My map gets used! And some other election-y stuff

Nice to see that my efforts are contributing to local endeavour: Andrew Gambier's handy map of who's who in the impending Peninsula elections uses the boundaries I drew a while back for my blog to show the area I aim to represent.

In other news, scaffolding appears on East Greenwich Library just in time for the election season to kick off, despite the (unwritten) claim from Cllr. Fahy that work would be under way two months ago. To be honest I'm just glad the work's finally getting started, though the news that Greenwich Community College will be closing down its part of library is yet another blow to the future of the building. I imagine that unless a significant change in the balance of power occurs in the next couple of months, the library will continue to struggle on until the future of the Heart of East Greenwich project becomes clearer. If I had my way of course... but then words can't make up for actions, can they?

This evening was spent leaflet-/canvassing in the SE3 part of Charlton's ward, where the Conservative team have been listening to and tackling various local concerns - some new, some old - from students using the back gate at BBCS to how late the rugby club parties in the wee hours. The view on the doorstep is always a good weathervane of how people feel generally, and this evening was no exception - now that national coverage of the election is underway, people are generally better informed of the parties' policies at a national level, and this tends to either shape their opinion of local politics, or eclipses it. It means that all the graft we've put in so far can be amplified a thousandfol or dashed to pieces by a well-placed or misjudged comment from either of the two main parties at a national level. At the moment, I've noticed an increase in undecided voters, a slight decrease in those who say they don't vote (I'm afraid I tired of trying to explain the significance of spoiling a ballot many doorsteps ago, but believe me I was quite a fan of registering my disaffection with witty and/or profane comments on my slip back in my more youthful days) and am still waiting to see the election signs appear in the front room windows...

There's a full week of canvassing and leafleting ahead (and fitting in a splendiferous uni assignment somewhere in the middle). I'm looking forward to finding out what the people of Greenwich make of us, and whether our work of the last few years (qv. GCs's website, our blogs and the local commentariat) will permit them to reward us with the opportunity to inject some energy into the council's work and really crack on with transforming the Borough's offer.

My two favourites: GT and CS

Taking a quick break from my lunchtime emails and plate of toast swimming in hot butter (mmm), I noticed GT's special feature on Cleansweep's "Sweeping Success" since taking on 250 local people out of work to help. This is undoubtedly great news - as I've said before, seeing investment (albeit "old" money already agreed to some time ago and marketed as "new") in essential front line services is something I hope everyone can get behind - but it doesn't address the problem of the culture of working to rule at the expense of actually keeping the borough clean and tidy. There are a number of constructive ways this can be addressed - performance related pay, customer feedback (ie us), or even just a gentle reminder from supervisors that even if you are unable to remove something (I'm thinking of the flytipping along the railway embankments along Troughton Road) then report it to somebody who can follow up with the landowners and get it sorted.

And on the subject of Greenwich Time, a check on the online edition provoked an idea. Greenwich Conservatives are committed to abolishing GT, thereby sparing everybody a regular dose of propaganda and saving local people £3 million a year, but until the day comes where we are able to realise this, could the Council show some commitment to sustainability and affordability by giving residents the opportunity to subscribe to the online version and stop receiving dead trees through their doors? All thoughts are welcome...

4 phone calls, 3 call centre operatives, 2 polite "asks" on the street, 1 manager, 1 meeting and 10 weeks later: Cleansweep Remove a Shopping Trolley

Today the saga of the dumped shopping trolley came to an end. I can't remember exactly when I first noticed somebody had parked up a trolley in the shrubbery of the Park Row carpark, but I know it was warm and sunny. The pictures I took at about the time I called the council contact centre up the first time were taken on 30 July.

To cut a long story short, the second time I followed up with the contact centre and they told me the job had been marked complete, I thought it might be a misunderstanding of the location. The third time I followed up with them I must have sounded sufficiently vexed for them to put me through to a manager at the Council, who to his credit did his best to move things along (and got the brushwood in the top two photos cleared up the next afternoon) but admitted to me that Cleansweep didn't really care about keeping the streets of Greenwich clean, as long as they completed their job detail.

I asked one of the Cleansweep guys in the street if they wouldn't mind going 10 yards down the road. "No problem mate". I thanked him very much. Next day? Nothing done. A second call to the manager got me a face to face meeting - and who should have happened to be in the area leaning on their brooms? (at least until they spotted the manager) A second "ask" managed to move some dumped refuse sacks.

A fortnight later, the nights are drawing in and I notice this afternoon that it's finally gone. The beer cans and deadwood's still there, but if it takes the best part of the summer to move a shopping trolley, I think I'll put my faith in the forces of nature to rust and rot them away before Cleansweep do anything with them.

On a less sarcastic note, I've learnt a few lessons from this. I'll pick who I contact at the council carefully, and keep calling until the job's done. It's frustrating, but I imagine this sort of thing is a regular experience for the residents of the Borough: you need to be a real pain in the backside to get anything done. It's absurd.

When I temped at a housing association, every job undertaken by the maintenence crews was the subject of customer feedback by tenants and local residents - the association could monitor the performance of the crews by matching the job number to the feedback and take appropriate actions if problems recurred. It required cards, an excel spreadsheet and an administrator to operate - not a tricky system to organise. When will we as residents be allowed to give our feedback to the Council?

A thought on "local" banking for local businesses

On the drive back to Greenwich this evening, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 (it happens occasionally when I fancy a change from Pendulum and Feeder) about how you might go about setting up your own bank. It raised a number of interesting challenges and ideas about conventional (and unconventional) banking and the ways in which various bright sparks have reacted to the banking crisis.

I shan't discuss the full ins and outs of it, but one item that cropped up was Essex County Council's scheme to offer temporary support to local small businesses (in conjunction with Santander) in the form of overdraft facilities and loans. The representative from the council explained that local businesses needed cash to support themselves through the recession, the council had a considerable amount of cash raised through day to day business and that safeguarding local businesses was a priority (I guess their logic goes something along the lines of "less business=fewer jobs= fewer employees= less revenue for us"), so the idea of creating access to cash where normal banks were unwilling was put into action.

It sounded like a simple and effective way of ensuring that small, strong local businesses stay open through the recession. 87% of Greenwich's businesses employ fewer than 10 people, so you would assume that helping these small local enterprises would be a priority for the council to ensure that local businesses can survive until the recession is over.

On the contrary, a quick visit to the Greenwich Council Business page greets me with the headline: "Planning for emergencies: Is your workplace ready for an emergency? Find out how planning could help minimise the risk of disruption." Within this article is a great number of noble words on how to draw up strategies for your business should civil disorder or those pesky terrorists get in the way of trading in the normal way, but unfortunately it doesn't have any guidance on what to do if you wake up one morning and find your customers have gone. Or if your bank is sending you vaguely threatening correspondence demanding all of its money back in full within a short period of time. (Or, oddly enough, what to do if your workforce is struck down with pandemic flu).

Having said that, it seems that an action plan "concentrating on the "must do" rather than "nice to do" activities of your business" may help avert you from catastrophe. But ONLY if you test your plan, as it sagely notes that "An untested emergency plan is A RECIPE FOR DISASTER!!!" (...I might have taken some artistic licence with the caps).

I think the point that I'm attempting to make with this gentle ribbing is that is likely to take more than doling out common sense to reduce the risk of business failure when times are hard. It takes swift and decisive action and a commitment to ensuring that all available action can be taken to try and encourage small businesses to flourish. I hope that if I ever get the chance offer that assistance on the council that I am able to offer more than just words.