Last night, Wolverhampton’s Conservatives and Liberal Democrats came to an agreement that will see the Tories run the city council with support from the Lib Dems.
Neville Patten - the new leader of the council - gave the details to The Stirrer, where he revealed the following:
- The unpopular and ineffective A449 red route in Fordhouses will be scrapped.
- Kerbside plastic and cardboard recycling will finally come to the city and they’re promising within three months.
- There’ll be a review of youth services with the suggestion of more facilities for teenagers.
That’s on top of their commitment to lower council tax. I’m hoping to interview Neville Patten on tomorrow’s Wolverhampton Politics Show.
I’m sitting on the top floor of Wolverhampton Civic Centre, with my WCR FM co-host Neil Calloway, waiting for the Wolverhampton local election count to get underway.
So far, not a lot’s happening. Blue sky above, refreshments in the corner and a bloke from the Express and Star on the next table.
I’ll be updating this throughout the morning.
09.30: And we’re off. The presiding officer has started the count. Express and Start, BBC WM and national BBC are here.
10.40: St Peter’s declared for Roger Lawrence (Labour). Looks like a slim margin. Didn’t quite hear but sounded like 954 for Labour, 891 Lib Dem and 381 Conservative.
Update: Recording for and live reporting back to WCR FM took over from the blog.
I’ve signed up for Entanet’s part of the BT 21CN trial, So, soon BT will turn up and install a line that’s hooked up to their new pure IP network. I get a 24 Mbit broadband connection and £50 of calls per quarter.
Those in the trial pay nothing but can choose to continue the service - for an as yet undecided fee - at the end of the trial.
You probably haven’t come across Enta before. I only know them because they’re reasonably local to Wolverhampton and I’d always assumed they were a small-scale ADSL reseller and web host, with a sideline in voice telecoms. So, I’m kinda surprised to see them as the only non-BT ISP in this 21CN trial.
You can apply for the trial by emailing 21cn@entagroup.com. Someone from Vivaciti - new to me - will then give you further details. The catch is that you have to be in the catchment of one of the trial exchanges. If you’re in Wolverhampton, you need to be connected to the Penn exchange. Other exchanges are across the West Midlands and include:
Burntwood, Castle Bromwich, Central (Birmingham?), Chelmsley Wood, Edgbaston, Halesowen, Sheldon, Stechford, Victoria and Wood Gate.
You can find out what your local exchange is on the excellent SamKnows site.