Advertised all this week was advertised a Q&A session with the Quedgeley City Councillors and the Gloucester MP Richard Graham. So I dragged Eloise along to the Kingsway Community Centre for the advertised 10am start. When I got there, all the councillors were stood outside, not sure how to get in and with no MP. Some phrase about a brewery came to mind.
I got them into the Centre, so they could set up, and by 10am we were sat expectantly for our MP and for some people to turn up. At 10 past 10, we were still waiting. There was 5 members in the Audience, including myself and my daughter Eloise. At 20 past 10 still no MP, so Cllr Andy Lewis kicked proceedings off. At which point Richard Graham walks in (it was obviously a long print job). He had got a bit lost trying to find the community Centre.
Andy suggested that Richard gave a bit of an overview about what he did at Westminster. We then got into some questions.
Firstly was the problems being felt at the Spring Centre, a Special Needs charity in Quedgeley. This was covering the fact that they were getting very squeezed in terms of funding, and yet the County Council were putting more and more children their way without any support.
Talk moved onto the Incinerator and about its selection and placement. Richard Graham said that he expected the “solution” to also include waste sorting and some form of Anaerobic Digestion, but this was by no means a given. He also pleaded that everyone hold off with their campaigning until the companies have presented their proposals.
The Green Waste charge then came up and about how expensive it was going to prove and in a particular, Trefor and Sandra Hughes (Quedgeley News) raised some interesting points about the take up of the service. The City Councillors claimed that 300 people per day were taking it up (I did raise my eyebrow somewhat at that). I brought forward the point about joined up council and how many people were thinking of putting the green waste in the bin which would then get incinerated. No real answer to that, apart from to say that they thought there was no other way and it was one of the more big-ticket services.
I pressed it back about the Incinerator and the report about why DEFRA removed the PFI credits. But all I got was a mini rant about Labours abuse of the PFI system.
The point was then raised about Kingsway and in particular the Health provision. In essence, the whole panel knew less than what Kingsway residents already knew, but some interesting analysis by Mr Graham about why we had not had a doctors surgery already.
We also discussed the Post Office and the delay, but again, no new information.
I did repeat my offer to Richard to come to a Kingsway Public meeting, which he said thank you, but not before the election. Bit of a moot point really as the next one is at the end of May, but hopefully he will come to one at some point.
And that was it really. Nothing groundbreaking to report. But also by the end there had only been 8 people turn up, though that can be explained by the fact its such a glorious weekend, or the people of Quedgeley are so unimpressed that they didn’t really care what they had to say.
To put some context to it, when I run a public meeting, I normally get between 50 and 80 people attending.
Related Articles
- Gloucestershire Tory County Council ram through Incinerator plans for Quedgeley (bazkirby.wordpress.com)
