Matt Palmer

One of the longest standing item in my inbox (along with Chris and Dale’s) has been doing something about speeding traffic and pedestrian safety on West Chevin Road, which runs between Menston and Otley.

Following an extended delay due to local government bureaucracy an a very long wait for comment from the Ambulance Service, the Council is finally advertising a scheme which should make the residential part of this popular rat-run much safer.

I’m very pleased all this work (including considerable effort by local residents to keep things moving forward) is now coming to fruition and we can finally tell people on Viewlands that there is not much longer to wait!

Full details available here (pdf): West Chevin Road Safety Scheme

• Come to "Burley Library Consultation" 06 September from 19:30 to 22:30. Consultation meeting on Burley Library /… http://t.co/s0XVTy5 #

• Good to see 200 people turn out for parish council meeting on burley library this week. But are they all library members? #

At the Parish Council planning meeting on Monday it was announced that the Libraries Service had refused to have the plans on display in Burley Library. I contacted the head of the Council’s libraries service yesterday and have been assured that the plans will now be made available for viewing in the Library. I will let you know as soon as they are available.

Burley Library meeting

It was great to see so many people attend the planning meeting. There was some confusion at the beginning though – this was never intended to be a full scale consultation – that will be on September 6th. Understandably, some residents publicised the meeting very effectively but the Parish Council only became aware of that late on. Given that the Parish Council did not expect such a turnout, they did an admirable job. The larger hall was not available, I’m sorry people (including me!) had to stand but it was not within the Parish Council’s control, so not their fault.

The consultation meeting will be in the main hall and a microphone and full size display will be available, as will representatives of the Libraries Service.

Matt

The Co-op / Burley Library proposals are understandably generating a lot of interest, both for and against. In order to give everyone a say and ensure the co-op and the council can take local views into account, i have asked the Area Coordinators Office to support a Special Neighbourhood Forum on the issue. This will take place at the Queens Hall on Tuesday 6th September at 7.30pm. I am hoping the plans can be made available in the Hall earlier in the evening for viewing as well.

Artists impression of proposed building

The co-op does not want to run the library, contrary to the Gazette headline! The proposal is for Bradford Council to lease the library building to the co-op on a 99 year lease, with the co-op building a new library on the first floor. I have asked the developer and the Council to brief the Parish Council, which they will do tomorrow night. This meeting is open to the public, but is not a consultation. I have been assured that no decisions will be made before the consultation meeting on September 6th.

If you’d like to be kept informed of how this develelops and make sure you hve an opportunity to comment, you can add your email address here.

f you’re interested in the plans, more information (and discussion!) is available here:

• Ilkley Gazette – Co-op wants to take over Burley Library
• Ilkley Gazette – Growing Opposition to Library Plan
• Wharfedale Forums – Burley Library

Burley Millenium Theatre Group are performing a comedy ‘Outside Edge’ this week. I’m told tickets will be available on the door at the Queens Hall, so if you fancy a change to the normal evening routine…

“‘Outside Edge’ written by Richard Harris and directed by Mike Newman. This is an original and truly hilarious comedy! What begins as an afternoon of cricket turns into utter chaos! A tale of lust, betrayal, jealousy…………and cream teas.”

Dear Mr Hoddy,

Having submitted the requested words in time for your deadline (your being already in posession of my photograph) I was surprised and disappointed to open my Gazette today to find that they had not been included along with the other candidates.

I have no doubt that this is simply an oversight by the paper, however the fact that no information is included sends a signal to the electorate that is not justified, provides unbalanced coverage in an election period, and means that those residents who look to your paper for information about who they are voting for will not be fully informed.

You have also omitted my name from the list of candidates, despite no doubt being in possestion of the list of candidates from City Hall. On top of this, you last week printed that I was standing down from Burley Parish Council without stating that I was seeking relection as a district councillor.

Any one of these would give me cause for comment, but together this gives entirely the wrong impression and as a reuslt I have had people on the phone to me asking why I am not seeking relection and why there is no Conservative candidate, when this is clearly not the case.

Whilst I do not generally choose to comment on your coverage, in this case I do feel very strongly that an apology is in order and would like to ask for a correction to be printed please, along with the words I submitted, in next Thursday’s paper.

Yours,

Matt Palmer
Conservative Candidate for Wharfedale Ward

Dear all,

With an election around the corner, if you have not already received my election address through your door delivered by local volunteers, you should do so shortly. However, I wanted to write to you now to let you know why this election matters.

Having become a father since the last election, I know it’s a fact of life that things change— the job of a Councillor is often to make sure that, wherever possible, that change is for the better.

There’s rarely been a more difficult time to achieve that than now.

Regardless of who is to blame, the fact is that our national economy has the highest deficit in the G20. The process of dealing with this is painful but necessary.

Extra government funds have allowed council tax to be held at last year’s level, but the new Labour administration in City Hall is anxious to prove that cutting the deficit will hurt.

Labour are closing five local libraries this year with five more to go next year. Along with Dale Smith and Chris Greaves, I’ve been working to protect local services from these cuts.

I’ve also been campaigning for improvements, and it’s been fantastic to be part of local community successes such as protecting Burley House field, winning investment for faster broadband, and improving local facilities.

By far the toughest battle though is not yet over, and that’s the fight to show that proposals to build on Derry Hill and Bingley Road in Menston are ludicrous and unworkable. Planning law needs to change and Conservatives are working to change it.

Burley and Menston are great places to live and it’s been my honour to represent you. I very much hope you will give me the opportunity  to continue: standing up for our area, delivering better local services and fighting to protect our green fields.

If you’d like to know more about what I’ve been doing for Burley and Menston and local priorities for next year, you will find more information in my election address, which I’ve also put online at www.mattpalmer.net.

Just as important at this election is the vote on AV. At the moment, the person with the most votes wins. It’s fair and it’s democratic. I’ll be voting ‘no’ to AV to keep it that way, and I hope you will join me. Of course politics needs to change—but only for the better.

Regards,

Matt

PS. You can read the election leaflet here: Election Address – Matt Palmer

We’ve won.

Amazing to think where this started. The below picture is February 2003 – Kevin Reid, Malcolm Fisher and myself kicking off Burley’s first Broadband campaign, LS29.NET.

Back then we were still all on dial-up. BT had said they were not going to enable the exchange. We’d tried to persuade them and failed. I’d tried to find public funding, but whilst Airedale was a priority, Burley was not.

So we pursued our own solution – an ambitious project to be our own broadband provider. From the Yorkshire Forward magazine.

Matt Palmer of internet company Palmedia is secretary of LS29.NET, which has produced a new wireless solution to bringing broadband to Burley in Wharfedale. Despite having one of the highest levels of demand in the country, BT had not upgraded the exchange.

The not-for-profit community group will provide a leased line (ultra-fast connection to the internet) to a central location in the village which will be distributed to residents, businesses and community buildings using wireless technology.
Matt said: “LS29.NET will be broadband for the community, by the community and in the community. Residents will benefit from broadband internet access in their homes at lower cost than BT. Business will benefit for their networks and communication and community groups will also benefit, such as the planned internet café for the local youth club.

“We have completed successful technical trials and are now ready to sign people up. We are delighted that over 200 local residents have already registered and several businesses have already shown an interest. Burley will no longer be left in the dark ages.”

LS29.NET chairman Kevin Reed said: “Fifteen miles from the heart of Leeds and Bradford and considered to be in the outback, Burley residents deserve to be connected to the superhighway. We have in the community all the skills we need to do this for ourselves – network consultants, security consultants, and many willing volunteers all working for the good of the village”

http://www.digitalyorkshire.org.uk/news_601.htm

This did what persuasion could not do – BT noticed the ‘market stimulation activity’ and Yorkshire Forward noted the demand. Somehow, Airedale became Airedale and Wharfedale, and ‘Broadband Airedale and Wharfedale’ was born, with BT enabling Burley’s exchange using Council and regional government support.

i remeber mixed emotions – sorry it no longer made sense to pursue our rather exciting community scheme after investing a lot of time in it, but at the same time a degree of relief that we wouldn’t have to, and real happiness that we had won what we had originally sought.

On the back of that project, this forum was born. In the days before social networking, setting up the forum was the way we communicated. For the technical minded, the original version of the forum was the ASP1.0 based Snitz Forums 2000, hosted on a Windows server.

I never thought at the time that the legacy of the LS29.NET campaign would be a succesful campaign to take Burley from last-in-line to the front of the queue for the latest technology.

Nonetheless, eight years, two major software upgrades, three web hosts and almost 10,000 posts later, a forum member posts:

BT are seeking votes to determine which locations get access to the next generation of high speed broadband.  The web site is at: http://www.racetoinfinity.bt.com/ 3 votes so far for Burley.

And it all went from there.

Once again, the forum was the tool of chocie for communication with a seperate hidden iburley forum to keep strategy away from the competition. That’s a closed team forum with 1,325 posts in about 3 months.

So from me, a big thank you to forum users such as Wharfedale, Malcolm, Peppa Pig, ianrigarslford, wierdmusic, Harverybos and appropriatebridge. A more reluctant bunch of heroes I have rarely met – everyone wanted to get the job done and nobody wanted credit for it.

Thanks also to The Queens Head and the Red Lion for hosting ‘team meetings’ on a regular basis.

Thanks to all those who supported the campaign, both everyone locally and to my 89 colleagues on Bradford Council for supporting us unanimously, regardless of party.

Thanks to BT for recognising the value of community in business.

Thanks to all those who voted.

In may ways most im portantly, thanks to all those who engaged with LS29.NET back in 2003, particularly Malcolm Fisher, Kevin Reid and the other members of that committee.

Thank you all though for reading the forum. Just as I was wondering whether it was really worth the remarkable amount of hassle, it proves it’s worth to the community – and it’s a seven figure sum.

Matt

Many Burley in Wharfedale residents will have been reading about the ‘iburley‘ campaign for faster broadband for Burley. BT have announced that the five exchanges with the highest level of support will be enabled, when they wouldn’t be otherwise.

So what’s the issue?

• Burley waits for everything. Broadband, Channel 5. Digital radio. Digital television. Carrier pigeons*. Most people have forgotten now that it was community campaigning and Bradford Council support that got us Broadband in the first place. Without that, we’d be stuck on dial-up.
• Today’s broadband is tomorrow’s dial-up: obsolete and out-of-date. If we don’t get the next generation service, in a few years time Burley will be back in the internet dark age
• Upgrading the exchange won’t happen without this. OK, it might eventually, but not for many, many years. This isn’t a timing issue. It;’s a yes/no issue
• Even if you’re not bothered at the moment, many of your friends and neighbours will be. Please support them and support Burley
• Campaigners have worked really hard and Burley deserves to win, and we can win. Don’t let your vote be the one that could have made that critical difference.

Burley is currently 4th out of 2,475. We need to stay in the top 5, but some exchanges are already 70% voted. This means we need EVERY vote to win – and that means you!

Please visit www.racetoinfinity.bt.com and vote today – it literally does only take minute…. and for years to come, will save your hours!

(*probably. I wasn’t here then.)