I am not sure that Ealing is ready for this but here is a bit of fun from Hammermsith and Fulham:
Author: Phil
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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.
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.
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.
Yesterday the Mayor was making a song and dance about police numbers in his budget speech, and the Prime Minister immediately contradicted him.
The Mayor claims 10,000 extra officers in London under his tenure. He is of course counting PCSOs as the equivalent of PCs whereas as even our dissimulating PM will not go that far. The Mayor also does a bit of erroneous rounding.
Yesterday dismal Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon asked this patsy question of the PM at Prime Minister’s Questions:
Will my right hon. Friend personally congratulate Chief Superintendent Steve Kavanagh, his officers and police community support officers, and especially the safer neighbourhoods teams on their achievement in cutting crime in Barnet by 8.6 per cent. so far this year, on top of 16 per cent. last year, with 24.6 per cent. in total? That is one of the best records in the Met. With 5,600 extra officers and 3,700 PCSOs in London provided by the Mayor, what does my right hon. Friend think the result will be of the cuts in the budget proposed by the Tory candidate for London Mayor?
Note that Andrew Dismore shows his ignorance of basic maths – you multiply percentage in this case not add them.
The PM answered as follows:
In the London area alone, there are 6,000 more police than there were in 1997. As my hon. Friend rightly said, in graphic detail, crime is down in his constituency. The choice in London will be between an administration that wants to employ more police and wants to get crime down, and what the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) has said, which is that he wishes to cut spending on the Metropolitan police. That would be disastrous for the police, disastrous for London and bad for the whole country.
This response caused Boris Johnson to lose his rag – quite right too. Read about it here.
So, the PM says 6,000, Dismore says 9,300 and the Mayor says 10,000. The rounding issue is important, if Dismore’s numbers are right, because the Mayor is talking about adding 1,000 officers next year. If he does we will then have 10,300 officer next year but the Mayor is already claiming 10,000 when in reality we have 9,000 extra – if you round like a normal person. It seems that the Mayor’s maths is as bad as Dismore’s.
At last the Mayor is doing something that he is paid to do. Demanding more civility on public transport.
We have not seen much on this topic from Livingstone in the past eight years so it is interesting to see the Mayor respond to Boris Johnson’s call for greater civility – he raised this issue at his campaign launch on September 3rd, see previous posting.
Too often politicians are wary of taking on board this kind of issue. They worry that the people they chastise will not vote for them. Maybe the Mayor has calculated that on average the people who mess the place up will either not be registered to vote or will not bother to vote anyway whilst the rest of us far outnumber the idiots. If so he is right.
See the Mayor’s little movie here. The movie does not show teenagers bad mouthing drivers when they challenge them to show their free passes so it is a little fanciful.
It seems that Ealing Labour group are using their precious opportunities to discuss local issues to support the Mayor. Their choice for opposition business at the next council meeting on Tuesday 5th is the Freedom Pass. The papers just plopped down on my mat.
The Labour motion is:
This Council welcomes the Mayor of London’s decision to extend the benefits available to Londoners from the Freedom Pass concessionary fares scheme. This extension will enable many Ealing residents to have greater access and mobility and enhances their quality of life significantly. This Council commends the Mayor of London for his actions that are vital for some of our most vulnerable members of society.
On the other hand if you go to the Mayor’s own re-election website you will see that the offer to increase the hours of the Freedom Pass is manifesto commitment – you have to elect him first, see here:
Ken Livingstone today announced his first manifesto pledge for May’s Mayoral election. If re-elected the Freedom Pass will be valid 24 hours a day on London’s buses, tube, rail network and trams. At present the Freedom Pass only starts at 9am. Londoners entitled to a Freedom Pass therefore cannot use it early in the morning, even for vital trips.
Ooops.
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4th teen murder in Dean Gardens
Rather horribly it looks like London’s 4th teen murder of the year happened in Dean Gardens, West Ealing, early this morning. Four in the space of a month is frightening indeed, all the more so as this latest incident is so close to home. See BBC coverage here.
The BBC says:
A teenager has died in hospital after an attack with a “blunt instrument” in a west London park.
Police found the young man, who is believed to be 19, after they were called to Dean Gardens, West Ealing, in the early hours of the morning.
He was taken to hospital but died 40 minutes later from head injuries. A murder inquiry has been launched.
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Mayor in Davos
After his “worst week” the Mayor flew off to Davos in Switzerland to hob-nob on the public purse with world leaders. Strangely this fact is not mentioned on the Mayor’s home page. He does not like to highlight his international travel because it does rather undermine his green stance.
The list of public figures published by the World Economic Forum includes his name along with only three other world mayors. I wonder what business Livingstone might be doing with the mayors of Milan, Tehran and Dalian (China). I guess Michael Bloomberg is actually running his city. Still you have got to admire the guy’s chutzpah going off on a massive beano when he is fighting for his political life.
Still at least in Davos the Mayor doesn’t have to read his bad notices back home in the Times, Telegraph and Standard.
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Sharma the lazy
Ealing Southall MP, Virendra Sharma, doesn’t seem to have been putting himself out that much on our behalf since he was elected last July. He has so far managed to have at least FOUR holidays.
Cyprus 30 September-3 October 2007
Went for so-called study visit with Friends of Cyprus delegation. Accommodation costs, use of car and driver provided by the Republic of Cyprus House of Representatives. Return flights to Cyprus paid for out of House of Commons European travel allowance. Registered 17 October 2007. Since when has Sharma had any interest in Cyprus?
India 23-30 October 2007
Went to India, including New Delhi and Mumbai, for international Parliamentarians of Indian Origin event. Return flight to India, accommodation, meals and travel costs met by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Registered 21 November 2007. Nice for him. Maybe useful for India to be able influence international parliamentarians. What’s in it for Ealing and Southall?
India 16-23 November 2007
Off to India again with London Mayor Ken Livingstone, see previous posting.
Just plain absent 8-9 January 2008
Missed first week back at Parliament and failed to vote for these two days, see previous posting.
I guess his high level of absenteeism explains his low work rate. In his first six months in Parliament he has roused himself to speak only 3 times and has rather feebly asked 3 written questions. Is that really enough work for six months pay?
I acknowledge TheyworkForYou.com as the source for the Parliamentary stats – great job.
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More for less
Today council leader Jason Stacey has been briefing the Ealing Times about next year’s council tax and his priorities for the borough. He says we will have a below inflation increase. By this I am pretty sure he means a below CPI increase rather than a below RPI increase! CPI, the Government’s target measure for inflation, was 2.1% in December, unchanged from November. RPI inflation fell to 4.0% in December, down from 4.3% in November. See more here.
We already knew that the Mayor’s portion was going up 2.4%, see previous posting. The Mayor compared his, modest by his standards, rise with RPI to make it look good.
Stacey said:
Last year we dealt with the issues of street cleaning and putting more bobbies on the beat, and we will not be pumping more into those areas this year.
I think it’s important we look at the state of the road surfaces which need replacing and put more money into our heritage buildings, some of which are falling down. There are some big figures involved in their maintenance.
We are also abolishing the charge for collecting things like fridges from people’s homes, which currently stands at £15, and will be bringing in a street washing programme.
There is also going to be a £50,000 investment for more litter bins around the borough.
Phil Taylor 