This blog has recently suffered some nasty spam attacks. I am removing the offending comments as quickly as I can. In the meantime please accept my apologies.

We had a good street surgery last night in Stourton Grange when we went round the South Hills, Kensingtons, Lea Parks, Mandarins and Hopes Farms. It was a lovely sunny night and it was good to be out and about talking to people. We picked up on a lot of local issues, many that we already knew about and others that were new.

One common issue was the problems with young people and adults on motorbikes tearing around the streets and green spaces. Geoff Driver also picked up a few residents with concerns about the erratic performance of the 85 bus (run, and rather not always run by First Bus).

Other issues included a lack of street cleaning and maintenance of trees etc.

There is a normal surgery tomorrow:

9.15am - 10.00am 
ffice:excel">Hunslet Carr Sports and Social Club, Moor Road

1st Saturday in each month
ffice:excel">10.15am
ffice:excel">St George's Centre, Middleton

1st Saturday in each month
ffice:excel">11.00am 
ffice:excel">Middleton Community Centre, Middleton Park Avenue

The three Middleton Park councillors run a rota and since I did last month's surgery I won't be there tomorrow.

Although I wasn't on the rota I actually ended up going to this morning's surgeries and ending up dealing with a case that has been on-going since 2001! It's to do with anti-social behaviour on the Westwood estate. We've had some improvements after I helped to get some bushes etc planted to make access to the bank harder. But recently the problem has returned. I'll let you know what happens.

However as both mu fellow councillors (Judith Blake and Geoff Driver) were there it gave us a chance to have a quick look at Middleton Leisure Centre. There is a hard playing surface there which at the moment can't be used properly as it is too slippery and dangerous when wet. What we'd like to possibly see is an all-weather Astroturf pitch.

Let me know know what you think of the idea. The area that I'm talking about is the one next to William Gascoigne Youth Centre.

Anyone who has ever read John O'Farrell's excellent and hilarious book Things Can Only Get Better will have an idea of what it can be like to join the Labour Party.

Politics for beginners is an account of one anonymous man in London who has joined the Labour Party and is blogging about his experience. Not much happens because of the inability of his local Labour Party to actually get in touch. Not that this is necessarily the local party's fault as it relies on the Labour Party's national membership unit to inform them of the new member's existence. In this case it appears to have the wrong contact details for the constituency secretary.