Julie & David's update on local and other news

26 Sep 2020

Dear friends, here is our latest update covering what we hope are interesting developments since our last update on 12 September.

We've slightly tweaked the headings to keep things fresh, let us know what you think.

Please see our plea for some more Focus deliverers.

Borough news (some good news…):

One of Epsom's "claims to fame" is the sacrifice that Emily Davison made. Thanks to some hard work by various residents a statue should be unveiled in the Market Square for next year's International Women's Day. See http://emilydavisonproject.org/2020/09/23/we-have-done-it/
One of our local cultural events is back - the Satisfied Eye film festival will run from 9 to 11 October, see https://satisfiedeye.com
And still on film, Rosebery Park was due to be the site for some filming on Tuesday 22^nd for an ITV show called Finding Alice

Borough news (some not so good news…):

There has been a spate of catalytic converter thefts from cars (often Prius's or Jazz's) in the Borough - including Sainsbury's car park. Be careful.
There have been 26 new COVID cases in the Borough over last fortnight. Rate of growth is less than national, but Spelthorne is looking worrying.
Despite many protests, Surrey County Council (SCC) has gone ahead with the narrowing of the road/widening of the pavement by Wilkos. It will be in place for "at least a month" to "gather data". Let us know what you think.
At the Strategy & Resources meeting this week some goals for future cuts to the 2021/22 Council budget were tabled. David did not support them as they lacked overall coherency.

Other local and County news:

If you have any investments in Hutchison Ports, David suggests selling, given our MPs new role advising them 1 day a week for £100k pa!
The LibDem group at SCC have organised a petition against the cuts to the fire service in Surrey. The petition will be debated at SCC on 29 September, see https://petitions.surreycc.gov.uk/FireSOS/
At the Planning Committee this week, approval was given to the proposed residential development on the Atkins site. This was a difficult decision with many conflicting considerations.
We will be distributing a new Focus in next week or so - if you could help in this (ie have some gentle exercise walking around the Borough pushing leaflets through letterboxes) please let Julie know at jorrisam@aol.com

Wider issues:

An interesting development in democracy is the potential role of "citizens assemblies" to consider complex issues (since our MPs are generally useless at this). One considering climate change reported recently at https://tinyurl.com/ERSclimate-change
The much-trumpeted UK Covid app is now available at covid19.nhs.uk/ - it will be interesting to monitor the take-up. Given the failure of the manual track & trace systems (too much outsourcing to private companies?) this may help.
It seems that Johnson's idea for Brexit involves passports to enter Kent!! (well, documents for lorries anyway). It gets more and more farcical.
It is the LibDem virtual conference right now. We are both registered to "zoom in" but not sure if we'll have time. Please be wary when reading any press reports - sadly much of the media enjoys making things up!

All the best, and please stay safe

Julie and David

Saturday 26 September