My week ahead 7 - 13 January 2013

Monday 7 January, 4pm – Culture and leisure portfolio meeting
6pm - Labour campaigning

Thursday 10 January, 7pm – Suffolk Fabians Meeting, Paul Geater:“The local press -essential to our democracy”

Saturday 12 January, 9.30am – Labour campaigning in North Ipswich

Often residents remark that they only see us (politicians) when there is about to be an election, maybe what happens in some parts of the country but certainly not in Ipswich as unlike other parts of the country we have an election every year in Ipswich. Plus Ipswich Labour campaign all year and with the police elections at the end of last year some residents may have even seen a local Tory but the last time a Lib Dem was seen campaigning was last May (and in Rushmere about 2004!)

So we now have the ‘long’ campaigns starting for the Suffolk County Council elections in May, we hope that by working hard we will continue the progress we made last May and followed up with a good result in the Police and Crime Commissioners election in November. But we will also be looking to help our colleagues in rural Suffolk win seats and we saw with Jan Basham coming first that Suffolk is no longer the haven the Tories think it is.

But I do expect the Tories to fight hard (in at least some wards) in May, and we may even see Lib Dems campaigning even if only on one ward in the town.

We have already seen a flurry of press releases from Suffolk Tories and Clly Terry is using her ‘Flyer’ column as a personal campaign tool and the Lib Dems have even informed us that someone attempted to hack into their website – seems strange when no local news has been posted for over 7 months!

We do have one election before May, as the Ipswich Tories look to elect a new leader – not that you would know that their last leader has quit if you looked at their website or read any of their activist blogs. One leading Ipswich Tory even complained that he first heard about the Tory leader quitting on the council facebook page.

I will be joining my Ipswich Labour colleagues campaigning hard to make Ipswich a Tory free are of Suffolk.