Short & Sweet

Good morning,

Just a quick update from me this week as I have a number of tasks to carry out this morning before I hit the door knocking trail at 11.00 hours. This week I have mostly been:

• Published in the Southampton Directory (page12) - writing on the importance of proactive councillors and constiuents willing to talk to their elected servants;
• Speaking to the Street Cleaning teams (on three occaisions) to let them know issues at Sterminster House, Testwood Road, Marchwwod Road and Foundry Lane. And then to chase them up;
• Keep updated with the latest problems surrounding the consultation on Vascular arrangements in Southampon;
• Starting to read the 170 page document which is the draft city centre masterplan - the problem being that a subtle nuiance may have been left out of the summary paper and so you have to read the whole lot!
• As the Group Secretary, making sure that arrangments have been made and that paperwork has been circulated for a weekend of activity for Team Millbrook. Yes that includes me writing up another set of minutes;
• Creation of a small set of leaflets to be hand delivered in a certain part of our ward, highlighting the current administrations attitude to an important right;
• Casework galore!
• Monday night I was at a meeting with a local employment agency discussing the opportunities for returning the long term unemployed back into the workplace. A major challenge, but one which must be tackled to give our local economy a chance of competing regionally or nationally;
• On Wednesday evening, I joined a Gym. Lots of points from the wife for doing as she asked! And yes, I am supporting a local business in ward. No David lloyd for me!
• Thursday night was a local policing briefing for Councillors. A bit of a busmans holiday for me, but it was important to be present so that I could be a bridge between officers and councillors, even though I was there in my capacity as your representative. Amongst the issues I raised, included some Wimpsome lane specifics: the selling of cars from residents carparks and ASB linked to the night time economy in the area.

I think at this point its important to remember that it is still only January. The workload will increase once people have recovered from the Christmas period.

Like my daughter, this weeks message is short and sweet.