Guido Fawkes is reporting (please note that a lot of his commenters are pretty wild and sweary) that local Labour MP, Andrew Slaughter, rather lost his rag today during a recording of Week in Westminster on Radio 4. This goes out on Saturday morning at 11am if you want to hear Slaughter telling I Want a Referendum Chairman Derek Scott to “f*&^ off”. Ooops.
Author: Phil
After Tuesday’s Council meeting, where the Labour group made themselves look foolish over the Freedom Pass amongst other things, it appears that Nicki Gavron, the Mayor’s invisible deputy, is coming to Ealing.
See this notice that appeared on Ealing Today Forum yesterday:
The Deputy Mayor of London will be at the next EBSCAG (Ealing Borough Senior Citizen Action Group) Meeting on Friday 22nd Feb 08 between 2pm and 4pm at Ealing Town Hall.
The theme for the meeting will be “Transport in London” and key issues includes:
1) Freedom Pass
2) Door to Door Transport
3) Public Transport
And much more…Light refreshment available
Limited spaces, so reserve your place or have any access needs please contact Jim on email: jim@ealingcvs.org.uk or via
telephone: 020-8280-2233
I was a bit surprised to get an e-mail from the managing director of Ethnic Media Group today, see below. I also had Lester Holloway, the new editor of New Nation which is one of EMG’s publications, posting on an old piece I did back in December commenting on the Mayor’s “Get Gilligan” press conference. I was at a loss to know what had stirred them up. Then I saw Andrew Gilligan’s piece in the Standard from yesterday here. I was a bit busy with speaking at council last night to read the paper.
Dear Mr Taylor,
Could you please get in touch by telephone in regards to the publishing of false and inaccurate information.
I have family roots spanning three generations in the Ealing Borough and wish to speak with you.
I await your call.
Thank you.
Wayne Bower
Managing Director
Ethnic Media Group Ltd
I am not sure quite what Bower wants from me. Is he going to send his big brother round to rough me up or something? He can comment here if he wants to share his views.
Just for the record Lester Holloway is an ex-Labour councillor and in his previous job edited the BLINK website where he was effectively the conduit for the Mayor’s publicly funded campaign against Trevor Phillips becoming the chariman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Council leader, Jason Stacey, used tonight’s council meeting to announce that the Ealing portion of next year’s council tax would rise by only 1.9%, below even CPI, see previous posting. This is the second year in a row that the council tax in Ealing has risen by this tiny amount.
In a press release issued tonight Cllr Stacey said:
Last year when we announced a 1.9% increase in Council tax, it was the lowest increase for 13 years and I am pleased to say we can again deliver what is in real terms a Council tax cut. Residents were well and truly stuffed by the last Labour administration on Council tax, and in uncertain economic times I know that people are pleased to see some relief.
It is important to emphasise that we have managed to deliver Council tax relief whilst enhancing services as part of our commitment to value for money. Instead of spending money on Labour’s wasteful £50M Response Programme, we have been able to invest in cleaner streets, and community safety measures as well as protecting the vulnerable. We will continue to listen to residents and ensure that hard earned residents’ Council Tax is spent wisely and in the areas that people want.
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Times calls LEZ right
Today’s Times has picked up that the LEZ is not what it seems and that the Mayor has been extremely disingenuous to put the 1,000 deaths figure in his mendacious press release.
The Times says:
The [Mayor’s press] release implied that the zone would help to save the lives of many of the 1,000 people who die prematurely in London each year because of poor air quality.
But Transport for London, the mayor’s transport authority, admitted yesterday that very few lives would be saved. It said that existing European regulations on reducing engine emissions would contribute 65 per cent of the health benefits listed by Mr Livingstone. Another 15 per cent would be the product of existing plans to introduce cleaner buses and taxis. Only a fifth of the improvement in air pollution by 2012 will be attributable to the low emission zone. Air pollution in general will reduce only by about 5 per cent, meaning the zone will improve overall air quality by only 1 per cent.
They quote LibDem candidate Brian Paddick as saying:
To suggest the LEZ will do something about the 1,000 deaths a year caused by pollution is grossly misleading. The most effective way to deal with pollution in London is to get the traffic moving again and reduce the number of lorries on our roads through retail consolidation schemes. This is about improving the mayor’s image, not improving air quality.
The Freight Transport Association’s Gordon Telling, the association’s head of policy for London, said:
This scheme achieves very little that would not have been achieved anyway. This means that Londoners, and lorry operators, are having to pay an enormous price for a trivial improvement in air quality.
Even Nick Fairholme, TfL’s head of the low emission zone, when asked how many lives would be saved by the zone, Mr Fairholme said:
Very few is the honest answer. The benefits are not so much in terms of lives saved. It’s about reduced use of inhalers and reduced hospital admissions.
Don’t forget that the number of reduced hospital admissions for the whole life of the scheme is 86.
Categories
BBC falls for it
The Mayor has got his Teletubbies thing going on his website today and the BBC has fallen for his press release. It is a shame they can’t check the facts.
The Mayor puts this line in a nice prominent position in his press release:
Poor air quality worsens asthma and causes the premature death of an estimated 1,000 people each year in London.
The Mayor’s 265 PRs are not silly. They know that some dumb journalist is going to get the wrong end of the stick and write this is up as Mayor saves 1,000 a year. Sure enough the BBC oblige here in bold in the opening line of their piece this morning:
It is a measure aimed at saving up to 1,000 lives a year.
The Transport for London background documents tell a much more modest story. See Section 4.41, page 35 of this report:
The Defra methodology estimates that the proposed LEZ scheme would prevent between 5200 and 5500 years of lost life expectancy lost across London, that 86 hospital admissions would be avoided and roughly 40 deaths brought forward would be avoided. The CAFE methodology predicts 65 hospital admissions be avoided. The CAFE methodology also expresses years of life lost in an alternative format, as premature deaths, and predicts that the LEZ will lead to 210 fewer premature deaths.
I guess the BBC is voting for Livingstone then.
3:00 pm Update: Their TV commentary here repeats the 1,000 number as if this has anything to do with the scheme.
At 00:00 hours today the Mayor’s Low Emission Zone came into force.
If you have the stamina you might want to read this piece of analysis of the scheme. ConservativeHome were kind enough to publish it this morning.
As it happens it is also the topic of a Labour party motion being proposed by Cllr Mahfouz for tomorrow’s full council meeting:
This Council welcomes the recent initiative by the Mayor of London to implement a Low Emission Zone (LEZ) in London as part of the Transport and Air Quality Strategy. The LEZ is one of the most effective ways to achieve reductions of harmful road transport generated emissions in London. The initiative will help to make Ealing a better place to live by reducing the levels of key air pollutants as outlined in the Council’s Sustainable Community Strategy. The Council therefore welcomes the implementation of the Low Emission Zone by the Mayor of London as of 4th February.
One thing that emerged clearly from my research is that this scheme is of no interest to London’s politicians. A year ago 81 London MPs and MEPs were consulted on this scheme and only 2 London MPs roused themselves to respond, one Labour and one Tory. Our three local Labour MPs all failed to respond.
I guess I will have something to say tomorrow!
The Mayor’s press machine have got themselves in a tizzy about an article in the Sunday Times today. The good news is that we will not the wretched Londoner anymore after February. The Mayor apparently does not reckon to publish it in March and April. Boris Johnson has promised not to publish it if he is elected so if you want to see the back of it vote Boris! Still nice to see the Mayor’s 265 comms people getting some overtime on a Sunday.
As ever these people are twisting the truth. This so-called paper usually comes out at the start of the month – not the end of it! They will get the February issue out at the end of the month so there are only two clear months between then and the elections.
In 2004 the election was on June 10th. The last issue of the Londoner came out in April leaving only one clear month.
I guess a month’s worth of the Londoner will not make much difference in a climate where the Mayor is spending £100 million a year on advertising and PR.
Categories
Mayor’s blog police
In the middle of January I did a piece on the Mayor’s 265 person comms machine, see previous posting. You might wonder what they all do. Well some of them read blogs.
I pointed out back then that I had already had evidence of the Livingstone PR machine keeping tabs on me here and here. The first incident was Joy Johnson herself. The Mayor’s Director of Media and Marketing. In 2005/6 she was paid £117,882, the same as the Mayor’s Socialist Action cronies Redmond O’Neill, Neale Coleman and John Ross (according to the The TaxPayers’ Alliance Town Hall Rich List). Before her current job she was director of communications for the Labour party. The second incident was a person of unknown gender called Sam Strudwick.
Sam clearly hasn’t got much else to do because he or she has commented on the site twice in the last couple of weeks in the guise of GLA Spokesperson, here and here.
I checked the IP addresses for both comments and they were definitely City Hall ones.
Yesterday 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.
Phil Taylor 