by Paul Scully | Nov 19, 2008 | News |
Much of my work as a ward councillor and group leader doesn’t merit a great long article. Some of it doesn’t even merit comment at all. However the main reason that I started blogging in 2006 was to allow people to keep up to date with what I am doing. I would venture that most people don’t know what their councillor does.
Twitter is a mini-blog based on text messaging. As an experiment, I’ll try to keep my page (which is replicated in the top right hand corner of this blog) up to date with the various meetings and events. Let me know what you think. If you’re that keen you can even “follow me” when you will get text message updates. Instructions for new users can be found here. Having said that, I can’t imagine too many people that desperate to know what happened in Sutton’s Pension Fund Working Party and suchlike.
Oh well, here’s the leap into the unknown.
by Paul Scully | Nov 19, 2008 | News |
The Telegraph reports that Gosport District Council has banned doormats from some of their properties on the grounds that people might trip on them, especially in an emergency.
Residents have been threatened with legal action and eviction if they are not removed.
Residents have been quick to point out the obvious charge that surely the LibDem run council has more important things to do. The Council says that the risks are more acute because the corridors are too narrow. Is it helpful to threaten residents with eviction as an indirect consequence of the poor standard of housing in this area?
The LibDem parliamentary candidate for Gosport at the last General Election was Sutton Councillor, Roger Roberts. Maybe the two Local Authorities could exchange notes on superfluous bans.
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by Paul Scully | Nov 10, 2008 | News |
An excellent new website has come on line recently, encouraging people in Sutton to share their views. Adrian Short, a regular poster on this site has set up Sutton Chat, to publicise local events and allow residents to exchange opinions about everything from developing local businesses to politicians, ahem.
As I have found out in the years that I have been doing this blog, it is much more fun and meaningful if you are not just talking to yourself. This site doesn’t have an agenda beyond getting Sutton residents to talk to each other about shared interests and that is to be welcomed and encouraged. Go along, register and make your voice heard. There is plenty of room for all of us.
by Paul Scully | Nov 9, 2008 | News |
Sutton Guardian, London Tonight and the Daily Telegraph have made the link between Remembrance Sunday and the sale of the Carshalton War Memorial land for housing. Another terrific turnout at the War Memorial by the ponds where locals, joined by the Civic party comprising of the Mayor, MPs, councillors an dcouncil officers, showed the lasting respect that Carshalton residents have for those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. The Hospital is a lasting legacy left by those who paid for it to be built for the treatment of local people and especially those who had returned from the frontline.
For people in the area now, the depth of feeling lasts longer than a single weekend. Selling off the family silver means that this site will never be able to be used for healthcare again. So many plots of land have gone the same way. How can we cope with ever-changing theories and fashions in healthcare? It operated on the same basis as a cottage hospital. These were largely closed over many years but are starting to make a comeback. Unfortunately for Sutton residents, they are mainly coming back in Merton thanks to a lot of postage stamps bought by the local MP using taxpayers’ money. The Telegraph reports that the NHS changed their mind on Intermediate Care because they would treat people in their homes. This skips over the fact that they have a 53 page report on their website explaining how they are going to site the Intermediate care that was considered for Carshalton, in Wilsons Hospital. This is a building that I have been blissfully unaware of the existence of for the near quarter of a century that I have lived in Carshalton.
Looking back, I first posted about the hospital two years ago. At that time it was out of frustration after waiting eight months to get an answer as to what was happening on the site. It took a further twenty four months to get that answer. If a single piece of correspondence takes that long, I wonder how long the proposed changes in local healthcare take to implement.
by Paul Scully | Nov 3, 2008 | News |
Bournemouth Council is leading the way in removing certain words from the Local Authority lexicon. They have a lot of choice with council jargon ranging from ‘Living Documents’ to ‘Performance Management Frameworks’ and acronyms like KLOEs, ROEs and ALMOs. However they have ignored these to concentrate on other more pressing issues.
The Daily Mail report that the council whose motto is ‘Pulchritudo et Salubritas’ has listed 19 Latin terms that it deems unacceptable. These aren’t even terms that schoolboys would scan for first in their Latin dictionary, instead they are words and phrases in common usage like ‘ad hoc’, ‘bona fide’ and ‘status quo’.
They reason that there are a lot of residents who don’t have English as a first language who may be confused. The Plain English Campaign supported the move explaining that people might confuse eg. with egg!
There’s me thinking that Councils had quite a lot to do without such pointless diversions but what do I know? Latin has only been around for a few thousand years, providing the base for the vast majority of European languages, thus giving the majority of people throughout the known world some vague idea of what someone is talking about when saying et cetera. As we know Latin is not the only influence on the English language. I assume that the Council will call an emergency session to debate the turmoil that will be caused by residents washing their hair with shampoo (Indian) in their bungalow (Indian) before leaving their cul-de-sac (French) to go to the cafe (French) for a cup of tea (Chinese). What a fiasco (Italian)! If they only retain the Anglo-Saxon, maybe Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand might find a quick return to the public sector on the south coast.
by Paul Scully | Nov 1, 2008 | News |
I found one for the scrapbooks in today’s Daily Telegraph. This sign appeared in Swansea. The English is correct. Unfortunately the Welsh actually says “I’m not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”
It illustrates the situation in Wales where an inordinate amount of money is spent on keeping Welsh alive in the south by people who can’t speak it. It also shows how easy it is to blow public money by not checking.
Anyway, the story made me laugh.
Much of my work as a ward councillor and group leader doesn’t merit a great long article. Some of it doesn’t even merit comment at all. However the main reason that I started blogging in 2006 was to allow people to keep up to date with what I am doing. I would venture that most people don’t know what their councillor does.
