Mary Reid

Good news! The pedestrian controlled crossing outside the White Hart went live earlier today.

I had been chasing Transport for London for some time because the actual crossing was completed several weeks ago, yet the lights were not working. In fact, I asked again only yesterday, only to be told that there was some highly technical problem with the electricity supply. Whatever it was they seem to have solved it.

You may also have noticed the cables across the road near the crossing. These are measuring the road use and speeds as part of TfL's feasibility study of the Elm Road/Hook Road junction.

I particularly asked for them to extend the sensors along the Hook Road towards the new crossing because the speeding traffic is shaking the only listed building we have in the ward - it's the delightful Vane Cottage, which is around 350 years old. It would be good if a solution can be found that will improve the Elm Road junction and also slow down the traffic along the Hook Road.

"Where's my blue case?"

"I thought you'd packed it in the car."

"I thought you had."

We had arrived in a hotel carpark in Norwich last Wednesday, where I was due to speak at an international conference the following morning. Ian and I had planned to stay on and enjoy a short break over the Bank Holiday weekend. I had packed my clothes in two bags - and, it seems, had left the larger one behind.

So what had I got with me? - shoes (thank goodness), toiletries and some tops. That's all. Sitting in the blue bag at home were skirts, trousers, more tops, plus all my underwear.

We avoided having a row and set about solving the problem. First thought, Marks and Spencers - but it was 6pm and all the town centre shops had closed. Second thought (thanks to Ian) - Asda, open 24 hours and we had passed it on the way in.

So off we went.  Underwear was easy, although I'm not sure that the Katie Price brand is quite my demographic. (Though oddly enough that actually is my name - I was born Katharine Mary Price)

Skirts and trousers were more of a problem, as finding the right combination of colour and length in the fairly small range was a challenge. But I just had to get something to wear for my presentation first thing the next morning.

What bothered me most was buying very cheap clothes, knowing that the people who had constructed them were being paid a pittance. It did get me thinking again about the actions we can take as consumers to make a difference to the wellbeing of fellow humans across the world.

I try to be an ethical shopper, buying Fair Trade foods whenever I can. Unfortunately there are far fewer outlets for Fair Trade clothes. It doesn't take much imagination to realise that the person who made that £3 t-shirt or £6 bra was receiving only pence for their work. But the problem is that the same could also be true of the £30 t-shirt or £25 bra bought in a more up-market store.

There are some online Fair Trade clothes suppliers (google 'Fair Trade clothes') but it is very rare indeed to see clothes labelled as such in the High Street. So I was pleased to see that Oxfam have launched a Fair Trade boutique, which will be the first in a chain of high street shops. I do hope they have plans for one in Kingston.

I should have mentioned it before, but there was a surprising letter in the Surrey Comet this week from Conservative Cllr David Fraser. In it he lambasts the Lib Dems for outsourcing the management of the Manor Park Hall, saying that it should have remained in Council control.

Surprising, because the evening before his Conservative colleagues had recommended that the management of the Hook Centre should be, well, outsourced!

Actually I'm pretty sanguine about whether the management of public resources should be under community or Council control. I helped to pioneer the very successful community trust model for Dinton Playing Fields, but on the other hand I would be sceptical about independent management of our Children's Centres.

The point I made about the Hook Centre is that the current management by the Library Service has only been in operation for less than the year, and has already produced some very good results, so it would be silly to change it at this stage.

Now this picture takes some explaining... Euan Semple is talking at the International Political Forum on eDemocracy about social networking and Web 2.0.

To illustrate the immediacy of the medium he had taken a photo of me this morning when I had been talking to the same audience about Facebook. He then uploaded it to Flickr, and here it was on the screen already as a bit of reportage.

As it happens, at that very moment I was updating my Facebook status to say that I was attending a session about social networking!

What is more Euan had blogged about what I was saying as I spoke in the morning session.

It seems the circles are turning into spirals (that's the only metaphor I could think of that wasn't pretty rude)..... But it was good to meet him, and that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't both been interested in the social networking phenomenon.

Scrutiny is a peculiar activity, but one that is essential in a modern democracy. It is the process of chewing over policy decisions that have been, or are about to be, taken by the Council.

The Lib Dems in Kingston believe that formal scrutiny should be undertaken by the Opposition, so, with the agreement of the Conservatives, we always ensure that they have a majority on the Scrutiny Panel, and that they chair it.

The Scrutiny Panel can 'call-in' any decision taken, amongst others, by Neighbourhood Committees. But I was rather surprised when they called in a decision we took at South of the Borough in March. This decision was neither controversial nor crucial; in fact, it could hardly be described as a policy decision at all!  It went like this:

Hook Centre -Operational Review

1. The review of the performance of the Centre in its first year of operation be noted;

2. Thanks be passed to all Hook Centre staff for their efforts at creating a vibrant community facility

The Call-in request stated that the report on the Hook Centre (which you can see here) 'did not address the financial issues in any detail'. It didn't - because we had asked for a report on the usage of the Centre; the financial details had all been given in the Budget papers.

The Call-in also said that the Scrutiny Panel wanted to review the success of the proposals for the Centre which had been discussed at a previous Scrutiny meeting. In fact, the South of the Borough report did exactly that, and very comprehensively, so it was puzzling to know why it required further scrutiny.

Here are a few snapshots from that report about the first year of operation of the Hook Centre:

• Over 1000 people, mostly young people, have used the Recording Studio
• 19 local schools have used the recording facilities
• The Information Desk has serviced nearly 13,000 requests about Council and community services
• The Library exceeded all its usage targets
• 90.6% of children and young people rated Hook Library as 'Good' (the highest category)
• 15 courses are offered each term in the Learning Centre
• The Centre offers free wifi access to anyone who drops in
• The new Full of Beans café is popular and well-used
• Chessington Care have had 850 contacts
• Citizens Advice Bureau sees an average of 10 clients per session

The Chair of the Scrutiny Panel yesterday evening, and Leader of the Conservative Group, Cllr Howard Jones kicked off by stating that he had called-on the decision "because there are no Opposition councillors on the South of the Borough Neighbourhood".

That's true, but a couple of Conservative councillors did attend the Neighbourhood meeting when it was discussed - I seem to remember that Cllr Jones was there himself - but they didn't utter a word! They would have been very welcome to ask questions and make comments at the meeting, but they just lurked at the back.

In fact, Cllr Paul Johnston, who is on Scrutiny, lives in Chessington South, so had he been there he would have had every reason for joining in the discussion as a local resident. Would he have suggested that we did not note the report? - or not thank the Centre staff?  Of course not! And had he asked for the financial details the officers would have referred him to the relevant Budget pages.

So we knew right from the start that this was about politics, not about the workings of the Hook Centre.

We have, in South of the Borough, an innovative and exciting new project, dreamt up by councillors as a way of developing the local community. In fact, it is the only public building of note in Hook! Did I detect a little jealousy here?

As the meeting got going Council officers were quizzed on the performance of the Hook Centre - but virtually all the answers were already in the report that went to South of the Borough!

Why doesn't the Recording Studio offer DJ courses? - it does
When will the Hook Library introduce self-service machines? - it has had them from the start
Why doesn't the Hook Centre leaflet mention that rooms can be hired? - it does
Why didn't we take note of the consultation and offer something for young people? - well, that's the main reason for installing the highly popular recording studio
and so on...

Cllr Jones also indicated that he had no idea what a Children's Centre is, even though there are several of these major multi-agency developments for families within the Borough!

Then the Conservatives starting asking about all sorts of other issues - the structure of the building, the specification drawn up five years ago, the management of the building project - none of which were the subject of the report and none of which were mentioned in the Call-in request.

This was highly improper, especially given that last year they did a detailed scrutiny of all these aspects of the project, and the relevant officers were present to answer questions.

I was even quizzed on the capital costs of the building. I pointed out that when considering the costs of the new building you have to take into account the whole-life costs of the alternative, which would have been to throw large sums of money at maintaining two crumbling buildings (Library and Community Hall) which were not fit for purpose. Indeed large sections of the old Library huts had been destroyed by fire.

After two and a half hours the Conservatives made some recommendations which were not backed up by the information they had received.

One recommendation was to outsource the management of the Centre.

In fact, the management of the whole Centre was taken over by the Library Service in the middle of last year. Since then they have appointed the new café operator, have negotiated the use of the créche area for a new Children's Centre, and have successfully marketed the community hall for lettings. Why do they want to stop something that has been successful?  I suggested that it would be wise to wait a couple of years to see how it works before disrupting this new system.

Another recommendation was to report the finances of users to the Neighbourhood.

The South of the Borough is responsible for the overall budget of the Centre. It charges rent to the users, which include some Council services such as the Kingston Music and Arts Service, Housing and Adult Education, as well as external users such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and Chessington Care. From our financial perspective we need to know that these services can meet the rental charges, but we do not need to know their internal budgets. The Conservatives have asked for 'greater transparency' in the budget reports to Neighbourhood, by which they mean that we should be given the detailed financial breakdowns of these users.

Now this is a nonsense. The budgets for the Council services are already made public through the Council's own Budget processes; and it would be completely inappropriate to require voluntary organisations to disclose their detailed financial affairs to us.

So what happens to these recommendations? They will be referred to the Council's Executive to decide whether to take any action. I can't wait ...

It gave me quite a jolt when two Golden Wedding Anniversary invitations popped through the letter box at the weekend. Have we really got to the stage when friends are celebrating 50 years of life together?  Ian and I have managed 40 years so far, which seems extraordinary enough.

I recall my father saying that he remembered the time when he looked in the local paper at the wedding pictures, then some years later it was the baby announcements (that's how they did things in those days), and finally he became an avid reader of obituaries.

When I was about 12 he asked me what I thought was the best age to be. I said "17" because it seemed very glamorous and I was sure I would have a boyfriend by then. He said, "No, the best age to be is the age you are now". He believed that every age has its delights, and that we should savour them and never regret the passing of years.

But that did not mean submitting to traditional expectations about how we should behave at each stage. He and my mother celebrated their 75th birthdays by flying down the Grand Canyon, and he was happily working right up until a month before his death ten years later.

I've taken his advice and I've never minded people knowing my age. I've enjoyed watching my hair turn from dark brown to white. I don't mind the odd wrinkle - yes, really. 

In fact the only thing I do regret is how it has become increasingly difficult to lose weight.

Compost - now I've written about this subject before, though I'm no gardener. But we keep a bin in the back garden and are slowly learning how to make it turn grass cuttings and many other things into the ultimate organic good stuff.

Recycle Now is a not-for-profit organisation which encourages people to have compost bins. They reckon that at least 30% of the contents of your rubbish bin can be composted!

Kingston Council now has a scheme with Recycle Now, which means you can buy compost bins at reduced prices - from £17 to £40 (depending on size), with free delivery. Just go to the website and put in your postcode.

I've discovered a couple of new facts about composting:

You can compost shredded paper, which is useful as you can't put it out with the normal paper recycling. Apparently the shredding breaks up the fibres too much so it cannot be recycled again as paper.

All that fluff that comes out of the filter in the tumble drier can go in the compost too.

UPDATE Monday: Oops! It seems I misunderstood the information I was given, so I need to set the record straight.

The Rose Theatre is indeed celebrating selling 50,000 seats in its first four months, but that doesn't quite translate into a take of £1 million.

The ticket sales must indeed be getting quite close to that figure. However, not all of that is income for the Rose, as the various theatre companies who have performed here have naturally taken their cut.

I've just received a great new photo of the theatre....

Photo by Chris Pearsall

Original text

I've just heard that the Rose Theatre has taken £1million since it opened in January! 

An amazing 50,000 seats have been sold so far.

I went last night to see 'Come on, Jeeves' which I have to admit was not really to my liking. But it did demonstrate that a show designed with a three-sided room set for a traditional stage still works well in our unique space.

I don't know about you, but recycling as much as I can makes me feel quite virtuous. 

So how do you increase recycling from 25% to 50% overall?

Simple, you collect recycling every week and you recycle a wider range of materials. That's what happened in Berrylands when the Council tried out weekly recycling collections.

The latest news is that 'Berrylands trial' helped to push the Borough average for recycling over 25% for the first time. That means that when a similar scheme is introduced across the Borough in September we should see a substantial leap in recycling figures overall.

I do hope so. Some pretty negative things were said, purely for political gain, about the Berrylands trial. It was a trial, which means that lessons were learned, and there will be some tweaks in the new system. But the increase from 25% to 50% cannot be ignored.

As I've mentioned before, from September the weekly recycling collection will include food waste, cardboard, drinks cartons, directories and batteries as well as the usual paper, glass, textiles and plastic bottles. Anything else will go to landfill, and the Government tax on that will double by 2012 - a charge that will have to be met by council tax payers.

The Surrey Comet has done it again! A perfectly accurate front page report has been ruined by the sensational and totally inaccurate headline: 'Charity centre to shut'.

The last time this happened - only three weeks ago - two unrelated stories were combined under a 'Council wields axe' headline. The reality was that six elderly people were being moved from sub-standard accommodation, and that a local charity was closing down in spite of the support it was getting from the Council.

This time the story is about Springboard. I've written about this several times already (here and here and here) and you will know that Springboard is a NHS sheltered workshop for people with mental health problems or learning difficulties. 

Springboard is not a charity, and the story only makes sense when you know that the local Primary Care Trust - the commissioning arm of the NHS - is trying to close it down.

The Council's Health Overview Panel (which I'm on) forced Kingston Primary Care Trust, which funds Springboard, to consult on its proposal to close the workshop. At that stage we had no information about how the needs would be met of the 50 or so people who used the service. There was no assessment of their needs, so there was no way of analysing what the costs would be for alternative provision.

Last week Health Overview held a special meeting to hear fom the PCT about the consultation.

I was very critical of the consultation document, especially around the lack of costings, but also because it did not use Plain English, which in itself is a serious equalities matter.  Astonishingly it emerged that the needs assessments had still not been completed. 

The good news is that, under the leadership of our MP, Edward Davey, a rescue bid has been set up by a group of local charities. This is correctly reported by Peter Truman in the Comet.

So who was the sub-editor who wrote the headline 'Charity centre to shut'? A better headline would have been 'Charity centre to open'.

I haven't written anything about the disaster in Burma - what can I possibly say that isn't trite?

But the report in The Observer today was headlined Burma exports rice as cyclone victims starve.

Yes, this takes callousness and obscene power to even greater depths. Burma is exporting rice to Bangladesh from one port, whilst millions are on the edge of starvation in one of the main rice growing areas within Burma, where crops have been destroyed. Rice exports are controlled entirely by the military regime.

Skilled relief workers must sit in hotels in Thailand waiting for visas, and only a handful of planes carrying emergency supplies are allowed in, with little evidence that the supplies are reaching the survivors.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre effort to fool the rest of the world that the generals have everything under control, they have gone ahead with the planned referendum on a change in the constitution that would give even greater powers to the military.

In God's name, what can we do?

Well, we've certainly seen variety in the productions at the Rose! - from a naked Romeo, through the exuberance of The Ragged Child to a sparkling Peter Hall production of Uncle Vanya.

This Saturday there's a spectacular aerial dance show from the amazing Ockham's Razor. I remember catching a glimpse of them on TV some time ago and thinking that I must try to see them live - and here they are in Kingston!

Next week, it's another shift, this time into high comedy with Come on Jeeves, based on those wonderfully camp stories by P G Wodehouse.

Incidently, it's worth going into the theatre to book seats in person. As well as avoiding booking fees, at the moment they are giving away 20% vouchers for Frère Jacques (the French restaurant by Kingston Bridge) with the tickets.

Annual Council is the occasion when a new Mayor is installed, and yesterday we welcomed Cllr David Berry to the office.

The new Mayor is a Liberal Democrat councillor in Alexandra Ward. As we heard, David was involved in computers before some of of the councillors (but sadly not me) were born!

David will be supported by Cllr Rohan Yoganathan as Deputy Mayor, clearly hoping to establish a family dynasty to rival the Reids!

This is a sad day for those of us who value small shopping parades, centred around a post office, and their place within local communities.

The Post Office has announced that, in spite of energetic and informed opposition by all parties, it will close all six post offices in the borough that were under threat.

In fact, 155 post offices will close across London. Only seven of those on the original list were reprieved.

A few weeks ago we had a debate in Council on the threatened closures. I mentioned:

Cllr Steve Mama claimed that he had a hotline to the Government and that we could expect some concessions.

Hmm ... didn't work, then.

(In case you don't know, Steve Mama is the only Labour councillor on Kingston Council.)

Thanks to NewsBiscuit and Iain Dale

Any Questions last night was broadcast live from the Rose Theatre in Kingston.

I was delighted to see Sir Peter Hall on the team, alongside some political stars - Harriet Harman, Vince Cable and Caroline Spelman.

(If you're wondering whether the panellists are hidden in the dark - they're not. This was a sneaky shot taken as the audience arrived)

Three questions referred to Shakespeare, presumably in deference to Peter, but he is quite capable of making pithy comments on any topic thrown at him, as he clearly demonstrated.

The first 20 minutes was given over to a discussion on how the prospects of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party had been damaged by the local elections. This was before the results had been announced from London.

You can hear the repeat of the show today on Radio 4 at 1.10pm followed by Any Answers, or you'll be able to listen again for some time afterwards.

With support for Liberal Democrats running at 25% across the rest of the country, London stands out as an anomaly with only 11% for the party list.  It seems that the heavy media interest in the Boris v Ken confrontation actually got in the way of good democracy.

Labour introduced the idea of having elected mayors, partly to bring some excitement back into politics, and it has certainly had that effect.

But higher turnouts are not the only measure of a healthy democracy. What is also necessary is a real understanding of the options, so that people make informed choices.

During the run-up to these elections I came across many electors who believed that they had to vote for Ken to keep Boris out, or vice versa. They didn't know about the second preference vote - at least not until I told them. 

Even more worryingly, with the news focussing interminably on the mayoral contest, they didn't know they had a constituency Assembly member. They didn't know about the party lists and how these affected the eventual balance on the Assembly.

The London Elects booklet was a welcome addition to the literature, and it was clear if lengthy. Sadly it was delivered far too late in the campaign to have much impact.

The political parties did their best to explain the various voting systems in London. When I say 'political parties' round here, that means only the Lib Dems and Conservatives. Believe it or not, Ken Livingstone and Labour didn't deliver a single election leaflet in Chessington.

Nevertheless the media dominated the buzz around the London Elections. It was in their interest to simplify the story to a classic confrontation between two strong characters. After all, simple fights and rows sell newspapers, complex issues don't.

I'm not attempting to make excuses - this is about learning lessons. But my fear is that the machinery of democracy is now so dominated and skewed by the media that democracy itself is the loser.

Update

Since I wrote this I've received the analysis of the London Elections from Make Votes Count. This is a link to the pdf.

Can anyone explain to me why the Royal victim of blackmail, and his employee, were given anonymity by the courts? Blackmail trials are fairly rare, so is this normal practice? Or were they given special protection because of the Royal links?

I'm all for protecting victims, but I sincerely hope this was not special treatment.

Of course, anyone interested has been able to google and find out the names for ages. And any viewer of 'Have I Got News for You' would have noticed the juxtaposition of questions at around the time when the story broke.

Well - after all the gloomy predictions, Liberal Democrats achieved 25% of the vote across the country, beating Labour into third place. This is almost exactly the same as four years ago, when anger over Iraq sent many voters in our direction. Having found the Lib Dems they seem to like us and have stayed with us.

To sum up, as I write Lib Dems have achieved an overall increase of 19 councillors, have hung onto Hull (after a defection lost us control temporarily) and Liverpool (though a defection to us was the decider), and have gained St Albans and Burnley. Sadly we lost control of Pendle.

I'm particularly pleased with a snippet of news from Wales. Merthyr Tydfil, elected six Liberal Democrats, I think for the first time ever. And one of those is Kevin O'Connor - no, not the councillor here in Chessington South, but his son (and brother of Cllr Rachel Reid). Congratulations Kevin! 

It just shows how damaged Labour is that it lost control in Merthyr so resoundingly. This is the town that elected Keir Hardie as the first ever Labour MP in 1900. Instead it is now represented by a complete mixture of parties, who now have to negotiate some kind of coalition.