like most sad politicos I am up and watching the 24 hour news channels to see what the result of Super Tuesday is.

I will not go on about why we should care who wins some political battle in the US - I think Iraq has demonstrated that to everyone.

What does interest me about US politics is its cult of personality over party politics and issues. Or where issues are important social issues seem to be far more important than here.

Their politics is very very different to ours. There is far more money, far more elections and far greater voter apathy.

I think this is something that we need to take note of. It can be easy to get carried away with the US personality style elections - but far less people vote! This means at the heart of US politics there is a serious problem. Now my man Obama has reached out to new voters, but this is nowhere near enough to overcome a system which fails to engage vast amounts of its population. This is a warning to us here in Britain. Turnout is often decreasing rather than increasing.

In my own election only 40% of people voted. Mind you this was up from the usual turnout of under 30%. But if we can not get even half of people to cast a vote what state is our democracy in?

OK enough of this - back to the 24 hour news.

I have just watched the debate about the new parks strategy at the Physical Environment Scrutiny Commission last week and this has left me disappointed.

I put in a submission (published earlier here on my blog) which was read by my colleague Cllr Jon Rogers. The submission was fairly critical of the process that we had gone through and raised doubts about the new strategy proposed.

But the discussion became more about point scoring than scrutiny. Labour were not interested in the proposals at all, in fact they tried to divert everything down a side track. Cllr Gary Hopkins, the Lib Dem Chair did pick up some themes from my statement and tried to get at the facts but Labour's diversionary attacks continued. I was also surprised at Charlie Bolton's input. As a Green Councillor, and all the shouting the Green party have done over this, you would think he would be critical and investigative in his questioning but it all seemed a bit of a damp squib. It was clear that he did not oppose the new policy of selling off 90 acres of parkland. This is completely opposite to what Glenn Vowles and other Green Members have been claiming is their position.

Another strange moment in the debate was an outburst by Cllr Rosalie Walker, the Labour Executive Member, who I personally have a lot of time for. She was clearly very unhappy with someone. I can only assume it was either Gary or I, for daring to question the consultation process and openness over Labour's proposals.

The Parks Forum has come out in support of the new strategy and this can not be discounted. But I can only believe that they are doing this as they have been told this is the best deal they could get. I do not believe it is a good enough deal for Bristol and our parks. I also fear that a lot of this land will be in or near my ward and am still amazed that there is still no sign of the missing maps.

If you want to watch the debate click HERE and click on the physical environment commission link and scroll forward to 1 hour and 59 mins.

I have just learnt that the Labour Executive have just had a rethink on their mass sale plans of our parks, which I stopped last month.

The new proposals will see 90 acres sold off - instead of the 200+ acres in their orginal plan.

I am delighted that 110 acres have been saved but the 90 acres concerns me. This is nearly double the orginal proposal from a few months ago. We still do not know where this will be, which community affected. What we do know is that the Council wants to build a lot more houses in south Bristol so it is reasonable to fear that much of this will be south of the river.

Here is a statement I have just sent in to a Council watchdog committee that is discussing the plans tomorrow:

What a day.

Today was judgment day for Hartcliffe Farm where we went along to the Council's Executive and appealed for the grant to the farm not to be slashed. After coverage from the Western Daily Press and the Evening Post, who even devoted their editorial to appeal for the savior of the farm, I was hopeful. Well the good news is that the Cabinet listened and the Farm will get enough grant to stay open.

But that was not all. I had another statement in with regard to the Parks Strategy. This is a great plan to reinvest in all our parks and open spaces. But to fund it involves selling off some green space. But at the last minute the Executive doubled the amount of parkland that would have to be sold. £102 million worth to be exact! The problem for them is that I spotted they had left out an essential part of the report from the paperwork. After considering my challenge the Executive agreed to delay the report to the next meeting. This gives us and the Bristol Parks Forum time to try to pursued the Executive not to sell off so much of our parkland.

The Post Office Campaign has once again hit the press with the Evening Post running a large article about our campaign to open up Royal Mail sorting offices in the evening so we can collect parcels. Then I did interviews for Kiss 101 and GWR Bristol radio stations on the campaign. There is a lot of media interest around this and I think it shows just how fed up people are with Royal Mails second class service here in Bristol. To sign the petition click HERE.

I also did a radio interview for BCFM - Bristol Community Radio. This is a small community radio station and they asked me about the ward, child poverty and what it is like to be a Councillor. I must admit I had not listend to the station before but after listening for a few hours I can highly recomend it. You can find it at 93.2 or just click on the link and listen on line.

Finally Happy New Year!

Our Community Park Farm is in the final tonight of the Peoples Millions in the West. If they win the phone poll they will be awarded £75,000+ to build a nature reserve, cafe and petting area for animals. This is a great project at Hartcliffe Community Farm so I would like to urge everyone to call 08702 435801. You can call up to 10 times and each call costs 10p so get voting to make sure this local project gets the go ahead (vote up to midnight tonight).

I have just listened to the Queen's Speech.

First thoughts -Climate change - we will have to see what detail is provided in this but I hope they are going to take this seriously as so far the Government has only paid lip service to this crisis.

Planning System - plans to speed this up. I support speeding up the planning process but not at the cost of local decision making. As a Councillor we now decide on less than 100 applications a year in the whole city. There must not be any more movement away from the peoples elected representatives deciding on planning applications.

Youth facilities - we desperately need more money to promote youth facilities and programmes but I doubt that raiding a few forgotten bank accounts will provide enough - but we will see.

I am watching the State Opening of Parliament by the Queen. BBC news have done a vox pox asking people how relevant they saw this to them. The majority clearly felt it had no relevance at all.

I love and hate the traditional opening of Parliament in about equal measure. I sometimes find some of the traditions to be just to out of date and distant from our daily lives. Yet this tradition tells a story of civil war, struggle of Parliament of Monarchy and the parliamentary democracy that we have today that has so protected us from the political crisis suffered by many other European countries over the last 200 or so years.

Ultimately though this is about the Government's agenda for the next year. What acts will we face - how will the Government try to change our lives. This is important to every single person and it is a real shame that the connection with the population has been so lost from this process.

Will the Government try to take more of our freedoms, spend billions on nuclear weapons and what will they do to improve educational achievement and provide more affordable homes? We will see within the hour.

I noticed that the MPs expenses have been published today. Now normally this causes a fuss in the press . But the figures, normally about £130,000 a year per MP, is not their expenses at all. It also includes all of their office and staffing costs.

I noticed something strange though, on a Yahoo News report. It say that Gordon Brown claimed £17,017 for London accommodation. All MPs from outside of London get this allowance. BUT he also gets a free flat in No 10! WHAT! I hear you cry. Yep, is Mr Prudent pulling a fast one? Far be it from me to accuse the former Chancellor of fleecing the public. Surely this must be some form of mistake?

I guess there is one rule for us and another rule for Labour Prime Ministers. I am fairly certain if anyone else did this they would be prosecuted in court and have the Inland Revenue all over them.

UPDATE this is the link that shows you the figures. It seems he did claim this money.

I have just returned from the Fire Authority meeting called over the incident of the four firemen on the Downs.

The Lib Dems made it clear that we felt having the meeting only made this subject worse and that there were far greater challenges for the authority to get on with. Our Leader made it clear whether we though the punishment was too harsh, too light or about right it was for the senior officers via our procedures to deal with this. Members only deal with cases of dismissal when staff appeal to us. Otherwise it is for the Chief and the senior officers to deal with.

The meeting did serve to clear up a lot of the speculation - I was quite shocked by some of the media stories that had occurred on this. The Chief was very open and tried his best to answer questions with as much detail as he was permitted (this was a case involving personnel so he was restricted in some areas). He had suffered a lot of abuse over the last few weeks and a death threat. My own Leader had received threatening emails as well. I read a few and was very shocked at what some people had put. I will not repeat them hear but they were vial, threatening, prejudiced and cowardly.

Cllr Murphy, a Conservative Councillor from Avonmouth, where the station of the officers involved is, then raised a series of verbal questions. Now, I had found his written questions to be fair in the main. But his verbal questions were hysterical, conspiracy theorist and in some places I would greatly question his motivation. He accused the Chief of not telling the truth - with no evidence to back this up. When the Chief was backed up by the FBU representative (who had represented the four firemen involved) he then questioned his honesty. That man was also a fellow Bristol Councillor. I felt that Cllr Murphy's questioning was ludicrous in places; he refused to believe people when they told him what had occurred yet failed at anytime to present a single fact to substantiate his allegations. I am afraid on occasion I lost it with him a little and vocalised my feelings - I doubt he will be sending me a Christmas card!

Cllr Ron Stone (Labour) after speaking moved a motion to say we back the Chief and the senior officers. I seconded it. Every Councillor voted for the motion apart from Cllr Murphy who on more than one occasion said he did not know something as he 'must have missed the meeting'.

This was covered in advance by the Evening Post and you can see the article which mostly is quotes from me HERE. All the media was there including local reports Paul Barltrop and Bob Constantine. I hope they will reflect the strong feeling in the meeting that Cllr Murphy was alone with his conspiracy theories.

I hope now this is an end to the sorry affair. As an Authority we now need to move on. I do not believe this press attention could have been easy for the four firemen involved. Who ever took this to the press has done a lot of damage to all those involved and no one has come away looking good. We must now draw a line under it and concentrate on the challenges that we now face.