The Latest From Your Parish Councillor - Martin Corney

Well I did enjoy Pensilva Gala Day, I saw the young and adventurous resolutely facing the challenge of Pam's Climbing Wall, I manned the Pensilva Wildlife Group stand briefly, and had difficulty holding my camera steady, I was laughing so much at the Arrow Barrows. The light summer mist then drove us indoors, where I helped Steph and Ruth draw raffle tickets. Some of those prizes were still in the office, waiting to be claimed, last time I looked. Anyway, a really great day was had by all. So many thanks to all those who organised it so brilliantly, especially Ruth. After the fun, now back to the serious stuff.

For my own personal use, I've created a few interconnected blogs on Blogspot, so that you can send me comments. Most search engines will find them if you enter "martin corney blog st ive", and I promise to publish all polite comments. This is a chance for you to tell me what you think. Blogs so far cover; my Parish Pump contributions, internet for the parish, the parish Neighbourhood Development Plan, and my Green thoughts.

The Parish Council have asked me to lead a steering group looking at how we can best use the internet for the benefit of the community. I've created a Facebook Page "St Ive Parish Council" which non Facebook users can view at www.facebook.com/stiveparishcouncil. We will keep this page updated with parish news items such as road closures, and parish council meeting agendas and minutes. Facebook users can "Like" the page and automatically receive these news items in their news feed. The Facebook news feed is a bit like creating your own personal newspaper with articles from just the sources you are interested in. I think this has real potential.

In order to keep improving how we use the internet my next project will be sorting out the parish web sites. I'd like to get a group of us involved. If enough people are interested in volunteering for work experience, I'd really like to form a Community Interest Company based around internet services. I think there are lots of local groups and businesses that would like a web site. Please check out my blog for more details.

Finally the Parish Council have asked me to lead a working group for creating a Neighbourhood Development Plan. (If you want something done fast, give the job to someone who's busy.) A Neighbourhood Development Plan is our chance to decide how new building projects and other developments happen in the future. The whole community can be involved in this. There will be a need to gather your views, and at the end we all get to vote in a referendum, which gives the Neighbourhood Development Plan legal weight. My blog has links to more information I've found on the internet, but remember that it's not the official way to feed back opinion to the Parish Council. We are still working on that.

An Introduction From Your New Councillor Martin Corney

I’ve just been co-opted on to your Parish Council, so I thought I’d tell you something about myself. I’ve lived in St Ive for the last 25 years, and for 22 of those years I worked in Devonport Royal Dockyard in the computer department. I took early retirement three years ago, which has given me more time to spend on my interest in wildlife, as well as gardening. Think about it – how would you balance those two conflicting interests? Well I’ve had to think up a few new ideas of how to grow vegetables while letting the wildlife thrive in my garden. The ideas don’t all work, but I learn.

I volunteered my name for the council because I wanted the drain gulleys in my area cleared out properly, and thought, “Don’t just moan about it, get involved and do something”. So when I saw that the Parish Council was short in numbers, I stuck my head above the parapet.
Because of my background in computing, the first thing that the Parish Council asked me to do, was to look at how we can improve our internet services. I’m still at the stage of gathering information. So if you have any ideas about how we can use the internet to help share useful information about things that are happening locally, please contact me. I can be emailed, martin.corney@btinternet.com, or ring me on 382450 (leave a message if I’m not in), and I’m even on Facebook. I’ve created a group “St Ive Area Internet Ideas” on Facebook where your ideas can be shared.
I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other over the coming months, and I still want to sort out the drains. Don’t let me forget.