I started the day with a very useful meeting on our plans for a Go Bananas event for Fairtrade Fortnight. It looks as though we'll get good support from Stockton Council's events team this year along with the town centre management team. It's so refreshing to work with people who are used to listing all the people who need to be involved in something and thinking about how to get the press interest that we need. I hope it all comes to pass! Now I have a list of people to speak to or email and get their agreement to doing things and the promise of another meeting in a couple of weeks.

There was just time for a quick visit to Municipal Buildings to check on e-mails and print off papers for a meeting on Friday before returning home to do some work there. I walked into the house to the sound of the phone ringing - a local radio station wanting an interview on the report published by Lib Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy on the number of people being taken to court for non-payment of Council Tax bills. As she says, it's really important that councils distinguish between those who can't pay and those who won't pay. It's also important for those who are paying, even when it means going without something else, that everyone who possibly can pay does. Otherwise the bills have to go up for the rest and it becomes a vicious circle. Either that or service levels go down, and not many people would be happy with that solution.

Stockton Council does have a policy of pursuing non payment and if necessary taking people to court. Although no-one would claim that it's a perfect system it's certainly not a bad or nasty system.

Of course, if only the local taxation could be based on income rather than one asset (a dwelling) it would be much fairer. But only the Liberal Democrats promote fair taxation so we won't get it for a few years yet.

Elections Approaching

Another step on the way to election day came on Friday when I collected the paperwork for nomination to Egglescliffe Parish Council for Alan, John and me. Mike is valiantly seeing to the Borough Council paperwork and deserves a medal for it.

I spent part of the morning in a meeting about how we assess the performance of senior officers of the council. It's a very difficult subject - so many things that really matter to us are beyond their control like bus timetables and yet they have targets to meet! I hope we've set in motion a slightly more sensible system but it'll take time to see if it works. The officers do a great job and it seems hard at times to be looking for ways to challenge them to do even better, but that's what performance management involves.

Then it was time to sort through some papers and try to catch up on things I'd missed when not well earlier in the week before trying to sort out an IT problem for another councillor. The more I read the more I concluded that Ming Campbell was right - Gordon Brown has wasted a great opportunity in his budget. Then I read about how little of the Lyons Review seems likely to be implemented and I thought "How on earth do they expect Local government to work when they won't finance it and won't give us the freedom to listen to our electorate?" Except I wasn't quite as polite as that when I was muttering.

Time to produce a Focus leaflet and get it to deliverers before Easter! Much more satisfying than listening to Labour MPs telling us why we can't be trusted to do things.