The meeting, which I pushed for, was held in public, and with inputs from members of the public as well as officers and supporting consultants.

The outcome of the meeting was a unanimous recommendation to increase the underlying recycling and composting assumptions behind the plan, which should reduce the required size of any future residual waste facility. It’s up to the Cabinet and Full Council now to decide whether or not to accept this recommendation.

However, it seems that national tests for 11 year olds will carry on, and presumably therefore the whole system of school league tables which is so counterproductive and divisive, and largely irrelevant to the education progress of individual pupils. Why won’t the Government listen to teachers about this as well?

It’s a very sad day for the local community in the Albion Street area, who had demonstrated clearly its support for the current branch through survey responses, petitions, letters to the Post Office and Postwatch and attendance at the public meeting in July.

Some elderly and vulnerable residents are going to be very badly affected by this decision, which is based purely on cost-cutting rather than meeting the needs of the community.

The Post Office’s decision document released today also makes no reference whatsoever to the knock-on effects on other shops and businesses in the Albion Street area when the post office branch closes. Many local shopkeepers are very worried about this.

I have today asked county council officers to pick up the Outreach Services alternative again as a matter of urgency, to see if it could offer a solution to keeping some sort of local service to residents in the Albion Street area.

The issue of personal data security has become a critical one over the past year, following a number of well-publicised losses of data by both central and local government. It is essential that the county council ensures that its own processes and safeguards are as tight as they can be, and the Portfolio Holder promised that our recommendations would be fed into a review team that was already working on this.

There was wide support for our recommendation to challenge the need for central government to collect data on children, young people and families that is not anonymous. If the requirement is only for statistical analysis there is no justification for this.

After eight months of review, debate and consultation, the Cabinet had been presented with detailed proposals to renew and redevelop secondary school provision in Nuneaton & Bedworth district. The proposals were controversial but had a clear logic behind them, with the most contentious area being in East and Central Nuneaton, where declining pupil numbers argued for two schools rather than the current three. Wrapped up in all the proposals was the apparent opportunity to achive early release of BSF (Building Schools for the Future) funding from the government, and also the assertion that this would only be possible if at least one Academy was included.

At the Cabinet meeting today these proposals were unexpectedly replaced with a new set of recommendations, which ducked the contentious issue of three schools into two, and called for more analysis and discussion pending the opportunity to find out what the latest government thinking was on both BSF and Academy funding - the goverment seems to moving the goalposts yet again.

I am not in favour of Academies in principle, nor are the Liberal Democrats as a national party - nor by his own admission is the Conservative leader of the council, and many other members of all parties. Yet they are basing their whole strategy around academies on the grounds that this is what the government wants - ignoring the Conservative party’s advice yesterday to councils to stop co-operating with the Labour government on policies they don’t agree with! The only remaining question seems to be is it two Academies or only one?

In the meantime, the uncertainty hanging over Nuneaton schools - staff, pupils and parents - is allowed to continue on into the Autumn. A very sorry state of affairs.

Good news locally is that the High Street Kenilworth branch is not on the list, despite being earmarked earlier on a leaked map that was rapidly withdrawn and denied by the Post Office. A massive campaign of support for the High Street branch, a 2,000 signature petition presented to the Town Council by my colleague Cllr. Ann Blacklock, and publicity from our Lib Dem MEP Liz Lynne and prospective parliamentary candidate Nigel Rock all seem to have been successful.

Bad news is that the Post Office has simply transferred its attention to the next available branch, in Albion Street Kenilworth. This branch, based in the local One Stop shop, serves a local community with a high proportion of elderly people and low levels of car ownership - a community which very much depends on local shopping to provide its basic needs, sustaining a greengrocer, butcher and breadshop/delicatessen.

This morning I shall be outside the Albion Street branch with fellow councillors Ann Blacklock and Pat Ryan, gauging local people’s reactions to the news and gathering their comments and views as to how this proposed closure would affect their lives. We can then decide our best line of counter-attack.

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!

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!

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!

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.