Ben Gray

@cllxben.bsky.social

1314 Followers 1161 Following

Nottingham and East Midlands Green Party Co-Chair Dad, Cyclist, Inventor, Green Party, former Borough Councillor, keen runner, enthusiastic OCR participant, tree hugger, PhD Chemist, increasingly grumpy.

A cut up labour membership card
Bridgford Hall, a Grade II Listed building with registry office and lottery funded hotel. Image credit John Sutton / West Bridgford Hall / CC BY-SA 2.0
Craft beer and a puzzle. Rock and roll
Greenpeace are being sued by oil companies. These planet murdering scumbags have the law on their side.
Getting plaster ready for slopping onto the walls
Begging letter from Labour where they are both victor and victim in this fight
Group picture of runners
Image featuring clear whey protein and single malt whiskey
Graph showing estimated number of nuclear warheads for the USA and Russia. Showing the Russian peak around 1987 at 40,000
Selfie of five people and a dog
Cute black and white cockapoo on a sofa
Dusty man points at newly built stairs
Morning coffee, three pour tulip design which is only one I can do
Morning sunshine over collingdon way in west bridgford
Fiona Bruce pulling a face after being accused of being one of the highest earners in the country, whilst being demonstrably one of the top 1% earners in the UK
Mansion in the Park Nottingham.
Labur MPs urge investors to support defence firms
Panel of solar panel inverter showing date and 30w generated
Green councillor Shuguftah Quddoos and myself at the Robin Hood statue in Nottingham
Standard proliferation graphic from xkcd
Trading Game, non fiction book of the month in Aberystwyth Waterstones
Hairy man holding a vote green sign and a cheeky child peers round a green party roller banner
Article from the Brussels Times. Belgian commutes pay off: employees earn up to 810 euros for cycling to work
Cup of coffee with tulip and heart latte art, from Okende in West Bridgford
Table of figures showing that East Midlands gets less than half the funding of Cambridgeshire for walking and wheeling
Idiot pointing at a sign (sign says 1000)
Saison du kitachino nest beer. Glass and bottle
Illuminated sign saying kushi ya
Labour copying reform's and style
Cup of coffee in green cup
That moment when you're about to join the Revolution and you realise you'd promised to take the kids to the park.
Hard working activists taking a well earned break!
Insulation being fitted and taped in a loft extension
Shiny coffee machine
Shiny coffee machine and a cup of coffee
Sunset over the West Bridgford suburbs
Coffee cup with latte are next to flowery butter dish
Coffee cup with tulip latte art and a coffee tamper on oak
Green Party leafleting spatula
Cool glass tube with liquid cooling for CO2 laser cutting
Figure one: Efficiency, effectiveness and performance: size doesn’t matter Despite the conviction with which the case is made that increases in council size improve efficiency, effectiveness and performance, no consistent or conclusive results were found. In the literature surveyed, nothing could be used to justify the belief that larger councils are always more efficient, effective, cheaper or a better option in the provision of public services than smaller units of local government. The literature is contradictory and inconsistent findings on this matter, suggesting that other factors have overwhelmingly more impact on councils. Figure two: Local democracy: size does matter The literature is far more consistent in its findings that increases in the population or geographical scale of local government units have a deleterious effect on democratic criteria, such as: electoral turnout public trust in councillors public trust in officers levels of engagement contact between citizens and councillors contact between citizens and council officers levels of identification or affinity with the council held by the public number of councillors from beyond the major national parties. The literature reveals that there is an inevitability that the democratic criteria of local government will be damaged by increases in council size.
Graphs showing areas of deprivation in the uk
Three cell cartoon. "I used to think correlation implied causation", "then I took a statistics class. Now I don't." "Sounds like the class helped" " well, maybe"
View from the back of the office. The office is on the right of the picture
Part of a notice board from Vengeance Most Fowl showing a DO NOT COMMIT CRIME poster and a wanted poster of Feathers McGraw
Glass of beer with bottle of said beer
Corner of a street with the sign post "Grenville road"
Esher style tessellations on an IKEA tea tray
A shaped flint
Photos of a man in his favourite tshirt with some other people
From Strava. This year 1000 miles to go.
Graph showing progression for a goal of 1000 miles
1500 day streak on Duolingo
It needs people with courage to stand up and say: ‘This is not in the public interest. I want my kids to be able to get to school under their own steam.’ Just 211 miles from here [in the Netherlands], 66% of kids do get around under their own steam, and our children are being denied that
Picture of a large basted turkey
A handful of people that its somehow more democratic to hand massive powers to than it is to thousands of councillors or 650 MPs