Month: Jun 2010

Last night was the first real council meeting since the election and a noisy affair it was. It took us almost an hour to get through the oral questions. The new Mayor seemed to be particularly pleased that there were supplementary and second supplementary questions for all seven questions.

In one exchange on Labour’s housing manoeuvres the Tory group managed to establish that Labour intends to renege on its previous promise to give tenants a full ballot on all the options for the future of their homes. The Tory group put out the following press release last night:

LABOUR BREAKS PROMISE ON HOUSING BALLOT

Labour has broken one of its first promises as a Council administration by refusing to honour a pledge to offer Council tenants and lessees a ballot before making any changes to the way Council housing is managed in the Borough. Council Leader Julian Bell moved the following motion at a Council meeting on 20 October 2009:

Council agrees that before any change is made to who owns or manages council housing in the borough, tenants should be involved in full and proper consultation on the options and should have the right to decide on the best alternative in a ballot.

Less than eight months later, Labour has abandoned that pledge, and has now said it will force tenants and lessees to accept a return to in-house management against their will if necessary.

At tonight’s full Council meeting Conservative Housing spokesman, Cllr Colm Costello asked the Housing portfolio holder when the ballot promised by Labour would take place. He was told that Labour no longer had any intention of holding a ballot, and that the words of Cllr Julian Bell just eight months ago could not be taken seriously. Councillors were told that Labour would now do as it liked as it had won the election. Cllr Costello complained:

It is this sort of U-turn without any pretense of justification that really gives politics a bad name. Cllr Bell could not have been clearer before the election that he wanted Council tenants and lessees to have a ballot on how their housing is managed and run. Yet at the first Council meeting after the election he and the rest of the Labour Group totally overturned their promises of a few months earlier.

The future arrangements housing management is of vital importance to thousands of people in Council homes across this Borough. If they deserved a ballot before the election, they deserve one now. Labour are running scared by the fact that if people are given an actual fair say they may not pick what has already been chosen for them.

18 days ago George Osborne announced some £6.2 billion of in year spending cuts for the current financial year 2010/11. Yesterday the Department for Communities and Local Government spelt out where the axe would fall in individual local authorities, see their press release here.

It looks like Ealing is going to lose £1.8 million this year or 0.4% of its central government grant made up as follows:

Department for Education Area Based Grant (ABG) £1.496 million
Supporting People Administration ABG £172,000
Prevent ABG £102,000
Cohesion ABG £18,000
Home Office ABG £46,000

This will be a blow to the new administration in Ealing and it will cause some local services to change, probably for the worse in most cases. In year cuts are always awkward because they are unplanned. The Labour group in Ealing will no doubt jump up and down and tell us how terrible the coalition is to impose these cuts on Ealing but let us be clear where the blame lies…

… as confirmed by Liam “there’s no money left” Byrne and Lord Myners:

There is nothing progressive about a government that consistently spends more than it can raise in taxation and certainly nothing progressive that endows generations to come with the liabilities incurred with respect to the current generation.

After the street cleaning announcement today came another one from the council on Southall Manor House.

This press release re-announced one from February here.

Again, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it seems like Julian Bell’s cabinet are busying themselves having photos taken in front of Tory projects rather than getting on with their own stuff.

Update: Ooops. Apparently I am wrong about Bell wasting time running around getting photos done. On closer inspection it seems that Acton resident Bell saved a little time and money here by getting himself Photoshopped into a picture of Southall Manor rather than actually going there himself.

It is good to see the new Labour council carrying on enthusiastically with Conservative policies. Today Bassam Mahfouz, cabinet member for Transport and Environment, announced that 52 miles of streets in the north of the borough, which have their rubbish collected on a Friday, will have their streets cleaned on a Saturday. Hooray!

Bassam said:

At the moment, rubbish can build-up across the weekend, which can be unpleasant for residents and their visitors. We’re committed to making Ealing cleaner and I think residents will really notice the difference. I’m keen to receive feedback from residents on how the service establishes itself across the north of the borough.

This is old news though. This policy was first announced on the 13th February by the old leader, Jason Stacey, at the Annual Streetwatchers’ Conference. Sue Emment, the old portfolio holder, used a supplementary question at the full council on the 20th April to confirm the 12th June as the starting date.

Labour’s election platform echoed the messages the Tories had been using for four years so in spite of not being in control the Tories can take some pleasure in the fact that Labour are happy to plough the same furrow – for now.

Nice picture of Bassam. Has he got a height thing? Why else be photographed so far in front of street cleaner Peter Richter? Or maybe there is some four legs good, two legs better stuff happening here?

Local MP Virendra Sharma has been even quieter than usual lately. Maybe as a fellow opposition politician I should have some sympathy, but hey! He stopped his Tweeting before the general election and has not been much in evidence since. He raised himself to ask a question about Pakistan on 2nd June, see TheyWorkForYou.com here.

Today the Daily Mail is really going for fellow Labour MP Keith Vaz about his involvement with disbarred lawyer Shahrokh Mireskandari, see here. They have totally nailed Vaz as a liar. You may remember that in June 2008 Sharma jointly signed a letter which Vaz wrote to a judge urging the High Court to delay proceedings against Mireskandari.

Rather pathetically Sharma said at the time:

I am a new MP. I will be more questioning before I sign a letter in future.

It was no coincidence that Vaz was on his selection panel when he became the Ealing Southall Labour candidate in 2007 so you have to assume there was mutual back scratching going on here.