Monthly Archives: June 2008

Tweets on 2008-06-12

  • @willhowells gmail app not entirely bug free … #
  • Very shocked to hear of death of Cllr Michael Cowan. He was king of the awkward squad on the council and will be sorely missed #
  • My usual street key cutter stall has disappeared, so I find myself giving money to Evil Timpson Empire. #
  • Hmmm. Computer game or writing a local party mailing? questions, questions. #
  • @willhowells SELECT alan_bates FROM sparring_partners WHERE combat_style=”mano a mano” INNER JOIN… #
  • Off out to Liberal Drinks in the Lord Roberts. #

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Cllr Michael Cowan dies

We heard today that Michael Cowan, one of Nottingham’s councillors, died early this morning after being ill with cancer for some time.

He was a very important part of life on the city council and he will be sorely missed – even by those who didn’t like him very much.

Personally, I had a lot of respect for him.  No-one could doubt his commitment to making Nottingham City Council a better place.  But he sometimes chose to make the biggest waves to make the smallest changes, which led to him being unpopular with the Labour group. He never minced his words, and got hauled over the coals by the Standards Board as a consequence – searching there for his name returns several cases of him offending officers and fellow councillors by being outspoken.

In terms of him being unpopular, it didn’t help that he started his 40-year political career as a Labour councillor and crossed the floor to the Conservatives only relatively recently.  He had a stab at being elected when he was a Labour by-election candidate in the Ashfield seat.  Part of the rough-and-tumble of Full Council over the past years has been the Labour group contrasting his stance now with what his stance used to be when he was still with them.

My earliest memories of being elected five years ago are all coloured by Cllr Cowan.  It was he who had a stand-up row with the brand new Lord Mayor at my first ever council meeting – certainly a baptism of fire for the newest of us in the chamber, and uncomfortable watching for our guests who’d only come to see the Mayormaking!

Michael also had a detailed understanding of local government that comes with decades of experience, and there are very few remaining in the chamber with his level of knowledge.  Still fewer in the opposition groups who are prepared to speak out on some of the issues.  His life was politics, and you could rely on him to spot details that most would overlook.

The Council will certainly be a poorer place without him.

Exercise

I am tired and achey after a few days of much more exercise then I never normally get.

Firstly getting to play with a gadget is encouraging me to walk more. MapMyRun.com has a number of challenges, the only one of which that was remotely achievable for me was “Walk A Marathon in 30 Days.”  I got off to a good start walking to a meeting in town and back, but have now fallen behind.

Yesterday I had my first real meeting with my cycling instructor from Nottingham Ridewise. I was very kindly given a bike a year or so ago by a friend who’d replaced hers with a better one. It’s been sitting in our living room ever since, so must have enjoyed having its tyres reinflated to be bundled into the back of my car for a brief outing to the Forest Rec.

Many people have wondered how you teach 100 kilos of hulking adult to ride a bike.  Stabilisers are out, as is the traditional “Dad” approach of running behind and holding the bike up.  The approach we attempted was for me to free-wheel down a slope with my legs held wide of the pedals, then a separate exercise trying to pedal.  The theory is all easily understandable but I have not got as far as making my awkward uncoordinated limbs do quite what I ought to be doing.  So, the next plan is for me to repeat the exercises on my own and then get in touch with the instructor when I’m ready for another go.  But for the time being, I am – well – saddle sore, I think is the polite way of putting it – and my hip hurts from all that swinging my leg high enough to get it over the bike.  Poor me!

Then today, I have been playing golf.  Not something I ever thought I would do, but two of my friends unexpectedly took it up some time ago, and invited me to have a go on a driving range.  Today, two of us had a weekday free, so we went over to the Riverside Golf Centre to try a go at 9 holes of actual golf, instead of standing in a booth whacking balls as far as you can.

The centre is really approachable and will lend you clubs, so really is suitable for total beginners.  I suspect people with loads of experience would find the rookies everywhere frustrating.  It being a weekday, there weren’t many people around.  A group of four athletic studenty types followed us immediately we began, so we let them go ahead of us, and after that, it was probably another 40 minutes before anyone else started round, so we had plenty of freedom to just get on with it.

And actually, I wasn’t all that bad.  I wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination good at it.  I didn’t get anything approaching par on any of the holes, and spent a lot of time toing and froing on the greens.  But by and large I stuck to the fairways and avoided the water hasards and bunkers.  I managed to go 8 holes with the same ball before finally sending it into a pond.  Although I managed to fish it back out of the water, I then managed to lose it in a ballcleaning device at the start of the next hole by misunderstanding how it worked.

But by and large I had a really great afternoon, and I’m looking forward to the next opportunity to have a go.  I’m quite a way off from doing anything rash like investing in golf kit or clothing, particularly when the golf centre is more than happy to let you borrow clubs for free.

To be honest, at the moment, I am feeling much more positive about the golf than the cycling.  Which is a shame, because the cycling could be much more useful.

Tweets on 2008-06-11

  • A little saddle sore after yesterday’s bike lesson. Now off to play golf. #
  • Well, the golf went better than the cycling. #
  • @willhowells it’s still better than the “mac book air” which sounds like a chicken clucking. #
  • Wondering if it’s better for the planet to drive home for the reuseable shopping bags or just get plastic ones. #
  • Nicely timed. Finished bbq just a few mins before rain started. Secretly hoping rain stops delivery day. #
  • Childishly amused by a fold in the bread bag that turns Hovis Soft White into Hovis Shite. #

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Tweets on 2008-06-10

  • Freewheeling down a gentle slope – and feeling awfully klutzy. #
  • @jamesgraham Eurostar fine for simple city-to-city journeys but gets messy fast if you factor in connections. #
  • @jamesgraham Next month I’ll be twittering my attempts at getting from Nottingham to Munich by train! #
  • Listening to Mark Lawson interview himself on Front Row. #

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Tweets on 2008-06-09

  • About to start Full Council. Today we’ll be hearing directly from young people about the issues that affect them. #
  • Our question to Council reveals 28,000 council tax summonses are issued each year – but 23,000 withdrawn. #
  • Oh dear. I misheard. Is actually only 5,000 summonses withdrawn not 25,000. #
  • Googling “david cameron slaughter of the first born” #
  • @meryl_f trying to remember who said “If David Cameron reported he was in favour of the slaughter of the first born, the press would say…” #
  • @meryl_f “… excellent news for second children” #

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Excellent news for second children

Guido reports that Mad Nad is saying:

The frenzied attack against Conservative MPs and MEPs, orchestrated by and emanating from the left wing BBC and press has equalled that of an animal in its death throes. The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and left wing press become. The incoming Conservative government has many big dragons to slay, the BBC has to be the biggest.

I suppose we all have a view on the bias of the press and for many of us it’s related to our own positions.  If we’re left wing, we lament the right bias of the press and vice versa.

I am racking my brain trying to remember where I heard or read the following which I now paraphrase:

The right-wing press have given David Cameron’s policy vacuum an easy ride.  One gets the impression that if the Tories announced a new policy in favour of the slaughter of the first born, the Daily Mail would headline it “Excellent news for second children”

I can’t find it by googling, but I do keep coming across this beaut of a quote from Nottingham South MP Alan Simpson’s resignation letter.  I really ought to put this on an election leaflet at some point.

There are good people in the Parliamentary Labour Party; just not enough of them. Many MPs complain of a government that no longer listens to the party, but they dutifully walk through the division lobbies to vote for whatever regressive measures Downing Street asks for. At times I feel that colleagues would vote for the slaughter of the first-born if asked to.

My pointless battle with the Council

The Council has upgraded its email system.  Before it was using IMAP with Horde, and there were complaints.  The system was slow, people used up their mailbox quota in the blink of an eye, it wasn’t very user friendly.  If you were one of the favoured few allowed access to your email from home, you had to use a big RSA SecurID keyfob with an ever-changing 6 digit number on the front.  I’m not entirely sure what was in council email that could possibly need as much protection as internet banking!

Now that has changed, and they’re embarking on a rollout of Outlook Web Access, which I think is the same thing as MS Exchange.

And it’s pretty good.  Access from home is much better.  It has many new features, lots of which are ace.  It should help the officers and councillors be more productive, as it is simply easier to use, despite being more fully functional.  It’s more the sort of product other organisations use, so people joining us and leaving us will have useful transferable skills.

And like other Outlook versions, it also has a good group diary facility, meaning we can store our commitments and availability on the system, and it can help organise meetings by checking other people’s schedules for you.  This could really be helpful right across the council, where there is no shortage of busy people, and particularly helpful with councillors who have strange commitment patterns.

So, I was hoping it would integrate with the electronic diary I am already using on my Nokia E65, which for the past few years has been reasonably successful at managing my diverse commitments and making sure I turn up at most of the things I am supposed to do.

I was really hoping I could just make the Council system a third or fourth place where I can sync my data to.  If I did that reasonably frequently, the version of my diary on the Council system should be up-to-date enough to be useful, and could work as an extra backup just in case.  True it would mean sending details of my personal commitments too, but you can mark them as private, and it is useful to the Council because it explains when I am on other business and not available.

Technically, I think this is possible. There is a free download which connects Nokia business phones with the Outlook system.  Unfortunately, there is a policy in place which says this is a bad idea.  They don’t want personal devices connecting directly to the council system.

This is a little odd.  I am allowed to read my email and connect to my diary from any computer in the world.  That’s at least partly the point of the new system – easy, secure, remote access.  I can even use the web browser on my mobile phone to access the system, although the screen is a bit small for that to be really useful.  But it seems actually synching with the system is different, and not allowed.

The solutions suggested have been helpful, but stop short of what I want.  “Keep two diaries!” they suggest.  Which strikes me as a recipe for real confusion, not least because being a councillor is more a lifestyle than a job.  Council commitments can be any time from 7am-10pm six nights a week.

They have also offered me a Council mobile phone with data connection that would do everything my existing phone does.  On a one off basis, they don’t mind taking my existing data from my existing phone, putting it on the council system and from then on, only using a Council phone.

Now, there’s problems with this approach.  Nottingham City Councillors are offered a fair amount of kit if they want it to help with the job of being a councillor.  You can have a council telephone extension in your home, which I do have.  They offer mobile phones, a laptop or a computer.  I’ve resisted all of those because I already have one of each, and I don’t want another.  I don’t want two computers on my desk where one can only be used for council work and one for private, not least because the boundary between the two can be blurry.  This weekend, a Council director kindly came to a Lib Dem meeting to brief Lib Dem local party members about regeneration in Nottingham. Was that encouraged Council work or verboten party political work – or really a blend of the two?

So I have resisted taking on Council tech, because in almost all circumstances, I can use my own equipment to do the same job, and not have to worry about whether I am abusing council facilities when I also use it to do all the things I normally do with the internet, which if I’m honest consumes almost all of my leisure time.

The point at which this approach doesn’t work is when the Council ban personal machines from connecting to their network.  Which is an understandable position – their own machines they are responsible for keeping secure, virus free, and legal in terms of software licences. Other people’s machines are a different kettle of fish – close to Rumsfeld Unknown Unknowns.

But where that leaves me with my diary is uncertain. Hopefully this will be resolvable.

My crockery is judging me

The dishwasher is sitting there, and for the last few days it has been smugly concealing all the teaspoons we have.  Side plates ran out this morning, and bowls are nearly out, and yet the dishwasher is still not ready to run.

This is because I have had one of those bad, bad weeks where I have eaten out or had takeaway food nearly every night.

I’ve had a series of run-on meetings, where you start in the Council House at 10 or 12 (I’m back to nocturnal again this week, so there is no time to do anything before a noon meeting) meet, have maybe an hour off before another 4 or 5, followed by a resident or local party meeting in the evening starting at 7 or 7.30.  There isn’t time to get home before meetings, and certainly not time to cook.

So, I’ve been taking the easy way out.  I know I can sit in the carpark of a residents meeting, phone the chinese takeaway round the corner from me, and they will have delicious unhealthy food all ready for me to swing by the shop on the way home.  There is no waiting, no Nigel Slater syle 30 minute fast food, it’s just ready, and tasty, and convenient.

And expensive of course, comparatively. Although in a city like ours, there’s enough competition to make sure there isn’t too much in it.

And because I’ve not been using pots and pans, it’s taking forever to fill the dishwasher and we’re running out of the important things.  So there is yet another appliance sitting there telling me I am not running my life quite the way I planned to.