OSC Super Call-In night and a new Camberwell Labour Rose

The OSC Meeting last 6 long hours ending at midnight and the item on the Camberwell Leisure Centre took over 3 hours with a number of excellent presentations, especially from Professor Moxham, Clinical Director of Kings College Hospital and Camberwell resident.
It was clear early on that the Lib Dems and Tory has been instructed to play "hard ball" on all 3 items and there apeared little prospect of getting any of the items referred back.

In the end we focussed on this vague notion of a "Community Hub" for Camberwell which is clearly "Council speak" for downgrading the Leisure Centre, closing the pool and moving the Library across.

We agreed a motion reaffirming our desire for a 21st century Centre with a Swimming Pool at the heart of it and to work with the local community to fund a £6M redevelopment of the Centre, £1.5M from the Council, another £1M fromn the sale of the adjacent plot of land and the £3-4M balance being found through partners or funding from within or outside oif the council.
It was still a bad decision and the hastily "secret" cobbled togther justification from Consultants was quite riseable in parts and we rightfully ignored it, it was even titled "Camberwell Vs Dulwich" and seemed to suggest that people grow older quicker in Camberwell than in Dulwich??????!!

The real political point in all of this is that we have a seriously vindictive group in control of the Council who appear to make decisons on everything from School Governors, Southwark Alliance Membership, voluntary sector funding and capital investment based on past or future election results and their own personal prejudices!. It is quite obvious really that due to the Lib Dems , and Tories at the moment, lack of any clear political principles they are making all their key decisons on prejudice and spite and we have 3 more years of this to put up with!!!! They make me feel ashamed to be a Councillor at times and are an embarrassment to everytone who lives and works in Southwark!

Chris, Dora and I have now finished our latest Labour Rose which will keep us busy delivering over the next few weeks. Chris is the real expert of producing them and has the knack of writing readable articles which hopefully are of interest to our constiuents. We always get a very positive response from our tear off and return slips and we have a solid distribution network which can get all 6,000 leaflets out within a couple of weeks! (If you click on the pages they wil go to full page so that you can read them!)

I went with Tony Ritchie and Tony Squires to see Dulwich Hamlet play Tooting and Mitcham last night and they lost 2-0 with a very poor performance where they were just bullied out of the game by a much more physical side. Hope that is not a bad omen for Saturday??

I was pleased to see that Scotland have risen 4 places to 16th in the FIFA World Rankings. I recall when they were in the low 40's not so long ago so they really have come a long way! No doubt the victory over France played a major part in that?
Good to see that Gary O'Connor, ex-Hibs) may be back in the squad after his strange behaviour going awol before the game against the Ukraine. I cant believe that living in Moscow can be that much fun and Hibs could really do with him back so hopefully he will return although probably to Rangers unfortuinatley rather than a retrun to Hibs!

I am off to Edinburgh tomorrow for the Cup Final and apparently the rail strike in Scotland is over so we should have no problems getting to and from the match! All we need now is a HIBS WIN!!!!!!