Joe Salmon, 26 August 2023, Tags:
As ever this blog only represents my own views at the moment of writing. It should not be taken as representative of anybody else or the Green Group as a whole.
So I’m going to try and change things around with this blog in the next couple of weeks or so. I think it’d be good to separate my public to do list out into something a bit more organised and in one place, so I’ve done this google sheet and I’ve enabled commenting via the link.
This has taken up most of my morning, and I’d quite like to watch Bmouth Spurs so I won’t be writing any long philosophical stuff today, although I do like sharing the long philosophical stuff. I actually think a better format for that might be a video blog alongside something written like I’ve been doing so I’m going to try and get that started in the next couple of weeks.
Aside from what I’ve put in the google sheet there isn’t much to share this week. I did my introductory session for BDC Bournemouth Development Company | Creating a better place and I’m looking forward to my first board meeting next week.
Kate’s campaign for a crossing on Charminster Road has finally been assessed and meets the minimum criteria for a formal crossing facility. The request currently sits 35th out of 80 sites in the ranking. Current levels of funding mean the council are only able to install approximately two locations a year. Obviously this means the list will grow and grow forever as we’re not going to clear that backlog of requests at that rate.
The massive hole in the council's finances is quite a problem. I’d love to know more about how we can address this and how we got here, so I have taken Phil Broadhead up on the kind offer to talk through how this happened he made on Twitter https://twitter.com/PhilBroadhead/status/1693681092203540990?s=20. I think one of the most useful things to keep in mind when solving difficult institutional problems is that “the quickest way out leads straight back in”. It’s very tempting to storm in, assume whoever was doing the job before was thick as two short planks and that doing the obviously sensible things will sort things out. Unfortunately that approach almost certainly got the organisation into the current mess in the first place, and that course of action in a few years will leave you facing the same problems, or a slightly different set of problems which the organisation rotates through cyclically.
Also given the fellow spends a lot of time up in London kicking about with very rich and powerful Tory MPs it would be nice to know if he has managed to wrangle us any additional funding. Given the situation with our budget for children's services it would be really good to know what he’s heard from his friends in central government.
Good news with Moordown Rec, the plan is to replace the redundant bit of kit here below using the insurance money from the vandalised bit of kit. This can’t be done in the same location as the vandalised bit of kit because the surface isn’t suitable.
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These are the two new bits of kit being considered, the officer is just waiting to hear back on install costs etc.
Also the wood bridge has been refreshed as below, which is nice to see.
Anyhow I’m just going to keep this short and sweet as I quite fancy watching the game, I think we were unlucky not to take 3 points last time they were here, and I’m hoping we get justice this time round. Plus I need to sort out the girls’ bikes so we can do “DnB on the Bike” tomorrow Domonic on X: "Drum & Bass On The Bike Bournemouth Sunday 27th August starting at 2pm from AFC Bournemouth. *THE ROUTE* https://t.co/QCvqZZtAso" / X (twitter.com)
Have a great weekend
Joe
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