A full day of activity, reacting to the Budget by fax, copying election posters with Debbie’s help in Cambridge and then dealing with investments after a Little Chef lunch.
Attending this evening productive Southoe Parish and St Neots Town Council meetings about a playing field for Southoe and to try and stop the St Neots Post Office closure.
I took Debbie with me to Cambridge this morning and she helped me to photocopy the St Neots Election posters on the machine at Glisson Road. Earlier, I had got up to draft a press release for our Budget reaction and had exchanged faxes with Sue Sutton to agree the content. I printed off individually addressed copies of the release and then, once we had arrived, we faxed these off to the radio, TV and newspapers. My activity was not without problems this morning. I had to replace the fax roll before that would work for us and then the toner for the Sharp photocopier ran out and so I had to leave my job un-finished!
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There followed a hectic series of telephone calls to try to obtain another so as not to leave the copier out of use. Then, upon returning to the car, I found a £10 excess parking ticket on my windscreen which was another blow! At least I had the posters that we urgently needed. Debbie was very helpful, feeding all of the paper in as the copying process continued but she earned £1.50 in return and also got the chance to go out and buy a present and a card for Daniel's birthday which will take place whilst we are in America. We stopped off for lunch at the Little Chef and were thus home in early afternoon. Several telephone messages to deal with but two from Daniel cancelled each other out!
The afternoon sorting my office out and attending to financial transactions. I contracted both Diana and I into tax-saving BES schemes, after checking that the Budget measures were not going to alter any of my previous tax planning. Ended up rushing around about 5.00pm to get the BES forms off to my accountant for signing and then to transfer money between building societies by 5.00pm which was a struggle. This evening, I succeeded in attending two important meetings one after another. I first went to Southoe Parish Meeting and managed to get them to discuss both the A1 junctions and the playing field quest within the first twenty minutes. They had to re-organise their agenda to do this and they still agreed with my proposals despite being rushed. We are going to investigate the scope for compulsory purchase of the land necessary for a new playing field.
Then I rushed over to St Neots council chamber and got there just in time to see John Davidson present a 5000-signature petition to the council in support of the retention of the existing St Neots Crown Post Office. Mr Inches, the regional controller, was there to speak to the Town Council about the proposal and heard united opposition from all of those present. I had started a pyramid telephone lobby earlier in the evening and the chamber was quite full with members of the public murmuring their concern by their presence. The meeting went on quite late in the end and I stayed later to chat to the other activists who had attended. Home late and then to bed without time to enter my computer journal.