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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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11th November '07
Bideford has a new Police Sergeant in the form of Simon Bassett. He has served 26 years in the force including stints at both Barnstaple and Ilfracombe and he has two sons who have followed their father. I mention this as Sergeant Bassett turned up to the last town council meeting both to introduce himself and to report on crime in the town and area. As usual crime was relatively low even in relation to the rest of North Devon which itself isn’t a black spot. Given this I suspect the recent front page report where our MP went on about local crime was more to do with possible electioneering rather than reality. One thing Sergeant Bassett did stress was the importance of reporting crime – especially low level stuff like graffiti. If it isn’t recorded then no resources are devoted to tackling it – though luckily Bideford is to get a group of 6 to 9 people who, as part of their community sentence, will be cleaning up graffiti around the town. Councillor Tony Inch did ask whether if the public drinking ban was extended to all streets in the town would it help in the fight against crime? He received the reply that the police are to look at the crime figures to see if this might help. Councillor Andy Powell came up with a novel suggestion that the PCSOs (Police Community Support Officers) be stationed outside the houses of known drug dealers as a deterrent - but the Sergeant had had to say this wasn’t possible as the PCSOs were specifically set up to patrol the town and make daily contact with as many members of the public as they could. These question and answer sessions are a very valuable part of the council’s work but if you would like to attend one then the police do stage public ones – look out for announcements in the press or to posters
You probably saw the various news articles on the expenses claimed by MPs, and as I have quoted the sums for district councillors it seems only fair to look at how much Geoffrey Cox our MP received. On top of his basic salary of £60,277 (+ pension) he also claimed £143,262 in expenses last year which put him 207th out of the 645 MPs. For this sum he managed to speak in 14 debates which, according to Parliamentary figures is ‘below average’. Again ‘below average’ was his voting record – he voted in 63% of Parliamentary votes. Mr.Cox does, of course, have a lot to do and I believe he still practices as a well-paid barrister in London but only voting in 6 out of 10 debates might strike one as somewhat underwhelming. Most of this material is freely available on a free website www.theyworkforyou. Interestingly when I first mentioned this site only a handful of people were following Mr.Cox’s parliamentary career – now 90 are tracking him whenever he speaks. Modern communications have certainly done wonders for democracy.
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