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Does anyone know of any project a group of 13-15 year olds who are doing their DOE bronze award could undertake. It could be something like clearing a garden. If you do please let me know.

Tonight is the full meeting of the Council. I will be speaking on the administration’s policy item whci is about improving recycling rates. The main thrust of the item is that it is better to incentivise   people to recycle by rewarding them in some way rather than taxing their polluting behaviour. I shall be arguing that we need both and that Green taxes rather than taxes on income are far better if they are not applied as a stealth tax but as part of a redistribution of the tax burden from good things like work to bad things like pollution.

At the last Council meeting I asked how many staff were in the community protection group. The CPG is the group within the council tasked with enforcing things like dog fouling, littering and some parking offences such as parking on the zig zag lines outside a school.

There are 54 staff in the CPG. There are 21 wards so that makes just over 2.5 staff per ward. The Safer neighbourhood team in High Barnet have 9 staff who could be enforcing these powers. When I asked how many of the CPG staff were street based the number goes down even further because the CPG staffing includes CCTV operators, admin and technical staff. This means that the Council has effectively no staff in High Barnet who are capable of enforcing these laws. Even if they did the Council does not possess the means to issue penalty tickets for these offences. In other words much of the minor but ant-social activities that take place in High Barnet are not in any way controlled. The police who have the resources are not allowed to because the council has reserved the powers for itself. This urgently needs review if we are to have any sanction against the small minority of people who act in an anti-social manner.

I’m not a huge football fan. I normally go to a couple of Barnet matches during a season and that’s about it. However my eldest daughter has suddenly acquired an interest in Spurs and with the help of a friend who is a season ticket holder we have obtained two tickets for this afternoons match against Hull City. The only other time I’ve been to a premiership match was also a Spurs match. It was years ago against Crystal Palace (probably well before the premiership). The Company I was working for was involved on a project with another company that had a box at Spurs and we managed to get to invited to fo to their box. A colleague picked me up in his car which was an old LADA estate that was only one step removed from a tractor.  The sight of us pulling up at the gate to the executive car park in this clapped out old Lada is one I won’t forget in a hurry. The match was a very forgettable 0-0 draw. Let’s hope that today’s match is better.

UPDATE

Well it was another 0-0 draw but it was a decent match.

Firstly, happy new year! We seem to be in the longest freeze that I can remember. It has certainly caused me to cut my car usage. Barnet’s main roads are not too bad but the side roads and the pavements are very icy. I walked up to Barnet yesterday for my surgery at Chipping Barnet Library. I usually walk up the path from Mays Lane past the tennis courts and into the Old Court House park. To my surprise the path had been gritted the whole way up which is more than you can say for either Manor Rd or Fitzjohn Avenue which would be the alternative pedestrian routes. Walking along the High Street I was amazed to see the number of shops that still have their doors wide open. The amount of heat they must be wasting is frighting. Others have commented on the lack of political leadership during te freeze. (Apparently the Leader and deputy are on holiday). Frankly this is symptomatic of this administration.

There are plans to build a new play area in Tudor Park using funds from the playbuilder programme. You can view the proposed scheme and make make comments by following the link below.

http://www.barnet.gov.uk/index/council-democracy/consultations/playbuilder-consultation.htm

At the last Council meeting we discussed the 10:10 campaign. This is a campaign that individuals or organisations can sign up to that commits to try and cut their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. The motion for the Council to join the campaign was defeated by the Conservative majority and a much weaker piece of waffle passed in its place. I have therefore decided to join the 10:10 campaign as an individual and try and cut my and my families carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. My first action as mentioned in a previous post is to opt out of the Councils courier service, which will save vehicle journeys and a considerable amount of paper. The campaign will send me emails every so often with further ideas. You can read more about the campaign and join your self by going to http://www.1010uk.org/

For a while now I’ve been concerned about the cost both environmentally and monetary of the Council’s courier service. The courier service delivers committee papers including agenda’s and minutes and any other post that comes directly to the Town Hall to councillors home addresses. At the last council meeting I asked about the cost and was told that the cost of just delivering to Councillors for the last financial year was £26,600. Now given that all the committee papers are available electronically and that most other post that I receive via the Town Hall is not time sensitive it makes sense to opt out of the courier service. This is what I have now asked to happen. So if you want to write to me on a time sensitive issue then please use my home address as listed on the council’s website or if you live in High Barnet please use the freepost address given on my Focus newsletters. Or better still email me and save the paper.

Tonight’s Council meeting decended into farce. The Tories elected the new leader of the Council Lynn Hillan. They then spent too long celebrating in the break so that there was no one there to move the administration policy item and so it was not taken. When they did all return they voted down the opposition policy item which was about signing up for the 10:10 campaign (A cross party non political campaign to aim to reduce Carbon emissions by 10% in 2010). Then having elected a new Cabinet, one of the new cabinet members who wished to raise an issue under the work of the cabinet section of the meeting found he could not do so because he was now in the cabinet. Total farce. Total disregard for the meeting. If residents ever actually saw the antics that take place at the town hall then they would be even less likely to want any involvement with local democracy.

Well it all went pretty well. The weather conspired to cause problems with a few showers, but people stayed around and enjoyed carols, singing and a great group of sax players. The mulled wine was popular and Santa was almost mobbed. I would like to say a big thank you to all those who helped make it happen. These events take a lot of organising.