Category Archives: Wandsworth
Chugging chuggers
Imagine I stopped you on the street, perhaps applying a bit of gentle pressure, persuaded you to give me your bank details, then used them to take over £500 from your account without really telling you what it was going towards; you would have good reason to think you have been mugged. Yet last night’s [...]
How to involve people in local democracy: include booze
I love this story from a New Hampshire council meeting. (The article disappears behind a paywall eventually, so here’s a PDF version.) Essentially protesters against the town rules against street drinking decided to protest by turning a council meeting into a drinking game – having a drink whenever certain phrases were uttered. About six members [...]
Prove me wrong on surgeries…
While I’ve often complained that surgeries are not that useful I still do them. So if you want to be my first visitor in something like two years I’ll be manning the councillor surgery session in Battersea Library tomorrow (Saturday 21 August) from 10am to 11am. No appointment necessary, just show up. Like the Filipino [...]
A level results…
I don’t have any pictures of attractive young girls celebrating their results. Which partly explains why The Daily Telegraph stubbornly remains better read than this blog. But congratulations to all those celebrating today, and commiserations to those who are not. I’ll hold my own counsel on whether exams are getting easier. But today has made [...]
Going to the library in my boxers
Of course I didn’t actually go to the library in my boxers* But I have discovered that Wandsworth is lending ebooks. Not on any massive scale, and technically it’s the London Libraries Consortium rather than Wandsworth as such. But, whatever, there’s a smallish selection at library.wandsworth.gov.uk As a geek I’m quite excited about it. But [...]
A councillor’s life…
I’m currently reading “More Blood, More Sweat and More Tea”, the second book from the Random Acts of Reality blog of an east London emergency medical technician (ambulance driver, to most, although he’s in the process of moving back to nursing). While it’s strange reading a blog in that way (and both his books are [...]
Whither Battersea? Or anywhere?
I love things like this. It is the geek in me. The map above is from a project called Boundaries by Tom Taylor (and thanks to Robert Brook for bringing it to my attention). It essentially takes the data that flickr users input when they upload their photos. While there’s complicated background to it which [...]
Community Advice Day
The council is again running a Community Advice Day in the Civic Suite on Wandsworth High Street. The day sees a range of people from within the council, other public sector organisations and charities come together to provide information and advice to local residents. Much of the focus this year is on income maximisation and [...]
Dog control orders are finally here!
I’ve celebrated the arrival prematurely on at least a couple of occasions before, but, finally Wandsworth’s dog control orders have come into effect. The delays ranged from misunderstandings (many people at first thought we were banning dogs from all parks) which caused a re-consultation, to technicalities (the cold weather meant the signs we need to [...]
Somebody nicked my fridge
For a few years we were a two fridge family. This was, I have no hesitation in confessing, extravagant and bad for the environment. It was also entirely unintentional. When we moved to our current house we, of course, brought a lot of stuff with us, including our own fridge freezer. We’d failed to appreciate [...]
