Mary Reid

It was damp, but it was fun.

The organisers, John Azah and Prabha Shetty, with the Mayor

Kingston Carnival is becoming one of big events locally, with costumes fresh from the Notting Hill Carnival, food, live music and dance all day. This picture was taken last year, and it's going to be bigger and better this year.

So this Sunday catch the main procession along Clarence Street and in the Ancient Market from 12 noon. There are two stages, one in the Market Place and the other at the Guildhall, and you can see the full programme here. There's a return procession at 3pm.

It took about a minute - less than the time it would take me to walk to the postbox.

I was pleasantly surprised when the Register of Electors 2009 form arrived today and I saw that I could do my registration online. There is also a 24 hours freephone number I could use instead. I could even send a text, but that will get charged at the standard rate.

All these methods allow me to apply for a postal vote, or to exempt myself from the public register, as well as simply confirm the names of the voters at my home.

In fact, I only need to use post if I want to make some specific changes, such as adding a new person to the household.

I've been going on for long enough about the benefits of online transactions in local government. As a local resident I really value the facility to do business with the Council 24/7; as a councillor I know that the cost per transaction is far less when using automated methods, so this is saving public money.

Of course, not everyone wants, or is able, to use the Internet. The key thing is to open up as many channels of communication as possible, and to encourage everyone to use the method that is most convenient for them.

The online registration system has been developed by Electoral Reform Services, which is the commercial arm of the Electoral Reform Society.  The ERS is the highly respected independent organisation that, in its Society version, campaigns for fair and inclusive elections and, in its Services version, conducts ballots and elections for all kinds of bodies, including large corporations, trade unions and political parties.

So many major Government IT projects have failed disastrously. They tend to be huge undertakings, and are often launched with a major switchover, followed by a widespread demonstration of all the bugs.

The ones that succeed are those that build from relatively small beginnings and are proved sound at every stage, such as online petitions which were pioneered in local government by Kingston.

And when the supplier is a tried and tested organisation that has been working in the field for over 100 years then you can be pretty sure that the system will work. And, indeed, while I have been writing this an email has arrived from ERS confirming my registration.

We're in for a real treat this season at the Rose Theatre, with three productions by Peter Hall.

The Bath Festival production of a stage adaptation of Henry James' 'The Portrait of a Lady' opens tomorrow, directed by Peter Hall and with a script by his wife, Nicki Frei.

This is paired with Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' which opens on 9th September. The two plays should offer a fascinating study of how two women deal with the cultural expectations of their marriages.

I'm going to see both, but the one I'm looking forward to most is a rare production of 'Love's Labour's Lost'. This will be the first homegrown professional production in the Rose, developed specifically for the space.

Peter Hall is bound to bring fresh insights to this oddity of a play; after all, he is renowned as the director who can breathe life into the most difficult of texts. I've already planned to go to see it twice.

In between, the resident Artistic Director of the Rose, Stephen Unwin, will delight us with a modern piece by Peter Nichols, 'Born inthe Gardens'.

You can book online, but it's cheaper to pop into the box office as you go past. Whilst you're calling in, have a look at the Culture Café on the ground floor - it offers art exhibitions and free performances while you munch through your paninis.

(Yes - I did nick the photo from the website)

A few days ago I was astonished to read that Andrew Lansley (the Conservative Health spokesman) had claimed that Kingston Hospital had cancelled over 10,000 operations last year. This was so obviously false, and yet the Tories persisted in telling the world that Kingston hospital was the worst in the country.

How dare they!

Our local MP was equally startled and did some digging around. As you might have guessed, the figure the Tories gave for cancelled operations was nearer to the figure for operations that happened!

The Healthcare Commission gives these figures for cancelled operations at Kingston Hospital: 116 for 2006-07, and 190 for 2007-08. The hospital carries out around 15,000 each year so the number of cancellations accounts for less than 1%.

As if that wasn't enough, this is the second time in a couple of weeks that the Tories have misled the public about Kingston Hospital. On the previous occasion they obtained the figures for visits by pest controllers to hospitals across the country, and spread a scare story about the number of infestations that this must represent.

In the case of Kingston Hospital they claimed that pest controllers had visited over 50 times between January 2006 and April 2008. In fact, the actual figure was higher, at 121.

But, but, but.... the truth is that the Hospital has a contract under which a pest controller visits every week. So during that period there were 121 planned visits. This is a preventative approach that should be applauded.

Again - an appalling piece of misleading publicity.

Edward Davey has demanded an apology from Andrew Lansley and you can read the full text of his letter.

Next week, if you live in Chessington North and Hook your refuse will be collected on Tuesday, as usual. In fact, all over the Borough refuse and recycling will be collected on the normal day.

So what?

Well, Monday is a Bank Holiday. In the past there was no collection on Bank Holidays, and everyone's refuse was collected one or even two days later in the week.

The new waste contractors, Veolia, have agreed to ignore Bank Holidays and collect on the usual day every week of the year (apart from at Christmas and New Year, of course).

Now this should avoid confusion in the long run, although it is inevitable that some rubbish will be left out on the wrong day next week. If that happens to you just ring the Waste hotline on 8547 5560 and they will arrange for it to be picked up in a day or so.

The Surrey Comet has the story about Zac Goldsmith's 'illegal' donation to the Richmond Park Conservative Association. Goldsmith is their parliamentary candidate, and the Electoral Commission is investigating the allegation that he gave them £7000 when he was not on the electoral register, which is not allowed under electoral law.

So the Richmond Park Tories will probably lose the £7000.

But what intrigues me more about this story is the news that multi-millionaire Zac Goldsmith has (allegedly - we know about his father's run-ins with Private Eye) ploughed £90,000 of his own money into his campaign to win the seat from Susan Kramer MP. It seems he has set up an office with two staff.

This is way beyond the resources available to the vast majority of candidates, who have to rely on small personal donations and fundraising social events to cover their costs.

Now I have always believed that we are fortunate in the UK in the way we run elections with a strict cap on the amount of money that can be spent by candidates. In the States, of course, election campaigning is all about raising millions of dollars for the White House race, or even hundreds of thousands to stand a chance of being elected as a State Representative. And if you get elected then you immediately start raising the huge sums needed to get re-elected in four years time.

The one catch in the UK is that the limit on expenditure only applies during the short period after an election is formally called. There are no restrictions on what can be spent between elections.

So, the question is quite simple. Is it fair that one candidate can spend very large sums from their personal wealth outside the election period?

Here we are, protesting at the decision by the Government Inspector about the planning application in Somerset Avenue. He has decreed that the two houses in the background can be pulled down and replaced with seven new houses.

This photo requires some explanation - there are lots of coincidences here.

Some months ago, Ranil Mendis (on the right) who works for the City of Toronto, came across my blog when googling for Kingston upon Thames and got in touch. He is involved in the Toronto Mayor's XI, a youth cricket team in the city, and was planning a trip to London for them. We finally met yesterday.

Now Canada is not exactly known as the home of cricket. When I was over in Jamaica at the Cricket World Cup last year I was surprised to find that Canada had made the final sixteen - but then realised how that was possible. Their team was almost entirely drawn from ex-pats from those three great cricketing nations of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

And the same is true of the young men in the photo. I've been to Toronto many times to stay with my brother, and it is said to be the most diverse city in the world. That must be reflected in many cultural ways, including sport.

So why did the team stay in Kingston on their visit to London?

Well, the Chair of Chessington Cricket Club was flying to Sri Lanka and his wife fell into conversation with a fellow passenger, whose son was a member of the Toronto cricket team. As a result of that chance meeting, Chessington invited the Toronto team to play here and are hosting them for the two week tour. You can read all about the visit here.

Back to my message from Ranil - I was able to pass it on to the then Mayor, Cllr Shiraz Mirza, who by coincidence is a huge cricketing fan and a great supporter of Chessington Cricket Club. So he made sure everything went smoothly, and yesterday evening the current Mayor held a reception for the Toronto squad.

I had a fascinating conversation with Fay Arlene Grange (the only woman in the photo!) who is the Development Officer for Parks, Forestry and Recreation in Toronto. We don't have much need for a forestry officer in Kingston, but the other two have their equivalents in Kingston.

We shared many of the same aspirations, such as wanting to support youth sport through grants and recognising the importance of providing a diverse range of opportunities. The final coincidence was that Fay's sister is Minister of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports in Jamaica, and we have a number of mutual contacts over there.

Are you, like me, fascinated by the social impact of the Web? If so, then find an hour to sit down and watch this brilliant presentation given a couple of months ago by Michael Wesch at the Library of Congress.

I'm really, really angry and upset. We've just heard that the application to build 7 houses on the site on 30-32 Somerset Ave (plus the garden next door) has been permitted on appeal.

Last month I wrote about the appeal hearing. 73 local people turned up to object!  Now their views, and the professional opinion of Kingston's planning experts, have been overturned by the Government's Inspector.

This is the first back garden development of its kind that has been allowed in this ward for many, many years. In fact, I think that the last example was probably (ironically) St Paul's Vicarage back in the 1960s.

Since then local councillors have fought hard to maintain the suburban character of the area. That is now under threat, and this decision will be held up as precedent.

Alex Wilcocks has challenged Lib Dem bloggers to pick out their own best blog entries in the last year.

The idea is to make it easier to for readers to make nominations for the Best Posting on a Lib Dem blog category in the Blog of the Year Awards. I'm not really aspiring to that (well....) but I thought it would be fun to do anyway.

So here are my best bits since 1st Sept last year.

I wrote How Shere Close influenced Government policy just last week, and it brings together my very local interests in supporting the people who live in the ward, with my national campaigning on democracy issues.

Also recently, Saving Bletchley Park links one of my heroes, Alan Turing, with two women from Surbiton - I always try to find the local angle!

Cheap clothes was my train of thought after arriving to speak at a conference, only to find that I had left most of my clothes behind.

What is a close friend, and why did it matter to Mayor Ken?  All is revealed in Close friends, but not a sexual relationship

The early findings of appalling child abuse in Jersey got me thinking about how attitudes towards the treatment of children have changed for the better. During my own childhood, institutionalised violence was considered acceptable, and at the time when I became professionally involved in education child sex abuse was dismissed as a fantasy. I wrote about the Contexts of abuse.

What do you want to be when you grow up?  It seems that work I did in my gap year, which sent me off on my own career path, has come to fruition over 40 years later.

Now that was fun -  I really enjoyed trawling through a year in my life.

It was great seeing the cyclist Nicole Cooke winning the first gold medal for Britain!

I wonder if she knows how much her sport owes to a former Mayor of Kingston? Eileen Gray CBE, who was Mayor in 1991-92, was almost single handedly responsible for turning women's cycling into a high quality international sport.

Eileen was a top class cyclist herself, and was one of the first three women to cycle for Great Britain, back in 1946. She then founded the Women's Cycle Racing Association and served as its President for 13 years. Ten years in, she broke through any remaining gender barriers and was elected President of the British Cycling Federation, which she also did for 13 years.

Finally, in 1984, due to her pressure, women's cycling became an Olympic sport.

But ever onwards - she then became the first female Vice Chair of the British Olympic Committee.

In the meantime, she got herself elected as a Conservative councillor in Kingston, and was a very popular Mayor.

Now you might think that would be enough for one life, but Eileen then did something that has benefitted literally hundreds of thousands of young sportspeople. She dreamt up the London Youth Games.

But it was more than a dream - she made the games a reality in 1977, chairing the committee for many years.

This year alone, 25,000 young Londoners took part in the games, in 33 different sports. Teams are entered for each London Borough, and Kingston always does pretty well considering it is the smallest Borough (apart from the City of London, which doesn't really count!). Eileen always attends - we had quite a chat at the games two years ago when I went along as Mayor to support our team.

I've known Eileen for many years - she is still a wonderfully twinkly person.

Here she is, seated next to David Jacobs at a gathering of past Mayors which I hosted to celebrate his 80th birthday.

As a footnote - her son, Dr John Gray, is a GP in Hook, so is well known to many round here.

The Adventure playground in Jubilee Way is taking shape - and it's emerging as a mini landscape with hills to climb. Mature trees have already been planted.

I posted the plan and a fuller description a couple of months ago, but here are some photos of the construction. It should be finished in September or October.

Some years ago the people who live in Shere Close got together to present a petition to the Council, asking for improved parking in their rather restricted cul-de-sac. The petition was discussed, with them, at a South of the Borough Neighbourhood meeting and eventually we were able to find the money to create some extra parking spaces.

Shere Close has 12 houses, and the petition was signed by one person from each house.

Now they may not know, but that activity may have actually shifted Government policy.

You see, Hazel Blears (the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) has got quite interested in petitions to Councils in the last year or so. They are an important element in her vision of empowering communities, and although I don't agree with everything she's championing, I do agree that everyone should have the right to present a petition to local government, and that petitions should be discussed by councillors.

Last winter she carried out a consultation on 'Local Petitions and Calls for Action', and she has now given the Government's response. In the consultation, she asked whether a petition should have a minimum number of signatures before the Council would be obliged to respond - an earlier pronouncement had suggested that 200 signatures would be needed.

In my own submission, I referred to (without naming) the 12 signatures on the petition from Shere Close, which represented 100% of the people affected. I believe that all petitions should be taken seriously (apart from the obviously inappropriate ones) and should be discussed, however few signatures they may have.

I'm delighted to say that the Secretary of State has accepted this point and the document reads:

Some respondents were concerned that a high threshold could exclude minority groups or issues which only affect one street.

...

The Government proposes that the local authority should respond to all petitions. The response should be proportionate to the seriousness of the issue, or the level of support for the petition - but it should always be substantive. Responding to petitions should not be a tick-box exercise.

Once the local authority has considered the issue raised by the petition, they could respond in the form of a letter. The local authority may also want to change or review their policy, hold a public meeting, or run a public consultation to gather more views on the issue.

One staggering statistic to emerge is that less than one third of Councils in England guarantee to respond to petitions. From our position here in Kingston this seems unbelievable, but I have been surprised myself to discover how other Councils around the country do manage to bury petitions.

The proposals in this document have been transferred directly into the Communities in control: real people, real power - White Paper, which will eventually become a parliamentary Bill. I'm pleased that at last the Government is proposing that Councils should have a statutory duty to respond to all local petitions.

And I'm even more pleased that it explicitly includes electronic petitions.  I got Kingston to lead the first project on online petitions in local government, and they have been widely accepted as a sensible addition to our democratic tools.

I'm also relieved that the Government is drawing back from prescribing how Councils should handle petitions. There are lots of decent ways of processing them - from petitions committees, through petitions slots on all agendas, to the full-blown officer reports that we expect at Kingston - but that should properly be up to the local Councils to decide.

By the way, Hazel Blears started a blog to coincide with the launch of the White Paper.

Something very puzzling is happening just outside my front door.

Early this morning Southern Gas Networks started a six week project to replace all the gas pipes in my road. The letter from them refers to 'reinstatement of roads and footpaths'. 

But the Council replaced almost all the pavements in Clayton Road only a month ago!

When anything by is done by gas, electricity or other bodies that involves digging up the road or pavements, they do have to arrange the timing with the Council. This is to make sure that new surfaces are not dug up again soon after they are laid. Believe it or not, this process usually works!

So I've asked the Council what is going on. I'll report back when I hear.

Update - midday

Apparently the gas and other suppliers have an agreement with the Council that they will not dig up any pavements or roads within 6 months of them being laid, except in an emergency.

I've just spoken to the Southern Gas Networks project manager, and he says that they will dig along the grass verges and only lift paving slabs where necessary. I'll be watching carefully and taking photos.

The remaining problem is that further along the road the pavement has black top instead of paving slabs. This will definitely be spoilt if they have to dig into it.

About a year ago I blogged about the misuse of blue badges. 

Since then a working group of Kingston councillors has been set up to review the allocation and use of blue badges, and also the availability of disabled parking bays.

These are its terms of reference:

The review has been commissioned to:

Address concerns that the current scheme is not robust enough to ensure that only people who meet the set criteria and that there could be misuse of Blue Badges in the borough.

To ensure the range of discretionary parking concessions for Blue Badge holders in the borough is appropriate and consistent.

To ensure that the allocation of disabled bays in residential areas reflects local demand.

To ensure the siting of disabled bays in town centre locations is appropriate and consistent right across the borough.

The working group will be contacting organisations that support people with disabilities, but it would also be very happy to hear from individuals.

Send your comments to:

Stella Okoloba, Guildhall, Kingston upon Thames KT1 1EU

020 8547 4623

or email her

For more information about blue badges have a look at the Kingston Council site.

Yesterday I attended the last Board meeting of the International Centre of Excellence for Local e-Democracy (ICELE). The Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) brought it to an end in June - more about it here - and the last month has been spent tidying things up.

I'm still desperately sorry that it has been closed down. For the last five years ICELE, and the National Project that preceded it, have been trying to persuade the Government to encourage people to get more involved in local issues, using the new media to attract wider groups.

Just at the point when the Government is about to introduce legislation whose aim is 'empowerment', it takes the bizarre step of closing down the one organisation that is best placed to help.

Since the announcement of its closure, ICELE has been trying to make sure that its accumulated knowledge and active projects are not lost.

I've already reported that the blogging platform that I use, Blog in a Box (ReadMyDay), which is designed specifically for councillors, is now safe.

The Voice community website system - known locally as Kingston eVoice - is funded until April 2009. CLG is now looking for a home for this, preferably with one of the local authorities already actively involved, and has promised some seed funding to make sure the transition goes smoothly.

The ICELE website had 300,000 visits in the last six months, and is an enormous resource for local authorities. CLG have reassured us that they will retain the contents of the site and continue to make them available, which is good news.

ICELE had recently won bids to be part of two European projects - Pep-Net and Momentum - and Lichfield District Council, who hosted ICELE, will take those forward.

The IPR on other items has been largely sorted out now.

As for all that expertise in working with local councils and encouraging them to adopt more open styles of government - that will all be lost, I'm afraid. The impetus for change will slow down; I'm sure it will be many months before CLG starts working with local authorities again on e-participation.

So there we are - the end, for me, of nearly five year's involvement in an internationally acclaimed Government sponsored e-democracy initiative.

But that doesn't mean I will be dropping out of the e-democracy world - just watch this space, as they say.