The last few weeks of any election campaign are quite draining. The weather wasn’t on any of our sides in recent weeks. We started campaigning in the snow and spent the last three days being rained on from a great height. More than once the Tory teams would pass the Labour teams in Borehamwood and everyone looked as wet and fed up as each other. But actually it was generally well spirited. Contrary to what many would have you believe, out there on the streets we can share a chat and the odd laugh as we criss-cross roads and peoples’ front gardens in an effort to identify votes.

Certainly none of us take any election for granted. And although the Conservatives entered the race in Hertsmere with a large majority last Thursday, we still took our campaign as seriously as any I have been involved in during 25 years of local and national campaigning.

There was a feeling that turnout could be low this year in Borehamwood. Ironically in Brookmeadow where many thought residents might stay away and push the vote down lower than the 24% last year, turn out was up by a third to almost 32.5%. I think that there was a London Mayoral Election effect as people came back from work and went out to vote – spurred on by the big profile campaign that met and greeted them each day in the Capital. Indeed there were some who believing us to be in London – with our 0208 phone numbers – complained when they found out that they couldn’t cast a vote for Boris or Ken, et al.

I think that in fairness the work put in by both the Conservatives and Labour in Brookmeadow helped get the numbers up. In a year when everyone predicted meltdown for Labour, locally in Brookmeadow, the candidate polled over 100 votes more than the number on which he was elected last year. Meanwhile the Tory candidate was elected on the highest Tory turnout in Brookmeadow in recent years (excluding general elections when turnout is often twice as high anyway). Turnout was, sadly, almost unchanged elsewhere in other parts of Borehamwood where in Hillside it rose very slightly to 28.5% and in Cowley Hill where it remained almost the same as last year at around 26.5%.

A great deal of work goes into local campaigns. It’s not just sucking it and seeing how the national picture sits and hoping for the best. Whatever people may think of the parties that get elected, whether you are for or against those that won, at least you know that we all take it seriously enough. If there is any frustration it should be directed at the Liberal Democrats who put up just 5 candidates across the thirteen seats up for election in Hertsmere. You may not back the Tories, you may not back Labour, but at least you had a choice in the polling stations to elect, not elect or boot out. All the major parties should have candidates. If we don’t than beware the rise of the small extremist groups who look for weaknesses in local democracy.

There are no Borough Council elections next year – it’s County’s turn and the European Parliament – so we can concentrate on getting out there, talking and listening to our increasingly diverse communities and serve everyone in the way that we are rightly expected to do, by residents across the Borough.

At Full Council on Wednesday night, members had just started debating the new Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership plan for 2008-2011. It's the document which talks about the work and plans for bringing all the different groups and agencies together in Hertsmere to tackle crime and the fear of crime. The meetings of the CDRP happen quarterly with around 40-50 in attendance ranging from councillors to police, housing associations to local interested groups and residents and many others. The document needs to be prepared every three years and regularly updated to take into account the changes within areas and communities and also the issues that need to be addressed. One of the main areas that members were discussing within the document was Police Community Support Officers and their work.

I left the chamber for just a moment - the meeting had already been going for over an hour and a half - for a quick comfort break. During that time my phone went off with an urgent message telling me the police were trying to get in touch. I called them immediately to be told that one of our PCSO's had come across an incident in Elstree and had called for back up and that there were 3 PCSO's now in attendance with 4 police officers. I gave them the information they needed from me and went back into the meeting to report what I had just heard. It was an amazing coincidence yet a tacit reinforcement of the Council’s decision to continue to invest in PCSO's. We now have 28 across the Borough. It costs the Council around £128,000 a year in total, which is the equivalent of less than £4,000 per PCSO - the rest being made up from monies from the constabulary, Home Office etc. Because Hertsmere bought in early to the scheme our investment has paid off well for residents in the number of PCSO’s we have for our towns.

At a recent Town Council meeting our local PCSO - that the Town Council is part-funding - talked us through the work he had been doing recently, including being involved in 16 arrests.

Fear of crime is at a level where 44% of people are concerned they might become a victim of crime. The numbers of people who do become victims of crime in this Borough are around 2%. So there is more work to be done to bring down people's fear of crime and there is no doubt that the PCSO's are a very useful tool when it comes to giving an assuring presence on our streets - as we saw once again on Wednesday night.

Congratulations to Borehamwood councillor, Darren Solomons, who ran the London Marathon at the weekend in aid of his chosen charity, Children with Leukaemia, and well done also to all our other local marathan runners. That is some achievement.

There are many individuals, groups and organisations locally that give of their time to help others.

At last weekend’s annual Civic Dinner, the guest of honour, Lord Salisbury, spoke about people’s contribution to society. That was one of the objects of the Civic Dinner – an opportunity for councillors, officers, charitable groups and local organisations to come together to celebrate such work.

Among the 250 guests were more than 60 local groups from across the Borough. Four were chosen by the Mayor for a Civic award for the contribution they had made to Hertsmere – one of those being the 1st Elstree and Borehamwood Scouts group which celebrated its 100th anniversary just a few weeks ago.

It’s when you look at the guest list on an evening such as the Civic Dinner that you are reminded of just how much some people give of their time for our local area. From our towns alone the following groups were represented: Elstree & Borehamwood Green Belt Association, Hertsmere Crossroads, The Royal British Legion, the Otters Swimming Club for the Disabled, Elstree Productions Theatre Company, the local Talking Newspaper group, Home-Start, the Elstree & Borehamwood District Scouts, The Town Twinning Association, Worknet, the Elstree and Borehamwood Museum, the British Red Cross, Hertsmere Community Partnership, Borehamwood Athletic Club, the Elstree Film and Television Heritage Group, The Com.Unity Choir, Borehamwood Women’s Institute, Hertsmere Community Partnership, Penniwells Riding for the Disabled, and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to all groups and associations who help to improve and enrich the lives of our local communities.

The Council sets aside almost £370,000 a year in Grant Aid to local groups and associations of which around £317k goes to core funded organisations such as the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and just over £50,000 in capital grant aid. Recipients so far this year include the Borehamwood Athletic Club, the Crusaders Skater Hockey club, a local scout group, the local operatic society, table tennis club, Com.Unity Choir and so on.

Only the first tranche of that £50,000 has been awarded at this time and there is a further £38,000 available for grant applications during the year.

If you know of any local groups or organisations that need help, please get in touch with the Council. The cross party panel that sits to consider the applications will be meeting again in the months ahead.

Over 70% of printed news coverage dealing with young people are negative stories painting youths in a poor or bad light. Just one in ten stories about young people paint them in a positive light. That’s a very sad statistic. Are we saying that three quarters of our children and our young are bad people – do they all commit anti-social behaviour, are they all binge drinkers, hoodies and drug misusers? Yes, sure there are problems and sure we see our fair share of them in Borehamwood but do we really feel our young people are getting a fair press?

We were confronted with those statistics and questions when I attended the Young People of the Year Awards this week. As one of over a dozen judges, I was asked to look at the stories and lives of a dozen nominated young people in Hertsmere, Watford and Three Rivers – stories of great courage, character building, leading by example and stories of pain and tragedy which had brought out the best in the nominees.

It was a humbling experience and I hope that newspapers will cover those stories and that print media in general will focus more on the positive side of our young, as well as the negative.

It was good to see among the nominees Charlotte Weston and Tom Dunn who for some time now have been involved in organising and running youth discos at The Vibe Youth Project in Borehamwood. To quote Charlotte (aged 20): “I love to inspire the children we work with and work with them to create shows, helping them be part of ‘something’, meet new friends and grow.” Tom (aged 13) said: “At the last Vibe there was approximately 120-130 kids there which makes me feel a lot better because if I see them enjoying themselves, I think I’ve done what I was meant to do to a good enough standard. The Vibe discos were mainly set up to keep kids off the streets and from the last 7 to 8 discos I feel like its working.”

What great examples Charlotte and Tom are. There are more young people like that out there and we should speak up for them too.

Well it’s the 27th March today, and we enter what is known in local government circles in the run up to the local elections as the “purdah period”. The purdah period starts from the publication of the notice of elections – in Hertsmere’s case this is Thursday 27 March – and lasts until after the elections on Thursday 1 May 2008.

This means that there are restrictions placed on the publicity that the Council can put out during this time. The restrictions do not mean that the Council cannot undertake any publicity – it would seem odd if residents suddenly heard nothing from their councils for five weeks – but the Council must ensure that during the purdah period any publicity it is involved in must not be perceived as giving support to a candidate, their supporters, or a particular political party. The Council must also avoid issuing any publicity that deals with controversial issues or which reports views or policies in a way that identifies them with individual members or groups of members. (The restrictions on political publicity are contained in Section 2 of the Local Government Act (1986), as amended by section 27 of the Local Government Act 1988 and revised in April 2001.)

I tell you this because there will be some who believe that perhaps to err on the side of caution people like myself should not be writing blogs during this period. I must admit I thought so too.

Yet I’ve sought advice from both officers at Hertsmere and also from the good folk at the Borehamwood Times. While I was getting ready to shut it all down for the next month, their general feeling seems to be that we can carry on with these blogs if everyone feels happy to do so, as they are not being written or sent out by the Council itself.

I think though to be on the safe side, even though I personally am not up for election, I’ll stick to non-contentious issues in the weeks ahead, matters that I hope we can all agree on and seek your views on those. It doesn’t mean that its open house on coming gunning for me because I can’t write back, but it does mean I will endeavour to ensure that these blogs are kept as apolitical as possible in the weeks ahead.

I made a rare trip into London at the weekend. My wife suggested we go by train and discouraged me from driving in by car. I met her half way and we drove to a tube station and travelled in on the Underground. We visited the National Gallery. It’s quite extraordinary that we live so close to such magnificent buildings and exhibitions - just 13 miles from here - and yet I visit places in other countries when I’m on holiday but rarely go and visit the great stuff we have in our capital city. It was a mild day, before this cold spell returned, and walking round the pedestrianised Trafalgar Square was a pleasure – or would have been if we hadn’t got caught up in a protest that was being held there. I’m all for freedom of expression but it would have been lovely to be able to walk to the National without feeling heckled and dodging placards as we made our way to the front entrance. (And no it wasn’t the St Patrick’s Day parade – I’m no killjoy – that was the next day!)

It’s only when you get to look at paintings from hundred of years ago that one can really piece together how things must have looked and felt in those days. We take it all for granted when we watch films or television programmes about the past and somehow in our mind’s eye “reconstructions” of past events now seem to be how our memory thinks of them as actually being, but of course there were no cameras - still image or moving pictures - and we do really only get a snap shot of life before advanced technology by looking at paintings.

Afterwards we walked around the West End for a few hours.

I have a tendency to look at pavements when I visit anywhere now. I get increasingly aggravated by the state of pavements specifically the scarring by used chewing gum. It’s particularly bad on certain thoroughfares in Hertsmere, including the high street in Borehamwood, and I remember the facts often presented that it now costs 3 pence to make a stick of gum and 10 pence to remove it. And that’s just from pavements. Anyone who has trod on some or sat on some will know just how bad that can be and expensive and inconvenient to remove too. We talk about removing graffiti to make our streets look cleaner and the council is moving ahead with plans for cracking down on this type of anti-social behaviour. But shouldn’t we be looking at the same type of action with gum. I’m not saying ban gum or ban people who chew it, from our streets. Just crack down on those people who don’t consider others by spitting it out on to the roads. The Council is looking at environmental crime in general and I’d be interested to hear views.

We know from “art” how the streets of London looked hundreds of years ago and let’s not imagine that the streets were "paved with gold". Before proper drainage and sewerage systems gold was probably the last thng they were paved in. But it would be nice not to have our streets paved with gum, nor to be remembered for this mess when artists portray our landscapes in their works now and in the years ahead.

I was at Hertswood school earlier this week answering questions from a group of young children asking about Elstree Studios and what goes on there, and, most importantly which famous people I had seen on set. I pointed out, much to their disappointment that I don’t go on set and see anyone. I had seen Eamonn Holmes walk past in the car park once and Noel Edmonds in the distance as he made his way to a recording but that was about it. The cross-party board of Councillors – made up of all three political parties that sit on the Council – who oversee the studios for the Council and for residents don’t visit celebrities, we’re there to ensure the facilities are working right so that productions will want to come back to us season after season. The children didn’t seem that keen to hear about studio laundry and painting of dressing rooms and offices. I think they were surprised to hear that the councillors don’t get paid to sit on the Board and do this work and that the Studios, rather than costing money actually makes money for the Borough, which gets ploughed back into local services.

Their ears did prick up when they heard that Big Brother would be coming back and about Dancing on Ice, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Are you Smarter Than…? “I hope Big Brother stays,” said one of the young girls, “I’d like to be on it when I’m older”, which I found a little troubling.

I mentioned some of the Studios’ history and the children were very polite but other than Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I don’t think they knew much of Hitchcock making this country’s first talking picture back there in 1929, Moby Dick or The Dam Busters.

So they probably won’t be very excited by the prospect of a gentleman called Bryan Forbes who is coming to the Studios for a plaque unveiling in his honour in April, courtesy of the Town Council. Many of you will remember Bryan Forbes as a dashing young actor in the 1950s; he was also screenwriter, producer and director. He still writes novels and received the CBE for his services to his industry two years ago. The guest unveiler is due to be Lord Attenborough with whom Forbes worked closely on many projects over the years from Whistle Down the Wind and The Angry Silence in the early 1960s to Chaplin in the early 1990s. Bryan Forbes was also the head of Elstree studios in the early 1970s during a time of great difficulty and strife for the British film industry.

There are around 20 of these tribute plaques that have been unveiled at Elstree Studios and placed around our town. A booklet is available from the Town Council listing them all. The scheme started in 1996, well before I was a Town councillor, as part of the 100th anniversary of British film celebrations. Our local film historian and entertainments officer at the Town Council, Paul Welsh, has spearheaded the scheme throughout all that time. Paul won the MBE in 1997 for his services to help save the Studios when it was under threat before the Borough council took it over in 1996, again before my time. Paul has suggested names for all the plaques to date and those names once agreed by the cross-party entertainment’s committee are approached for the honour. It was Paul who got Simon Cowell to the Studios too…but we won’t hold that against him! Actually, everyone who met Mr Cowell in person came away pleasantly surprised that his television image wasn’t entirely his own “real life” persona. I think they call it acting.

This event will be the first time that these unveilings have been opened up to the public. Something that I have been very keen on since joining the committee last year. The Studios belong to the people and these types of events should be able to overcome security and other issues to allow residents, albeit I accept in limited numbers, to come and pay tribute to stars of Elstree, past and present.

There will be some guests I am sure who are as wide eyed and bowled over that Bryan Forbes and Lord Attenborough will be coming to Elstree, as there are those who are when they see Davina McCall and Dermot O’Leary. I suppose it’s about age and personal taste.

Whichever your favourites, the opportunity to celebrate our town’s big screen and small screen heritage, is at the forefront of our minds. We have a lot to be proud of in this town and I thank people like Paul Welsh for making these tributes happen.