I’ve been loathe to write anything about concessionary fares since the local Tories came up with their alternative budget which offered nothing genuine to the residents of Maidstone. Instead, they shocked me by coming up with a cruel political stunt, in my opinion, to do nothing more than win a view votes in May.

In the background I’ve continued to speak to Norman Bakers office about what can be done, spoken to (and kept updated) a number of those affected by the withdrawal of our voucher scheme, and finally have been investigating the possibilty of getting EU funding to continue to offer our exisiting scheme. In addition, I’ve now been a wheelchair user myself for a couple of weeks, so I now know first hand just how useless a bus pass is to some people.

Following all the terrible (and unfair) press we’ve been given locally, the decision was made to not mention the concessionary fare scheme and it’s implications on any of our Focus’s. The logic being that it would just continue to add fuel to the Tories fire. However, clearly people need to understand what’s going on, and so Fran Wilson (leader of Maidstone Borough Council) released this onto our website (www.maidstoneandthewealdlibdems.org.uk) and I think it’s worth repeating here:

Update from leader of Maidstone Council - Cllr Mrs Fran Wilson: 

The new statutory national concessionary fares scheme, which will be introduced in April, is far more generous than the current Maidstone Borough Council scheme, in that it gives concessions on local buses anywhere in England for those aged 60 years or more, and for disabled and people with mobility problems of any age.

The catch is that the local authority has to pay for all journeys starting in the Borough, not only those of our own residents but also those of anyone who is eligible who live outside the Borough. If the journey starts in Maidstone we have to pay for it.

Our estimate is that this will cost council taxpayers in the region of 2 million pounds in the first year, rising year on year, from revenue budgets. Our existing scheme has cost 1.6 million this year and the government has given us grant of £444,000. Putting those two amounts together it means we will have an estimated shortfall of £500,000 at the end of the first year of the scheme. Central government has made it quite clear that they expect us to manage the financial risks ourselves. They are not saying we cannot run any add-ons but the inference is plain, if we can afford add-ons they will consider that we have already covered the base costs of their statutory scheme before putting in additional discretions ourselves and they will not consider us for a top-up grant. If we run this risk, our calculations prove correct and we have given government any reason to refuse us additional funding it will mean another 4% on council tax 2009/10 or commensurate savings made from other front-line services.

Having said that we think that in introducing this new national concessionary fares scheme the government has not thought through the implications for the most vulnerable and needy in our society - those disabled citizens who, for what ever reason cannot access a bus. Currently of the 761 disabled people who were in receipt of MBC travel tokens, 491 have already transferred to the national concessionary fares scheme leaving 270 who have not.

Contrary to what the Conservatives are saying, this administration is, and always was, seeking ways to assist those for whom the new scheme is unsuitable and for whom there is genuine need. But first we have to establish precisely what those reasons are. In some cases a bus service might not exist, in others the bus designated to the route is not wheelchair friendly and in a few cases, that even were a bus to be available the person could not use it. Solutions can only be found based on information. We have a meeting organised in the last week of March to discuss this with all the other agencies such as the Hospital Trusts, Social Services and the voluntary sector. But we want genuine solutions not half baked, ill thought through suggestions to garner votes.

Finally, Norman Baker will be debating the entire concessionary fare scheme and it’s implications at around 10pm, this Tuesday on the floor of the House of Commons. I’m not sure if this is something that can be viewed or not, but I’ll be trying to.

As I said to a friend recently - I can’t pin-point the exact reasons why, but the way this concessionary fare scheme has come into existence, has really gotten under my skin. I continue to maintain that it’s a good idea in principle, but the costs to each area have not been worked out properly and there has  been no thought given to those that are unable to use a bus, or those that do not have a bus service in their local area.

In April 2008 the Government will be introducing it’s new national concessionary bus fare scheme. From now on, every person over the age of 60 and all disabled people will be able to travel on any bus in the country for free.

Sounds great doesn’t it?

Yes it does - and it is a great IDEA….. however, once again, not enough thought has gone into how this will actually work in reality….

Each borough across the country will have to pay for any journey started in it’s boundaries, regardless of where the traveller actually comes from. With a great town like Maidstone, a lot of people will get the bus to us for a days shopping, which their local authority will pay for. However, every trip home (by virtue of the fact that it’s beginning in our borough) will be paid for by us.

Now the Govt. is giving us funding to pay for this - however, it’s woefully short of even the most conservative of our projections. In addition, any additional benefits we offer to our residents (such as companion bus passes for disabled people, or are alternative ‘voucher scheme) will have to stop, or we will be penalized through lack of further funding.

What can be done? Well - on this one, I’ve gone and got all political!

Over the weekend, I’ve been collecting Councillors signatures to call for an extraordinary meeting of Maidstone’s council to debate the following motion:

CONCESSIONARY FARE MOTION

The Council regrets the government’s failure to fund fully the new national concessionary fares travel scheme and in particular the limitations to the funding that will affect the lives of disabled people and carers in Maidstone.

The Council calls on the government to reconsider its decision ont he criteria for the national scheme and to include companion passes, on a national basis, for the benefit of disabled people.

The Council also calls on the government to ensre that it fully funds each individual authority in adminstering the new national scheme in order to relieve the enormous pressure on our budget which has affected our ability to fund additional discretionary services.

In addition to this, I’ve written to Norman Baker (shadow Transport) requesting he submits an Early Day Motion (EDM) on this topic.

I’ve also been investigating how other councils have been affected, and it appears pretty bleak for them too. Lots have started similar campaigns. An example being Harlow Lib Dems. 

If you have any ideas on how this can be progressed further, please let me know and I’ll give your ideas a go.

I have just had one of the best days out with the kids ever and it only cost £2. It was great for the following reasons:

1. It was cheap (meaning we can do this often);
2. The kids didn’t whinge once and had a great time;
3. It wore them out completely;
4. It was very educational;
5. It was an outdoor and healthy day;
6. I thoroughly enjoyed it myself too, rather than just enjoyed their pleasure in a childish activity (which is what I normally do).

So what did we do?

Well as the title probably suggests we went to Trosley Country Park, just by Trottiscliffe and Vigo. Parking for the day is £1 (half the budget gone!) and for a further £1 we invested in an orienteering course around the park. The £1 gets you a map, instructions, a plastic protector wallet and SEVEN different courses to try. Obviously we only did one today, so we’ve still got six trips left without any more expense (other than the car parking).

Trosley Country Park is run and maintained by Kent County Council (KCC) - much as I find myself normally slagging off KCC (think Highways department here), I have to congratulate them on a fantastic service. The park is accessible to all (including young Travis in his pushchair), puts on loads of events throughout the year, has lots of fun ‘trim trail’ equipment as you go round, and to top it all off is slap bang in the middle of some of the most beautiful countryside… all this and practically on my doorstep.

When you arrive there is a visitors centre with a log fire burning away to keep it heated (presumably this doesn’t run in the summer!) and some really friendly staff that run a cafe in the centre. Obviously you don’t have to spend any money at all to walk around the park and there are several maps and plans of different suggested walks of varying difficulty. Personally though, spending that additional £1 on the orienteering course meant that I could easily keep the kids occupied (in looking for our next marker) while I enjoyed the tranquility and beauty of the place.

For more information call 01732 823570, click on this link, or pop into the Tourist Information office in town and pick up a leaflet.

Today marked day one of six weeks of ‘clean sweeps’ in and around Maidstone. These are for those of us fed up with fly tipping and litter around the town. All equipment is provided - litter pickers, high vis jackets, gloves and bin bags and you set off to pick up what you can.

The photo shows just some of us that were litter picking today. Travis looks exceptionally bored, but the rest of us look pretty happy. It was a nice day for it though! One passer-by asked us if we were doing community service and couldn’t believe that anyone would willingly pick up other peoples litter without a big reward. A nicer area to live in is reward enough for me though!

Groups and individuals are invited to come along to one of these arranged events, or indeed arrange their own. For further information please contact Annika Fraser at Maidstone Borough Council on 01622 602559.

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).

Last night, I experienced first hand Maidstone A&E - and it was very good.

While on the phone to husband, Travis started crying. Rachael went off to talk to him and the crying stopped - Rachael deserves a lot of credit for the help she is - although last night she ended up in a heap of trouble. About 40 seconds after Rachael had wandered off, there was an almighty crash. I was in the room before any crying had even started…

It turned out that Rachael had taken Travis out of his rocking chair and climbed up on to the coffee table so he could see himself in the mirror (a trick I often do - without needing to climb on the table). Unfortunately, Rachael fell off the table whilst carrying Travis…

He mostly landed on her, but typically his head didn’t, and from Rachael’s explanations, his head hit the table edge on the way down.

After about a 15 second pause, Travis started screaming and I mean really SCREAMING. I cuddled him, rubbed his head, bounced him up and down, tried a dummy, tried to feed him, more cuddling, more head rubbing, couple of nursery rhymes and still he continued screaming. After about 15 minutes I got on to NHS Direct, but they were all busy, so I phoned Maiddoc (Maidstone’s out of hours Doctors). They registered my call, and I was to wait for a call back.

I waited, but still he screamed. I was getting more and more panicy… at this point I made the decision to go to hospital - just a short walk from our house. Kids got dressed while I continued to try to settle poor Travis. We walked out the door just as Maiddoc phoned back and agreed with them to take him to hospital.

Travis settled about 30 seconds before we arrived at hospital - after at least 50 minutes solid screaming, I think he was just worn out. I registered him, beginning to feel like a timewasting fool and sat down. He was probably quiet for a total of 5 minutes and then the screaming started again. Again, no matter what I did, he screamed - we were seen after an hour, which in my opinion is really fast for a busy evening in an A&E ward. Possibly they were all getting headaches.

Shining a torch in Travis’ eyes finally stopped the crying and gave them (and me) an oppurtunity to really check him over. Because of all the crying and screaming, his face had gone really red, so it had been difficult to see if there were any bruised areas. When he calmed down, it was pretty obvious he had a bruise above his left eye but nothing else of concern. The Doctor checked his pulse, checked his general awareness/alertness and assured me all would be fine, but what signs to look out for. I was simply advised to give him a calpol and keep an eye on him.

As we left the cubicle the screaming started again and I think everyone was glad to see the back of us! All’s well now and after a good nights sleep, even the bruising has gone down.

While there, I noticed  that it’s A&E has been renamed “Emergency Care Centre”. I hope this isn’t a sign that the much feared withdrawal of ‘blue-light’ services will happen. Although Travis turned out to be absolutely fine, I’ve always had serious reservations about the assurances that moving such an important service so far away will not have an impact. If I hadn’t been using the services last night, I would have been (where I was supposed to be) at a scrutiny meeting with the Kent & Medways Primary Care Trust (PCT) discussing their revised plans for the future of the hospital. I will have to watch back the meeting which was webcast to find out what I missed. You can view it here.

Well - If any of my friends or family read this they won’t believe it! I’ve finally gone and joined a gym.

We promised the kids that from now on, we’ll take them swimming once a week on either a Saturday or Sunday. The cost of a trip to the pool is £4.50 per adult (Mote Park Leisure Centre). In other words nearly £20 a month. However, for just £14.95 a month - price fixed for life as well - I can have unlimited use of the Gym and Pool all weekend and between 1pm and 3pm, Monday to Fridays. What a bargain!

As a new member, one of the first things you must do is have an induction to the gym. This is to learn how to use all the equipment correctly, and I was assured, not just to show me up!

I arrived bright and breezy ready to learn what (and how) I needed to do each visit. First, a 10 minute warm-up on the cycling machine - and that’s just the warm up! I did 5 minutes, and said to my instructor - OK, I know how to use this machine now, shall we move on. Truth was I was worn out already! We moved on to a ‘cross-trainer’ where you sort of step up and down whilst holding on to bars. I was advised that I should do about 10-20 minutes on this to start with. I managed 2, then made up some story about needing to move on, as I hadn’t really allowed enough time to do a full work out today.

Next a running machine - now I actually quite like running, but it seemed a bit pointless to me just staring at the pool in front running on a machine, that simulated hills (well the ups anyway) when I could be out running and seeing a bit of the local countryside and getting to go down hills as well as up. I lasted about 5 minutes on this machine and then muttered about moving on.

I have a real phobia about the size of my thighs - because I used to run so much, they’ve always been big and muscley - even now that I’m post pregnancy and really unfit, they’re still large. Thankfully, this meant that I shouldn’t use the step machine as this targets thighs, so it was on to the rowing machine. This was fun, as I just played a game where you have to catch fish by rowing at an appropriate speed. I played for a little while and then said that I was comfortable with how to use this machine.

“So” says the instructor “I’ll work out a program for you, and each time you come, you just pick up your card and work through the steps on it”.

Well - having been overtaken on the bicycles by 2 octogenarians, broken out into a major sweat at walking speed on the cross-trainer,  decided I’d rather go for a run around the local fields and knowing that I’d never in a million years return to the gym - I said to him “That’d be great - thanks - I’m really looking forward to coming back each week”.

Back down at the main leisure centre reception I changed my membership. Just hours after signing up originally, I’m now paying £18.95 a month, but this time, it’s for unlimited use of the swimming pool and no gym - much better suited for me and still a bargain!

If you’re interested in any of the fantastically priced memberships, check out Maidstone Leisure Centres website for more information.

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

With so much negative campaigning being done by the Conservatives, its time the record was set straight…

FACT: Conservatives commissioned report into future of Coombe Quarry Park and Ride.

FACT: Conservatives set the parameters for the report including consultation levels.

FACT: The park and ride report proposing closure of the Coombe Quarry park and ride was programmed to be published in February – for some reason it did not appear in the run-in period to the local elections.

FACT: We assumed control to find the report recommending closure waiting for us.

FACT: Conservatives set a 2007/8 park and ride budget falling far short of the cost of running the service in 2006/7.

FACT: The Council is locked into the Conservative budget for 2007/8.

FACT: Liberal Democrats introduced park and ride to Maidstone in the face of Conservative opposition.

FACT: The Liberal Democrats are ensuring that resources released by the closure of the Coombe Quarry Park and Ride will be used to deliver improved public transportation in south Maidstone.

FACT: Local bus services were decimated by Conservative deregulation of public transport.

If you have any further comments or questions on the Park and Ride service in Maidstone please get in touch.