Winter Learning

Now that it's warmed up a bit (and boy was it hot last weekend) it's easy to forget just how cold it was this winter. That is until you take a look at my garden, where several plants suffered much more than normal in the winters sub -10 conditions. If anyone's got any ideas how I can rejuvinate my Jerusalem sage then I'd love to hear it....

Anyway, the council have been thinking back, and there's a very interesting report been produced entitled Winter Learning. Click the link to read the full report.

What did we learn? It a nutshell, that the council met it's legal obligations, but it didn't meet public expectation. There are many sensible suggestions for improving the service, and even more importantly the communication - especially when it came to rubbish collections.

This raises the question: is it possible to meet public expectation? Most of the complaints and telephone calls I received about roads needing gritting were for minor estate roads. We can't honestly expect the council to be able to hold enough grit to keep these clear, and have sufficient gritters/drivers to do so. It would double council tax.

Interestingly, and the report picks up on this, I had many more complaints when the weather first turned bad than towards the end of the period. Had conditions got better? No, probably the opposite. But people had got more used to them, and learnt to drive in them - hence the end of the "it's not like this in France/canada/norway" comments. Or perhaps it's just because I proof that it was just like this in France....