Our regular
estate diary.
Why not check
back frequently
to see what is
going on at
Kingsholm?
Back Issues
To say this is a week of meetings is an understatement! We attended an all-day meeting at the Guildhall Arts Centre - an "awayday" for tenants (the second of two such days) in which the whole range of new thinking in housing is presented and discussed. The topics have ranged from the Tenant Participation Compacts to "Best Value" and the massive "choices" debate.
Then in the evening it was our TCC monthly meeting - the last we are to hold with our Housing Office Manager, Louise Beard who as regular readers will know is wrenching herself away from Gloucester to accompany her husband to California where he is working in for the next three years.
We will really miss Louise who has done us proud. If every tenant group in England had a housing officer like Louise, then everyone would be happy! In the few years she has run our area housing office, we have had the occasional "argument". But at the end of the day she has done far more than pay lip service to the words "tenant participation".
She is one of the very few housing officers we have know who only has two baskets on her desk - an "in tray" and and "out tray" (there is NO "pending tray", which is very refreshing). We would put money on that the minutes of tonight's meeting will be written up by 9 am tomorrow morning!
We had one of our shorter meetings and after the few words of thanks and good wishes by the chairman at the end, we retired to the lounge of Clapham Court where a couple of bottles of wine materialised along with a few "nibbles".
So, the end of an era at Kingsholm. We have known Louise for some eight years. She started off as a receptionist at our area housing office, then moved to another area on promotion before returning a couple of promotions later as "boss lady".
At the "awayday" meeting this morning, we discovered a new word that is taboo, or politically incorrect.
The deputy head of Gloucester Housing Services, Glynis Sampey, suggested at one point that there should be a "brain-storming" session! Oh, my! What a furore!
The faux pas was not about the suggestion that the meeting might "b***n-s***m" some aspect of what ever was being discussed, but the use of the word "b***n-s***m".
Glynis, bless her, refused to the be ruffled! LET'S BRAIN-STORM, she again suggested! Game, set, and match to Glynis Sampey!
This political correctness can sometimes be taken too far. One of our representatives attending a Tenants Forum meeting the Council Chamber had the nerve to ask for a black coffee! The council official who was dispensing the drinks repremanded him, saying he should have saked for "coffee without milk". Being the sort of person who prefers to use two words rather than three, our representative repeated his order - black coffee. He got his drink!
We now come to a plea for help. We have
racked our politically incorrect heads for hours trying
to reason what is wrong with the word
"brain-storm". If anyone can enlighten us,
please send us a note, either in the Guestbook
or by 
.
We are longing to know!
Today was not the best of days for Gloucester City Services! It started off when we spotted one of their small lorries parked (again) on a paved area. The workmen were replacing broken paving slabs! As we suggested in Tuesday's diary, this is a macabre form of creating work!
We brought the matter to the attention of Louise Beard, who duly telephoned Gloucester City Services.
Later in the day, we learned that the matter had been referred to Gloucester City Services on Tuesday. In addition Jane Harris had personally spoken to the workmen yesterday, as had a contracts officer from Gloucester City Services who was on the estate on another matter!
In the afternoon, the lorry was still there! Again telephoned Louise who hit the roof! Tenancy Services in the Housing Department was contacted, as was Gloucester City Services who were unable to put us through to the General Manager, David Parish - he was "in a meeting!"
Telephoned the Chief Executive's office to find that he was also in a meeting, but learned that the best person to talk to was David Clegg. Tried to get him, but now joy. He was ... yes, you guess it ... in a meeting!
Just as we were about to bash our heads against the well-worn brick wall, Tony our estate caretaker came into the office to ask us to pop outside as he wanted to show us something.
The "something" was the mess created by the "binmen" from Gloucester City Services. It was dustbin day for part of the estate and the binmen had emptied the large communal "eurobin" that serves the block 19-34 Union Street. Unfortunately, they had "forgotten" to replace the bin back underneath the "chute", leaving the empty bin outside and behind a brick wall!
The same thing happened about two weeks ago in exactly the same block, would you believe!
We immediately contacted the refuse department of Gloucester City Services. Alex Selsby, the cleansing manager, was not available. He was .... WRONG, he was on sick leave! So we spoke to the supervisor of the department. "There's nothing I can do about it, I was at work at 6 o'clock this morning and I'm going home," he told us, adding that he would personally come round in the morning and put things right at 6 o'clock!
As we were not satisfied, we contacted the client side of the City Council and explained the position. Within five minutes, we spotter Richard Dyer, a client officer, looking at the problem area.
He told us that he had radioed for the mess to be cleared up and a few minutes later told us that someone from Gloucester City Services "would be round in 15 minutes".
Is is a very long 15 minutes! All this happened between 4 pm and 5 pm. The area was checked at 9 pm and there was no sign of Gloucester City Services! So much for 15 minutes, but then I suppose when we check tomorrow we will be told that the wrong sort of leaves were blocking the depot entrance and they could not get a vehicle out - and that their watches had stopped after six minutes and that they would be round within nine minutes!
Left a message on the answering maching of Councillor Mike Peplar, who in the Chairman (whoops, politically incorrect) ... the chair of the board of Gloucester City Services.
We then went to vote. Not for a candidate to represent us in the European Parliament, but for a party.
HAS THE COUNTRY GONE TOTALLY BONKERS????