Saturday 1 April 2006

King's Park Triumph! Roads and Council Tax ...

Extremely early start delivering "Good Morning" leaflets in Glasgow on Thursday at King's Park by-election. It was well worth it - our candidate Margot Clark took the seat from Labour by 100 votes, taking the LibDems from fourth to first place. A truly tremendous result and a sign of the times without a doubt. You can see the result by clicking the heading above.

Friday included speaking with the local press on the continuing West End roads issues - in my last blog last Wednesday I mentioned Step Row in relation to roads and pavement issues. Unfortunately one of my constituents had a fall at the top of the road here a week ago - the road has been patched where a utility repair has been undertaken and I have asked Planning & Transportation to progress a better repair with the utility concerned ASAP. See http://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/output/2006/03/31/story8182762t0.shtm - although I should say the additional promised pavement resurfacing is actually Perth Road (north side between Ryehill Lane and Millers Wynd) and Magdalen Place.

The Courier on Thursday carried a story about the City Council data matching salary records against Council Tax to ensure employees are up to date with payments. Although data matching is not new (and is already used by DCC and DWP in relation to benefits claims) the Council Tax aspect follows new IT developments to data match the records.

In today's Courier, the "Dundee Association of Council Tax Payers" is having a pop at me. Now what is this group? Well who knows - membership one man and dog methinks - their only spokesperson is an ex Labour then Tory councillor (conversion on the road to Mrs Thatcher I suppose) and he doesn't even live in Dundee. Anyway, he's claiming that we had refused to do this before, we had the data all along and that I had reacted to "pressure" from them. Not any truth in any of this, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story!