St Andrews Day

Could not post this week without mentioning the celebration of St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. This is especially relevant as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office flew the flag of St George on 23rd April (quite rightly) but did NOT have the St Andrews Cross flying on Monday of this week, despite a number of emails being sent asking about it. This is one of the inconsistencies of government. As a "United" (how difficult it is to type that word as a supporter of England's most successful football team) Kingdom, it is ill advised for any of the departments that represent the "whole" Kingdom to promote the celebration of one part of the Kingdom more than the other and this is the impression given. It should be either all or nothing and given the enormous interest across the Commonwealth - and indeed outside of those countries that make up our successful Commonwealth - it should be all.

Right, personal rant over. As a disclaimer, the above paragraph does not reflect the views of the Cheshire Association of Local Councils, nor any of its members. In fact there may even be one or two who disagree with them, but they are unlikely to say so to my face! Even if they do, they would not be able to put forward a logical argument (IMHO as well as not so humble).

As for ChALC, what a change a week makes. Every day of the week commencing 23rd November, Susan and I were both in the office and have been dealing with the more "mundane", albeit some of that is incredibly interesting, aspects of our jobs. More recently the review of the Local Area Partnerships in Cheshire East has begun and they were kind enough to invite me to participate in that. Whilst it is an early stage review, this has the potential for lifting the less successful ones to the level of the more proactive and energetic, providing that those involved learn from the good practice.

In addition, Alan Budge of the Participatory Budgeting Unit provided an exciting proposal for our parish and town councils to take the experience of his unit, then turn it into an impressive method of engaging with our communities. For those councils that are already engaging well, this gives an opportunity to improve the engagement even further and I look forward to working with the forward thinking councils to achieve even more than they are at present.