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Novel Traffic Control Experiment Proposed at Addenbrookes
Speaking at a public session of the Cambridgeshire Transport Commission on the 26th of March 2009 Roger Cutting, Addenbrookes’ planning and development officer, gave what I believe was the first public description of the scheme currently proposed to prevent the new Addenbrookes’ link road being being used by people wanting to access the south of […]
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Looking into the Folk Festival Mistakes
On the evening of Monday the 30th of March 2009 Cambridge City Council’s Civic Affairs Committee considered a report into how the council came to lose £644,951 which was not paid to the council by the company it appointed to sell Folk Festival tickets online in 2008. I have written a previous article on the […]
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Bad Language in Government
The UK Parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee is currently calling for people to send them examples of the Government’s poor use of language. I have submitted the following: The HMRC’s description of their online forms for self assessment taxation as software. I feel that the use of the word “software”, while not technically inaccurate, suggests […]
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Council Spy HQ to Commence Operations
In February 2009 I attended an event which included a presentation by John Peerless of the National Anti-Fraud Network (NAFN), a organisation established by local councils to assist them in fighting fraud. Council officers can log in to the NAFN website and search for information about individuals. The information available via NAFN already includes phone […]
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Holding the Police to Account – March 2009
On Thursday the 19th of March 2009 I attended Cambridge’s North Area committee, where councillors vote on what they believe ought to be the local policing priorities and hold the police to account for their performance in the areas they have prioritised. The police were represented by Sgt. Jason Wragg. Using the opportunity given to […]
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Damming Report on Cambridge Folk Festival Fiasco
The report paints a picture of the City Council as institution in a state of chaos where junior council officers working on the folk festival were free to ignore advice from the council’s finance and legal departments. The key questions of where the city’s money is, and what’s being done to try and get it back have not been tackled. It also isn’t the independent, external, report promised.
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Cambridge Congestion Charge – The Liberal Democrat View as of Thursday 19th March
On Thursday the 19th of March 2009 I watched the leader of the City Council Ian Nimmo-Smith and the Executive Councillor for Climate Change and Growth Sian Read give evidence to the Cambridgeshire Transport Commission. Notable Comments The Liberal Democrat councillors put forward their policy to extend a charge to include the park and ride […]
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Google Streetview Arrives in Cambridge
Google’s Streetview service began covering Cambridge as of the 18th of March 2009. The pictures appear to have been taken in the late summer of 2008. The guildhall clock says twenty-five past eight and given the number of people around I think it must be a Sunday morning. The relatively empty Cambridge is quite a […]
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New City Centre Signage for Cambridge
Cambridge City Council’s Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee on the 16th of March 2009 discussed the new signage proposed for the city centre. My responses to the consultation on the proposals which was held in May 2008 are available via this link; we are yet to see how many, if any of the suggestions for […]
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Residents’ and Retailers’ Advocates on the Cambridge City Council City Centre Management Partnership
I am writing from Cambridge City Council’s Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee. Using the opportunity for members of the public to ask questions at council meetings I asked who had been appointed to the residents’ representative and independent retailer representative on the new city centre management partnership – “Love Cambridge”. I noted the published timetable […]