In the last month Somerfield opened a new store on the High Street in Lincoln. Today we hear that the company has been sold to the Co-operative Group.
The question I have is, “what will happen to the store on the High Street?”.
Lincolnshire is awash with Lincolnshire Co-op’s (different to the Co-operative Group, who are owned by the old Manchester Co-op), so I don’t think they will want to compete.
The BBC talk of stores being sold off, however the names being mentioned are:
- Waitrose (already one uphill)
- Morrisons (already one on Triton Road)
- Iceland (litterally opposite),
so I don’t think any of them will buy the site.
Hopefully the real media might get some answers in the next few days.

Last night when I got home, I discovered that Parliament were debating “Council Tax Limitation - Lincolnshire police authority budget”. The bill was to place a cap on the 78.9% increase that Lincolnshire police authority had made on the council tax bills. I blogged about this in March (Council Tax up by 11.1%).

So how did those Lincolnshire MPs vote?
Quentin Davies - Grantham & Stamford (Lab) - aye
John Hayes - South Holland & The Deepings (Con) - absent
Douglas Hogg - Sleaford and North Hykeham (Con) - absent
Edward Leigh - Gainsborough (Con) - absent
Gillian Merron - Lincoln (Lab) - absent
Mark Simmonds - Boston & Skegness (Con) - absent
Peter Tapsell - Louth & Horncastle (Con) - absent

Out of the 7 Lincolnshire MPs with consituents affected, only one went down the lobby.

However, at least unlike 44 LibDems, the Tories didn’t actually vote against it.

My twitter last night summed this up:
artesea disapointed to see the LibDems voting no on the Lincolnshire Police Council Tax cap on BBC Parliament.

Amazingly due to the magic of technology I got this response:
joswinson is voting against the unfair Council Tax system.

However I still can’t see how a “Local Income Tax” would have stopped the Lincolnshire Police from asking for more money than anyone would expect. Instead we now have it on record that the LibDems are “pro” 78.9% increase.

Maybe someone from the Parlimentary party would have like to have asked those who have been affected by the issue, and campaigned in elections last May what our views were first, or is that just a bit too hard?

* Voting records taken from PublicWhip.org.uk

One of the things I noticed about Lincoln compared to Hemel Hempstead is the way in which the tip is organised.
In Hemel (Herts County Council) you had big skips with metal stairs. The staff were always unfriendly and looked aghast as you started filling their bins in case you might actually give them some work to do.
Where as Lincoln (Lincolnshire County Council) it’s in one big loop. You can pull over, drop off, drive forward a bit, empty some more and as it’s ramped there are no stairs. They have collections for Glass, Plastic, Paper, Clothes, Cardboard, Tetrapak, Oil, Batteries, Garden, Electrical, Rubble plus others which I’ve yet to spot. As soon as you stop a member of staff is willing to help get stuff out of the car, sort it into the correct containers or point you in the right direction and because of this they are able to hit 75%+ on recycling what arrives every month.

The Echo last week ran with a story about the Police confiscating alcohol from under-age drinkers. They published a table of what was taken and had a picture of the haul.

Now was it like what the Tories were saying? That the problem is with alcopops and super-strength booze?

Nope, here are the figures:
Beer - 157.69 litres (78%)
Cider - 25.52 litres (13%)
Wine - 7.5 litres (4%)
Spirits - 4.2 litres (2%)
Alcopops - 5.72 litres (3%)

and whilst the beer and cider figures don’t separate normal from strong, the picture clearly shows a large number of cans, bottles and boxes of Carling, Fosters, Stella and Carlsberg.

In Thursday Echo we had the front page How does your garden grow?. The article is about the Environment Protection Team taking four households to court over the state of their back gardens. All of them had been asked several times to sort them out, and finally the magistrates fined them over £150 each.
Hopefully other households in Lincoln will realise that the mess in your backgarden affects your neighbours and that the council have a right and a duty to sort it out.

Unfortunately for those in Lincoln (and very similar for those elsewhere in Lincolnshire), the 11.1% increase isn’t over 2 or 3 years. Nor is it calculated against the odd stealth local charge. Nope the figure of 11.1% is the actual increase in council tax on my bill right in front of me.
For this year Lincolnshire Police Authority have been fcked by the government and in return fcked every single council tax payer in the county.
Last year our band A house paid £87.72 to the police, this year it’s £156.90. That’s an increase of 78.9%. Seriously 78.9%! I now pay the police more than I pay the City Council (£147.84).
What seems to be worse is there is nothing we can do about it. If the county or city wanted to raise their portion by over 5% the government would stop them and if they didn’t at the next election the electorate might, but as far as I can see the police seem to be a law unto themselves.

The BBC are saying the City’s Christmas wheel scrapped, which may mean that the Pudsey Party in Lincolnshire might want to rename it’s location.
Hopefully BIG can find either a new wheel, or something else to fill the City Square this Christmas.

On the way home tonight the radio was teasing with breaking news, what could they mean? I was sure I knew the answer but they weren’t going to tell me until the newsreader got to her piece. It must be that someone was either pushed or jumped. Then at 17.06 it was announced that John Schofield had gone.

In the last round of Post Office closures the branch on Cross Street was closed down. At the time we were told that we could easily get to our second nearest Post Office which is located on the High Street opposite St Peter at Gowts school (also the name of the branch). However according to todays plans this branch is now also to be closed.
How long before Lincoln is just left with one Post Office?

I would like to thank those who elected me last year, and voted for me this year. However with the boundary changes and all-ups unfortunately both Heather and myself are no longer the councillors for Park Ward. The Liberal Democrats did avoid a complete wipe out with Helen Heath taking one of the Labour seats in Carholme Ward.
The Tories did what they promised all year and took control of the council from Labour with 17 councillors (up 6). There was bad luck for Claire Metcalfe (Con) who got elected with me last year, she came 4th in Glebe, losing out to her 18 year old daughter Charlotte (Con) who came 1st and I wish Sandra Gratrick (Con) the best of luck next year having to stand for the third year in a row even though she’s been elected twice.
This years other losers were: Steve Allnutt (Lab); Lesley Rose (Lab); Larry Wells (Lab); Morris Cookson (Lab) and Geoff Ellis (Lab)