Thursday, February 14, 2008

A couple of door-knocking sessions

Liam and I have been out knocking on doors twice this week so far. I must say it is a wonderful way to spend the day. We are so warmly received, especially when people realise we are there to discuss issues and concerns they have. I cannot count the number of people who thank us for calling and say how pleased they are to see us. I only wish we could get round more people but we tend to spend an average of fifteen minutes at each house so it can be a very slow process.

Today was particularly good, we recruited a new member, took away 37 pieces of casework - guess what I have been processing all evening? and we found a new window cleaner prepared to come and do our windows, result!

Dog muck is still top of the agenda for most people and they are deeply disappointed to learn that the LibDems voted down our motion to get some more dog wardens to enforce action against irresponsible dog owners. There is some good news on dog bins though. We went to our "Putting our neighbourhood first" meeting in Venture Housing today and they have agreed to fund 20 dog bins, along with Rodney Housing and also the Elm Park TRA. These will go on the streets near Newsham Park where this is a particular problem.

Local ward councillors (me, Wendy and Frank) agreed to spend our contingency fund from the NRF on buying a further 10 bins to support the project, and also some hanging baskets and planters for the L6 area. We are going to have another Sparkles day on April 12th hopefully where local people can help plant them up, but more about this when the details have been confirmed.

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