Rocke
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The week up to Easter that wasAnd a hectic one at that.
Very Community-minded this past week.
CLEAN AGM on Monday, followed by the normal meeting , which regrettably I had to miss.
The Cwmtilley Lakes Environment Action Network is a group of community-mined people who have been responsible not only for keeping the Lakes clean with litter picks but powered by CF they've attracted a fair bit of investment and in coupling this with their own efforts the Lakes is well on the way to being worthy of plans for it.
It's nice to be associated with them and to be able to act as their bridge to the Council, whose officers are very supportive and on-the-ball.
There's big plans for the Great Outdoors Event as part of Aberfest, which you'll hear about.
Tuesday was Licencing day, and what a meeting.
First, the good news for diehard drinkers, curry eaters and taxi-users like me. The Council's prospective 'Saturation Policy' which started the rounds in Dec. 2007 was abandoned, mainly because the Police - who had originally objected - withdrew their objections.
This means that there will be no special provisions to prevent drinks licencing or takeaways.
We then had a very mixed bundle of Taxi Driver licencing.
Only 1 out of 5 turned up.
This resulted in some colleagues being aggrieved at the waste of everyone's time and we might be bringing in rules to encourage applicants to attend meetings when required.
I had the usual Declaration of Interest ( I just know too many people, I think ).
Weds. and it was a chat with Des Hillman, leader of the partnership. This was non-council business, hence the lack of capitals. A useful 30 mins or so ( should have been 15, but you all know what I'm like...... ).
Almost a year on - unbelievable.
I also had a very useful 1-to-1 with one of our Chief Officers, which I feel has given me a much wider perspective of one of the council's functions.
Finally on Weds there was a meeting held for all Ebbw Fach Members regarding the possible closure of Nantyglo Comp and a considerable number of matters arising out of it. I'm particularly pleased to have been able to put a number of ideas that my colleagues found interesting and which has encouraged improvements on them by others. If the school does close hopefully there'll be an innovative and successful transition.
Had a fair bit of background reading to do, since I'm on an Appeals Sub-Committee next ( this ) week.
The files get thicker and thicker.
Nice to know I'm still in the public eye.
Mr Hanney seems fixated with councillors' allowances and pensions and particularly me of late, given his letter to The Gazette.
A few inaccuracies, which I'm sure our local paper will allow me to correct in this week's edition, if Easter hasn't changed copy deadline.
And hopefully my appraisal of Mr. Hanney's reasoning powers will be included, coupled with my exposure of a Freudian Slip worthy of some of our contributors ( most of who I'm referring to seem to have gone er... rather quiet ).
Cheers.
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