Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

The main driver for the element involving charging motorists was explained clearly in the meeting papers – if you could find the relevant paragraphs in the 500+ pages. “The overarching objective of the scheme is providing viable alternatives to private car use which means reducing congestion (to allow alternatives to be faster, more reliable andContinue reading “Why did the Greater Cambridge Partnership throw so much political capital at C-Charge proposals? Follow. The. Money.”

“Greater Cambridge Partnership’s congestion charge plans unravel over ‘party politics’” declares the Cambridge Independent – and its right. But the GCP was designed and created in a very different party political environment – one that no longer exists. Today’s Greater Cambridge Partnership Assembly meeting was grim watching. I cannot recall a meeting where senior councillorsContinue reading “The Greater Cambridge Partnership was never designed to cope with a hostile political environment”

On the architectural battles between the traditionalists vs the minimalists Or rather Charles’s / Gove’s lot vs Le Corbusier’s / Norman Foster’s lot. For want of another set of descriptors. TL/DR? Read this I’ve moaned a lot about this subject because it’s something that stayed with me ever since we did a project on oldContinue reading “Can beautiful buildings & places be created within a fundamentally extractive economic system?”

The writing was on the wall when senior Liberal Democrats’ MP-candidates spoke out against the plans – now Cambridge Labour has confirmed it won’t support the plans either. Cambridge University and the business community involved in the GCP’s plans also have some serious questions to ask of themselves See the Cambridge Independent here. This willContinue reading “The Cambridge Congestion Charge proposals collapse as political support evaporates”

Quite a turn-around given over a decade ago I was urging organisations to make use of all things online. But with new and revamped community centres opening, how can we ensure they are used in the midst of our cost of living crisis? Especially if social media reach is much more limited than before? ThisContinue reading “Will we see more door-to-door leafleting by local campaign groups as social media fragments?”

…But is is the job of The Government to ensure that local councils and other responsible bodies are properly funded to carry out the necessary maintenance. On that front, ministers haven’t just failed. Because failure implies making an effort to try and succeed in a task. And I’m not seeing nearly enough evidence of that.Continue reading ““It is not the job of the Dept for Education to maintain school buildings…””

The Care Quality Commission graded maternity services as requiring improvement in the face of understaffing – but ministers are preventing the hospitals and local government from dealing with those problems by maintaining restrictions on local taxation and a broken structure of governance See the headlines here. You’ll have seen the headlines in the national newsContinue reading “Addenbrooke’s and The Rosie are facing challenges they have no powers to deal with”

How do you familiarise very busy local residents with how their town/city functions when they don’t have time to engage in consultation events or workshops? I needed to get out of the house earlier this evening so went for a short wander as the shadows started lengthening and bumped into one of my local councillorsContinue reading “Bitesize briefings for busy burgesses?”

Trying to prevent more taxpayer-funded research from gathering digital dust in a forgotten corner of the internet I’ll try and keep this short because all-day brainfog which may mean I have to cry off the Stourbridge Fair later. This follows on from my own proposed local pilot workshops in that I want to see howContinue reading “The Citizens’ Curriculum – a forgotten Government pilot scheme?”

I’ve got to the stage where I’m just going to go for it, see who turns up, see what they say, and see what the feedback is. If you browse through my blog and the entries of the past few months you’ll have seen a lot of talk about citizenship and democracy learning. This nextContinue reading “Pilot workshops: Cambridge – how our city functions”