Wheelie bin wars, 'live' on YouTube

Of course, the real reason why the Lib Dem city council distributed wheelie bins throughout Oxford was as part of our ‘recycling revolution’. But the people of Headington are an inventive and subversive lot, as befits this Arezzo to Oxford city’s Florence.

So it was wholly in character that one of the highlights of yesterday’s Highfield Residents’ Association should be that newest of traditions, the wheelie bin tag-team race. Happy viewing:



The second highlight, at least for me, was the unveiling of the latest community notice-board by that most distinguished of personages, Oxford’s deputy lord mayor. Though I successfully lowered the tone by joining in the rain-sodden limbo dance.

All captured here:

Easy as Qwerty

A quick but public thanks to the Lib Dems' innovations team for helping make online campaigning so much easier.

A particular local issue has arisen in my ward - a proposal by the County Council to close a popular underpass. Within 20 minutes, thanks to some techno-wizardry available to any Lib Dem party member, I was able to create from scratch a dedicated web presence and online petition, Headington SOS. You can too, here.

Within an hour, 17 people have signed up... It's no substitute for door-knocking and leaflet delivery, but it's a handy alternative if you're working late at the office anyway.

Good-bye, or is it au revoir?

All good things must, so the cliché tells us, come to an end. And so it is with my year’s tenure on Oxford City Council’s Executive Board - what some places, with more pretensions to grandeur than us, call a cabinet - as portfolio holder for Better Finances.

I decided way back in October last year that, if the Lib Dems continue to run the City Council as a minority administration, I would step down from the post this coming May. It’s been a hugely rewarding 12 months, but, to be honest, also a knackering one. Combining a busy, full-time job with being responsible for the setting and delivery of the City’s £70m net spending budget (let alone being a local councillor) is not a recipe for a good work-life balance. I doff my cap to those who do achieve it.

Looking back over the last year, I am quietly and moderately pleased with what has so far been achieved by the Lib Dem administration, working together with Council officers, and frequently with the opposition Labour and Green groups too. In my own area, Better Finances, we have, for example:

1. Met our manifesto pledge to keep Council Tax down, setting a below-inflation 3% rise for the coming year, and proposing 2% only rises for the next two years;
2. Set a budget which made £4m of savings with no cuts to key front-line services, despite having to write-off £2m of savings clocked-up by Labour which had proved completely undeliverable;
3. Transformed the collection of Council Tax - 96.3% was collected in 2006-07, compared to last year’s pretty dismal 94.8% under Labour, making it Oxford’s most successful ever year;
4. Seen the whole Revenues and Benefits team’s performance improve markedly, reducing the Council’s ‘local cost of benefits’ from £500k to zero in a year, and ensuring benefits are paid in the fastest time ever;
5. Put in place, for the first time, a comprehensive IT strategy for the City Council, promising to invest £500k in the Council’s technology year-on-year in order to improve services;
6. Continued to smarten-up the Council’s procurement, with the Facilities Management team short-listed for the LGC’s sustainable communities award for encouraging local businesses and the not-for-profit sector to apply for contract opportunities with the Council and other local public bodies;
7. Improved Council target-setting, ensuring the targets set by Council officers are, at long last, all of the following: robust, stretching and achievable;
8. Improved the Council’s ‘use of resources’ score - the value-for-money it’s giving to its citizens - as assessed by the Audit Commission, from 1 to 2 (out of 4).

Anything left to do? Just a little:

1. The Council’s capital programme is still unrealistic and over-stretched, and too little progress has yet been made to make inroads into the £9m maintenance backlog carelessly built-up under Labour;
2. Value-for-money remains under-developed, though is now heading in the right direction, as publicly noted by the District Auditor;
3. And we have yet to introduce properly devolved budgets to the City’s six area committees, though there should be concrete proposals coming forward on this very shortly;
4. Oh, and there’s the little matter of trying to set a budget next year without a majority in Council.

A part of me would love to spend the next year getting to grips with these challenges, and ensuring the continuing improvement of the Council’s finances. But a larger part of me is looking forward to having more time to get back to the role of being a councillor I really love: working and campaigning in my ward.

That, and to having a little bit more of a life.

I can see the park from here

I can’t pretend that delivering leaflets to tower blocks is my absolute favourite activity for a Sunday afternoon. However, it does have its compensations, as I re-discovered today when distributing the latest Lib Dem newsletter round Ploughman’s Tower in the Northway estate of Oxford East.

First, it’s warm and dry inside - less important today, but a boon when you’re seeking refuge from wet and blustery weather.

And, secondly, the views from the top of the tower. This photo was snapped from the top floor, looking east towards the John Radcliffe Hospital in my Headington ward. A shame it was so overcast, but still a pretty impressive sight.

It’s one of the constant delights of Oxford that, as a small, densely-packed city surrounded by greenbelt, you’re only ever a few minutes away from countryside.

I should also pay tribute to my ward colleague, David Rundle, who helped me deliver one of the 14 floors. The first floor. That’s what political comradeship is all about.

We then repaired to Old Headington village, only a five minute drive from Ploughman’s Tower - but it somehow feels a lot further away.

I took the opportunity to nip into Bury Knowle Park, right in the heart of Headington - and, therefore, for such is the barking madness of the Boundary Commissioners, just outside Headington ward.

The park is in post-winter splendour right now, with naked trees hinting that spring is soon to break through. And the new lamps the Council has installed are helping to combat the lingering gloom. Terrifically tranquil.

Now if I could just get rid of the ink still staining my fingers…

Never before seen. With good reason

I see m’colleague, Cllr Rundle, has posted a quick ‘n’ easy users’ guide to aid the unfamiliar in distinguishing the two of us. (I learned a few things about myself I can tell you.)

David tends towards the circumlocquacious. Me, I’m more direct and visual. So here’s a photo.

Most councillors have stashed away somewhere a campaigning photo that’s never seen the light of day, one that seemed a good idea at the time - and which, in hindsight (and perhaps with some foresight), was never going to work.

Here’s ours.

This photo was taken three years ago by a very kind and trusting local resident, who willingly loaned us her baby.

The image was supposed to show how the Headington Lib Dems’ campaign to ‘Keep Osler Road Special’ would safeguard the futures of the kids who lived there.

Unfortunately, the captions it provoked from friends included: ‘My two gay dads’ and ‘Sign our petition, or the kid gets it.’

It has thus never before been published.