My column in the Midweek Visiter

The entries in my Mayoral diary this week are very varied. I began with the Technology Challenge organised by the local Rotary group at Greenbank High School. I met students from local school and colleges who were participating in this event. Their task was to design and make an electrically powered car to travel along a course and pick up a load. I was genuinely impressed by the inventiveness of the students who ranged in age from 12 to 18 years old. Some of the older students from Southport College were undertaking apprenticeships or preparing to go to university, they had the task well in hand. But it was the younger students who really impressed me. It was good to observe so many girls actively and successfully participating in engineering.

At the weekend I was at the Floral Hall for the annual conference of the Lancashire and Cumbria Rotary district. They have come back to Southport for three of the last five years. It is my habit at these events to speak to as many of the delegates as I can about their experience of our town. Conferences likes this fill our hotels and Guest Houses and provide bookings for our restaurants so it was very pleasing that there was universal praise for the welcome they have received. A special mention must go to the staff at the Floral Hall.

The Mayor’s Parlour was the venue for a citizenship ceremony to welcome five people who had completed all the procedure to be accepted as UK citizens. I have regularly presided over events like this and it is clear to me that those I have met who have chosen make this country their home will make a significant contribution to our society.

I was back in Mayor’s Parlour later in the week to welcome students from Range High School in Formby. They are involved in a exchange with German students and I showed forty of them around the Town Hall. Next week I shall be meeting more school students this time at Waterloo Primary School.

My final visits of the week was to the charity Nugent who have a number of impressive projects in our borough. I met staff in a children’s home in Formby and at a school proving educational day placements in a therapeutic setting for girls and boys aged 7-19 years old, with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.