Adult education chosen for Select Committee

Quick bit of good news is that something I called for back in May has come to pass. The Council's Overview and Scrutiny Management committee (a real thriller!) has chosen adult education to be a topic for a Select Committee in the coming year. Select Committees are used to examine topics of interest in detail on a cross-party basis to see what can be done to improve them. The Government has thrown funding for adult education up in the air in the last few months, so now is a perfect time to look at what the city is doing to try to make it more robust and hopefully to grow as well. I await the results with interest...

A new newspaper is born

Bristol has a new newspaper! Well, I say newspaper, but it's actually an online-only outlet, called Bristol 24-7. It launched a few days ago and thus far it looks quite good - a nice mix of news and features, presented attractively. It's run by Cotham resident Christopher Brown and I wish him the best of luck with the venture. A healthy press is a vital component of democracy and the more sources of news people have available to them the better!

Thirty years of progress

I've just got back from the Glastonbury Festival, where one of the highlights for me was seeing The Specials for the first time. I am always a little sceptical of seeing bands on reunions, but as they split back in the early 80s when I was a little on the young side for ska gigs, I couldn't be too prissy about it!

One of the things that struck me during the gig was how far British society has come in those thirty years. The Specials were one of the first bands to sing about race at the time, for example, of the St Pauls riots. The members demonstrated a new model of unity to a society that was grappling with what difference meant - a society that was being told by Margaret Thatcher that it didn't exist. Here I was now in 2009, in a crowd in an easy mix of white and black, women and men, old and young and gay and straight. The Specials (and Madness, who played the following day) were an original part of the legacy of tolerence and celebration that my generation thankfully inherited.

But, in the context of the recent Euro elections, their message is still vitally important to our society - a point that they made on stage. Music was what politicised me as a teenager and it continues to do so. We need a new generation of artists to come through and pick up where The Specials left off, not endless TV-friendly talent show washouts.

The audio on this video isn't great as it's a YouTube borrow from a bloke with a mobile phone (who, from the angle, must have been near me). For a better reflection, you can see the official BBC clip. In the context of Michael Jackson passing, I was a bit worried about old Neville Staples a couple of times - he's three years older than Jacko and still running around the stage like a loon!

Cotham School trees - anger builds!

I am still pursuing with local residents and organisations the loss of four mature trees at Cotham School. I have got increasingly angry at what is becoming evasive buck-passing between different departments in the Council, the Local Education Partnership and Skanska.

It is now clear that the line that Skanska put out in the press was a fabrication. They had no permission to remove the trees and, worse still, they did it during the bird nesting season without taking the appropriate precautions. This is potentially a criminal offence and we are investigating whether and how this might be prosecuted.

For reasons that are not clear to me, the Council seems to be dragging its feet about putting pressure on Skanska to put right their mistake. A letter has gone out to residents effectively telling them not to moan as the trees needed to go for the good of our children and I have complained to the Director of Children and Young People's Services about this.

I wrote formally to the Local Education Partnership (who contract between the Council and Skanska) two weeks ago and I have not yet had a response. I get the faint whiff of bucks being passed and backsides being covered...

8 and 9 bus routes to change

First Bus are proposing to alter the 8 and 9 bus routes that currently serve the Cotham and Redland areas.

They are planning to axe the 8A and 9A routes that go through Clifton, but this is outside my patch. The main change for around here is that they want to move the route from Redland Park and Clyde Road to Redland Hill - see map right.

The reason for this is that the buses are getting caught up in traffic on this stretch of road due to the parking on both sides. This is affecting the reliability of the services and also the number that can be provided per hour. I discussed this problem with the former Managing Director when I had 20 minutes on the phone with him a year or so ago.

The quid pro quo for these changes is that they will offer a more regular service with higher reliability. They are seeking to shift from every 20 minutes to every 12 minutes during weekdays and Saturdays and from every 30 minutes to every 20 minutes on Sundays.

I am obviously going to be taking some time to think about what these changes will mean. The improved frequency is obviously very welcome, but it does mean that those people living on Redland Park and Clyde Road and the side roads will have to walk further to get to a bus stop. On the other hand, some people on these roads will be quite keen on the changes as they get kept awake by the buses at the moment as some of the houses open straight onto the road. Also, those people living on Redland Hill would get a better service.

I would welcome any thoughts from local people about the proposals - these will be very helpful in deciding how I respond to First.

Anthony Negus elected

Back from a election-based hiatus! I didn't want this blog to turn into a 'big P' political battleground as I try to keep it mainly informative and not for down-and-dirty campaigning, so I thought it best to have a little break.

Anyway, the election on 4th June saw Lib Dem Anthony Negus elected to join me as the other councillor for Cotham Ward. Anthony replaces Roger McDermott who stepped down due to work commitments. Anthony was elected with a positive swing from all the other parties and a majority of 683 votes - the full result is on the Council website.

Anthony has been helping me with stuff around Cotham for much of the last year, learning the ropes and providing expert advice on planning and conservation issues. I am really looking forward to working with him and I am just sending him his first load of issues to get his teeth into!

P.S. No-one told me that there were going to be photos, so I look scruffy even for me here with Nick Clegg!

Vote Match Europe

Quick plug for a new service from the nice folks at Unlock Democracy, of which I am a member / supporter. It's called Vote Match and it helps people to decide which of the political parties they should vote for in the Euro elections.

It asks you to agree or disagree with 30 statements and then to specify which issues are most and least important to you and then compares these with the political parties.

Hardly a surprise that I came out as a Lib Dem voter (!), but it is a useful way of spelling out what the dividing issues are without the usual Eurofog.

Waste Doctors - the return!

Over the last few weeks, a team from an organisation called Resource Futures have been plodding the streets of Cotham (and Redland and Bishopston), knocking on doors and talking to people about their waste. I caught up with a team in their nice hi-vis jackets a few days ago for a chat (see photo).

It's a pilot project that I set up using funding from the Neighbourhood Partnership, based around the concept of Waste Doctors that the last Lib Dem administration brought in (and Labour axed). The idea, in a nutshell, is that they engage with residents about what they do with their waste and try to persuade them to recycle more and to put things out correctly. This time, they have also been working to try to stop people leaving their bins out and making the pavements messy.

The approach has been shown to be effective. People often don't know about what can and can't be recycled, especially in an area where people are moving around a lot. For example, students who move into an area often assume that things are the same as at their parents home and so get it wrong - not entirely their fault! The role of Waste Doctors is to provide information and explain how it all works, one-to-one. It's far more effective than simply sending out more and more bits of paper - a more human approach works wonders.

There is a double-win for this scheme. It pushes the city's already excellent recycling rates upwards and lowers our collective carbon footprint, but it also pays for itself by reducing the amount of landfill tax we would be paying on the waste.

The pilot project has seen nearly 3,000 doors knocked on so far and they are just starting to go back to houses for a second time to catch the people they missed last time. I'm looking forwards to getting the report about how they've done - I will post a summary when I have it later in the summer.

Lib Dem Europe Manifesto

Just thought I would post a link through to the southwest region candidates and the Lib Dem manifesto for the European elections on Thursday 4th June. The main themes are :



The health of our economy is linked as never before to the health of those we trade with in Europe and beyond. We must work urgently with other European countries to help us all pull through recession.


The European Union, with a combined population of half a billion people, has achieved a great deal in the last 50 years, but it now needs to adapt its focus to the changing world of the 21st Century.


The threat from crime and terrorism does not stop at our borders. Globalisation and mass migration have created a world where more and more crime happens across national borders, and our response must be international too.


Dangerous climate change will destroy our way of life unless radical action is taken. We are running out of time to safeguard the future for our children and for our grandchildren. No individual country can tackle this problem alone. We have to work together to ensure that our way of life doesn’t hurt the planet.


In the 20th century, European integration helped to bring peace to a continent divided by the Iron Curtain and by historic rivalries. With globalisation in the 21st century, Britain and Europe face a different set of threats, but many opportunities too.

Hurrah for Good Gas!

I was delighted to get an e-mail today from Good Energy who supply me with 100% renewable electricity. They have just launched a new service to offer an eco-friendly gas supply too.

Apparently, the UK's gas network is not yet able to cope directly with the various different forms of gas from renewable sources - like biogas from anaerobic digestion. Therefore they have come up with a way of using gas sales to stimulate microgeneration and thereby provide an environmental benefit. The economics is all a bit too much for my poor head to understand, but they have a webpage with it all on.

I've signed up this evening and I am hopeful that they will be able to switch me to full renewable gas as soon as technically possible. The various types of biogas are going to be increasingly important for the UK, which has a heavy reliance on gas for cooking and heating which would be very difficult to replace directly with renewable electricity.

(In the interests of financial probity, I should probably mention that I am a small shareholder in Good Energy as well as a customer - that's not the reason for the plug though!)