Shaw Tory councillor Gary Perkins has been the council’s nominated director on Digital City during this fiasco while your other two Tory councillors are in the Cabinet.

PLEASE USE YOUR VOTES TO ELECT COUNCILLORS WHO WILL NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY.

• Campaign to attract funds into the ward for youth and community facilities.
• Work with schools and the community to improve road safety outside our schools.
• Work to implement traffic measures to discourage large vehicles driving through residential areas.
• Organise and help with litter pick ups and community activity to improve our open spaces.
• Protect our designated green spaces from the Tory presumption in favour of “sustainable development”.
• Defend community facilities from further cuts.
• Focus on open and accessible local representation so you know you can have your say in how your community is managed.

As long as you are on the electoral roll all you need to do on polling day (May 3^rd 2012) is to turn up at your polling station and give your name and address and you’ll be able to vote.

Finding your polling station:

The council website has details of polling stations that can be downloaded here in PDF format – you can download the free Adobe Reader software at http://get.adobe.com/reader/ if you can’t open the polling stations list.

You can contact your Shaw Labour team by telephone on 01793 230657 or via email on shaw@southswindonlabour.co.uk

SCHOOL PARKING A PROBLEM IN SHAW SAYS MIKE HEAL

Cartwright Drive in Shaw has been a topic of conversation at the school gates for a number of years, whether your child goes to Brookfield or Shaw Ridge.

The Tory council’s solution is no solution. Double yellow lines on both sides of the road from the roundabout along a quarter of Cartwright Drive does nothing. If anything it compounds the problem.

Mike Heal, Labour candidate for Shaw says “How long do the Council envisage it willbe before Shaw residents start complaining?” Mike continued “The fact is, it is residents who suffer as at times they cannot get on or off their own drives as parents park there to drop off or collect their children from school.”

Once again I am raising this issue, and this time I do it as a result of speaking to one family and hearing of a second who have had personal and painful involvement with them.   Both of the stories relate to children.  In one case a girl was riding her scooter on the path when her front wheel went into one of the deep potholes.  She went over the handle bar and smashed her face into the path resulting in not only cuts and brusies but damage to her jaw which left her unable to eat or speak properly for a number of weeks.
The family only wanted one thing form the council – that they make a proper repair to the path. This was believed to have been done until the recent cold weather got to work, adn the hole is breaking up again.

The second family saw their daughter out on her first bike learning to ride, the wheel again hit a pot hole and this time the girl fell off to her right side cuts and grazes were thankfully all she suffered.  When the family contacted the Council they were told that it would only be repaired as part of an ongoing programme. A few days later a Council employee did come to look at the pothole sprayed a yellow circle around the hole and left, the hole is still there but it does have a pretty halo!!

It is time to stop wasting money on unwanted projects and use taxpayers money on maintain our infrastructure properly.

When did Swindon Borough Council know about this change?  The Swindon Family Information Service just passes people looking for childminders back to the national service! 

This is a message fro the  Swindon Sure Start Partnership sent on 25th March 2011.

Family Information Directory Online

“We have been advised by the Department for Education at short notice that the national online childcare finder service available on Directgov at http://childcarefinder.direct.gov.uk/childcarefinder will no longer be funded by central government and will close on 31st March 2011. This means that parents will no longer be able to find information using this site. Parents who look for this service will be directed to the Family Information Service at their Local Authority.”

This seems to be part of closure of the national Family Information Directory.  This was an extensive online signposting which aggregated data from local authorities and national organisations in England and then published it on a range of websites to enable parents,  families and those who work with them to search for information about childcare and family services.  It contained pages with assistance for mums, dads, grandparents, lone-parents, parents and families of disabled children.

How can the Government pull the plug on this vital service, with almost no notice, and at a time which local councils clearly cannot provide a replacement?

The cut of 30% in funding for Surestart means  that their website simply cannot provide this service.

Clearly the anti-cuts protests of 400,000 demonstrators in London yesterday are falling not only on deaf ears but on uncaring ears.

Mike Heal, Labour Candidate, Shaw and Nine Elms.