June Councillor 'report'

This isn’t meant as a formal report but I do want to keep constituents in the loop. This is a much longer post than usual but I hope of interest to local constituents!

Council work:


Formal council committees that that I am a member of and met in June are Environment scrutiny committee (full post here) and the full council meeting on 29th June. I had a motion to full council on on keeping postmen and women on their bikes. This was passed unanimously.  I also voted for the motion on council’s commitment on climate change (also passed unanimously after being watered down by a libdem amendment).  The motion that would enable All Saints school to have time to explore funding options for a building they want to expand was amended by the administration to say that they would decide on the sale at the next cabinet meeting (passed as amended with Libdem/Conservatives for, Labour, Green against).  I voted against the amendment and then against the motion as it now meant the opposite of what was intended by the Minster ward councillors.  I voted against the Conservative/Libdem coalition agreement as they voted down the amendments that would have provided some reassurance (passed with Conservative/Libdem votes for Labour and Green against), for the endorsement of the tree strategy, the report on regulation of sexual entertainment venues, approving the accounts, procedures to promote local democracy and engagement, the new governance arrangements proposals and the appointment of the honorary recorder (all passed unanimously).


I attended the last of the induction training for new councillors at the beginning of the month as well, very useful and good information.



Other council related events that I’ve attended include the exhibition for refugee week, part of the Armed Forces Day (before being taken to watch the footie with my husband and friends - would have rather stayed to be honest!), Waterfest/Forebury Fever and the June meeting of the Reading Faith forum.

Out and about in the ward:


Jim Hanley, Mike Orton and I have held two events for local people to come and chat to us in June. 4th June Mike and I held a surgery in Whitley Wood and 19th June Jim and I hosted a councillor’s coffee morning at the South Reading Youth and Community Centre. I hope we can continue this as it’s a nice, informal way to chat to people about their concerns.


Jim and I also attended the Kennet Island residents association meeting on 1st June.


I’ve also had a number of individual issues that residents have raised with me. Obviously I won’t list them here but they do really vary: housing, parks, road surfaces, anti-social behaviour etc. Please do feel free to contact your ward councillors if you have something that you want us to help with!

Other meetings:
I have met with a number of groups and individuals, including a developer with a site in Whitley, trade union representatives, a community sports association, the management company of a major development, the car club that operates the council and Kennet Island car club cars and attended a local charity’s board meeting (I don’t count my school governor role as council work but have been involved there as well). Obviously although I am happy to listen to anyone who I think has something relevant to say I will always put Reading and Whitley’s best interests first!

I also made sure I have met with a number of council staff (or officers as they are known) to ensure that I quickly get used to the way things work on the council and I can be an effective representative.

Labour party and campaigning

This section is not related to my work as a councillor but is something I do on a voluntary basis and is relevant to constituents!


I’ve stepped down as women’s officer for the local party as I want to make sure that I can commit my time to being an effective representative and campaigner.
However I’ve remained elected to the committees of the local party and was elected as one of the back bench members of the Labour councillors' group ‘executive committee’. I’ve been to local meetings and Reading wide meetings as we discuss how we campaign for the future.  There's a lot of positive ideas in the party and I know that we're going to do all we can to win votes and seats on the council in next year's elections.


Locally we’ve put out a leaflet to a large portion of Whitley ward following the election thanking all those who voted for us, reminding people of our contact details and giving information about the new coalition locally, we'll be putting out a newsletter to the rest of the ward over the summer.

I’ve also been keeping the ‘Whitley News’ website up to date as I know it’s become a popular source of information.

It’s also been great to welcome new members to the party, if you want to join or you’ve just joined but haven’t heard from anyone locally yet get in touch – it could just be because it takes a little while for the local party to hear about new members!




Next month:

I hope to post a similar report to this on a monthly basis. My expectation is that July will be a slightly quieter month as many committees of the council don’t meet and I will be taking a little time out during the month. Please do continue to get in touch with me, but please bear with me if you don't hear back for a couple of days.  You might prefer to contact Mike or Jim if it's very urgent. I’ll do my best to stay up to date and helpful!

Lots of hot air...

Full council last night was full of hot air.

I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by the game playing and the lack of real engagement in debate by the Conservative/Libdem groups.  I had to make a real effort to attend (thanks to the staff who brought me water and a fan - it made a real difference!) so it was particularly disappointing to me that the administration didn't seem to want to any debate - even very moderate proposals such as suggesting that any changes to voluntary sector funding followed the principles of the Reading Compact (and the coalition's stated aims), of openness, transparency and consistency were shot down and debate was closed off.  Of course at the moment the Conservatives and Libdems between them have got a majority but it's disappointing of them to use it to vote down the ability of opposition to put their case.

It was summed up for my by at the end of a very long evening the response of the Con-dems to a motion from Minster ward councillors.  The motion simply asked the new administration to give the governors and parents of All Saints School time to complete their business case for expansion into a neighbouring property by postponing the sale, which the Labour administration had agreed to do.  Rather than address that point they chose to talk about the national deficit.  The Conservatives proposed (and Libdems seconded) an amendment that reversed the meaning of the motion from offering a delay on any decision to saying they'll make a decision as to who they will sell the building to on 12th July (in fact it changed all the words after 'This council'!).  I was genuinely surprised by this as my understanding of the new government's policy is that they want community involvement, academies and free schools.  As far as I am aware the governors of All Saints are keen to go for something like this - certainly that's what our new MP seems to have thought as well.  Whether it is feasible or not I don't know, but surely it's worth giving them a chance to put their case.
I guess that the local coalition isn't as keen on the 'Big Society' as the national government?  Or maybe the 'Big Society' is a con?


I also noticed that while some members of the administration complained that we hadn't given copies of our amendments to them in advance (and one spent more of her speech on that than actually addressing the amendment) they certainly didn't give Labour or the Greens copies of their amendments either.  I don't have a problem with that, but it should be one rule for everyone!

On the positive side my own 'motion on cycling postmen' as it was described in the chamber was so widely supported it passed unanimously with virtually no debate, (it was amended very, very slightly for wording) and Cllr Willis said some kind things about it and my first speech.  I did manage to get a cross-party laugh and it had the virtue of being fairly short but generally it wasn't a very good speech, by then the heat had really taken it out of me.  Of all the Conservatives Cllr Willis was the only one I spotted who managed to give a speech (on the council's tree strategy) without suggesting that the whole world was coming to an end because of Labour not spending enough on schools/spending too much/generally being evil.  Having said that at 40 weeks pregnant in 30 degree heat I may have missed something...

Photo is of a gathering of Labour and Greens united against cuts to vital services - thanks to Cllr Maskell who took the picture.

Why put a motion in to council on cycling posties?

As the local press has spotted I've put a motion in to the council calling on the Royal Mail to reconsider it's decision to phase our most bike deliveries.  As a cyclist myself I know that cycling can be the most efficient, cheap and environmentally friendly way to get about and I suspect this proposal was drawn up by someone who hasn't experienced cycling in general or delivering by bike in particular.  I've done both, although not as a postal worker and I should also probably declare that my husband is a former cycling postman!

This is a draft text of the speech I plan to give tomorrow (although I may adlib/shorten it a bit, I think it currently takes about 3 minutes...):

"Colleagues,

Our council is proudly committed to reducing our carbon footprint and working with others to improve the environment

It has also been, and I hope will continue to be, council policy to reduce congestion, encourage cycle use and to reduce air pollution in our borough.

Therefore I’m hoping this motion will attract all party support.  It’s relevant to Reading borough council as it is our street network that will be affected, our air quality that will be damaged and our residents who ultimately will suffer from this!

At present our postmen and women delivering to our doors with their study bikes are a familiar site in our community.  As elected representatives I’m sure we all have experience of delivering our own leaflets to our constituents and I’ve personally found that using a bike can be the most efficient way to get about when doing this.

The Royal Mail’s previous chief executive announced a plan to phase out almost all bike delivery to be replaced by more vans and electric trolleys.  This motion simply supports the campaign for the new chief executive to reconsider.  As a local union representative recently said to me:

“This proposal increases substantially the size of Royal mails fleet, will inflate fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, will increase congestion on our over burdened roads during peak morning traffic, and it is far from Eco friendly.”

The Cyclist Touring Club and many postmen and women are opposing the proposal, which is being advocated on spurious ‘health and safety’ grounds – ignoring the reduced sickness and the increased life expectancy that cyclists enjoy.

I would ask all members to support this motion to maintain the positive contribution that postal deliveries by bike make to Reading and support ordinary postal workers, union representatives and the Cyclists Touring Club who want to see common sense prevail."

"...It's much more important than that"

Someone once said 'Football's not a matter of life and death, it's much more important than that".

Well frankly after yesterday I hope that no-one seriously feels that way.

Something maybe more important than football, and party politics, is the promises made and not made by G8 leaders on maternal death and childbirth in developing countries.  It's something that I've got a personal interest in.  It's public knowledge that I'm expecting my first child and I know that the chances for me and my baby are some of the best in the world.  However as a woman in Sierra Leone I would have a 1/8 chance of my cause of death being childbirth and about a one in four chance that each child born to me would die before thier 5th birthday.  This is falling slowly, but it's pretty shocking.


Charitable fundraising isn't really enough so I'm really hoping that Cameron will continue the UK's positive record on support for measures that will make a real difference.  It's not a matter of politics or the deficit, it's much more important than that.

First scrutiny panel

Well I've attended my first scrutiny panel what a varied agenda!  It's all publicly available if you want to see the reports that we had access to.

Disappointing that the 10:10 report was shunted to the end of the meeting, but it looks like the council has been making good progress on the target and also doing a lot to help others reach their goals.

On the performance indicators report the one I was most concerned about was the slippage on recycling, but I asked about the total amount sent to landfill, which is after all the more important thing, and was pleased to be told it was continuing to fall quite fast.  I wrote down that residual waste in the year that ended April 2010 was down 6.6% on the previous year.  We'll need to keep that up as a borough, and I will push for council policies that help us get there.

I was also able to agree with Cllr Emma Warman about improving communication on when road surfaces in general and potholes in particular were scheduled to be filled.  It's something I've been asked about quite a bit after the snowy weather, and while Reading may have done well compared to many other councils that's not really a comfort to people who are waiting for resurfacing.  Of course it's also an area where we may see cuts following the slash and burn of the budget.  At least with more reporting people will know how long they have to wait and as a councillor we won't have to keep asking about particular roads.

We also had a report on the Reading festival and what is being done to prevent the small number of people who spoilt it for everyone on Sunday night last year.  Paul Gittings and Martin Salter did a lot of work on this with the police and the festival organisers and the key thing to me is the massive increase in security and policing (paid for by the festival organisers) that has been agreed. 

Oh and we had to have a bit of silly games by the Conservatives/Lib dems playing didn't we?  Health warning This next paragraph is long and boring unless you are interested in politics with a small p...

We were told that our first item of business was to elect a chair but we weren't allowed to nominate anyone.  The Labour members had intended to nominate Paul, as former lead councillor for this area we felt he would be an experienced choice.  So instead of an open declaration of who was interested we had a list of all the councillors on the committee and had to vote for one of them.  I voted for Paul, then the secretary of the committee went and counted the votes, there were an equal number for Paul and Cllr Emma Warman, one of the Conservative members.  We weren't told how many votes there were for each member.  We were then told to vote again, and again the votes came out equal (I'm assuming 3, 3 with an abstention from Cllr Ricky Duveen, but who knows?!).  So we had to elect a chair just for the meeting.  One of the Conservatives initially nominated Cllr Warman, but sensibly Paul suggested that in order to cut short this farce we just had the previous Chair of committee take the Chair for the meeting, so Cllr Duveen it was. On taking the chair he suggested that we should have talked about it before the meeting and come up with an agreement.  That's as much as to say we should have done a deal away from the public eye?  Open and transparent?  More doublespeak I'm afraid...

I described it to my husband when I got home and we agreed that although the process was completely the opposite of open and transparent we couldn't really understand what the point of it was.  Secret candidates, secret ballot and a secret number of votes cast.  Utterly bizarre, and doesn't seem to be actually giving the coalition any advantage at all.  It's not a sensible way of carrying on scrutiny.

Anyway at least the rest of the meeting was worthwhile and focused.
 
PS I'm planning to write a report of my activities in June to keep anyone who is interested informed.

Doublespeak - Progressive is regressive

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is a well known, quite staid but very respected think tank.

They've done their own analysis of the budget and have concluded that the "overall impact of the budget is regressive".  The conclusion is on p20 of the link

It's bad enough to make the lowest paid, pensioners, the disabled and children for the banks crisis but to then pretend that you're not is just plain hypocritical.  "This is a progressive budget" said Osborne smugly yesterday.  There's something a bit 1984 about all this.  The novel and the year...

Never mind growth and jobs – tax the poor and hit the disabled!

My instant reaction – this budget is consistent with what we've already seen from this government - short term, blaming everything on other people and good for their friends (Cheshire is the least affected area in the country, and where is Osborne's constituency?).

There are some specific policies I am immediately concerned about, including 25% budget cuts for education, policing, housing and social care.  VAT up to 20% will hit everyone including businesses. 

Two things I like, firstly another levy on banks, continuing Labour's policy (but this time offset by a cut in corporation tax!) and the increase in capital gains tax is fairer than the VAT rate going up.

Overall though I it answers the wrong question – ““How do we encourage economic growth?” is the question Osborne he should have asked.   

I have to say Harriet Harman hit the nail on the head “A reckless Budget which pulls the rug out from under the economy”.

It’s nonsense for Osborne to suggest he doesn’t have a choice - I think he just hasn't thought too much about growth.  His own “Office of Budget Responsibility” have just revised their growth and employment predictions down as a result of policies announced in this budget (not to mention Obama calling on G20 leaders not to consolidate too quickly!).  

Reading is a great, resilient place to live and work, I just hope that we're resilient enough to cope with this government.

Great speech.

My favourite bits of Jon Cruddas's recent speech.   First quote I think rebuffs the nonsense that the coalition up to.   The second two quotes are about why I joined the Labour party and why I hope that others in Reading will be coming forward to help build up the Labour movement.

"...the public well knows - about who needs to pick up the tab for the crisis.
There's something absurd - there's no other word - about coming out of the crash and picking not on Bob Diamond, or Fred The Shred, or Philip Green, but people on welfare and struggling migrants."


"Labour’s future is our obligation.
Make it once more the defender of society against the power of the state and the market.
Organise the powerless. Give voice to the voiceless.  A new covenant with the people of England and with the nations of Britain.  Built on identity and nationhood; neighbourliness and belonging; kindness and solidarity; duty and obligation.  Critically it is a politics located in and respectful of the ordinary."

"For Labour to be part of the solution it must rediscover a rich English tradition of volatile, inspirational cultures of non-conformity, rebelliousness and creativity.
The task at hand is quite simple: to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.  Literally by rediscovering a sense of purpose for a nation."

Full text is here

Big society? Don't fix what isn't broken

I was at the Reading faith forum earlier this week and it struck me just how little the very people you would expect to be keen on the Big Society - the faith groups that do such great voluntary work, seemed taken with the idea of the council and government passing over more and more services to them.  After all they provide things that currently the council or government don't and their selfless volunteers only have so much time.  If they start providing social care to the elderly they won't be able to run lunch clubs.

Talking yesterday with a community worker (who has been rechristened as a social enterprise co-ordinator or something equally silly under the new regime - who said nonsense titles were the domain of the left?) she said "We're not all in this together, to them (the government) it's one less meal out, to others it's can they afford to pay for school dinners."

Senior people in government and the council seem to be admitting that many are going to be left high and dry who previously thought society would stand by them - whether that's the elderly, the mentally ill, families or children.

Voluntary and community groups are already doing so much to make Reading a civilised place to live.  Of course the government can't replace volunteers but neither can volunteers be expected to shoulder the burden of what the Tory/Lid-dem council and national governments decide is a price worth paying.

And for what?  Locally bringing back weekly refuse collections in marginal wards priority areas.  At a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds while leaving the vulnerable to suffer

I know I would prefer to wait a week for my landfill to be taken in exchange for knowing that an elderly neighbour is being given a chance to take a weekly shower or that my community centre is not being starved of funds!  And if anyone challenges me about that on the doorstep I will defend my view.  They say good politics is about hard choices, but this isn't even a hard choice for me.

What does Whitley mean to you? Photography competition

One of the things that the Whitley Arts festival is going to have this year is a photo exhibition on the theme of 'Your Whitley'.  There are a number of categories and it can be anything!

More information on entering is here

This is a great competition - I'll be entering a photo myself - if I can find something more inspiring than photos of myself being a politician!

From Whitley News