Third time lucky for Stapley residents

IT was third time lucky for Stapley as the weather improved and I finally managed to canvass the hamlet, where, hopefully, I have covered every home - if not, please let me know.
Even so, it took two visits to walk from top to bottom and up and down all those long private driveways where homes are tucked away out of sight.
On the first evening, the rain was still threatening and I had only been to three or four properties when heavy drops started falling.
Nevertheless, I pressed on and the rain lifted, but eventually, as dusk settled in, it became too gloomy to continue. You cannot expect people to answer their doors to a stranger in the dark.
The following evening was a complete contrast with bright sunshine, and on this occasion I was joined on the campaign trail by my two-year-old son, George.
Without transport and without a babysitter, I had to resort to a lift from my elder daughter, which meant putting a child seat in her car and taking George with us.
They waited patiently while I met residents and heard of the local issues which concern them.
Stapley proved as interesting and varied a community as any other I have visited during this campaign, with again the level of Council Tax being a common concern.
It is even more notable in such an isolated community that while residents may be paying as much as those in an urban community, they are not receiving the same services.
In effect, they pay a premium for living in the countryside and being surrounded by some of the finest local environment.
Which, I believe, makes it even more important for the council to provide the best possible service to residents when it is called upon to do so.
Refuse and recycling collections, and the attention of planning officers from time to time were about the only services one could put a finger on as being directly delivered in Stapley.
And each of these topics provided cause for concern on the doorsteps. I won’t go into the planning issue, as it seems this is something that is going to need to be handled after my election. Residents of Stapley, though, will know what I am talking about.
The recycling concerns were again around the recycling of plastic, where I was again able to reassure people that, along with cardboard recycling, the Conservatives are bringing this in soon after the elections.
The refuse concern was similar to comments I have heard previously but with a slightly different twist.
As I mentioned above, there are quite a few long driveways and lanes to reach people’s homes, and few - actually, I cannot think of any – have a flat, Tarmac surface.
This makes it very difficult for some residents to wheel their wheelie bins to the roadside on bin day.
The concern came from a family deeply committed to doing their bit for the environment and very supportive of the council’s recycling programme.
Although they were the first to raise this specific point about the wheelie bins, I am sure there must be quite a lot of others who share the problematic experience every week. The couple also came up with a suggested solution, something which I will look into after the poll on May 3.
Elsewhere, another planning issue has raised its head again, this time involving gipsies – and, no, it is not in North Curry.
One of the difficulties for planning officers in dealing with gipsy matters is that the current Labour Government has a different and less rigid set of rules for gipsy-related applications than it does for ‘ordinary’ planning applications.
Yes, one law for them and another law for the rest of us. I’m not familiar enough with the subject to know if this is another of those situations manufactured by the unelected and unaccountable faceless bureaucrats of Brussels, but I strongly suspect so.
This particular case raises an interesting question: When is a gipsy not a gipsy?
I shall be working with residents in the area to find the answer and to try to resolve the situation as sympathetically as possible for all concerned.

Heavy rain disrupts the campaign trail

THE weather, which has been very kind to us on almost every occasion since last October, has finally broken with less than a fortnight to polling day.
Heavy, thundery-type rain set in just as I completed my circuit of Churchinford and its hinterland, forcing me to take a break.
I wanted to visit Stapley as well, but will have to reschedule the hamlet in what is becoming a tighter and tighter timescale as election day approaches.
Churchinford provided a brilliant experience for me, with a real variety of characters and political beliefs appearing on the doorsteps.
Despite being mistaken for a Green Party candidate - we are using the new Conservative logo, the green tree squiggle, on our rosettes (on which I will make no comment here!) - I managed to put across quite a lot about how the Conservatives have been working and what our plans are for the future.
The village also threw up a first on the campaign trail for me, so far - a council tenant who raised the subject of the housing stock transfer.
It is the one and only time the supposedly highly-controversial topic has come up, and it possibly showed how poorly the Conservatives had put across the case for the transfer.
The lady concerned held a deep belief that her home was to be sold off privately to a commercial organisation with the result that rents would double, etc.
I have never actually been much of a fan of the idea, although I thought I understood the principles behind it.
But standing on the doorstep and explaining face-to-face to a tenant how it would have worked made me think about the idea even more intensely and I found myself beginning to warm to it.
No, the houses were not being ‘sold’, they were being transferred; no, they were not going to a nasty private firm out to make a huge profit, they were going to a protected trust run by the very same people whom you presently call the ‘council housing department’; no, rents were not going to shoot up, they would be protected (and the £14 a week the Government takes away and spends in Labour-supporting parts of the country would be kept here to be spent on improving the properties).
The discussion showed the extent to which the Liberal Democrat misinformation campaign had traded on people’s fears, a campaign which has shamefully continued into the election period with gross exaggeration of the cost of an exercise which was ordered by the Labour Government and started by the former Lib Dem administration before they were rightly kicked out of office by the same voters they have now misled.
On a cold evening, there was also cause to appreciate how difficult it can be for elderly people to keep themselves warm.
I heard how heating systems in some homes seem not to be working efficiently, leaving some tenants unable to afford the expense of keeping all the radiators switched on.
Ironically, it appears it was the installation of a new heating system which has caused the problem, while tenants who opted to stay on the old system seem not to have the problem.
I shall be looking into this one more closely once I am elected.
Elsewhere, the subject of the desperate plight of some farmers came up, and here I was pleased to be able to explain some of the measures the Conservative team on the Blackdowns are looking at in order to help.
There were, as always, a few who will not be voting for me and who did not want my leaflets, not even to keep for a rainy evening’s reading.