Lewisham held its first citizenship ceremony this afternoon (this is a new power for local government).  I went along as one of my areas of responsibility is registration services (births, deaths and marriage) who are responsible for the ceremony.

I understand that for the ceremony to be legal there has to be a picture of the Queen and a ffice:smarttags" />Union flag in the room.  Because - to my shame - I arrived ten minutes late I didn't hear the form of words that are used (yes it is  short ceremony).  But everyone looked really happy.fficeffice" />

Another Wednesday full of meetings.  fficeffice" />

First, our usual weekly meeting of the Mayor, Cabinet Members and officers to look at decisions that are coming up, current issues and this week presentations on parking and our design position for Deptford.  These meetings start at 9.30 and usually finish at about 12.30.

Second, some media training.  I've done some of this before in my other life. I've even done the real thing and don't mind the experience.  The thing is to only take the things you want from training and not to become a clone.  We all hate the interviewee who won't answer the question or who won't take responsibility for problems.  In any case it was useful to know some of the things I do without thinking; bad posture, legs too far apart, talking for too long.

Third, we launched Lewisham in Bloom.  I'm sure I've already mentioned that Lewisham is the ffice:smarttags" />London entrant for Britain in Bloom this year; which is fantastic.

Fourth a meeting about performance indicators for next year.

Fifth a meeting to talk about graffiti in the borough with the Mayor, cabinet colleages, and officers from across the council, including the heads of Environmental Services, Housing, Community Safety and the Youth Service.  General consensus was that we want to reduce the level of graffiti that we see around the place and that the additional resources that have been put in this year should play a part.  But that we also need to work together a little more to see further benefits.

Finally on to see a speech by a local resident who has visited North Korea and was talking about her experiences.

I've been thinking about fly posting quite a bit recently.  Where I live there's a few unused shops that have been posted quite a bit, and walking past pictures of Sting and adverts for some sort of animal liberation punk-fest has started to get really annoying.

At the moment the legal powers we have around prosecuting the people responsible are minimal, but I want to do what we can.

Any thoughts?

This week's Wednesday morning Mayor and Cabinet session included a presentation on fly tipping by Nigel Tyrell, the head of environmental services, an area where the GLA think Lewisham is pretty good.  Nigel is streets ahead of most of us in using technology to get his points across so the presentation was full of short video clips.  Fly tipping is particularly good for that sort of video as the sight of a bloke opening the back of his car taking out a couple of bin bags and slinging them on to the side of the road makes the point quite well that there are people who don't much care about their environment.

Lewisham has been trialing a new approach to fly tipping - where enforcement officers and the pick-up crews work together - which is being evaluated at the moment but which seems suited to some areas better than others.

Thing that seems to make the biggest difference has been the moves to get the trade refuse bins (those big paladin bins) off the street and to replace them with bags that are collected daily. 

This Wednesday I was also involved in choosing the new name for what has been the Sue Godfrey park in Deptford.  The park has had quite a lot of investment over the last couple of months and will now be part of the way from Deptford station to the Laban Centre.  There has been a competition to choose a name and I along with two other officers got to decide from amongst the 15 or so entries which one we liked best.  Steve Bullock and I will be opening the park, hopefully with the person that chose the winning name, formally on 19 June.

Oh and the winning name?  Don't know if it's in the public domain as yet, but what the hell, it will be Farranti Park, after the man that built the Deptford Power Station.

Just the one person at my surgery yesterday.  They were unhappy about a planning application from a restaurant in Blackheath who are looking to allow their customers to eat outside during the summer.  The problem for the restaurant is that their original planning permission explicitly says they can't do that, and from what my constituent was telling me they spent last summer breaking their agreement, much to the annoyance of many of their neighbours who are now not in the mood to let the restaurant get their application through.

This case reflects a real and continuing tension between the restaurant businesses in the village and the residents.  The businesses want to expand as much as they can either by using the whole of their space, inside and out, or by extending their licences into the early hours of the morning.  The residents want to enjoy a quite village type atmosphere.

Just going off to meet the animal welfare people at the council.  I met a vet the other day who said nice things about their work so I am looking forward to hearing more.fficeffice" />

Update: I've now been to see animal welfare and I can see why they are so well considered.  Robert the man I met and senior animal welfare officer at the council was telling me that when he started about a decade ago there were (at any one time) 200 stray dogs in Lewisham.  He says that now they get around 4 calls a month about strays.  He made the point - one which I wouldn't dare comment on - that in neighbouring boroughs he understands that the problem with strays has gone up not down.  In part our success in reducing the stray population can be put down to changes in public attitudes, it's no longer acceptable for people to allow their dogs to wander the streets, and that is in part because of the wider animal welfare remit that officers have (in other areas the same sort of post would be called dog control or dog catcher).

We also talked about wildlife that they deal with - usually escaped exotic pets - and how they advise people about foxes.  Apparently we used to shoot foxes in Lewisham but have stopped probably on the grounds that it is dangerous and doesn't actually control the population very well.  Robert's view is that as long as they aren't being fed by residents they are in some ways a boon to an area, given that they are the rats' biggest predator.

He showed me some of the cases they have dealt with (there clearly are some very cruel people out there) and the kennels they have on site for cats, dogs and injured birds.  They also have a lost and found register of people who ring in saying they've lost or found dogs and cats. 

As you might be able to tell I've come away pretty impressed with their work and the attitude they have to helping people in the borough.  In case anyone things we are talking of a big team of people, in fact it turns out that there are just two people in the team.