Posted by: allabouteve on: September 30, 2007
The Mansfield park project has been years in the making, with the most extensive consultation I’ve ever witnessed , including the hiring of a shopfront in Dumbarton Road with the plans and a scale model on display for comments and alterations. Council departments could learn something from the effort the Friends of Mansfield Park (assisted [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 24, 2007
Party conferences are pure political anorak heaven. What’s interesting is that there isn’t “one” conference , but a multitude of different conferences going on in the one small square mile of a seaside town. The left conference is about challenging CAC (Conference Arrangements Committee) reports, anti-war fringes and rampant (but usually justified) paranoia.
The trade union [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 22, 2007
This week and the next are living out of a suitcase weeks - earlier this week was in Gateshead for the ASPE (Association of Public Service Excellence) annual seminar and today am on my way to Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth. APSE is an organisation that’s evolved from the fight to retain directly delivered council services in [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 20, 2007
Making people pay extra for their bin collections if they’re not recycling enough..nothing is more guaranteed to bring on a Victor Meldrew moment – “I don’t believe it..!” This flags up another issue as well – the extent to which Audit Scotland is attempting to have a say in the running of councils , this [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 16, 2007
Supermarket wars in Partick ? Glasgow Harbour have just submitted a planning application for a large supermarket (brand unspecified) and residential develoment at the west end of their site between South Street and the riverside. Potentially this could be an alternative site for Tesco in a location that makes a bit more sense, but the [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 13, 2007
One day I’m going to post a quiz about identifying the artists from the song titles that head up some of my blog posts and this one will be a trick question as there are two bands that have recorded songs with this title but there was only one that I had in mind to [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 8, 2007
I know I said I wasn’t going to mix up local activities and issues with wider political issues, but any round up of my week has to include my visit to South Africa House to chair a meeting of Local Authorities for Southern Africa (already referred to in the blog, and the website to [...]
Posted by: allabouteve on: September 7, 2007
It’s a mystery why anyone would imagine having council elections on the same day as the Holyrood elections is a good idea ? It’s arguable that there wasn’t any confusion between the parliament and council vote as the percentage of spoiled papers was more or less normal for a council election, despite STV being deployed [...]
