I've had the following from Trading Standards:

I am writing to advise that Lewisham trading standards is now working with Consumer Direct London - a new telephone and web based advice and information line with the objective of providing clear and practical advice on a range of consumer issues.

Consumer Direct London was publicly launched on 13 June 2005 and is a partnership between the Department of Trade and Industry, the Association of London Government and London trading standards services. Telephone consumer advice is now available as follows:-

Monday to Friday 0800 to 1830 (excluding bank holidays and public holidays) &
Saturday 0900 to 1300

If your constituents require telephone consumer advice then please give them the number for Consumer Direct – 08454 040506. Mincom 08451 28 13 84.

To request advice online then visit www.consumerdirect.gov.uk and select the ‘complain online’ option.

I've mentioned that the Council have been running a competition to come up with an anti-graffiti image.  The winner has now been chosen and their picture now sits on the side of one of our refuse trucks.  My role was to help draw up the shortlist for Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen to pick the winner from, and this is what he chose:

And once it'd been turned into the finished product.

Congratulations to Asher who drew the winning picture.

The Civic Trust has announced the Green Flag Award winners for 2005.  The ffice:smarttags" />London results can be found here.fficeffice" />

Those with sharp eyes will see that there are now six parks in Lewisham that have been awarded a green flag.  My congratulations go to all those who have worked on bringing them up to, and maintaining them at such a high level.

I've had a letter from the officer who is overseeing the works in the village who tells me that they are now two weeks ahead of schedule.fficeffice" />

This means that all the dates given in the leaflet should be moved forward.  More details and updates are on the Council website.

The Blackheath councillors hold our surgeries in venues that are inaccessible to those with difficulties walking and are regularly lobbied about it.  We're, of course, happy to make other arrangements to see disabled constituents to get round the problems caused by this, but know it's not ideal.

So when I saw that Scope are looking for people to fillin their Polls Apart 2005 survey I thought I should give it a plug.  They ask:

"Can you spend 5 minutes when you vote to fill in a short survey? If you can - you can help make democracy accessible to everyone in the UK. At the last election 'Polls Apart 3' found that 69% of polling stations were inaccessible to disabled people."

(via Louise)

Griff has put up the video my friend Shane produced for the Local E-Democracy National Project and in which he and I feature. 

If you're interested you can see what I said about it here and you can find the video here.