Phil Taylor

Ealing Times is reporting that they just did a Freedom of Information request on tram costs to-date and got a number of £24.5 million out of TfL.
Back in May Councillor Will Brooks got the number “approximately £23 million” out of them. See previous posting. So they have added £1.5 milliion doing [...]

Today I took down a flyposter at the junction on South Ealing Road and Little Ealing Lane. A promoter of a club night at the Townhouse pub in Ealing thinks it is OK to make a mess of our neighbourhood in order to promote his or her business. No you can’t. Calling [...]

The Telegraph today reports that the state is emplying 3,200 press officers.
This includes 69 in the Metropolitan Police (not-force-but) Service and 25 in Transport for London.

Bank holiday Monday is a strange day to see new policy initiatives floated. Today the Telegraph was reporting on a proposal to charge people for the rubbish they throw away, ostensibly to improve our recycling rates. They are reporting on an IPPR paper which was made available on a Sunday.
This really [...]

Tonight Darra Singh, our council’s chief executive, was interviewed on Radio 4’s PM programme. He has been appointed as chairman of the government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion. He was harried mightily by Eddie Mair to say something controversial. Although people like Ruth Kelly (not to mention Trevor Phillips, Michael Nazir-Ali [...]

I went out with ECT this morning to understand their grading process better. See previous post.
I spent an hour with Jon Sharkey (senior ECT management), Steve Hodges (manages Ealing’s street cleaning) and Robby Kettle (local supervisor). We covered 16 streets.

Street
Grade

Bramley Road
B

Airedale Road
B

Creighton Road
A/B

Temple Road
A/B

Weymouth Avenue
A/B

Hereford Road
A/B

York Road
A

Julien Road
A/B

Niagara Avenue
A/B

Blondin [...]

Over the weekend the September copy of Livingstone’s £3 million a year Londoner arrived on my doorstep.
Livingstone is at his lying worst with a front page that declares “London’s buses now free for under-18s”. This is true so long as you are still in education. Because this is not a real [...]

Mark Nicholson, the Conservative candidate for Ealing Southall at the last election, has been engaging in some extra-curricular activity. As secretary of the Bow Group, a right of centre think tank, he has been looking at the education field and has published a
paper entitled “A for Effort, D for Results” yesterday.
He points [...]

Ealing Times covered the TfL ad waste story today. Follow link. They chose to link it to rising bus fares. Quite right.