Local issues for the next election

Are you interested in making the next general election a more transparent process? Then you might be interested in the Democracy Club, a network of volunteers to help mySociety and TheStraightChoice ahead of our next big vote.

They want to know what the local issues for the next election are for a variety of areas to help inform their website - so we'd love to hear from you what you think are important decisive topics for the local area.

Here's a possible list to get started:

1. Flooding - is enough being done to protect local residents? Can the various agencies responsible for flooding work together well enough?
2. Green transport - is enough being done to keep public transport low to encourage cars off the roads? (The endlessly increasing bus fares are a personal bugbear of mine. Especially when you have to get on a 47, pay £3.30 for a return and there's someone smoking dope on the top deck at 9AM.)
3. Congestion - why is driving into or through the city centre such a convoluted unmitigated nightmare?
4. Council finances - how can central government help to make BCC more transparent? How can we counter local borkups like BCC spending £2.8 million on a new, broken website and having the head of the scrutiny committee say that local people aren't interested in how the council is run?

And a few yes/no ones:

1. Should South Birmingham PCT be allowed to continue with presumed opt-in to Lorenzo patients record system?
2. Should the redevelopment of the Central Library go ahead? (though I realise it's not in B29).
3. Should we get the Stirchley swimming pool redeveloped?

Perhaps a better question is "Are there any local issues which divide the candidates standing at the next election" - let us know in the comments below, or by using the hashtags #localissues and #b29 on twitter, and we can feed them back to Democracy Club :).

Selly Oak New Road - Bournbrook stuff

Phase 2 has got its own website, mysteriously full of watercolour paintings of dual carriageways, and a map that's far too small to be useful.

They have got some progress pictures, though, and some brief information about what's going on. I was interested in the mysterious crane action in Bournbrook Road - they are apparently realigning the river, extending the bridge and culverting (enclosing) part of the river.

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It means Bournbrook Road is shut (until Feb 2011!), but it doesn't seem to stop people optimistically driving past the Road Closed signs and frowning at the inability to get on the Bristol Road.