Author: Phil

Categories
Health, housing and adult social services

Labour councillor draws attention to NHS mismanagement

TownhallThe only excitement at last night’s full council meeting was Labour Councillor Greenhead quoting my blog.

She quoted from a paragraph that I had written in my report of the last Health, Housing and Adult Social Services Panel.

Greenhead complains about my robust turn of phrase but refuses to acknowledge that the Labour government has made massive cuts to preventative health services right here in Ealing in spite of the best efforts of our own PCT. This year Ealing PCT was planning to spend £5 million on new preventative health measures. Over the summer, as a result of the current financial crisis in the NHS, Ealing PCT’s entire budget was top sliced by 3% and instead of having £5 million to spend on new services they were looking at taking £6 million out of their current spending plans.

Now that Greenhead has highlighted my “insensitive and inappropriate comments” I would be interested to hear her views on local NHS cuts which are actually destroying services designed to help Ealing people make better choices and improve their own health.

The full paragraph was:

Ruth Barnes gave a presentation on health inequalities and pointed out that health inequalities are Ealing PCT’s number 1 priority. That is fine but it is a bit obvious that those that make all the right choices all their lives, whether it is in education or health, will have better outcomes than those that make crap choices all their lives. The presentation kept referring to the good outcomes in places like Hangar Hill where homes cost about £2 million. If you live in one of these you have probably been making cute decisions all your life and you will probably have a long life. If you follow the inequality logic to its natural conclusion you end up pushing all of your health resources at people who are basket cases. It does seem though that the PCT is responding to this priority in the right way with behaviour changing initiatives – unfortunately these are just the services that they are having to freeze or cut due to Labour’s mismanagement of the health service.

No amount of huffing and puffing from Labour councillors is going to hide Labour’s mismanagement of the health service.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Mayor wants Waste for London

The Mayor today reconfirmed, in answers to Angie Bray AM, that he would seek amendments to the bill currently going through Parliament to allow him to take over London’s waste disposal and create a pan-London waste disposal authority.

This of course would be a disaster for London. The Mayor sees the ultra-wasteful and expensive Transport for London as a model. The LFEPA model, with its strong representation from London Boroughs, is one that the Mayor will not countenance.

The cost of waste disposal to council tax payers is already set to spiral out of control due to the Labour government’s land fill tax and the EU land fill directive. We can guarantee that allowing Livingstone loose on this subject with our chequebooks will be excruciating.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Funny freeze

The Mayor today announced a 29p a week increase in council tax today. Being a serial dissembler (liar to you and me) he opens his press release with some irrelevant waffle about the Olympics tax not changing and then slips in that the precept will go up 5.2% next year. Most people express rises in percentages so that they are comprehensible. Not the London Liar who uses the “29p a week” construction to confuse you.

Just to recap in 1999/2000, the year before the Mayor came into being, I was charged £129.07 for the Met and £45.95 for the London Fire Brigade. Next year the bill will be £506.03. So the Mayor’s charge has gone up 2.89 times in eight years. Does this mean 2.89 times more police? No.

For press coverage follow link.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Ealing Times = London Mayor

It looks like the Ealing Times comes at some issues from the same direction as our beloved Mayor. They reported yesterday that Roger Evans, Tory transport spokesman on the London Assembly, is in hot water for an unguarded comment on his blog about free bus passes for young people on London Buses.

Evans said:

Given the cost of this concession, the levels of antisocial behaviour and the lack of control over the issuing and checking of passes, I will be recommending abolition – if asked.

The Ealing Times article fails to mention the cost of the scheme. These concessions have cost £55 million a year which is an awful lot of money that is not targeted at the poorest in society. The Mayor loves to trumpet these give aways without honestly talking about their costs. The costs have to be winkled out in questions because the Mayor only ever talks about benefits, not costs.

In addition to the cost many people feel intimidated by freeloading youngsters on the buses and the Police are finding that young criminals are using the bus system to do more crime as a result of these free passes. At the very least there should be a 9pm curfew for them. We pay twice if we let young people on our buses for free and then they scratch every window on the top floor with graffiti.

Only yesterday I had to restrain myself from leaping out of my car to remonstrate with a youngster who threw a bottle out of the top floor window of a double decker. The Mayor’s taxi bill is so large I can well believe that he rarely has to deal with foul mouthed youngsters on buses as I had to in Greenford recently.

I don’t suppose the Ealing Times has made the connection with their own story the previous week.

On September 17 this year, a 22-year-old man from Hayes was punched and kicked to the floor by a 30-strong gang on the 207 bus in Ealing, at 5.30am. His nose was broken, he suffered a deep cut to his eyelid which required nine stitches and he needed a further eye operation. The victim was off work for three weeks and on prescription pain medication for a month.

All the members of the MDP gang who attacked the man were eligible for free bus passes.

London Buses are subsidised to the tune of £100 millions. Again the Mayor keeps talking about buses but refuses to honestly address the subsidy we all pay. There is no way you can read TfL’s Statement of Accounts and work out what the bus subsidy is.

This year the Mayor increased his charge on us by 13.3%. For me this means that the Mayor’s charge is £481.02 this year. In 1999/2000, the year before the Mayor came into being, I was charged £129.07 for the Met and £45.95 for the London Fire Brigade. So the Mayor’s charge has gone up 2.75 times in seven years. Can you afford this Mayor?

Categories
Ealing and Northfield Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Good news on council tax

Writing in his weekly column today Ealing Council Leader, Jason Stacey, promises “to keep any increases as low as possible”.

One of the biggest risks to the council tax is the continuing greed and wastefulness of the London Mayor. As Jason says:

Whilst we will be showing restraint, we must remember that £288 of the council tax is totally out of the council’s control. This is the part that is determined by Ken Livingstone and the GLA. Last year Ken raised his part of the council tax by 13.5%, and he has more than doubled it since he became Mayor.

We will be doing everything we can to reduce the burden of any council tax increases for residents. I only hope Mayor Livingstone will show similar restraint!

Every time the Mayor tells you of some minor new freebie he is giving away just remember that in the seven years since the old regime started to be reformed to get ready for the London Mayor the precept has gone up 2.75 times.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Gazette now online

Ealing Gazette

The Ealing Gazette has joined the 21st century and gone on line. Well done! See link right.

I am not sure what their policy is with respect to keeping the online version up to-date. Today’s stories are not up on it yet.

They report that Andrew Slaughter is cutting and running from Ealing and going back to Hammersmith. He obviously does not fancy his chances of winning against Angie Bray in the new seat of Ealing Central and Acton. He won’t have much fun in the new Fulham and Chelsea seat where he will be up against the very successful Greg Hands.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield Policing

Northfield SNT Focus Meeting

SNT banner from Met site.jpgLast night we had the 3rd Safer Neighbourhood Team focus meeting. Sgt Elam was there along with his PC, Stuart Hedley. There were 6 reps from residents and traders associations plus Ricky Wright, our envirocrime enforcement officer and Cllr Millican and myself.

The team of four promised by the Mayor by the end of April (see his press release) finally materialised at the end of November. Only 7 months late. Such are pre-election promises.

The good news is that a third PCSO is due to start today and another PC in January to bring us up to the full SNT team strength of 6 (1 sergeant, 2 PCs and 3 PCSOs).

The accommodation issue is not yet settled. The latest plan is a shared shop unit on South Ealing Road with the Ealing Common team. Sounds good to me.

We spent most of our time examining the three priorities set by the focus meeting.

Drugs

At the last meeting we set reducing the levels of drug activity as the first priority. Although there are 3 potential hot spots in the area the team have only found one person in possession since they started operating in April. They make about 30 stops per week so after stopping almost 1,000 people they have found 1 person. The police officers thought that the problem may be more one of perception than reality.

Vehicle crime

Motor vehicle crime is the biggest single category of crime in the ward. In Q2 there were 61 incidents, it went down to 35 in Q3 and back up to 48 in Q4. There is quite a mix with everything from key scratching to satnav thefts. There is a particular problem with one individual slashing car tyres. It is perhaps more prevalent in the south of the ward where it neighbours Brentford. Most victims are residents. The Police are actively educating owners to try to reduce the incidence of this crime. The team have not nabbed any villains for car crime.

Graffiti

Since the team started eight young offenders have been caught. Most have been let off with a caution as this is the first time they have come to the attention of the Police. One individual should be getting an ASBO on Thursday. There was general agreement that the new graffiti service combined with an effective envirocrime protection officer, Ricky, and this effective police work was having a marked effect on graffiti in the area.

CCTV

Linda Massey, from Boston Manor Residents Association, has been championing a new style of cheap CCTV system and has been working with the shops in Boston Manor Parade. This was of great interest to the Northfield Traders rep where they are having a problem with vandals scratching glass.

Burglaries

There was a big growth in burglaries in the last quarter to 24. More worrying there were 14 incidents in the last two weeks. Sneak thieves talking their way into the homes of the elderly are included in this category. Luckily there has been no violence but everyone is warned to check the id of callers. Apparently there is a pair of women going around claiming to be from Age Concern. If you are vulnerable trust no-one.

Priorities

We had a conversation about resetting priorities. The number one priority should be burglary, followed by motor vehicle crime, followed by more general criminal damage including graffiti.

The next meeting is provisionally scheduled for 7.30pm at room upstairs at the Harvester on Boston Manor Road on 13th February.

Call Sgt Elam on 07879 888989 if you have any local crime issues or if you would like to attend the next focus meeting.

Categories
Communications disease Public sector waste

Newspaper job ads under threat

Online media news source BrandRepublic is today covering an idea from Conservative Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne:

Shadow chancellor George Osborne has vowed to move all public sector job ads from newspapers to a new official website if his party comes to power after the next general election.

This plan could result in newspapers, particularly The Guardian’s Wednesday Society section, losing around £790m spent by local and central government on job ads each year. The dedicated public sector website would only cost an estimated £5m.

This is a great idea as state bodies are typically not run by people who understand value for money. In the private sector you think very hard before spending out on job ads in the Sunday Times and the Guardian. You almost always go to the much cheaper and better targeted trade press first.

In local authorities, which are relatively small organisations with very standard needs, they place very expensive ads in the ST and Guardian without engaging brains.

It is the same for schools where the Times Educational Supplement is something like a £250 million business whose entire revenue is taken straight out of the education budget. The school at which I am a governor is just about to place its second ad in TES for a headteacher.

Not only would this measure stop the Guardian living off the state but Murdoch also. Double whammy!

Categories
Public sector waste

MPs and Parliament out of control

MPs asking for itAll the papers are full of the MPs want £100K story. Most people think that they are taking the Mickey. They may be worth larger salaries but they can’t have those AND large pensions AND generous allowances AND plush offices in Portcullis House (one of the most expensive offices ever built) AND long recesses AND free airport parking AND SO ON.

One way of controlling them would be to set a fixed budget, linked to inflation, for all of Parliament and its activities. MPs could then decide to have lower pensions or less support staff if they wanted to have higher salaries. They might decide to have less MPs or to relocate to a cheaper location. Everyone who manages a business or a part of the public sector has to submit to this kind of discipline. So should our MPs.

If you agree with me that MPs and Parliament as a whole should have to contain their spending within limits rather than just being able to vote themselves any salary and perks that they like, you might like to sign the petition that I have started at the Number 10 e-petitions site.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to fix the budget for Parliament and link it to inflation such that MP’s salaries can only increase if they save money elsewhere.

Follow link.

Categories
Communications disease Policing Public sector waste

Wasteful copper – vain too

NYP GazeeboDella Cannings is the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire. Clearly they have too much money to spend. She was the one who spent £28K on her private shower, see BBC story.

The latest is that her force have just spent £7,500 on an outdoor meeting area, a kite anchored over a bit of decking to you and me. See lovely picture left.

Apart from being wasteful this woman seems to be typical of modern public sector management types who want to get their picture all over the place. They are not very good looking on the whole which makes their vanity doubly tiresome. The worst thing is that these twerps even employ PR types to write stories about them into the bargain, see stupid press release.

Like a bunch of African chiefs the nomenklatura of British public life all want their own praise-giver paid for from the public purse.