1000 Posts!

This is the 1000^th post on my website.

If I had been told at the end of January 2007, when I posted the first contribution, that I would still be blogging away over 7 years later I would probably have been surprised.  Despite one’s best intentions, keeping what amounts to an electronic journal going is sometimes a bit of a struggle, and indeed there have been times when I have been tempted to stop.  Somehow or other however the urge to communicate has won the day, and looking back over the entries I am pleased about that.

It seems that the site has been read and on the whole enjoyed by a good number of people, both locally and as far afield as the U.S and Japan, and I now have a lovely illustrated record of my local government life in and around South Suffolk, plus reminders of some holidays and cultural excursions elsewhere.

The earliest posts from the early months of 2007 see me setting out my stall as a fledgling local politician.  I had been approached by Colin Spence, the County Councillor for Waldingfield and Sudbury East, mainly because as he so succinctly put it at the time ‘there really isn’t anyone else’.

One of the earlier posts in 2008 complains about the fact that the increase in Babergh's grant from central government was likely to be below the level of inflation in coming years.  Below the level of inflation!  What would we have thought if we had known that in fact within a few years it would be slashed by around 30% and I would find myself with the job of coping with this, not just for South Suffolk but for the County as a whole.

My early comments seem a bit earnest now… perhaps as time has gone on and I have become a more practiced political animal I have relaxed a little, but many of the topics about which I wrote are still rumbling along:controversial planning issues at Babergh, spending elusive Section 106 funding,  and, of course, the perennial chestnuts: Chilton Woods, speeding, and the need to recycle our waste.   

Other matters that exercised us then have, for now, receded.  There was of course a Labour Government in the early days and, as alluded to above, councils were having a great time spending away!  Suffolk was resisting the pressure to become a Unitary authority, parking charges in Sudbury were the great controversy of the day, and we were fighting off the attempt to open an enormous quarry between Chilton and Great Waldingfield.

Some of these latter issues, like sleeping dragons in their caves, are merely waiting to raise their drowsy heads once again. Others will slumber on. Perhaps persistent readers of the site will encounter their sulpherous breath again in one of the next 1000 entries.