SLDC Council Meeting Webcasts

Last Thursday South Lakeland District Council did a live webcast of their Full Council meeting for the first time following a previous pilot.  This is an area I've casually moaned about in various forums (see bottom of post for various links) - councillors over time in general have commented on the lack of public coming to watch the council proceedings, my argument is that peoples working life don't allow the time needed to get themselves to these meetings to see what goes on, the council need to switch from assuming the public should come the them to making it easier for the council to get closer to the public.

Last year BBC4 broadcast a programme called Tales from the National Park, the first programme covered a issue in the Lake District which involved a planning application, one of the planning meeting was filmed, you could see the councillor stating their cases before a vote, some were with passion, others with nimby-ism.  But what was clear was reinforcing my thoughts that with the technology we have available today why were these meetings not being made for open to the general public (the ones that can't attend)

So I'll cut to the chase, below is the live view I had (plus the football), a fixed camera on the whole meeting with the audio fed in so you can hear everything clearly.  It was more than I was expecting, councillors were conscious of the webcast and acknowledged at odd points to need to do certain things to benefit those watching, like naming councillors as the majority of watchers won't recognise the councillor speaking.

Turned out the webcast had 250 viewers, which is a large number for something so local.  For me it's not important how many watch live, it that's we with have a clearer record of what is said in council meetings, so it I read or hear a sound bite in the media that I can go to the council recording and listen to it myself and get the full context that you would never of got from reading the minutes.

So could this broadcast be improved on?  I don't think it could or needs to - it would be interesting to see a meeting for a smaller committee, whether the camera needs to change it's position or how webcasts are dealt with which have sections which the public can't watch - also I think next they should move to broadcasting meetings that more often are likely to have the public involved like the planning meetings.

Next I need to see if LDNPA will start webcasting, recording their meetings which are open to the public

Confirmation of webcast trail

Westmorland Gazette - SLDC Newsletter waste

Broadband Cumbria Map

Below are two interactive maps, first map contains parish boundaries, green representing parishes that are known to have a parish champion, red if a parish champion isn't currently known (see previous post on how to supply info of champions that can be used to update this map).  Also on the map is the locations of current BT cabinets, data supplied for this was postcode based so location may not be exact.

In the second map is a guide of current broadband speed rate as supplied by BT, do I hear coughing in the audience, yes you'll correct in noticing that the circles look very uniform and I expect from you local experience that the reality of this speed estimates from BT are likely to be wildly different in the lower direction.

Now the fun bit, these maps are interactive, click anywhere on the maps and you'll get a popup giving champion details, cabinet details or BT speed estimate details.

Move one of the maps, the other map will move in line and vis-versa. You can zoom in/out of each map to make it easier to see your parish.  Finally as well at the normal Google Maps, I've included an OpenStreetMap overlay (set as default) which in some areas will contain more detail.

Thanks goes to everyone who's helped add to the data that's used for the overlays on these maps

London Trip - Strange Times

Today I travelled down to London for an afternoon meeting which was planned to finish around 5pm,with all the mindless looting going on around London I paid closer attention to all the news reports, seeing if there were any reports of trouble within the bounds of central London.  There was only one report of a problem at Oxford Circus on Sunday which the police said was contained so my main thinking was whether to walk to our meeting or to take the tube but I think it would be more the return journey that had the potential to be at risk.

I arrived at Euston just after 11:15am with a couple of colleagues, it was a clear sunny day so we decided to do a 30 minute walk to where the meeting was planned to take place.  The route was normal / uneventful, all shops along the way were open and there were no signs on problems or concerns.

We finally got to our destination which is a long street that is just full of expensive jewellery shops (no Ratners here).  We were expected at what we told is known as the diamond exchange because as the name suggests it's where diamond dealers go to trade and with this security to get in is very tight with thick full length turn gates like you'd see in those bank job movies.  This place also has normal office lets for none diamond related business which is what we were visiting.

Now when we entered this street the atmospheric had changed, alot of the jewellery shops had their shutters half way down and the odd one had a staff member outside looking on nervously.  We were early and had an hour to kill so went for a bite to eat and also met up with some other colleagues who were also attending.  When the hour was up we headed back to the street where we now noticed that a few of shops had cleared down there diamond shop front displays and shut up shop, we got into the building for our meeting and commenced business.

Within 30-45 minutes an office worker came into our meeting room and said the police had advised us to leave the area, so with that advise we quickly wrapped up and headed into the street to decide how best to get back to Euston (tube or walk).  Out in the street all the jewellery shops were now closed with their security shutters down.  Two police were at one end of the street with another five at the other end in the direction we decided to walk back to Euston.  Once we got out of the street the rest of the walk back was pretty normal, on the route there are not many shops that match the type you seen in news reports.

I think the police had decided to play safe and get everyone out of the area that has a potential risk so it's easier for them to deal with any issues and based on previous days things seemed to be at risk of happening from late afternoon although I've not heard of looting of jewellery shops, seems it's trainers and mobiles that are order of the day.

Oxenholme to Heathrow in half the time?

This week on the drive home I managed to catch the last part of Lakeland Radio's news bulletin which mentioned the possibility of travelling from Oxenholme to Heathrow in half the currently time that being in just two hours.  I thought this very strange, why Heathrow, is there a need to travel there when we have airports closer at Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, and don't you have to travel into London first then back out to Heathrow.

Back home I did a search of the web to see if I'd heard things right and was only able to find two media outlets in the North West reporting this story, one of them being this news report by Lakeland Radio and the other from the Blackpool Gazette.

From reading these two online reports it became clear that they were probable mostly copy n pasted from a Department for Transport press release that is trying garner support for the proposed High Speed Rail link (HS2) and seems to make out that it's be possible to travel from any North West station to Heathrow in two hours - the press release must be written by someone who thinks England doesn't pass the bounds of the M25

Does this two hour claim stack up?  I've tend to do the train journey into London from Oxenholme once or twice a year and it's possible to get down to London Euston from Oxenholme in 2 hours 45 mins, just enough time to settle down and watch a movie.  If you want to then goto Paddington then the train times allow you 1 hours to get on the tube to Paddington then it's a 15 minutes train to Heathrow.

Keeping the Euston to Heathrow times the same that would mean the journey between Oxenholme and Euston would need to be done in 45 minutes to meet the 2 hour claim - so is this possible with HS2.

Short answer is No.  Well HS2 could have a speed of around 240MPH and London is around 250 miles away so at best the journey would be over 1 hour into London.  Now the HS2 proposed will only get as far north as Birmingham although the release implies that it's go as far as Manchester as uses this as the basis for the 2 hour claim.  So lets say HS2 was to get as far as Manchester, could that help, I don't think so - all trains from Oxenholme tend to stop at other North Western stations which take up to a hour of the journey, I can't the number of stops reducing, so I can't see any time savings.

Conclusion is I think the report is pie in the sky, at best I think it would reduce journey times by upto 30 minutes but that will be lost if you have to change trains on route to London.

I wonder why more of the local media hasn't report this, is it obvious it's not a going or is it bad timing publication wise.

Cumbria Broadband Champions Map

I've produced a overlay map of Cumbria marking out all the parishes and which have a known Broadband Champion based on information found on Cumbria Broadband, looks sparse doesn't it, I'm sure there are more but look on the web it's not obvious who there are.  So this is where you guys come in to help fill in the blanks so we see a sea of green instead of the current red.

A walk-though on how to provide to details is available at the bottom of this post.

I've created a Google Spreadsheet where at minimum the name of the Broadband champion should be added against the relevant parish, also details like social network links can be added, these are optional but would be good to be added so as to extend the community and add ways on communicating on this subjects between those interested.  The spreadsheet can be updated by anyone, I will periodically pull the data from the spreadsheet to update the map, I'm also happy to input names myself if that's easier for some, a link to the various ways of contacting me is on the spreadsheet.

The current version of the map is shown below, link to larger interactive version is shown below which has options to embed in websites, this map can be reused by anyone supporting Cumbria Community Broadband, I'll post updates on this blog and on the spreadsheet, free free to let me know what your think of the map.

Map - Large Version

Walk-through on how to fill in the spreadsheet with details