Happy Holidays

With my mother currently snowed in and her pre Christmas visit abandoned, and both my father and other half contemplating whether to make trips to the frozen Scottish Border it’s difficult to answer when people ask what we’re doing for Christmas. Staying home mostly seems to cover it! Whilst I deal with all the domestic things that mysteriously happen “as if by magic” over the holiday season, the younger members of the household are building an igloo in the back garden.

I hate driving on snow at the best of times and accomplished a very controlled, slow speed, 180 degree spin this morning – much to my eldest son’s amazement and amusement. Caldecote, as with many other areas in the County, gets little / no gritting when it snows. Whilst we all hope that the current gritting review will be completed in a timely fashion, it’s a good time to remind people that Parish Councils can purchase their own gritting bins and the County Council will fill them for free. If you’re suffering with icy areas at the moment, please contact your Parish Council before their next meeting in January and ask about gritting bins.

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is probably more productive than waiting for an early morning bus in Caldecote or Hardwick at the moment! It used to be that you waited for a bus and two came along at once. If only that were still true.

My current Councillor workload is almost entirely built around infrastructure – or lack of it. We are continuing to build more and more houses locally for families – but the infrastructure required for our existing inhabitants and the ever-increasing number coming to live in our villages is just not keeping pace.

The Citi 4 regularly leaves 6th form children at bus stops in Caldecote and Hardwick (and people on their way to work) because it’s full before it gets there. Some local Children are bussed in to Secondary Schools in the City because the local one is full. Our Village Primary School has a few places left, but next week Caldecote will consider an application for another 97 houses. If we don’t extend the Primary School what will we do with the children these new houses bring to the village?

Whilst we need to build houses I think we’re in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water at the moment. We can’t keep building more housing developments without the necessary infrastructure in place to service them. And as some villages are finding out at the moment, what the bus company giveth, the bus company can oh so easily take away again!

Half Term almost over

I was expecting a quiet week this week as the local school children are on half term. It hasn’t turned out that way!

I seem to have spent most of the week at Shire Hall looking at the budget for Adult Social Care for the remainder of this year, the provision of secondary and sixth form school places for local children, overfull buses travelling in to the city (watch this space on Monday as we’ve been promised a bigger Citi4 bus running at Peak times) and the expansion of the A14.

Roll on business as usual next week!

Surely there's a better way .....

On the first day of the Harrogate Conference last week, we lost most of our pre-arranged MP speakers as they were recalled to London to vote on what appeared to be a three line whip. They then returned later that evening.

I’m all in favour of tradition, but with the current communication facilities available to us surely there has to be a better way for MPs to vote.

What price the train fares, carbon footprint and working time for such an old fashioned way of doing things?

Shaping the future

I spent three days in Harrogate last week at the Children and Adult Services Conference. There were many topics of discussion – probably the most pressing one being the Green Paper on “Shaping the Future” for adult social care.

The statistics relating to the future cost of care for adults is truly terrifying given the declining number of adults in paid employment for the number of retired people. When the system was first set up in 1948, there were 15 people in employment for every one retired person. Today that figure has dropped to between 3 or 4.

As a Council we’re currently formulating our response to the Green Paper – all responses have to be back by 13th November.

That aching feeling

As the County Council were debating TIF on Tuesday – and the need to do something to curb congestion in Cambridgeshire – all Lib Dem Cllrs left their cars at home and explored alternative ways of getting to Shire Hall.

Many years ago, as a reasonably fit teenager, I used to cycle from one end of Guernsey to the other to get to school. For those that know the Island I wasn’t quite fit enough to manage the Vals des Terres by peddle power so I walked up that part – but did cycle the rest of the way.

Tuesday morning reminded me of why it’s important to get more of us out of our cars and on to bikes – and when it stops hurting I know that I will appreciate it!

On a more serious note it was actually something that I will be doing on a more regular basis – weather permitting – and it was a real eye opener as to what cyclists face. In my case this included:

A motorist who crossed in front of me whilst I was on a clearly marked cycle path – because they didn’t want to wait for the car in front to turn right

The vegetation that would have taken an eye out if I hadn’t been wearing glasses

The overhanging low tree branch ready to knock someone off their bike

The non visible white lines in Hardwick that depicted the cycle path many years ago.

All noted and I’ll be reporting them.

And if any of you see me out in my yellow coat peddling – be kind and overtake gently – I may have discovered an alternative use for the L plates I took off my motorcycle just a few months ago!

Consistency and Integrity

I was feeling a little under the weather yesterday so took a few hours off in the afternoon. Having nothing much to occupy myself, little on TV, and a mug of tea to hand I curled up and tuned in to Gordon Brown's closing speech for a few minutes.

Five minutes in to listening he had my full attention! Having failed, last week, to be persuaded by Eric Pickles that my true home was in the Conservative Party, I was dumbstruck to realise that Gordon Brown wanted to join the Lib Dems. I'm sure that unless my hearing was out of synch yesterday I heard the words "Referendum", "Alternative Vote System" and "Scrapping ID cards" all uttered in quick succession.

As Lib Dems we often get criticised for our approach. We don't go for the easy option, we don't come out with glib soundbites. And we often shy away from the easy: look at our fight for the rights of the Gurkhas and our refusal to support an illegal war in Iraq. Instead we pride ourselves on consistency and integrity. Politics is a funny old world but I find it deeply unedifying at the moment to see two of the main parties ditching most of their policies in the hope of getting elected next year. Makes you wonder what they'll offer us next week!