Sun and fun in the park

I have posted some pics to the West End Bowlers blog today and took a few other pics in the park at the same time:

 Look at the  sky — not a cloud in sight and already far too hot for me to enjoy. I took this pic when I arrive just after 2pm and by the time I left ninety minutes later the park was beginning to heave and the 'Mr Whippy' ice cream van had arrived and was parked by the entrance opposite Holy Trinity Church.

As I was leaving the park I found Hannah and James dunking, but I have never seen a 'dunker' dressed like Hannah before. I tried getting a pic with the 'ball' (is that its correct name?) just leaving her hands, but it was all too quick for me — which, I hope, explains why her arms are raised in the air like this.

James, as you can see, is dressed quite differently to Hannah, but they made a happy couple and it was great to catch them having fun. They'll both in Lenton 'for a few years yet' as James is doing medics and Hannah nursing. I hope they enjoy their stay in Lenton.

Finally, a pic of one of our student neighbours, Rob, hard at work revising. I caught him sitting at the desk in his bedroom, which looks across to our 2nd floor. This is the other side of student life in Lenton I've not even mentioned before — actual studying and doing 'the donkey' work you need to do if you want to get your degree. He has a job to go to this summer after he gets his degree. I wish him well and hope that he takes good memories of Lenton with him. 

Bluebell heaven courtesy of a no.35

On 9 May, some close friends from Stoke-on-Trent came across to see Susan and me for the day and to take us out for an early birthday lunch of fish and chips plus a trip to Oldmoor Wood near  Strelley, on the edge of Nottingham.

Normally it's a trip we do on a no.35 Nottingham City Transport bus. I am in no doubt that it is the most interesting bus route in the city. The only sad thing is that the service is now operated by single deckers. Only occasionally do you see a double-decker. I have blogged about the woods before, but on this occasion I took none of the pics, Paul, Rosie and Susan should get the credit.

I think the pics speak for themselves and I really was that close to the Tree Creeper in the pic. I turned to look at a tree and there it was. We both froze and somehow Paul came up and got the pic before the bird flew off.  A really, really magic moment and as for the Bluebells, what can I say? I love them — and to think you can see all this less than fifteen minutes walk from getting off a no.35 bus, which begins its wandering journey from outside the city's Central Library on Angel Row, but first heads south-west down the Derby Road to Lenton, where I live, then along the southern edge of Wollaton Park, before turning north and hugging the city's western edge until it reaches Bulwell, where it terminates.

Along the way it passes through Nottingham's inner-city, then some of its better off suburbs before running through large tracts of inter-war council housing and all the way, every now and again, you catch glorious glimpses of historic buildings and little parks, but best of all, it takes you to Oldmoor Wood. Enjoy!

And as you leave the wood, this vision of the English countryside leaps out and the only thing which lets you know that this is not a Tuscany landscape in faraway Italy is the M1 motorway!  At first you hear the traffic all the time, but very quickly the sound fades and you are enveloped in the smell of wood and birdsong.

Nottingham's first mayoral might have been

Well, it's all over. Despite what the Nottingham Post and the elected mayor 'yes' campaign would like us to believe, how the city voted was not unexceptional in any way — we voted to stick with the present Devil we know rather than, lemming like, throw ourselves into the arms of the Coalition. We behaved like every other city taking part in the mayoral referendums with the exception of Bristol, which has been badly governed for years by a series of local coalitions.

For the Post to claim that the 'no' campaign was at a disadvantage because it had to begin from 'a standing start' is disingenuous. They could have called for a mayoral referendum years ago. The sadly deceased former Labour and Conservative city councillor Michael Cowan certainly considered organising a petition because he spoke to me at length on one occasion about what he wanted to do. There is page on the Nottingham City Council website which tells you how many electors you need to trigger a mayoral referendum. The Local Government Act 2000 obliges the Council to make this information available. All you have to do is to get 5% of city voters (10,302 at present) to support you and you can have your mayoral referendum.


I suspect that Michael saw me as an ally because I publicly supported his efforts to create an urban parish council in Wollaton in 2000. Even though he and his Wollaton supporters had all the signatures they needed to go ahead, they (wrongly) I believe bowed to pressure from Nottingham City Council (aka the Nottingham Labour Group) and agreed to a postal vote and were trounced with 82% of voters against a Wollaton Parish Council on a 60% turnout. Residents were subjected to a campaign of disinformation by the Labour Group which taught me that when you go up against them (and I have done so in the past) you have to choose your ground carefully.


I see it as no coincidence that the Nottingham Post reports today that the highest turnout in the Mayoral referendum was in Wollaton West (27%). It will be interesting to see any ward figures which may become available for the 'yes' and 'no' votes by wards.


For a host of reasons I saw Michael's proposal as a non-starter, not least that I believed then (and still do) that we need to empower local communities first so that they have some degree of protection from an elected mayor with strategic priorities. I say this because Lenton, where I live, suffers every day from the consequences of a City Council which puts the interests of big business, Nottingham University and itself before those of the people who live in Lenton, despite the best efforts of its Labour city councillors, who I know and happily work for. They are not the problem and what few victories local residents have had have come with their support.


The media has shown little interest in the matter, including The Guardian, who published a letter from me about these issues on 19 April 2012, which I  wrote in response to an article by their columnist Simon Jenkins accusing city councils like Nottingham of being run by 'mafias' and in support of elected in mayors in English cities. I said:

'We need to address the role of councillors in post-mayoral councils, yet we hear not a word. There is currently an ongoing consultation into 'The role of councillors as leaders of communities and neighbourhoods' by the Parliamentary Communities and Local Government Committee, which has gone unreported by The Guardian, nor has a single columnist mentioned it, yet to me and thousands of others it is how 'doorstep services' are delivered and controlled which matters most. There is an overwhelming case for electing more powerful councillors to represent single member wards able to innovate and control budgets. This is the debate I would like Simon Jenkins and others to take part in, but I can him now… 'boring, yawn yawn'.

And so it is to the media. The Nottingham Post is as guilty of short-termism as any politician. They have shown no interest in this issue nor the work of Nottingham North MP Graham Allen, whose Parliamentary Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is arguing strongly for the relationship between central and local government to be codified.

Michael Cowan's efforts came to nothing and was, perhaps, Nottingham's first mayoral might have been. It's now up to the pro-elected mayor lobby in Nottingham to plan a long game (which might lead to another referendum in, say, 2014), to take the lead in organising a Nottingham 'Democracy Commission' to come up with better governance proposals for the city (and other parts of the conurbation if they are interested) so that when the next referendum takes place (with the support of 5% of city oters) there will be a clear alternative to what is on offer at present.

To win next time the 'yes' campaign will have to win an extra 8% of the votes. Even if the turnout was double Thursday's, this would be fewer than an extra 8,000 votes. Get the balance right and I may well vote 'yes' next time. As I wrote to a Labour city councillor earlier this week: 

Ultimately, Labour's undoing in Nottingham will be its failure to give attention to the seemingly inconseqential issues. Every week I listen to the 'vox pop' of elderly bowlers and local historians. Frustration and a sense of powerlessness feed an unhealthy cynicism of local politics. As for Labour's active opponents I know and talk to, there is a bitterness creeping in that I have not heard before. I tell you this as a friend and lifelong Party member. You could hear it in the audience at the Post's mayoral debate in the Playhouse last night.

I look forward to the aftermath of Thursday's mayoral referendum with interest and in hope.

An invitation for 12 May 2012

In the last week or so, all this has come together. The leaflets have been printed and distributed. Plus some posters. Small scale compared to some of our historic efforts in the past, but it still promises to be a fun day. Come along if you can…

The Nottingham Post elected Mayor debate and other distractions

I went along last night to the Nottingham Playhouse and listened, along with about 200 other people, to what the 'yes' and 'no' protagonists had to say for themselves. The report is the Post today was fair and, if anything, surprisingly bland. I made my own notes and offer my own take on what was said and what I thought of the four speakers.

To deal with the latter first. I felt the 'yes' speakers performed better than the 'no' speakers and I particularly warmed to Issan Ghazni, Chairman of Nottingham Liberal Democrats. Graham Chapman coped well with periodic outbursts of frustration from 'yes' supporters in the audience who, thanks to a good chairman in the shape of Charles Walker from the Nottingham Post, never got out of hand. Mick Newton from the Nottingham 'Yes' Campaign seemed overwhelmed and hesitant at times. Tony Eggington, the present elected Mayor of Mansfield was on the stage in the absence of a comparable Nottingham politician willing to speak in support of the 'yes' argument (why else bring an outsider into what is, essentially, a city matter?). Eggington has all the bearing of someone used to being the centre of attention and was the first to turn on another member of the panel.

I think it fair to say the arguments were well rehearsed and little new was said, although I did leave thinking the Post had been given their headline from a heated exchange between a businessman in the audience and Chapman. In fact they went with a very tame headline in the Kindle edition and on their website: 'Complex issues in debate behind the simple Yes and No'. All I intend to add is what caught my attention during the debate.

to be continued later... as I now have to go and do dinner.

In the meantime, some pics from the park on this very wet and cold 1st May, which I took at about 5pm when I went to lock up the toilets and park pavilion.

A lone runner blurred by the rain which was lashing my camera in an otherwise deserted Lenton Recreation Ground…

…except for the tail enders in the pavilion who had been working on part of a huge inflatable artwork in the company of other local residents. Kim and Emily, who work for Nottingham based Architects of Air, which was founded in 1981, hold part of the work aloft against the backdrop of a paper template. I just had time to snap this pic as they were packing things away at the end of a busy afternoon. The completed structure, called a 'luminarium', will be in nearby Highfields Park, 2–10 June, as part of an event being organised by the Lakeside Arts Centre.

Now, back to the mayoral debate last night. The main argument of the 'yes' campaign was succinctly summed up by Mick Newton: 'Having  and elected mayor primarily gives the right to choose who leads Nottingham to voters — not a group councillors'.  Issan Ghazni immediately made the point that having an elected mayor would impact on an area greater than just the city; that city councillors would lose their powers and we have no idea as to what powers the new mayor will have.

Sometime was spent arguing over 'no' campaign claims that an elected mayor will cost Nottingham £1million over a number of years and, in fairness to Mick Newton, I thought he did have a point when he said 'The 'no' campaign has sensationalised the cost of a mayor and (had) pulled the £1million cost out of thin air because it made a good headline'. Even if they did, it remains a good argument and anyone watching the regional East Midlands TV news will have heard and seen all the arguments about the cost of their elected mayor and his deputies. Eggington, however, claimed that 'The cost of a mayor in Mansfield in 2012 is actually cheaper than the cost of a council leader and cabinet ten years ago.

When you elect a mayor you get one person who then picks a number of paid helpers. With councillors you get a team who choose a leader and a pool of colleagues to work with that person.

Chapman referred to his professional experience of working with elected mayors who had been less than successful in a string of English towns and cities. He named North Tyneside, Hartlepool, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent and Torbay. He made the point that Nottingham 'punches above its weight' in terms of attracting inward investment and that this had been achieved under the present system.

Eggington told the audience that 'The role of Chapman in Mansfield has been to disrupt the working of the Council' and added that 'the mayors who failed in Doncaster and Stoke were Labour mayors'. As Chapman pointed out this was not true — one was an English Democrat and the other an Independent.

Issan Ghazni made a telling observation when he said 'We're sleep walking into a crisis… The London mayoral model is very different (it covers all the London Boroughs) and comes with a  assembly to scrutinise the work (and policies) of the mayor'. He added that in Japan such assemblies could dismiss mayors, but if they did this they would trigger not just an election for a new mayor, but a new assembly as well'.

Charles Walker, the debate's chairman, referred to the fact that when the Nottingham Post went out and about on Monday asking people what they thought, the question of Nottingham's boundary came up more than once and asked the panel for their views. Newton was in favour of extending the city's boundaries, as was Ghazni, who added that 'This is why this is the wrong time to be electing a mayor'. Eggington took the view that boundaries should not restrict a mayor from doing his job, whilst Chapman said 'I cannot see the outer areas agreeing (to a Greater Nottingham)… It's not really an issue as we already work well with the County and meeting regularly with Derby and Leicester city councils'.

At about this point an irate 'businessman' (his own description) in the audience stood up and shouted that Chapman had told a meeting of city business leaders recently that when meeting other European city leaders he had described himself as 'a mayor', at which point the 'no' members of the audience howled at Chapman in derision.  Chapman, over the din, admitted that that was what had been said and that he had also explained why. Put simply, most European cities have mayors with similar powers to leading councillors in Nottingham, but they find it difficult to comprehend the way we work.

It was this outburst and exchange which I expected to see turned into a headline by the Nottingham Post, but they chose to ignore it in their press report*.   As it happens I fully understood why Chapman and his colleagues used the analogy with a mayor. During my time as a councillor, albeit a long time ago, I chaired two regional authorities for a good few years and found myself on more than one occasion being whisked through customs, into a waiting Mercedes with police out-riders and given five-star treatment. I have sat in the royal box at La Scala, Milan, and have the audience rise to applaud me and my wife as we entered. I spent an idyllic few days in Norway and Sweden, travelling between the two countries in a private railway carriage fit for a king and all because on every occasion my hosts in these countries thought that I was a 'regional minister'. The failure of Chapman's critic to understand how and why the situation he so deplored came about simply revealed his ignorance and Chapman's pragmatism.

Towards the end there was a discussion about how the 'yes' and 'no' campaigns were being funded. Mick Newton simply blustered a few feeble words about how their campaign was funded by 'private donors', all from Nottingham and he had to respect their privacy — this coming from the person who attacked the City Council for not publishing details of all items of expenditure over £500 was a less than satisfactory response.

Chapman said that the 'no' campaign was being paid for by Labour city councillors, who contribute c10% of their allowances to the Party. If only I had had such a chance when I was on Birmingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council. I would have paid gladly.

Then it all came to an end with each speaker having a final minute to speak. Nothing new was said and the debated ended at 7.15pm. I'm glad I went.

Come Friday we'll know the outcome of it all, but somehow I feel as if this is the beginning of change in Nottingham. The governance of our great city is an issue which needs attention and debate. 

Ultimately, Labour's undoing in Nottingham will be its failure to give attention to the seemingly inconseqential issues. Every week I listen to the 'vox pop' of elderly bowlers and local historians. Frustration and a sense of powerlessness feed an unhealthy cynicism of local politics. As for Labour's active opponents I know and talk to, there is a bitterness creeping in that I have not heard before. I say this as a lifelong Party member. You could hear it in the audience at the Post's mayoral debate in the Playhouse last night.

*FOOTNOTE: The Nottingham Post used the story on 2 May 2012 (the eve of the mayoral referendum) and said 'Mr Chapman's comments prompted laughter in the audience of up to 200 people'. Not my interpretation — I don't think his opponents in the audience thought his remarks funny at all. 

International news today:

Russian police have arrested 17 gay rights activists at a May Day rally in St Petersburg. Members of the group were detained while trying to unfurl rainbow flags at a rally organised by opposition groups, activists said. Police said they were to be charged with failing to co-operate with officers.

National news today: 

Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person" to exercise stewardship of a major international company, a committee of MPs has concluded, in a report highly critical of the mogul and his son James's role in the News of the World phone-hacking affair.

Nottingham news today: 

More than 4,500 pupils were off school again yesterday as members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) went on strike for the third time over the city council's plan for a five-term year.

Nottingham's disappearing Tram

If Nottingham City Transport (NCT) is to be believed, The Tram no longer exists — it's gone — disappeared. Look at the extracts from the latest NCT 'Journey Planner' dated March 2102 (below left) and the previous edition dated September 2011 (below right):

Some Nottingham City Council funded 'Local Link' bus routes have disappeared too, although they still exist — which is how I came to notice that The Tram had gone. I was looking for the times of the L5 bus route that runs hourly Monday–Friday mornings and afternoons between Middleton Boulevard (although the destination blind always says 'Wollaton') and the Victoria Centre in the city centre via the QMC, Lenton, Castle Marina and Broadmarsh. I couldn't find the timetable or any information the NCT website. Knowing it to be a City Council subsidised service I went to their website, but could not find it.

Also gone from the new map are the Tram 'Interchange Points'.

So I emailed NCT on 8 April 2012. I still haven't had a reply, but then they don't usually reply anyway. I then did what I did the last time I had a question, I eventually contacted city councillor Brian Parbutt, the Chair of Nottingham City Transport, on 20 April 2012, but I'm still waiting for a reply from him too.

I also contacted Nottingham's Big Wheel on the 8th as well, who were very prompt and provided me with a well hidden link to the L5 timetable on the City Council's own website, which proudly boasts that 'Nottingham is home to a multi award winning public transport authority, plus 2 multi award winning local bus companies, bringing you an excellent public transport network with the highest levels of accessibility and use per person outside London' — a claim I do not question, but and there is a but, why then has The Tram disappeared from the latest NCT bus map?


The Big Wheel gave me their own explanation: 'With regards to the bus maps; the Big Wheel produces walking and cycling maps as part of it's package of support for residents and businesses in the Nottingham Area.  We do promote bus services, tickets and integrated
links, however, specific bus timetables are produced directly by the bus
companies as they operate the routes and have all the up to date
information about stops, times and timetable changes. We collaborate with
the transport operators, but as businesses they create their own bus maps'.

Given that Nottingham City Council are a major shareholder in Nottingham City Transport and funding The Tram as well, you would think that they would want NCT maps still to show The Tram route and stops?

Nottingham's public transport services are fantastic and I share the City Council's pride — which is why I cannot believe that city councillors would let crude, petty, 'market' considerations be a factor in what and what does not appear on their city bus map. Afterall, they show the railway lines and stations and are they not 'competitors' too?

If I was the city councillor in charge, I would be taking the money NCT spends on their 'Journey Planner' and using it to produce a comprehensive Greater Nottingham public transport map showing all services by all operators.  Transport for London can still teach Nottingham a thing or two when it comes to transport maps, so why not try and match their example.

As for me I am working on a comprehensive public transport map showing all services in the Lenton area. I hope to have it ready for when the students come back in September and have found some funding to get a few thousand printed, unless, of course, the City Council and NCT have a change of heart and do it before me.


A FOOTNOTE:  I have received a reply from City Councillor Jan Urquhart, the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transport which she kindly agreed I can publish here in full. Thank you Jane.

Thank you for your comments regarding Nottingham's public transport.

In answer to your question regarding the NCT journey planner map - NCT kindly added in the City Council supported services onto their map previously but as a commercial operator they are not obliged to do so and have removed them this time.

They cannot however promote another bus company's services, this would not be acceptable under the Transport Act 1985. The City Council does however produce an all operator frequent routes map and destination finder and have done so for the past 10 years. This includes, all bus and tram services that offer a frequency of 15 mins or better . This map is available in leaflet form from NCT's Travel Centre, libraries and the Broadmarsh Travel Centre. It is also in all of the City Council's bus shelters, displayed in the sheltercase or it can also be found on-line on our website.

It would be very difficult to maintain an all operator map for Nottingham ( more than the one noted above), having 10 transport operators in the City. Service changes happen almost monthly with one operator or another adding new routes or changing timetables and routes.

The tram route map used to show only NCT's connecting services and not the other 9 transport operators. The need for information about all  the connecting operator services  to be shown on the route maps has already been raised with the new  tram consortium.

Service L5 is a City Council supported service, information relating to this service has been on the City Council's website from its commencement, NCT linked to it originally from their website, but removed this link recently. Please find the link to L5 information - http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2769

I hope this has  gone same way to answering  your questions, we do try to provide as much public information as possible, and to improve where we can, but we are sometimes hampered by rules and regulations that we have to ‘work with’

Kinds Regards

  

Jane Urquhart

Cllr Sherwood Ward and Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transport

International news today:
Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador from Egypt and threatened to close its embassy and all its consulates in protest at a series of demonstrations against the arrest of an Egyptian man.

  

National news today: A majority of doctors support measures to deny treatment to smokers and the obese, according to a survey that has sparked a row over theNHS's growing use of "lifestyle rationing".

Nottingham news today: A FORMER leader of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers has been jailed for four years for stealing almost £150,000 from a Notts charity which cared for elderly miners.

Nottingham: Greater than the sum of its parts

Back in the 1980s and 90s my wife Susan worked job-share as Nottinghamshire County Council's Social Services Librarian and Information Officer. She never went a week without a telephone call from a Long Eaton resident seeking advice or assistance because the caller was convinced that they lived in Nottinghamshire. Susan would explain that they actually lived in Derbyshire, but more often than not back came the response "But I have a Nottingham postcode and telephone number and I work in Nottingham".


It is amazing how many people living outside Nottingham City Council's boundary feel very proprietorial about the city. Don't take my word for it. Just go through copies of the Nottingham Post for a week or two and I guarantee that you will read more letters about city services, facilities and events from non-residents living in the surrounding areas than you will from actual city residents.


As a local historian I have long argued that Nottingham should pay more attention to its 'Domesday' communities. Places now part of the Nottingham city council area, but with their own entries in William the Conquerer's great 'Domesday Book' of 1086. All of them were separate communities well into the 19th century. It is a historical fact that without the patronage and support of Lenton's Cluniac Priory, Nottingham the borough would probably have got less royal attention than it did. Without the coal mine owners, weavers, lacemakers and manufacturers in places like Ruddington, Beeston, Bulwell, Radford and Wollaton to name but a few, Nottingham's merchants and guilds would not have thrived or become as wealthy as some did.


There is a view that the tiny 19th century borough that was Nottingham expanded to take over the Lentons and Sneintons that surrounded it. I would argue that these communities very much wanted to be part of a greater Nottingham borough because they realised it would be to their ultimate advantage. They argued for the link roads that we now know as 'the boulevards' and ensured that we had open spaces for our leisure. I look at one, Lenton Recreation Ground, every day from my bedroom and living room windows and bless the negotiating skills of those 19th century Lentonians.


None of these places on their own amounted to as much as they did when they became one, when they joined forces at various times between 1877 and 1951, the last time Nottingham's boundary was extended in any significant way. Wollaton and Bilborough did not become part of the city until 1932, whereas Basford, Bulwell, Lenton, Radford and Sneinton joined the then borough in 1877. Clifton and the south part of Wilford joined in 1951. Since then? Nothing.


The last great local government re-organisation in 1974 has to be seen as a missed opportunity on a grand scale. Across the country, national and local politicians connived to protect their interests and one can only assume that some short-sighted Nottingham grandees conspired to keep Labour in and the Tories out, whilst in West Bridgford and Arnold there were almost certainly those who wanted to keep the Tories in and Labour out. The end result was a disaster in terms of good local governance.


In 1974 I was a Birmingham city councillor and Secretary of the city's Borough Labour Party, and found myself embroiled in all the arguments we had there. Birmingham already had a population of 900,000 but still had Sutton Coldfield grafted on and became a city of over one million people. We wanted Chelmsley Wood, then part of Meriden, because it was home to thousands of Brummies in homes built by Birmingham City Council (one of my favourite books, Estates: An Intimate History by Lynsey Hanley, tells you what happened and why). We lost the fight and the area became part of Solihull. The Tories were cock-a-hoop. With twelve Tory councillors from Sutton they thought they would win control. They didn't. They had to wait until 1976. I tell you this because I came to Nottingham in 1979 and became a county councillor in 1981 and saw immediately all the disadvantages of the city being part of the county council and the problems caused by having its boundary so tightly drawn. I began arguing for a unitary Greater Nottingham council then and have lost count of the number of times I have been told since to forget the idea.


And here we are, thirty years on and for the first time I feel as if something may be about to happen.  By chance, today's Nottingham Post devotes a page to the topic under the heading 'Mayor debate opens up the thorny issue of whether to widen city boundaries' and includes a map, which I reproduce below:

The first thing that strikes me is how tightly drawn this boundary would have been and begs the question, what would have happened to the what was left of Broxtowe, Gedling and Rushcliffe boroughs? The trouble with the 2007 proposal was that 'the deal' (albeit that it came to nothing) was done behind closed doors. In a letter to the Nottingham Post recently I said that: 'Perhaps what we need is a 'Greater Nottingham Governance Commission' to collect evidence and views on how we could create a system of local government better suited to the needs of the 21st century in the conurbation which is, in reality, the 'Nottingham' we all recognise and identify with, even though we may, as yet, be unwilling to accept the fact'.

Once the mayoral referendum is out of the way, I hope something like my proposed commission can be established from the grass roots up to collect evidence and ideas. I would envisage the first part of the process to be a survey asking residents in Nottingham and the surrounding boroughs how they define 'Nottingham' in geographical and social terms. This data would then be used to produce maps of Nottingham as seen by residents in each local authority area. I would allow six months for this. 

During the same period I would collate data for each area covering a wide range of topics, from the number of councillors and voters per councillor to community groups and service 'satisfaction' ratings. This would bring us to early-2013 by which time 2011 Census data should be available — something I see as crucial if we are to understand our area better. 

With all this information in the public domain, I would give individuals and organisations three months to formulate and publish their own proposals based on the evidence. At the end of this period we would allow a further three months to collate the proposals and for verification of any disputed data in the proposals.

So the second year of the Commission would begin with a series of sessions in public so that those making detailed proposals could speak to them and answer questions. This would bring us up to September 2013 at the earliest. Hopefully, some of the proposals will be able to find common ground, with the result that we may be left with a manageable number of proposals to further debate. The aim would be to put at least three options to voters in May 2014, plus a 'no change' option, with a view that the chosen option would come into effect on 1 April 2016 (assuming voters reject the 'no change' option).  Elections, if needed, could be held in May 2015 and would allow for a twelve month changeover period.

This is my scenario of what could be done and would fit in extremely well with the work of Nottingham North MP Graham Allen and his Parliamentary 'Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee', which has proposed the codifying of the relationship between local and central government — a kind of 'Magna Carta', which includes the following:

Article 6 – Council Governmental Systems:  Local citizens, through their councils, have the autonomy to choose decision making processes which should be subject to a binding referendum. Processes must be reviewed every eight years. Any electoral system can be adopted by local citizens following consultation and a referendum.

This aim if realised could be tested by the people of Greater Nottingham making common cause for change.

I have deliberately stayed away from where an 'elected mayor' fits into all this because this idea is not part of my argument in favour of some kind of 'Greater Nottingham Governance Commission'. Anyone who has read letters by me published in The Guardian and Nottingham Post over the years, or heard me talk on the topic, will know that I believe in community empowerment and devolved budgets and control to councillors representing single member wards (once I would have argued for urban parish councils, but there are now legal mechanisms in place which actually give more powers to councillors should they want to exercise them).

My personal ideas for a possible 'Greater Nottingham Metropolitan City Area' have their origins in public transport connections across the area. My map below shows those places that have Monday–Saturday daytime links with Nottingham city centre every fifteen minutes or better. It's a simple test and a good one.

I have some ideas about how strategic services and facilities in this area could be organised whilst strengthening local communities at the same time, but this is a topic for the future. Right now I want to get people thinking about how they perceive Nottingham as a place in terms of its geography. How different would your map be to mine or that published in the Nottingham Post today?

International news today: From the anti-austerity firebrands of Greece's imminent elections to the corruption crusaders in Prague, from the Pirates of Berlin to the populists who scored well in France's presidential election, a new wave of anti-establishment parties are on the rise across Europe, posing a threat to the political elite.

National news today: Pupils are ditching chips, hamburgers and sweets for soup, sandwiches and fruit juice at lunchtime in the wake of the school food revolution begun by Jamie Oliver, a new study reveals. But the chef warned that this "huge progress" was at risk from the government's "short-sighted and dangerous" decision to exempt academies and free schools from the rules that have compelled other schools to improve the food they offer to students.

Nottingham news today: Westminster City Council is considering plans to move homeless housing benefit claimants to Nottingham and Derby, according to proposals by one of its private providers, Smart Housing Group (SHG).