The Gagging Law in 5 minutes

There's got to be a better way to handle budget cuts than more cuts.

I cannot help but think that the way many local councils are handling the budget cuts (or planning to handle them) is backwards.  Rather than shedding staff and outsourcing services to companies that will have to cut standards to turn a profit, surely it would be better to look at how they can save through local shared services and increase income by offering more services to local businesses for a fee.

Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs"

This is pretty much what I've been saying since politicians started saying that we should give tax cuts to the rich to create jobs.

Emailing councillors about missing drain grids

Emailed my local councilors (via WriteTothem):

Dear Daphne Gaved, David Osborne and David Willis,

I am writing to you about a failure of the council to deal with a dangerous situation in a timely manner.

On Wednesday 2nd February 2011 I noticed that the grids had been removed from a number of drains near my home,. specifically 2 on Medley Road near the corner with Gough Road and one on Tomey Road near the corner with Holte Road. Whilst two of these (the one on Tomey road and one of those on medley Road) had barriers around them (marked as belonging to, and presumably being put there by, Amey, the council's contractor for road maintenance and repair), one was just left open. This was logged and I was given a job reference number of 80035851110.

When there was no change by Friday (as a minimum I was hoping that someone would come and put barriers around open drain) I submitted a report to the council through the website FixMyStreet (http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/161865) on 4th February. We are now nearly 4 weeks from the initial report and the only change I have seen is that it appears that a bin sack has fallen or been put into the open drain and that the barriers around the open drain on Tomey Road keep falling over.

Could you please follow this up and at least have the issue with missing and insubstantial barriers be resolved.

Thank you


Stephen

If that doesn't work my only option will be Ed Doolan.