Richard Baum

I spent the weekend in London, enjoying a three hour traffic-free motorway journey as far as the end of the M4, and then a two hour clogged-up apocalypse between Earl’s Court and my mate’s flat in Streatham. A flat which, rent-wise, sets her back as much as a genuine palace bedecked with jewels and minarets would do up here.

Why anyone lives in the traffic-soaked and unceasingly busy spiders-web of ramshackle flats that is London, is a mystery to me. And yet so many people I know do, which means I have to go there more often than I’d like. Unless you’re Frank Lampard on £120,000 a week, with your Bentley Continental gliding effortlessly between luxurious city abodes, living in London must be an unendurable nightmare of crowds, sky-high prices for everything, and take-away fried chicken restaurants.

Still, a number of likeable souls live there, and we all ended up watching a comedy evening in a pub in Balham (that’ll be sixteen pounds to get in, sir).

My trip down south meant a weekend off duty in Prestwich, although the week ahead is very busy indeed. Today I have already contacted the Council to once again chase up the planned improvements to the junction of St Ann’s Road and Bury New Road. The junction in its present form looks like the work of an evil scientist bent on causing mayhem and destruction, but keeping it peculiarly restricted to minor road accidents. The pedestrian crossing is not only a ludicrously short distance away from then main crossing, but is out of sync as well, meaning that cars and pedestrians get confused, nobody knows what’s going on half the time, and it’s pretty miraculous that nothing serious has happened. I received another report of a minor accident there today, so it’s about time the Council followed up on their promise to get it sorted by the end of the financial year. I will keep you posted.

This week it’s the Prestwich Local Area Partnership, which takes place tomorrow night at St Monica’s School (on Bury Old Road, near to the junction with Scholes Lane / Sheepfoot Lane). The meeting starts at 18.30 with LAP business and reporting back from sub-committees and the like. The public forum starts at 19.30, when you will have the chance to grill LAP members including all of your local Councillors. So if you have a burning issue you’d like to bring up about anything we might be able to help you with, please come on down and take the opportunity to raise it.

On Thursday it’s another  Rainsough TRA meeting, where we can update the residents on what’s been going on, and hear back from them on what they’ve been getting upto. Obviously the main issue at present is the Chapel Road shops and the potential conversion of one or more units into an outreach facility for the Children’s Centre. We have secured money from Bury Council, and despite my overtures to Labour-run Salford City Council for funding from them (the shops belong to them even though the residents / tenants pay council tax / rent to Bury) they have not come up with funding yet. I hope they come up with it soon, because if it isn’t spent by 31^st March then the grant we’ve got become worthless, and so much effort will have been wasted.

On top of my meetings this week I have an interview tonight with a local researcher about anti-Semitism. And I also have the City v West Ham replay on Wednesday. All of which means that poor Tamsin is left to measure up for furniture on our new house by herself, because I am out every night! We finally exchanged contracts on Friday, and will be moving in early February. People keep asking if I’m celebrating, but frankly the thought of having just signed my life away to a bank for twenty five years makes me want to do anything but! I will probably write (significantly) more about developments as they occur.

Rick