My return to the subject of mental health came in my piece of flash fiction that described what it is like to have depression from the sufferer’s point of view. It was written as a Halloween story but, unfortunately, didn’t get posted until the day after for one reason or another. Of course, one of the reasons for the delay in the Halloween blog was the subject of my first blog attacking the incompetence surrounding the repairs to the immersion heater in my council flat.
THIS month has already flown by - I can't believe it is just over one week until Christmas now. That is crazy!!
I don't think we realise how quickly a month goes by until we are counting down to a big event like this. I actually had a dream last night about buying veg for Christmas day but I had left it until Christmas morning so was running around like a headless chicken (or turkey) trying to get everything I needed when everywhere was closed or sold out.
Taking account of his conduct as a Councillor over the past nineteen months his comments are nothing more than brazen-faced deceit. He has rarely, if ever, attended his publicised “surgeries”. He is conspicuous by his absence from Council meetings, condescending to appear twice a year, for a couple of hours, in order to qualify for his £8,000 p.a. allowance and to add insult to injury he does not have the decency to tender his apologies for his absence. Again he has rarely, if ever, attended the South Ockendon Residents Association [SORA] meetings or ever attended a South Ockendon Street Representatives meeting.
Firstly, I attended the Independent Advisory Group meeting at the Civic Offices on 14 November to see what the group was all about. The IAG was set up following a damning report into the lack of community engagement in the Metropolitan Police and the problems that that caused. The report found that the police in the London area did not know what was going on in the community because they were not talking to the residents of the area. This, of course, was a problem that occurred beyond the London area but it was in that area that violence ensued.
You can register your mobile and landline telphone for free with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) which is worth doing as I did it at the flat and noticed a difference. Unfortunately it doesn't stop the calls from abroad but I noticed a big difference in how many calls we got. We haven't hurried to get a landline in the house yet because of sales calls but when we get one I will register us again.
The items are shabby chic / vintage inspired and range from wall hangings to picture frames, trinkets to candle holders and much much more! There was so much there. I was lusting after so many different items whilst trying desperately to work out where it could all go in our house!
In the end, I was sensible and just bought a few little things to start off; a wall hanging, two tea light candle holders and a decorative iron heart which is now hanging from my bedroom wardrobe door.
WHOEVER thought it was a good idea to 'pay as you go' for electricity obviously had money coming out of their earholes and didn't know what to do with it. That being said, once upon a time it probably was a cheap and cheerful way of doing it and of course that way at least you know it's one less monthly bill to worry about. Even so, since moving into our house three weeks ago and using this method of payment, we have found it to be FAR too expensive to continue with.
I do not usually get involved in discussing local politics, apart from my local election coverage on my personal blog, so this is a departure from my usual column as my subject is the care proceeding costs issue brought up at the last Audit Committee meeting that I covered in a news item for this very site a few weeks ago. There has been, over the last four years, an apparent wastage of funds on care proceeding cases to the tune of approximately £2 million. Looked at in this superficial way, this is a large sum of money being flushed down the toilet at a time when Thurrock Council, like every other council in the country, is being asked to make savage cuts to their spending.
TOWARDS the end of a health and well-being committee meeting last week, an item emerged that involved debate on matters in Barking and Dagenham. The deputy chair of the committee, cllr Mark Coxshall (Cons) questioned why, in a Thurrock committee, they were debating such matters. A Labour councillor agreed.
I have written two columns for this site on the very subject of taking the party politics out of the UK’s political arena and actively encourage cross-party working. I have openly declared my contempt of politicians as a group regardless of their political affiliations. Does this seem like the actions of a left-wing supporter? Of course not.
The current practice of being preached to and the saying of prayers at the Meetings of Full Council. I believe that religious beliefs are a personal matter and should not be imposed upon people at Council meetings who may feel embarrassed but obliged to conform less they be seen as disrespectful. If Councillors wish to hold such meetings then perhaps they should conduct them in the privacy of the Mayor’s Parlour prior to the commencement of the Council Meeting
And that is the nub. For all his radical posturing, there are people who are really really struggling out there. People in Ockendon who cannot feed their kids, who are living the lives of quiet and not so quiet desperation.
Let us put it in perspective. Of the 8,000 people in Ockendon, the vast majority of people neither know nor care about Aaron Kiely. All they know is that the petrol is getting more expensive, the food bill is going up. People are anxious about the disability living allowances or the jobseekers or the damp in their homes.
I know I will feel quite melancholy this weekend as it's our very last bit of relaxation / downtime within those four walls before a week of working, packing and then eventually moving. Patrick isn't sad to leave the flat at all despite the memories which I have come to realise this week is definitely a man thing after a conversation with family about the subject over a curry one night. I will be fine once I have closed the door for the last time, got to our new house and start unpacking. The excitemant of new furniture, decorating ideas and settling in will soon distract me. I'm not sad we are moving but leaving our first home together is the end of an era. (Think Patrick was more sad when we sold the Mercedes earlier this year!)
That night the down pipe from the toilet system started to leak onto the floor, every time we flushed the toilet, and the sieve inside the system was facing the wrong way so was chucking water through the lid and down the sides of the system onto the floor, we called the TBC on the free phone, telling them that we had serious problems with the toilet system, they said it had only just been replaced, and couldn't be leaking again so soon!, four days later after repeated calls to the council on the famous free phone, taking at least thirty minutes every time we called,
MANY OF YOU may turn to www.yourthurrock.com but may not know that we have a dedicated youtube channel called www.youtube.com/yourthurrockfilms. The channel now hosts over 4,000 films made by the YourThurrock team.
