This week’s meeting of the County Council Cabinet showed the ruling Conservative group in total disarray.

First they rejected their own proposals  for restructuring and reorganising the management of Youth & Community Service premises across the county. The Lib Dem group had already made it clear we would “call in” the decision for scrutiny review if it had gone through, but in the end this was not necessary.

Then they took a number of decisions about secondary education in Nuneaton & Bedworth that conflicted with or went totally against previous decisions or pronouncements - notably deciding suddenly (and with no word of explanation) to withdraw support for the co-location of two colleges in Nuneaton town centre. The knock-on effect of the new decision was to kill the project to build a new library in Nuneaton, which they had fought for vociferously against Lib Dem and Labour opposition - we had said it was not good value.

The most likely reason for the complete change of direction in Nuneaton is that the local borough council had recently been won by the Tories from Labour, and there was disagreement between the Tory borough and county groups.

What a shambles!

Despite my personal intervention in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election - i.e. spending a day pounding pavements there on Wednesday - I’m afraid the Lib Dems didn’t do as well as we hoped, suffering the classic “third party squeeze” on our vote. Travelling around the constituency it was clear that the Conservatives had won the poster battle, and this was reflected in the votes cast on the day.

A pity - we had an excellent candidate, but it seems that voters were intent on giving Gordon Brown a “kicking”, and had decided that the best way to do this was to vote Tory. By-elections always magnify trends, and this time it didn’t favour us. The next one (Henley), however, may be very different!

Yesterday I fell foul of the ”Sort It” rules governing the new recycling and waste collection rules imposed by Tory-controlled Warwick District Council!

I put out my green (garden waste) bin for collection, together with another bag of garden waste - something that previously I had done many times before. But no, under the new rules the extra bag is not allowed, and I received a stern warning notice stuck to my green bin detailing my sins!

And yet, under the new red box (household recycling) rules introduced at the same time, I would be allowed to put as many extra bags out as I wanted alongside the red box(es) -but if the extra bags were of glass bottles and jars they could not be in the purpose-designed bags provided by the council. No, these are for plastic bottles and cardboard only! The extra bags have to be plastic bags, which of course we have far fewer of now that we all take re-useable bags for supermarket shopping ………

Confused? Well I am.

Talking to one of the red box collection men out on their rounds today, I asked him if things were getting better after the first month or so of the new scheme. His “no!” answer was not a great surprise!

However, I’m lucky compared with some poor souls who have had no grey bin (residual household waste) collections at all since the new scheme started.

The message to the Tory-controlled district council is clear - “Sort It”, quickly!

Caring for older people is one of the top priorities for local councils, as the demographic changes (increasing average age of population, increasing percentages of older people with dementia etc) put massive demands on resources and current facilities.

I attended a seminar on this subject yesterday, which set out the County Council’s strategy which is due to be endorsed by the Cabinet next week. One of the key elements is the rapid introduction of an “Extra Care” accommodation option, not currently available in Warwickshire - essentially a form of sheltered accommodation allowing older people to continue to live independent lives, but with good support services on hand as and when needed. Residential homes will continue to be an important part of total provision, but increasingly specialising on care of older people with dementia.

This is a complex and emotive subject, but the issues it raises cannot be ducked. I think the senior officers responsible for the programme are on the right lines, and the strategy has my support.

Yesterday I went to a seminar to hear about the Warwickshire LINk, which is just being set up. LINks are independent of Councils and the Health Service, and are intended to provide a strong voice for local people in the planning, design and commissioning of Health and Social Care services.

The technology and facilities being set up to enable public participation are impressive - full details are on the web site www.communityvoicesonline.org.

Less clear was how the new structure would operate in overall governance terms, how it would set its priorities etc. The government’s view seems to me that this will emerge in line with local needs, but this approach risks a lot of wasted navel-gazing time in the early months. Far better would have been to have put up a standard model to begin with, and allowed each LINk to then adapt this over time as required.

On Wednesday I accompanied Nigel Rock, our Lib Dem PPC for Kenilworth & Southam constituency, to a meeting at the University of Warwick with the Registrar and the Community Relations Manager. Half of the university campus is within Warwickshire (the other half in Coventry), and within my electoral division of Kenilworth Abbey. In addition the university is a major local employer, with several hundred people in my division working there in one capacity or another.

We had an interesting wide-ranging discussion covering national and local issues. I was particularly interested to hear about the activities of the Warwick Volunteers, which unusually is run by the university rather than the students themselves, and which gets many undergraduate students directly involved in projects and activities supporting the local community.

Tomorrow Warwick District Council launches a major public consultation on the “Core Strategy” element of its Local Development Framework, which will set the broad framework of planning policies that will shape developments in the District up to 2026.

Within the context of the Government’s agenda of building 3 million more houses over the next 20 years, the question for Warwick District is very simple - where will all the houses go?

As a county rather than district councillor I shall be a consultee rather than a decision maker in this vital process. When I have had the opportunity to read all the papers thoroughly I will comment further.

At the Annual Meeting of the County Council yesterday, the Conservative leader announced a number of changes to his Cabinet, to serve for the next year and until the county elections in May 2009.

The most striking change was the removal of a Cabinet member specifically for Schools, with these responsibilities now being subsumed entirely within the much broader responsibilities of a single Cabinet member for Children Young People and Families.

While understanding the statutory requirement for a single lead member with Executive responsibility for Children, Young People and Families, I do not see why the Schools portfolio could not have been retained in a separate but subservient position - there are precedents in national government for this. Certainly the change could reinforce the view of many people in the Warwickshire education world that the focus on schools has been diluted in the move towards more integrated working with Children’s Social Services.

The new Cabinet seems to me to be even more unbalanced, with the two members for Adult Services and Children Services respectively responsible for the vast proportion of the County’s expenditure, while the other eight Cabinet members cover a variety of other roles, some better defined than others.

The local press ran a lead story a week ago quoting Cllr. Norman Vincett, the leader of the Conservative-controlled town council, saying that plans for a  ”showpiece” civic centre at Smalley Place in Kenilworth were in trouble. This was confirmed at the Town Assembly on Thursday evening, when Cllr. Vincett admitted that current plans were financially unacceptable and unaffordable, but that work was continuing although no timescales could be promised.

I find it unacceptable to hear such news via the press, when I am a member of a joint Steering Group of county, district and town councillors that is supposed to be co-ordinating efforts to secure this prize for the people of Kenilworth. Until last May, under the then Lib Dem/Labour administration, a senior District Council officer was driving the project hard and keeping everyone regularly informed of progress. Since the Conservatives won the District Council, project leadership has effectively transferred to the County Council (also Tory controlled), but all sense of urgency and real commitment seems to have disappeared, while non-Tory members of the joint Steering Group have been kept largely in the dark.

The Lib Dem group here in Kenilworth has been forced to go on the attack, accusing the ruling Conservatives of letting down local residents by not being prepared to put up any “new” money to make this showpiece a reality - despite having moaned for years when they were in opposition on the District Council that Kenilworth “did not get its fair share”!

Having lived for some years in London, and with family down there, I took great interest in this year’s London mayoral elections.

I’m really sorry that Boris won, and I’m sure Londoners will regret it eventually. However, what was really interesting in the results last night was the way the second preference votes worked out. Boris had the most first preferences of course - that was to be expected - but there more were more than enough second preference votes available to have defeated him if Ken Livingstone had been successful in his “Stop Boris” strategy.

In the event the second preferences split pretty evenly between the two of them, and so Boris won. If we assume that most of the Greens followed their leader’s advice to give Ken their second preference, and most BNP went for Boris, then the great majority of Lib Dems in London didn’t go for either of them!

Perhaps, collectively, London Lib Dems came up with the perfect strategy to unmask the “new” Tory party. Give them something real to run, and see what a mess they make of it!

I spent most of Thursday over in Harbury, helping Liberal Democrat Bev Mann in her campaign to unseat the Conservative incumbent in the Stratford District Council elections. Bev is fairly new to the Lib Dems, but very well known locally after six years as a parish councillor, and coming from a long-established local family.

The result was incredibly close, but ended up with Bev winning the seat by a margin of 11 votes (861 votes to 850). Perhaps those last few people that I “knock up” at 9 o’clock at night made all the difference!

Anyway, winning is a great feeling, especially as the Lib Dems made a total of five gains from the Tories across Stratford District as a whole. I’m off to the post-election party tonight, which will definitely be quite a celebration!