My week ahead, 19 - 25 January 2015

Monday 19 January, 8am – Angle editorial board meeting.
6pm – Labour Group campaigning

Wednesday 21 January, 9am – Ipswich Borough Council Planning Committee

Thursday 22 January, 6pm –Ipswich Labour Party and Fabians meeting on the ‘Living Wage’

Saturday 24 January, 10am – Labour campaigning in South East Ipswich

Sunday 25 January, 10am – Labour campaigning in South West Ipswich

More campaigning ahead this week, and it is still months to the election! We spend most of our campaigning time talking to residents and the Tories also seem keen to get their message over, with their main form of communication being expensive and large leaflets/papers. National issues are covered but most of the focus is on Mr Gummer, not sure many will believe his promise of getting Ipswich the best schools, the fact is in the last 4 years the standard of education in the County has spiralled downwards. With two of the key causes to the poor standard of education being the Tory run County Council not seeming to be interested in improving education, their priority seems to be get rid of as many schools from their responsibility as they can and they have been helped in that task by the Tory Government who have forced a number of primary schools to take the path to becoming an academy, in most cases against the wishes of both staff and parents.

It was not long ago that Mr Gummer could be found at the drop of a hat outside Ipswich Academy having his picture taken; he even joined Mr Gove on a visit to the school. Noticeably this week with the publication of yet another poor Ofsted report he does not seem so keen to be associated with the school.

So maybe there should be a ‘health warning’ printed at the bottom of all his leaflets?

The other party you would think are campaigning hard if you are someone who uses twitter is the local Green Party, but it seems that the social media campaign is the only work they are doing as talking to residents, face to face is not yet a priority for them.

Then we have the Lib Dems and UKIP. Both seem to have no local campaigning planned, UKIP seem to be happy to let all their national politicians do their work whilst the Lib Dems seem to be unable to go more than 400m from the confines of Christchurch Park, no social media presence unless you include one of their councillors writing for a blog then arguing with someone who had the audacity to comment on one of his posts! Locally they seem to be a party that no longer seems to have the will to continue. The way they jumped into bed locally with the Tories, means to many they will not be missed.