Month: Feb 2008

Categories
Ealing and Northfield Ealing envirocrime

Partnership Day in Northfield

If you were wondering what all the coppers and council officials in hi-vis jackets were doing on South Ealing Road yesterday, just outside the Co-op, here is the answer. It was a joint Partnership Day between the police and the council in Northfield. There were two components of the operation – a vehicle check point outside the Co-op on South Ealing Road and a commercial waste exercise on Northfield Avenue.

Partnership Day 20-2-2008

The photo above shows the worst case they came across yesterday. This van was ordered off the road when the police stopped it. You could see the road through the floor pan and the battery was loose in the engine compartment – it would turn into a cannonball in an accident. Just about nothing was right with this vehicle. The police wouldn’t even let them drive it up the ramp of the recovery vehicle.

Continue reading “Partnership Day in Northfield”
Categories
Policing

5th teen murder in Plumstead

Yesterday afternoon saw London’s 5th teen murder in 2008. This time in Invermore Place, Plumstead near Woolwich.

I was hoping that after January’s grim toll of 4 deaths we could get through February without.

According the Standard piece today the 15-year old kid was hunted down and stabbed to death in the street by a gang of five youths. The co-writer of the report is Benedict Moore-Bridger late of Ealing Times.

Covered by the BBC also here.

Until the police can work out how to stop these kids carrying this will continue.

Update: More details from the BBC here.

I have listed the names, ages and cause of death of these five young men below:

1 January: Henry Bolombi, 18, stabbed to death
5 January: Faridon Alizada, 18, stabbed to death
21 January: Boduka Mudianga, 18, stabbed to death
26 January: Fuad Buraleh, 19, beaten to death
19 February: Sunday Essiet, 15, stabbed to death

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor cheating again

Today the Mayor has launched a new electioneering website and a set of online ads – which I saw first on Iain Dale’s blog. The artwork for the new site/ads owes much to the artwork for the Low Emission Zone ads that went with the £1.9 million LEZ consultation and another million or so of ads to announce the start of the scheme.

Here is the Mayor’s artwork:

Here is the LEZ artwork:

Public property - some £2-3 million worth

London’s taxpayers have spent £ millions building up this lovely Teletubbies green and blue branding and getting it established in people’s minds and the Mayor is simply stealing it for his campaign. This is passing off, plain and simple.

We shouldn’t be surprised as his race and police advisor, suspended but still paid from the public purse, is electioneering on the Mayor’s behalf in EMG’s Voice “newspaper” – see Evening Standard piece here.

These guys are just bandits.

Categories
Mayor Johnson

Brian Paddick challenges Boris and the Mayor to do the London Marathon

Brian PaddickBrian Paddick, the LibDem Mayoral candidate, today challenged Boris and the Mayor to join him in running the London Marathon on 13th April. If I was a LibDem activist I would not be too impressed with my candidate using up valuable campaigning time to do a marathon. What’s more his legs will probably be useless for the last two weeks of the campaign. Paddick is showing his inexperience. What’s worse for every picture of him looking butch in his shorts there will be ten of him red-faced and panting and woe betide him if he trips up along the way.

Brian Paddick says:

Running London is an extremely tough and demanding job and the Mayor needs to be mentally and physically fit. I am running the London Marathon this year and I challenge all Mayoral candidates to join me – it will be a real test of their mettle. If people vote for me on 1st May, they know I will be fit for office.

Yeah, whatever.

Having met Boris I don’t reckon he has the build for marathons. The Mayor has more sense too. He would be forgiven for using his age as an excuse – if he gets elected he can start to draw his old age pension during his next term. He already qualifies for a Freedom Pass.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Post Office closures

The Post Office should consult for 12 weeks but 10 weeks is good enough for meToday’s big story for many Londoners will be reports that 169 Post Offices are to close across London. See story in tonight’s Standard here.

These closures will affect many in Ealing. The following Ealing Post Offices are on the list:

  1. Greenford Green, 1238 Greenford Road, UB6
  2. The Avenue, 22 The Avenue, W13
  3. Boileau Parade, 2 Boileau Parade, W5
  4. Bollo Bridge Road, 102-104 Bollo Bridge Road, W3
  5. Churchfied Road, 24 Churchfield Road, W3
  6. Haven Green, 2 Madeley Road, Haven Green, W5
  7. Norwood Green, 175 Norwood Road, UB2
  8. Park Parade, 6 Park Parade, Gunnersbury Avenue, W3

Also there are 3 post offices close to borough boundaries whose closure will impact upon Ealing residents, these are:

  1. Chiswick High Road, 110 Chiswick High Road, W4 (LB Hounslow)
  2. Askew Road, 68 Askew Raod W12 (LBH&F)
  3. Goldhawk Road, 88 Goldhawk Road W12 (LBH&F)

The Mayor is threatening the Post Office with judicial review. In particular he is exercised that the consultation in only 6 weeks long. He cites Cabinet Office guidance that states that 12 weeks minimum is good practice for public consultations. We should hold the Mayor to this in future. His £1.4 million consultation on emissions related congestion charging, which he suppressed because he didn’t like the result, ran from 10th August 2007 to 19th October 2007, ie only ten weeks. What a jerk?

The Mayor’s press release doesn’t tell you how to respond to the consultation. The Evening Standard does:

Those wishing to register their views should contact http://www.postoffice.co.uk/networkchange or write to Post Office Ltd at Freepost Consultation (no stamp required) or email consultation@postoffice.co.uk.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Gilligan highlights Mayor’s poll cheating

After my story last week about how the Mayor had suppressed the emissions related congestion charging consultation report, see here, and the POLITICALBETTING.COM story about how TfL has leaned on Ipsos MORI not to publish the details of the polling done in the same exercise Andrew Gilligan reveals tonight that the Mayor has a some form in this area already.

It appears that he is a serial poll cheat.

This comes as no surprise to Ealing after the Tram consultation shenanigans.

Categories
Mayor Johnson

Boris calls Brown a lier

Back BorisBoris Johnson is absolutely hopping mad today. At the Northern Rock press conference this morning Brown didn’t like a question about whether he was endorsing Livingstone for Mayor. He answered by talking about Boris and suggesting that if Boris won police numbers would go down. Livingstone has been stupid to talk about Boris so much and Brown is making the same mistake – why couldn’t Brown say something positive about Livingstone’s campaign? Probably for the same reason that he never uses his name – he absolutely hates Livingstone.

Anyway Boris was so mad he said:

The first time Gordon Brown said this he misled the House and I demanded an apology. Now he uses his Northern Rock press conference to spread the same lies. When I am Mayor of London, police numbers will increase in their hundreds in the Capital, as I explained in my 36 page crime manifesto. For the Prime Minister to say different is just plain rubbish. Mired in maladministration, Labour are just trying to deflect attention away from themselves at a time when the public are crying out for change. I offer that change in London – clearly the Prime Minister doesn’t like it one bit.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

London Congestion Charge – 5 years, £1.2 billion and …

conhome-front-page-18-2-2008.JPG

This morning ConservativeHome took this piece from me on the Congestion Charge.

Read how the Mayor has taken £1.2 billion off Londoners in 5 years and, well, just spent it all on out of control set-up and running costs. All gone. Yep, all of it. None left, not a bean. When Peter Hendy and the Mayor say that it is contributing £120 million towards the buses or cycling or walking they are telling three fibs that add up to one big lie. The three fibs are:

  1. they ignore capital costs
  2. they ignore indirect costs (ie they assume the charge is run out of a garage)
  3. they ignore the first year’s losses.

If these guys were businessmen they would have been sacked about four years ago on this performance.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

What costs £1.2 billion and achieves nothing?

Congestion Charge signToday is the fifth anniversary of the start of the London Mayor’s congestion charging scheme.

Tomorrow I will be showing how the Mayor’s Congestion Charge has cost Londoners £1.2 billion in five years of operation whilst achieving nothing.

And if you thought any of the cash would be left over for good works …

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

More dirty emissions

Congestion Charge consultation graphicIt appears that not only was the suppressed consultation on emissions related congestion charging not what the Mayor wanted to hear but it also seems that the polling data he used in its place was dodgy too.

The POLITICALBETTING.COM blog ran this story yesterday about how the polling data published by the Mayor in December (see previous posting) is going to be reviewed by a body called the British Polling Council. Ipsos MORI have enough to be ashamed about given the way they wrote the management summary of the consultation, see previous posting.

On Tuesday the consultation results from November were published. Tory AM Angie Bray formally asked for these twice last year, in November and December, but she was stonewalled each time. The consultation showed that 60% of Londoners thought that the scheme would not work.

Ealing people will remember that the Mayor pulled the same stunt with the West London Tram. A very expensive consultation exercise came up with the wrong result so the Mayor spent even more cash on some market research that delivered the answer that the Mayor wanted to hear. Maybe there are some bodies buried there too?