Bit of community work.

I noticed that the bushes from the local school were getting out of hand at a certain section and growing to block the pavement. So I grabbed how of my mum's clippers, pulled her garden waste recycling bin and got to work. Fifteen minutes later the bin was full, the path was clear and I was chuffed.

Having been told by the Head Teacher how much this sort of work costs them to have done it does give me a little bit of self satisfaction to know that I have saved her this amount of money to be spent of something a little more worthwhile.

Robert Shaw School Clean Up.

A lovely day for a clean up today. All the pupils from the year 4 class came out to help out with the litter pick, assisted by local residents, some parents, a member of the Local Area team and the local Lib Dem Councillors.

A great effort by all with about 20 bags of litter and garden rubbish with a large quantity of brambles and broken twigs/branches being put in a skip. The efforts of the children and parents has almost cleared the edge of the school of the litter that has built up over the years. A few interesting items were found including an old childs bike, an angle grinder blade and an old axe.

The efforts of the Residents Association cleared old twigs and branches with a couple of the Association managing to clear a good portion including brambles. I have a few cuts from this but not as painful as the paper cut on my little finger.

The pictures show a portion of the hard work carried out by the volunteers. The subway which provides access to the school was also given a good spruce with a wheel barrow full of leaves and litter collected.

Support in the way of equipment and rubbish bags was organised by Susan Ward-Rice, one of the Neighbourhood Officers for the area and the collected rubbish was taken away by Streetscene.

During this time the Local Councillors Foster and Long put themselves to work collecting litter for the street Robert Shaw is located on and with ferreting around in hedges managed to collect a big bag full of litter.

A big thank you to everyone involved.

Litter picking spring clean

I had some time spare again as I have the week off so after the disaster of going to get some new tyres to find our mechanic had our locking nut in his worshop(a quick run around to fetch it) I thought I would do a bit more voluntary community work on our estate.

I don't know whether it was because of the bad weather and the authorities hadn't had chance to go around cleaning properly but boy was there a lot of litter around.
Yes, it is a bug bear of mine and I don't like it but I'm sure I have a few people for company, at least I know of Bill Bryson anyway.

Three bin bags later and a lovely walk on a lovely sunny day the place looks alot cleaner.

I didn't get some funny looks though. It seems that this activity seems out of the ordinary for a normal person and I did get looks that people thought I was a weirdo. I dressed what I thought was relatively smartly for the process I was undertaking. Maybe the looks I was getting was of shock that some people still do care about where they live.

I will probably never know unless I ask them. I may do that next time.

Oh, it only took about an hour today, just think if everyone did their 2 minutes what a lovely clean country we would live in.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/4957531/Call-to-revive-Saturday-litter-pick-to-save-trashed-Britain.html

Volunteer Work

I decided last week as the relevant powers probably had more pressing maters on their hands that I would do a bit of clearance work on some of the garages on our estate where parts had become a little over grown. This was a couple of hours good hard manual labour which can be a little hard going sometime for an office bloke like me but continue I did.

I was quite proud of the outcome given the limited resources at my disposal. I was a little perturbed as I was doing the work several people passed and whilst not doing the work for any credit about 3 of them comment on whether I was getting paid for doing it. No I wasn't but doing it for the general good. Is it too hard to believe nowadays that some on might do something like this and not look at you in shock and winder if you have lost your faculties.

LITTER LITTER EVERYWHERE

I had a walk today to sort some things out around my old estate and couldn't believe the proliferation of litter. It amazes me that people live around this. Is it now always someone else's responsibility to pick it up? Should we just whinge about the litter louts that blight our country?

These small pieces of filth in a relatively small amount of numbers can instantly reduce the quality of an area. Do your country, your estate, the environment a favour and either don't drop it in the first place or be a good person and pick some up an throw it in the nearest bin.

I did my bit today (again). One whole carrier bag of cans and plastic bottles straight in the recycling bin at home, ready to be used again in a more useful way instead of sitting there awaiting the other person who responsibility it is to pick it up.

I'll keep on doing my bit. If everyone did there very little bit what a better and cleaner place we would be.

Rant over.

Ainsley Area Resident Association Meeting

First Meeting of the newly formed association met on Monday 21st April 2008. Some people seemed quite nervous of each other as some had only really just met. It was nice to really meet some new people from our estate that I would probably not have met before or probably ever. Hopefully more residents will attend future meetings but the turnout wasn't too bad at all. A variety of ages of people which is always important. The local Lib Dem Councillors attended together. I only really met Alex Foster last week. He seemed a really personable man and a pleasure to meet. Gary Long has been our councillor for some time and is a very knowledge person and always has time for local people.

We are mainly trying to get an open space owned by the school opened for public use as it has fell in to disrepair but because of legislation, inter-department funding and liability seem to be rather big mountains to climb. We will have to wait and see.

AGM of the Ainsley Area Tenants and Residents Association

Tonight was the AGM of the local residents association which was attended by several residents, Local Councillor Alex Foster, a member of Nottingham City Council Neighbour team and a member of Nottingham City Homes.

The previous members of the RA have seem to have dissipated except one fellow. Having seen a documentary of the BBC regarding a Grandma form London who travelled to Plymouth to try and transform an estate as she did her own was quite inspiring. It did show that people generally do still want a sense of community but are initially reluctant. This showed in the AGM when it came to voting for new members for the Residents Association as people seem to feel that it is going to go anywhere.

I thought that we can't just sit there and complain about certain things on the estate not being done if you are not willing to hold your hand up and be counted. To this end I thought I would put myself forward as Secretary and thankfully the previous member of the TRA put himself forward as Chairman. At least this will give some continuity to the proceedings.

We have a field on our estate that used to be a playing field but has become derelict and the previous TRA did a lot of initial work with regard to getting it sorted out again but unfortunately this plan was never put in to action. This is a shame as they did a lot of work with regard to the legal position and liability which is a consequence of society today. Hopefully with this work done we should be able to move forward at a good speed and at least see some results.

One problem I felt last time was there seemed little communication with the residents so a sense of community and ownership of any projects would be little forthcoming. Hopefully as a new committee we can improve this.

The next meeting is on Monday 21st April at 6.30pm.

This will give us a chance as a refreshed group to see if we can make a difference.

http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/area3

http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/nchl_home/getting_involved/tenant___residents_associations_.htm