Phil Taylor

See you next week.

Ealing North MP Stephen Pound seems to be making a habit of using references to homosexuality to insult people. I ignored the recent Daily Mail piece because I thought it was a bit unnecessary to comment any further but yesterday’s piece in the Gazette starts to look like a bit of a pattern. [...]

After last night’s annual council, or mayor making (sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings I know), the new Labour council leader has been swift to launch his new team. It is interesting to see him taking a more collegiate approach compared to his last two predecessors, Conservative Jason Stacey and Labour’s [...]

I apologise for the rather poor photograph of a photocopy above, click to enlarge. Hilariously Labour leadership candidate David Miliband wrote to the leader of Ealing Council last week to congratulate him on Labour taking control of the council. Only he wrote to the old leader, Conservative Jason Stacey, not the new leader, [...]

I will be reading the full coalition agreement with interest over the next few days.
One thing that already leaps out at me is that the coalition has adopted some key Tory policies on transparent government, namely:

We will require full, online disclosure of all central government spending and contracts over £25,000.
We will create a [...]

A few hints about the new Labour Ealing cabinet were swirling around at last night’s council meeting. We know the leader will be Julian Bell and the chief whip Brian Reeves.
The finance portfolio will be taken by the old opposition Finance and Performance spokeswoman Yvonne Johnson. At the count Shittal Manro, [...]

Tonight we had the first council meeting since the election. This was an extraordinary meeting called by the new Labour administration to discuss one motion:
This Council resolves that with immediate effect its support for privatising the Management Contract of Ealing Homes is removed. The Council mandates officers to immediately draw up proposals to [...]

In my speech tonight I highlighted the fact that although Labour had made a total of 12 promises about council housing the glaring omission was any commitment to keep council rent rises under control. If you look at their manifesto you will see this list:

Total opposition to Conservative plans to transfer council homes to [...]

It is good to see the details here. It starts off reassuringly with the deficit.
The parties agree that deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain. We have therefore agreed that there will need to be:
- a significantly accelerated reduction in the structural deficit over [...]

I am doing the politics slot on Petrie Hosken’s show on LBC 97.3 FM tonight from 8pm to 9pm. I have done it a couple of times before but it will be fun to do it at such an interesting time (puts me in mind of a certain Chinese curse).
I will be [...]