Nottingham City Council Democracy

Nottingham City Council have a section on "Council and Democracy" on their website like most councils. It gives you the opportunity to submit a question to be answered publicly in a Full Council meeting as long as the question doesn't fall in to certain criteria.

This is how it is meant to work anyway.

I had a few thoughts about an issue mentioned in a press release just before the summer holidays that I felt

On submission of a question on the website, which I believe fell in to acceptable criteria, it was directed by the Customer Relations Department to a department they felt was relevant without any explanation of why this was not put forward for Full Council hearing.

May be the Customer Relations department feel that it is their job to keep oiks like me away from out Lord and Master Labour Councillor Portfolio Holders. It might explain why there has been no written questions to full council in the last 14 months and only one oral question in January 2009.

http://open.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/comm/question.asp

I was a little put out so have emailed Customer Relations and Committee Services for a response and some clarification. Hopefully their future communication and procedures will be more customer friendly.

I wait with baited breath!



UPDATE

I've had an email from Customer Services who realised their mistake and forwarded it forthwith to the Committee Team for reading and investigation.

The question was read out in Full Council on 14th September 2009. There was also an absolute stack of questions about one issue with Licenced properties on Churchfield Lane, Radford

Arnold Carnival

Off to Arnold Carnival today. From last years review it looks like an extremely popular event. I think I'm going to have to park a bit away and walk in from the looks of it but considering i walk down the longest cul-de-sac in Europe (about 1/2 mile) yesterday delivering leaftlets both sides I think we can cope with it.

Looking forward to the caribean carnival this year but am disappointed with myself that I went and missed the asian Mela in Nottingham City Centre. Oh well may be next year. These are wonderful, colourful and vibrant events that celebrate the uniqueness of these cultures but I can't think of any event that celebrates british culture in large event form and what would be at that event. Have we got such a boring culture and a willingness to just blend in and not drawing to much attention to ourselves like the person who can't dance at a party or are we too afraid that an event like this could slightly cross the line and be misread as overly nationalist.

I'm sure there must be still some forms of britshness that could be put in to a carnival of some sort.

The Meadows, Nottingham

On Thursday as part of the Election Campaign I assisted in delivering leaftlets around the Meadows area of Nottingham.

I have never particularly spent a significant amount of the around the estate itself it was a nice day and a lovely walk. The one thing I can say is that you tend to only hear negative stories about the area but on my walk that the people I passed where polite and curteous and generally had a "good day" or "hello" for you. This applied to people of all ages and all creeds. They were a credit to the area.

I must say that the community garden near one of the schools looked fantastic as well.

Although I was a little lost around the inner streets of the estate. I look forward to a repeat walk around at some point in the future.

Gurkha Issue

I am so glad that the Lib Dems and Conservatives could come together on this issue and vote this bill down. Hopefully the Government won't have the moral cowardice to ride rough shod over this as they have other things.

It seems the more you give to this country the less you are though of. I am not particularly military specialist or fan but these people have committed themselves to this country we need to commit ourselves to them. We seem to let any other random in to this country to leach off it but the Government are not willing to pay for patriots.

I've found the money needed for these people to stay in our country. (like alot of other people)

Number 1 - Scrap the Nuclear Arms Replacement program. (Loads of money)

Number 2 - Scrap the ID card system (Loads of Money)

Number 3 - Get Jackie Smith's husband to claim the money on her expenses as Porn. She doesn't check them receipts.

None of the bravery medal nonsense. They are all brave if they commit themselves to armed combat.

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.

Big Spring Clean - Robert Shaw School

As part of Nottinghams Big Spring Clean as few of the Residents Association, Year 4 pupils and a couple of others are getting together tomorrow to give the school a bit of a spruce.

Thankfully it looks as though the weather is going to be nice for us. Hopefully we'll all get the place spic and span.

Finally a break in the rain.

At least one of these Bank Holiday days has turned out to be relatively rain free day, although everything is still damp so no playground for the children unfortunately.

The wife is trying to get profile done for her yearly assessment so a little peace time is required. A little walk was in order to burn off the whole Easter egg that the children have just ate. A whole egg in one go, how they were not ill I'll never know. Glad to see Nestle have removed the plastic packing and replaced with cardboard and reduced the size of the box. I had read this was a plan of theirs. Good on them.

There was a bit of land near a subway that seemed to be a litter trap so a couple of black bags later the years of litter have been significantly reduced as well as a whole carrier bag of can recycling which went in the appropriate bin.

A couple a miles later back to home a few calories burnt off and a bit less muck on the street.