Hello, and welcome to my web site.

I am Richard Baum, a Liberal Democrat Focus Team campaigner for St Mary’s ward, one of the three Prestwich wards on Bury Council. I represented the ward as a Councillor between 2007-11. 

I was also the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Bury North at the last General Election.

 I am 30 years old. Bury is my home and I am proud to be working to make it a better place. But aside from being a campaigner I am just a normal person trying to navigate through life. Admittedly, I do more than my fair share of this navigation at the Town Hall, and I write about it on here, but pleased don’t be put off! I live with my wife, our goldfish and our three-legged cat in our house here in Bury, and you can read about what we get up to and my views on what’s going on locally on the blog on this site.

About St Mary’s Ward…

St Mary’s ward is one of three wards in Prestwich. It starts at the M60 junction 17, and travelling towards Manchester, it’s everything on your right until you reach Rainsough to the south and the border with Salford to the west. It’s also everything on your left until you reach St Mary’s park to the south, and the Metrolink line to the east.

Like all of Prestwich, St Mary’s has a diverse community, including an above average number of Jewish residents. As someone from a Jewish background myself, I am proud to represent all the diverse sections of our community. 

Who am I, and where have I come from? 

I was born in Bury and have lived in Bury for most of my life. My family have been here since the 1950s. I currently live on Butterstile Close in St Mary’s ward with my wife Tamsin, who is a primary school teacher whom I married in August 2010. Before that we lived on Clifton Road in the ward for a few years. Apart from three years in Birmingham at uni, and a couple of years after that in south Manchester, I have been a Bury boy all my life. I became involved in the local community when I came back to live in Bury, and was elected to the Council in May 2007, as part of the Lib Dem group. I lost my seat in May 2011.

How can you get in touch and have your say?

One of the most important roles that a community campaigner has is to represent local people. If you have an issue with a local public service, or want your say on how services might change for the better, please get in touch. I will always reply to letters, calls or emails. Or you can leave a comment on any of my blog posts. The contact details are available on the right hand side of the page. 

What is my role outside of the Council? 

I support a wide variety of local organisations and groups. This includes local residents associations and community groups and I am a governor of Philips High School in Whitefield, and a former governor of Butterstile Primary School in my ward.

I am also a member of the Executive Committee of Bury Liberal Democrats and have served as Secretary and Membership Secretary of the local party in the past, as well as being an official Bury Lib Dem conference delegate.

My full time job is in the NHS, where I work for Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust as a Business Planning Manager.

What’s this website all about? 

I think it’s important that elected people keep in touch and are as approachable as possible. That’s what we were elected for, after all! I keep this site with that in mind.

I hope you enjoy the site, and particularly enjoy reading my blog. I try to make it an honest account of how a politically-active campaigner spends his time, as well as a place where you can read my thoughts on lots of things, political and (often) not political. Where there are meetings, I’ll offer my appraisal, and where there are issues you can have my take on them. It’s also a place where you can keep up to date with all the local and national Lib Dem news. Just follow the links on the main home page for this.

I hope you find the site entertaining and a useful way of keeping up to date with my work in the ward, as well as getting to know me a bit more. I try not to bash the opposition just for the sake of it, and a lot of what I write has little or nothing to do with politics anyway!

Please feel free to comment on what you read by sending me an email. I will always try to respond.

Website history 

I have kept a blog since August 2006, and you can see the old version (up to August 2007) here. The old blog made it into Iain Dale’s top 100 Lib Dem blogs in 2006 and 2007 and even got a favourable review from the New Statesman! The new blog has been featured on Lib Dem Voice several times, and was shortlisted for the snappily titled “Best Blog from someone in an Elected Public office” award at the Lib Dem blog of the year awards in 2007 and 2008. In its first full year the blog was visited nearly a quarter of a million times (of which at least 17 of these visits were made by people outside of my immediate family…), and in summer 2010 I had my millionth hit. The site now gets just sort of 10,000 unique visitors a month on average.

What do I do in my spare time?

With a full time job and this on the side, I don’t get a huge amount of free time. However, I am a member of Northern Air Hospital Radio, the hospital broadcasting service for North Manchester General Hospital, and help out there whenever I can as I have done for the last 10 years. I also like irritating my friends by taking pictures of them and posting them online (there is a link to my photo site in the “useful links” section of this site). I enjoy their company probably more than they enjoy mine, and  I spend most of my time with them.

I like a good book, and can sit through a film every now and again as well. I also like eating out, sadly moreso than I enjoy running these meals off, although I can be seen jogging around Prestwich and Whitefield on occasion. I am worryingly obsessed with TV’s “The West Wing,” and am developing a disturbing warm feeling when presented with a batch of Focus leaflets to deliver.

I really do hope you enjoy this site, and please get in touch.

Rick