Barnet Eye - Local News roundup

Barnet Council continue to get rotten press coverage, exposing their lack of respect for voters. The Evening Standard detailed yesterday how they were refusing to allow libraries to display the anti closure petition.( 2nd Story down)

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23912827-one-library-has-to-close-you-choose-council-tells-residents.do

Also making the news in the Standard, our very own Brian Coleman, doing what he does best - attacking our brave firemen and trying to stifle debate.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23912956-all-of-londons-firefighters-will-be-sacked.do

And here's him defending the indefensible :-


Also in the news, it seems that all of the officers of Hendon Conservative Association have had enough of Matthew Offord and want to spend more time at home with their stamp collections :-

http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/8781488.Tory_council_trio_step_down_from_association/

Totally, completely unrelated, in every way is the story about Matthew Offord damaging his retina (strangely he doesn't tell us how)

http://barnetfutureshape.blogspot.com/2011/01/matthew-offord-tears-retina.html

Anyway, enough of Tories behaving badly. How's about some good news for a change. My old dearly departed Dad used to have a saying - "Faith can move mountains, but to put the rubbish out someone has to get off their backside". Well my friends. I think the time has come to start putting the rubbish out in Barnet. That means you have to get off your backside. Another of his sayings was "Rome wasn't built in a day, but there was a day when the building started". Today is the day, my friends, that we start building the campaign that will put the rubbish out. What has given me the faith to believe the tide has turned. A couple of days ago I added a link to the "Stop car parking charge hike in Barnet". This petition has got over 1,600 signatures in two days. This is unprecedented for an on line petition in Barnet. Councillor Brian Coleman, the man responsible for the hike, has made a name being "the car drivers friend". It people have finally seen through him.

Well please put in your diary the following date Sunday 30th January - Noon. There is a march from Finchley Central to The Arts Depot (which is threatened by Barnet Council Cuts). At 1pm we are staging an event at the Arts Depot, featuring music and speeches uniting the whole of the Barnet community against the cuts. We've secured international superstars "The Foundations" as headline band, with a host of other well known and local bands. We've also got some absolutely fantastic speakers, including Tariq Ali  who will be energising us against the cuts.The whole event will be broadcast live on the web.

We hope to also have speakers from the arts depot, sheltered housing campaign, local student groups and all of the other groups affected by the cuts and we will be signing people up for workshops on how to fight back against the cuts and organise effective campaigns. We are finalising the line up which will be announced shortly. My fellow blogger, Vicki M has set up a pledge for those who intend marching to sign, please sign this  ASAP so we can keep in touch

http://www.pledgebank.com/Barnetmarch

However the cuts affect you, sign up. Give the council a message they can't ignore that you are unhappy. Use the comment facility to tell them why. I've had a huge number of hits today. You may be interested to know that the to 5 keywords which people used to land at the blog were :-

Barnet Eye (always No 1)
Brian Coleman parking
Barnet library closures
Barnet Council Wikileaks
mark shooter hendon conservatives

Not quite sure why people were so interested in Councillor Mark Shooter, the failed usurper of Lynne Hillan, first time he's made it into the top five since his failed coup - I wonder what suddenly inspired dozens of people to check him out - planning another coup? Coleman really seems to have got people goat up with his name appearing in four of the next five favourite searches. Sadly two of those searches included a rude word, so I didn't print them.