My week ahead 18 - 24 August 2014

Monday – 18 August, 9am – Ipswich Angle Board meeting
6pm –Labour Group campaigning session

Tuesday – 19 August, 2pm – Labour campaigning in NE Ipswich

Thursday – 21 August, 10am Labour campaigning in SW Ipswich
2pm – NE Area Committee agenda setting meeting

Saturday – 23 August, 10am – Labour campaigning in South East Ipswich

Sunday – 24 August, 10am – Labour campaigning in South West Ipswich

Most of next week will be spent campaigning in Ipswich and after reading some of the latest comment from our Tory MP, it seems even more important to me that we replace the Tory Ben Gummer with David Ellesmere.

I do agree with Mr Gummer that Ipswich needs to gain unitary status but I do not believe we need (as Mr Gummer seems to think) that we need an elected Mayor. Even more amazingly (and yet again highlights how out of touch our MP is) Mr Gummer believes we only need a handful of councillors in the town. I will admit that I already struggle at time to take care of all my case work and hold down a full time job and I have two other ward councillors to share the load with!

The only way ( and they would still struggle) to cope with all the casework that would come your way with the town divided into just 6 wards would be to become a full time politician – the last thing that is needed at councillor level.

It would be interesting to cmpare how much case work Mr Gummer delas with compared to the former Labour MP for the town, Mr Gummer did say he would be bvery transparent with what he claims and what he does but as his websitre is so out of date it seems from reading that he does very little.

Plus how would we deal with planning and licensing plus scrutiny with just a handful of councillors? If Mr Gummer wants to save mone and get rid of politicians that are not needed, tell Mr Cameron to get rid of the House of Lords – oh, I forgot the PM has just made a a number of Tory donors members of that House! Worry about that Mr Gummer before preaching to us how many councillors we need.

Tonight I witnessed the climax of yet another great Ipswich Maritime festival – the climax being a great (and free) firework display. I watched it from the packed beer festival whilst drinking a nice pint of Kiwi!

I did find it strange that the lead blogger on an Ipswich political website seemed to have a quick pop at myself for not attending the beer festival before tonight! I must have missed his tweets that asked why our Tory MP did not turn up to the event Ipswich held to commemorate the start of World War One or a tweet wondering why the Lib Dems failed to attend the latest culture working group. He may think attendance at a beer festival is more important that turning up at the cenotaph to remember the events of 1914!