Amanda Taylor

Credit where credit is due.

Thank you to the County Highways Department, who have filled in a dangerous hole on Hills Road in record time.

Over the weekend, an eagle-eyed resident alerted me to a nasty hole in the pavement on Hills Road near the Long Road junction. It looked like a missing manhole cover and we were concerned about feet going into it by mistake, either human or animal. I reported it to Mr Ben Cross at the County Council Highways Department, got a reply back first thing this morning and by this evening it had been fixed!

All the more impressive considering the Highways people are busy at the moment mending all the potholes that have appeared this winter. Don’t forget to let us know about any that you notice, and we will pass on the details.

Ambitious plans to revitalise a Cambridge shopping centre will be unveiled on Thursday evening (March 11).

The scheme for the parade of shops at Wulfstan Way is being developed following consultation last summer with local residents (see picture), including one survey carried out at the local primary school.

Projects, costing around £250,000 which include landscaping, new paths, seating, lighting, public art and a new community noticeboard, will be put before members of the South Area Committee.

People at the meeting will have an opportunity to comment again, then councillors will decide which projects should be pursued to improve the Cambridge City Council-owned shops.

Queen Edith’s Councillor Amanda Taylor said: “We have listened to residents and schoolchildren who have come up with some excellent ideas of how to improve this local shopping centre.

“Now we want to move forward so that their ideas can be put into practice to revitalise this area, encouraging more people to visit the shops and enjoy this open space.”

The committee will look at introducing two-hour only parking at the centre in a bid to keep spaces exclusively for shoppers. They will also investigate longer opening hours for the shops and additional marketing support.

Anyone wishing to air their views on the plans is invited to attend the South Area Committee at Hills Road VI Form Collegte, starting at 7.30 p.m. There will also be a presentation by the police followed by an invitation to agree priorities for the next quarter, an update on environmental spending, and planning applications. Anyone is welcome to this meeting, which focusses on issues concerning Queen Edith’s, Trumpington and Cherry Hinton.

Cambridgeshire County Council’s Highways Department has promised thorough repairs to the potholes in our area next week.

Queen Edith’s Focus Team member Jean Swanson is keeping a list of all potholes in the Queen Edith’s area and passing them on to the County Council.  Help us make sure they don’t miss any by sending us the details of where the pothole is (nearby house number and street name, whether in the middle of the road or the cycleway) and what it’s like. You can contact Jean at jsswanson@ntlworld.com. You can also report it to Cambridgeshire County Council on line.

Well done to the person who did a citizen’s repair on two deep holes running across Rock Road, by filling them with rubble. The County Council has assured me that they are on the list of holes to be ‘cut and patched’ and promised to get the contractor to attend to them asap.

There are about 2,000 potholes across the county, so the repairs are going to take some time. I have never seen the roads so bad.

My colleague, Cllr Sebastian Kindersley, is in the news today calling on the Conservative-run County Council to take immediate and urgent action.

Did you know that only one in four women and girls in the UK ever cycles? I was staggered by this statistic, which came out of research carried out by Sustrans last year. It resulted in a 9,000 petition to the Minister for Transport asking for safer cycle routes.

The Cambridge Cycling Campaign (of which I am a member) is working on encouraging more women and girls to take up cycling as an everyday way of getting about.

They are putting on two events:

On Wednesday 10th March they will be showing the film ‘Beauty and the Beast — why British girls don’t cycle’.

‘Ride for Joy’ is a big fashion cycling event on Saturday 20th March. That’s NOT an oxymoron. The idea is to wear your ordinary clothes, but still be as stylish as you please. We’ll be riding around the centre of town, meeting  at Lammas Land at 2 p.m. and fetching up at Parkers Piece for a speaker later. For the latest news, see the Cambridge Cycling Campaign website. b

LOVE CAMBRIDGE, the city centre partnership, has teamed up with Cambridge Nespapers, Park & Ride and Stagecoach to launch ‘Wonderful Wednesdays’, a great deal to encourage people to visit Cambridge for shopping, culture, entertainment or just to enjoy our fine city.

Wonderful Wednesdays runs all through March and offers two Park & Ride bus fares for the price of one every Wednesday afternoon in March, on production of a voucher.

To download the vital voucher, visit Love Cambridge, phone them on 01223 457179, or email helen.hames@love-cambridge.co.uk

Along with other city councillors, I was asked if I would like to read my council agenda and papers on a ‘tablet’, with the aim of saving paper (and therefore money) as well as carbon usage.

We often have agenda papers of 500-1000 pages for some of our meetings, particularly the one I chair, where we scrutinize twelve different departments of the Council. An electronic tablet would certainly be lighter to carry, although I would still want to be able to scribble notes in the margin and use Post-It notes as navigation markers. And what if they were stolen or got damaged?

Given the inbuilt obsolescence of technical gadgets I fear that a tablet might be upgraded or become outdated before it paid for itself in terms of saved paper costs.

Any advice welcome! Thanks to those who have commented, who are confirming my scepticism…

UPDATE

My colleague Cllr Salah Albander, councillor for Trumpington, already has one of these devices, an I-pad brand, which he purchased second-hand, doubtless from someone who found it less useful than the marketing hype would suggest. I took the opportunity at last night’s council meeting (25th Feb) to photograph Salah using it and now add it here, to pacify those amongst my readership who require pictures to accompany the text.

Diana Manasseh, a pineapple grower from Ghana, was in Cambridge today telling us all about fair trade pineapple and mango farming and the tangible differences that the fair trade premium makes to the farmers and their families. It was fascinating to hear how the shopping choices we make in Cambridge affects the people who grow and harvest the crops.

Ghana is a poor country, and its challenges include a lack of basic amenities such as access to water and electricity, as well as health care and education. Fair trade offers producers a guaranteed price for their goods, and the money goes back into the community. Several of us listening were amazed at the sheer number of projects that have come about through the fair trade premium. I am probably missing some out, but for example, at Bomarts it has paid for: boreholes to provide clean drinking water, a toilet block, refurbished medical centres, a maternity wing at a clinic, school meals to encourage the children to stay at school longer (Cambridge’s newest restauranteur Jamie Oliver would surely approve!) and nursery equipment for the smaller children.

Bomart starts harvesting pineapples in March and mangos in May. Fair trade pineapples can be found on the shelves of four major supermarkets: Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons. My pineapples will taste all the sweeter now that I’ve glimpsed something of the lives of the people who grow them.

Diana’s a Fair Trade Certification Officer at Bomarts Farms and is here on a tour. It’s her first trip to the UK, and she said she was enjoying it, though it is her first experience of snow. She was speaking today at Emmanuel United Reformed Church in Trumpington Street Cambridge, at the invitation of the Cambridge Fairtrade Steering Group.

There was also an exhibition on 30 years of Traidcraft – I didn’t realize it had been around that long. When I first came across fair trade as a university student in 1980, there was only WDM tea and Campaign coffee, which you had to be . . . errr . . . committed to drink, if you know what I mean.

Nowadays the Traidcraft catalogue is a veritable cornucopia of goods, from tea and coffee (VERY nice, I start the day with two cups of their Indian Ocean) to chocolate, wine, cards and giftwrap, clothes, even holidays! And that’s just one fair trade supplier. I use www.ethicalsuperstore.com to find more sorts of product. My current problem is that although I have lots of fair trade clothes, they are nearly all summery and it’s too cold to wear them without something warmer on top. A shopping trip must be in order . . .

Diana is repeating her talk tomorrow night at King’s College, and on Thursday at Bourn Village Hall.

Police Community Support Officer David Jackson will be at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre on Wednesday 3rd March between 6 and 7pm to listen to people’s concerns or comments about the neighbourhood. He will have information about making your property secure, and how to register your property using a computer data base. Please do go along and let him know what your concerns are, and also let him know if you think the Force is succeeding in its pledge on responding to your call.

If you would like to receive regular updates of police activity in the area, sign up for the Cambridgeshire Constabulary E Cops newsletter by visiting http://www.cambs-police.co.uk/myneighbourhood/ecops/

I picked up an interesting piece of news at a Lib Dem meeting last Thursday. Local bus operator, Stagecoach, is so exasperated at the never-ending delays to the Guided Bus that it is letting everyone know.

Its fleet of 15 buses bought a year ago for the busway used to sport ads saying ‘I’ll be on the busway soon — will you?’ These strips were replaced last week with new ones plaintively asking ‘Will I be on the busway soon?’

Stagecoach bought the buses a year ago (for a cool three million pounds), but the opening of the busway seems no closer, with Cambridgeshire County Council in deep dispute with their contractor. Not surprising Stagecoach are narked.

Meanwhile, Conservative-run Cambridgeshire County Council is to spend five million pounds of taxpayers’ money just on legal costs . . . not to mention the additional costs of the busway itself, which is not surprisingly way over budget.

Councillors on the Cambridge traffic committee have approved a 20mph speed limit trial in the Wulfstan Way area. The trial will start in March and last for twelve months.

It will cover Wulfstan Way, Gunhild Way and Godwin Way, and the three cul-de-sacs in that area.

The Wulfstan Way area was chosen because it has a high number of pedestrians and cyclists, and several community facilities – churches, schools, doctors’ surgeries and shops.

There is a larger trial in Cambridge city centre but this is the only one out of town. Queen Edith’s is leading the way! Full details of the scheme can be seen on the County Council’s website.