Month: Feb 2008

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Sharma is in Stacey’s sights

jason-stacey.jpgYesterday the Leader of Ealing Council, Cllr Jason Stacey, issued a press release calling on Cllr Virendra Sharma MP to resign as a councillor after it was revealed that he has attended only a few minutes of one Council meeting since his election as an MP in July 2007.

Cllr Sharma was elected MP for Ealing Southall at a by-election on 19th July 2007, but decided he would continue as a councillor representing Norwood Green ward. Since then, Cllr Sharma has been scheduled to attend nine Council meetings and yet he has turned up to just one meeting where he was present for around five minutes. Cllr Sharma continues to claim his full councillor’s allowance.

Stacey said:

Since his election as an MP Cllr Sharma has found time to squeeze in three foreign trips so you would think he might be able to attend meetings that affect the lives of the residents he is supposed to be representing. You would think that as the MP for the Southall area he would be particularly interested in ensuring he attended the Southall Area Committee but Cllr Sharma has by far and away the worst record of attendance of any councillor.

He is doing a real disservice to the residents of Norwood Green and I say to Cllr Sharma that he should step aside and let someone else come forward who will do a proper job.

I blogged previously about Sharma’s holidays and partial attendance at one council meeting.

Note: Cllr Sharma has not attended the following Council meetings that he was scheduled to attend since 19 July 2007: Southall Area Committee on 19 September, 27 November and 23 January; Transport and Environment Scrutiny on 17 October, 19 December, and 30 January; Full Council on 11 December; Planning on 17 October and 30 January.

Categories
Public sector waste

Musical message from Hammersmith and Fulham

I am not sure that Ealing is ready for this but here is a bit of fun from Hammermsith and Fulham:

Categories
Uncategorized

How popular?

People often ask me how popular is my blog? My wife is foremost amongst these, no doubt wondering if I am using my time well. I now have some kind of answer thanks to Google analytics which I installed at the start of the year. The chart below, click to enlarge, shows how many unique visitors I got throughout January. Google counts people only once during the period for this particular chart.

january-2008-stats.JPG

This chart says that in January 3,765 different people made a total of 5,088 visits and looked at 9,371 pages. That’s 164 visits per day. Before I got carried away I had a look at the stats for the two most popular political blogs, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale’s Diary, and they came in at about 250-300,000 visits per month.

Continue reading “How popular?”
Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor will have to answer to Electoral Commission

After last week’s denials on the Today programme it looks like the Mayor will have to answer questions from the Electoral Commission on the behaviour of GLA staff during the 2004 elections. The Times reports that it has seen e-mails that show at least one GLA staffer worked on the 2004 campaign during office hours. It says:

Ken Livingstone’s campaign instructed public servants to write articles in support of his last reelection as Mayor of London in a breach of rules forbidding political abuse of taxpayers’ cash.

Documents passed to The Times prove that staff paid for by public money were told to carry out campaign work during office hours. One e-mail to the mayor’s former senior adviser on Asian affairs, Atma Singh, sent at 9.30am, explicitly asks that he write two articles in support of Mr Livingstone by noon that day.

The evidence directly contradicts the Mayor of London’s claim last week that senior public officials could not and did not carry out such work during the 2004 campaign. He said officials could engage in political activity “as long as they obey the law, which is that they can’t publicly campaign, which is they can’t make a speech for me or write an article for me”.

Asked if an investigation would find that no one had used office time to prepare articles in pursuit of his campaign, he replied: “Absolutely right.”

Yet on May 27, 2004, Mr Singh received an e-mail from the campaign office of the Ken4London based in the headquarters of the London Labour Party. It said: “We are still waiting for your article for the Asian Post . . . and the East Muslim News (400-500 words on Why should Muslims vote for Ken Livinsgtone? – this is urgent, publication date June 1st). Both required 12 noon today.”

Mr Singh also told The Times that he spent up to 90 per cent of his days during the campaign working for Mr Livingstone’s reelection, in contravention of electoral rules.

The e-mail, along with others, is being handed over to the Electoral Commission today as part of a formal complaint against Mr Livingstone.