Bluebell heaven courtesy of a no.35

May 24, 2012, 10:20 am

On 9 May, some close friends from Stoke-on-Trent came across to see Susan and me for the day and to take us out for an early birthday lunch of fish and chips plus a trip to Oldmoor Wood near Strelley, on the edge of Nottingham.

Normally it's a trip we do on a no.35 Nottingham City Transport bus. I am in no doubt that it is the most interesting bus route in the city. The only sad thing is that the service is now operated by single deckers. Only occasionally do you see a double-decker. I have blogged about the woods before, but on this occasion I took none of the pics, Paul, Rosie and Susan should get the credit.

I think the pics speak for themselves and I really was that close to the Tree Creeper in the pic. I turned to look at a tree and there it was. We both froze and somehow Paul came up and got the pic before the bird flew off. A really, really magic moment and as for the Bluebells, what can I say? I love them — and to think you can see all this less than fifteen minutes walk from getting off a no.35 bus, which begins its wandering journey from outside the city's Central Library on Angel Row, but first heads south-west down the Derby Road to Lenton, where I live, then along the southern edge of Wollaton Park, before turning north and hugging the city's western edge until it reaches Bulwell, where it terminates.

Along the way it passes through Nottingham's inner-city, then some of its better off suburbs before running through large tracts of inter-war council housing and all the way, every now and again, you catch glorious glimpses of historic buildings and little parks, but best of all, it takes you to Oldmoor Wood. Enjoy!

And as you leave the wood, this vision of the English countryside leaps out and the only thing which lets you know that this is not a Tuscany landscape in faraway Italy is the M1 motorway! At first you hear the traffic all the time, but very quickly the sound fades and you are enveloped in the smell of wood and birdsong.

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Sun and fun in the park

May 25, 2012, 9:46 am

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I have posted some pics to the West End Bowlers blog today and took a few other pics in the park at the same time:

Look at the sky — not a cloud in sight and already far too hot for me to enjoy. I took this pic when I arrive just after 2pm and by the time I left ninety minutes later the park was beginning to heave and the 'Mr Whippy' ice cream van had arrived and was parked by the entrance opposite Holy Trinity Church.

As I was leaving the park I found Hannah and James dunking, but I have never seen a 'dunker' dressed like Hannah before. I tried getting a pic with the 'ball' (is that its correct name?) just leaving her hands, but it was all too quick for me — which, I hope, explains why her arms are raised in the air like this.

James, as you can see, is dressed quite differently to Hannah, but they made a happy couple and it was great to catch them having fun. They'll both in Lenton 'for a few years yet' as James is doing medics and Hannah nursing. I hope they enjoy their stay in Lenton.

Finally, a pic of one of our student neighbours, Rob, hard at work revising. I caught him sitting at the desk in his bedroom, which looks across to our 2nd floor. This is the other side of student life in Lenton I've not even mentioned before — actual studying and doing 'the donkey' work you need to do if you want to get your degree. He has a job to go to this summer after he gets his degree. I wish him well and hope that he takes good memories of Lenton with him.

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A little park avenue and a 'stick' bowler

May 30, 2012, 4:47 pm

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This view never ceases to lift my spirits. I've seen it every few days for the past thirty-two years in all seasons. At this time of the year the pink blossom has gone and what you have is the beginnings of a corridor of green, which at its height will remind me of a Devon country lane. a simple enough pleasure and, yes, it could be any park, but it isn't. It's Lenton Recreation Ground and, for me at least, it makes it kind of special.

This little patch of overgrown grass is not the beginnings of a meadow, but has been left by Dave, our grounds-person, to allow the Daffodils to die back. As I took this pic, I was trying to catch a Blackbird which was leaping about in the long grass, no doubt chasing bugs of some kind. I rather like it. The trouble is that such features in the park get treated as large open litter bins and attract empty cans, bottles, chocolate bar wrappers and crisp packets — not that you would guess this from the pic. I like long grass in parts of the park, but I understand why Dave has to keep it short most of the year.

Finally, I've designed this little bowls symbol / logo to be printed A4 size to advertise West End Bowls and Social Club, who are based in Lenton Recreation Ground. Obviously, I've pinched the idea from the way road signs are now designed, but otherwise my bowler is all my own work. A kind of stick man really. I got the idea looking a picture I took of one of the Club's members, Frank Campion…

… who, as you can see, has a great pose when bowling a wood and is a great advert for bowls as a healthy way to exercise all your joints and your grip as well. I simply drew my lines over this pic. I also do the Club's blog / website and will be posting some pics later today of the some the local children who been coming along one evening a week for an hour of so and learning the art of playing bowls, so please go and have a look — you might like to come along yourself — we're always looking for new members!

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Who pays for Nottingham?

June 1, 2012, 10:55 am

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When it comes to how much Council Tax is paid by householders in Broxtowe, Gedlng and Nottingham, the information I have compiled clearly shows that the average per property for the financial year 2012/13 is lower in Nottingham and highest in Gedling (see table 3). Since my tables do not include parish rates, there are a good few places in Broxtowe and Gedling paying even higher amounts than my tables show.

The Council Tax information (and some other general information about population and local democracy) in the table below is for 2012/13 and based on information in the public domain, plus replies I received from Ashfield, Broxtowe, Gedling and Nottingham about the number of properties in each Council Tax band. I make no claims for the tables I have compiled other than that they provide a general guide. I would welcome notice of any corrections which may need to be made, but I am confident my compilation is a reliable guide to the situation as it exists at the beginning of June 2012.

I have deliberately excluded the Local Government Settlement paid to councils by central government. Because of the way this is calculated. Nottingham received £542.80 per head (it would have been £550.70 per head had the City Council agreed to a 2012/13 'freeze'); Broxtowe £75.43 and Gedling £78.76 per head at the frozen rate, including a percentage calculation I have added based on the settlement paid to Nottinghamshire County Council. Trying to calculate local government costs is like going into a corridor filled with lots of doors and mirrors and full of smoke. At the end of the day, when folk talk about the cost of local councils they almost, exclusively, refer to the dreaded 'Council Tax'.

Graham Allen, the MP for Nottingham North, has the good habit of reminding listeners whenever he can that most government income is spent locally on local services and that this money should be raised locally. We would all pay considerably less in national taxes, but a lot more in local taxes and, I suspect, the system would be easier to administer and understand to boot, but this is an issue for another day.

'Local democracy' is the subject on my table 6 and shows the number of councillors and voters there are in each of the three districts. Gedling is currently subject to a ward boundary review which should see the number of district councillors reduced by five.

I have asked both Ashfield and Rushcliffe councils for this information in relation to Hucknall, Ruddington and the West Bridgford wards, which I will add when I get their replies. I appreciate that asking people to extract information (even in this age of, seemingly. 'instant' technology) can be time consuming when staff time is limit for obvious reasons.

Nottingham is, in my view, well governed when it comes to strategic policies, services and facilities. Where it fails is at the 'doorstep' / community level. The City Council has a policy of 'cherry picking' communities and groups to be favoured with its largesse. The facts speak for themselves and they crow from the rooftops about how wonderful they are, whilst ignoring the neglect and decay which they allow to fester whilst they ignore matters of importance to the people who spend their lives in neighbourhoods deserving of attention. This is Nottingham's shame.

Nottingham's neighbours manage doorstep services better and, as evidenced by the numerous parish and town councils which exist. Strategically, Nottingham and the County Council do most of the work for them and herein is the lesson Nottingham needs to learn — somehow the City Council has to create mechanisms to get a better balance between its strategic and doorstep work.

I have submitted evidence recently to the Parliamentary Local Government and Communities Committee about the roles of councillors and their place in local communities, which I am not allowed to share until it is formally published by the committee.

For now, I leave you to make of the tables what you will.

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A soggy week in the park

June 17, 2012, 5:17 am

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Yesterday (Saturday) was Lenton's annual festival in Lenton Recreation Ground and came at the end of a week of almost continuous rain! Susan, Judith and I did tea and cake for £1 in the park pavilion and made enough at the end of the day to enable us to give £30 to the Dunkirk and Lenton Partnership Forum and West End Bowls and Social Club. Fiona and Kirsty at the Forum worked hard to make it all happen and deserve our thanks.

I took this pic about 3pm when it did brighten up a little, but by this time a good many stallholders were already packing up. In the circumstances, they did well to stay as long as they did. The festival has now been running since the late-1990s and used to be in September, but got to moved to June so that local students could attend 'by default' insomuch as on good days they fill our little park. It's also become a way in which local residents have been able to 'reclaim' Lenton Recreation Ground for one day at least. Next Friday is the end of the current academic year and most of the students will be off home.

When Susan, Judith and I arrived at the park pavilion and started getting it ready to sell our tea and cake for £1 a serving, it was raining and it stayed that way nearly all the time we were open between 1 and 4pm. We thought it would be bad for business, but I put the heating on and the pavilion became the one place where folk could be warm and dry.

On the right you can see two 'painted' faces. This is always popular at Lenton Festivals and has long queues throughout the day and, despite the weather, this year was no exception. By the time I had locked up the pavilion and was walking home it was 4.30pm and they were still painting faces in the rain.

Lenton resident Chantelle got my 'Award of the Day' for tenacity and stoicism because she was there at the end. I'm absolutely sure had it been a lovely day and the students were in the park they would have been buying her cupcakes by the dozen. She has set up a Facebook page to help her promote her new business, which she has called 'Cakes by Design'.

Chantelle came into the pavilion to buy a hot drink and I felt so bad that we were selling cakes as well that I promised that if we did it again we would work with her as she deserves local support and encouragement. Making lots of cakes usually includes the odd 'disaster' or two and so it was for Susan and me, so much so that Susan made me promise 'and hope to die' if I suggested such a thing again! Chantelle may well be my 'get out' clause. I wish her every success.

Me, Lenton's Labour Party city councillor Sarah Piper and Tony Holland from The Bowls Shop, Radford, had our pic taken by Susan, which I have sent to the Nottingham Post along with a short press release in the hope they will use it. You can read more on the West End Bowlers blog.

Last Monday I played with West End Bowlers in a match against Vernon Park Ladies (who play in Old Basford) and, yes, it was raining when we started and got heavier as the match went on, so much so that the game was eventually called off, but not before I took this pic of Anna from Vernon Park Ladies in her waterproofs. I think she looks a picture and thought I would like some bowls rain gear the same, but Tony Holland from The Bowls Shop in Radford told me it was discontinued some time ago, as it was designed for when ladies played in skirts, but since most now play in slacks there was no longer a market for them.

On Wednesday, I went round to open up the park pavilion for some bowlers (in the rain of course) and by the time I walked back this small marquee had gone up. The idea was that they would entertain and feed other park users but the rain was keeping the main users, students, indoors, except for these stalwarts from the University of Nottingham Christian Union — who were the organisers of the event.

On one level I love seeing Lenton Recreation Ground used in this way, just as I like to see the occasional wedding party from the Sikh gurdwara or the parish church in the park, but I would not like to see the park used for faith group (or political) rallies. I am not suggesting that this crossed such a line, but one has to be alert to these possibilities.

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Greater Nottingham page added

June 21, 2012, 10:21 am

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To the right you will see that I have added a 'Greater Nottingham' page which I will use to post information about the conurbation.

The only good thing about the Nottingham mayoral referendum was that it sparked a debate about the future of local government in the 'greater' Nottingham conurbation and it will be a pity if this discussion become just a distant memory and nothing comes from it. For my part, I am biding my time.

I want to refer a submission I made to the House of Commons Community and Local Government Committee about the role of councillors in the local community, but this will have to wait until it is published by the Committee. I also want to see the latest Census data for 2011 and what the Parliamentary Boundary Commissioners propose for the Greater Nottingham area.

At the end of the day, an official examination of how the conurbation is governed (a 'Principal area boundary review' – its technical name) can only be triggered by all the councils involved, so I think it unlikely that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England will be visiting Nottingham for a good while yet — which is why we need some kind of independent local governance commission to collect the evidence and then publish a report about possible options for the future. I am convinced the evidence for change is overwhelming and only blocked by local politicians fearful of losing power.

As my table on the voting at the 2011 local elections show, Labour has little to fear from an enlarged city area, but fortunes can change and at some point in the future the Conservatives may well become the dominant force in the conurbation. My own ideas for the future place greater emphasis on the role of councillors in their own wards and creating a kind of 'two tiers in one' arrangement to counter what might otherwise be reasonable local objections.

I have posted two maps to the page: one showing existing town and parish councils; the other places with 15 minute or better public transport links with Nottingham city centre.

I have updated the information I have posted about council tax charges in the Greater Nottingham conurbation and have included links to tables showing parish / town council tax charges as well for Broxtowe and Gedling. Ruddington is the only area in the table with a parish council. The level of council tax across the conurbation for Property band 'A' ranges from £1053 (Gedling basic rate) to £1097 (Ruddington including parish council tax charge) — a very small margin of difference by any measure.

I hope the page is of interest.

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Buses mag looks at Nottingham City Transport

June 22, 2012, 8:14 am

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The latest issue of Buses magazine (July 2012) has a very upbeat and positive four page article about NCT which is well worth reading. It is on sale in W H Smith's and at Nottingham Railway Station and costs £4.10.

Trent Barton had its own three page feature in Buses back in March 2010, which was equally as positive about Nottingham's other great bus operator and sub-titled the article, 'The black arts of branding'. Not everything is perfect, but it is the 99% good which makes the 1% 'bad' seem bigger than it is.

I have used buses all my life and have a particular love for the old London Transport double-deck 'RT' type. Thousands were built in the late-1940s and early-1950s before it made way for the iconic 'RM' Routemaster. I rode around London on all these buses as a kid and am old enough to have travelled on London trams and trolleybuses. The latter took me to and from work for a year before they disappeared. At the time, although only 18, I thought it a big mistake. When Nottingham opted for the tram I argued with Labour Party colleagues for trolleybuses instead because they would have been cheaper and for the same money the city could have got a network four times as big, but it was not to be. The marketing men and the focus groups showed that trams were, in the words of a senior councillor, 'more sexy' and appealing to men who came to Nottingham in cars.

To say this should not be taken as criticism of what eventually happened. The tram has been a great success and is very much in Nottingham's municipal tradition of being good at managing public transport. There are things I don't like and there have been a few scandals along the way and I won't ever forgive the planners, Nottingham University and the councillors who decided to take half the back gardens on Greenfield Street in Dunkirk instead of following the proposed original line of the Beeston tram extension along East Drive between the Djanolgy Art Centre and Highfield Park. A planning condition was overturned without any public consultation and remains a potent reminder of just how much some so called Labour councillors are in thrall to big business and the universities in our city and treat the city's residents with disdain.

I persuaded Alan Simpson to speak on behalf of Greenfield Street residents at the planning enquiry into the route of the tram and I think of them every time I go along University Boulevard or visit Lakeside, which I do every week, but the tram itself is not responsible for how I feel — which is why I support the Beeston and Clifton extensions.

The City Council needs more powers if it is to manage public transport in Nottingham as well as it could. Ideally, there needs to be a conurbation transport 'supremo'. If the Coalition think we can elect a Nottinghamshire police chief, then why not let us elect someone to run public transport in the county?

Today I watched a NCT '36' and Your Bus 'Y36' following exactly the same route pull away from outside the Victoria Centre on Milton Street together. It happens regularly and is called 'competition'. It doesn't seem that way when you then have to wait 12 minutes for the next bus down the Derby Road to Lenton and, yes, you've guessed it, two arrived and left together. This time a NCT '35' and a 'Y36'. Logic says that we need to manage bus routes in Nottingham just like they do in London by awarding 3–5 year 'contracts' to one bus company for a specific route and if they don't deliver the service they can be fined or even lose the contract. Ideally, of course, we should have just one bus 'mutual' for the city, owned by staff, passengers and local authorities in partnership. I am sure the voters would support this approach given the opportunity and I would happily buy 5% bonds to help finance such a mutual bus company.

Nottingham has much to be proud of when it comes to public transport and I don't doubt the commitment of most Labour councillors to ensuring NCT remains in council ownership. Long may it continue to be so.

Finally, I plan to write in the near future about how trolleybuses may re-appear on our streets, albeit more high-tech and that this is something we should push for in Nottingham on the busy 'Go2' routes.

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Rufford by bus: a lovely day out

June 24, 2012, 9:44 am

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≪ Previous: Buses mag looks at Nottingham City Transport

Nottingham's buses and my pensioner travel pass improve the quality of my life no end. Yesterday our travel passes took Susan and me to Rufford Abbey Country Park for the day. We left Lenton at 10.45am and arrived at Rufford just after mid-day, with a change of bus at the Victoria Centre in the city centre.

As you can see in this pic of the Victoria Clock Tower it was a lovely morning. For those who don't know the city, the Victoria Centre opened in 1972 on the site of the old Victoria railway station. It was a handsome mainline station and inspired a series of afternoon radio plays on Radio 4 a few years ago.

At the bus station, we caught 'The Sherwood Arrow', which runs between Worksop in North Nottinghamshire and Nottingham via the Mansfield Road as it heads north out of the city along a long country road before reaching the small villages of Farnsfield and Bilsthorpe and then Rufford, after which it heads towards Edwinstow and Ollerton, where it links with another bus going onto Worksop.

Britain and Ireland are probably the only places in the world where double-deck buses can be found travelling along narrow country lanes as my pic, taken between Farnsfield and Bilsthorpe, shows. The bus was quite full at times with buggies and mums trying to manage other young children as well. The drivers have my admiration in every sense. It's one thing to drive along these lanes on a lovely summer's day, but at close to midnight in the middle of winter, well, that must call for great skill.

The Sherwood Arrow bus dropped us off right outside the gates to Rufford Abbey, long closed now, but a reminder to just how grand the estate used to be. Back in my county councillor days I was closely involved in the creation of Rufford Abbey Country Park and persuaded my colleagues to create a sculpture park, albeit small at first, but given money to spend for a few years the officers and I soon built up a decent collection.

Over the road and in through the modern entrance made for cars (they don't expect visitors to arrive on foot or by bus as there is no footpath, so you have to cope with the cars, many who come past you at speed)…

…but it was only for five minutes or so, then we left the cars behind and passed through the old courtyard gates and into what is normally an empty quadrangle, but yesterday (Saturday) was home to some of the many stalls at the ceramics fair we had come to see.

We had an excellent early lunch for just £14, so that we could explore the ceramics fair at our leisure, but before we did we went on a short walk around the formal gardens and visited the old Orangery, which was originally built in the 18th century as a swimming bath.

In the gardens we found this new (and pleasing) contemporary brick seating area which was designed to celebrate the centenary of Girl Guide movement in Nottinghamshire in 2010.

And before we knew it, it was coming up the 4 o'clock and time to go and catch The Sherwood Arrow home. There are fewer finer sights in my mind than that of a double-decker bus going about its business in the English countryside, taking people to work and shoppers to town, enabling mums to get about with babies and young children in a way which was as good as impossible as little as thirty years ago. Before that buses had steps (and the older ones open rear platforms) and little space for pushchairs in the days before they became 'buggies'. It is a pity that so few people now use buses outside the city and the fact that many services still run is because local authorities like Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council support them with public money.

It was a lovely day out with the journey from Rufford to Lenton via the city centre taking no more than 70 minutes. If we had gone by car it would have cost £5 to park and at least as much for fuel.

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Lenton rubbish pictorial

June 24, 2012, 11:09 am

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I took these Lenton rubbish pics this weekend and used them as the basis for a 'news' story I have sent to the Nottingham Post, Radio Nottingham and East Midlands Today (see after pics). I took a good few more, but I think these are enough to prove the veracity of what I have said.

This is how it has looked outside 1 Devonshire Promenade since last weekend when the students left. They had bagged everything up, but within hours scavengers had torn many of the bags open. Susan saw one carrying off a discarded duvet on the back of his bike. It is all too easy to blame students when the real culprits are the landlords / agents who are not on hand to supervise what students leaving a property do with their rubbish, the scavengers and, not least, Nottingham City Council who choose to ignore a problem they have helped to create by their indifference and disdain for Lenton's permanent residents.

On Wednesday, the binmen came and just passed by. One would assume that they are expected to report scenes like this when they get back to their depot or, in this day and age by making a simple radio call to their control centre. The point is nothing was done.

MS Estates' maintenance van has been at the house for several days during the past week clearing up and cleaning inside the house. Their sole workman has tidied up the rubbish at least twice and I spoke to him about the rubbish as well. I assume the students paid deposits and given the mess they left behind, they are unlikely to get them back.

It is the same every year.

This is what it looks like out 24 Gloucester Avenue. The binmen don't come until Wednesday and they are likely to leave this lot untouched, so this will get worse over the next few days.

The rubbish along Henry Road will get worse by the day and despite reporting, I am sure Nottingham City Council will do nothing about it until we get our ward councillors involved. It has been the same story for years, as the two pics below from 2005 and 2009 show. We have proposed solutions and got every house to support and have met with our councillors as well, but all to no avail. What do we have to do to get attention?

My neighbour's solution is that we should take bags of rubbish to the Vice-chancellor's office and scatter their contents all over his office. I'd like to do the same at The Council House. Perhaps we will, We would welcome the publicity and a court appearance would help in this respect. And what could they do to us? We already active in the community, so a community service order would be OK with us. As for an orange 'Pay-back' jacket, I would wear it with pride and blog about the experience. There is always the risk of a fine, but we are pensioners on a low income, so to take money off us would show who side the courts are really on — the landlords, University and City Council. No, unless they read this blog, I think we'll probably get a 12 month conditional discharge.

I don't want any of this, but I have reached the point where I am fed up chasing my ward councillors. In truth, I suspect that they as frustrated as we are when it comes to their ability to do anything lasting.

And last, in this small selection of pics, comes Lenton Boulevard. It's the same old houses again every year and nothing ever changes, but with the Olympic torch due to pass by here on Friday morning, I bet the City Council will have this lot away by Thursday and will be doing special street inspection to make sure that the visiting media and Olympic entourage do not how Lenton is normally treated by city council officers.

My press release, by the way, reads:

'Over the past week Lenton streets, like other students areas in Nottingham, have become littered with piles of rubbish, much of it left behind by binmen who do not take away broken bags or boxes left beside wheelie bins. Landlords then add to these piles of rubbish as they begin to clear out the houses and simply throw their own rubbish on top.

Lenton resident Robert Howard says 'Every year it's the same. Permanent residents like my wife and I have to contact our councillors before the City Council does anything'. Student properties do no pay any council tax, yet the council spends a great deal of public money clearing up their rubbish and helping landlords clear out the empty houses so that they can be ready for the new students in September. 'And whilst all this is going on, we have to live with all the mess and rubbish' says Robert.

Local residents are expecting Lenton Boulevard to get special attention over the next few days as the council makes ready for the Olympic torch run on Friday and will be watching to see what happens to all the rubbish on the surrounding streets. Robert and the few neighbours he has despair at what has become an annual problem in Lenton for the past twenty years, so they have been out with their cameras photographing rubbish and now have a large archive dating back over many years showing rubbish in the same places year after year.

Attached dated pictures show Henry Road in 2005, 2009 and 2012, where local residents have proposed several solutions, all rejected by Nottingham City Council! If this year is like previous years then we can safely assume that the pile of rubbish is just going to get bigger and bigger before the council does anything. (I have pics in original file size if needed)'.

Now all I can do is sit back and see what happens.

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Lenton rubbish hit brings little comfort

June 26, 2012, 1:22 am

≫ Next: Lenton from the air in the 1920s

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Well, contacting Radio Nottingham brought Verity and her radio car to New Lenton, albeit at 7 o'clock this morning and she was a star. We positioned ourselves on the corner of Henry Road and Gloucester Avenue, which gave us a view of Devonshire Promenade and Lenton Boulevard as well, including the offices of the East Midlands Property Owners (EMPO — the landlords' association).

The City Council claimed that they were making a special effort in students areas and on Monday (yesterday) they came into New Lenton and cleared away some of the rubbish. The trouble is that they need to do this every day, but they think they're good at their job because they manage it just once.

The two pics below show 71 Lenton Boulevard before and after Nottingham City Council had paid the area a visit. The rubbish on the pavement went, but all the bags in the area between the wall and the front bay has not been touched. Now I know what the City Council will say, because I have heard the same old excuse countless times before: 'We can't touch it because it's on private property'. The trouble is that the scavengers don't make the same fine distinction and I bet come Friday the City Council will have cleared it anyway because it will look bad on TV as the Olympic torch goes by, so why didn't they do it yesterday?

I asked on Radio Nottingham this morning why can't landlords be on hand when the students leave to ensure that all the bags of rubbish and other boxes they put out are taken away before the scavengers have an opportunity to tear open bags as they search for food and other items, such as clothing, bedding and household items like toasters and kitchen utensils, especially since EMPO claims to work 'in partnership' with the City Council to ensure the rubbish doesn't pile up on streets in Lenton and other areas.

EMPO's spokesman actually agreed with me, adding that he knew the area I was talking about and it was just like I said it was. He then went onto say that, personally, he did take away student rubbish when they left his properties, but he couldn't speak for other landlords. This prompted the Radio Nottingham interviewer to ask 'Why not? You're on this programme representing landlords'.

Yesterday afternoon my wife Susan took some pics on her travels, including this one of 271 Derby Road, by the Lenton Boulevard bus stop. Maybe this will get special attention because of the Olympic torch. We shall see. God forbid that City Council officers should do anything without being pushed — after all they they did arrange for special rubbish trucks to tour Lenton last Saturday and, for that, the few older folk and families still stupid enough to live in Lenton should be grateful!

Yesterday also saw M-S Estates send a van to 1 Devonshire Promenade to clear away all the broken bags and rubbish which has been lying around for the past ten days. How much easier (and cheaper) it would have been had this been done on the day the students actually left. In fairness to M-S Estates they do respond when asked to do things, but we shouldn't have to ask in the first place.

I went to bed on Saturday night feeling pretty low and I feel a little better this morning, having made my point without disturbing my two ward councillors, who must groan every time they are contacted by folk like me about rubbish. It is less than 48 hours since I took my first pics, posted them to this blog and contacted Radio Nottingham. The best I am going to claim is 'a result of sorts'. I suspect that I will be contacting my councillors in the coming days and apologising for disturbing them about uncollected rubbish. This is how its been for the best part of twenty years and I cannot see the situation be any better next year or the year after.

As for the landlords, they smile all the way to bank, subsidised by the very same Coalition* Government that wants to withdraw Housing Benefit from the under-25s. Nothing though about making student housing pay Council Tax. If only purpose-built student accommodation was exempt, I suspect that many houses presently occupied by students would revert back to family housing. (* I never distinguish between Tories and Liberals as they are the same people in different clothing).

We must be mad to stay, but I keep hoping that, against all my expectations, things will improve!

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Lenton from the air in the 1920s

June 27, 2012, 9:46 am

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I have taken these three historic aerial photographs from a new online website called Britain from Above — a four year project aimed at conserving 95,000 of the oldest and most valuable photographs in the Aerofilms collection, dating from 1919 to 1953. Once conserved, the photographs were scanned into digital format and placed on this website for the public to see. The website launched recently with the first 10,000 images and is asking viewers to add additional information about the place shown in the photographs, as they currently have little information about the details in the images.

There are over 160 images of Nottingham and I have selected three which relate to Lenton in some way. The website will keep you occupied for hours!

This 1928 pic shows the Penn Avenue flats in Old Lenton. They were built in 1926 by Jesse Boot for his own employees and local residents whose homes were demolished to make way for Abbey Bridge road (which cuts across the bottom right-hand corner of the. The curving road behind is Church Street. Enlarged you can clearly see the Lenton war memorial and Albert Ball VC Memorial Homes. Then in the centre above the flats is Holy Trinity Church, Lenton's parish church. To the left of the church is Lenton Recreation Ground, much more open than it is today. An aerial photograph taken today would look very different!

I have added a version of the above text to the online photograph, together with a pic of the flats I took in 2008.

A picture from 1928 of what was then the newly built University College, Nottingham. Again, what you notice is just how open the landscape is.

And this is Lenton Abbey from the south-west. Enlarge the map online and you can see Wollaton Hall in the top right-hand corner of the picture.

I have already been looking at other places I know. A great new, must see, website!

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Olympic torch comes and goes along the Derby Road

June 29, 2012, 3:29 am

≫ Next: Neglect and change a way of life in Lenton?

≪ Previous: Lenton from the air in the 1920s

For a few minutes this morning Lenton played host to the Olympic torch, as it came from Nottingham Castle via Castle Boulevard and Lenton Boulevard before turning onto Derby Road and going past Lenton Recreation Ground and the end of my road — which is where I decided to wait. I decided that the best I could do was simply to take a few pics and try and tell a little 'Olympic torch' story about how I saw 'the moment' for, in truth, it was not much more than that. My camera dates and times all my pics, so I have used this information to show the time I took my pics this morning.

8.24am. As I stepped out of Devonshire Promenade and onto the Derby Road there were these two police motorcyclists in the middle of the road. The traffic was stopped at 7.30pm.

8.25am. I walked up to the corner of Gloucester Avenue and took this pic of the small crowd beginning to gather outside the Derby Road Health Centre. The police motorcyclist was from Leicestershire.

8.28am. Harry, Lenton's road sweeper, lives in Lenton and is based in Lenton Recreation Ground. He is well known among local residents and much respected. He told me that he had been at the Derby Road end of Gloucester Avenue since 6.30am and was blocking off the road with his barrow because there were not enough road cones.

8.29am. Compare this pic with one I posted of the same scene on Monday just gone, when I was having a rant about rubbish. The front garden now looks like a small country meadow. What a difference an Olympic torch can make — can we have one in Lenton every day please?

8.30am. A few of the permanent residents on the north side of the Derby Road had got out their easy chairs to get a good view of the torch. When the torch actually went by it was such a scrum that I suspect their view was rather restricted.

8.30am. No sooner had I taken the pic of the ladies in their easy chairs when this small bus came around the corner, followed by blaring speakers on the blue Samsung truck behind.

8.31am. Then came another corporate sponsor with more loud music handing out bottles of their tooth rotting soft drink. This is the side of the Olympic I hate. This kind of thing makes a mockery of the claim that the Olympics is about ordinary people. Perhaps, in truth, people see through this crude and nasty commercialism.

8.32am. Next came a bank, whose young stooges appeared to be acting as cheerleaders on wheels, then the yellow coach behind briefly stopped and …

8.33am …off got a lonely torch bearer and from nowhere a small crowd began to gather around him.

8.35am. Unfortunately I do not know his name, but during the few minutes he was standing here (the traffic lights behind are at the Derby Road junction with Lenton Boulevard) he posed for numerous photographs like this and the pleasure people got from holding the torch and having the pic taken was palpable and, without doubt, the best part of the few minutes the torch was in Lenton and a few yards from my home.

8.44am. As you can see from the time, the waiting torch bearer was waiting for a full twelve minutes, but after what seemed an age, the now familiar converted horse-box carrying the mobile TV camera crew came into view and with it, a large crowd too.

8.45am. At this point trying to take a pic of the actual handover, as the torch passed from one carrier to the next, was not easy as people with cameras (like me) pushed forward. Somehow I held my camera up high with one hand and pointed it in the general direction of the handover. I am amazed that you cannot see all the bodies surrounding me at this moment.

8.46am. Then he was off…

8.46am. …and before the minute was out he was gone, and that was the end of it and this was my last pic. I did look around to see if I could perhaps catch the young women in the wheelchair, but she had already gone, no doubt whisked away by Olympic minders so that the immediate focus would remain on the man with the torch.

In a sense not knowing their names captures the spirit of the occasion. They and all the other torch bearers are representative of countless other good folk who make life in our neighbourhoods a lot better with acts of quiet, unsung, kindness and sharing. — that is the good message from today's all few minutes of the Olympic torch in Lenton.

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Neglect and change a way of life in Lenton?

June 30, 2012, 5:35 am

≫ Next: Buses electric in Nottingham

≪ Previous: Olympic torch comes and goes along the Derby Road

During the week I walked home from Dunkirk Post Office along Abbey Street and Gregory Street. I was saddened by the neglect I saw and frustrated by the way change happens in Lenton, despite the best efforts of some local residents to ensure it is both meaningful and sensible. I think the following pics and links to previous blogs will show you what I mean.

It is just over four years since I blogged about Dunkirk Fire Station and a developer's 'consultation' I attended (see 1 June 2008 blog). In September 2008 I persuaded the Dunkirk and Lenton Branch Labour Party to organise a public meeting about what was happening the area. The developer clearly wanted to build student accommodation on the site, but the crash came and only now is the Fire Station being demolished, after years of delay and a court case in which the owners sued Nottingham City Council. Another Nottingham blogger, 'Nottingham City LOLs', wrote about it all in 2011 under the heading 'Fire station fuck-ups'. I have no idea what is going to happen with the site now. It could be that the owner is simply clearing it so it is easier to sell once the property market picks up.

Lenton is littered with derelict land and old service stations waiting development. Abbey Street alone has one service station which has been a 'by hand' car wash for years, a empty housing plot with planning permission for three houses which must be close to expiring (I must check out the dates) and, of course, the boarded up houses and shops duee to be demolished to make way for the new Tram line to Beeston and Chilwell.

In 2007, I and others tried to get the line of Tram altered to protect this historic building, but without success (see my post, 'Dunkirk and the Tram: who hoodwinked who?'). The building is currently being stripped prior to demolition. Wearing my Notts Local History Association hat I did bring together the old owners, Lenton Local History Society and the Notts Building Preservation Trust to carry out a detailed on-site survey with the support of the new Tram consortium and their contractors. A report will be published in the September 2012 issue of The Nottinghamshire Historian (for which I compile the news), suffice to say that some interesting finds were made in relation to Lenton Priory, the medieval Cluniac religious house which stood here (the gate house is thought to have been at the road junction in the above picture showing the boarded up shop on the corner of Abbey Street and Gregory Street).

It is a change we will have to live with, but I am in no doubt that it could have been better managed and that there were alternative solutions. The truth is that Nottingham City Council cocked it up, as they do all too often. Local people have been ignored time and again and could actually manage Dunkirk and Lenton much better than the City Council.

If anything epitomises Nottingham City Council, it is the little Priory Park in Old Lenton, across the way from the boarded corner shop in the previous picture. The last time I devoted any time to it was in 2008, when I posted some half-dozen Priory
blogs in a personal campaign to shame the City Council into doing something about this small open space on land which would have once been part of Lenton Priory. I love this mini copse of silver birch which greets park visitors as they come in through the Gregory Street gate.

Now, less than four years later this is how it looks. Every bench is broken or overgrown. Decay like this is the result of deliberate neglect. No one from Parks Department has visited or inspected this park for ages. How else can you explain what the picture shows. If someone has carried out an inspection, what did their report say? Did it recommend any action(s)? Any official 'ward walks' by our ward councillors have clearly not included Priory Park.

The need to save money on cutting grass can be turned to advantage. For example, had this part of Priory Park been planted up with meadow grass how different it would be looking now. My imagination sees a sea of waving colour, like a tide as it ebbs and flows across a stony shore or a sandy beach. Perhaps the Parks Department can be persuaded to do something for next year. It wouldn't cost a lot to do.

Another view of the same area. The broken benches I have already referred to are against the far wall. Like this it doesn't look too bad, but how much better it would look covered in wild meadow flowers.

And this is one of the overgrown seats on the Abbey Street side of Priory Park. Again, this could so easily, with a little garden maintenance, be turned to advantage and made a feature. Unfortunately, I know the Parks Department solution only too well — they will send in a 'hit squad' with motorised saws and strimmers who will hack down everything in sight and turn Priory Park into an area more like 'ground zero' than a lovely little oasis.

I suspect the City Council Parks Department already has its eyes on some 'Tram' money, or yet another pocket of Lottery or public money, with which they can give Priory Park yet another makeover. Not for the first time, I suspect they will end up being rewarded for their neglect and, somehow, they will emerge from all this as great managers, who deserve to be congratulated!

As for the leaning wall above, I am amazed it is still standing. The gods have been kind to the Parks Department. A few good kicks from the churchyard side and down it would fall. Back in 2008, there was talk of replacing the wall with metal railings, so that you could see through into the churchyard. Ideally, you would create one large space and promote it as part of what I would call the 'Lenton Priory Heritage Precinct'.

Priory Park deserves better and with the coming of the Tram and the long proposed 'MediPark' development between Leengate, Abbey Street and the River Leen, I can see it becoming a welcome lunch-time retreat for workers and visitors alike.

For now though it is little more than a very visible reminder of how neglect has become a way of life in Lenton and that change, when it does come, is all too often given a gloss and a spin that, somehow, allows those responsible to promote themselves to best advantage.

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Buses electric in Nottingham

July 7, 2012, 10:11 am

≫ Next: Becoming the 'Going Public Blogger'

≪ Previous: Neglect and change a way of life in Lenton?

Nottingham City Council owns 81% of Nottingham City Transport. It also owns sixty buses so that it can operate its own Link network. Logic says that these services should all be operated by NCT and any shortfall in fare income should come from NCT. In June 2012, the City Council went out to public tender 'to purchase up to 20 single or double-deck buses using either electric (zero emission) or diesel-hybrid technology'.

I am sure that there are plenty of folk in Nottingham who know far more than me about these things, but it does seem a little crazy to me that the 1985 Transport Act still lets the City Council own a bus company, operate buses and run subsidised services, but that it cannot do these things together. Then, of course, there is the matter of Nottingham bus maps which I blogged about in April this year.

Another thing which amazes me is how few people know that 'electric' buses first operated in Nottingham eighty-five years ago — they were known by various names, including 'railless traction' and 'trackless trams', but their most common name was 'trolleybuses'. Nottingham's trolleybus system was one of the largest in England and lasted until 1966, by which time diesel fuel was cheap and bus manufacturing companies like AEC and Leyland were manufacturing reliable buses in such large quantities that they were cheaper than trolleybuses.

I grew up in Wembley and with trolleybuses. I used a 662 to get to work in neighbouring Harlesden six days a week. They were part of my childhood and rarely did a week go by without using a trolleybus to go shopping in Harlesden or to visit relatives in Tooting. They last ran in my part of London in early-January 1962. I remember it well. I was seventeen and just after Christmas 1961 it snowed for a week and I was busy being a teenager, out and about, at parties and doing stuff in between going to work. Then one day, I went to work on a No.18 bus instead, which simply had its Sunday service from Wembley to London Bridge Station turned into a daily service. Even then it didn't make sense to get rid of a form of transport that didn't emit smoke or fumes — my first job as a trainee animal technician introduced me to the awful consequences of smoking and inhaling diesel fumes. I looked after rats who were subjected to daily doses of both and then I dissected them for my professor to inspect (I left after two years having been party to the continuous 'verification' of the obvious once too often and found a job in TV shop).

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photographs of the demise of the 662, so I have used a pic from a book I own, Trolleybuses in North-West London, which is still published by the London Trolleybus Preservation Society (£16 from: LTPS, 19 Fieldfare, Sandy, Bedfordshire, SG19 2UZ). Old bus photographs are fantastic records of social history: the way we dressed and how shops used to look, plus the cars and lorries etc.

I last rode on a trolleybus in public (as opposed to a museum) just after Christmas 1969, the year I moved from Harrow to Birmingham. My grandfather had come to stay and we went off to Walsall in search of a trolleybus. Again, I had no camera, but it is a day etched in my memory.

By the time we arrived in Nottingham in 1979 trolleybuses had been gone for thirteen years, so I never saw the scene shown in the pic below:

Another pic from a book I own: The Heyday of the Trolleybus by Howard Piltz, published by Ian Allen in 1994. The pic was taken by the author and although the book is no longer listed by Ian Allen, you can find it on Amazon and e-Bay.

If you want to learn more, then you can do no better than read Nottingham Trolleybuses by David Bowler, published by Trolleybooks in 2006. In truth, Nottingham's trolleybus network, whilst large, never met its planned extent and came to a halt in the mid-1930s as buses were used to replace trams instead. However, there were still trolleybus poles along the Derby Road in the 1980s and I remember coming to Nottingham in the early-1970s and seeing an electric bus. You can see a pic of this in Nottingham 2 by G H F Atkins, published by Venture Publications in 2002.

Then in the 1990s trams were introduced to Manchester and Sheffield, with Nottingham having already decided to follow suit. Planning began in late-1980s and it took until 2004 before the first trams came into service. Nottingham City Council were, and remain, tenacious when it comes to public transport in the city. At the time I did argue for trolleybuses, but trams were seen as 'sexy' and appealing to male motorists.

This week trolleybuses have been given their biggest boost in eighty years, with the decision by the Coalition Government to fund a new trolleybus network for Leeds which should be running by 2018 (why do these things take so long?). Trolleybuses with overhead wires may, though, be about to give way to a new kind of electric trolley bus — one that has electric motors fitted to each wheel and uses overhead power points instead of continuous wires to draw down the electricity needed to move it along. The kind of buses Nottingham is planning to buy have large batteries which have to be charged before use and which run out after so many miles. Being able to charge an electric bus continuously would enable the bus to remain in service all day.

The website Trolleybus UK sets out all the arguments with sections devoted to Leeds and London proposalsThe pic below shows a wireless trolleybus in Shanghai:

The bus has a pantograph on its roof which only needs to be in contact with a power point for a minute or so, then it can continue to the next power point. This reduces the need for overhead wiring — which makes it easy to understand why this such an attractive concept. No doubt as the technology improves, the waiting time will reduce. Then there is talk of using under road 'induction' cables (industrial type versions of the small domestic systems many of us now use to charge our toothbrushes and smart-phones). Again, this is a modern version of what many urban tram systems were using 100 years ago in cities like London, where the overhead power cables were replaced by a third middle rail which allowed a 'shoe' to collect the electricity needed to power the tram.

A Cambridge design concept company, Design Triangle, is also promoting its own version of this wireless technology and is seeking funders / partners to help them build this futuristic trolleybus:

The interior looks very much like that of a modern tram or commuter train:

And what does all this mean for Nottingham? Well, many European countries use trams / light rail alongside trolleybuses and motor-buses to maximise the efficiency of their networks, with trolleybuses providing high-capacity links to trams and buses providing 'link' services. Perhaps Nottingham will take its interest in 'electric' buses a stage further and consider re-introducing trolleybuses. This bendy green trolleybus from the Trolleybus UK website is elegant and stylish. The Derby Road could handle this vehicle with ease and provide a emission free alternative to buses between Long Eaton and the city centre. Now there's a thought…

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Becoming the 'Going Public Blogger'

October 1, 2012, 7:33 am

≫ Next: It's that missing Tram again

≪ Previous: Buses electric in Nottingham

Most of my recent posts, more by accident than design, have been about public transport, especially in Nottingham. It is a topic I have been interested in since I was a young boy and what information there is online about public transport is somewhat disjointed and incomplete, so after some thought, I have started a new blog, GoingPublicBlogger, devoted to the topic. This means that there will probably be fewer postings here, but I do not intend to let it go completely (I tried that once before and then came back).

I am very close to being on no committees at all and to having no outside commitments whatsoever for the first time in 54 years (!) since I joined Wembley South Young Socialists in 1960. It's a lovely feeling. For the rest of my days I intend to be a 'free agent' wandering at will. It doesn't mean I don't do things. In the past fortnight I have had visits from community consultants and City Homes to talk about plans for the future of the Lenton Flats development area in particular and local housing in general, plus an invite to give evidence to Parliament's Local Government & Community Committee later this month.

I will continue to write about Lenton matters from time to time, but I have put my 'activist' days behind me. I still want to see the corporate capitalist system defeated at the ballot box and believe, very reluctantly, that I live in a police state.

I have been attending a 'Creative Writing Class' run by Beeston Workers' Educational Association (WEA) Branch for a year now and enjoy it greatly. After years of writing about local history and local community issues, I am writing for me. It is quite a different experience.

So, this posting is attended as a way of playing catch up with those of you who visit Parkviews from time to time. Next week there will be a birthday bash for our two eldest grand-daughters (they will be 21 and 24 respectively this month) and there are elderly relatives to visit as well.

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It's that missing Tram again

October 6, 2012, 4:21 pm

≫ Next: My Don Quixote moment

≪ Previous: Becoming the 'Going Public Blogger'

If you would like to read 'part 2' of my story about Nottingham's 'Disappearing Tram' go to my new Going Public blog, where I posted an update to the story yesterday.

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My Don Quixote moment

October 10, 2012, 1:30 am

≫ Next: Don Quixote no more?

≪ Previous: It's that missing Tram again

On 22 October I will be giving Oral evidence to the Parliamentary Community & Local Government Committee at their invitation. You can find my evidence on the CLG Committee website. My submission is the second entry on a list containing just 53 submissions. Such a small number is somewhat disappointing, given all the talk there has been (and still is) about localism / community empowerment / neighbourhood democracy / 'Big Society' or call it what you will. I had, naively, thought that my submission would be just one of hundreds.

I feel this is my 'Don Quixote moment' and I wonder if I will ever learn to stop tilting at windmills? Sorting through an old archive box last week I came across some back issues of The Journal, which was published by Birmingham Trades Council and to which I was a regular contributor in the 1970s, writing mainly about the activities of the City Council. The then Leader of the Council, Stan Yapp, was asked by The Journal to contribute. Instead he got me to do it, because he thought I was 'independent enough to have some credibility'.

In 1972 I was Secretary of the Birmingham Borough Labour Party and met Dick Knowles, who was then the city's full-time Labour Party Agent. He subsequently became a city councillor and Leader of the Labour Group and the City Council. We got on well and I have always acknowledged his part in how I became a passionate believer in urban parish councils and neighbourhood democracy. And last week I found the October 1972 issue of The Journal, carrying a front page article by Dick Knowles entitled 'Local Government 74'.

28 October 2012. See next blog.

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Don Quixote no more?

October 28, 2012, 5:13 am

≫ Next: The Park footpath saga continues

≪ Previous: My Don Quixote moment

One of the problems I have, even after 6½ years of retirement is finding enough time to do the things I want to do. Since I left my (unfinished) last posting nearly three weeks ago, I have not had time to come back and finish it off, so I will try to continue here, but even this posting may not get done. It's just gone mid-day and I have been up and about for barely fifteen minutes. Susan is in the shower and I will be making coffee once she is out, then I'll be going downstairs to make us a light lunch for 1pm. Afterwards, we're going to try and clean the landing carpet and who knows how long that will take(!), but it needs to be done. Then it will be time for a cup of tea and a nice chocolate ginger biscuit. About 6pm I will start preparing supper (pasta and mushrooms with olives in a home-made tomato sauce full of garlic and onions. Oh, and there's still the washing up to do from breakfast, then lunch and supper. Markiza's litter tray also needs seeing to (I do it twice a day at least).

So, I'm fairly confident there will be no more blogging today. Tomorrow morning, Bernie, our garden help will be here for two hours and I have to go to Beeston to get the special cat food Markiza has because of a health problem she has (she is about twelve years old and came to us five years ago when a friend died and we had promised to care for his cat should anything happen to him. I'll do some food shopping as well, so there's another two hours gone. I've also got to write a piece for the creative writing class in Beeston, which I joined at the beginning of last year, and I enjoy going to.

I haven't mentioned trying to read The Guardian and The Observer every day as well, plus a couple of books I've got on the go. Am I crazy or what?

There are things I want to say about the way Nottingham is managed and the way its neighbourhoods, like Lenton where I live, are treated by the city's ruling elite. Even the local bowls club needs time and attention, with the first of three winter meetings next Monday and in December a local history forum to organise and publicise. I must be mad!

I've got a story on the go as well and a poem about the 35 bus route I have been playing around with since August, which is nearly there, but getting parts to flow is still a problem.

Then there are friends to see and other things to do and I have not even mentioned watching TV or listening to the radio (yesterday evening we listened to a 'Martin Beck' play on Radio 4, recorded from earlier in the afternoon, which I couldn't miss because he is my favourite detective of all time).

Susan says blogging is something you can do whenever, but I find it hard not to think of it a discipline which requires regular attention.

Perhaps my days at tilting at windmills are over, but never say never. Perhaps instead I should go to Marks & Spencers and buy in ready meals sandwiches instead of cooking and making bread?

Fifteen minutes since I started and Susan is out of the shower. Time for coffee.

PS. My fifty minutes with the Parliamentary Community and Local Government Community last Monday (22 October 2012), answering questions about the role of councillors in the community, went well insomuch as looking at archived film of the session on parliamentlive.tv and reading the transcript afterwards only reveal a couple of minor things I wasn't happy with (all were because I was speaking too quickly at times and missed words out).

I hammered home my central message: that we need single member councillor wards and that councillors should exercise existing powers to control all the services which relate to the ward — to be 'mini-mayors' in effect.

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The Park footpath saga continues

November 17, 2012, 8:11 am

≫ Next: The danger of 'one issue' Party names

≪ Previous: Don Quixote no more?

Taken from Park Road in Lenton. Beyond the bollards is Lenton Road and its in The park Estate. I took the picture on the left in 1999 and the one on the right in 2009.

If you look opposite, you see under 'Pages' that I have added a page headed 'Park footpath evidence' which shows some of 'the evidence' I have passed to Nottingham City Council's Footpaths' Officer showing that the foot-route between Nottingham and Lenton can fairly be described as an 'historic right-of-way' and, however inconvenient The Park Estate may find this, no one should have the power to close it ay any time of day. It is a path along lit roads — not some narrow, unpaved, unlit passage running between houses — so there is no case whatsoever that the footpath needs to be blocked to stop anti-social behaviour or criminals. Those in The Park Estate who want to do this are, basically, snobs, who see people from Lenton as some kind of riff-raff.

Next summer (2013) there should finally be a public enquiry into whether or not The Park Estate have the right to close off this historic footpath. I may be called to give evidence. I first lodged a complaint in 1999 and wrote a lead story for News for the Forum, which appeared on its front page. It will probably be 2014 before any decision is announced, so it will only have taken fifteen years to get the dispute resolved, but, hey, let's look on the bright side. That's quick by Nottingham City Council standards!

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The danger of 'one issue' Party names

November 17, 2012, 10:03 am

≫ Next: Erewash Canal 90 minute walk: Sandiacre to Towell

≪ Previous: The Park footpath saga continues

After fifty-two years in the Labour Party I am on the verge of leaving. I have been living a lie for years out of tribal loyalty, more worried about what my Auntie Nannie in Harlow and Keith, who I met when we were both Young Socialists in 1960, will say when I tell them I have left the Labour Party. Both have the ability to forgive the Labour leadership everything and I love them both, so what they think of me matters. With the exception of Susan, my wife, others have to take me as I am and I can live with the consequences. You cannot be active in politics or the community if you are going to worry about those who hold you in low regard because of your views / actions.

Politically, I have had more in common with 'Greens' than Labour for decades, in terms of policies. They are certainly to the left of the Labour Party these days, but that hasn't always been the case. As people, they are not as devious as Liberals. If anything, there are quite the opposite. They are probably too honest in an age when people do not want to hear the truth. Nor does calling themselves 'Green' help. Why? Because it creates an image in voters' minds that they are a single issue party.

A Green could well argue that the same is true of the Labour Party. When did the political party calling itself 'Labour' last have the interests of the poor, the vulnerable and dispossessed has a primary aim? At best, since 1997, the Party has thrown a few breadcrumbs in the direction of those it should care most about, whilst brown-nosing corporate capitalism and caring for themselves first. Of course, there are notable exceptions to my generalisation, but all too few to make it invalid. There are too many Party members like my Auntie Nannie and Keith, and I have been one as well until now, who have accepted arguments as to why we can't abandon nuclear weapons, why we can't take back water, gas, electricity and railways into some form of public ownership, even those are things they believe in.

The sad truth is that 'Labour' has become a political 'brand' that career politicians use to trade their futures. 'We'll look after you now and, afterwards, you'll look after us, right? And so with a nod and a wink, the deal is done. Oh, they are good with the talk, but their actions tell us how they have, systematically, been betraying ordinary folk everywhere. The expenses scandal rumbles on: a few are punished, but most got reselected. I knew Dennis MacShane in his Birmingham days and agreed with much of what he said, but, as my Susan says, 'Something happens to far too many MPs when they enter Parliament. They seem to forget who they were before they got elected'.

The fact that the Tories have been able to run riot with the NHS is because Labour put many of the mechanisms in place to make this possible. To name just a few: they abolished community health councils, they actively embraced Tory private finance initiative (PFI) programmes and allowed the private sector into the NHS big-time (and if you live in Nottingham, look no further than the QMC if you want to see evidence of this fact). They set up foundation hospitals and so the list goes on, and as for dentistry, that was cast adrift by Labour long ago.

But Labour's biggest failing of all between 1997 and 2010 was not the NHS or supporting American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was housing. In Lenton, we have lived with their failure and continue to pay a heavy price. Poorly regulated private landlords have grown in number, whilst council housing has become poorly funded 'social housing' and housing associations have become all but private in name — as have many national voluntary organisations — who take public money and donations whilst paying their senior managers and chief executives fat pay cheques. Many of these 'voluntary' organisations are anti-trade union and refuse to recognise them, yet still Labour has funded them.

The Tories love to lay the blame for the financial crisis at Labour's door and, in some respects they have an argument, but I am sure if they had been in power, there would have been even fewer 'controls' in place. The Labour leadership failed the Party and our country and we still allow ourselves to be led by these politicians — and these are the people we are expected to trust now.

After fifty-two years in the Labour Party, I write all these things with a heavy heart. There are many I respect in the Party for their commitment and enthusiasm, but loyalty can be misplaced. They are wrestling with problems not of their making and when some try to reason with Party elites, they are treated with disdain. In Dunkirk and Lenton, the Labour elite running the City Council have little or no trust in local people. They set up their own ward 'forum' with their own staff, when the community-led Dunkirk and Lenton Partnership Forum, founded in 1996, could provide the same services and support, but the City Council has to control everything, everywhere, and thinks the occasional act of largesse will blind voters to what is really happening.

For my part, I do believe there are alternative, viable, solutions to our problems as a nation and it is a time for change. I am going to give the new National Health Action Party (NHAP) a chance. They will not succeed, in the longer term, if they get trapped into being a single issue political party, but having read their aims and constitution, I think they understand this. They don't mention housing directly, but housing and health are inextricably linked. You cannot tackle health as an issue if you ignore housing and that, that, continues to be Labour's big failing. As far as I am concerned there is no place for the private sector in health or housing and where the voluntary sector is involved, then it has to be closely regulated. This will be the message I take to them.

As a local historian I have long believed that, in terms of Britain's 20th century achievements, council housing trumps the founding of the National Health Service. Without the former, the second would have failed a long time ago. And, if we continue the way we are going, what has happened to housing since the 1980s will happen to the NHS over the next 10–20 years, by which time I will almost certainly be dead (I hope to be lucky and still be here at 88, but I'm not banking on it!).

I also think the founders have been clever in giving themselves a 'brand name' which will sound familiar and a logo which voters in the polling booth will instantly recognise and many will identify with. They also talk of 'progressive taxation' and 'social care', so they are well on the way to being more than a narrow, one issue, party. They also talk of getting councillors elected, so there will be a local dimension to NHAP as well. To be credible, they will have to fight as many parliamentary and local council elections as possible and become a party for 'national health action' in the widest sense. For my part this will include the economic 'health' of our country, Nottingham, democracy and so much more.

Well, that's it!

I'll be back in a few days with pics of a wander I had along the Erewash Canal, between Sandiacre and Trowell, last Wednesday.

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