Sure enough Andrew Gilligan was straight onto the City Hall grants scandal today in the Standard. Three MPs, one from each main party, has asked the District Auditor to review the cases that Gilligan has raised. Quite right too.
Author: Phil
On Friday both the Mayor and the LDA issued 1,200 word press releases claiming that the LDA’s own internal investigation had cleared them all of “corruption” charges. Both press releases are, of course a load of twaddle and no doubt Andrew Gilligan will be laying into them in the Evening Standard in the week to come. The press releases are designed to make you read the positive headline and first paragraph and then glaze over without exploring the details. Boris Johnson’s team were pretty quick to cut through the crap and pull out the main point which was that four or five projects are being investigated by the Police, three of which were referred to them by the LDA as a result of Andrew Gilligan’s investigations.
It is much more fruitful to read Andrew Travers’, the LDA’s Group Director Resources and Risk, actual report to the board. It makes it pretty clear that Andrew Gilligan’s columns in the Evening Standard have been hitting home. It is particularly telling that the conclusions of this document (Section 8.) use nothing like the form of words used on the Mayor’s front page.
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LibDem victory
It is always a good laugh reading other party’s literature – or at least it is if you a bit of a political spanner like me. I particularly enjoyed the Walpole FOCUS No. 14 which I saw this weekend. Apparently the LibDem “FOCUS team”, led by local LibDem parliamentary candidates Jon Ball and Nigel Bakhai, has been studying at the Bassam Mahfouz School of Hubris. According to them:
Following a concerted campaign over many years by local Liberal Democrat councillors, the Council recently began recycling plastic in Ealing.
Yeah, right.
Another piece in Walpole FOCUS No. 14 was not so amusing. It was a bunch of outright porkies and the LibDems should know better. They are meant to be in favour of localism. The Cabinet proposals for ward forums are localism red in tooth and claw and the only people complaining about them are the weaker brethren amongst the councillors who are wary of making actual decisions and unwilling to engage with their voters. Decisions of ward forums will be susceptible to being thrown out by Cabinet in the same way that area committee decisions are currently.
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London Talking debate disappointing
Boris Johnson came across reasonably well on last night’s London Talking debate as did Brian Paddick who quite impressed after a slow start. Livingstone looked tired and old and tried to blame the recent surge in teen murder on Thatcherism from what I could work out. Nothing to do with ten years of a Labour government and eight years of a Labour Mayor then.
I was disappointed by the audience to be honest. With only 12 per party they were all party representatives and horribly partisan. The candidates were models of reasonableness in comparison. In particular the questions from Labour and the LibDems to Boris were at best un-illuminating and at worst just insults. I don’t think many London voters would have been impressed by these questions.
Ealing councillor Ed Yeo was one of the Tory “audience”. He fluffed his question to the Mayor which came out essentially as: “Why are you being so nasty”. The Mayor was able to brush this off easily as he had indeed been pretty sweet through the proceedings. As we saw with the little helpers and leftie Muslim letters to the Guardian the Mayor can afford to sound reasonable when he has lots other people who can do the nasty stuff for him. So it proved with questions to Boris where a Labour activist raised the Darius Guppy slur and with a LibDem lady piling in too. Not very edifying when there are big issues of transport and policing to deal with.
The combination of children’s presenter Konnie Huq and a bunch of over-excited activists made for pretty jarring viewing.
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Sharma still on holiday
I decided to check how local MPs had voted yesterday on the Tory motion that speaks out against Government proposals to reduce funding for those who already have higher education qualifications but want to undertake more study.
That this House is concerned that the Government’s decision to withdraw funding from institutions for equivalent or lower qualification students will have a disproportionate impact on the part-time sector in general and on specific institutions such as Birkbeck and the Open University; and urges the Government to consider ways in which it can minimise the damage this measure will do to lifelong learning and the delivery of the Leitch agenda objectives.
Local MPs Andy Slaughter and Stephen Pound both dutifully voted with the Government.
Northfield and Southall MP Virendra Sharma is clearly still on his holidays, see voting record here.
Spartan Boris Johnson writes his last column in the Telegraph today. He has cut out all of his other commitments to campaign fulltime to be London Mayor.
The Independent reported yesterday that he would spend £1 million on his campaign.
After Parking Services on Thursday we can rush home and watch the Mayoral candidates doing a TV debate on ITV.
Konnie Huq’s London Talking will host the three main candidates at 11:05pm. They are expected to answer the questions of the studio audience Question Time style.
Ms Huq will have to work hard to be objective. The Times reports her many links to Labour here.
The tentacles of the Mayor’s patronage extend to her as well – she picked up a £4,750 fee, and a reprimand from the BBC, when she helped kick off the Mayor’s Hovis London Freecycle event last year. No wonder she was “the first person to sign up” for the event as reported by the Mayor’s £3 million a year self-promotion vehicle the Londoner, left.
Standard report here.
The fourth meeting of the Parking Services Specialist Scrutiny Panel will take place in Committee Room 2 at the Town Hall on Thursday 10th January. See agenda and papers here.
The key item for discussion on Thursday is the draft of recommendations, see here. This document is very much a work in progress but shows where we are going with this panel.
We will also be looking at the results from some parking questions added to the regular panel survey undertaken by the council. Some 1881 residents took part, see here. The chart below, click to enlarge, shows what issue people think Parking Services should prioritise. It seems that people feel that quite a range of issues should be considered. Even that supposedly unpopular activity, raising cash, was rated third and considered by 15% of people to be a reasonable top priority for the service. I guess the 15% are non-car owners!
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The wife’s a Brit too now
The largest part of my morning was taken up by accompanying my wife to her citizenship ceremony, the last step in her becoming a British citizen. She is excited at the prospect of being able to vote Mayor Livingstone out of office on 1st May.
The ceremony took place in the Norwood Suite at the Town Hall. This is one of the smarter parts of the building and the ceremony was on the whole well run and moving even. As the participants were registering a selection of appropriate music was played including Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance and “I vow to thee, my country”. It would have been nice if Duncan, the registrars’ assistant, had been wearing a tie. At the end the usual one verse of the National Anthem was played and I had to sing on my own as I don’t think anyone else in the room knew the words. My wife was a bit sheepish about not singing. It was a shame that the celebrants couldn’t rouse themselves to at least mouth along.
The oath you have to say is reasonably full-on even for a product of New Labour:
I (name) swear by Almighty God that on becoming a British Citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second; Her Heirs and successors according to law.
I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British Citizen.
One thing I was very impressed with was the two well turned out ladies from the Library Service. They introduced themselves during the registration and helped people to fill in applications for library cards. They then gave out completed cards after the ceremony. A brilliant service and it is great to see the Library Service using some imagination and panache to recruit new users. They managed to give out 16 library cards. Big well done.
Phil Taylor 