Following the sad death of Corporal Ivano Violino after just 16 days in Afghanistan, a fundraising event for the 36 Royal Engineers Benelovent Fund was held today.

Six teams of six people took part in a sports challenge event in the Mall Chequers. Each team raised a minimum of £500 to take part and a tombola raised a further £200.

Maidstone’s Mayor, Richard Ash (who always seems to do well at these things!), won some pantomime tickets as well as some body lotion.

Congratulations to The Bob Prowse Health Club, who won the event and commiserations to Maidstone Borough Council who may not have been in the top five, but who put up a very respectable fight!

Coriander Drive 

• Case opened 18th Sep ‘07 - Lamp posts have been placed around the shops on the Oakwood Hospital estate without proper consultation with neighbours. I am investigating the possiblitiy of having them moved.
• Update - 25th Sep ‘07 - Have confirmed that these are not Kent County Council lamp posts and have been placed by the developer as this land on which they’re placed will not become ‘adopted’ by the Council. Am now investigating whether planning permission was sought and gained, or whether it wasn’t necessary prior to placement. Will then approach developer to discuss.
• Update - 4th Oct 07 - These lamp posts were not part of the conditions of building or included in the original developments permission. Therefore the lamp posts must come down and planning permission applied for. Developers have been informed and have agreed to meet with Cllr Hooper to discuss proposed new siting.

If you have any views on this siting of these lamp posts, please contact Cllr Peter Hooper on 729302 or by email here.

Cllr. Tony Harwood (Cabinet Member for Environment - Maidstone Borough) is keen to see the practise of shops giving out carrier bags stopped, and instead replaced with a reuseable “Maidstone bag”. Following some publicity in the papers with this, Pat Fyfe contacted all Borough Councillors to bring to our attention the “Mors bag” concept and to encourage us to advertise it widely.

The idea is that people arrange social events where everyone turns up, drinks a few glasses of wine (that’s what got me interested!) and makes reuseable bags out of leftover material, charity shop finds, old duvet covers etc. The bags are then given out to people with a little information about the idea. The estimate is that each one of these bags, reduces the need for around 500 plastic carrier bags.

The only extra thing you have to do when you’ve got one of these bags is get into the habit of taking it out with you. To quote the website, this is just like cleaning your teeth, only with less toothpaste…

What with Rachael being back at school full-time, but Ryan starting part-time this month (he’s now full time) and young baby, I haven’t had time to arrange anything. However, last night I had my first oppurtunity to sit down and make one of these bags. The bags are very strong. If you have even the most basic understanding of how a sewing machine works, they are also very easy to make.

At clothesmaking classes (started a fortnight ago) I’m making a beautiful (at least I hope it will be) denim skirt. All I’ve done so far is cut the material for my skirt, and because there was a fair bit left over, I’ve cut material for Rachael to have a dress too. Still there was some leftover and with this I made the bag.

From start to finish, it took me about an hour to iron, cut and sew the bag, but I’m sure can be done a lot faster. It took me a fair while to work out all the measurements and because I hadn’t done it before was a lot slower than necessary.

The link to the pattern and more information can be found here: www.morsbags.com. If you want to come round, drink wine and make these bags just let me know - The more the merrier….

While I was googling “Making bags” trying to find the morsbags wesite, I also discovered this from YouTube which is all about making bags out of old carriers. Next time I have some free time I might give this a go too…

The highly contested, controversial, multi-million pound incinerator at Allington was shut down today following further problems. For some weeks local residents and those that drive near the area have been overwhelmed with a truely awful stench eminating from the incinerator. This has allegedly been caused by a backlog of waste to be burnt.

Thousands of tonnes of stinking rotting rubbish have piled up and are now an explosive risk due to methane build up. This rubbish will now have to go to landfill.

Due to what can only be described as major design faults (the lining of the furnaces are falling off), the incinerator will be closed for up to 6 months. As well as burning our waste, the incinerator is designed to generate electricity. However, this too has broken. Parts that needed to be, were not being oiled - this was missed due to an electrical fault on the system that should have warned them! Apparently this will not be fixed for up to 12 months.

As Cllr Malcolm Robertson (who represents Allington) said on Meridian news this evening, this time we’ve been lucky… it may cost in excess of £1 million to fix, but at least there has been no damage to human health.

According to Kent County Council, the millions of pounds it will cost to repair the incinerator will not be paid by tax payers. Well who will then? At the end of the day, whether it’s via higher running costs in the future, or in some other way, of course we’ll end up paying for it…

Further information can be gained by calling the incinerator’s “community line” on 0845 803 8845 or by emailing info@kentenviropower.co.uk

It was full council tonight. The main topic for debate was funding of the recycling strategy. If people voted against it (as many of the Conservatives did), it would have meant we would have had to continue with the previous administrations plans to switch to alternate weekly collections. Thankfully, the recommendation was carried, and in February additional recycling will take place along side our existing weekly refuse collections.

As usual, there were Councillors talking a load of rubbish at the meeting -  I guess trying to win some points from somewhere… However, there were one or two valid points raised by members of the opposition. Councillors Chris Garland, Paul Oldham and Eric Hotson (all Conservative) made some fair comments against the proposals. Paul in fact proposed that the suggestion to take profits from the museum to pay for increased recycling should be removed. This motion was seconded and I’m very pleased to say unanimously carried.

Rightly or wrongly, I feel that some Councillors (from all parties) do not listen to the comments made by members of the opposition, having already made up their mind which way their vote will go. When I arrived at the meeting last night, I was certain that I would be voting for the proposal - it was one of our key election promises that we would do whatever we could to retain full weekly refuse collections. However, when Councillor Oldham made his proposal, I felt he was spot on, and was left panicing as to what to do… Could we afford to drop this money from the budget and still have enough to fulfill the increased recycling?

Thankfully the leader of the Council, Councillor Fran Wilson, quickly pointed out that we could afford to drop this and so with a major weight lifted, I very happily voted “for” this proposal.

Final votes were:

24 for the proposal (all Lib Dem, Labour or Indepdant); 18 against the proposal (all Conservative) and 5 abstentions (2 Lab - Hull & Moriaty, 3 Con - Ash, Garland and Ring).

Bridge, Fant and Heath Wards all held their quarterly Councillor’s surgery this morning. As usual it wasn’t particularly well attended, but people that did come had never before contacted any of us (their local Councillor’s), and so it was worth putting on.

Issues brought to Peter Hooper and myself (representing Heath Ward) were very close to the hall which we’d hired this time - so clearly there is value in changing venue each time and moving around the wards.

Sadly, as with every surgery we’ve run, the majority of problems people have is with anti-social behaviour - mostly aimed at teenagers. When I was a teenager (about 100 years ago according to my 6 year old), I was no angel, and I defy anyone to prove they were a perfect teen! However, I’d never hurt anyone, damage property or ‘answer back’ if caught doing something bad.

I remember one occassion when I was about 17, I had a boyfriend who had a car (this was a big deal and I was the envy of a few mates!). Anyway, this being in the days when there wasn’t a certain fast food outlet on every street corner, my boyfriend drove my mates and I, about 30 minutes away to buy a load of burgers etc and then we ate them on the drive back to my friends house. When we arrived, I left all the rubbish on the pavement opposite my friends house. A lady who lived there, saw what I had done and shouted at me to pick up my mess. I was so ashamed of myself, I immediately picked everything up and to this day have never dropped litter again.

By contrast, I recently (while still pregnant with Travis) watched a kid chuck down a half eaten burger in the town centre (right in the middle of the pedestrianised bit) surrounded by about 50 people. Seeing history repeat itself, I asked the lad to pick up his rubbish, thinking he wouldn’t do it again in a hurry. I got told to f**k off. Being a bit hormonal, and not quite believing my ears, I asked again for him to pick up his rubbish. The response I got this time was a little more eloquent, but still peppered with a fair few choice words. The burger remained on the floor. In the end, I picked up the burger and put it in the dustbin (that was about 1 metre from the drop point). I felt a complete idiot, until an older lady came up and congratulated me on having the nerve to stand up to the lad. She said, she’d had much the same response that I’d received in the past and wouldn’t ask anymore.

When did kids stop respecting their elders?

Whilst at the surgery, husband phoned to let me know that he’d just arrived at local (under 5’s) playground with kids, only to find it covered in obscene images and words. Trust me on this, you never want to answer a 6 year old asking: “What does **** mean Mummy?”

A local resident was cleaning down the worst of the graffitti, but there’s only so much you can do without industrial grade equipment - unfortunately, the remaining graffitti must stay until Monday, when Maidstone’s ‘hit squad’ go back to work…

I’ve added a new page to this web site entitled “Current Issues“. I think this will be easiest way for anyone to monitor what it is I get up to and what issues people have advised me of!

I’ve found it frustrating writing up just a few of the issues that I’m working on as it reminds just how much of my role as Councillor is just chasing up people time and time again.

One of my favourite films is “Shawshank Redemption” a film all about a wrongly convicted prisoner who after 19 years escapes having dug a tunnel with a rock hammer…

I digress because for years the lead character writes one letter a week to various authorities requesting funds to expand the prison library. Eventually he receives not only funds, but also box upon box of second hand books along with a letter telling him they expect to never hear from him again! Instead he states, he’ll write two letters a week!

Sadly, a lot of my time seems to be spent sending one letter a week (well email in all honesty) but I’m just not sure my (and my constituents) needs are sinking in. I guess it’s time to start sending two a week…

I attended a meeting this evening organised due to the ever increasing number of  complaints regarding Anti Social Behaviour (ASB) around the Oakwood Campus. In attendance were local and County Councillors, the Police & PCSOs, heads of the three secondary schools and representatives from the Community Safety Team (Maidstone Council).

There have been a number of incidents of missiles being thrown from or around Astor of Hever school (mostly rocks, but I’ve had the pleasure of sandwiches being chucked at my car - marmite in case you were wondering). In addition, local residents have been intimitaded by large groups of students out of class hours hanging around by their properties. These ‘visits’ often culminate in large amounts of litter being left, and often with some amount of verbal abuse occurring.

The meeting today highlighted each parties problems with the estate. The general consensus was that parking (and overspill), security and lack of definition of boundaries around each school are all contributing to the problems. All three schools, Astor, St. Simon Stock & Oakwood Grammar, agreed that any allegations of misbehaviour by a student wearing their uniform will be fully investigated and dealt with. But they each went on to say that this is detracting from their main priority, which is of course to teach.

The PCSO assigned to this estate has been absent due to illness for four months and is only just back in post. Hopefully, his renewed presence on and around Oakwood will help ease some of the problems. In addition, County Councillor Dan Daley has offered to pay out of his budget for appropriate lamp posts to be wired up with CCTV cameras. Maidstone’s Community Safety Team have been asked to investigate examples of best practise on simliar campuses across the country, and we did discuss, although not in detail, the idea of students being surveyed to discover what they thought might help the problems.

All these actions will be reviewed in November, hopefully with a positive outcome. Please remember that we need you to report any issues you have either to myself or to the local police. By letting us know all the issues you have, we can build up a file and really see the bigger picture.

To ease some anti-social behaviour occuring on the Freshlands Estate, it has been agreed that one of the pieces of trim trail equipment will be moved.

Currently, one of the pieces is just a few feet from a property and has become a ‘hang out’ bench, rather than the fun activity it was designed for. To discourage people using it as somewhere to sit and have a cigarette, or ‘nose’ into the neighbouring property, it will be moved to a site behind the playground, further away from houses.

The cost of moving it will be covered by the developers, so there will be no cost to any individuals or the council.

Whenever a new development is built, the council can ask for a contribution (known as section 106) towards the local area. It can cover contributions towards highways, local Doctors facilites, local education/schools, and play equipment (as in this case) as well as many other things. The design of the Freshlands estate was established and approved well before I was elected, but I really think the developers and council got it right - with a great play area, and a good amount of beautifully maintained green space.

My kids and I often wander around the edge of the estate playing on all the pieces of equipment culminating with a trip to the play area. This is one of our favourite activities and is, of course, FREE - making it that much the better!

From the 1st October, the No. 8 bus service that runs from Maidstone Hospital to Downswood is having a slight cut in service.

The detailed changes are that the following journeys are withdrawn on Mondays to Fridays:

0845 Downswood to the town centre.

1555 Hospital to Downswood,

1643 Downswood to Hospital,

1730 Hospital to Downswood

1815 Downswood to the town centre.

The Saturday service remains unchanged.

Timetable for No. 8 Bus service