Video of Bracknell MP Andrew MacKay's meeting

Look Mum, I'm on the telly! Well, er OK a web clip courtesy of GetBracknell website.

This is footage of some of the questions from Andrew MacKay's meeting on Friday that I blogged about on Saturday and includes some of his responses and the reaction of the audience.

I am the chap at the front of the balcony who asks the second set of questions.

It was following this meeting that Mr MacKay decided to step down (after a call from Mr Cameron who one suspects had been tipped off about the real feeling in the hall).

Hattip to Liberal Burblings and GetBracknell

Bracknell Blog

A new blog has recently been launched in my local area (Bracknell in Berkshire) that I am involved with which is aiming to focus primarily on local issues.

If you live in Bracknell, Sandhurst, Crowthorne or and of the surrounding areas you might want to get involved: http://bracknellblog.blogspot.com/

Campaigning in Bracknell

I spent a few hours on Saturday in Bracknell town centre campaigning with members of my local party. We were selling jumble on the Bandstand and myself and two other members (including Ray, the PPC) walked all around the centre handling out leaflets and talking to people.

I was very encouraged by how many people were willing to take leaflets and only one person ostentatiously screwed it up and dropped it on the floor! I was also pleasantly surprised to see how willing many people were to listen to what we had to say. Bracknell and Bracknell Forest Council are Tory fiefdoms with little other representation and lots of people were saying to me that this is not right and that some decent opposition was needed. They took the words right out of my mouth!

There was a BNP stand right next to our stall in the centre with a few volunteers and they seemed to attract a reasonable amount of interest. That should just make us all the more determined to campaign hard ourselves and make sure we counter their arguments. There was an interesting point where who I assume was a BNP member started shouting questions about the EU at us where he seemed to be blaming us for the fact that Peter Mandelson got paid one million pounds when he ceased to be an EU commissioner. I am not sure why he thought we were responsible for this! He also had a bee in his bonnet about the EU accounts and the fact that they have never passed an audit. I have written about this before myself and am as concerned as anyone that the EU structures are reformed to root out corruption and problems of this nature. Again, I am not sure why he thought we were responsible for this.

Still, all in all it was a very good day and I enjoyed pounding the pavements in the traditional style.

Wasting time?

My colleague Oranjepan from Reading List has passed on some information about a consultation regarding recycling for businesses in Central Berkshire. It encompasses Bracknell Forest where I live and also Reading where I run a business from.

I have to say that any movement in this area is welcome but it has taken long enough! We have run one of our offices in Reading for a year and a half and when we first moved in we discussed at length with the office management company about recycling and were told that there were no facilities. At all. Latterly, the management company itself has implemented an informal paper recycling scheme but anything else like plastic bottles, cans etc. are our own issue. It would be easy to just put them in the main waste (which goes to landfill) but I collect up the plastic bottles and take them home every few weeks to put in our domestic recycling system. This of course has been far from satisfactory.

Another point I would like to make is that as a director and manager of a company slap bang in the middle of the affected area, I have not heard anything about this consultation. I only know about it through my Lib Dem contacts as I am an activist. Most people are not however and therefore as the publicity about this seems to have been low to non-existent, I expect they will get very little feedback and people will be unaware of it. They need to publicise this sort of thing much more widely.

Anyway, as we have been waiting so long for something like this, my feedback is to get on with it!

Councillor Glenn Goodall has also posted on this here.