Phil Taylor

When the country is going to the bad at a rate of £155 billion per annum, or roughly £5K per worker per year, it is a relief to find an area of government spending where you can happily slice out some hundreds of millions and stop bugging people too. Last year all of [...]

I am doing the politics slot on Petrie Hosken’s show on LBC 97.3 FM again tonight from 8pm to 9pm. This will be the fourth time I think. Not sure what we will talk about given that we are on the verge of the silly season. Scools out last week. Parliament [...]

The new council leader, Julian Bell, was interviewed in the 16th-31st July edition of Maya News recently. Maya targets the Indian expat community in the UK. The picture and quote below are taken from the article.

During the election campaign the Labour party went around council estates telling a pack of lies [...]

We had a long meeting at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee tonight – almost three hours long. It was not without its drama though, however fleeting.
The Conservative opposition “called in” a couple of cabinet decisions from the cabinet’s 22nd June meeting. One of them was the decision to go out to [...]

The main order of business last night at the council meeting was discussion of the council’s corporate plan, see here. As Labour have just got into power the document is essentially a rehash of the Labour manifesto, see here, with some topping and tailing by council officers. Or at least that is what [...]

In his speech on the corporate plan the Conservative group leader, Jason Stacey, pulled up the new administration on their performance on street cleaning.
The council’s benchmark for street cleaning is that at least 90% of roads inspected in a ward should be rated A – this is means that effectively you cannot really [...]

One notable manifesto promise has disappeared altogether in the process of turning Labour’s manifesto into the corporate plan. In their manifesto, under the heading Value for Money, Labour said it would:
Reduce the Council’s bloated communications budget and stop money being wasted on party political propaganda
In their first month in power the Labour cabinet attended [...]

I got home this evening and tuned into BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme to catch up with the news. I listened to the piece on Andrew Lansley’s proposed reforms of the NHS with interest. My antennae started to twitch as I listened to Frances Crook who was a non-executive director [...]

Back in May I published a letter from David Milliband to the old Tory leader, Jason Stacey, congratulating him on winning Ealing Council – I wish. Apparently David Milliband still does not know his back side from his elbow.
Local Labour activist and failed local council candidate for Walpole ward, Rupa Huq, breathlessly [...]

Sitting next to Rupa Huq on her sofa yesterday was Anthony Woods, one of the failed Labour council candidates for Northfield ward. Woods turned up to the Northfield ward forum on Monday with 40 other local residents. It was a good meeting although Woods made a fool of himself. Eager to make [...]