Month: Aug 2007

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

New library looks great

northfields-library.JPG

I popped into the new Northfields library yesterday. I am afraid my purpose was not to pursue learning but to get hold of some pink sacks. It gave me the chance to check out the new library. It is fabulous.

It seems to be very well designed and the staff I talked to were pleased with it too. It was also busy which must be a good sign. I know there have been some complaints about book storage being sacrificed for modern gizmos like coffee machines and internet access but I have to congratulate the Library Service. They seem to have got the judgement right here.

I was pleased to see that there is now a toilet available for use by the public. The staff member I talked to seemed ambivalent about people using it but it is wonderful to have a public toilet in the area. Hurrah! Sometimes staff let themselves down with their “everything would work fine if it wasn’t for customers” attitude.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Latest proxy attack on Johnson

Today the Evening Standard covered the Mayor’s latest proxy attacks in a most naive way. Their “Deputy Political Editor” Paul Waugh wrote:

In a further blow to the Henley MP, the black newspaper New Nation today launched a fierce attack on his remarks about race and Africa.

Under the headline “Is This Man Fit to Run London?”, the paper said his selection would be an “insult” to ethnic minorities. It criticised a 2002 Spectator article in which he called for the return of colonial rule to Africa, joked about tribal leaders sporting “water melon smiles” and described black children as “piccaninnies”.

Fellow writer Rod Liddle also claimed that, while on a trip to Uganda, Mr Johnson used the word again in the company of Swedish Unicef workers.

Mr Johnson’s record on race issues was highlighted last week when Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen, said he was “not an appropriate person” to run London. Mr Johnson had lambasted the Lawrence Inquiry claiming it was a “witch-hunt” against the police.

A spokeswoman for Mr Johnson today said that he had been “inundated” with support from London’s ethnic minorities.

One ally added: “This is the lowest attack you can make on a Tory – just call them racist.”

I assume he is the deputy because he can’t spot that the New Nation piece is simply the latest in a string of proxy attacks by the London Mayor which all use the same quotes (see previous posting).

The reason that the New Nation is coming out for the Mayor is that they are bought and paid for, just like the other Livingstone proxies.

Follow this link to find out how when the Mayor spent £793K to give away 100,000 free Oyster cards he spent £77K with ineffective ethnic press (including New Nation) – a bung.

Follow this link to find out how in 2003 the GLA spent £261K on recruitment advertising. The bulk went to the Guardian and the rest to the “ethnic” press. No advertising in mainstream media outside the Guardian – corrupt in itself. The total ethnic press spend led to one appointment at a total cost of £79K. The Guardian ads led to 59 appointments at a cost of £182K. So ethnic press costs £79K per job. Guardian costs £3K per job.

The New Nation is part of Ethnic Media Group organisation which was given £38K but generated only 1 shortlisted candidate and no appointments.

Like I say the New Nation is bought and paid for.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor to spend £130K on promoting himself at party conferences

Mayor’s Question Time and the answers it generates is a good source of information on the workings of the Mayor and his bodies.

In time for the last meeting on 18th July Tory AM Bob Neil asked this question:

Regarding the Mayor’s expenditure on upcoming conferences outlined in MA 3086, will the Mayor provide a breakdown of how much he has budgeted for each separate conference?

The Mayor’s answer is:

The budget for the exhibition stand and advertising at each conference breaks down as follows and reflects the different prices for exhibition sites and advertising space:

TUC 20,800
Lib Dem 25,000
Labour 30,200
Conservative 26,500

Income from TfL and the LDA for these activities is in total £65,000.

In addition, the budget for the Mayor’s reception at the TUC Conference is £12,000 and for the Mayor’s reception at the Labour Conference is £16,000.

The Mayor seems to be unembarassed by the total bill of £130,500 or the fact that he is spending three times as much on the Labour and TUC conferences as he is on either the Lib Dem or Tory conferences.

On the one hand we might be grateful that the Mayor has been able to offload half the bill on TfL and the LDA. On the other that means fares are higher or services are worse on TfL and there are less jobs being created by LDA. Even the Mayor hasn’t the brass neck to ask the Fire Brigade and Police to contribute. Or, more likely, he asked and they had the gumption to say bog off.

Categories
Mayor Johnson

Livingstone’s proxies out to get Johnson

Today five of the Mayor’s little helpers had another go at Boris Johnson in a letter to the Guardian. They all seem to represent someone but in reality they are a bunch of activists who are in the pay of the Mayor.

Only days after the Mayor said he was trawling through Johnson’s writings BLINK (which as we will see later is actually funded by the Mayor), Doreen Lawrence and two Labour MPs, Diane Abbot and Dawn Butler, were all using the same material to rubbish Johnson.

They are using the same old trick that left-wingers always use on anyone with an opinion. Take what they say, chop it into little pieces and then quote them out of context. No room for complexity. No room for humour. No room for sailing close to the wind. No room for mistakes even. Every statement must be exhaustively tested to ensure that it could not possibly be misconstrued or cause offence to anyone. This one little article in the Telegraph five years ago is the genesis of much of this ire. The last person I heard using the word piccaninny was Darkus Howe so I am not sure it is that offensive unless we are back in the realm of only certain people can say certain things.

Karen Chouhan.jpgBack to the five signatories of the Guardian letter this morning – who are they? The first three (Chouhan – left, Walters and Woolley) are all officers of the Black Londoners Forum. This organisation has received £100Ks from the Mayor and all three are bought and paid for. Chouhan calls herself Chief Executive of The 1990 Trust which received £100K of GLA funding in September 2005. BLINK is an online publication of The 1990 Trust.

Simon Woolley
Woolley (right) also runs Operation Black Vote which again receives large amounts of GLA and central government funding. Woolley and Chouhan have both been speakers at GLA conferences for which I think we can assume they received fees. Chouhan is also an executive member of the National Association Against Racism, another body that receives GLA funding.

Massoud ShadjarehThe two Muslim activists are both what most people would call extremists. Massoud Shadjareh (left) speaks at Hizb-ut-Tahrir marches and is the so-called chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission which seems quite capable of slagging off the US, UK and Israel but has nothing to say of the excessive use of capital punishment in Iran. He can be heard here leading the crowd at the Al-Quds march on 1st December 2002 in chanting “Down, down Israel”. If you think 5 years ago is water under the bridge then what do you think of him speaking at the Hizb-ut-Tahrir US Embassy protest in January this year?

Mohammad Sawalha, President of British Muslim Initiative, is a Palestinian living in London and is described by Melanie Philips as a “fugitive Hamas commander”. This does not stop Livingstone embracing him as part of his steering group for the Coalition to Defend Religious and Cultural Expression.

Categories
Parking Services

Parking Services councillors to be mystery shoppers

Parking Services Specialist Scrutiny PanelToday the council has issued a press release giving details of some of the work that will be done in advance of the next meeting of the Parking Services Specialist Scrutiny Panel.

In order to get some insight as to how Parking Services treats its “customers” councillors will be getting their cars towed, riding along with parking attendants and applying for visitors vouchers, to name a few.

It will be interesting to see to what extent local media will pick this story up – they are quick to criticise in this area, often rightly. Hopefully they will be equally interested in the council trying to scrutinise its own service.

The first meeting of this panel was held on 5th July. At this meeting we did not do much more than agree our terms of reference and work programme. We also had an introductory presentation from the service head, Philip Burns. The only member of the public to attend was Eric Leach from West Ealing Neighbours (you can read his report of the meeting here).

The second meeting will focus on customers’ experience of Parking Services. The mystery shopper work will make sure that the councillors leading the workshops have hands on experience. The sessions will also involve council officers and give members of the public the chance to share their experiences. If you are interested in attending then please get in touch with Chris Cheyne at cheynec@ealing.gov.uk or on (020) 8825 6568. A maximum of 100 people will be admitted to the meeting. The meeting will take place a 7pm in the Queen’s Hall on 11th September.

For the third meeting on 15th November we will focus exclusively on the finances of Parking Services and try to address the often raised issue that Parking Services is just there to squeeze money out of drivers. No doubt the agenda for the subsequent meetings will be driven by whatever feedback we get from the public at the earlier meetings.

Anyway if you are interested in this topic here are the dates:

  • Tuesday 11th September 2007
  • Thursday 15th November 2007
  • Thursday 10th January 2008
  • Wednesday 5th March 2008

All the meetings take place at 7pm at the Town Hall.

Please note that at these meetings we will be raising and discussing general problems and principles, not the specifics of any particular penalty charge notice.

Categories
Communications disease

Government advertising heads back to its election peak

In the summer lull I have been catching up on some ongoing projects. One of those is tracking the overall level of government ad spending by watching the Central Office of Information. They published their annual report on 24th July and reported that they spent £338 million on behalf of the government on ads last year. This is a rise of 5% over the previous year.

As you can see from the graph below Labour have managed to produce a peak of ad spending to coincide with elections in 2001 and 2005. Note that John Major’s government did not electioneer on the public purse in 1997. Labour have also managed to habituate a level of government ad spending that is three times that of the Major years.

No doubt if Gordon Brown goes to the country in the spring next year the civil service will magically have predicted this and we will see government advertising peak at over £350 million next year. We’ll see.

COI Spending to 2007

The so-called Chief Executive of this organisation is called Alan Bishop. He is a career advertising man who became a civil servant in 2002. He pays himself £165K a year, £10K up on the previous year. Bishop has really fallen on his feet. He no longer has to take any risks or get out there and sell anything but he still manages to rake in a real entrepreneur’s salary.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

More empty consultation

More electioneering from me. More expense for youIt is just over a year since the Mayor mooted the idea of charging the most polluting vehicles £25 to enter the Congestion Charging Zone.

Since then the idea has been refined to include the notion that such vehicles inside the zone should lose the residents’ concession.

One year on and the Mayor is talking about consultation. This is just another bout of electioneering from the Mayor. He thinks that the green shtick has resonance – he is right, even a pretty libertarian conservative like me thinks that 4WDs are anti-social.

Today he says he wants to consult. He doesn’t really. According to a poll conducted by IPSOS/MORI for the Mayor in July 2006, 64 per cent of Londoners think the most polluting cars should pay a higher congestion charge. So the Mayor knows this will be popular and he has already spent out on the poll. He doesn’t mind though spending another few hundred thousand of our cash to put a leaflet through our doors telling us how green he is. Whatever the result, which is bound to be positive, he will proceed as planned. There are few central London 4WD drivers, apparently only 8% of cars in the zone would be affected, so we are talking about a minority of a minority. This is a fairly safe piece of rich people bashing for the Mayor.

The Mayor’s use of tendentious language such as “gas guzzlers” and “Chelsea tractors” demonstrates, as ever, that he is not the sober public servant but a populist politician who happily spends our money spinning to stay in power.

I will find out how much he is spending. I will report back after the usual 20 days have elapsed.

Categories
Communications disease Ex-Mayor Livingstone

“Free” Oyster cards cost us £11 each

OystercardDo you remember that back in April the Mayor promised to give away 100,000 free Oyster cards to the first 100,000 people to apply, waiving the usual £3 fee that most of the rest of us have already paid?

See his press release. By 1st May the Mayor had reported rapid progress with this campaign, having given 57,000 cards away. See his second press release.

You could charitably argue the Mayor was trying to help the poorest in society deal with the swingeing increases in cash fares that came into force at the start of the year (£2 for buses and £4 for tubes). You might think that this operation had cost £300,000 in 100,000 lost £3 deposits for the cards. You would be wrong.

This exercise was in fact one designed to promote the Mayor in the run up to the elections next year. It was therefore supported by a torrent of advertising.

In doing some research today I came across the cost of the ad campaign to support this exercise – £792,966 (see answer to question raised by LibDem AM Sally Hamwee).

So these “free” Oyster cards cost us £10.93 each not £3! Just so you know.

By the way note that the Mayor can’t help hiding £5K of funding for left wing newspapers The Tribune and the Morning Star in this budget. The idea that these are effective tools for communicating to Londoners is laughable. Still, if you are spending £793K bigging yourself up what is £5K?

Categories
Communications disease Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor’s Tour de France ad spending cost £3 million

What gear are you on mate?Today I finally received a reply from TfL on how much they spent on advertising for the Tour de France. The answer is £3 million. I wrote to TfL, who were driving this for the Mayor, on 21st June to ask how much the total comms campaign was costing but they have sullenly refused to answer up until now in spite of making the following pledge:

We will do our best to send you a full written response within 15 working days. If we cannot give you a full answer in this time, we will send you an acknowledgement and then a full written response will follow.

Now it is all old hat and there is not much to lose in letting us know.

The Sunday Times reported that:

London has paid £1.5m to stage the opening stage of the Tour de France and spent another £4m on planning, transport and security.

So the total for the Tour de France is at least £8.5 million or more than £2 a head for all the 4 million people who reportedly came out to watch. This does not include Kent County Council’s spending which was significant.

I have written to the Mayor to ask him to outline the entire budget. I am sure I will get an answer after 20 working days as usual. It doesn’t matter how easy it is to answer a question the Mayor cynically holds it until 20 days elapsed to stifle public scrutiny of his behaviour.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone Tram

Ding dong the Tram is dead II

My Tram is dead, it cost £35 million for nothing, but this way I might get some votes in MayLast night Ealing council leader Jason Stacey and the Mayor made a joint announcement about the West London Tram (see announcements here and here). It is dead – as we have known for two weeks (see previous posting).

It is clear from the careful words used by Ealing that there is no desire to rub the Mayor’s nose in it but it is certainly a climbdown on his part. Although the decision is notionally dependent on the go-ahead for Crossrail the Tram is still stone dead.

Gordon Brown has spent 10 years as chancellor not deciding to go ahead with Crossrail in spite of it being a total no-brainer. Now he is Prime Minister he can get the kudos for giving it the go-ahead so it is most likely to go ahead this autumn as part of a pre-election bundle of goodies.

Even if Crossrail does not get the go-ahead as expected it will not be killed off, no-one wants to say to Londoners that they have to struggle on with poor public transport infrastructure. Now that the Mayor has backed down it will be impossible to resurrect the Tram whilst Crossrail is still hanging around in the wings.

The story made the front page of the Mayor’s website but the spin his team put on it is pretty funny:

Mayor of London and the leader of Ealing Council agree new solution to traffic congestion as deal on Crossrail approaches

Ealing Council was a little more straigtforward:

Tram plans shelved

Jason Stacey deserves the highest praise for the way he made this an election issue in May 2006 and then worked effectively over the last 15 months to box the Mayor in so that his only choice is to give in gracefully. Now he has won this great battle he can afford to be magnanimous.