Our Council Planning Committee (LIB DEMs)  need to be utterly ashamed of themselves.
They clearly don't care about this bit of town or the environment!

We need better transport and underground parking.  Then this area cound be houses and parks!!
View Houses before Retail/Carparks in a larger map

Heads and Governors in Cambridgeshire schools who are falling over themselves to take up the new academy status are either naive or highly deceitful. They paint a picture of themselves as standing up for local schools and communities. They have either swallowed or are promoting David Camerons 'localism' mantra - which is a euphemism for handing public assets to the private sector and opening up new markets.




The academies bill is pushing schools to set up as businesses and it endangers the whole concept of the community schooling. Schools will be competitng against one another and will sink or swim. To be successful the new school businesses will have to expand to meet economies of scale, those that don’t will be taken over. The accountability of schools to their parents and students, already limited, will be virtually nonexistent and those with specific educational, emotional and behavioural needs will feel it hardest.



The real term funding for all schools is being reduced and that is partly why some heads are now fighting each other over the few extra scraps being top sliced to academies. The ‘extra’ funding is comming from other schools and central services. Many Schools will still struggle and the Governors, many of whom are already out of their depth, will now be personally responsible and fearing the loss of their own houses will hand the school over to others to run. This might not be the next School up the road but one of the vast edu-businesses who are licking their lips at the prospect of running hundreds of schools for profit. Heads and governers who value education as a right should resist the acadamies shock docterine and stay with the local autority and fight to make it better.

http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/

It appears that Julian Huppert is yet another one who does not understand the basic issues around the Postal Service.  He says in his response below that the volume of mail is dropping.   This is wrong on two accounts. Firstly if he cared to visit the sorting or deliveries office in cambridge and spoke to those who deliver the mail he would find out that they are working at capacity. Secondly the volume of mail on the UK road (across all carries) has massively increase.  It doesn't take a genius to work this out.  Junk mail is on the rise and royal mail currently delivers this at a loss or at best the profit from this service goes to down sorting houses that are privately owned. And of course the internet, through online shopping, has increased the need to delivery and distribution networks.

Julian Huppert spent all day yesterday discussing cycling in the city of Cambridge yet he can not grasp that hundreds of different mail distributors add traffic to our roads and undermine the public mail infrastructure that is the most efficient and environmentally sound way of getting post to our doors. 

With regards the Pension - well Gordon Brown took 5billion out of the postal scheme in 1997 and has not put it back.  Postal workers, like everyone else deserve good pensions.

From the Office of Julian Huppert 

Member of Parliament for Cambridge 

House of Commons, 

London 

SW1A 0AA 

Telephone 01223 304421

 Email julianhuppertmp@gmail.com 

 02 March 2011

 Dear Tom, 

 Thank you for contacting me about the future of the postal services.

The Government published the Postal Services Bill on the 13th October
which sets out its vision for the future of the Royal Mail and the
Post Office. I understand that there are concerns over the proposed
changes. However, I hope you will allow me to explain why I believe
these are changes for the better.

The Royal Mail and the Post Office are two different businesses, which
require different approaches. 

The network of over 11,500 Post Offices
is enormously valued by the public. The Liberal Democrats have
campaigned against post office closures for years. That is why the
network is not for sale and there will be no further programme of
closures. Instead, new ideas have been proposed to sustain this unique
national asset. The Government is proposing that, in time, the Post
Office could be converted into a mutual structure. This would mean
handing the ownership and running of the Post Office over to
employees, sub postmasters and communities, in a similar manner to
success stories like the John Lewis Partnership or the Co-operative
Group. 

 The Royal Mail, which collects and delivers your letters, is facing
business environment that is vastly different from twenty or thirty
years ago; mail volumes are far lower in the digital age, there are
more competitors who have been able to devise new, more efficient
working methods and there is scope to integrate new technology. The
only way to save it for the future is to bring in new private capital
to drive modernisation. The Postal Services Bill will also provide the
employees of the Royal Mail with greater security, over their pensions
and also the future of their employer. 

They are facing a multi-billion
pound pension deficit but pensions will now be safeguarded in a public
sector scheme.
Overall, I believe that the Postal Services Bill is the best way to
secure the future of these two organisations by enabling the Royal
Mail and the Post Office to meet the new challenges they face in
today’s world.

I hope this helps to clarify my position but please feel free to get
in touch if you wish to discuss this matter further. 

Yours sincerely, 

Julian Huppert MP 

Member of Parliament for Cambridge

Labels: Environment, Huppert, Pensions, Royal Mail

Following on from our successful initial meetings in July and October, at which there was a consensus to move forward with a local electoral project, we will be meeting again on Monday November the 2nd. A room in the Friends Meeting House (Jesus Lane) has been booked from 7.30pm - 9.00pm. The items we agreed to discuss are a manifesto, a constitution and a name. A draft document has been produced tofor the meeting. If you would like a copy or want to submit other documents then please contact us.

Please invite other people to the meeting who you feel would be sympathetic to the project. If you can't make it to the meeting then let me know and I will make sure that notes of the meeting are sent to you.

Please watch this video and then come to the stop the war meeting and Demo (see below)



Thursday 15th October, 7.30pm
Cambridge Stop the War Public Meeting
Afghanistan – Troops Home
Keynes Hall (enter via Kings Lane)
Speakers:
Adrian Clarke – Falkland’s veteran and Fire Brigades Union Regional Secretary
Daud Abdullah – Muslim Council of Britain
Andrew Burgin – Stop the War

Saturday 24th October
Stop the War Demo
TROOPS HOME FROM AFGHANISTAN
London
Coaches from Cambridge £3/£7/£10
Call: 07841657222

Following on from our successful initial meeting last July we agreed to meet again on Tuesday October 6th. A room in the Friends Meeting House (Jesus Lane) has been booked from 7.30pm - 9.00pm. The items we need to discuss are:

Are we agreed that a united left alternative in the up and coming general election and the local elections in Cambridge is a good project for us?;
What would be the programme such a united left would stand on?;
Are there any other initiatives we could jointly work on?

Please invite other people to the meeting who you feel would be sympathetic to the project. If you can't make it to the meeting then let me know and I will make sure that notes of the meeting are sent to you.

Protest at Labour Party Conference in Brighton
SUNDAY 27th SEPTEMBER for:
JOBS,PEACE & EDUCATION

Cambridge TUC Coach leaves Queens Road (The Backs) at 8.30am – return journey leaves Brighton at 5.30pm

Tickets Cost £2 Unwaged/£5Waged/£10 Solidarity (get your group or union to sponsor seats) Contact: woodcocktom@hotmail.com

the result is in! We stood under the slogan 'make the bankers pay – defend jobs, public services and the environment'. Our result shows that where we put up a left fight we can win support. We need to build an alternative all over the country in order to build the resistance and challenge the major parties and the fascist BNP.

Kilian Bourke (Lib Dem) 34.4% 829
Chris Freeman (Labour) 20.46% 493
Tom Woodcock (Independent) 17.63 % 425
Phil Richards (Green) 12.32% 297
Sam Barker (Conservative) 11.2% 270
Marjorie Barr ((UKIP) 3.98% 96