Local councillor Sam Hearn's blog about his week
Cllr Sam Hearn who represents the Riverside ward in Chiswick, is chairman of the Chiswick Area Forum. He has written this account of his week as a busy local councillor
Friday 27th May: Received the formal notification that the June meeting of the Borough Council has been cancelled because of a lack of official business. This leads me to idly speculate just how many Borough meetings we actually need in order to efficiently conduct the democratic business of the Council. There are no other council meetings in my diary for next week. My WiFi connection keeps “falling over” and phone calls on the Virgin helpline lead to several pleasant but ultimately unproductive conversations.
Saturday 28th May: Our WiFi connection remains at best “vague”. My general lack of technical knowledge just adds to the frustration. Turning the modem on and off and depressing the restart button seem about as useful as sacrificing a cockerel and smearing its blood on “the hub” although I must admit that I have not yet tried this. A constituent contacts me to complain about the traffic congestion in Stilehall Gardens and Wellesley Road. Clearly something needs to be done. Some expert traffic management advice is needed.
Sunday 29th May: A constituent and old friend tells me that her was car stolen from outside her home but thankfully the Police quickly located it. However three weeks later, despite numerous phone calls, the car is still being held forensic checks. The disruption to this lady’s life is enormous and the uncertainty both annoying and debilitating.
Monday 30th May: Chasing up old casework. I have not received a reply to one request that I made in February. This is embarrassing for me and I just hope that it is a not the tip of an iceberg across the Borough.
Tuesday 31st May: The Virgin Media engineer arrived dead on 8.00am and identified and fixed the hardware problem. I see that my concerns about rubbish in Loraine Road have been now been properly logged with Recycling. This is an overlapping problem since Hounslow Highways are manfully trying to sweep up the mess left by the rubbish collectors and some residents.
Wednesday 1st June: A lady (my daughter tells me that I should say woman) in Oxford Gardens emails to complain about the felling of two further trees in her street. Earlier she had quite rightly complained that a new sapling had died and that she was receiving no responses to her emails to Hounslow Highways asking for it to be replaced. The treatment of the street scene in Oxford Gardens has really been pretty shoddy. The ripping up of the paving slabs and their replacement with tarmac has changed the character of the street.
Thursday 2nd June: A “thank you party” at my house this evening for the volunteers who helped produce such an excellent result in the Chiswick Riverside Ward for Zac Goldsmith and Tony Arbour. Several new faces have now joined the serried ranks of Riverside Ward’s battle scarred housecallers. Interestingly discussion of the Referendum was muted until late in the evening when numbers had dwindled and alcohol and good company had conspired to loosen tongues a little. One keen Brexiter expressed surprise at the extent of the support for “Leave” that canvassing by him and his colleagues was revealing. Support appeared to have no obvious correlation with respondents’ ages or previous political persuasions. I of course could not possibly comment.
June 3, 2016
