Richard Baum

Only a brief post today, because I am struggling to breath under the weight of work I keep putting off to do Council things…

Yesterday’s Annual Council was a remarkably dull affair. The whoops, screams, and general childishness I expected from the ruling group on their assumption of overall control for the first time in Bury sine 1986 didn’t emerge. So credit to them for that. It beats their various displays in Council over the last twelve months. Instead, the historic moment passed in a grumbled “aye” when the motion to let the Conservatives form the Executive was put to Council.

The only other marginally exciting part of the agenda (and I use that phrase with a spade-full of salt) concerned democratic arrangements, and was postponed. So we were left with various annual reports, all of which were informative, but none of which were in the least bit fun.

I am prepared for the LAP tonight, which, just to remind anyone who wants to come, is at Prestwich’s Longfield Suite, from 18:30. There will be presentations on the Urbed regeneration and on local health services, as well as the open forum where you can ask us anything (to do with the work of the LAP, obviously).

So maybe I’ll see you there.

Rick

An important day for Bury today - it’s “Annual Council,” where Councillors vote to see who will form the Council’s Executive (i.e. who will run the Council) for the coming year. Since the Conservatives won a small overall majority in the election, they have the votes to ensure that they run the Council, and I’m sure their lady members will be suitably dressed to mark the occasion, before heading off to Ascot or whatever is the correct thing to do with what they’ve got on their heads. 

There will also be a debate on proposed changes to the Council’s constitution, particularly around the rights of Members to ask questions. I suspect there may be some objections to the proposals to limit the time given to questions in meetings, so there may well be some fiery debate.

The Annual Council meeting is actually split in two, with one half dedicated to business (the Executive positions etc), and the other half given over to the ceremony of electing a new Mayor. The Mayor for the 2007-8 municipal year is Cllr Dr Farook Choudhry, and his term of office expires today. The presumptive new Mayor is Cllr Peter Ashworth, with whom I served on the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission and the Council’s Youth Cabinet. He will be elected and sworn in this afternoon as well, and I send him my congratulations and wish him all the best for the year ahead as the Borough’s Mayor.

So, in essence, that’s what I’ll be doing today.

Rick

The first Prestwich Local Area Partnership of the Municipal Year takes place at 6.30pm pm Thursday 15th May 2008 at The Longfield Civic Suite, Prestwich. Come along and see the launch of the “Love Prestwich” anti-litter campaign, which follows on from some of the work local Lib Dem Councillors have been leading on in getting the Council to tackle the “Dickensian filth” which sometimes plagues local streets.

Prestwich LAP will launch its Love Prestwich Litter Campaign for the summer which aims to target Prestwich Village Town Centre to promote respect of the environment to residents and businesses to Love Prestwich and keep it clean. Lots of the problems we have with litter are caused by people dropping it, and we need to create a lot more pride in our local area. So many local people tell me that they lovel Prestwich, so now is the time to show it.

The meeting will also feature URBED, the regeneration specialists who we’ve been working with on plans for the future of the Village centre. Following on from the huge turn out at Prestwich Visioning event in March, URBED will be coming along on Thursday to say what people Love about Prestwich Village and how it might move forward.  They will have some initial options and ideas to put forward of how the future of Prestwich may look in the future, and there’ll be the opportunity to ask questions on what you see. 

There’s so much going on in Prestwich at the moment, and I’m confident that we stand at the start of a hugely exciting time.  This is the perfect opportunity to come and have your say. As well as the URBED proposals and the Love Prestwich campaign, the Open Forum will be at 7.30 for any concerns members of the public may want to raise about anything at all to do with the Council, Police, Fire and Health services, and the local area in general.

It will also give you the chance to meet the newest Lib Dem Councillor in Prestwich, Cllr Mary D’Albert, who will join the LAP for the first time.

Please do come to the meeting and have your say on what’s going on in Prestwich.

Rick 

The domestic news today has once again been full of the types of economic bleakness that makes me ache with frustration about things.

Prices for domestic fuel seem about to leap again, and if Tam and I are feeling the pinch trying to keep the two of us warm in a modern house and with two above-average incomes, God knows how OAPs and big families with low wages are supposed to cope.

On top of this, I tried to fill my car this morning and would have had to take out a mortgage to achieve it, had any been available. Sadly the credit crunch means that there aren’t any, and so I was forced to pay with my Debit Card, which I feared would melt in the machine.

I really should know more about the forces at work behind these events. At the moment I can’t understand why, if everyone is bothered about the rising price of all, they just don’t stop paying those prices for it… Of course I know it’s not as simple as that, but the nuances of why things are happening the way they are escape me sometimes, as they must do so many people caught up in events beyond their control.

As a result, I am now reading a book about The City and the economy at the moment, and it is teaching me about what’s important and why. I hope it might make my frustration less about feeling ignorant. It’s oddly both complicated and very simple at the same time, but what it underlines is how immensely powerful the large investors and financial institutions are, and how they can generate both enormous wealth, and the potential to make millions of livelihoods vulnerable even for people with nothing to do with them.

The Lib Dems nationally are acutely concerned about the state of the economy, and have today launched their manifesto for the City of London called “A New Deal For The City – Liberal Democrat Proposals.” The document sets out our plans to create a new relationship between the Government and the City, by reforming regulations and simplifying taxes. What is clear is that, although the City is rightly praised for generating wealth, jobs and expertise for the country, it isn’t perfect. There are abuses and unfairness in the system which now seem to be effecting the entire country, and it is government’s role to continue allowing for innovation and the success of the City, but in an environment which protects us all.

I am learning more about this all the time. “The Economy” might seem boring, but then anyone with a job or a home or a car is as vulnerable to its fluctuations as I am. The proposals in our document today are sensible and much needed ways of trying to ensure that whilst we maximise the great potential of the City to drive forward our country, we don’t forget the responsibilities this brings to the government and the City itself.

Rick

At my party on Saturday, a friend of mine who I’ve known since three minutes after I started university, and who has recently married, announced that she was now pregnant. I was overjoyed at the news, cooing around the place like a demented owl and generally doubting my own gender by getting the types of broody feelings I’m not sure men are biologically supposed to get. It was the best news I’d heard all year.

But now, two days and one clean-up later, I find myself asking how on earth this managed to happen. Obviously I have moved on from the biological now. My parents taught me about the dangers of baths that are too hot, and of cabbage patches years ago, and I tell Tam never to take such baths or eat such vegetables because I know we’re just not ready for children yet. No, I don’t mean how she managed to get pregnant in the first place, but how in the name of all that’s rational I came to be old enough not only to have friends who are married, but friends who are now carrying children of their own.

Does this sudden dismay happen to other people? Do others ever just stop for a moment and think about how many decades their inner-selves are from their outer-selves? Is there a cure?

Yesterday, and I mean, literally, yesterday, I was six years old. I lived in a house with my parents and sister, I went to primary school, and I played with a plastic football and Lego bricks. There is no way, NO WAY, that anyone in my peer group is now old enough to have a baby, without them being the talk of the town and rightly whisked off to a country house supervised by sadistic Irish nuns. And yet, it turns out that they are all old enough. How did this happen?

There was someone else at the party, a friend of Tam’s, who has gone through the whole pregnancy thing already, and emerged out the other end with a real child. A “Francesca” that breathes and cries and will soon walk and talk. How could she have done such a thing and survived? Here she is, with a baby, still managing to do normal things like engage in conversation and drive a car, and here I am struggling to come up with the necessary commitment to bung a pizza in the oven for 15 minutes. If I had an actual baby, I really don’t understand how I would be able to do anything other than act like a jibbering wreck.

I can pin-point the exact moment when we suddenly stopped being the young generation and started being the middle one. It was 19:50 on October 31st 2006, when the last of my grandparents died, and there was absolutely nothing and nobody standing between my parents and The Great Hereafter. The shield that separated my cosy little childhood from nasty things like time’s irritating ticking disappeared. But I didn’t have to do anything about it then. I could just pretend to still reside in kid-hood, because there was no-one beneath me coming up on the rails. Now that’s changed too, and there is no place in the play-pen left for me. I’m going to be shoved out of it by a gurgling newcomer who is the product of someone who was, last week, LAST WEEK I tell you, the 18 year old fresher at university tumbling about the place without a care in the world. And now she has travel-cots and stuff that pumps things. It’s unpleasant for any number of reasons.

I have a responsible job. I am elected to public office for God’s sake. People ask me to do things for them, and they get done. I debate issues that matter and people ask me for advice. And yet, in my head, I just can’t contemplate that it is even conceivable that a peer of mine is doing something this grown up. An actual baby, that will be here after we’re gone and will have babies of its own.  

I probably grossly undercooked a sausage or two at my party. I thought quite often about the mountain of debt it is necessary to tunnel into to afford the mortgage on the house. And I let two dozen people drink red wine near my cream sofas. But the one truly frightening thing about Saturday night was the thought that in six months time there’ll be a little one amongst us and we really really won’t be those kids who met on the first day of university any more.

Which would be a sad thought, were I not still absolutely gob-smacked with delight about the whole thing.

Rick

The weekend just gone saw my house well and truly “warmed,” when a large throng of people descended on it and risked their lives by taking part in that most extreme of sports – eating food barbecued by me.

The death count is currently static and zero, but can only move one way, and since the gestation period of whatever bacteria I have infected my friends with is probably a good few days, I am expected a flurry of angry and vomit-interrupted phone calls towards the end of the week.

There were representatives from every walk of my life there in the garden on Saturday night – neighbours, old friends, fellow Lib Dem types, strangers who claimed to be friends with Tam… And obviously because we all lead contented lives where our every whim is catered for in a blizzard of effortless consumerism, nobody could be bothered putting in the necessary legwork and making new friends any more. So we had the odd scenario which I see at weddings whereby the assembled crowd split off into sects, not intermingling except for laboured small talk in the queue for food. I am equally guilty of being simply too lazy to bother making friends with new people. Occasionally someone new sneaks in by the back door, just appearing at enough functions that I’m also at so that my ignoring turns to gruff nodding, then to an acknowledging smile, until eventually conversation turns to mutual ground like the fact that we keep bumping into each other at interminable social events. But mainly, I’m sorry to say, my friendship train left the station long ago.

So on Saturday I got a taste of what it must be like having a wedding of my own – being happy that everyone I love is in the same room for pretty much the only time in my life, but then spending the whole time panicking that I can’t get round to see them all. There really is a lot to be said for granting audiences with people at individual time-slots. At least then I could ask the sort of probing questions about new boyfriends that I really want to ask, rather than just glancing across rooms at laughing crowds that should have me in them, and making sure everyone has enough wine in their re-usable plastic cup.

The perfect way to get rid of hangovers, whilst simultaneously fulfilling community duty, is to attend the Annual Prestwich Clough Day. Happily for all concerned, this was yesterday, and once again was an absolutely excellent event of which our whole area can be proud. The weather was perfect, unlike last year when, as I recall, Prestwich was visited by the monsoon. This year the brass bands weren’t using their trumpets as snorkels, which is always a good sign for an outdoor event, I find.

As in previous years there were some excellent stands, full of information from community groups, the Council, local charities and societies. I learned a lot about the very exciting developments from the Forestry Commission in the Drinkwater Park area over the coming months – there are going to be some beautiful new developments, by the sounds of it. There were also animals to view – birds of prey and hedgehogs received plenty of attention from the guests who I’d brought along post-housewarming.

I think there were more people there than I’d seen in previous years too. I was there from the beginning right through until near the end, and it was a hugely successful event which showed our district off for the vibrant and friendly place it really is. Enormous credit must go to the organisers and those who gave up their time to make the stalls a success. Their efforts really did make an enormously positive impression. Here’s to next year.

Rick

Last night’s Lib Dem Group AGM saw lots of interesting discussion about the election campaign just gone, and our plans to work successfully on the Council over the next 12 months. Obviously none of the discussions were anywhere near as interesting as frolicking in the sunshine outside, but unfortunately with the privilege of power comes the irritating burden of responsibility, so I had to put down my ice cold Vimto momentarily, exchange my flowing Hawaiian grass skirt for a suit, un-hand the hula girl, and go to the meeting.

Congratulations to Councillors Tim Pickstone and Andrew Garner who were re-elected Group Leader and Deputy Leader respectively, and to Cllr Mary D’Albert who remained conscious throughout her debut Group meeting. The last twelve months have undoubtedly been a success for our Group - election victories and leading campaigns on issues like congestion charging and post offices - and we are sure to go from strength to strength with a continuing leadership team and a new face on the Group.

The meeting also saw us discuss appointments to the many many (many) Council committees, working groups and outside bodies that exist across the community. In the grand shake-up I emerged on to the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Committee, and the Licensing Committee. I worked on R&P last year - it’s the Scrutiny Committee that takes a broad view of all the Council’s work and focuses on service performance and finance. It was enjoyable and I think we got some good stuff done, so hopefully that will continue. Licensing will be new to me, but I join my colleague Cllr Steve Wright on it and he only has good things to say about the work we can achieve on there.

I was also elected Chair of the Community Development Working Group of Prestwich Local Area Partnership last night, which is an exciting challenge. I was a member of the group last year and we achieved some great work in Rainsough and Polefield, so hopefully I can continue the momentum here in the coming twelve months. I will be supported by Cllr Ann Garner who is stepping down from the Chair herself but will still be a valued and influential member of the working group.

All such re-shuffling pales into insignificance when set off against the blue sky above me this morning. It’s still far too sunny outside to be cooped up in an office. Resultantly I may make a daring bid for freedom soon after lunch. There may be fireworks.

Have a good weekend. 

Rick

The continuing warm spell meant that last night I took advantage and mowed the lawn. The occasion also saw the juddering debut of my new strimmer. Such is the exciting life a Councillor leads in the week after an election.

So now my lawn has stripes on it, which I must admit are wavey in parts due to the fact that my lawnmower has the turning circle of an oil tanker, rendered even worse by the fact that in turning it I regularly ended up inside a shrub.

I have scheduled a barbecue for Saturday night, so expect that sky to turn black and start pelting the earth with rain like God’s own rage at about Saturday teatime.

Tonight is the Liberal Democract Council Group Annual General Meeting, where we decide who does what and how the Group is going to work for the coming year. It will be nice to see my colleagues’ brows looking less furrowed than when I saw them all last on election day (although they became visibly less creased as the results became clear).

And in the meantime, I must get back to work. Sadly not under a tree, but here in my office, which is so hot that I’m fairly certain there is liquid magma flowing through the radiators.

Rick

Now that the election is over, there is less need for me to spend every waking hour out on the streets, so of course God has warmly mocked me by stopping the rain and blasting us all with a premature taste of Summer. I took advantage of the nice warm weather last night by unpacking a flat-pack barbecue, and attempting to build it.

Obviously, this being a construction project overseen by a British elected representative, it drastically over-ran. However, the delay in completion was only a few hours long, and was caused less by chronic maladministration, and more by my utter inability to tighten a nut to a screw. Somewhere along the line, when I should have learned how to do man’s things like re-wire stuff and wear a tool belt without looking like a buffoon, I missed out. Other people know how to do this stuff. I absolutely do not.

What I have now then is a functioning, if somewhat rickety, barbecue. It’s not all bad - I suspect it can be just about used for its primary purpose, although it may not work entirely as planned, and is in danger of collapse at any moment. Rather like the Home Office, in many respects.

Where my barbecue is different from the Home Office is that it has foldy-down side bits for hot dog buns and burgers. And these folding side table bits do indeed fold down, after some rigorous shaking. They are the definite highlights of my work. And, like all masterpieces, we should not risk damaging them. As such they should be preserved in either the up or down position at all times, and not tinkered with. Let me assure you that my reluctance to repeatedly extend or contract the shelves is entirely about the preservation of fine craftsmanship, and nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility that the whole thing might fall to pieces in my hands, scattering white-hot coal fragments over my nearest and dearest.

Now that my work is done, all that is left is for me to put the BBQ to good use this weekend at my house-warming party, by poisoning all of my friends.

As well as being all manly and building stuff with tools, I have been catching up on casework these past 24 hours. I have facilitated a meeting between the Police and a local man concerned with vandalism at some local allotments. Also, I have chased up some missing street signs (Butterstile Lane and Carr Avenue, not that you’d realise you were there, of course), and got the Council Tax people to prioritise the case of a local man who’s refund application has got lost in the system somewhere.

Thankfully, I am better at the casework than I am at the furniture-building. It’s a good job, otherwise nobody would cast a single vote in my favour ever again.

Rick

I am at a bit of a loss at the moment, and I wonder if I’m the only one feeling the pain of election cold turkey. This is an odd time of year when the elections are finished and the Council has yet to kick off. A kind of hole in the political space-time continuum that sucks people in at the conclusion of the count, and spits them out at annual Council with nothing in between except for a black and empty week and a half.

I do miss the campaign though, despite disliking every minute of it. I don’t have a mother-in-law, but I suppose if I did, and she came to visit for an entire horrific and unendurable month of ceaseless horror, before abruptly leaving, I’d feel the same kind of confusing sense of loss. I’d have done anything to end it sooner, including acts of criminal violence, but now that it’s gone away and left me with nothing to think about but the good bits, I wonder if I wasn’t just wasting time complaining instead of appreciating it. It’s not often a team comes together to achieve something that is genuinely good. It’s even less often that I am a part of it.

For weeks on end I was immersed in the election – leafleting all day every weekend, canvassing every night, and thinking of little else but how much I wanted to win a contest which, it turned out, even fewer people cared enough about to vote than last year. In the last week I was literally doing nothing but sleeping and election-ing, and in the last 24 hours even the sleeping was jettisoned in favour of about 5,000 leaflets and lots and lots of knockabout knock-up fun. It is not the nature of elections to have soft landings, but I wish there was some way of scaling down activity gently, rather than ramping it up until the last minute and then just stopping.

I miss it now, despite wishing the whole thing over throughout. It’s the people more than anything, of course. Although I wanted to commit an act of savage harm on the person who asked me to go knocking up 100 more people at 20:00 on election night, I’d really quite like to be back there now with the rest of the team, knowing that he was as tired as I was and that we were both going through it together. Thankfully my sleep-deprived and leaflet-addled body couldn’t muster the beating I so longed to meter out, because if it had then I probably wouldn’t have been invited back.

I spent the weekend away from Prestwich. In Cumbria, at a hotel I am loathe to call “my favourite hotel” because I think it makes me sound worryingly middle-aged. Is it right for me to have a favourite hotel when there is 99.8% of the world left to explore? People retire to their favourite hotels. People my age should have favourite bars or something. Is it wrong that mine is becoming the one at Bury Town Hall?

Well, I suppose this hotel is my favourite one so far. And in it I returned to normality, of sorts. It’s a “foodie” place, and whilst on six nights a week the menu is more or less normal (with only one or two dishes that I am not cultured enough to understand), the Sunday night tasting menu involves bizarre dishes which this week included filet of python. There were only about six guests, and one man declined the python on animal welfare grounds, only to tuck in with gusto to the replacement course of veal. I can only hope he didn’t vote.

But throughout the weekend, where I did normal things like sleep in late and watch TV and drive off to see attractions that weren’t related to local pot-holes or derelict shops, there was something missing. It is depressing to think that I am almost certain it was a pack of leaflets and a canvass sheet.

Rick