A few weeks ago (actually on Election Day!) The Mercury published a rather misleading article concerning a Scrutiny Committee item that I had submitted regarding Freedom of Information requests.

 

Essentially The Mercury article stated that the item hadn't been discussed at the March meeting of Scrutiny - I replied at the time that the item had been fully discussed and provided a link to the information sheet for that meeting.

 

Recently Broxbourne Council has started to publish FOI requests in the form of a disclosure log on the Borough website - this is a direct result of the decision of the Scrutiny Committee to put this information into the public domain.

 

Taken into consideration with Broxbourne being ahead of the game in publishing payments over £500 made to it's suppliers, I think we can see that the Council is responding positively to increasing it's openness and accountability to the residents of the Borough.

In early May Judi's Dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness which progressed with frightening speed over the last few weeks.

 

In the early hours of Friday morning he passed away very peacefully whilst being cared for by the wonderful people at The North London Hospice.

 

For  the next week or two we will be pretty much out of circulation whilst we help Judi's Mum make all of the necessary arrangements.

 

We would like to say a huge thank you to everybody who has passed on so many kind words and offered so much support in the last couple of days.

Just got time to mention a new addition to the Clemerson Household.

 

On Wednesday we "acquired" a beautiful 8 week old black & white kitten that we have called Franki.

 

(I wanted to call her Frankenstein but Judi put her foot down - the reference is, if course, to Lister's cat in Red Dwarf).

 

So now we are, once again, a multiple cat household - it's fascinating to see how our very grumpy (but adorable) 16 year old cat is dealing with having such a lively youngster around. 

 

So far lots of growling & minor spats but not quite open warfare................

 

Anyway, this is Franki who already has decided that a basket full of clean towels is the best place to settle down for a rest and who has brought some real cheer into our home.

 

 

 

This is the first time for about a fortnight that I've found time to update our website.

 

Things are absolutely manic at the moment with a combination of work and, more importantly, almost all of our "free" time being taken up dealing with urgent family matters.

 

Website maintainance has been well down our list of priorities & is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future so updates will be very sporadic - sorry.

 

 

To expand on the previous post - I've been wondering why on earth Danny Alexander has been promoted from Scottish Secretary to Chief Secretary of the Treasury.

 

Alexander has no discernable career history in finance (arguably he has no discernable career history outside of politics full stop!) .

 

He is well known as being a supporter of the European project and British entry into the Euro.........(shudder!)

 

I suspect the promotion is entirely due to the lack of Conservative MP's in Scotland and the guaranteed Lib Dem cabinet seats!

 

Think about it - promoting Alexander was an easy choice.

 

He could be easily replaced as Scottish Secretary by one of the numerous other Scots Lib Dem MP's and, of course, the Conservatives could hardly put up a viable alternative owing to our lack of MP's "north of the border".

 

I am perhaps being unfair but I simply don't understand what aptitude, background or knowledge Mr Alexander can bring to his new role - to me his appointment is simply down to "an accident of geography".