The Politics show, Junior PCSOs and Rugby at Twickenham!

We had some national publicity over the weekend. You may have seen the politics show on Sunday 18 October which featured the Junior PCSOs from Chapel and Deanery doing their time capsule for Black History Month. This year’s theme for BHM is black heroes. The Junior PCSOs, under the guidance of PCSO Kelly Drodge and Swaythling Housing Community Officer Jade Missen (one of my ex-PCSO) have identified their black heroes, prepared some facts about them, and then all the heroes were placed in a large tube (capsule) which will be hidden at a secret location and opened in 2014. The programme featured a short interview with Kelly which was great.

This week we are involved with 'Bike safe' week. This is all about safety for two wheeled road users, and will be concentrating on cycle safety, particularly during the commuter times. I was asked to pop down to Twiggs Lane on the Marchwood by-pass and did a bit with Radio Solent - so I hope that came across OK. Twiggs Lane was chosen as the programme featured a man who lost his best friend to a motor cycle accident at that junction last year. I spoke a bit about cycle safety in the St Marys area, particularly with the children going to and from school.

Talking about St Marys and road safety - PC Jeanette Denton has held two vehicle operations on St Mary St. Primarily these operations were to reduce speeding as we have had several complaints, but the results have been numerous fixed penalty tickets for people not wearing seat belts. We are getting about eight tickets an hour. Jeanette will continue the operations and there has been some really positive feedback and support from the community who have spoken to the officers during the operations. So far we have issued 17 tickets and loads of advice.

In my previous blog I mentioned the tag rugby we are looking at delivering in St Marys school. Well, Nicola Vaughan of Hampshire RFU came down last week and trained 12 of us in tag. We are going to call the scheme the Southampton Street Rugby Project. On Tuesday, PCSO Kelly Drodge and I started tag at St Marys and on Friday PCSO James Morgan started at Mount Pleasant School. These are after school clubs, so will help to reduce youth anti social behaviour after school and also help us get to know the kids better. A fantastic bonus though is that Hampshire RFU have won the bid for the 'curtain raiser' (pre match activity) at Twickenham for the England v Argentina game on Novemeber 14th. We will hopefully be taking 24 children up to Twickenham to play tag rugby on the hallowed turf prior to the international. What a fantastic opportunity and, and one of the main organisers for the scheme, I will be going and am looking forward to it.

The meetings and beat surgeries are still coming in thick and fast. On 2 November we will have the next Northam open police public meeting to identify the community priorities. This week we have the bike safe event on Northam Rd on Wednesday morning with the council, Thursday I have the Northam 521/ CityReach youth project meeting followed by the Chapel residents meeting then next Monday is the St Marys Traders Association meeting.

And finally, you may have been aware that last Saturday was the Hindu festival of Diwali. This is the busiest night of the year at the Vedic Temple in Radcliffe Rd, where hundreds of people attend the temple and the fireworks display. I went down with four of my team to help keep the traffic flowing and assist where needed. The traffic is the main problem, with so many cars coming to Radcliffe Rd. The temple had arranged to use the Mt Pleasant Trading Estate for some parking, and whilst we ignored some of the double yellow lines, we prevented any large obstructions and kept the traffic moving, with plenty of understanding from both the Temple visitors and residents.

Well, that’s it till next time

Cheers

Dick