Month: Sep 2006

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Standard takes quotes

The Standard used some of my stuff today, with my permission. In an article about the congestion charge they said:

“Phil Taylor, a Tory councillor in Ealing who has been investigating TfL’s use of public money, said the congestion charge was a “terribly inefficient way of turning our money into things we actually want”.

He said: “TfL’s highly-paid managers cannot run a tax system let alone a transport system. The extra £3 a day motorists are paying is not funding public transport improvements. Instead they have just vanished in costs”.

Click below for full article.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

TfL annual report reveals horrors

TfL Report cover 2006.gifI have just found TfL’s figures for this year. There was no accompanying press release so I guess TfL is trying to bury the bad news. The pants-on-fire Mayor can announce three new TfL directors today but does not see fit to comment on the organisation’s figures.

The first thing that jumps out is Bob Kiley’s £1.7 million severance package. Not bad for 10 months work.

Apparently the Chief Financial Officer of TfL, Stephen Critchley, signed these figures off on 28th June but it takes almost 3 months for them to appear, without fanfare, on a public website.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Lords of Transport are marching

TfL Report cover 2006.gifThe most startling part of the TfL Annual Report is the explosion of highly paid people being given a good living. In 2002 the “corporation” had 59 people earning over £50K. That number has shot up to 344 this last year. In the category of people paid over £100K the number has gone from 9 to 40.

The 344 are not the whole picture. Across the whole TfL “group” the number paid over £50K is a staggering 821. The group employs 76 people who earn over £100K. I always thought that straightforward transport and construction types were relatively modestly paid people. Maybe they have been bigging themselves up so much with their £78 million of ad spending, in spite of having no competitors, that they think they are worth more than they really are.

This crew keep ramping fares but still need £2 BILLION of subsidies to keep all of their balls in the air.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

CC margins fall

TfL Report cover 2006.gifTfL’s highly paid managers cannot run a tax system let alone a transport system. Robber Livingstone put up the Congestion Charge to £8 in February but the idiots have wasted the cash on running costs. Their margins have gone down from 44.2% to 41.8% in spite of the extra income. The extra £3 a day motorists are paying is not funding public transport improvements as Livingstone’s disingenuous ads are suggesting. No, instead it has just vanished in costs. Income up 17%, costs up 19%, surplus up a mere 10%.

This is a terribly inefficient way of turning our money into things that we actually want.

Categories
Communications disease

Government ad spending still going mad

I managed to miss the publication of the Central Office of Information’s annual report on 31st July. This is one of those bits of government information which they like to let out quietly as the figures are so embarrassing. With other things to think about in the summer I missed the publication. Anyway I have caught up with them now.

The COI basically is a clearing house for government advertising and other “marketing” activities. Their “turnover” is what government departments spend on ads and other marketing activities. There are benefits to this central purchasing both in saving on bulk purchasing and in making it more obvious for us to spot.

The figures for the last 14 years are shown below in the bar chart. It shows quite starkly how this spending has TREBLED under New Labour.

COI Spending1.bmp

Note these figures are all comparable and account for the hokey-cokey, in-out movement of the media monitoring activities. These went to the Cabinet Office in 2002 and came back in 2005.

Whatever you think of the Major government it is quite clear that it did not misbehave with government ad spending around the 1997 election. Under New Labour ad spending almost trebled to £295 million in time for the 2001 election and has stayed at these dizzy heights ever since. Another peak for the 2005 elections is also apparent.

Categories
Uncategorized

Everything you wanted to know about political blogging

Blogging book cover.jpgIan Dale has posted his guide to political blogging on his site this morning. It lists four hundred political blogs. If you were short of political comment you won’t be anymore.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield Policing

Northfield SNT Focus Meeting

SNT banner from Met site.jpgLast night we had the 2nd Safer Neighbourhood Team focus meeting. Sgt Elam was there along with a new PCSO, David Williams. Unfortunately he replaces the previous PCSO, bringing the team strength up to one sergeant, one constable and one PCSO, so we are still no nearer to having the team of four we were promised by the Mayor by the end of April (see his press release).

The three Northfield councillors attended, along with four representatives of residents’ associations, David Stokes who leads the council’s envirocrime team for the area, and Fiorella Williams who is one of the council’s park rangers. Also Mark Meluish, the vicar from St Paul’s Church was there.

We are lucky in Northfield that we have the lowest crime rate in the borough. Lowest will never be low enough though!

Graffiti

Four young offenders have been caught with the help of the park rangers. Two of these have been cautioned, one was too young to get a caution even, and all three of these are in the hands of the youth offending team and will be making reparations. One stupid youngster has pleaded not guilty in spite of being caught red handed. The police are preparing an ASBO for this young idiot. One of the youngsters’ rooms had 35 cans of spray paint in it. They have identified 150 tags.

The police are looking at a dispersal order for Boston Manor which will mean that young people cannot congregate after 9pm.

The combination of the police activity and the new graffiti removal contract seem to be working together to relieve this problem.

Motor Vehicle Crime

There has been a focus on education with large sign boards related to satnavs and triangular yellow lamppost signs on areas where people park, especially commuters. Two offenders have also been jailed. Motor vehicle crimes are down from 61 in the second quarter to 35 in the third quarter.

Drugs

There are problems around North and South Road and the path through the cemetery known as Roberts Alley. This feeds into robbery, burglary and motor vehicle crime.

Dangerous Driving

A number of people mentioned people speeding stupidly. Sgt Elam reckoned that this could be sorted out with Section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002. All you need to do is phone him with the number plates. He can then issue a warning notice. The next time they come to police attention the police can confiscate the vehicle they are driving. This should be a significant deterrent to these people.

Priorities

We had a conversation about resetting priorities in the light of progress with graffiti. The number one priority should be drug dealing, followed by motor vehicle crime followed by more general criminal damage including graffiti.

We asked the police to support the efforts of the council and the envirocrime team to tackle flytippers of all kinds.

The next meeting is provisionally scheduled for 7.30pm at Northfield Community Centre on 5th December.

Call Sgt Elam on 07879 888989 if you have any local crime issues or if you would like to attend the next focus meeting.

Categories
Communications disease Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor’s Question Time

Mayors Question Time.jpgThe contrast between the Nelson Room and the City Hall chamber could not be greater. Sitting on the sumptuous suede effect gallery seats, surrounded by state of the art audio visual equipment my only complaint was that I was too cold. The Mayor is getting very windy on the subject of carbon but perhaps he could turn down the aircon a couple of notches.

The main topic for the first hour or so were the TfL price increases. Nobody had spotted Livingstone’s RPI wheeze. There was much talk of mitigating the effect of these above inflation rises on poorer Londoners but the fact is that if you don’t get onto Oyster TfL are going to plunder you. In many ways the Mayor comes across as an extremely bright and capable man. He then blows it by describing how his weird oil deal with Venezuela is going to help poor Londoners.

Tory spokesman for transport, Roger Evans, asked a question following up on the £78 million number that I got out of TfL:

“Why is the budget for TfL’s ‘Advertising, marketing and communications’ £78 million? Why do you think it is necessary for a public body that provides a monopoly service to spend such an amount on advertising?”

The Mayor tried to pretend that this was a small sum compared to overall TfL spending and to justify it in terms it being spent on things like timetables. In his breakdown of this spending he still had to admit that £40 million goes on advertising.

The Mayor admitted that this figure was a £14 million overspend on this budget and that he would expect to see spending in the same ballpark next year. The self-promotion goes on.

One of TfL’s expensive ads warns young people that if they misbehave on public transport they will lose their travelcard. The Mayor admitted today that only 4 cards had been withdrawn in a year. I can’t see this measure stopping many hoodies from scratching up bus windows.

I was interested to see this component of London democracy in action but it was pretty poor sport. Although Livingstone was suffering from a cough he seemed happy enough batting away the questions of the assembly member. Incidentally our member, Richard Barnes was not present.

Although not quite the marathon that the EAC was it still went on for 2 hours 37 minutes – not for the faint hearted.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Ealing Area Committee

Townhall.jpgThe councillors and residents’ association representatives who attended last night’s Ealing Area Committee had to endure a three hour meeting last night. Whilst these sessions are very useful – we discussed everything from street lights, through bus lanes to cycle schemes, we just had too much ground to cover. There were 11 papers to discuss after we had spent the best part of an hour covering three issues raised by members of the public. The Town Hall’s Nelson Room added to the burden on the participants as sounds from the street come straight through the windows.

The star of the show was definitely a bus driver called Alvarez who wanted to raise the lack of enforcement of parking restrictions which get in the way of his doing his job. There was some feeling that the council’s parking function is quick to ticket somebody overstaying in a parking bay but people who clutter main roads at busy times, such as minicab drivers, are largely unmolested. A number of times during the evening Mr Alvarez was consulted on bus related issues and the Committee welcomed having an expert in attendance for once. Keith Townsend, the relevant executive director, went away with some things to think about.

The issue that caused the most resonance was our discussion of the EDF street lighting PFI. This is grinding slowly along. The previous Labour council decided to try to save money by limiting the number of “heritage” lampposts that would be used. Many Edwardian streets are going to be disfigured by tubular “hockey stick” lampposts that will be out of character. One lady present reported that our lamposts were being sold by EDF to Camden for refurbishment and re-use. I understand that the previous administration decided to reduce the overall cost of the PFI by £2 million over its lifetime by this decision. This is definitely something that the Conservative group need to re-assess now it is in power.

Julian Edmonds of the Central Ealing Resident’s Association got my wind bag of the evening award. He is never shy of using 10 words where one will suffice.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Big improvement in graffiti removal service

Ealing logo.bmpFlipping through the cabinet papers for the next meeting on 19th September I chanced upon a report from Joe Tavernier, Director of Street Environment, on the council’s new graffiti removal service. The new service provider, MPM, managed to clear 76% of the jobs assigned to it in August within 2 working days. This is against a target of 90% to be removed within 2 working days of notification. Although this does not sound like the 24 hour service the council has promised it is an improvement over the previous service which only managed to remove 57% in May. There is still a long way to go though.

One of the biggest impediments is that formally the council needs to get a disclaimer from private poperty owners, essentially saying the council is not liable for any damage caused. The officers are recommending a 4 month trial suspension of these disclaimers. It may mean the council gets chased by the odd private landowner for damages, eg where the council has painted over something it should not have. The upside is that we do not have to wait around for disclaimers and therefore we can get the service improved.