Your Bathwick councillors are holding thier latest public surgery at Bathwick St Mary’s Church Hall, 10-11am on Saturday 7th June.

I am sorry for the short notice, I forgot to post about this earlier. You may have noticed though that it is at the same time on the first Saturday of every second month, so there is some sort of routine. It was also printed in Focus which went out this week, but I acknowledge the typing error advertising the date as March, not June.

Armand and I will be there in case anyone manages to turn up!

Don Foster, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, will join his colleagues Bathwick councillors Armand Edwards and Nicholas Coombes for a public surgery in the ward.

Bathwick St Mary’s Church are again kindly providing their church hall for 10am – 12noon on Saturady 29th March. Bathwick residents are welcome to dicuss issues with either or all politicians without an appointment.

Nicholas and Armand have been holding bi-monthly public surgeries in Bathwick since their election last year, usually on the first Saturday of the month. However, this one has been moved forward by one week to accomodate Don Foster’s busy parliamentary schedule. In February they held a similar joint surgery on the university campus aimed at students and staff of the institution.

Liberal Democrat politicians commonly hold surgeries to make themselves better available to the public and closer to their communities. Says Cllr Coombes: “I’m glad to welcome Don Foster back to Bathwick. Our surgeries are generally popular but we’ve never yet turned someone away.”

Today we had another of our public surgeries, in Bathwick St Mary’s Church Hall. We do these on the first Saturday of every second month to give local residents the chance to speak to us in person. Most Liberal Democrat councillors and MPs provide this service so we are happy to have introduced it to Bathwick.

BathNES council does not give any support for these, in their view it is an additional activity which we choose to do. Fortunately though, our kind hosts at St Mary’s and Claverton Community Hall provide us with a room and chairs, which is all we really need.

We have now hosted five surgeries since May 2007 and I am pleased that we have never yet sat by ourselves for the whole hour! This week we had four visitors which is about average. People come with concerns specific to them or their street, or wider political issues which they want to raise. Everything is confidential as necessary.

Our next surgery should be on 5th April in Claverton Hall – although I still have to book it. It’s a 10 am start, although with the cold weather this moring I did wonder why we get up so early at the weekend.

Armand and I spent this weekend delivering leaflets up and around Bathwick; together we did about 600 homes on two wet afternoons. Delivering leaflets is a rather vital part of being a Lib Dem councillor – that and holding public surgeries.

During the election campaign last year lots of people said that they appreciated the effort that we were making to keep people informed of what we are doing. Having won that election we’re not going to change the habit, so all year around we’re out delivering leaflets, telling you what we’ve been up to as local representatives, even when it is cold and rainy.

You may be surprised to know that there is no ‘party line’ involved and we write our own news and stories. I do the desk-top publishing part as well, which probably shows whenever something doesn’t line up or I make a mistake with the photo captions. Still, no one likes their politicians to be too professional! We then go and print them on a high power photocopier (with recycled paper of course!) which we pay for ourselves.

 For the delivery part we have a few dedicated Lib Dem members who help out by leafletting their own street, typically less than an hour’s work. Nonetheless, Armand and I do most of the leg work ourselves, which means that we get to see nearly every house fairly regularly. If you think that you can help out though, we’d be very happy to hear from you!

On Monday I shall try and finish the last ones on North Road, always the most difficult. Without meaning to offend any of our valued North Road dwelling voters, your road is steep and long, sparsely populated with generally long walks to the letterbox. The views over the city are wonderful though, but I expect low cloud and drizzle will spoil that for me tomorrow. The best street for leafleting, if you were wondering, I think is Raby Mews which has the exact opposite characteristics of the above.

I’ll admit that this was a post about pretty much nothing, but I thought you might be interested.