Echo readers' audience with PM

Two Echo readers got the chance to grill Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who yesterday held his Cabinet meeting in the region.

Mr Brown and a host of high-ranking politicians including Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw also met members of the public during an event in Nottingham to gauge grass-roots views.

It was the first time a Cabinet of a British Government had met in the city.

The Prime Minister spoke about the Government's continued work in tackling youth unemployment, the banking crisis, crime and anti-social behaviour and said he was "optimistic" over the future of the country's finances.

Rosanne Kirk, 39, a school governor at St Hugh's Primary School, in Woodfield Avenue, Lincoln, is calling for pedestrian crossings at all schools in Lincoln and is trying to make it law for every local council nationally to install crossings near schools.

She and landscape gardener David Harby, 57, of Carral Close, off Brant Road, Lincoln, were accompanied by the Echo during the round-table question-and-answer session with Mr Brown and the Cabinet.

Mrs Kirk, of Winthorpe Road, told Transport Secretary Lord Andrew Adonis how she had heard that schools can have crossings or 20mph zones, but not both.

Lord Adonis said he would be surprised if the two were incompatible, but invited Mrs Kirk to send him further details of the campaign in writing.

The Prime Minister then met Mrs Kirk and said the issues raised warranted further attention.

Mrs Kirk, who also shook Lord Mandelson's hand, said she was confident her campaign would be given a boost.

"It was good to meet Lord Adonis and Gordon Brown," she told the Echo.

"I really do think they will take the issues I raised away with them.

"It's not every day you get to meet the most powerful man in Britain."

Mr Harby said it was interesting to hear Mr Brown explain that several terrorist attacks in Britain and Europe, either executed or intercepted, originated along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border and that it remains important to be taking military action while not wishing to divide Muslims in Britain.

Meanwhile, two senior politicians visited Lincolnshire yesterday.

Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Royall was at the Birchwood Children's Centre while Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth visited RAF Waddington.