The Christmas tree at the House of Commons is up, carol singing has stated and on Saturday I attended no fewer than 5 Christmas fairs across the constituency after opening the Adur Art Exhibition, attending the Ukrainian Cultural Day at Worthing Museum and holding a Lancing street surgery. So the festive season is well and truly with us. No doubt Easter eggs will be in the shops in a few weeks’ time too!
It was great to see so many people turn up to Worthing Museum for the Ukrainian Cultural Day to enjoy the traditional dancing, poetry and some amazing paintings, photographs and textiles which are part of the long-term exhibition there. Solidarity between Worthing and our very active Ukrainian refugee community is stronger than ever, and I am looking forward to welcoming many of them back to Parliament in a few weeks’ time.
On Thursday, the EYE (Eco, Young and Engaged) Project welcomed pupils from 10 primary schools in and around Crawley to Crawley College for our latest Eco Summit. Having held similar events in Adur, Worthing, Littlehampton, Chichester and Singleton the environmental charity we set up in 2008 to spread environmental good practice has certainly gone county wide. There was a real buzz amongst our young eco-warriors who went back to their schools fired up with good ideas for how they can all do their bit for combatting climate change.
In January EYE will be holding a special Question Time ‘interrogation’ of the head of Southern Water by local secondary school students which will be an interesting exercise given all the bad publicity around sewage overflows. In my experience of being quizzed by enthusiastic teenagers from the UK Youth Parliament Select Committee they can be a tough gig.
We area also looking to set up a project where EYE Project students can inspect and validate local businesses to rate how environmentally friendly they actually are. So if you have a business and are up to the challenge then let me know.
