Susan Jefferies

For those of you who have been concerned about my Ghost Coi, Herbert, he is at last back home.

Renovations and repairs to his pond took much longer than planned and he was confined to a tank for 3 weeks. Over the first weekend he jumped, through the netting, and back into his pond, by now drained and 5 feet lower down, with only 3 inches of rainwater in the bottom. I must have found him fairly quickly because he miraculously survived.

He is now back in the restored pond. He celebrated by doing circuits! The next day he was offered a companion, she had been made homeless a week before when her pond was filled in. They have been inseperable ever since, swimming round close together.

Our MP, Annette Brooke, has been in Bangladesh this week, with the Micro Finance group.

Micro Finance lends quite small amounts of money, mainly to women, to start up small businesses. The success rate is very high, most of the loans are paid back very quickly, and in full, and the women succeed with their business and manage to feed and educate their children.  Many expand fast and quickly employ other women in the village.

In the less developed countries a small investment can go a very long way, the multiplier effect is something like 4 or 5 times greater than in Britain.

The consultation on the awful prospect of 700 additional houses built on our Green Belt in Corfe Mullen is still in progress. We are being urged by Keep Corfe Mullen Green to write as many individual letters as possible. Let us hope that KCMG are right and someone actually reads all these letters.

Please can we urge you, if you are against the principle and the fact of broaching our Green Belt boundaries for additional housing, to write to

The Rt Hon Hazel Blears MP
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
Eland House
Bressenden Place
London
SW1 5DV

And/or to the man in charge of planning for the South West

Dave Jones

Planning Manager

Planning and Housing Delivery Team

2 Rivergate
Temple Quay
Bristol
BS1 6EH

Last night the Parish Council re-elected Cllr Peter Haward as their Chairman for another year.

Cllr Haward has been an excellent Chairman for the last 4 years and we are delighted that he is prepared to be our Chairman for one further year. He has worked very hard, and effectively, in all aspects, the most important of which was his representation of the Village at the Examination in Public of the RSS (Regional Spatial Strategy) in Exeter a year ago.

He lead the team who rigorously defended the Corfe Mullen against the threat of the building of an additional 700 homes in the Village. Not I am afraid that the Panel took much account of what anyone who appeared before them said.

He will lead the Parish Council into a further year when we will take over responsibility for running the Village Hall from the exisitng volunteer committee.

One Parish Councillor disagreed. He has disagreed with everything that the Parish Council has done since he was elected a year ago. He has done nothing positive for the community, has offered assistance for nothing at all.

He has however wasted quite some Council time and wasted the time of the Parish Council staff. He has written a series of offensive and potentially libellous letters which have upset some of the more sensitive members of the Council.

I will support the democratic process until the day I die, however I do wonder if the residents who voted for this person, on the basis of remarks which were a tissue of lies, realise how little he has done for them.

Tuesday morning, report from the Parish Clerk:  Last night it was the turn of the toilets, all the loo rolls set alight, untold damage, and they tried to break down the new door to the Ladies.

All this damage has to be repaired and the cost is borne, ultimately by all of us, the Council tax payers. The bill for removing the latest round of graffiti was £246, that is £246 we have not got to spend on improvements in the Village.

I have recently become concerned about one or two young adults who have failed to be eligible for Student Loans and Student support because they have fallen foul of the 3 year residency rule, a rule few people know exists.

When you fill in the application form for a Student loan you are asked whether you have lived in the UK and Islands for the 3 years prior to the start of your course.  If you declare that you have not, this triggers off further enquiries which may deny you the right to a Student loan and Student support.

I have recently come across young adults who had set off on Gap Year travel, got themselves involved in something and stayed away much longer than they first intended.  After a few years they realise that a University education is really what they need after all so they come home, get a place at University and apply, unsuccessfully, for Student Support.  These young adults are told that the 3 year clock starts again when they returned to the UK and Dorset, so they will not get funding for another 3 years.

In each case the young person has come home fired up with enthusiasm, more mature than a school leaver and poised to do very well at University.

While I can perhaps understand why this  rule was made, I am sure it is not in place to deny young people such as these the chance to do a University degree at 25 or 28 years old.  Our present Govt talks about Life Long Learning, which we all support, and declares that we should all have access to education throughout our lives.

I am taking up this anomaly with  my MP Annette Brooke, and Jim Knight, Minister of State for Education and MP for South Dorset.

I would be interested to hear your views on this please.

I have spoken to the Youth Club and the District Council about the increasing level of disturbance in Corfe Mullen and they have very quickly agreed to fund an Outreach Youth worker for 10 weeks for Corfe Mullen.  This is an extra couple of Youth workers who will go around the village in the evenings, together, to talk to the young people who are not in the Youth Club.

Excellent news, they did this for us for 6 weeks last year and it was very helpful.  10 weeks should take us through into the summer holidays.

Sita, at the Beacon Hill Waste Disposal site are putting in plans for some expansion made neccessary by European legislation, they need to sort the waste to a greater degree before landfill and recycle as much as they can.

As part of these plans they hope to include a Household Recycling area for local people. this will mean the usual recycling bins, glass, cans, paper, cardboard and Garden waste ! This will be a great help for local people.

More news later.

Bye election in Poole yesterday and Matthew Gillett, LibDem candidate doubled the LibDem vote in Branksome,  a usually stolid Tory ward !

The days are getting longer, the evenings lighter, the weather warmer and our young people are spending more time out of doors which is wonderful.  However a small minority of them get bored and entertain them selves by causing trouble.  Some of them call themselves the Corfe Mullen Crew (CMC)

We have had

• graffiti sprayed in several places in the village, some of it quite personal.
• A dozen beer bottles smashed on the brand new surface of a children’s play area in the Library garden
• The glass in a bus shelter smashed
• The entrance to the Library trashed
• The brand new artificial wicket on the Rec (cost £6,000) damaged immediately after it was installed
• And more seriously, our longtime elderly custodian of the Village Hall, pushed and verbally abused by a local lad as he was helping the Blood Donors crew leave the Hall before he locked up after them.

All these things need to be repaired and the burden of cost falls upon us all as Council Tax payers, the money used to repair the damage could otherwise have been used to create positive things within the village.

We do not want these events to escalate.  If anyone sees anything untoward or knows any young people who may be involved please tell the Police (01202 222222), the Parish Office or me, you can use this website without revealing your name.