Rick

The Bury Times today told the story of one Conservative Councillor’s allegations of assault against another member of his group. The whole thing makes Councillors a laughing stock, and whilst I don’t know the details of the incident, quite why Conservative Councillors can’t control themselves is a mystery.

This comes hot on the heels of last week’s story outlining the squabbles between Labour and the Tories over some remarks made at a local meeting, and the subsequent lack of apology from the Tory Councillor who made them (the same one involved in the “assault”). The Tory won’t apologise, nor will he recognise the Standards Committee to which he’s been referred by Labour.

Again, it’s a ridiculous story that makes Councillors look like school children in the playground. We’re supposed to be running the town - looked up to and respected. And yet the papers are dominated by a game of “he said, she said” that wouldn’t look out of place in the toilets at a teenage disco. Come on guys, sort it out. Stop making stupid remarks, apologise if you do make them, don’t over-react if they’re made to you, and show respect to the procedures of the Council you’re elected to.

All this looks particularly bad for the Tories, because they look even more squabbly than Labour. It’s no wonder that one Conservative said she was “embarrassed” by the antics of her colleague at the centre of these allegations. I’m embarrassed too, and the quicker the Leader of the Council takes action to bring this type of thing to an end, the less bad it’ll look for him, and the less bad it’ll look for the rest of us.

Rick

Despite the lacklustre surroundings, it was an excellent day, the undoubted highlight of which was the closing speaker - Simon Weston OBE, best known for being the most seriously wounded survivor of the Falklands War. His is a remarkable story of triumph in the face of unimaginable adversity, and a reminder not only of his own courage, but of the sacrifices being made by service men and women for the protection of our way of life every day. Mr Weston’s life in the 26 years since his injuries has seen him positively influence the lives of thousands of young people directly through his charity, and influence many thousands more through speaking engagements. His fundraising and other charitable activities earned him his OBE, and he continues to raise the profile of good causes today.

His story certainly puts local political squabbles into context, and his message of public service spurs me on to try and do more good things as a Councillor. I must confess though that because I was listening to him all day, I haven’t managed to do any good Councillor things yet today. However, I am about to go and chase up some emails and return some phone messages, so I can start putting that right straight away.

Rick

Since the re-modelling of the junction at St Ann’s Road outside the park, the gate is now much more aligned to the crossing, and the only thing preventing a hyperactive child flinging himself into the path of an oncoming Range Rover is a single small barrier. Given the ever-rising obesity numbers, several of the youngsters may soon be wider than the barrier itself, and so I have been asking for additional protection for some time, along with a local resident who has been prodding me on the subject too.

And now the Council say that we can have it. Apparently there will be two or three extra barriers there soon, which will make the whole place lots safer, and minimize the angst which I suffer every time I drive past there half expecting a tragedy to occur. 

All of which is good news for me and for local children, although bad news for those hand car wash places that are springing up everywhere.

Tonight I am going to see a band at the Manchester Apoloo, in an homage to my youth. I will probably complain that it is too loud, and suffer from tinnitus-like symptoms until a week next Tuesday. But it beats staying in.

Rick

The following schools in Bury will be fully closed tomorrow and Thursday due to strike action unless otherwise stated:

All Saints C of E Primary School
Cams Lane Primary School - part closed
Chantlers Primary School.
Chesham Primary School closing at 12noon each day
Christchurch Ainsworth C of E Primary School.
East Ward Community Primary School
Elton Community Primary school - part closed
Green Hill Primary School
Greenmount Primary School.
Heaton Park Primary School.
Hollins Grundy Primary School.
Lowercroft Primary School.
Mersey Drive Community Primary School - part closed
Park View Primary School.
Peel Brow school - part closed
Radcliffe Hall C of E/ Methodist Primary School.
Radcliffe Primary School
Ribble Drive Community Primary School.
Springside Primary School
Sedgely Park Community Primary School
St Andrews C of E Primary School, Ramsbottom.
St Peters C of E Primary School.
St Joseph & St Bede RC Primary School
St Joseph RC, Primary Ramsbottom
St Lukes C of E Primary School.
Tottington Primary School
Unsworth Primary School.
Whitefield Community Primary School.
Wesley Methodist Primary School - part closed
Woodback Primary School

High Schools:

Bury C of E High School
Castlebrook High School.
The Derby High School - closed, but school trips going ahead.
Elms Bank Specialist Arts College.
Parrenthorn High School
The Ark
Radcliffe Riverside School
Woodhey High School.
Tottington High School.

There are two schools which will be closed on the 16 July, which is the last day of the school term.

Guardian Angels Roman Catholic Primary School
St Maries Roman Catholic Primary School

Broad Oak High School will be closed on 16 July, but open on 17 July as a large number of pupils will be on school trips.

St Johns C of E Primary School will be closed on 17 July only.

The Council can be contacted on 0161 253 5000 for further information.

Rick

In addition, I noticed this morning that the sign at the end of my own road can no longer be read since it has been overcome by nasty-looking thorned weeds. So I asked them to sort that out too, whilst they’re in the area. I’d do it myself but there are nettles and I am delicate…

Later on this week there’s the next meeting of the St Mary’s Conservation Area working group. I am looking forward to finding out the latest plans for this important local area.

One of the issues involved for anyone living in the area is around buildings and planning, which reminded ne today to chase up the planning application for the site of the former Park Hotel on Lowther Road. This site has been derelict for a few years since the pub was knocked down, and now there has been an application received for some flats. I think that opinion may be divided on this one – we don’t want a building site, but not many people like flats, especially if they’re overly tall. So I am talking to a resident with concerns, and would be happy to hear any others. We need to make sure that whatever happens, the development minimises its impact on the surrounding homes – i.e. enough car parking spaces, retention of privacy and light for existing residents, and a commitment to actually build something rather than keep the land vacant for years.

I’ll put any updates on here as they arrive.

Rick

Normally I get a couple of comments a week, which is all very nice, and shows me that at least it’s not just me reading the blog. The other day though I logged in to find 534 comments had been left in the hour since I’d last been on. “Hmm…” I thought to myself. “Clearly my report in the Local Area Partnership meeting has captured the public’s imagination.”

Sadly it was not to be, as I discovered that instead of a varied discourse on the merits of the Prestwich Plan, my comments were all very generous offers from a foreign gentleman wondering if I was interested in some free movies he had to offer. All I had to do was click on the link he kindly provided, and I was promised certain lewd acts which bordered on the illegal but which were without exception free.

I declined his repeated offerings, but sadly he has not gone away, and keeps bombarding me even though I have told the blog many times that his IP address is spam.

Apparently this is happening to a lot of my fellow bloggers, and it’s very annoying because not only does it take time to delete them, but there’s also the chance that the occasional genuine comment on the merits of Bury Council will get washed away in the torrent of free naughtiness. Like the digital-age version of a nun getting lost on Haight-Ashbury in 1967.

Any words of advice on dealing with the problem will be gratefully received. Although I reckon you should email rather than comment…

Rick

This weekend though has been nothing short of a social whirl, as weddings, farewells and gatherings have collided to make it seem for a brief period as if I do indeed have some semblance of a life. Unfortunately, the social occasions have merely re-affirmed my suspicions that my emotional development is not sufficient enough to cope with the rigours of having friends. In particular, there seems to be a glut of my mates leaving for foreign shores at the moment. And my fragile ego isn’t coping at all well.

A few years ago it was fine. My friends lived in various bits of the UK, but nowhere that couldn’t be reached in four or five hours by car, even with a stop for a Ginsters at a service station on the way. So I would see them all a few times a year, and birthdays/christmases wouldn’t come and go without at least an evening somewhere loud.

Now though my life is taking on a definite international flavour, and not in the cosmopolitan way that I’d like. It all boils down to the fact that my mates are deciding to live in various parts of the other side of the world, and leaving me rattling around England getting bored and fat.

Saturday night saw me in a pub in Altrincham, bidding farewell to a girl I’ve known since I was at school. And bear in mind that I went to an all-boys school. Finding a girl friend at all against those odds is like digging up potatoes from the garden and unearthing the Cullinan Diamond. But I did find this one. I didn’t mind that she went to university in Durham, because I was in Birmingham anyway, and at holiday time there we both were, back home. Now though she’s going to live in Hong Kong. And that is far too far away to pop out to for a drink when I want reminding I can’t be old because, look, here’s someone I knew from school!

And with her go all the other friends, the hangers-on who I know through her, see twice a year, and am reminded each time that they’re actually a lovely bunch. I never think of them beforehand, and don’t notice if they’re not there. But after two hours chatting to them I realise that my life is touched by a hundred lovely people I never see as much as I should. And last night on my drive home from Altrincham, probably the only thing that kept me from crying about that was Tam sitting next to me offering practical tips like texting them once in a while.

This Hong Kong revelation has come hot on the heels of another very good friend of mine informing me that he is emigrating to New Zealand, a place so far away that it’s a long haul flight further on than Australia. It took the crew of Apollo 11 only marginally longer to fly to the moon than it would take me to fly to Auckland. And so rather than being able to meet up in Manchester and drown our sorrows after the typically horrific working week, now any meeting requires buying shares in Qantas. It’s awful. I won’t lie to you like I’ve lied to him. It’s just plain awful.

The guy I used to live with, and had two of the most dangerous years of my life sharing a bathroom with, now lives in San Francisco. My sister is one step away from packing it all in and going to live on a commune in the Ganges. A former colleague to whom I have come to rely on an unhealthy amount for emotional reassurance informs me that she’s chucking in Chorlton for Dorset. Fair enough it isn’t Cape Town, but it’s beyond the end of the M5, and that’s far enough away to warrant serious pre-planning. Others around me are planning their various escapes, all requiring passports. Is there a disease here I haven’t heard about? What’s the rush? Where’s the need?

My oldest friend, to whom I was introduced my my grandpa at the age of 0, now lives in Melbourne. Granted, it’s a handy stopping off point on my epic journey to New Zealand, but his presents living arrangements are very inconvenient indeed for someone who enjoys wallowing in self pity and contemplating the passage of time as much as I do. Just flying there would give me enough free time to depress myself into oblivion. He is back in England at the moment, and in the snatched few hours we’ve had together between him showing his Antipodean girlfriend the London Eye and me messing about delivering Focus leaflets, he told me he mightn’t be back for two years.

What can a I say about that? Two years? These people I love leading their lives so far away, for two years??… How can friends stay friends when lives go by in different time zones?

People tell me to look on the bright side - that at least I won’t have to pay for hotel rooms. But frankly I like hotel rooms, and I don’t like using other people’s bathrooms. Nor do I want to get off a 24 hour flight and have three nights on a sofa to look forward to. There is no plus side in this. Not for me.

My address book is beginning to resemble the call sheet of the United Nations switchboard. One after another the players in my life are stuffing their wallets with weird currencies and jetting off into the sunset, then the sunrise, then the sunset again, before landing somewhere so far away that they cease to exist in reality and are just an email address that beeps at me once in a while.

The best argument I could hear right now against globalisation is that without it, people like my friends wouldn’t leave people like me. Two generations ago, adventurous people might marry an actress from Melton Mowbray. But they’d still come back for birthdays. Now they dice with death living on top of the San Andreas fault line or commute to work via the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And they don’t come back for two years. Or five. Or ten. Or ever.

The best argument against an expansion of air travel isn’t that the world and everything in it might die from carbon overload, but that if they cancel flights people I know can’t go and live in New Zealand.

I’m not leaving. I love this country. I start getting home-sick in the airport departure lounge because they take Dollars at the tills. But I wonder how much of what I love about it is because of the people in it? And, no joke, the best ones I know are all leaving. Not because they believe the rubbish in the papers about being stabbed or paedophiled to death here, but because they don’t get sweaty-palmed at Passport Control. I can’t stop them going, but I wish I shared their outlook, or they shared mine, because frankly I like my friends, and making new ones is far too nerve-wracking.

Anyway, work in the morning. That’ll cheer me up…

Rick

I have to say that I am absolutely astounded by some of the things on offer, and I urge any local resident to check out the events on offer at www.bury.gov.uk/events. There’s something to do virtually every single day between now and October, much of it completely free. I am already excited about going up the Peel Tower next Sunday (for the princely sum of £1), and if I was off work all summer like Tamsin (who’s a teacher), I could keep myself well and truly amused with walks, nature activities, arts and crafts, events, shows and other activities.

In Prestwich alone, before this month is out there is the chance to enjoy Salsa, swing and jive dancing, and pond dipping in Philips Park. And in the wider Borough there’s talks at Bury Art Gallery, a tour of the town hall, ranger quests in the parks and walks all over the shop.

For families over the summer there are many things to do with the kids. Thomas the Tank Engine appears at the East Lancs Railway on the first three days of August, there are mini-beast hunts in parks, mask making, and a family fun day in St Mary’s Park in the ward on 16th and 17th August.

The “What’s On” guide also details the activities ongoing throughout the year, and local societies and clubs to join. I just wish I could give up work and do all these things! I’d be busier than I am now!

I am not normally one to give PR to the Council, because often they make me want to hurl myself out of the window in anger. But on this occasion and with this range of activities on offer for residents, they have excelled themselves. I am going to put some dates in the diary right now.

Rick 

What is the Community Plan?

The Community Plan is a document which sets out the Local Area Partnership’s (LAP’s) priorities for Prestwich between 2008-11. It is the document which says how Prestwich will become a better place to live in the next three years.

The Community Plan contains ten priorities overall, with the aim to create a Green Prestwich, a Thriving Prestwich, and a Strong Prestwich.

Each of these 10 priorities contains some specific actions which the LAP aims to achieve by 2011.

The first Prestwich Community Plan was created in 2001, with a second Plan in 2005. The first two plans were aspirational documents, but this new plan sets out targets for the LAP to achieve, building on the successes in Prestwich in recent years, and setting the scene for progress in the future.

Who was involved in creating the Community Plan?

The Community Plan has been created after joint working with a wide range of partners, including the Council, Police, Fire Service, NHS Primary Care Trust, the voluntary and faith sectors, and other agencies. There have been a number of events held in the last year in Prestwich and Bury, such as the Bury Community Conference and the Bury Community Planning Event, involving all partners in setting priorities for the area.

Local people have had their say too, via their local Councillors and through the opportunities to comment on drafts presented to previous meetings of the Local Area Partnership. The Developing Communities Working Group of the LAP has met 7 times to discuss the Plan during its development.

In addition, evidence such as government policies, current Council plans, surveys and local intelligence information like the Prestwich Neighbourhood Intelligence Assessment has been used to inform the priorities in the Community Plan.

After extensive consultation and analysis, the Plan was brought together by Carran O’Grady, the Prestwich LAP Manager, with assistance from Councillors and other partners.
What are the Plan’s priorities for Prestwich?

The Community Plan sets out the LAP’s joint priorities for Prestwich. There are 10 in all:

A Green Prestwich
1. Improve Parks and Leisure Facilities for Prestwich
2. Achieve a reduction in car usage in Prestwich
3. Reduce air pollution in Prestwich
4. Improve the Prestwich environment by reducing litter and graffiti

A Thriving Prestwich
5. Create a clear vision for the redevelopment of Prestwich town centre
6. Support for the retention and growth of local Prestwich Village Town Centre businesses
7. Create Better Facilities for the most deprived areas of Prestwich

A Strong Prestwich
8. Make Prestwich healthier
9. Make Prestwich safer, and reduce crime and the fear of crime
10. Create a Prestwich for people of all ages

How will we make sure that we achieve our priorities?

Each of the 10 priority areas detailed in the Community Plan contains agreed actions and target outcomes. There are approximately 70 actions overall that will need to be completed by 2011.

Every action has an identified person and/or agency responsible. All the partner agencies, including the Council, Police and NHS, have agreed to the Community Plan, so everyone knows what they have to do. The identified people and agencies will regularly report back to the LAP and the two LAP working groups on progress, and we can make sure we achieve our aims.

How does the Prestwich Community Plan link to the wider plans for Bury?

Prestwich LAP is one of six LAPs in Bury, each with their own Community Plan. All the Community Plans link to an overall Team Bury plan for the whole Borough.

Each of the 10 priorities in the Prestwich Community Plan links directly to a Bury Borough priority. This means that Prestwich improves in step with Bury as a whole, and everyone in the Borough is supportive of Prestwich’s plans and priorities.

What about things that aren’t on the Plan?

Obviously there are many things that aren’t in the Community Plan. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t important. Although the Community Plan identifies 10 priorities, a huge range of actions and targets are contained in the plan, and the priorities themselves will ensure that if a viable project requires LAP support to make Prestwich better, then it will receive the LAP’s help.

Come along and learn more tonight, as well as the usual LAP goodness including updates on everything that’s going on in Prestwich.

Rick