A letter about Christmas light night road closures and of introduction to JCR and MCR presidents

I sent the following letter today to all JCR and MCR presidents at Colleges of Oxford University that are in my Carfax ward today:

Dear JCR/MCR president,
Introduction and news from your Oxford City Councillor about major end of 6th week event.
closuresI’m writing to you at the start of this academic year, firstly to introduce myself, so you and your common room members know how to contact me (see phone and email above, or tweet @tonybrett) for any city issues while you are resident here; and, secondly, to let you know about the City Council Christmas Lights event that is planned for the end of sixth week as it will involve some multi-day road closures and parking suspensions in large parts of the City Centre that will affect you.
An Oxford graduate myself, I’ve been representing Carfax ward since 2010. About 65% of its people are students so I am very keen that I am accessible to you so I can help you with anything you need while you are here in Oxford. I work at IT Services at 13 Banbury Road, so I’m very close at hand if you or any of your college’s students have any questions about city issues. You can ring me on internal 83354.
I want to do all I can to ensure you and all your fellow students feel as welcome in this city as possible, and part of it. I’d be really pleased to come along to a suitable common room meeting or any other appropriate event, perhaps to give a quick 5-minute run-down on what councillors do for people, how we can help and to take any questions. Would that be useful? Did you know, for example, that Oxford City Council is responsible for shared houses; parks; licensing live music venues; pubs, clubs, taxis and kebab vans; planning permission, collecting rubbish, and dealing with complaints about noise nuisance? I’ve helped students with all of those. Remember my job is to represent you to the council – not the council to you! You can read more about my work at http://tonybrett.mycouncillor.org.uk/
Turning to the Christmas event at the end of sixth week I am very keen that students get advance warning of the road closures as I think the Council has been pretty poor at keeping you informed. I only found out about them myself last month! All of St. Giles and some surrounding roads will be closed from 7pm on Thursday of 6th week right up until Monday of 7th week. That will mean no cycling and certainly no driving into town for friend or parent visits etc. I’m sure the Christmas event will be good but I wanted all your college’s students to know about it as I thought you might have concerns or questions. I’ve put a map of the closures on the back of this letter – I’m assured, after querying the council, that the green area will actually be closed from 7pm, not 4pm on Thursday of sixth week. Please do let me have any queries or comments and I will make sure they are passed on to the appropriate council officers and dealt with properly. As a past student of Oxford myself I know how important it is to be able to get around the City when you live right in the centre of it.
Thanks very much for taking time to read this and I wish you a happy and successful Michaelmas Term and academic year.

I hope some will find it useful.  You can click the image to see a larger version.

A meeting about Christmas light night

consultationJean Fooks and I met today with two council officers and a contractor about the events planned for 22-24 November in the City Centre to Celebrate Christmas light night.

We made quite a few points but the main one was about our fears that such a long closure of so many City Centre roads would cause utter havoc for the thousands of City Centre residents who had not been consulted about the event.  I also had not been consulted as a ward councillor which I find frankly staggering for an event of such size and disruption.  There are many disabled and inform people extremely worried that they will not be able to get to their regular places of worship on the Sunday too.

I am not very sure our points were taken very seriously and it does increasingly like councillors who are not part of the Labour administration really are not taken seriously by the paid staff and that the need to consult us as ward councillors doesn’t really seem to register.

I wish the City Council would understand that Oxford University is not just an historic backdrop against which it can do what it likes, but rather a busy and active world-leading centre of excellence in education and research.  I don’t think it is reasonable to disrupt that so comprehensively in what is the height of University term.  Without the University there would be very little of Oxford – it is one of the main wealth-creators of the City and certainly one of the biggest employers.  The City Council would do well to remember that before it tramples all over its activities with such massive disruption.

 

Interfaith evening for better understanding

This evening I attended an interfaith event at the St Clement’s family centre on Cross Street.  Canon Bruce Gillingham of St. Clements’ Church opened the event and the topic of discussion was “The founders of our religions”. We heard some excellent talks both from Dr Richard McCallum of the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies in Oxford and from Mr Abdul Ghani Jahangir Khan.  I was delighted to accept a cheque for the Lord Mayor of Oxford’s charitable trust, which came frrom the good works of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community nationally.  The event was chaired by Ch Waseem Ahamad, National President of the Elders of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association.

understanding

I am impressed that the Ahmadiyya Muslim community UK has been doing great work for 100 years and that the Oxford chapter has been active for about 30 of those. I think it’s great that the community puts such emphasis on education, values, peace, harmony and service to humanity and it is an example to all people in our City, be they of other faiths or none. I was particularly pleased to hear that the centenary activities include making regular contributions to feeding Oxford’s many homeless people and that so many members are donating generously to charitable activities in Oxford and beyond. It is a sign of a healthy, compassionate and committed community that it is engaged in humanitarian efforts in other parts of the world too, under the auspices of its own national community, and I want to thanked all involved for their current fundraising efforts for the victims of the Syrian humanitarian crisis.

Drug and substance abuse, antisocial behaviour, gang culture, violence and promiscuity are all plagues of our time on the younger people of our society and I am grateful for the work the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community does in encouraging our youth to take alternative, more healthy and wholesome pathways.

I think we really benefit from a multi-faith approach to such issues in jointly showing our youth that there are better ways to live a fulfilled life. In any faith, evangelism is important so I was interested to see that the Oxford chapter of the Admadiyya Muslim Community has visited nearly 30,000 homes in Oxford to spread the peaceful message of Islam with leaflets – I joked that maybe I should invite some of them out for election campaigns! Spreading peaceful messages is so important in these times of terrorist threat and it does a huge amount to help the public resist the temptation to be suspicious of all Muslims just because a tiny minority have some radical views that they express as hateful terrorist actions. There have been plenty of radical Christians in history too and I hope we can all agree that all religions of peace have no place for radicalism, hatred and terrorism. These peace symposia, held in Oxford since 2011, are very useful in spreading the “love for all, hatred for none” motto.

We ended the evening with some wonderful Asian food, prepared on the premises for us.

Freshers’ Fair

freshersI took a couple of hours out over lunch today to join the Oxford University Liberal Democrats on their stall at Oxford University’s Freshers Fair.  I had some really good conversations with lots of new students and lots were asking interesting questions.  It was interested being sandwiched between the Labour and Tory tables  and hearing some other conversations too.  We signed up dozens and dozens of new members so I look forward to an exciting year of events with this important student society.  I’m pictured here with Andy McKay (Wadham), the current Social and Events Officer.

Planning application for St Cross College rejected

St Cross College submitted a planning application over the summer I was quick to alert residents in the immediate area about it.  It would be fair to say that the area of the application site does need some sorting out as it’s a bit of a mess at the moment but it seems to me that the St Cross planning application had some features that seemed more about ticking boxes than actually doing some appropriate development.

I worked with the St. John Street area Residents’ Association and had a very constuctive meeting with them back on 10th August to help better understand their concerns and work out how best to articulate those to the council and to the members of the West Area Planning Committee who would be determining the application.  I was impressed at how well people pulled together to get all the points in a high-impact, extremely effective summary that was delivered to the planning committee when it met.

stx

I think the image here shows how the design with very square and blocky features would just jar terribly against the existing chapel and against the roof-lines of the existing St. John Street properties.

As it turned out, despite the planning department recommending approval of this rather inappropriate proposal, most members of the West Area Planning committee voted against the proposal so it was rejected.   The application fell 6 against, 2 for (Cllrs Cook & Gotch in favour; Cllrs Van Nooijen, Tanner, Price, Canning, Clack & Jones against).  I believe this is the right result and I hope that a more suitable proposition will be forthcoming in the future so that St Cross can build the extra accommodation it badly needs without doing quite so much damage to the amenity and beauty of this sensitive part of Oxford’s historic centre.

Lovely to be thanked!

I had a really lovely email today following my last-minute attendance at the Oxford-Léon link meeting and AGM from the organiser, sent to me and to the Lord Mayor’s PA Anjana who organises our engagements:

“I would like to thank you both for Thursday evening: Anjana for organising Tony to deputise at our meeting at short notice, as Cllr Sinclair, the mayor was ill and Tony for stepping in. It was clear that Anjana had efficiently forwarded the notes – and that Tony had read them. Your system for dealing with these situations clearly works.

Tony, I appreciate that it must have been difficult with little notice, but your speech was excellent and thank you for staying for the meeting and taking an interest in our work. Thanks especially for your technical help with the Skype link. It was (again) a tad embarrassing that the problems were at this end and that Oxford City Council’s technology was out-done by that of a small NGO in a developing country. Our contacts in Leon were very amused by this.

I’m glad that, with your help, we were able to establish the connection and speak to Jane and Andrew. It is a pity that there were no speakers, as we requested so even had we got Skype working on time, the audience would not have been able to hear them as intended.

All in all it was a good meeting and making £70 on the raffle was an added bonus.”

Receiving such messages is wonderful and really makes it feel worth making the effort to attend everything I am invited to as Deputy Lord Mayor.  I feel honoured and very blessed.

Opening of The Individual Funeral Company

individualI really had no idea what to expect today, being asked to open a funeral directors.  I needn’t have feared though as the owner of this new business, Lucy Jane, was really lovely and made me feel so very welcome.

I know that Lucy Jane has a local history in this business, training in Oxford and then becoming the first female hearse rider in the world for Motorcycle funerals. That sounds very exciting and quite fitting for those who have motorbikes and indeed probably petrol in their blood.

I am delighted that Lucy Jane has decided to come back to Oxford to fulfil her dream of helping local families to have an individual funeral tailored exactly to their needs and wishes. She says that people are not gold, silver or bronze packages and that the Individual Funeral Company won’t treat them as such. I think that’s really important as funerals are a very difficult time for friends, family and loved ones of those that have passed away. Getting the details right, including treating everyone with dignity and respect is so important in properly enabling the grieving process and helping those that are left to come to terms with their loss.  I loved the way everything was accessible and there were some really beautiful decorated coffins on show in the window as well as a model of the motorcycle hearse.

windowThe individual Funeral Company is a small independent company and although it is principally a funeral directors I am pleased that the intention is very much to become an integral part of the community where people can just come and say hello to Lucy Jane and her staff as friends as well as providers of this important service that we all ultimately need! It’s great that the company is family owned and managed and is happy to give honest advice on any matters to the local and wider community. I’m sure that as a small local company it will be a great asset to the Rose Hill community and beyond.

It was an honour to give the business, its owner and all its staff the formal blessing of the City.

Oxford León Association and Trust AGM

This was another last-minute engagement due to the Lord Mayor being unwell.  I was invited to speak and indeed did so the minute I was through the door!

I am a great advocate of town-twinning activity and in my time so far on the council have made some great friends in Bonn, another City with which Oxford is privileged to be twinned.

The link with León in Nicaragua is different to all Oxford’s others because Nicaragua is a developing country and this Association and Trust raises funds for important projects in that country. It’s a real credit to everyone involved that the link has been alive and doing great work since 1986 – nearly 30 years. I am pleased that two of my councillor colleagues, John Tanner and Mike Rowley were able to visit León as part of the delegation back in February.

leonOf course fundraising should also be fun and indeed many in Oxford had great fun earlier this year swimming at Hinksey Pool, our wonderful heated outdoor pool just down the road, in the sponsored swim. It raised much needed funds for a pipeline to carry clean drinking water into a Nicaraguan community where the previous supply was contaminated with Arsenic.
I know there are plans to bring two young people from León to Oxford next year and I think that’s a really great thing to do to strengthen then link. I’ll certainly do what I can to get the City Council to support this.

I also thanked the Association for the gigantona (giant puppet woman) that was a gift from León to Oxford. I know it was used in the Cowley Road Carnival this year and provided great entertainment and delight for many people – I hope Oxford can use it much more as time goes on!

We were treated to a Skype link conversation with some volunteers actually in Nicaragua and indeed some rather delicious Nicaraguan Rum.  I also bought some fair trade coffee that had been got as part of a project running also in Léon.  There was also a raffle but I didn’t win anything!

Opening of Andrew Wiles Mathematics Building for the University of Oxford

penroseThis event was a last-minute stand-in as the Lord Mayor was ill.  It was a great privilege to see this building and its opening as it really is stunning. Speeches were made by the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and by David Willetts, the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science, as well as the Head of the Department, Sam Howison.  I was treated to a wonderful tour by the department’s head of administration and hugely enjoyed the visit.  The building is quite amazing in that it has all sorts of mathematical quirks built in, including the Penrose paving, based on a non-repeating pattern discovered by famous Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, and two “crystals” which are based also on mathematical structures.

maths

The building provides more than 300 offices in a range of sizes, identifiable space for graduate taught course students and 4th year undergraduate students working on projects, an extensive suite of teaching and seminar spaces as well as a range of meeting rooms, breakout spaces and a large departmental common room. It provides workspace for a diverse community of more than 500 mathematical researchers and support staff, including faculty, research fellows and postgraduate students. It is a centre for the academic life of approximately 900 undergraduates.

The project incorporates Ground Source Heat Pumps which will supply heat in winter and cool the building in the summer. This is achieved by submerging pipes deep into the ground that can transfer the temperature to the building by use of pumps. The Institute building was designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects.

Music and the Deaf Concert

This is possibly the most inspiring event I’ve been to yet as Deputy Lord Mayor.  It was a concert in aid of the charity Music and the Deaf, at the Town Hall.  This charity is unique in that it enables the 10 million people in the UK with hearing loss (1 in 6) to enjoy the world of music.  Dr Paul Whittaker OBE is the Artistic Director of MATD and has been profoundly deaf all his life.  He was admitted to Oxford by Wadham College to read music in 1983 after rejections from many other UK Universities on the misguided basis that “deaf people can’t do music”.  Paul founded MATD in 1988 and has I thinkemphatically proved how wonderful music is to deaf people and how they contribute just as much to music as those with non-impaired hearing.  I’m sure he has changed and enriched thousands of lives through his amazing work and commitment.

The concert was really good both in terms of being fun and being musically excellent.  I hugely enjoyed along with the Mayor of Witney, the Chief Examiner of the London College of Music and Steve Webb MP.    It was just stunning to hear some Mozart piano duets played by two profoundly deaf men and Paul Whittaker’s command of the pipe organ was just wonderful.  I parituclarly enjoyed Paul’s rendition of Noel Rawsthorne’s Hornpipe Humoresque.