AV referendum to cost £100m

Either that figure is wrong (but as it came from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg - I doubt it !!!) or I am voting NO just to spite whoever decided to run such an expensive waste of time just as the rest of country is bracing itself for cuts. Honestly - I know I'm a Conservative but is this really the best that the "new politics" can do?

And the result from the Commission into the Bleeding Obvious is...

Some schools waste money, according to a report (read this). But isn't the report itself the biggest waste of money - I could have told you this for free, as indeed could most of the people who work in schools?

My Night Tonight

Tonight I did two meetings at City Hall - firstly to feedback on the new Councillors IT system which is better but still has some problems. Then it was the Waste Working Party. Although I'm not at liberty to say, we recieved some very good news about the way in which AWC has been rolled out and also some very tricky questions to solve in the future. It was a thought provoking meeting really. Odldy enough not a single LibDem Councillor bothered to attend; if the boot was on the other foot they'd be shouting about a lack of interest from other parties (I have blogged before about thier glee when Labour, Tories and Greens don't put down motions at Council) so I wonder why they passed up the chance to have their say on important recycling and waste issues.

Then tonight I have been formulating my questions for the Bus Scrutiny Committee and I focused heavily on the length of total bus journies, the cost of the tickets and the social, economic and educational impact of late buses in the morning. I mean, how many hours of education are lost because of bus lateness? How much productivity in industry and business is thrown away?

Tomorrow I will be at a Scrutiny meeting and then onto the Bowthorpe and Costessey SNAP, 7.30pm at Costessey High School if you'd like to make any points there.

Councillor "does" recycling - so why isn't my waste bin empty?

I hate New Year's Resolutions because they tend to be broken within fifteen seconds of being made. So this year I discarded the notion of losing weight, drinking less or giving up chocolate. None of those three were going to happen anyway so I thought I'd set myself a far more crucial challenge - recycling properly.

Up until now I consider myself a "Norwich Recycler", that is, somebody who recycles as much as they can on the kerbside without letting it interupt my everyday life, causing me hassle or driving anywhere.

But from the 1st January I became a "Proper Recycler". I have seperated paper and cardboard, even tearing up things to ensure I recycle what I can and throw away what I must. I sorted through things. I even removed the selotape from wrapping paper. I have created, in just a week, over twice the paper recycling that I did in a fortnight. I have been using my three composters in the garden for food waste. I have been cleaning out glass so I can put that on the kerb, not just the empty winebottles! I am keeping my tetrapaks to one side and when I sorted out my wardrobes, I did so with recycling in mind.

This evening I put my waste bin out. Full. Again.

Absolutely no difference. Now either my bin this week would have been massive if I hadn't of recycled or...

The truth is that I was recycling most of what I could have and my extra efforts haven't paid off in terms of the total percentage of waste produced by two adults and two small children in a semi-detached house in Norwich.

Or, and this is my view, the recycling I can do with some ease is so limited that our county and city must do something more as a matter of urgency to improve the situation.

I have tried, and mostly failed, to use my goodwill to improve the situation. Must the council force me to recycle, or should they provide me with extra opportunities to recycle? The Greens would say the former, we Conservatives no doubt the latter.

I am going to carry on and see what happens in the next few weeks. But all those who are planning for our future recycling needs should take heed of my experience. Good intentions won't improve our woeful recycling rates - we must be more radical than that.