The minutes of the last Parking Services session are up on the Council’s website here. A couple of people asked me for these so here they are.
They include a list of the issues raised by the public. I can see the final report being a bit long!
Author: Phil
Categories
Labour on the phone
On Tuesday we held the second Northfield ward forum, more on that later. In passing David Millican, one of our three councillors, told me he had been canvassed by Labour – by an automated telephone call. The same thing happened to me last night. The call went along the lines of “If you are going to vote Labour press 1, if you are going to …”.
I hate anyone calling me, especially in the evening, unless they are a real person I want to talk to. Automated calls just make me foam with anger. Machines don’t have lives they just just waste ours!
No doubt Brown is trying to work out whether to go to the country. I wouldn’t trust the result from automated canvassing.
Remember Gordon Brown’s windy rhetoric in Bournemouth last week:
So let me set out how we take the NHS into a new era.
Our great achievement of the 1940s was a service universal to all. In 2007 we need a service that is accessible to all and personal to all.
Our great ambition now: a National Health Service that is also a personal health service.
Today both the Telegraph and the Guardian are reporting how far the NHS needs to travel if it is to get to the point where it is valued by its customers in the way that health systems are valued in the wealthiest countries of Europe. Both of these newspaper reports are based on a report from an organisation called Health Consumer Powerhouse.
It is clear from the table above (click to enlarge) that the UK is not getting value from its healthcare system. Three groups are apparent. The elite group of wealthy countries have scores in the range 687 to 806. These are the countries you might expect to have good health systems, the Nordics, Austria, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany Belgium and Luxembourg. It is a national scandal that the UK is not in this group.
Instead we languish in a group of countries that were until recently considered to be the poor men of Europe. Between Lithuania at 496 and Estonia at 633 there are fifteen countries. The UK is scored at 581 which puts it bang in the middle of a group of countries which we might once, in our arrogance, have written off as “poor Mediterraneans” or “former Soviet block”.
We are just not getting value for our health spending. Brown has had ten years. Brown has spent the money. Brown has failed.
Categories
Mahfouz trips himself up
Labour councillor Bassam Mahfouz is their Transport, Environment & Climate Change Spokesman and is also going head-to-head with Angie Bray in the Ealing Central and Acton constituency. Last month he tried to have a go at the current Conservative administration for their performance in the parking area, highlighting the rate at which people were winning cases at the final court of appeal for these things which is called PATAS. Apparently Ealing was the worst in West London with 80% people winning their appeals. See his claims here.
The only problem is that wheels grind somewhat slowly in such matters and 90% of these appeals are a hang over from the old contract which the new Conservative administration inherited from the old Labour administration. Getting this right was one of the first pieces of business of the new administration. Today the Tory Transport portfolio holder issued a press release firmly putting Mahfouz back in his box.
A parking contract negotiated by the previous Labour administration has been held responsible for the high number of wrongly issued parking tickets in Ealing. Last year, 80%of appeals against tickets issued by Ealing Council were upheld – the highest rate of successful parking appeals in west London. It has now been revealed that 90% of the 1,458 successful appeals occurred under the parking contract negotiated by the previous Labour administration, which has now been renegotiated.
Labour’s contract paid bonuses to the contractor for issuing over 170,000 tickets whether or not the tickets were issued correctly. It gave an incentive to issue extra tickets with no penalties for the issuing of unfair tickets. A new contract, negotiated by the Conservative administration late last year, removed incentives for issuing over an arbitrary number of tickets and penalises the contractor where they issue tickets incorrectly.
Cabinet portfolio holder for Transport, Cllr Vlod Barchuk, said there was little doubt as to why Ealing had issued so many false tickets last year. He said:
“This is yet another legacy inherited from the previous Council. Labour’s contract actively provided incentives to the contractor to issue dodgy tickets and victimise motorists. It’s no surprise that so many Ealing motorists have brought successful appeals. The new contract is fairer as it puts the emphasis on tickets being issued correctly.”
“It’s a particularly disgraceful piece of spin by Labour’s Transport spokesman, Cllr Bassam Mahfouz, to have suggested last week that the high number of wrong tickets issued last year was our fault. At the same time he tried to take credit for stopping the tram, when Cllr Mahfouz and his party had actively supported it. How shameless and dishonest can you be?”
As the unwise Mahfouz himself says:
The Council should be ensuring that their parking wardens are only ticketing those who have genuinely broken local regulations.
Quite!
The young tyke has also being trying to claim that he had some kind of a role in killing the tram. Pull the other one Bassam.
Categories
Buses again
Twisty old Livingstone is on the bus theme again.
According to today’s press release from the Mayor TfL commissioner Hendy and Livingstone have given up their Sunday to promote the Mayor’s 10p bus fare cut which came into force today.
As we know the Mayor has shouted from the front page headline of the Londoner about this three times in three successive months.
It is good to see that this blatant piece of electioneering is being done on their own time. If Hendy and Livingstone want to give up their Sunday to get the Mayor re-lected fine. I hope that no-one in the Mayor’s press office picked up any overtime either.
None of the Mayor’s outpourings mention that two years ago off peak Oyster bus fares were 80p, they went up to £1 last year and this year they will be 90p. So off peak fares will be 12.5% higher than they were even after this supposed cut.
Categories
Disappearing Navy
Compare and contrast this story in the Telegraph this morning about the way the Royal Navy is disappearing before our eyes (click to enlarge graphic above) with this story from the Telegraph back in July which highlighted the 1,000 press people currently being employed by the MoD. Yes, 1,000 not 100.
I figure trading say 900 MoD press officers for keeping a fleet of minesweepers in service to protect our new carriers would be a good bargain.
I have been Navy-barmy since 1969 when HMS Fearless came to Lagos to accompany a visit from then Prime Minister Harold Wilson. My Dad, who was working out there for Barclays Bank, met a couple of Royal Marines and invited them over for dinner. In return they gave my brothers and I a tour of the ship and Royal Marines cap badges. You can imagine how this bowled over a 7 year old. HMS Fearless went on to serve as the command vessel for the amphibious assault on the Falkland Islands. Commissioned in 1965 she was only decommissioned in 2002.
Categories
Bar 38 fly-posters back
Over the last couple of days I have noticed 50 or so green and white posters appearing on lamposts between here and Hammersmith. They are promoting a club night at Bar 38 in Hammersmith this Friday. I had hoped that this had stopped after the pub chain’s company secretary, Andrew Green, wrote to say that he had put an end to this, see previous posting.
Previously these posters had named Bar 38. Now they only mention a website – at least a MySpace page. They have been quiet since early May when Green wrote to me. They seem to think it is OK to start up again messing up west London now 4 months has passed.
Although Brown had to work hard to keep his stage grin on yesterday as Livingstone pumped his arm it is clear that the PPP feud between Brown and Livingstone has definitely been been settled. Besides the mood music – such as Brown’s favourite sidekick, the corrupt Balls, joining in the Johnson baiting yesterday – the Brown team are putting themselves out to prop up the Mayor. If Brown is thinking of playing a long game with the general election then having a Tory mayor in place for that period would really make that plan look unattractive so I guess it is not surprising.
Giving Livingstone the main conference platform is one example of this.
This story (left) popped up whilst I was on holiday and provides another example. Whilst youth provision is properly a subject for minister Balls and for the Boroughs I really don’t see how the Mayor fits in. How does youth provision fit into the Mayor’s competences? It does not. Balls is quite happy to do a photocall with Livingstone to allow him to rebrand £40 million of an existing government programme as his own. The Mayor also seems to be happy to divert £20 million of LDA money towards this programme. Aren’t they meant to promote economic development rather than youth clubs? I’m not saying that youth clubs are a bad thing. Just that the LDA’s economic development pot seems to be being spent on anything rather than economic development.
Right now Labour ministers are twisting the City’s arm to get more cash for Crossrail but at the same time LDA budgets are spent on anything other than what should be their main priority – getting young Londoners good jobs in the City. Or am I missing something? Are Livingstone, Balls and co so patronising that they don’t think that London youth are capable of working in about the only world class industry that we still have left? What is the LDA doing? Investing in the Tate gallery, sponsoring the Tour de France and paying for youth clubs.
Categories
Brown cringe
Yesterday at the Labour conference Gordon Brown kept a fixed grin as Mayor Livingstone grabbed Brown’s arm at the end of his speech and held it aloft, see BBC footage here. He pretty quickly pulled it back down again. Talk about cringe-making.
Categories
Boris is selected by 79%
A few minutes ago the ConservativeHome website reported that the results of the Conservative primary to select a candidate to be London Mayor are as follows:
Boris Johnson: 15,661 (79.0%)
Victoria Borwick: 1,869 (9.4%)
Andrew Boff: 1,674 (8.4%)
Warwick Lightfoot: 609 (3.1%)
20,000 people took the trouble to vote. I hope that most of those will join the Conservative party in working to remove King Newt and replace him with Boris.
We know that the Labour party are worried about this development from the amount of flak that Johnson got at the Labour conference yesterday. Ed Balls, he of the dodgy housing expenses claim, called Johnson “a gaffe-prone, TV quiz-show clown – a Bullingdon club throwback to a bygone age”. Apparently although Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper earn about £240K a year they still bend the rules to claim £27K per year to pay their London mortgage by claiming that their Stoke Newington home, where their kids go to school, is in fact their second home. Let’s see, you work in London, your wife works in London, your kids go to school in London but your main home is in Yorkshire. Talk about hand in the till.
The BACKBORIS site is carrying this message from Bozza:
I’d like to thank Londoners for giving me this opportunity.
As I visited all of London’s 32 boroughs in the last few weeks, the message is loud and clear – King Newt’s days are numbered. Across London I’ve met people fed up with paying so much to city hall and getting so little in return.
The job of the Mayor is simple – to get people to work on time, to ensure people feel safe on the streets, to help people find a place to call home, to celebrate our diversity and to champion our success.
My determination to lead this city is stronger than ever. After seeing both the good and bad that London has to offer, I am committed to making London greater and standing up for every Londoner that invests so heavily in our city.
I want to be a Mayor for all Londoners, from Zone 6 to Zone 1. A Mayor that will listen, will learn and will lead.
Phil Taylor 