Paul Jenkins – Ramsbottom Ward Candidate

  

Liberal Democrat Ramsbottom Ward Candidate - PAUL JENKINS

 

The clock is ticking… 

 As election day looms closer, some residents have asked if they can have a little information about what the campaign for the Lib Dems consists of. As we don’t have the financial resources to be able to get printed literature to people en masse, the internet will have to do! (Why publish to 5000 homes, when the whole planet could get access instead??).  I shall be trying to ‘do an Obama’ and point people in this general direction as much as I can!

Paul Jenkins 

The local candidate 

Paul Jenkins has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Ramsbottom. Living locally in the area of Holcombe Hill, Paul has been a Liberal Democrat campaigner for over fifteen years. As a drama teacher and father of two young boys, Paul’s main priorities are for high standards in Education. He is a governor at St Andrew’s Primary and pupil voice co-ordinator within his secondary school, working with young people to ensure that their views are represented within the community. 

Other areas that Paul would like to see gaining more attention from Bury council include improved leisure facilities in the area (he completed the London Marathon in 2008 and is a keen amateur road runner) and the development of more community arts based activities in the borough. Finally, Paul would like to see the heritage status of Ramsbottom maintained and would actively look at ways of improving publicity about the area to increase trade for local businesses based in the “Jewel in the Crown” of the borough. 

As well as this, local Liberal Democrats in Bury have identified four key areas to improve the local council. 

1 – Get the Basics Right
We’ll concentrate on making sure that the basic services that everyone needs work well. This will include spending more money on street repairs, getting bin collections working and better gritting. 

2 – Better Place to Live  

We’ll make sure everything we do helps make our towns and communities better places to live. Our first priorities will be improving our environment and making people feel safe from crime. This will include providing extra community policing in each town of Bury. 

3 – Power to the People 

We’ll cut back Town Hall bureaucracy and give power back to local towns and citizens. Everything we do will be open and fair and involve local people. We will immediately give back the right of people to ask questions at every meeting of the Council.    

4 – More Money in Your Pocket  

We will keep Council Tax as low as we can, and make what Bury Council does great value for money for local people. 

Thank you for your time 

Paul Jenkins 

Ramsbottom Liberal Democrats

And we’re off….

Shleepy 

This post WILL be short as I’m dog tired already, and we’re only at the end of day two. Maybe working till 11:30 last night stuffing envelopes for a supporters mailing wasn’t great in terms of my grabbing enough shuteye…

This could also have something to do with being up at the crack of dawn to speak to a researcher from Radio Five Live about the possibility of having some sort of local voice from the Lib Dems on their Breakfast programme that this morning came from Bury . She nervously enquired with her producer, who politely informed me that Sarah Teather MP was going to be doing our bit for adding balance to their programme from London. (Which to me defied the point of the Beeb sending a whole crew up here anyway…) And after I’d got up to get down there for 6.15am as well – how rude! Still our girl Sarah did well, even convincing an online listener to switch allegiance live on air! Having caught her speech at confidence, she is a very safe pair of hands and good at getting people on side.

Nominations are now finally in for the candidates in the locals (I am now officially ’The Ramsbottom candidate’)  and now we have to have our candidate here in Bury North’s parliamentary papers to be done as soon as possible. Will these pointless pieces of paperwork ever come to an end?? By the way if you haven’t had the time as yet to discover why you’d be silly enough to vote anything but Lib Dem in Bury North as yet, I suggest that you check out Richard Baum, our candidates website. He’s a man on a mission!

As you can tell, now Gordon’s hit the green light, everyone’s on the go – but trying to fit all that in with two kids on school holidays is not that easy either. I’m feeling a little guilty that I’m not out there with the troops tonight, but have been filling my time with my real job (exam marking waits for no man!) and doing the artwork for a campaign leaflet in one of our target wards. With only 29 days left (hooray for the facebook countdown calendar!) there are still plenty of jobs to be done. Including of course waflling into cyberspace for no good reason…

Chuckle

To finish I thought I’d share this with you, as it made me laugh at just the right time today. Sums up everything we already knew…  

I've seen many of these floating around, but this was the first to make me chuckle out loud...

An old grump writing to moan.

 Grumpy

 Last week I sent this letter to the Bury Times. Stuff not being done properly makes me grumpy and I’d had enough. They’ve decided not to publish (as yet) so you may as well have a gander at my chirpy, yet damning verdict of waste collection services in dear old Rammy.  

 

A blue bin with rubbish to be recycled in it - for all you Visual learners out there....

Dear Editor…

I have held off from writing this letter for many months now, as I wanted to see just how ludicrous things would get before I put pen to paper. I think we may possibly have reached the pinnacle now, so I feel confident that things couldn’t possibly get any more disorganised with our waste recycling here in Ramsbottom. 

At the end of last year, a new recycling calendar was put through our door after the Conservative council decided to change the delivery routes to ‘improve’ things for us all. Two weeks later, I received a different calendar in the post (this time in a costly envelope with a first class stamp) with a note to destroy the old one as it had been delivered to our route by mistake. A glitch? No, it was just the beginning. 

 On the first run, they missed us completely. But I bit my tongue – we’re classed as a farm route and I can understand why the blue bin might be missed as we’re classed as being in an ‘awkward’ place (that’s the call centre’s description – not mine). 

Then came the snow. Lack of grit equals lack of road. Lack of road equals lack of collection. It was the beginning of February before my Christmas wrapping paper was on its way. At least this time though they got it right for the blue bin, but mucked up the paper. Bags were taken – but not replaced. Oh dear. More phone calls, new bags delivered. 

February was mostly fine, we all thought we’d settled. Until we had the same problem last week when the green bags were not replaced after collection again. Personally I’m ok, as I managed to pull one out of a ditch at the bottom of my hill that must have fallen off of the truck – I have no idea how many others may be bagless. 

And then to top it all off, today I received a copy of the recycling calendar – the same one I received three months ago in the post! What a waste of money, time and my patience. When the Conservative council promised to make things ‘easier’ by changing the routes, was this really what they had in mind? 

All it means is that it has strengthened my resolve to become a councillor myself, and I would like to thank the frustrated residents of my street for offering to nominate me in the upcoming election. I hope I would never make as much of a mess of something which should be so simple. 

Yours sincerely 

Paul Jenkins 

Ramsbottom Liberal Democrats