My week ahead 10 - 17 June 2013

Monday 10 June – 6pm, Labour campaigning- East Ipswich

Tuesday 11 June – 6pm, East Ipswich Housing Panel

Thursday 13 June – 4pm, Meeting at SCC about proposals for Rushmere Hall School
6pm – Ipswich Borough Council Scrutiny meeting

Friday 14 June – 4pm, Pearl Izumi Cycle Tour series, Ipswich town centre

Saturday 16 June - 10am, Labour campaigning, North West Ipswich

This week has been both satisfying and difficult – the good part was being able to inform residents that their bus service (22 and 31) were not to be lost. The first cuts by the Tory run Suffolk County Council are starting to leak out (no mention in any Tory election leaflet) and subsidies to bus routes are one of the first cuts to hit Ipswich. The good news is that the 22 and 31 will be replaced by a new service – the 39 – though it does cease working earlier in the afternoon as it then moves to the County run school bus service later in the afternoon. I will continue to both fight with residents against these Tory cuts and also work with the Borough Council and Ipswich Buses to try and help in areas where a bus service is lost.

The frustrating part has been dealing with residents’ concerns about the building of the new supermarket on the ‘Golden Key’ site on Woodbridge Rd. Chaos is the best way to describe what Rushmere residents woke to on Monday morning. The traffic jams and chaos were not acceptable. Fortunately our new Labour County Councillor was onto the task straight away and managed to get the County Council to change part of the road layout.

We now have a further 6 weeks of this chaos on one of the town’s main arterial routes! We (Ipswich Borough Council) did turn down the planning application because of traffic concerns – Monday was just yet one more example of where we (and residents) were right. Pity the Government Inspector did not listen – or visit the site during term time!

But to finish on a positive note, was a pleasure to visit the Beverley/Whitby Rd Community 'Front garden' sale today - after the success of the 'Big Lunch' held on Brunswick Recreation Ground last week, it is nice to know that we live in a ward with a real community feel.

Ipswich Buses - only safe under Labour

Ipswich Labour have always promised to do all we can to help save the Ipswich Bus Company.

Ipswich are now one of only eleven municipal bus companies left in this country with Edinburgh and Blackpool being the two largest.

John Carnall the Tory leader even stated a few days before the local election in 2011 that his intention was to sell the Bus Company off. Labour won so that put a stop to his plan, but the company is under plenty of pressure from outside influences.

The Tory run Suffolk County Council took away the Park and Ride franchise when the Ipswich Tories were in power and have since cut back on the rebate given to IBC for pensioners fares and taken the 'Explore' card away completely whilst the Tory Government is about to reduce the diesel fuel rebate it hands to bus and coach businesses.

Yesterday Rachel Reeves MP and Iain Wright MP visited the Ipswich Bus Company along with David Ellesmere and were very happy to see that Ipswich was still maintaining a municipal bus service.

But do Ipswich residents still want a council owned bus company? I think they do and it is far better than the alternative that Iain Wright told us about, in Hartlepool they no longer have a bus service run by the council and the council also can no longer afford to give the private bus company money toward subsidising routes - so what does Hartlepool now have? No buses after 6pm during the week and no weekend bus service at all. If that's what you want in Ipswich- Vote Tory but I am sure most of you would like not only to keep our 'Green' buses but to improve the service - then you have to vote Labour.

Ipswich buses - Hell on Wheels!

Spent this evening at a meeting of Ipswich Borough Council Scrutiny committee, tonight we looked at transport in Ipswich.
What the meeting showed is that the Tory run County Council and the Tory run Borough Council aren't even talking to each other when it comes to transport.This week the local press were full of the new transport development that you can now buy bus tickets over your mobile and guess what? The Tory Borough Council did not know anything about it till Tuesday this week, so much for a joined up transport policy.

But it was later in the meeting that the Tories showed their real views on public transport, a leading Ipswich Tory councillor declared that traveling on Ipswich Buses was like "Hell on Wheels",

Obviously he has never been on the 13 route up to Chantry, with the buses that were ordered under a Labour Council.

Back on the radio!

I have previously blogged about appearing as a guest on the Naked Football Show on Ipswich Community Radio (ICR), well I was back at the station today making my first appearance on the weekly run "Councillors" show. Each of the three main political parties gets a show and then every 4 weeks they all get together for a political discussion/argument!

Today we were hoping to go live to Ohio, where my fellow Labour Councillor, John Cook has been over in the States helping on the Obama campaign, but we were either let down by a technical problem or John was still out celebrating a fantastic win for Obama. So what did we talk about?

The main topic was Remembrance Day and how as a town and council we need not only to remember those who have lost their lives in previous wars and campaigns but what we can do to help serving soldiers and more importantly what we can do to support their families whist their husbands, (or wives, fathers, mothers) are serving in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We also discussed the Ipswich Bus service and the £5 million that Ipswich Borough Council may have lost after investing in an Icelandic bank. We had so much to talk about that we ran out of time, so it was a pity we could not get through to the USA to talk to John and discuss the Presidential election but we found there were plenty of local issues that were of as much more importance to the Ipswich public.

And the Tories said the Ipswich bus service was safe!

Tory election leaflets have accused myself and my Ipswich Labour colleagues of scaremongering- to quote their leaflet - "Not for the first time in Rushmere, Labour has tried to alarm residents by scaremongering, this time about local bus services to Rushmere."

Well from the 28th September, the number 11 bus service to Rushmere is being reduced- from every 15 minutes to every 20 minutes during the working week and more worrying for me as a parent- to just one service an hour on evenings and Sundays.

So only two years after the horrific murders in Ipswich, this Tory/Lib dem council want to cut bus services in the evenings, so youngsters have a choice of an expensive taxi, an hour wait for a bus or more alarming they may decide to walk home.

So much for the "Green" Mr Cameron! More cars on the roads, reduced bus service. the Tories have someone to blame (as well as themselves) the Tory run County council, who have taken away the Park and Ride contract from Ipswich Buses.

So, remember do not believe everything (or anything) in a Tory election leaflet!

Save our bus service

The title of this item may get you thinking this is just a normal local campaign that only effects the people of Ipswich, true it is just the Ipswich bus service that I am talking about but it highlights many aspects of local politics that people can relate to all over the country.

• Green issues


• Getting people to use Public Transport


• Lib Dem support for Tory councils and policies


• Getting the local paper to support the campaign (without letting them make it seem that it was their idea in the first place)
  

In Ipswich this campaign has really caught the public attention, and the Tories seem to be totally shocked by the public response to the threat of cuts to the public bus service.

A basic explanation of the situation in Ipswich: We have bus service in Ipswich that many town and cities would be proud of. when the Tory Government de- regulated Public Transport, A Labour run Ipswich council set the bus company up as an arms length company and have run it that way since. the Tories now proposes to move the bus depot and then hike up it's rent and also make the bus company pay a dividend to the council from it's profits.

The reason why? So the money from the bus service Will enable the Tories to keep council tax down - their holy grail.

The managing director of the bus company prepared a document to show where cuts would have to be made to pay this new rent and the dividend that the council now required. a number of the less used bus routes will go but also more worryingly at night most bus services will change from two and hour to one an hour. this to me is criminal, especially after the tragic events that occurred in Ipswich before Christmas- we should be looking to increase the number of bus routes at night not cut them - public safety should come before profits.

When Labour and the local paper went public with this it not only came as a shock to the public but also certain Tory Councillor's- even the Mayor! His own ward would see it's bus service cut- it became obvious to many that this administration is run by about 4 people and that they do not even keep their own group informed of policy.

A certain Liberal activist- who has bigger aspirations joined in with the attack on the Tory administration (he is currently a Lib Dem County Councillor) but within two weeks had changed his view to one that the Labour Group were "mischief making". His change in view came around when he found out that the Lib Dem's on the Borough Council - had rubber stamped the Tory plan.

For once we have the local paper on our side, and it has helped us in what we had found a difficult task in informing the people of Ipswich that the council was now Tory run - with support of the Lib Dem's. Up to this point many in Ipswich still thought we were in power. The cuts in the bus service by the Borough and the cuts in Community care by the County Council has at least shown the public of Ipswich and Suffolk that there is still a clear difference between Labor and Conservative- what ever certain papers say.