Category Archives: Uncategorized

TL/DR? Read through all of these (click on the ‘supporting evidence’ tab) [Updated to add: Watch the presentation at The Guildhall of 21 June 2023 here] Back in May 2021 I invited people to read through lots of complicated stuff in this blogpost but I’m not sure anyone took me up on it! Essentially itContinue reading “Cambridge Biomedical Campus – two years on from the publication of their 2050 vision”

Cambridge Matters – the city council’s quarterly magazine has arrived. Yet it is limited by the artificial silos that ministers have placed around local public service providers so cannot provide the ‘state of our city’ report that might be more useful to residents. Above – you can read the digital version here. It’s not aContinue reading “Could Cambridge’s public service organisations produce shared publications?”

I popped up to The Junction to see what the Cambridge Playlaws Project was about. One of their teenage paid staff [Let’s call them Student T] gave me chapter-and-verse on how city and county institutions – and central government have utterly failed our teenagers and young people over man years. TL/DR: All major public serviceContinue reading “How Cambridge & Cambridgeshire under-provide for our teenagers: a case study in multiple and chronic policy failures”

A buzzing Cambridge Pride had a community marquee full of local public service and health organisations with outreach stalls – alongside stalls from Labour, Liberal Democrats, and The Greens. How can other free events in our city learn from Pride in getting such a large number of organisations participating? “Was it really over a decadeContinue reading “Cambridge Pride 2023 shows our city how to do community outreach”

Following on from Reimagining Cambridgeshire run by Hilary Cox Condron and friends for the Cambridge Festival 2022, could we take the concept further using local history, maps, and displays to get people learning about how our city functions and how we might improve it for future generations? As I mentioned in an earlier blogpost: “DeadlineContinue reading “Could we redraw Cambridge at Open Cambridge 2023?”

Something for you to try at home! Watch the video of the City Council’s West-Central Area Committee and identify the root problems of all of the issues raised. Then ask whether the public authorities concerned have the necessary funding, powers, structures, systems and processes – and even calibre of staff, to deal with them. YouContinue reading “Are Cambridge’s governance structures working? A case study – the city council, police, and health services”

“The proposals meet the capacity studies with the design of the station proposed to meet the 2043 Central Case Demand Forecast (1.3% p. a.) of 2,364,236 yearly passengers.” says the application. Prediction: It will be ***much more than that*** by 2043. Unless we’ve had a climate catastrophe and society has imploded. Which could happen. “HowContinue reading “So…what’s Cambridge South going to look like then? Detail plans released”

The Director of Cambridge Science Park Ltd, Jane Hutchins, said it was “not right” that for all the wealth being generated by firms on the science park, King’s Hedges ward remains one of the most economically deprived parts of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire – in a city that is the most unequal in the country. AsContinue reading “‘The Cambridge Science Park has a moral duty to respond to the poverty on its doorstep’”

He gave an extended speech during a Westminster Hall debate on 13 June 2023 You can watch the video of the debate here – led by Richard Fuller MP (Cons – North Bedfordshire) “What’s a Westminster Hall debate?” It’s a relatively recent invention (in parliamentary history terms) brought in by the Labour Government as aContinue reading “Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner’s speech to Parliament on East West Rail”

The Greater Cambridge Partnership is consulting (again) on something that really should have been something they should have dealt with years ago. You can read their consultation on Hills Road, Cambridge here – on the northern section between Parker’s Piece junction (next to where I want Florence Ada Keynes’ new concert hall) down to HillsContinue reading “How to solve a problem like Hills Road (the road), Cambridge”