Don’t forget your recycling and landfill waste collections remain unchanged during the weeks with a Bank Holiday.

Your collection crew work on Public Holidays, so please place your containers out for collection on your usual collection day. The only exception to this is the weeks after Christmas and New Year when collections maybe made between one and three days later than usual. Please check this page nearer the time for information about your collections.

Please place your containers out for collection by 6am on your usual collection day

The Household Reuse and Recycling Centre at Villiers Road (“the tip”) will be open from 7am to 4.30pm on all public holidays. Public holidays, particularly in the spring, are always busy times so please take care to separate items for recycling before arriving at the site so that you can unload your vehicle as quickly as possible. Before you leave, you can check the length of the queue to the site by viewing the tip cam:

We are continually improving your recycling and landfill waste collection service, and this year, the collection crews will be working on the Bank Holidays over the festive season. This means your andfill waste and recycling will be collected on your normal collection day.

Please place your containers out for collection by 6am on your usual collection day

Christmas trees will be collected for composting from Monday 3 January to Friday 22 January 2011. Please place your trees out for collection on your normal landfill waste collection day. You can also take your Christmas trees to the Household Reuse and Recycling Centre on Villiers Road.

Councillors need to be vigilant about these things, as their predeccessors were! And still are!

Your collection crew work on Public Holidays, so please place your containers out for collection on your usual collection day.  The only exception to this is the weeks after Christmas and New Year, when collections may be made between one and three days later than usual. This means you should put ut your bins etc. on the usual day this week..

These complete newcomers to the Ward have put out a letter to postal voters claiming to have done everything.

Let’s deal with the issues they raise;

1. Schools, It was Nick Kilby who alerted a complacent Lib Dem administration in Kingston to the growing pressure on primary places, which they had ignored – and Dennis Doe who demanded a new secondary school in North Kingston, which they said wasn’t necessary.
2. Recycling: we campaigned for weekly recycling in 2006. Our Focus team wouldn’t know that because they weren’t around at the time.  I spoke about it at length in that year’s Budget debate and was told it wasn’t affordable. By whom? You guessed it!
3. Tesco at Tolworth: they claim to have ‘fought it off’ They weren’t even at the Planning meetings.
4. Tolworth Broadway Post Office: was saved because the present occupiers came forward to take on the business, thus solving the only reason it might have closed. Well done the business people that took it on.
5. Council Housing: Everyone in School Lane knows that Nick and I have campaigned ceaselessly against the Government’s Negative Housing Subsidy. So do the Leaders of the Residents’ Associations on all estates. That’s why they have elected me Chair of the Housing Consultative Committee for 12 years in succession. Every Lib Dem councillor knows this too and it is just plain dishonest for any Liberal Democrat to put their name to such a patent falsehood as the suggestion ‘(we) have failed to stand up against a Labour Government that takes £7m from local tenant rents.’  when Nick Kilby, Ian George and I have been at the cutting edge of attempts to improve resident participation and foster the only thing that will get this system altered for Kingston residents, usually in the face of an inactive Lib Dem Executive Member, who sits in meeting after meeting of the Housing Consultative Committee failing to communicate with tenants and leaseholders. Only in the last month has the Executive finally woken up to the fact that it has been habitually ignoring residents at its own peril.
6. Only profound ignorance can possibly excuse such a blatant untruth – Until I read with a magnifying glass the name of their agent, I was inclined to ascribe it to ignorance rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive. But their Agent, an ex-Lib Dem Leader and Lib Dem councillors, including those in St. Marks and Berrylands, cannot be so excused.
7. Less than a year ago the Surbiton Hill Focus Team did not exist, yet they repeat the tired old Lib Dem formula that ‘many residents say we’re the only ones they hear from all the year round.’

SAME OLD LIB DEMS – SAME OLD HUMBUG: PLEASE DON’T BE TAKEN IN BY IT

If you receive one of these missives – please recycle it.

Plastic: Where do you think it goes?

Please watch our short film (it’ll only take 30 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoL3v6pqJ9M

Greener upon Thames wants YOU to help reduce plastic bag use in the UK.

Thanks to all those who have already accepted our invitation to sign the petition. To those who haven’t signed it yet – ‘What’s keeping you?’

A Conservative Administration will introduce the first Carbon Budget for the Royal Borough of Kingston. This will give an open and transparent way to measure our efforts to respond to the growing concerns on Climate Change, and the Budget will be set annually at Budget Council and enable residents to see what measures the Council is taking to respond to the threat of climate change. And to see the returns on the investments in both financial and environmental terms on a year by year basis.

The Council will first need to agree how it will measure its current position and Carbon Foot Print; how it will set an annual Green Budget and then how it will monitor its performance during the year. The Council already has a great deal of this data that can be accessed but it does not use it or publish it in a form suitable for setting a Carbon Budget.

• We will host a Public Workshop in July 2010. From this we will establish a Working Party made up of Councillors, Officers and Environmental Groups and Specialists who will work together to first agree the methodology that the Council will need to adopt to support the creation of a Green Budget.

• The Council will then produce an initial Environmental  Statement. This will then be reviewed and revisions made to the process. This initial statement will be used to produce a test Green Budget in March 2011. The Council will monitor this test budget through the next year and make improvements to the process.
• In September 2011, RBK will commission the first Annual Environment Statement and this will be presented to the Executive in November 2011 for adoption. The Administration will then use this statement to base its first official Green Budget proposals for the Budget Council in March 2012.

Our Green Budget will be defined as much by the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the earth’s atmosphere by the activities that are under our direct control. We will also look to embrace other measurements that support other direct action on climate change.

• The Green Budget will be made up of a series of proposals, budgeted and included in the Annual Budget of the Council.

By introducing a Green Budget we believe we can draw together all the resources at our disposal and engage meaningfully with other organisations to make a dramatic difference. We also believe that through our efforts we will encourage Residents and Businesses in the Borough to find out what they can do to reduce further their negative impact on the Environment.

We believe the investment and costs associated with the introduction will be at least cost neutral over the first three years. We are confident that there will actually be a more optimistic outcome as regards savings and a greater effect in terms of the potential reduction of our negative impact on the Environment.

Cllr. Ken Smith, Conservative Spokesman said “We know that while people will debate what levels of threat we face from climate change, it is clear we all have to become more aware of the effects we ourselves have on our environment. Reducing the impact and the costs of energy use is something we can all agree on. Our proposal is one clear way for the Council to step up to the table and give leadership to our residents and the businesses operating in the Royal Borough of Kingston.

We will involve everyone who works at the Council and everyone we work with in delivering services to our Residents. It will bring all that we do under a spotlight and help bring the need to change in the way we work into the open. We believe this proposal will also complement the wider need for change in the corporate culture of the Council. This innovation will bring together all organisations interested in Climate Change and the Environment in Kingston and enable us to unite and work together in making a difference that will benefit our Borough and its people for generations”

Zac Goldsmith, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Richmond Park said “This is a hugely important initiative. Without proper information and real transparency, we won’t be able to tackle climate change. The right approach is one that combines saving money with saving energy. It’s a win-win situation.”

Kingston, worth fighting for!

From Andrea Craig of ‘Greener upon Thames’

Dear all,

Following on from the announced plans for (a Conservative) Green Budget I am writing to ask you all to sign the Greener Upon Thames pledge which is below. Greener upon Thames began as plastic-bag-free campaigns in the London boroughs of Richmond and Kingston – and  we have now got other boroughs involved as they become more environmentally aware.

Their 3 objectives are:

1.  To dramatically reduce plastic bag usage in London

2.  To pressure the government for an outright ban or levy

3.  Education and awareness

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/-PlasticBagFree

This was originally sent to our Council Group but I imagine Ms Craig would be happy with the widest support she and her fellow trustees can get. So, readers who agree, please help.

I know Mr. Davey sent emails to many of you asking for your support for his petition. This is a matter of grave community concern, not something to play party politics with, so I am at a loss to understand why he did not seek our support. He knows the email addresses of all of us councillors well enough.

I urge readers to see the letter from NHS SW London on the Health and Hospitals page before signing the petition form on the back of the ‘newspaper’.

If you do sign the form, think carefully before filling in your email address. The object of the exercise is to build up a database of private email addresses for future use. It says this in very small print which is very hard to read without a powerful glass, just conforming with the letter of the Data Protection Act.

Finally, the headline of the article says Labour has a plan to close the services. The logic of this statement is that the right thing to do is to vote Labour out of office nationally. You will not achieve that by voting Lib Dem at the next election, any more than it was achieved by voting Lib Dem in 1997, 2001 or 2005.

Please remember to recycle the paper.