My week ahead, 8 - 15 September 2013.

Monday 9 September, 4pm – Culture Portfolio meeting
6pm – Labour Group Meeting

Wednesday 11 September, 6pm – East Ipswich area Housing Meeting, Reg Driver Centre

Thursday 12 September, 6pm – Overview and Scrutiny meeting, Grafton House

Saturday 14 September, 10am – Labour campaigning, South West Ipswich

Now we know the summer is over! Meetings almost every night with the big one being scrutiny this week. We will be looking at a report on the refurbishment work at Crown Pools.

But even though most of the week is spent on meetings it is important that we continue to campaign and meet residents, it seems that Ben Gummer and (some) Ipswich Tories realise that they have not done much since the last General Election and are now belatedly going out and talking to residents, not sure a fleeting visit to the multi- cultural event counts!– they have continued to lose council seats, on both the Borough and County and did very little campaigning in the Police Commissioner election last year. We are also looking at new ways to campaign and meet residents but when it comes to knocking on doors, we have a 3 year head start on the local Tory lot.

The Lib Dems? Your guess is as good as mine!

Away from that Ipswich was blessed with another great event this weekend with the Sky Ride, the Suffolk Coastal Pro race and a Sportive- all just a few weeks after Maritime Ipswich and with the Ipswich half-marathon also this month to look forward to. We do have a fantastic events team and glad to see that they will be involved over the 4 years we will be remembering the sacrifices many made during the First World War, their expertise will be of a great help.

My week ahead 3 - 8 October

Monday 3 October 6pm - Campaigning in North East Ipswich

Wednesday 5 October 6pm - Scrutiny, Call in of decision to delay paying of locality budgets

Thursday 6 October 7pm - Fabians meeting - Debate on Europe

Saturday 8 October 10.30am - Campaigning all over Ipswich, focus on Tory plans for NHS

Only one meeting this week but an important one as we looked at the plan to manage the refurbishment of Crown Pools, making sure that we look after those who have used Crown Pools regularly over the last few years.

We have also started campaigning hard in St Margaret's Ward, Ipswich. Maybe not our most fertile area for votes but have had some excellent contacts with local residents. Many seem to be keen to vote for us as they feel they have been badly let down by the Lib Dems, issues such as tuition fees are important to many in St Margaret's and they are not willing to allow the local Lib Dems to distance themselves from the decision that Clegg and his colleagues made to vote for Tuition fees at Westminster. Even Tory voters were keen to talk to us, as they are confused what the Tory policy is on building on the Northern Fringe. The Tory Government seem to be saying developers can build anywhere, Dr Poulter said it does not mean this and even the local Tory Cllrs seem split one what should happen. We still wait for Ben Gummer to make a public statement on the issue.

One thing for certain is that most residents have not got a clue what the Tories plan is for developing this part of the town and maybe the Tories are not even sure themselves!

My week ahead 25 - 31 July 2011

This week, I will be In Mid Wales, supporting some young Ipswich residents as they tray to gain their Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award.

Saturday 30 July 10.30am Campaigning in North Ipswich

This week started with 3 meetings on Monday, the first was spent looking how we can get more local residents involved in the North East Ipswich forum, the second was a meeting with Council Officers as we looked at the plan for the Olympic torch arriving in Ipswich. The day finished off with the Labour Group meeting.

On Wednesday, I joined fellow Labour councillors, Bryony Rudkin and Peter Gardiner at Crown Pools in Ipswich as we met users of the pool to discuss the next stage of the pool refurbishment. the users seemed impressed (and surprised) that we were keen to hear their views.




The council meeting that night saw unanimous support for the motion that will see Ipswich form closer links with Nettuno in Italy, what should have just been a formality was slightly soured by Tory leader John Carnall trying to make a fuss about why the meeting was being held. But from the speakers on the night, it seems he was a lone voice and the comments by Lib Dem Richard Atkins and even some of Carnall's own group also indicated that the opposition had wished to form a link with Nettuno during their time in power but for some reason (Carnall?) it never happened.

On Thursday I was at the Colchester Road Fire Station to see the handover of the Needham Market Fire engine and then I finished the week by spending Saturday campaigning for Tracey Welsh in Great Cornard.

Ipswich has an advantage- we know the Tories are still the same 'nasty' Party!

Just had a Tory Ben Gummer leaflet through my door- as a politics anorak, I read it - and I quite like Ben but I could see no mention of the mess the Tory (with help from their Lib Dem friends) have made of Ipswich.

We have an advantage in this great town as we know for all Cameron's talk the Tory Party is still the 'nasty' Party. In Ipswich they can't even get on with the Tories running Suffolk County Council.

All we have seen is mis management - with the latest Tory/Carnell scheme the maddest of the lot - selling off Ipswich buses. We have also had:
Crown Street Car Park shut
Crown Street Swimming Pool neglected
A promise of a million pounds towards Broom Hill Swimming Pool removed
Planning to close the area Housing Offices
Passing on as much work as they can to private consultants
Planning to close West Villa

And most of this done behind closed doors!!

What next?

Selling off the Refuse collection?
Council Housing?

So in Ipswich use that knowledge of knowing the Tories have not changed by voting Labour this year - in both the local and General Election.

But it is not all bad news in this town as a Labour Government has seen the building of new schools, the current building of a new 6th Form Centre, a new University, a new building at Ipswich Hospital and millions about to be spent on the A14.

On top of that is it just me? But every time Cameron talks about the NHS, it seems he is attacking the brilliant staff that the NHS has, no praise for their sterling work.

A vision for sport in Ipswich

As a councilor you do get invited to a number of events, you can't go to them all but I do feel it is my duty to attend as many as possible. As a great fan of all sport, I do try to attend as many sport events in Ipswich as possible. This week I went to town hall to help celebrate the announcement that Ipswich will host the 2012 European Cyclo-Cross Championship. the event will be held in Chantry Park.

The council and Team Ipswich have helped Ipswich get the event but most of the hard work has been done by local Cycling guru, Steve Grimwood.

The highlight of the launch event was the attendance of the BBC cycling commentator, Hugh Porter, who spoke about how proud he had been to commentate on the GB cycling golds at this years Olympics.

It is great news that we will host such a big event in 2012 and this along with the gymnastics centre likely to be used as an Olympic training venue by one of the competing nations are all feathers in the cap of the council and Team Ipswich.

But it did get me thinking- do we have a vision of where sport is going in Ipswich?

I remember as a school kid in Ipswich we had very few facilities in the town but an Officer at the council- Randal Bevan had a vision and with the Labour run Ipswich Borough Council was able to deliver, sports centres at Whitton, Maidenhall, Northgate, an athletics track at Northgate, Crown Pools, a cycle speedway track at Whitton and the Gymnastics centre at Gainsborough.

But now we seem to have promises of more facilities- a cycle velodrome was mentioned by Hugh Porter at this event but Cllr Judy Terry seems keen to make such announcements, as she did over a 50M pool for Portman Road but we never seem to see any concrete proposals. at the same time we have Broomhill Swimming Pool being refused a Lottery Grant, with the lack of council commitment being given as one of the reasons for the failure to get a grant.

At the same time Crown Pools is need of urgent repairs but all we get is statements in the press saying how keen they are on Broomhill, how a cycle velodrome will be built and so on.

What is needed is a proper plan for the provision of sport in Ipswich over the next 20 years, what new facilities will be built and what money will be spent on improving and maintaining present facilities.

I am afraid that all we get at the moment from Judy Terry are some great idea's but with little chance of any being pushed through. Maybe if Mrs Terry can't deliver she should take up cycling or as Norman Tebbit would have told her- "get on your bike!"

Democracy? Just left on the last Ipswich bus!

It may have taken them nearly a month but the Tories and Lib Dems in Ipswich are after taking revenge on the local Labour Party. Trouble is, the residents of Ipswich will also suffer.
Why the need for revenge? A number of reasons - the collapse of the Lib Dem vote in Ipswich, the failure of the Ipswich Tories to make any gains in Ipswich- if anything they seem to have gone backwards from their results in 2004 and 2006.
Labour did well because we ran an organised campaign and we had issues that concerned the public of Ipswich- the likely destruction of the Ipswich Bus Service by the local Tory/Lib Dems and the way the Suffolk County Tories are attacking those who need help most- the elderly- with the closure of day care centres.
The Tory/ Lib Dem answer is not to campaign for what they believe in but to get rid of any dissenting voice, last week they got rid of the lone Labour member on the council executive and this week they really twisted the knife in- getting rid of both Martin Cook and Phil Smart from the board of Ipswich buses. So now the Tories will feel they can do anything they like.
So now we have to really fear for the health of the excellent Ipswich Bus service and in the meantime they can spend money on a publicity war with the (also Tory run) County council over unitary status and then also tell residents that they will re-open Broom Hill lido at the same time that Crown Pools is closed for the half term week as they refuse to spend any money on a pool that is already open.
In the Balkans they have a saying that "Revenge is a dish better served cold" well in Ipswich they couldn't even wait for the dish to go luke warm.