Football Pride

Anyone who knows me will be amused to learn that I'm sitting here in a plenary session at Football Pride.

But for the last three years I have been in a dialogue with Chesterfield Football Club (CFC) about lgbtq+ equality. As a councillor and as an lgbtq+ campaigner

I feel that football has a reputation as a home for homophobia - and I was keen that CFC were active in calling out that perception.

So today, at Football Pride, I’m not alone from Chesterfield - there are three of us here - myself and the tow fans who are the drivers of establishing Rainbow Spireites…

It’s great progress, and I’m proud of being a tiny part of this side of equality activism.

Sir Raymond Unwin - signed!

I’m out canvassing chatting to the voters and I comment that the house of the people I’m speaking to was built by local architect William Martin Ashmore. 

The resident enquires who William Ashmore is and I explain that he develops and builds most of lower Newbold, that he was close personal friends with Edward Carpenter and a direct contemporary and associate of Raymond Unwin.

Yes, Sir Raymond Unwin - who lived at Cross Street, Chesterfield and when he lived here was a budding architect and new on the block. I explain that with Barry Parker they go on to be giants of the architectural world.

The chap I’m speaking to says “in that case look at this” and there on the wall, on a brick at the front of the house the young Raymond Unwin has scratched his name into the wall.

Yes, really, here in Chesterfield, never seen before, the father of the Garden Suburb movement has etched his name into the wall of a house built by his best mate William Ashmore...

And as far as we can tell, this is totally unknown and has never been seen before by those interested in architecture, the history of Chesterfield or Unwin and Parker themselves.

I am excited and frankly flabbergasted!! 

Unlocking and revealing our rivers

For too long the rivers of Chesterfield - the Rother, Hipper and Holmebrook have lain neglected and in too many cases hidden.

In many places you drive and walk and cycle over them and don’t event know. Where they run and flow at street level there are often calls and barriers to prevent them being appreciated and seen.

All the evidence and much research confirms that the closer we are to flowing and standing water it helps with calming our emotions and relaxing us. In a busy and hectic world we should protect and enhance these rivers and streams as crucial elements of our town.

That is why I am proud and delighted to use some of my County Council Community Leadership Fund to resource explanation boards on the River Holmebrook.

Initial boards are at the Monkey Park end of the Holmebrook and the next phase will be at the Loundsley Green end of things. Huge thanks are due to Don Catchment River Trust for their work making this happen - it’s a great addition to the local community.

 

Meet Pearson the Badger

The amazing generosity of spirit of Chesterfield

One of the staff members from Fred’s Haberdashers walked into my shop yesterday and handed me a life size crocheted badger.

Yes, a badger.

We are Brockwell Books of Chesterfield and in the spirit of Brock the Badger we have adopted said animal as our logo and shop persona.

I often pop into Fred’s (on low pavements opposite The Portland Hotel) for a range of things - they stock everything useful - and I have admired their crocheted Lion and Unicorn. I’ve often teased that there should be a badger too.

There now is. And we have named the badger Pearson in honour of the great pottery tradition in the town. He is proudly on display in our shop in the Market Hall.

It speaks volumes about a town and its community that fellow shop traders make such lovely, such generous and such amazing gestures to each other. The staff member from Fred’s refused to take any payement or such like and gave me this stunning badger as a gift.

Please, we are all small independent shops and we all need the support of each other - I’d love to welcome you to my little bookshop, and you can meet Pearson the Badger. But do me a small favour, pop into Fred’s and have a browse - you want be disappointed - and marvel at the skill of the crocheted Lion and Unicorn in the doorway.

Ed

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Chesterfield’s Cup of Care

It’s 6.33am as I type this and I’m already in tears. I’ve just been walking the dog - it’s cruelly cold and has been freezing all night.

As I the doggo and I walked past the back of the Town Hall in Chesterfield a guy shouted and screamed: he had dropped his cup of tea. I realise he was one of a pair of guys who had clearly slept out last night.

Shocked at how cold it is, upset at their plight I rushed hone, made a flask of tea and walked back with the flask and two mugs and gave it to the lads.

Whatever the reasons, whatever the cause, it is unacceptable in this day and age that anyone is sleeping out on the streets of Chesterfield in this weather. It is even worse that they have fallen through the safety nets to protect them in extreme weather such as this.

So I’m asking for any independent cafe who is willing to serve homeless and rough sleepers to contact me. I’d like to kick start a scheme in Chesterfield where anyone who is homeless or a rough sleeper or who can’t afford a hot drink to go to a cafe, ask for a Cup of Care and without any fuss, they will be served a hot drink of their choice. I in turn, will underwrite the cost and pay for this privately.

Is there any independent cafe who is willing to help me start this scheme? We have to ensure that the homeless, the rough sleepers and the low income residents of our town are at least warm and have a hot drink. 

Please, independent cafes of Chesterfield please contact me on WhatsApp you can help me set up a Cup of Care scheme: Ed 07974 950 512

EDIT: two cafes have been in contact and we hope to have local schemes up and running this week or so...

Thank you for the road surfacing

 There has been a break in reporting service here and apologies for that... but we are back and it’s with good news...

For years now I have been raising the issue of the terrible road surface in and around my ward - this has been especially bad around the one way system in Cross Street and Tennyson Avenue.

The surface has been deteriorating and the patchwork of pothole repairs by the County Council has been totally unsatisfactory.

Since I was elected to the County Council I have raised this issue again and again on full Council. I have asked, begged, pleaded and yes, protested.

Well after two years of my direct complaints I am pleased and proud to see the work has been done. Indeed it has been done so well and to such a high standard that it is almost a work of art.

There are other roads that are as bad and in need of work and I shall be pushing for this - but there are few that were such main roads, so heavily used and outside a school where the traffic and cycling use was so high. So it’s thank you Derbyshire County Council for a job well done on Cross Street, Tennyson Avenue and the Hawksley Avenue crossing.

About the other streets... I have a list

Tribute to Queen Elizabeth II

At Derbyshire County Council on Wednesday tributes were paid to the Queen. Here, for the record, is mine:

Many speeches and tributes have been made, but it is nonetheless an honour and a privilege to rise in this chamber and add my voice and that of the Liberal Democrats to the sad occasion that is the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

Rarely have we seen and unlikely will we see again such clarity of duty - such a continuing reference point for a people, for the county, for the commonwealth and for her own sense of purpose.  Service - truly a lifetime of service - what Princess Anne described as a almost devotional work ethic 24/7,  all 12 months, each one of the 52 weeks of every year.

The commitment and the cool headed clarity of that statement at 21 “my whole life, whether it be long or short...” will stand without compare for years evermore.

We have truly seen the second Elizabethan Age. A time of change, lives lived at speed, great depths of pain with war and conflicts with great social change and massive achievements of humankind: sailing round the world single handed, ascending everest, reaching the moon, the creation of the internet and of course signing into law the right of same sex couples to marry each other.  Throughout these the Queen has been constant - with Prince Philip as her truest companion and stay.

Closing the pages of the Empire, the Queen unlocked the power of the Commonwealth - we called her influence soft power - but she was anything but soft. Determined and steadfast - we could have had no finer head of state. As the winds of change swept across the world she sat with Nehru to Nkrumah, Kenyatta to Kibaki, Thabo Mbeki to Nelson Mandela, Presidents and Popes, and world leaders too many to count.

Let us recall the work she conducted on our behalf: a British Head of State in China, Russia, the Vatican, across Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean, Canada, New Zealand, America, and even after the war of independence, a civil war and decades of troubles in the Republic of Ireland.

Born in the years after World War One, shaped in the grim reality of World War Two and resolute in her duty and effective in her role for seven decades. It is truly remarkable.

She ascended as a woman in a man’s world - overseen by the towering stern focus of Queen Mary, formerly of Teck. Queen Mary’s first engagement was to Prince Albert Victor who died aged just 28 in the influenza epidemic of 1892, but then she married his brother who became George V.  Lillibet was further guided and chided by her mother Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, The Queen Mother, as they were thrust forwards into succession with the Abdication. And upon accession with the early death of her father her only sister Margaret there throughout everything. And so today we see her only daughter Anne sustaining those matriarchal qualities of duty, of dignity, of purpose - escorting her mother’s coffin even today.  Let us recall the contribution of these Royal women in supporting our Queen Elizabeth II.

A woman in a man’s world yet we have in fact lived in her world. She was the most esteemed woman, respected and loved across the nations - a world she knew and had seen better than any other. I think it fair to say that those who write in the future can speak openly and with the widespread acclaim of the people of this county of Queen Elizabeth the Great.

In one of her broadcasts Her Majesty said “Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love” let her example inspire us and others to hear that message.

On behalf of the Liberal Democrats in this chamber and across Derbyshre I offer our condolences to his Majesty the King, to the Royal Family and affirm our allegiance to both.

God save the King.