Funny thing to be doing a blog. I have never been very attracted to them myself, and if I hadn’t been asked by Oxford Mail, I wouldn’t be doing this one now. That’s 32 words, so only 468 to go.

Blogs are especially perilous for politicians. There’s a fine line you have to hit between indiscretion (the main reason I suppose people read them – but deadly for a politician) and boring people senseless with worthy trivia.

So let’s start with something worthy, but certainly not trivial – the neglected state of some of our City Centre. Spent Sunday morning doing a regular residents’ survey down in St Ebbes, part of which enjoys - if that is the right word - an administrative existence as bit of the artifice the Town Hall calls Carfax ward. Most residents are pleased to see me. I can understand those who don’t like seeing anyone, even their MP, on a Sunday morning.

There are some wonderful people living in Paradise Street, Faulkner Street and Buttewyke Place, some of them original St Ebbes residents, who were moved out when the old St Ebbes was knocked down in the 1960s and who were eventually able to make good on the promises made to them to be able to move back.

But the old St Ebbes community was never recreated in full, and the residential streets exist there in uneasy juxtaposition with the Westgate car park, large-scale buildings, traffic and institutional uses which aren’t always easy to live next door to.

Walking through St Ebbes I pass some good efforts to create really nice areas (like the walkway and bridge behind Paradise Street) being spoiled by people dumping rubbish and worse, which I make a note to get onto the Council about.

Then someone says – have you seen the mess behind the Wharf House? I get to Butterwyke Place and it hits me – great piles of rubbish, abandoned trolleys empty bottles, a stinking mess, right next door to people’s houses and flats. Residents tell me they’ve reported it to the Council, but nothing’s been done. They also tell me that drug and alcohol abusers are being drawn back to the empty yard, which apparently they often frequented when the pub was a going concern.

One irate neighbour tells me in no uncertain terms that it’s mess like this which causes people to lose faith in the political system. My protestations that at least I’m down there on a Sunday morning seeing it for myself cut little ice. Understandably the only thing which matters to him is getting it cleaned up.

Monday morning I whiz a fax off to Environmental Health, who to be fair are generally pretty good when I get on to them. I share the residents’ anger. I put it to the Council that not only does this need cleaning up, but someone really ought to be prosecuted for allowing it in the first place.

The government can pass all the laws it likes on cleaning up the environment (and it has passed quite a few) but if we don’t win the battle on the ground, whether in the city centre or on the estates, we won’t have the community to be proud of which we all want, and people’s confidence in what representative democracy delivers for them will sink a notch lower.

So let’s hope it’s cleaned up fast – and someone brought to book. I’ll keep you posted.