Grove Senior Pupil Becomes Member of the Education Committee for 2013-14

At the Education Committee on Monday night, Lorna Allan, a senior pupil at Grove Academy joined the Committee for the first time. Lorna was nominated by the City Wide Pupil Representative Council to be to be the pupil member of the Education Committee for Session 2013/2014. 

Lorna is the second pupil representative on the Education Committee following a decision of the City Council held on 20th August, 2012 where it was agreed to seek nominations for parent and pupil representatives to join the Education Committee.

As the Pupil representative for 2012/2013 had left school, a new nominee was sought and Lorna was chosen by her peers.

Pupil and parent representation on the Education Committee was one of the Dundee Labour Party commitments in our manifesto for the local government elections in May 2012. I am therefore pleased to see this in practice and delighted that a Grove senior pupil will be a part of the Education Committee for 2013/14.

Supporting Dundee Bid for UK City of Culture 2017

Yesterday it was confirmed by UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey that Dundee will be in competition with as many as ten other locations for the the prestigious title of UK City of Culture 2017.

The 11 places that have registered their initial interest in bidding are:

Aberdeen, Chester, Dundee, East Kent (covering Ashford, Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone and Thanet), Hastings and Bexhill on Sea, Hull, Leicester, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Southampton, Southend on Sea, Swansea Bay (covering Swansea, Carmarthenshire, Neath, and Port Talbot).

Labour in Dundee made making such a bid one of our manifesto commitments at the local government elections in May 2012. I am pleased that there is now cross party support on the Council to pursue submitting such a bid.

Bearing in mind our existing cultural assets of vibrant and engaged communities, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee Rep, the McManus and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, with the VandA at Dundee the icing on the cake, I am convinced we have a compelling case to make to the judges and we should be able to see off the competition.
Click on this link to listen to my colleague, Councillor Richard McCready, making the case for Dundee's bid on Radio Scotland.

All eleven places have until 30 April 2013 to submit their initial bids to an independent advisory panel which will be chaired by Phil Redmond. The panel will then decide on a shortlist which will be announced in June 2013.

The chosen place will succeed Londonderry, which is the UK City of Culture for 2013 and the first place to be awarded this prestigious title.

Re-election - Commitment to All my Constituents

Earlier this afternoon, after all the votes had been counted, I was declared elected to serve as one of the four councillors to represent The Ferry ward. 
I am delighted that constituents have had the confidence to re-elect me.
I wish to acknowledge the help and support of my energetic campaign team, especially my agent Kevin Findlay.
After an exhausting campaign, I am sure constituents will not begrudge me the holiday weekend to recuperate and get accustomed to coping with a broken wrist which came from a tripping up on a constituent's driveway when I was out delivering leaflets on Tuesday afternoon.
I look forward to working for all of my constituents in the coming weeks and months of the new five year term of office.

Evening Telegraph Profile - The Uncut Version

Name: Councillor Laurie Bidwell

Party: Scottish Labour Party

Age: 65

Day job: Working full time as a Councillor for The Ferry. I was formerly a Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee.

Home area: Over 30 years ago, we moved into our family home, which is on the main street in central Broughty Ferry.

Personal aim: To maintain and make improvements to the public services on which our community relies and to use my influence to support good quality developments and initiatives. I will strenuously oppose changes that are detrimental to constituents or would undermine the distinct identity of Broughty Ferry.

At Least One Voter Delighted to Receive my Letter about their Postal Ballot

My student daughter, Imogen Bidwell, has just emailed me this photo of her holding a letter from her Father and Labour Candidate about her postal vote in the local government elections next Thursday. 
I trust many more of the postal voters in The Ferry were pleased, if not so delighted, to receive their letters from me too.

Dundee Labour Offers Alternative Vision for Education in the City That Includes Bringing Back the Visiting Primary PE and Music Teachers

Despite receiving an extra £97,000 from the Scottish Government towards providing two hours of quality PE for all our primary and secondary school pupils, the Director of Education has announced that he will be recommending in the report to the Education Committee on Monday 23 April, that the Council should not re-employ the 6.9 PE specialists who worked in our Primary Schools. That team of qualified specialist visiting PE teachers, was axed by our SNP led Council as part of the Council budget for 2012/13. Those PE teachers, who worked in every Primary Schools in the City, took their last classes at the end of last term before the Easter break.

This is confusing news for parents carers and pupils. It's confusing news because additional money, if only £48,500 per year for two years, to be spent on PE developments in our schools is to be welcomed. But the mark of quality set by the SNP in their own manifesto for the Holyrood Elections was the provision of two hours of quality PE with a qualified specialist. While the report to the Education Committee includes some projects that are to be welcomed, none will lead to the immediate replacement of the 6.9 qualified PE teachers that were withdrawn. For example, installing artificial grass sports pitches at ten more Primary Schools is a worthy improvement to facilities but new pitches won't make any impact on the supply of qualified PE teachers to coach the children during the school day.

But it's not altogether surprising that the SNP led Council should be backing such a move because they went out of their way to reject Labour's alternative budget proposals on 9 February 2012 that would have secured the retention of the visiting teachers to our Primary Schools. Amongst our reasonable and costed proposals then was a reduction in the number of chauffeur driven civic cars from two to one. Dundee Labour Councillors were firmly of the view that it would be better to transfer expenditure like this to provide the specialist PE teachers in our Primary Schools and get our young pupils more fit and active.

While the Education Committee won't be in a position to re-employ the qualified PE teachers next week, the Education Convener won't have the last word this time.  It will be Dundee voters who can make the decision in the local government elections ten days later.

Labour in Dundee is launching it's manifesto proposals for Education in our schools and nurseries today. This can be read in full at http://www.dundeelabour.org.uk/2012manifesto/ . We believe our proposals will enhance the education of children and young people in our nursery, primary and secondary schools.

We are happy for voters to examine our proposals and make up their minds. What they will find is that we are proposing to halt the slide in teacher numbers in our schools and bring back the team of visiting specialist PE and Music teachers to support all of our Primary Schools. 

Let the voters decide!

Entente Cordiale - Developing Election Twinning Links With Orléans

Next Sunday is the day when voters in France go to the polls in the first round of their Presidential Elections. The Scottish Labour Party in Dundee has taken the opportunity to link its website with site of the French Socialist Party in Orléans, to give interested Dundonians the opportunity to follow online the election on the ground in Dundee’s twin city in France.

The link on the Dundee Labour site is at :

http://www.dundeelabour.org.uk/orleans.htm

The French Socialists have reciprocated with a link to the Dundee Labour site . This appears on the Orléans site as Liens (Links) Labour de Dundee http://orleans-socialiste.fr/

Since the link went live , there have been some 200 visitors to our linked Dundee page.

Twinning encourages a better understanding of the what we share in common with citizens abroad for the benefit of us all.

This Dundee- Orléans political twinning for the French election and Council Elections provides an opportunity to see how the issues and values that dominate politics here are also being contested in France.

I wonder how the turnout in our elections will compare? In the last Presidential election in France in 2007, the turn-out in the first round of voting was 84 per cent. This compares with 50 per cent in the 2011 elections to the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish Labour Election Broadcast - Putting You First

Scottish Labour’s election broadcast for the local government elections aired last night on BBC1, BBC2 and STV. Called Putting You First, it focused on the issues that matter to local people across Scotland.

In case you missed it, here is your chance to view it. 

The film is narrated by actor David Tennant.

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It's Official - I Shall be Standing For Re-election in the Local Government Elections on 3 May

Councillor Laurie Bidwell with Scottish
Labour Party Leader Johann Lamont MSP

Earlier this month I was re-selected by the Broughty Ferry Branch of The Labour Party to seek re-election to the City Council.


I have been proud to represent residents in The Ferry over the last five years. I shall be campaigning hard to retain my seat in the local government elections on Thursday 3 May 2012.

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