Author: Phil

Currently across the whole borough 30% of our streets are not clean enough after the first clean. That is 30% on average for the last 22 months since the contract started in April 2012. There are also something like 4,000 missed collections a month. Every month for 22 months across the whole borough.

On Saturday I was canvassing in Willcott Road in Acton. A lady at the top end complained about repeated missed collections. A young man at the other end had the same complaint. I told them both the same thing. Obviously I would report it but it is only when the council gets a few complaints from residents that they do anything about it. No complaint, no problem.

Last week I enjoyed this piece from Sue Bourne on the actonw3.com website. She said:

The one thing that does annoy me is that when the bin men come round our street – or actually any of the local streets – they leave it looking filthy.. like the third world. So because the bin men patently dont give a stuff about our rubbish and leave it strewn everywhere I don’t think it encourages anyone else to care about keeping the streets clean .. it such a shame.

Again. If no-one reports it, nothing will happen.

If your road is not cleaned to a high standard. If a collection is missed. If recycling containers are thrown around. If the binmen leave a spillage and don’t clean it up. Complain. Call 020 8825 6000 and report it. It is slightly painful and long winded but a supervisor really will talk to the crew and they will most likely improve.

Just make the call.

In his customary first person way Labour’s Cllr Bassam Mahfouz has been trying to take credit for the continuing progress that the Borough is making in improving our roads. Of course none of this would be possible without the work of the previous Conservative administration in Ealing nor the finance provided by TfL as directed by Conservative London Mayor, Boris Johnson.

All of the big road projects in Ealing, outside straightforward road resurfacing, are paid for by Transport for London (TfL) Local Implementation Plan (LIP) funding. London Mayor, Boris Johnson, was elected in 2008 on a platform of “Getting Londoners Moving”. Part of Boris’s vision was to get traffic moving by sweeping away unnecessary traffic lights. Johnson decreed that the boroughs should be given much more flexibility in how they spent this LIP funding. No borough was more enthusiastic about taking up this offer than Ealing under the then transport spokesman, David Millican (now Tory group leader). He led an extensive consultation exercise that led to a raft of proposals that included the roundabout outside Acton Town tube station and the one at the top of Argyle Road. This work was kicked off in early 2009.

Not every scheme was taken forward but the experience gained and the LIP flexibility offered by the Mayor has ensured that the current wave of new roundabouts, at Church Road, at Atlas Road and on Acton High Street, can go ahead.

Before 2008 in London and 2006 in Ealing the transport authorities were locked in an anti-car dogma that not only slowed traffic down but did nothing for safety. Conservatives in City Hall and the Town Hall have made big improvements in our borough’s roads. It is good to see that Cllr Mahfouz is taking them forward temporarily. We will be happy to take up the baton again in May.

It seems that a shady far left group has hoodwinked ITV star Adrian Chiles into chairing their West London Question Time this coming Wednesday in Hammersmith. Chiles is billed as a “local parent”.

The event organisers say “Everyone is welcome especially parents,
governors and students”. In reality it will be a stage managed event, strictly for the left only. Note you can only ask questions in advance to @NCE2014. Who? More on that later.

The panellists don’t look too extreme – a children’s author, a council leader and a teaching union rep. But look more closely.

The children’s author is Michael Rosen who is a self-confessed fellow traveller with the Socialist Workers Party.

It’s no secret that for many years I was personally and politically close to the SWP and its forerunner the International Socialists. This meant that I read and sometimes wrote for your journals, I supported many of the campaigns you supported or initiated and over the years, I have been personally friendly with several of your prominent members.

The council leader is Ealing’s own Julian Bell who worked with the Ealing Southall MP (who employs him) to try to persuade a Southall school not to become an academy. They failed luckily.

Christine Blower of NUT is known to be a left-wing extremist.

The organiser of this event seems to be an anonymous front organisation called Towards a National Campaign for Education. Their website doesn’t identify any officers, members, etc.

A clue to who is behind all of this can be found on the event poster. The contact details give all away.

Nick Grant is a full-time employee of Ealing Council* who is paid the best part of £80K a year to be a full-time NUT union rep. He uses his time for activities such as co-founding the Anti Academies Alliance, “convening” the Ealing Alliance for Public Services, writing articles for the The Socialist Worker and organising strikes in Ealing’s schools.

So it seems clear to me that this will be a totally stage managed, extreme left wing event. If Adrian Chiles goes through with chairing it all he will do is lend legitimacy to Nick Grant and his SWP clique.

*The council officers have written to me to point out that Grant isn’t employed by the council directly. Technically he is employed by one school. The way the cost of his employment is divided between the Borough’s schools was not explained to me. The effect is the same. I will ask for clarification. I wonder how transparent and subject to scrutiny it is? Grant recently went down 50% time. Again the officers didn’t care to explain what proportion of this was a free gift to the NUT so that he could be a NUT NEC member.

Last night at Overview and Scrutiny Committee I tried to have a grown up discussion with Labour’s Bassam Mahfouz about the Recycling Rewards scheme, more about that later.

Mahfouz was his usual huffy self. His parting shot was to tell the meeting what a champion of food waste recycling he was. As we had been discussing participation in recycling we had the numbers in front of us from officers. I can only think he wasn’t that familiar with them or he wouldn’t have been quite so full of hubris. Whilst Cllr Mahfouz has been in charge of recycling in Ealing participation in food waste recycling has gone down. With champions like these, we don’t need …