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“Pure Clean Water” at Cambridge Film Festival

I’m really pleased that Pure Clean Water, a documentary made by my friend Tony Eva, is screening at the Cambridge Film Festival – and I’m in it!

It concerns the water crisis in the greater Cambridge area, and particularly looks at the impact on our precious chalk streams

It is screening on Wednesday 25 October at 1820 and Thursday 26 October at 1420 at the Arts Picturehouse – details on the CFF website. And I will be taking part in a discussion about the film after the Wednesday screening.

You can find out more on the Pure Clean Water website.

Getting ready for May 4

it’s the last weekend of campaigning before the local elections on Thursday, and I’ve been all over Cambridge these past few days supporting my fellow Labour candidates, when I’m not canvassing and delivering leaflets in Cambridge. It’s hard work, but worth it to support great local candidates like Alice Gilderdale, Anne Miller, Antoinette Nestor and Mary Murphy, and everyone else, of course – see the full list on the Cambridge Labour website, and find out where to cast your vote here, if you haven’t already voted by post, on the excellent ‘Where do I vote?’ site from Democracy Club:

I couldn’t have managed it all without my trusty Urban Arrow electric cargo bike. Since we bought it in 2018 it has been a vital part of my life, getting me around, and carrying leaflets, shopping, books, clothes and a lot more. We have the ‘short’ cargo version, which is a lot more manoeuverable than the long one, but won’t take a small child!

(And see my earlier blog post about choosing the bike.)

Cycling is the main way I get around, so I’m always pleased to respond to the Camcycle election survey – see my answers on the Camcycle website.

The Cargo Bike outside Outspoken

The cargo bike is a complex machine, and so this week we took it back to Outspoken for a full service – which included upgrading the firmware on both the controller and the battery – and now it’s as smooth to ride as when we bought it.

Parked outside Savino’s on Drummer Street

I’ll try to wave as I whizz past you – and don’t forget to vote on Thursday (and bring some ID).

Rail is key to Cambridge’s Future

I wrote an article recently for the East Anglian branch of Railfuture, raileast

You can see the whole issues here on the RailEast website

It’s a real privilege to represent Cambridge City Council on the East West Mainline Partnership, and an opportunity to ensure that we can make a full contribution to improving rail services in the region.

It also reflects the commitments made by Cambridge Labour, the controlling group on the City Council, to support further rail investment and improvements, acknowledging what has currently been achieved and building on it.

Our wider transport strategy is clear about the importance of rail and the City Council, via the County Council as the transport authority, made a commitment to support investment and improvements in the rail network through the 2014 Transport Strategy for Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, which supports our current 2018 Local Plan.

It’s great that all the planned rail service improvements have been implemented along with many of the future service enhancement sought, but the main outstanding development is the Bedford to Cambridge connection.

Fortunately funding has been allocated for the feasibility, contracts and delivery of the Stage 3 Bedford to Cambridge section and, subject to ministerial approval, could be approved in the next few weeks but with so many changes in the government we may have to wait longer to know if this will be granted or not.

And we want to go further, with a proper assessment of routes from Norwich and Ipswich to Bristol and Cardiff via Cambridge. We need a more extensive, integrated rail system that is not London-centric, one that reflects changing patterns of living and working.

It is vital that we get this right: a modern transport system needs to work for people in their daily lives. People shape their lives around transport systems, asking whether there is a bus stop near home or work, how long it will be to cycle to a rail station or get to the shops or GP surgery.

These are fundamental considerations, and we will be judged on how effectively we can deliver. Working with the East West Mainline Partnership offers a significant contribution to achieving our shared goals.

Election Day: Thursday May 5

Thursday May 5 is election day for local authority elections in England, Scotland and Wales and for all London borough councils, as well as some new unitary authorities.

Katie and Simon Smith, who is standing in Castle Ward

Please use your vote for Labour in these vital elections. Here in Petersfield my colleague and friend Richard Robertson is standing for re-election, along with many other great Labour candidates across Cambridge – see all their details here on the Cambridge Labour website.

My First Few Months in Petersfield

Thursday May 6th was a significant day, as we held four separate local elections – for Cambridge City Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and the Police and Crime Commissioner.

Katie and her bike outside a polling station in Petersfield
Katie and her bike outside a polling station in Petersfield

It was also exceptional because in Cambridge, where council elections had been cancelled in 2020, it was an ‘all-up’ election for three councillors in every ward after the boundary review had changed the way the city was divided into council wards.

For me, it was both exciting and sad. Trumpington Ward, where I’d been elected by only four votes in May 2018, had been broken up in the review, and one-third of its electorate had been allocated to other wards, and I was standing in Petersfield, where many of them had gone. It was sad to say goodbye to Trumpington, but I was also pleased to be standing with my good friends and fellow councillors Richard Robertson and Mike Davey.

Because of the number of votes to be counted, and with Covid-19 affecting so many aspects of our lives, the votes on May 6th weren’t counted until the Friday and Saturday, and there was no opportunity for all the candidates to gather in The Guildhall and watch the piles accumulate as we tried to decide whether we had won or not.

As someone who had gone through two recounts in 2018, I knew just how nail-biting it could be, but it wasn’t an option. However I also felt that it would be no fun at all to sit at home waiting for a text message or watching the online stream from the count, and so for all of Friday and Saturday I hosted a Zoom call for candidates, where we could hang out, wait for results, chat, and celebrate or commiserate with our comrades.

Katie at a table set for a meal, with several Labour posters as table mats
Katie at a table set for a meal, with several Labour posters as table mats
Continue reading “My First Few Months in Petersfield”

Supporting the Aims of the CEE Bill

There has been some criticism of Labour councillors for the way we voted on a motion at the Council meeting on Thursday 27 May. A motion of support for the Climate and Ecology Bill, which had been laid before Parliament by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas and a group of other MPs in September 2020 came to the Council. Labour proposed an amendment which welcomed the Bill, but laid the emphasis on attempting to deliver change through the Environment Bill which is currently being debated. This amendment was passed, and the amended motion was then passed by the council

What that means is that the City Council supports the ambitions of the CEE Bill, but believes those ambitions need to be achieved in a different way, because not even the CEE Bill’s most ardent supporters believe it will become law when we have an anti-environment Tory government with an eighty-seat majority led by a man who has betrayed every promise on the green agenda he has ever made.

Continue reading “Supporting the Aims of the CEE Bill”

A typical day…

June 1 2021…

Being a councillor is an important job, and each of us has to decide how much time we spend each day or week in our role, especially those who have caring responsibilities, full time jobs, or other voluntary commitments. I’m fortunate to be able to devote a lot of my time to it, and I really admire my colleagues who manage to fit in their work as a councillor with other obligations.

Now that things have settled down after the May elections, I thought it might be useful to share a typical day.

I usually start the day catching up with emails and checking out what’s being said on social media. I know they say you shouldn’t read what they say about you on Twitter and Facebook, but I’m afraid I can’t resist. Today I spent a productive couple of hours dealing with email, answering the pressing stuff and flagging the things that could wait, and found time to like and retweet some comments that resonated with me.

I helped out a couple of fellow councillors deal with a biodiversity issue and a road closure issue – because we work as a team. I’m always calling or WhatsApping (is that a word? I think it is now..) others to discuss issues outside my area of expertise where I need guidance, and I’m happy to do the same.

A lot of time goes into coordination. It’s a lot easier now that we can meet virtually – at least for most things (let’s not forget that the Conservative government refused to extend the provisions to let us hold council meetings online, forcing us to sit at suitably distanced school desks in the Corn Exchange for last week’s full council meeting).

Continue reading “A typical day…”

Getting back to campaigning – safely

When it was announced that this year’s local elections would be going ahead everyone active in local politics was relieved that we would get a chance to speak to people, discover their concerns, share our vision and campaign for your votes.  

For the last few weeks we’ve been doing that through phone canvassing, but now we’re actually going out onto the doorstep again. Or rather, we’re knocking on doors and then standing a safe distance away from the doorstep, wearing a mask and following the guidance we’ve been given!

I have always enjoyed this part of the campaign the most, as it gives me a chance to meet people and find out what matters to them, to hear about any problems they may be having, and to explain why I believe that voting for a Labour councilor is the way to make sure that Cambridge can thrive.  

A lot of the concerns are about local issues, but we can also talk about bigger things.  I believe we need find ways to live that balance people’s needs for a good quality of life with the planet’s need for us to live sustainably, and that the city council has a key role to play, and I’m always happy to talk about our support for the environment, food supply, and biodiversity.

Today I was in Accordia, off Brooklands Avenue, an area I know very well as it is one of the sizeable parts of Trumpington Ward that has been moved into Petersfield as part of this year’s boundary changes.  It was hard to decide which part of Trumpington to stay with when everything was moved, but having lived in Petersfield in the past I felt that I had most to offer there.

I hope I’ll get a chance to see lots of Petersfield residents between now and election day on May 6, but if I don’t please get in touch – you can email me on [email protected] or call or message me on 07480 246939.