Saturday, August 18, 2018

I’ve been a little tied up...

›
It’s funny how you collect stuff over time. And it’s not as if I’m some out of control collector of “stuff”. I shop occasionally, if a litt...
Thursday, June 21, 2018

An evening at the Suffolk Association of Local Councils Area Meeting

›
To Claydon this evening, for the quarterly meeting of the Mid Suffolk South Area of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils, the gatherin...
Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Giving away surplus food is sensible, not radical. It isn’t original, either...

›
I was, I admit, somewhat disappointed when I saw the final shortlist for the Ashdown Prize. Yes, they were all terribly sensible, but radic...
Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Is Western democracy a nut to be squeezed between Trump and Putin?

›
It has been obvious for some time that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is no friend of the western democracies, enthusiastically supporting politic...
Monday, June 18, 2018

An unexpected encounter at dusk...

›
I have walked around the village quite a lot over the past two and a half years. My laps get longer in the summer, and cleave closer to the...
Sunday, June 17, 2018

Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils to pilot pioneering developer contributions database

›
I don’t normally reproduce Council press releases, but this one might be of wider interest... Residents and those in the development in...
Saturday, June 16, 2018

Pedalling frantically towards the cliff edge?

›
It may be because I am, at heart, someone who believes that you can affect real change only by building coalitions of interest, that I find...
Friday, June 15, 2018

I may not be what Mid Suffolk District Council expect...

›
I take my newly awarded responsibilities as Chair of my Parish Council seriously, as one should.  In that capacity, I see myself having...
Thursday, June 14, 2018

Eight hundred and forty-six days, and still counting...

›
When I started my original “Building a Better Walrus” programme at the beginning of 2016, the intention was to walk 10,000 steps each day. ...
Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Highways maintenance: was I accidentally surfing a wave in the Creetings?

›
A couple of years ago, I decided to clean a road sign that was annoying me. It seems as though somebody was paying attention, because Suff...
Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Creeting St Peter welcomes careful (and somewhat slower) drivers...

›
On returning to the Parish Council some two years ago, I was told that an application was in train to introduce a 20 mph speed limit in the...

Building a better walrus - time for phase 2...

›
Nearly two years ago, my stepson and his lovely fiancée got married. This meant that I would have to wear a suit and, having concluded that...
Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Creeting St Peter: a new Chair reflects...

›
Well, that  was somewhat unexpected. I had turned up at Monday night’s Annual Parish Meeting and Annual Parish Council Meeting (not the...
2 comments:
Thursday, May 17, 2018

Ros in the Lords: East Suffolk (Local Government Changes) Order 2018

›
It’s not all Brexit glamour in the House of Lords, and whilst most attention is on the series of defeats inflicted on the Government with r...
Tuesday, May 15, 2018

FIRC: a personal response to the Alderdice Report

›
Federal International Relations Committee will be discussing its response to the Alderdice Report on Thursday evening, and we have been ask...
Sunday, April 29, 2018

A sense of dissonance in Sofia

›
So, here I am in a cafe on Vitosha, the main pedestrian thoroughfare in Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, surrounded by men enjoying a shisha ...
Friday, April 20, 2018

Some thoughts on Ipswich Town, courtesy of an outsider....

›
I ought to declare my (lack of) interest straight away - I’m a Luton Town supporter, more in the technical sense than the “turning up in ra...
Thursday, April 19, 2018

Merging Suffolk Councils - a glitch emerges...

›
I must thank Ros for bringing this to my attention, and the noble Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope for bringing it to hers. Times are tough in...

Adventures in Transnistria (part 2)...

›
I had rather forgotten to report back on the rest of my trip to Moldova, so let’s see if we can remedy that. If you haven’t read the earlie...
Wednesday, April 18, 2018

@ALDEParty: a day of advanced bureaucracy for political parties

›
It does sometimes seem hard to believe that I’m now in my seventh year as a member of the ALDE Party’s Financial Advisory Committee. Perhap...