Thursday 22 September 2011

Acting & Pantomime


What a week in my escapist world, two casting readings, two parts.

The first is playing Richard in ‘Tea for Two’ for St Peters Players, Newlyn, for performance in November. Tea for Two is a comedy/farce; I told you that there is a cross over with being a Town Councillor.
Richard is drunk throughout the play, this is not a piece of type casting as I’m almost tea total, in truth coffee total as I don’t drink tea, not that I have anything against a drink.  I just don’t do a lot of it, I think this comes from the fact that my parents where publicans as I was growing up, enough to put anyone off for life. It also gives me an advantage in that being sober on nights out I have spent a lot of time observing drunks.
For all of that a nice part to play.

St Peters Players have been going for fifty years this year and is one of a very few amateur drama groups still going in West Cornwall, but we as with all groups have problems recruiting new members, I wish I knew the answer but its very hard to attract new young members.

You would think that with so many at college studying drama a few would like to get a little on stage, in front of an audience experience, the song and dance groups seem to do well but not the non musical groups.

The second reading was with Rosudgeon Pantomime, a group I was asked to help with last year, after many successful years the past couple had not gone so well for them, a small group of us from St Peters went along to help, and great fun it was too, I had not done pantomime for a good few years, after playing dame for many years. Pleased to say that all went very well, with good audiences for all the performances.  

It was great to be cast as the baddy ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ for last year and ham it up I did, Alan Rickman would have been proud. Most of the smaller children in the audiences should be coming out of therapy by now.

Pantomime is a fantastic medium, for the vast majority of people it’s the very first live theatre that you get to see, I know it was for me and gave me a life long love of live theatre of all kinds.

So was looking forward to casting this year for ‘Beauty and the Beast of Rosudgeon’ and even better to see a lot of new faces, young and old. Doing a bit of re-writing of the script so that all the youngsters get at least a line or two, what part did I get……… The Queen!
Yes its back to being the dame, talk about being type cast.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Penzance Town Council Meeting Part 2

Penzance CCTV

This was the other item that raised passions last night, and a right good old ding-dong it was.

A bit of background, at the moment the CCTV in Penzance is not active and has not been for a little while, various reasons for this, cost of an upgrade, no monitoring contract in place, move from district to County.

A group of West Cornwall town councils (St Ives, Hayle, Camborne, Helston & Redruth) have now got together to form a new partnership, with County paying for the upgrade. The question is does Penzance wish to join this group.

This has been discussed in committee over the past few months with various questions being asked regarding cost, contracts and so on and meetings held with the other towns.

The item came to the General Purposes Committee, of which I’m chairman, for a final time in this cycle of meetings.

Now I should state at this point that I’m not a fan of CCTV, I question it’s usefulness as a crime prevention measure, I have issues over right to privacy, displacement of crime, that it can lead to lazy policing i.e. less on the beat as we have CCTV, cost, an over reliance on CCTV etc.

At the General Purposes Committee, questions where again raised and a recommendation passed that, following receipt of the information requested, consideration of the issue be deferred to the next Full Town Council meeting.

There where five questions to which we had asked for further information, two where a bit technical the other three where:

  1. Information regarding the number of recorded crimes in the period that the cameras where not in operation compared to the previous year.
  2. An assurance that CCTV footage was not sold or used for television purposes.
  3. Availability of police resources to follow up on reported incidents covered by CCTV.


The debate starts, and first to his feet is yours truly, starting with the replies given to the above questions.

  1. There was no answer, this is the norm, I have never been able to establish any real data for CCTV’s effectiveness, not even in the limited scope of this question.
  2. Cornwall Council will remain the data owners and controllers. All data will be subject to the guidelines in the Code of Practice and CCTV Operations manual. This covers the use of data and restricts its use for specific purposes – these do not include media use.
     
    I’m not sure what this answer means, restricts its use so can’t be used in the media or does not cover the use of the data by the media. Our town clerk was not sure either when he received it, so he asked for further information and got a lot of legal jargon for his trouble, from this it would appear that Cornwall Council can very possibly sell the data to a TV company. Well the argument goes do nothing wrong and you have nothing to fear. Consider this, lady in Market Jew Street falls through railings on the Terrace, shopping goes rolling down the street, great fun, sold to TV station so all can join in the fun. But in the background is yours truly, on the pavement having a laugh and a joke with Alec Robertson (Leader Cornwall Council), that could well be the end of my political career and/or marriage, and I’m sure it would not do a lot of good for his political career either.
  3. A Sergeant and other officers have received training and are able to interrogate recorded images for evidence and down load it.

    This was not what was being asked. Personal experience has shown me that if an incident takes place, in this case a broken shop window, that may have been caught on CCTV, unless it was seen at the time by the sole operator monitoring the CCTV from the six towns, then the police do not have the resources to review the CCTV images. So even if CCTV catch the offence, unless it is a major incident, which very few are, CCTV is worth nothing.     


Much debate now follows, one of our dual hatters (Penzance Town and Cornwall Council councillors) even managing to get comments about the comfort of the new children’s swing seats, into the debate, in a previous blog I did mention she can be a bit random, others speak in favour expressing the view that the cameras will increase safety in the town and if not safety, the fear of crime would be decreased, then reading my briefing notes I notice this paragraph:

Within the next two years, Cornwall Council would be providing a centrally monitored service from a new purpose built building.

   What for CCTV? No for everything Fire, Police, Ambulance is this true?

Now we come to the tears & laughter I promised in part one.
I’m on to my feet at the first sign from the Mayor that I can speak.
With tears rolling down my cheeks, not sure if they are of fear or laughter I should say, the very thought of Cornwall Council even contemplating a joint control room is just too much for me, I’m sure there are some very good officers at Cornwall Council, as I’m sure there are some very good civil servants, but the record of government bodies and IT is not good to say the least, as today’s news only confirms Cost of control room(strangely, I even mentioned £500 million, not a bad guess)  and demand that should Penzance enter into a contract for CCTV it ends before the centrally monitored service is introduced , with the town making no commitment to continue.

After all the above we come to the vote, does Penzance Town Council join the CCTV partnership, and this could be close, and it is 8 – 8.

This should now go to a casting vote of the Mayor, this is not a good place to be in, in two terms as Mayor I had to use my casting vote only once and you can never win.

Town Clerk to the rescue, there had been a second proposal earlier, to not join the CCTV partnership, as this was a direct negative to the first vote it would have fallen, if the first had been in favour, as it was not in favour it still stood to be voted on, second vote, not to join, vote  8 – 7 against 1 abstains (saves Mayor).

Penzance joins CCTV partnership.

What a night.

Penzance Town Council Meeting


In truth Full Town Council meetings can be pretty dry affairs, just ticking off resolutions passed in the committees, where most of the work is done, but last night we had a Full Town Council that had it all, tied votes, some of the finest pre election manoeuvring, tears & laughter.

So what could have brought about all this, on the face of it very little, yes the main item did concern the link to the Isles of Scilly, but not anything too controversial, some background.

 After the collapse of Cornwall Council’s funding bid, Andrew George and Penzance Town Council along with other groups got together to rework a new bid, Cornwall Council where invited to join but declined, this bid will be lead by the Town Council, to this end a committee was set up, of which I was a member, and within this a working group.
Meetings have been held, work done and on the 1st September a meeting was held, attended by the Mayor and Deputy, reps of Penzance Seafront Forum, The Isles of Scilly Steamship Company with DfT and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Meetings have also been held with the Isles of Scilly council and chief executive.http://www.scillytoday.com/2011/09/20/council-building-bridges-with-penzance-over-route-plans/
We now move to the next stage of the bid process which is the formation of the Penzance Harbour Scheme Management Board, this is what was under discussion last night, it should be noted that there is broad agreement within Penzance Town Council for this to go ahead, but who was going to be on the board, that was the question?

The proposed make-up of the Board was the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chairman of the Finance/Property Committee, Chairman of the Planning Committee and one other councillor, three members of the Penzance Seafront Forum, a representative from the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company, one rep from Cornwall Council(if they wish, officer or councillor), a representative from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

So five members from Penzance Town Council (as lead body), three from Penzance Seafront Forum (a wide based community group), Isles of Scilly Steamship Company, one rep from Cornwall Council and a representative from the Department for Communities and Local Government (funding body).

Now we come to the problem, one other councillor, straight to her feet is one of our two dual hated councillors (Penzance Town and Cornwall Council councillors). Proposing that she should be the one, not sure of the reason given, it was a bit random and I was losing interest, and that the Deputy Mayor should be replaced by her colleague (the other twin hatter), who had graced us with her presence for the first time for some while, that woke me up, I should have known something was up, a two pronged attack, but why the sudden interest ?

Then it hit me, this should nicely be coming to an end in an election year, now call me a cynic if you want, but I’ve been doing this for a good few years and I can spot a bit of pre election manoeuvring a long way off. Our two County Councillors are going to save the harbour.

Well this kicked off a right old debate, during which I managed to keep my own council, should the Chairman of Planning be a member as he’s also the chair of the Civic Society, (probably a third of councillors are involved with other groups, certainly the active one’s), and so on.

How did it end? Well councillor one, got part of her way and got the seat, the Deputy Mayor retained his seat, her comrade in arms talked her way onto the group also, but non voting, sure that won’t be mentioned in the election blurb.

I admire their cheek, but I am still not sure, whatever their motives that having two councillors from County on the board is such a good thing.