Langport Town Council

This evenings Town Council meeting was always going to be an interesting one.  With the resignation of four town councillors and the town clerk all happening prior to this meeting and all four town councillors planning to show up, it was bound to be a little controversial.

Public question time kicked off the meeting, as always.  An ex-councillor brought up the very valid point of the fact that at the moment the council meetings are inaccessible to people with mobility issues, as it is held in a room at the top of a flight of stairs.  The sheer amount of vitriol that was heaped upon her by the town clerk and the chair was unbelievable.  She had quoted from the disabilities act so as to sound proffessional and to show that she had done her research and had this thrown back in her face,
"that document you are so fond of quoting" was said by the clerk.

This vitriol actually spilled over into the way that the clerk spoke to a member of the public who was simply trying to find out why things brought up by the public during question time are not allowed to be discussed or have decisions taken on them until the next meeting.  The clerk simply shouted "it's the law" at her.

This general bad feeling continued in to the rest of the meeting where the letter of resignation from the current clerk was read out very pointedly.

At the beginning of the meeting I went to the Clerk to hand in a petition I had been collecting signatures on, that stated that members of the public wanted the council to hold an election for the new positions.  I was told that my petition was too late - despite the only information with a specific time on it was posted on the noticeboard and was not in the media or on the TC website.  What really frustrated me was that this petition was not mentioned to the other councillors and was essentially completely ignored, not even brought up as correspondence received.  This just goes to show that the feelings of the public are completely irrelevant to this supposedly accountable public body.

If you are reading this, live in Langport, and feel it is as wrong as I do then I urge you to complain, right to the elections officer at south somerset district council and come to the next town council meeting. The next one will be held on the 5th August in the Town Hall.  I will be standing for co-option and would appreciate seeing some friendly faces in the audience.

If people are interested in hearing about the Town Council meetings due to being unable to attend I will be happy to continue blogging about them and will include more detail of the actual content.
Post a comment if you'd be interested!

Disclaimer: if I become a councillor I won't be able to keep blogging about it...lol

Beauty ain't all of it

I've been inspired by an article : Don't Call Me Beautiful

But I want to take it slightly further.  I don't agree that we should never call women beautiful because there are some days when everyone deserves to hear that.  Their wedding day for example.  On your wedding day, you want to be seen as happy, vivacious, loved up and all the rest of it, but you've spent hours having your hair and make up profesionally done, searching for the right dress and shoes and you've been preening in front of a camera for a few hours, you want to be told you look beautiful.

The rest of the article I agree with though, the rest of the time we ought to be looking at other attributes that make people who they are.  I don't want to have to put on make up every day, hoping someone will notice. I want to wear the big smile I wear every day, engage with people in conversation and be recognised for those things.  Or be recognised for doing something nice for someone.

So yes, I agree, lets change what we great people with.  Lose "You look nice today" and replace it with:

Community Organising!

Sometimes I think I should really have something to blog about before I write a blog, but sometimes (like now) I just fancy blogging.

So I've just got home from Action Camp 2014, what an amazing weekend!! So many amazing, inspirational people coming together with the common thought "we want to change the world sustainably".  I love having the opportunity to see the Community Organising programme from the other side, and see how grassroots it really is, the things that happen within the programme all come from the Organisers, there are very rarely top-down decisions.

If you're interested in knowing more about the programme, check out the website: www.cocollaborative.org.uk

In other news I am slightly more sorry to say that the four town councillors we had who were genuinely trying to engage with the community, listen to people and work with partner organisations have been forced to hand in their resignations.  This is a huge blow to our Town.  I have personal experience of being blown off by the rest of the Town Council, ignored, mocked and patronized and the four people who have stepped down have always stuck up for me, and actively tried to listen to me  - and through me a voice of the town I have listened to on a one to one, grass roots level.

I will be calling for an election, and no co-option but 4 spots will be hard to fill in a town with a population of only 1000. I really hope that people come out and stand.

How to fix Error 106

Error 106 – How to Fix!

For those that don't know I'm in to my Techie stuff and like to find ways to fix things on my own so I thought I would share for those that find things difficult!

My Mum’s computer is running Windows XP and it’s very old. Quite often it throws up an Error 106 message and it won’t connect to the internet. So I checked out how to fix it and have done a few times – if you’re computer does the same thing, this is how to fix!

Error 106 usually occurs when trying to connect to the internet to browse a website. Generally when there is a problem it has something to do with the network. It blocks your access to the internet completely.

If this happens this is what you should do:

• Restart your computer – you never know!
• Reset the computer to its last working point. For instructions on how to do this on XP see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084
• If neither of these work then you are going to have to get a little technical
• Click on start button > Run
• Type in inetcpl.cpl then enter
• Uncheck all LAN and Connection boxes
• Click on start button > Run
• Type in ipconfig/release and press enter
• Change the IP address to 0.0.0.0
• Type in ipconfig/flushdns and hit enter
• Type in ipconfig/renew and hit enter

Hopefully, all being well, this will have sorted your problem. If not, feel free to comment and maybe someone will be able to help!

Bowling, Pizza Hut and good times :)

One of the things you can always rely on is that it will always rain on a bank holiday weekend in the UK.

Another thing you can always rely on is that you can have fun with friends no matter the weather provided you have money to spend.

I never really have any money to spend but sometimes I throw caution to the winds! Then end up broke at the end of the month.

Anyway, we decided to take my niece bowling for the first time!

Believe it or not she's only four, those are her shoes on the left!

So we first we hit up Pizza Hut in Taunton, despite it taking half an hour to get a table the food and service was pretty good.  

Didn't get out of there until gone nine o'clock! 

For those of you without access to a four year old, you may not appreciate how they work when they're tired.  They are grumpy, irritable, stubborn and rude.  They do not at any point seem as though they've run out of energy.  

Maya turned out to be pretty good at Bowling! 

I don't really have a point to this blog - just wanted to post that picture really! 

In other news, those of you that voted UKIP should be ashamed of yourselves for not better educating yourselves.  

There's also a petition going around about the fact that BBC hasn't paid any attention the Green party moving way up in the polls which is a huge shame.

There's a fourth power player at the table and it is the wrong one!!

Pop Up!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a day of the Pop Up! Business School.  http://www.popupbusinessschool.co.uk/

If this great resource is coming anywhere near you then get in there and get involved!!

I went in without any real plan for a business, barely even had an idea, I've come out ready and raring to go and wanting to create my business right away. I still don't have a plan but they've shown me that all you need is a great idea and you could have a business making hundreds of thousands of pounds in less than a week.

The success stories of people who had amazing ideas and just needed this push are constantly flowing from the mouths of the amazing leaders!

And if you're put off by the word 'school' then never fear, its the best kind of school you could ever hope for.  Skiving off to have a fag, checking your facebook or twitter and talking in class are all perfectly accepted, you take the day as you want to at you're own speed!

I could only make two days of the school in my area and they still managed to massively inspire me!  So if you have a chance, go and get involved!!

Under Kicking Intelligent People

That's what I think UKIP really stands for.

As I get older I am becoming more and more interested in Politics but one thing I really care about is being informed.  So, in the spirit of staying informed I decided to telephone UKIP last year and ask about some of the policies that I care about.

I started off with Wind Farms which I know they stand against - they had a very reasonable response, they don't believe that selling our land to german companies to bring fuel to other countries is the way forward and they believed in other means of renewable energy.

When she was telling me all this she made the mistake of mentioning their policy on gay marriage.  It was negative.  I was so incensed that I hung up the phone immediately.  On closer inspection, what they're actually against is forcing priests and vicars who don't believe in gay marriage to perform the ceremonies in their churches and therein lies the problem with UKIP.

They're far too hard and fast about everything - instead of, we believe in gay marriage but it should be the church leaders choice whether they marry them or not, its WE ARE AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE.

The world isn't black and white and this is once again being reflected in their European Manifesto.
'Under EU rules, anyone in the EU can
come to the UK and live, claim welfare
and government services they have
not contributed to.'
I'll admit that this doesn't seem right - but surely that's our fault for having the most giving and easy to claim benefits system in Europe? What goes for us must go for the rest of the EU too but what stops thousands of us migrating to France is that we wouldn't get the same treatment.  That's not because of the EU, that's because of our idiotic government from before the coalition who were so desperate to get the world to love them and were willing to pay them to do it.  It's also the fault of the coalition who have repeatedly said that they're going to sort out our benefits system but haven't.

My personal belief is that if we're going to be in Europe, we should be in it.  Listen to what our peers in other countries are saying, stop half arsing it.  We're either in or we're not.
The damage that will be done to this country over the next 100 years if we pull out of the EU will be huge, we'll watch as the rest of Europe grows without us.
But if we keep trying to hold on to some form of independence (in all the wrong places) we're never going to reap the benefits either.

It's about time someone came on to the television and told us the goddamn truth.  I'm fed up of trying to wade through the propoganda.

If anyone's interested, here is UKIPs European manifesto.
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5308a93901925b5b09000002/attachments/original/1398869254/EuroManifestoLaunch.pdf?1398869254