Nick Barlow's blog:
- Jan 4, 2012:
- Upcoming roadworks on Westway
Just to let people know that I've had notice from Essex County Council about roadworks that are going to be carried out on Westway (the A134) between the Balkerne Hill and Colne Bank roundabouts. These are some important safety works, centred around fitting in a proper barrier system on the central reservation, but they might cause delays while they're happening.
They're scheduled to start next Monday (the 9th January) - weather permitting - and will continue for about six weeks, though the work is only scheduled to take place during the day from 9.30am until 3.30pm, so it should hopefully not be causing delays during the rush hour.
- Jul 5, 2011:
- Colchester Carnival lineup
It's Colchester Carnival a week on Saturday (the 16th) and there's going to be a whole day of activity going on in town. Keep an eye on the official website and this Facebook page for more information, but as I write this, the current plan for the day is:
Here are just a few of the amazing things you will be able to see in the parade - in no particular order.
The Main part of the parade starts from Abby Fields at 5.30 pm on the 16th July and goes via Butt Road, Headgate, Head Street and High Street, finishing in the Castle Park. However, for logistical and technical reasons, some parts of it will start from Headgate instead: so if you want to see the whole parade in all its glory, we recommend you to watch it in Head Street or High Street.
Martin Reed and the Obby Oss: Derek Wray and Dagmar Engelken as Old King Coel and the Town Trumpeter: The Town Watch: Colchester District Pipes & Drums: The Indian Rickshaw with the local heroes: Footprints Theatre Company: Colchester 2000 Travel Plan Club/Sustrans: Slack Space Colchester with the SlackJazz group: Colin the Dragon and Dragonettes: Colchester Karate Academy: Suffolk Samba: Destination Colchester with Nepalese Dancers. Colchester Historical Enactment Society:Malkiat Singh: Akula Tribal Belly Dance: Kingsland Promotions and the Valhalla Crew: Open Road - SOS Bus: Colchester Scout Band: Braiswick District Girl Guiding: 44th Colchester Scouts: 9th Colchester Scouts: 3rd Stanway Brownies: Colchester Gangshow: First Strokes Swim Schools: Funky Voices Choir: Colchester Cat Rescue: The Laura Rampton School of Dance: The Ormiston Children and Families Trust: Annie's Fantasies Clog Morris and Dobbin: Go Bananas: Carol Gale School of Dance: Colchester Gladiators: Valentine School of Dance: Fisher Jones Greenwood: LEPRA: Essex Samba: Greenstead Community Association: Time Bank: Jazzhands Stage Academy: African Drummers and Indian Dhol drummers with the workshop drum group: The Big Bamboo: Colchester Community Voluntary Services: Ashanti Yard Sound System: The WIGS (Women Institute Girls): Gerry, Jo, Ellie and Ben Stockwell:: Urban Allstars: New Horizon Majorettes: St Stephens Pre School: Boudica Samba: Harwich Brass Band
All in all, we expect at least 700 people in the parade!
Colchester Carnival's Street and Park Festival
Colchester Carnival is not just a parade! We have arranged an entire day of music, dance,and sheer family fun for you throughout the streets of Colchester and in the Castle Park to put you in the party mood for the most spectacular procession that Colchester has ever seen!
A dazzling array of entertainers, dancers and musicians has been assembled by the artistic Director of the Carnival, Dorian Kelly, of Illuminati on behalf of the Colchester Round Table.
It will take place from 11.30 am on Saturday 16th July on Culver Square, Lion Walk, Trinty Street, and Sir Isaacs Walk with buskers through the rest of the town centre, and of course, throughout the Park.
CULVER SQUARE
Free Face Painting for children at Costa Coffee House, Culver Square
11.30: Starting with an opening by The Mayor, The Mayor and Mayor's Escort Cllr. Helen Chua and Cllr Mike Hogg. With the Town watch and a chance to meet Colin the Dragon and Old King Coel
11.40: Compered by Street Poet MARK BRAYLEY we kick off with the amazing 26-piece contemporary choir FUNKY VOICES.
12.15 ANNIES FANTASIES, Colchester's own traditional clog morris dancers with live concertina and melodeon music from Paul McCann.
12.50 This is followed by some fantastic and highly enjoyable operatic arias from CORRINA DOLFO.
1.15 AKULA TRIBAL BELLY DANCERS then take the square by storm with some amazing set-piece dances from various cultures.
1.45: A real treat from Colchester's rising stars LADY BIRD AND THE LARKS, with their own self-penned songs which take a highly entertaining but wry look at life.
2.30 THE CAROL GALE SCHOOL OF DANCE: Street dance display
3.00: THE MEDDLARS - traditional songs and music from the Brisish Isles.
3.45: A special treat THE HAT CHECK HONEYS- Helene and Julie - a sassy, witty duo will be bringing their own brand of glamour and swing.
LION WALK,
Free face painting for Children at The Costa Coffee House, Lion Walk
Opened by the Mayor at approximately 11.45 and compered by Street Poet ANDREW BUDD:
11.30: AKULA TRIBAL BELLY DANCERS- exotic!
12.00: LADY BIRD AND THE LARKS - 5 piece girl group- unmissable!
12.30: CAROL GALE SCHOOL OF DANCE - Street dance exrtraordinaire!
1.00: Colchester's Very own Slum Poet Fred Slattern.
1.15:THE MEDDLARS, Traditional Songs and instrumentals
1.45: ANNIES FANTASIES CLOG- from the NW of England Morris Tradition with a touch of Border wildness!
2.15: VALENTINES SCHOOL OF DANCE - more street dance
2.45 THE GITANE HOT CLUB a new band who will be serving some French-style café jazz Django/ Grapelli style
3.30: FUNKY VOICES 26 incredible voices.
TRINITY STREET
A full programme of Dance events including Clog Morris dancing, Belly Dancing, Street Dance and much more besides:
LUSH! Live music at SIR ISAACS WALK - in the shop or in the Street if fine weather
Lush - the ethical cosmetics shop in Sir Isaac's Walk (a few shops along from Scheregate Steps) - is providing a live music venue as part of the Colchester Carnival programme to raise funds for the Colchester Round Table's charities, but with a lot of emphasis on fun for the community. Call in to Lush; listen; shop; and make a contribution..
Arranged and curated by RICHARD BRAZEAR on behalf of Illuminati and the Carnival
11.00: GRASSHOPPER - Bluegrass trio with cool harmonies and fine songs
11.30: HARMONISE - A gifted a cappella choir with music from around the world
12.00: THE MEDLARS:
12.30: GRAHAM TIDD - a man of many instruments and some great songs
1.00 THE HAT CHECK HONEYS - Helene and Julie - a sassy, witty duo bringing their own brand of swing to any occasion
1.30: DINOSUAR BLUES- Singer,/guitarist and harmonica duo, old and new blues
2.00: TEA TIME ASSORTMENT - a curious assortment of musicians with a curious assortment of music! Traditional and contemporary folk, new and old.
2.30: PAUL RILEY AND CAROLE - a gifted guitarist together with a chanteuse with an attachment to Edith Piaf
3.00: NO STRINGS ATTACHED - Anglo-French acapella duo with songs in English and Breton.
3.30: ADAM HAYES -Talented singer/songwriter with a satin voice and a subtle guitar style
4.00: SHANTYCLEAR- Rumbustious practitioners of the traditional British shanty
4.30: JON RICHARD AND MIKE ( Three of the Four Blokes)
BUNTING ROOMS, Headgate: 2.00- 5.00
2.00 pm: Free African Djembe Drumming workshop followed by a place in the big parade! For people of ages 16 up to 25 - as long as they are big enough to carry a drum for a mile! Drums provided. Register for your free place on artisticdirector@colchestercarnival.com Non-drummers welcome to watch.
THE BUSKERS
Everywhere else in the town centre including the market area will be all your favourite buskers.
IN THE PARK:
A wide variety of attractions, good food and things to do. Dancing in front of the castle at various times, Food and drink. Come and get your own back with a few well-aimed damp sponges …
Give local politicians Will Quince,Nick Barlow,Dave Harris, or Jordan Newell a soaking!@
ON THE BANDSTAND FROM 11.00 TILL LATE
COLCHESTER ROCK PROJECT, Colchester's own rising stars from seven at adult will show what they can do!
M.C. LINGUAR - Award-winning body-popping and breakdancing like you have never seen before!
THE ARENA: HOLLYTREES MEADOW
11.15: COLCHESTER VILLA F.C. Training session - open to all.
12.30 BEST FOOT FORWARD: creative, street and contemporary dance styles as well as encompassing other art forms like video and drama to a range of people, specialising in working with people with learning disabilities.
12.45 LAURA RAMPTON SCHOOL OF DANCE:
13.30 COLCHESTER UNITED TRUST - Football practice: Come and join in!
15.00: DIVERSAFIT: Zumba dance and fitness workshop- open to all
15.30 STAGECOACH
5,00- 7.00 ARENA CLOSED DURING THE PROCESSION
7.00: The Colchester Pipe and Drum band
7.30 THE GREAT SAMBA ECONTRO: Boudica Samba, Essex Samba and Suffolk Samba
THE CASTLE STAGE (Sponsored by Dream 100 FM) from
11.15: VIXATION: Local classic rock: Richard Young, Russell Briggs, Elliott Brock, Victoria Eldon.
12.15 ADP Stage School: ADP Theatre school is based in Wivenhoe, Colchester and run by local professional singer ANGIE DIGGENS.
1.00 JAZZHANDS: Performance from this friendly and fun dance class.
1.30: EXALTATION CHOIR: gospel, spirituals and more contemporary songs.
2.00 STAGECOACH: Performance by this down-to-earth training school for four to eighteen year-olds in the disciplines of dance, drama and singing.
3.45: GITANE HOTCLUB. -purveyors of Manouche Jazz (Gypsy Jazz), and play an intriguing melange of Hot Club de Paris swing (Django / Grappelli) and French / German cafe standards of the 1930s / 1940s (Edith Piaf / Marlene Dietrich)."
5,00- 7.00 STAGE CLOSED DURING THE PROCESSION
7.30 MAIN BANDS: Darien Prophecy / Rainbow band. Prophecy has been defined as "A divinely inspired utterance" and this description is fitting for this amazingly talented singer who has come out of the Mandeville countryside in Jamaica to reside in the UK.
Reggae Rainbows have been in the recording business since the 80s where their first recording was in the group called Jah Warriors which Lloyd Duppy Clarke was the founder member. They have toured with the likes of Curtis Mayfield, the mighty diamonds, yellow man, culture, plus many more to name a few.
Well done to everyone involved in the Carnival for putting together what sounds like a very impressive lineup - now lets all hope for great weather on the day!
- May 28, 2011:
- Simple answers to Googled questions
Someone came here on a search for 'when is rubbish collection day in Colchester when there is a bank holiday?' and I can tell you that next week it's one day later than your usual date. So if your waste is normally collected on a Monday, it'll be collected on Tuesday, if you normally have a Tuesday collection, it'll be on Wednesday and so on with regular Friday collections being picked up on Saturday morning. Hope that helps - for more information you can check the Council's website here.
- May 26, 2011:
- May 18, 2011:
- Maths, Hanningfield style
You may have heard that Paul White (aka Lord Hanningfield), the former leader of Essex County Council, is currently on trial on charges of false accounting in Chelmsford.
While I'm not going to comment on the substance of the trial until after it's concluded, there's one comment of his that's been reported that does deserve some attention:
He said: "Essex is as big as Northern Ireland. So my job is something like the equivalent of being prime minister of Northern Ireland. It is bigger than Croatia, Lithuania and Latvia.
Leaving aside the different roles of the Northern Ireland Executive and the leadership of a County Council, let's look at the 'bigger than Croatia, Lithuania and Latvia' part.
The population of the part of Essex governed by the County Council (Southend and Thurrock are unitary authorities) is, according to Wikipedia 1,396,300, in an area of 3,465 square kilometres.
Croatia, by contrast, has a population of 4,483,804 and an area of 56,594 sq km. (source)
Lithuania has a population of 3,535,547 and an area of 65,300 sq km (source)
And Latvia has a population of 2,204,708 and an area of 64,589 sq km (source)
Again, leaving aside the difference between running an English County Council and an entire nation-state, I can't quite see how one can claim Essex as being bigger than any of those countries. I think it's clear that neither geography nor mathematics are amongst Lord Hanningfield's strong points, which may go some way to explaining why he is where he is today.
- May 11, 2011:
- May 7, 2011:
- Local news and local elections
With the election over, I got to return to one of favourite evening pastimes (after canvassing, of course) - shouting at the TV when Look East is covering politics.
Firstly, they clearly have an issue in getting accurate information about what's going on. Last night, their political editor reported that the Bedford mayoral contest wasn't looking good for the Liberal Democrats, about an hour after the result of the first preference votes had been announced, showing that Dave Hodgson was leading the race, and about five minutes after I'd seen the first mentions on Twitter that he'd won re-election by a clear majority.
Yes, there were elections going on all over the region yesterday, but for the BBC's regional political editor to not be up to speed with what's happening in the region's largest local election? That's really not delivering what I think you should expect from regional political coverage.
But I think that reveals a much larger problem with the way local politics is covered, which follows the lead of their national colleagues in assuming that the elections are merely an expression of people's views on national politics. Thus, the fact that Liberal Democrats had lost seats in North Norfolk, while we in Colchester held our position was put entirely down to the different attitudes towards the Government of Norman Lamb and Bob Russell. The idea that people might have been voting with regard to local issues wasn't even discussed as a possible explanation of why the votes might have gone the way they did.
I'm not denying that people's local votes aren't influenced by the national political situation - though there's a long history here in Colchester of results going against the national trends - but surely we should expect that our local news programmes might actually make an effort to discover what the local issues are, rather than just blindly assuming that no one cares who runs their local council and are just having their say about the Westminster beauty contest?
- May 6, 2011:
- The result
As I've already had one phone call this morning asking how I did, here's the result for Castle Ward:
Nick Barlow (Lib Dem): 1113
Green: 715
Conservative: 583
Labour: 368
Thanks to everyone who voted for me, and I look forward to representing you for another four years.
Elsewhere in Colchester, everything stayed the same with every seat being held, despite Labour and Tory claims that they were certain to take seats off us. For the full results, see the Council's website.
- May 5, 2011:
- Why vote for me today?
First, I want to thank the voters of Castle Ward for giving me the chance to represent you as one of your councillors for the last four years. Representing the oldest part of Britain's oldest recorded town has been a great honour, and I hope you'll give me the opportunity to do it again for another four years.
I don't claim that Colchester is perfect, but I do think the Lib Dem-led administration that has run Colchester Borough for the last three years has got things on the right track. By initiating a series of Fundamental Service Reviews when we got into power, we've been able to identify lots of efficiency savings that have allowed us to minimise the effects of the cuts on Colchester, while protecting jobs and front line services.
We'll introduce new neighbourhood teams for street cleaning and street services, which will mean that Castle Ward has a dedicated team working to respond to residents' complaints and problems. Our policy of cleaning all graffiti has already started making Castle Ward look better, and under the new system, the ward will have its own team.
I work hard to make Castle ward a better place for everyone, and I regularly report issues to the street services team to get them cleaned up. I also make sure I follow up on reports I make to ensure we get action - I've lobbied the County Council to get our potholes fixed quicker, and we're finally seeing action there.
We're investing in the town centre, and working with local businesses to make it better. One of the first decisions I made as a Cabinet member was to get our new Christmas lights, and working in partnership with businesses and other organisations means we had a great array of events running to compliment them - and there'll be even more this year.
I want Colchester to be a place that attracts visitors. That's why I pushed for us to spend money fixing the Roman Wall, and if I'm re-elected I'll work to get a proper protection and management plan for it, so we make the most of it. I want to promote our other heritage sites, and will look to arrange a Heritage Summit to get all groups working together on a strategy to really make the most of our history.
I'll also work to get more jobs in Colchester, and ensure the Council continues to support our small businesses. This year, we've opened the new Business Incubation Centre at Severalls, and now we need to work hard to get the funding for the Creative Business Hub in the town centre that will bring in new jobs and new investment for the St Botolph's area.
I'll also continue to work on making the Town Centre a better place at night. Colchester's not alone in suffering the problems caused by the night-time economy, but we need to act to stop those problems spreading - I opposed the plans for a massive nightclub in Crouch Street, and will oppose the plans for late-night opening every night of the week at the old Hippodrome. I led a group of councillors from all parties looking into these problems, and I'll make sure that the work we did isn't forgotten about, and find ways to get a wider variety of events in the Town Centre at night, making it attractive to everyone again.
I'll work to protect our nationally recognised arts venues, and ensure that the Council keeps funding and working with them to make a better Colchester for everyone. A large number of people in Colchester work in the creative and cultural sector, and it's a vital and growing part of our local economy that we need to protect and nurture.
Finally, I promise to keep up what I've been doing for the last four years, and work to make life better for the residents of Castle Ward, championing your issues and resolving your problems. Along with my colleagues Bill Frame and Henry Spyvee, we'll keep reporting back to you through regular Castle Focus newsletters about what we've been doing, and will always be accessible to you.
Castle ward is my home too - I've lived here for almost fifteen years, and want to make it a great place for everyone. Please give me your support today so I can keep doing that.
- May 4, 2011:
- Voting tomorrow
Don't forget to vote tomorrow - your polling station should be on your poll card, but you can vote without it if you've lost or misplaced it. The polling stations for Castle ward are:
Friends Meeting House, 6 Church Street (next to the Arts Centre) if you're in St Mary's, Lexden Road, the west side of North Hill, Sheepen Road/Place and Rotary Way (AE polling district).
Castle Methodist Church, Maidenburgh Street if you're in the Dutch Quarter, Town Centre, Abbeygate Street, Priory Street, Roman Road and Castle Road (AF polling district).
Celtic Rose Centre, Guildford Road (formerly St James' Hall) for Riverside estate, East Hill, East Street, Smythies Avenue, Rosebery Avenue, Nicholson's Grove, Brook Street, Ipswich Road, Fenwick Drive and Rouse Way (AG polling district).
Belle Vue Social Club, Colne Bank Avenue (by the Albert roundabout) if you're in St Paul's, North Station Road, Clarendon Way, Essex Hall Road, Claremont Heights, Cowdray Avenue, the new Riverside quarter (Meander Mews, Reed Walk and Pillbox Walk), Jarmin Road, Catchpool Road, Serpentine Walk, Kings Meadow Road, Margaret Road, Mercers Way, Albert Street and Causton Road (AH polling district).
All the polling stations are open from 7am until 10pm. If you're in another part of Colchester and not sure where to vote, contact the Council's Customer Service Centre on 01206 282222 or you can call us at 01206 766171.
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