Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

Our local government structures were not designed to deal with this intensity of town planning activities What’s the point on having gleaming science parks if the local councils cannot afford to maintain the pot-holed roads that lead to them? At the moment, Cambridge feels like it is under a speculative attack from international organisations lookingContinue reading “The cumulative impact of science park speculation in/around Cambridge”

This follows the rejection of proposals to turn the site into a freight park – which generated huge opposition from local residents due to the pollution risks and lack of vehicle access to the site. You can read about the opposition here. It looks like the former majority landowner, Andersons, has sold their share ofContinue reading “More science park plans – this one on the site of the old Cambridge Tip on Coldham’s Lane”

…as local councils across the country stand on the precipice of financial catastrophes. You can read the motions tabled at Cambridge City Council earlier this evening here (Scroll down). As Cllr Sam Davies MBE (Ind – Queen Edith’s) said, they have some hard decisions ahead. Why those hard decisions seldom seem to hit the veryContinue reading “Next week will feel like an eternity in politics as Liz Truss goes”

…because of the pace of events happening in Westminster. When the captions on BBC News are like this, surely time is up? Above – from the BBC News livestream at 9:44pm earlier this evening. And that’s still 45 minutes to Newsnight! (Who will be there to defend the Government?) And who will be doing theContinue reading “This blogpost will be out of date by the time you finish reading it…”

Only the Greater Cambridge Partnership Transport Offices have declined *again* to state their comprehensive answer to this. “They’ll join the existing bus network” simply does not cut the mustard. Here’s me asking the same question over five years ago. Above – me in 2017 with more hair and fewer greys. Fast forward to summer 2021Continue reading “What happens to the C2C busway buses from Cambourne when they hit Grange Road?”

Me to Dotty McLeod on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire this morning. Above – a screengrab from the spoof ad from Juice Media in Australia on the shambles that was Boris Johnson’s administration. Watch the video here. Are things even worse now?!?! It’s never straight forward to try and give a non-party-political assessment of the political andContinue reading ““24 hours is a very long time in politics and this week will feel like an eternity””

Following on from the debate by councillors If you don’t know who Florence is, have a read about the Mother of Modern Cambridge. Above – Cllr Mrs Keynes (1915), from the Palmer Clark Archive in the Cambridgeshire Collection, colourised by Nick Harris, print commissioned by Antony Carpen. I managed to get to The Guildhall atContinue reading “Revamp Cambridge’s Guildhall in time for Florence Ada Keynes’ mayoral centenary 1932-2032”

On the decline of local government – and why opposition parties need to come up with radical policies that can reverse this decline knowing that HM Treasury will try to block anything they suggest. You can read Unlock Democracy’s report Forty years of decline here. As Cllr Sam Davies MBE (Ind – Queen Edith’s onContinue reading ““40 years of hurt…never stopped us dreaming!””

On the day she sacked her Chancellor who over the past few weeks she told the world she was in lock-step with, the PM’s public speeches have been so dry and wooden that they might constitute a fire hazard under health and safety! Have a listen to Beth Rigby above – who interviewed the PrimeContinue reading “The Prime Minister achieved the impossible in her press conference. She made things worse.”

In the early 1920s we had three general elections in three years. Is something similar looming after a disastrous performance by the Prime Minister at PMQs today? (See also Held in Contempt by Hannah White) In GCSE history in the 1990s we learnt more about interwar Germany than we did about interwar UK. So IContinue reading “So this is what the early 1920s in UK politics must have been like!”