Posts from — July 2007

I put a personal motion before the full meeting of Staffordshire County Council today and I’m really pleased it was accepted cross Party. I wrote a post on this recently which resulted in quite a bit of interest, both public comment and via my contact facility.

The motion was to try and engender some patriotism by making a policy to fly the Union Flag over public buildings in Staffordshire 365 days a year instead of the traditional 18 special days. The County has all the schools and also hundreds of other public buildings and where there are flagpoles the Union Flag will now fly high and proud all the time.

I’ve also talked with the Leaders of most of the local councils in Staffordshire and they too have agreed to fly the Union Flag all the time in future. So hopefully we’ve started something and with luck it will spread.

Let’s be proud of our country…. let’s fly our national flag.

Click here to comment on this post

I was looking forward to Saturday morning just gone and the chance for a bit of a sleep in after what had been a thoroughly long and busy week. I’d got a Garrick event to speak briefly at during lunchtime and that was it…. or so I thought.

Heavy rain used to be an inconvenience until the floods in June but, at least at the moment, it worries me because of what else it may bring. We’d had hours of heavy rain Friday night into Saturday and an hour before I left for the Garrick I got a call to say there was some flooding problems at Fazeley but that it was nothing like as bad as last time and was under control.

Said my ‘piece’ to the gathering at the Garrick and decided to head down to Fazeley to see what was happening and talk to residents. It was worse than I had anticipated and a small road called New Mill Lane, which was badly flooded in June, was knee deep in water again.

It’s difficult to know what to say to locals who are so fed up with being in the same situation as only 5 weeks before. It was the canal this time which was causing the problems and in the five hours I was there it flooded more and more covering most of the road, overflowing the culvert by a foot and in turn making the water in houses deeper and deeper. Although there were plenty of sandbags available this time the water was so deep they had little effect. This really has to be sorted out…. more about that later.

During the afternoon at Fazeley we were told that fields and some roads in Hopwas were flooding (same as in June) and also that the Tame, which runs by Elford, had been put on a higher alert by the Environment Agency. They were also saying, however, that it was very unlikely to flood.

The general feeling was deja vu and so I decided to leave Fazeley and head over to Elford to see for myself what, if anything, was happening. When they said Hopwas was flooded again it was no exaggeration. It really was totally impassable so getting to Elford the long way round took an hour.

When I did get there the EA were already on standby with a pump but the river was well below the top of its banks. I talked to some locals and the EA guys for a while and then, about an hour after getting there, it started. A bit spooky really. The grates in the road started to bubble with pools of water forming quickly around them.

A further hour saw The Beck almost fully covered as far as could be seen and the pump from the EA, which was now going full pelt, wasn’t even holding its own against the rising water. It was all happening very quickly and a further larger pump and more resources arrived in the next couple of hours.

By the time I left Elford at 3am on Sunday morning there were a dozen or so officers from Staffs Fire & Rescue, 8 Environment Agency people, a handful of officers from Lichfield district council and a similar number from the County. Just about holding the flood water at bay were, by then, four pumps going at full speed. The houses which were flooded were mainly empty because of June’s floods and after pumping right into Sunday afternoon river water levels started to fall followed by the flooding in the village.

All the front line services were clearly much better prepared this time round but there are certainly some very significant infrastructure issues which need addressing because I’m certain the same problems with heavy rain will happen again. The latest flooding proved beyond doubt that the issues around when and how flooding is caused are not an exact science. Only the day before my briefing from the EA about the forcast bad weather assured me there would be no serious problems in Elford and on top of that, on the Saturday, a lot of things happened with water levels which just could not be explained by the professionals. That said, everyone worked to the limit including many villagers armed with, not only tea and coffee on tap, but invaluable local knowledge and bucket loads (pardon the pun) of moral support and great resilience.

The whole set up of dealing with water in the UK is very complicated. The Environment Agency, British Waterways, County Highways, individual landowners who have drainage ditches and the private utilities (Severn Trent) all have a hand in managing water and therefore an influence on coping with flooding.

The latter, Severn Trent, have certainly been the weak link in this chain. They’ve been poor at responding to requests from the Authorities throughout, difficult to get hold of most of the time and generally been hard work. The level of maintenance on some of their pumping stations is also dubious, at best. They are the only one of the front line services who are financially responsible to shareholders rather than accountable to the public. In my view that shows and somehow needs addressing.

I’m pleased to say that by Sunday all the water in Fazeley had gone as it had by Monday in Elford. It is really important to look at everything that has happened around flooding over the last five weeks, understand what worked well, what could be done better and, above all, make sure that improvements to flood defence and drainage is undertaken as soon as possible. I’ll do my best to make sure that the areas in my County patch at risk of flooding are high on the priority list for all the Authorities concerned and wish everyone who’s been affected by flooding this time, last time or both times the very best of luck.

Click here to comment on this post

A tremendous effort…. people in the community raising money for their own community.

It’s great that the Fazeley and District Initiative have held a series of fund raising events to help equip the new youth centre at Mile Oak. The centre is pretty well finished inside and all that remains is to continue in the battle to persuade the County Youth Service to use it as originally promised.

With more budget cuts and disruption on the way in the Youth Service I’m becoming increasingly frustrated and am utterly cheesed off at the lack of youth work in the area. More in a later post about how Conservatives are trying to stop Labour’s Youth Service budget cuts.

But anyway, I’m breaking my own rule here of not mixing party politics with work in the community. Apologies for that and well done to the members of the F&D Initiative for all they are doing for the area.

If anyone from Fazeley, Mile Oak, Bonehill or Drayton Bassett wants to get involved with the group call the Community Development officer at Lichfield District Council.

Click here to comment on this post

Patriotic or divisive? We don’t fly many flags, Union or St George in this country outside London.

Whenever in the US I’m always taken aback by how many Stars ‘n’ Stripes there are wherever you happen to be… flying from flagpoles, on almost every uniform from airport cleaners and baggage handlers to police officers, the rear of many everyday citizen’s cars; in fact just about everywhere it is feasible to put the image.

Patriotic, I believe. One thing which always makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end is when I hear or see something that makes me proud of my country or the people in it. To me, that means British or English.

So I wholeheartedly agree with the new Prime Minister’s comments that public buildings should fly the Union Flag as a matter of course. But it’s more than just flying a flag, I wish we were more patriotic as a country. I remember attending a baseball game in Baltimore USA last year and when the US national anthem piped up I was struck by the totally genuine starry eyed look on everyone’s faces. Hand on the heart and looking longingly at their flag…. not because it was what everyone expected but because they were genuinely proud and patriotic…. you could just tell. And I think that’s good.

With all the problems (not just terrorism) we have in the UK we could do with more patriotism. Actually I think the majority of people are patriotic…. we just don’t show it. For some bizarre reason, until fairly recently, anyone wanting to fly our national flag needed planning permission. What’s all that about. I’m not sure the PM’s comment about public buildings only being able to fly the Union flag for 18 days a year is correct…. I think it’s more likely to be political correctness gone mad!

So I say yes; let’s fly our flags and let’s be much much more patriotic. I’ll be saying that to those officials responsible for our public buildings (and flagpoles) in Staffordshire.

Click here to comment on this post

There aren’t many parts of what I do that I don’t enjoy. Sure, some stuff I find frustrating because things that should happen quickly don’t happen fast enough.

The last couple of weeks have been tough because of seeing the difficulties so many of my constituents have experienced from the recent flooding… the farming community who’ve lost livelihood and animals and local people who’ve seen their possessions lost and homes made uninhabitable. I’ve been powerless to help in any meaningful way and that’s frustrating!

But on the whole it’s interesting and enjoyable, despite the occasional ‘downs’. One of the best bits is meeting people. In any form of politics meeting people is what happens the most, or it certainly should be. And that’s what I enjoy… most people are really nice and very few aren’t; rough with the smooth, it’s what I’m here for.

Saturday lunchtime was one of those opportunities to meet a lot of local people at Hints village and it was worthwhile also to find out about some issues I probably wouldn’t have known about so soon. The Community Safety Day was organised by the police and most local public agencies were there in one form or another. Despite the torrential rain over a hundred residents turned out and the BBQ went down well…. thanks to all involved.

Click here to comment on this post