Spent the weekend in Gateshead for the Labour Local Government Conference. Conference was good, but I was rather more taken with the Angel of the North than anything else! We stayed at the aptly named Angel View Inn which has a great view of the sculpture. I'd always imagined that it was out in the country somewhere, so I was quite surprised to find that it is in fact just off the A1. I like Local Government Conference generally, mainly because it doesn't involve going to a seaside town beginning with B. Brighton, Blackpool and Bournemouth are all fine in themselves, but going to the seaside in February just feels wrong.

I'm doing various things in the ward this week. We are looking at advice bureaux provision in the ward, and looking at adding an extra bureau and finding a new location for one of the existing ones. I'm also meeting with the Police and Transport West Midlands about problems with anti social behaviour on one of the main bus routes through Kingstanding. On Friday, I've got another meeting for the Mobile Phone Masts scrutiny committee - this should be a particularly interesting meeting as we have asked the mobile phone operators to attend and answer questions. One of my jobs for this week is to go back through my notes and make up a list of questions - some have already been addressed, but quite a few issues were raised at the public meetings that I'd like to get more information on if possible.