Month: Aug 2008

Categories
Mayor Johnson

Lords of Transport

For the last couple of years I have tracked the number of people employed by Transport for London (TfL) who earn £50K or more. In an idle moment yesterday I came across TfL’s draft Annual Report and Accounts, more on this later. You need to scroll down to page 35 of the report to see the table of employees’ remuneration.

This year has seen the total who earn more than £50K leap from 1,411 to 1,954, a jump 543 people or 38%. To be fair some part of this jump must be down to TfL’s takeover of Metronet. It is still pretty eye-watering that TfL employ the best part of 2,000 who earn over £50K.

The upper echelon of £100K plus earners has increased at a good rate too but not at the rate of the £50K plus group. Maybe Metronet didn’t have that many high flyers. Either that or TfL binned them. Last year’s number of 112 has jumped 10% to 123. With 123 bloody geniuses working for them you might think they could stop the bus strikes.

If you go back to 2002 TfL (Corporation) employed 59 people who earned over £50K. Today the comparable number is 611, or 10 times bigger. Has this recent explosion of high earners delivered the kind of service we all want?

Categories
Communications disease

Government’s spin bill rises to nearly £400m

Today the Telegraph has covered a story I did a month ago. See here.

They say:

Official figures showed that central government spent a total of £391 million on advertising, marketing, PR and other presentational work in 2007-08.

The total is up by £53 million on the previous year, when it was £338 million – a rise of almost 16 per cent.

They missed the angle that this surge in spending was to pay for Brown’s election that never was.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Old news from SEC

It seems that Ealing Times are falling for Save Ealing Centre’s trick of recycling old news.

They have two items posted today that refer to a report from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). The first piece quotes extensively from CABE’s report dated 4th July.

The CABE report is not terribly negative and one of the main differences in opinion is that CABE are in the anti-car camp whereas Ealing Council is keen to have some car parking in the town centre to ensure the continued success of the town centre. A lot of the arguments about car movements around the site and car use in general ignore the fact that the curent site IS A CAR PARK.

In the second piece the old CABE report is referred to again and SEC spokesperson Anthony Lewis says:

We believe the time has come for Ealing Council to reconsider its proposals to redevelop Dickens Yard in isolation, and instead to hold back on the Dickens Yard development until it has worked up and set in place an integrated master plan for the whole of the centre of Ealing.

This is SEC’s long grass strategy, see previous posting.

SEC are waging a media campaign, but that is what it is. That is all it is.

Apparently SEC is in the process of putting together its own plans for Ealing’s future. That is very nice. I guess if they had £500 million – £1 billion in the bank they could make them happen. Back in the real world the council is trying to do the doable.

Categories
Mayor Johnson Policing

Two teens dead in a week

The last week has seen another two teenagers die in London. It seems we have almost equalled last year’s tally with only two thirds of the year gone.

Ahmed Benyermak died on Wednesday last week when he fell from a 13 storey building in Hackney whilst being chased by an armed gang. The Evening Standard counts him as the “24th teenager to die violently in London this year”.

On Sunday morning it was Charles Junior Hendricks who was stabbed in Walthamstow. Unlike the BBC the Evening Standard are counting Hendricks as number 25 because they are including Ahmed Benyermak in their tally whereas the BBC talks about the “24th teenager to be killed in a stabbing or a shooting in London this year”.

The first 20 kids are listed by the BBC here.

21: Frederick Moody Boateng
22: Ryan Bravo
23: Nilanthan Murddi
24: Ahmed Benyermak
25: Charles Junior Hendricks

Categories
Northfield Ward Forum

Northfield leads with ward forums

The council announced today that Northfield is keeping ahead of the pack by holding the first official ward forum in the borough on 4th September.

Any and all Northfield residents are invited to the Northfield Ward Forum to be held on Thursday 4 September at 7:30 pm at the Log Cabin, 259 Northfield Avenue, W5 4UA. Entrance behind Northfield Library.

Whilst Northfield councillors have organised three informal ward forums over the past year the council has now formalised this for every ward. The new ward forums replace the old area committees. The purpose is to give residents more opportunities to participate in local democracy, interact with the council, influence services and help to improve their local areas.

Led by elected councillors, the new ward forums feature joint problem solving on local concerns, including round table discussions on issues such as community safety, traffic and transport schemes, parks and street improvements. Each ward will have the chance to influence an annual budget of £40,000 for local capital improvements for their neighbourhood.

We hope you can all come to this new-look Northfield Ward Forum.

Please note: The flyer that the council sent erroneously ave a staert time of 7pm. The start time is 7.30pm.

Categories
Parking Services

Take your pick

On the front page of today’s Telegraph there was this piece titled (in my edition) “Drivers face big rise in the cost of parking”.

According to the Telegraph:

Local Government minister John Healey said that local councils should charge more for basic services such as off-street parking, despite people in many parts of the country experiencing inflation-busting council tax rises.

In a speech to the Local Government Association, he said: “Only one in five councils are using charging to the full potential. Not just to cover costs but to shape their area.”

In a clear sign that he believes motorists should be targeted, Mr Healey said that charging more would result in “reducing congestion, improving levels of health and exercise, encouraging the use of local shops”.

It seems that Labour intends to underfund local government and is signalling that councils can use parking charges to cover the gap. Healey is using phoney greenery to cover his tracks.

This time last week we made this announcement about parking charges in Ealing:

  • Pay and display parking charges that have been frozen for the past two years, will be frozen for a further two years.
  • Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) permit vouchers (priced at £25 and £45) will be frozen for a further two years. The cost of CPZ permits has not been increased for the past two years.
  • Residents in CPZ areas will also receive a book of free visitor parking vouchers to use from April 2009.
  • New facilities to renew parking permits online and an expanded over the phone parking payment service will also be introduced in early 2009.
  • The abolition of parking charges in council car parks after 6pm and on public holidays will remain. This was introduced two years ago and has been such a success that it will remain.
  • Following a review of box junctions in Southall, the box junction at South Road/Hamilton Road will be removed.
  • The opening hours of the Herbert Road Car Park are to be extended by 2 hours from 10pm to 12 midnight. This is being introduced following representations from Southall traders.

It seems that the government wants to make your life harder. Ealing council doesn’t.

Categories
Olympics

International Olympic Committee changes UK borders

I have spent another morning transfixed by the Olympics and the cyclists in particular.

I watched “Irishman” Paddy Barnes win his quarter-final of the men’s light flyweight boxing in good style, in the process guaranteeing himself a bronze medal, but I could not understand why a Belfast man was fighting for Ireland. All was explained by this posting on the Cranmer blog. I don’t agree with some of his points (Scottish cyclist Chris Hoy’s three golds make a mockery of his penultimate paragraph) but I hadn’t realised that our Sinn Féin appeasing Labour government has conspired with the IOC to allow Ireland to annex Northern Ireland, at least on the sports field.

Who voted for that?

Categories
Olympics

Olympic blog gag

As a blogger myself and someone who is interested in institutional accountability and transparency I have spent sometime this morning looking at the website of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). I can’t find any financial information or minutes of executive board meetings or of their “Sessions” which are basically the AGMs of the IOC. If anyone knows where you can find this stuff please point it out to me and save me from having to write to request this information from the IOC.

In my search I did though find the IOC’s blogging guidelines for Beijing here. They are pretty constraining. You can only write about yourself or use a photo of yourself and if you transgress by talking about any other participant they threaten to take your Olympic identity and accreditation card away. So we won’t hear any stories of IOC bigwigs throwing hissy fits or “Count” Jacques Rogge, IOC President, picking his nose.

Apparently blogs need to be “be dignified and in good taste” and “at all times conform to the Olympic spirit and the fundamental principles of Olympism”. Sounds like censorship to me.

The IOC keeps an iron grip on the way the Olympics and they themselves are portrayed. For instance Rule 49, Bye-law 2 of the Olympic Charter says:

Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity. Under no circumstances, throughout the duration of the Olympic Games, may any athlete, coach, official, press attaché or any other accredited participant act as a journalist or in any other media capacity.

The accreditation process and long memories allow them to control what accredited journalists say and their rules don’t allow anyone to compete with accredited journalists. This kind of authoritarian approach might be in keeping with 20th century totalitarian states but not with the modern world. Will London be different?

Categories
Mayor Johnson Policing

Teen toll not forgotten

My Olympic pleasure was somewhat muted over the weekend by the news that the 23rd London teen had been slain in the early hours of Saturday morning.

17 year old Nilanthan Murddi was stabbed to death in Croydon. More from the BBC here. The Evening Standard is carrying this story this morning.

I am happy that our new Mayor has put this issue centre stage and is not trying to ignore it like his predecessor who wanted the issue to go away because it jarred with his crime is down mood music.

The first 20 kids are listed by the BBC here.

21: Frederick Moody Boateng
22: Ryan Bravo
23: Nilanthan Murddi

Categories
Uncategorized

Olympic weekend

The blog has languished a bit for the last few days – particularly over the weekend. The Olympics have dominated my weekend, especially my own sport of rowing. Rowing delivered two golds, two silvers and two bronzes over the weekend.

Yet again the women failed to come through with rowing gold but the men’s coxless four and lightweight double came home. I was particularly pleased for Mark Hunter in the lightweight double. Mark Hunter is a relative veteran at 30, I remember seeing him win the junior quads event in 1995 at Henley. Since then he has worked solidly to get where he is now, always supported by his Dad who is as familiar a face on the rowing scene as his son.

Another largely untold story of the rowing team is Jurgen Grobler. He is the ex-East German coach of GB men’s heavyweight rowing who oversaw Redgrave and Pinsent and the subsequent coxless fours. Grobler has coached a gold medal winning crew at every Olympics since Munich in 1972. That’s 10 Olympics in a row.

Today the Telegraph points out that John Major is the father of the 17 medals picked up by Britain over the weekend. He started the Lottery and it is the Lottery funded machines of British Rowing, Sailing and Cycling that have delivered the goods. I am proud of my sport but I am open-mouthed in admiration of Britain’s cycling machine.

In Atlanta in 1996, Britain only managed to win one gold medal with rowers Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent in the pair. Since then the influence of the Lottery has been clear.