Write-Place

Dear Mr Barron, Thankyou for the Rother Valley Parliamentary Newsletter, which I received this week. I am interested to read about the positive work that you have been doing within the Rother Valley community, including the backing of local business in Dinnington, justice for miners in their compensation payments and supporting schools in Wales, Anston and Rother Valley College. I wish you continued good luck in the future with these projects. Unfortunately, I am very concerned that you do not feel the need to mention the major upheaval and recent discussion regarding the secondary school and primary schools within your home town of Maltby. I appreciate that your workload is great and that you must prioritise with the issues that you handle, yet, as you well know, there are currently major areas of concern on a number of issues in Maltby, Bramley and Wickersley, which mainly come under the heading of “Consultation and Acting on Public Views (or not) ”. Your newsletter states that yo...

The Muddies , Maltby, Rotherham was once a small wood with a small pond.It lies on the outskirts of Maltby and is surrounded by housing and farm land. For several months of the year it is very wet and supports a variety of water amphibians including frogs and newts. The Great Crested Newt has used the land for breeding for at least forty years, but the land is under threat from development by RMBC. Residents in the area have at last persuaded RMBC to erect a fencing along one boundary, in an attempt to prevent damage caused by "youths" congregating there. This has and is continuing to be a long and difficult struggle on the part of residents. I am allowing myself some light relief today from the constant stream of emails and phone calls that this entails. I present : The fencing cometh (with apologies to Flanders and Swann) ‘Twas on a Monday morning that the Muddies fence began And Streetpride came along to clear the rubbish, with their van. They looked and saw the mess was ...

This is very hastily put together, so I apologise now for any errors, omissions or panic style writing. I write in haste. I have heard today that The Home Office is considering plans to force “social networking sites” such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to hold information about their users in an effort to foil the criminals/terrorists who communicate through them. All the information would be stored on a central database (and yes, possibly a few cds which get mislaid on trains, buses etc) as part of the proposed Intercept Modernisation Programme. These plans are to keep information about all telephone calls, emails, and internet visits made by everyone in Britain through a multi-billion pound system. Every picture we look at, every piece of music we listen to and every person we have emailed will be “on file”. The Data Retention Directive, a European Union statutory order already proposes that internet service providers in member states store communications for one year. Now I do not ...

Almost a year since local elections here, when I made observations on the election of BNP Councillors. Then, there was debate about how BNP policies might affect Rotherham and concerns shown by some. As it has transpired since then, the concerns most prevalent within the town (particularly, from personal experience, in Maltby, Bramley, Wickersley) are the blatant underhand doings of RMBC and their Labour councillors and the awful detrimental effect this is having on the community. Maltby Town Council is commonly known as a pantomime. The chairman is under investigation after allegations have been made against him by previous Labour councillors who now purport to be independent. The true independent councillors are being hounded out of their positions by false accusations – some by intimidation and aspersions about their religious beliefs. Verbal and physical assaults have been made on members of the public by MTC councillors. The Chief Executive at RMBC pass the buck in any way that t...

Today is World Book Day. I had always thought that it was held on 23rd April - Shakespeare’s birthday, St. George’s day and no doubt many other things celebrated but it seems it’s a “moveable feast” in this country and varies. After weeks of reading, but little writing (apart from in my head) I promised myself that I would devote today to some serious writing on one of the many projects I have in process, specifically the follow up to “Crossing Borders”. But I am in a moral dilemma, which is this: When is it acceptable to publish autobiographically about situations and family life, and at which point does it become airing your dirty laundry in public ? Julie Myerson, a novelist and columnist has published a book which tells of her family life, and includes details of her son (allegedly) smoking a “spliff”. The debate about this is whether this is a mother betraying her family and making money in the process or is it perfectly feasible for anyone to tell their own story and that of ot...

I have been AWOL from this blog for various reasons, over the past few weeks (yes ok, no one noticed) and I couldn't decide what to talk about as I launch myself back onto the blogging “scene”. I could voice my opinion on the economic situation, the financial in-discrepancies of the government and bank officials, the love of the celebrity culture that is becoming sordid and inhuman, immigration, texting the police instead of contacting them directly, the Middle East situation or the “court of public opinion”. But these are all very serious topics, and I feel the need to think of relative trivia at the moment. What is on my mind today is organic vegetables. I don’t mean that I have a yearning for them or am about to become vegetarian. Just that I bought and cooked an organic Savoy cabbage yesterday and am puzzled about it’s texture. Now I have to say that this is the first time that I have bought an “organic” vegetable, or more precisely, the first time that I have bought vegetabl...