Richard Baum

Apologies for a couple of days with no bloggings. Or, if you prefer, apologies for returning when you may have thought I’d gone for good. I haven’t gone for good, although things might be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks as I get hitched and then disappear off on honeymoon.

My own wedding (coincidentally taking place at precisely the same time as my fiancee’s) is next Saturday, but tomorrow is a dummy run in the form of another wedding to which we’ve been invited. I did consider dressing in next weekend’s clothes to get a practice session in, but feel that may somewhat spoil the day for tomorrow’s real bride and groom.

In amongst preparing for the nuptials and doing my day job there has been casework and the like to occupy me as well. As your local councillor it’s my job to help if you’ve got any issues with council services. This week there’s been a mixed bag, with everything from problems with licensed premises, to vandalism and anti-social behaviour, to the perennial favourite - the missed bin. The missed bin concerned was in fact my own, and it wasn’t missed so much as wrecked by the bin wagon, which took not only its contents but also its lid when the thing was emptied on Monday! A spectacular success for the neighbourhood foxes, who were given free reign until it was replaced, but sadly no good for me. Thankfully it was speedily dealt with.

The same couldn’t be said for the residents of Belvedere Court, a couple of whom contacted me earlier in the week to say that their paper recycling bags hadn’t been collected and now presented a fire hazard. A touch over-dramatic in my view, since in order to be a fire hazard someone would need to set them alight, and if someone was setting things alight in the flats then they’d succeed whether there were bags of paper there or not. But still, a query is a query, so I made sure that the Council got onto it.

I was also amused by a couple of national things this week. Ed Miliband’s ridiculous claim to have been against the Iraq War in 2003 but to have forgotten to mention it at the time was disappointingly opportunistic, although this naked opportunism was sadly and wildly outdone by the Labour Party as a whole which has decided to campaign against AV in the referendum on changing the voting system which will happen (all being well) next May. Labour were actually the only party to campaign FOR it in the election, but now that the coalition (including the evil Lib Dems, now more evil than the Tories apparently) are proposing it, they are against. After 13 years away from opposition they appear to have forgotten that they aren’t meant to oppose everything, just the bits they don’t agree with.

But even electoral reform can’t distract me from weddings, and that’s what will keep me occupied for the time being. When I left work today my colleagues had tied balloons to the car with such uplifting slogans as “under the thumb” and “good lucj - you’ll need it” scrawled on them. With such sentiments in my mind do I leave for the weekend to return on Sunday night only five short days away from getting married. And, if those five days reflect anything that I have learned with dismay recently, they really will fly by.

Rick