This snippet comes from the NDDC website:

“All North Devon Council offices will be closed from 2pm on Christmas Eve until Monday 5 January. Due to some major IT works during that period, the council website will be unavailable and we won’t be able to send or receive emails. Some online serviceswill still be available and in a genuine council-related emergency, you can call our emergency out of office number on 01271 388240.”

I don’t know about you, but I expect public services like the District Council to be working over the Christmas period.  I’m also astounded that they are having major IT works done then – I believe that they are relocating their central computer system from the Civic Centre to another of their offices. When I worked for BT all such work was embargoed over the Christmas period because if there were any problems they were far more difficult to get fixed.

Western Power had a very low flying helicopter out this morning checking the power lines around South Molton following last Saturday’s power cut. I missed getting a picture of that, but I did see one of their landrovers parked in Alswear New Road this afternoon.

I hope that cyclists manage to avoid this rather nasty pothole near the leisure centre in Barnstaple. I’ve reported it on the Devon County Council website and it’s been given the reference number W14756109. I wonder how long it will take DCC to fix it?

This is one of the reasons that people think  plastic bags should be banned – that and the fact that they don’t ever biodegrade. Actually this isn’t quite true. UV rays can break the big bits of plastic down into smaller pieces which contain toxic chemicals.

I rang Western Power on Saturday morning because the power went out.

I have to say that their call centre (on 0800 6783195) were very helpful indeed and luckily their estimated time to restore power was wrong – it was only off for 13 minutes rather than the estimated three hours.  The supervisor gave me a call back to say what was happening and I also received a text message on my landline.

I asked for a written response to explain why we constantly get short duration outages and was amazed to receive a this morning.

Well done Western Power for such good customer service.  Let’s just hope you can put your line plant underground.  This should stop these mini-outages and  improve the streetscapes of South Molton immeasurably.

People may say that these mini-outages – often less than ten seconds – aren’t a big issue, but if you use computers,  or many other forms of electronic equipment, they’re a very big issue. They’re the reason I spent a fair amount of money recently to buy an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

It looks like the money that North Devon District Council receives from central government will be cut by 5% in 2015/16.

Torridge will see a cut of 4.3%,  Exeter a cut of 3.1%, West Devon a cut of 3%, Mid-Devon one of 2.6%, and South Hams  one of 2.1%.

Teignbridge sees no change, and East Devon has an increase of 2.7%.

Devon County Council (Con) will receive a very slight increase of 0.5%, Torbay a cut of 3% and Plymouth a cut of 3.3.%.

So North Devon gets shafted again.

I had quite a long correspondence with BT Payphones about this redundant phone box.

They refused to budge on the removal date, but, bizarrely, agreed to get it working again and replace the glass panels before they eventually remove it.

At least it’s now in somewhat better condition, albeit unpainted and without a door, but the important thing is that it does actually work again (I tested it on Sunday afternoon). Mobile coverage in that part of South Molton is pretty dire so a working phone box is a good thing.  Mind you, a working phone box is always better than one that doesn’t work.

I attended a Care Closer to Home meeting at the Barnstaple Hotel last night along with Councillors John Moore and David Goodman,

It was much better attended than the first meeting I went to there, when the CCG staff outnumbered the attendees by quite a large margin! This time around about 15 or 16 people attended.

It would appear that the CCG are certainly taking people’s views into account. However, indications are that the number of beds to be provided will be at the lower end of the range rather than the upper end! Comments on this part of the consultation need to be in by Friday 12 December.

The CCG will probably set out their proposals in January which will be followed by a further period of consultation.  The final decision is expected in April at the earliest, but is more likely to be announced at the end of May/beginning of June.