Category: Ealing and Northfield

No wonder that the Ealing Today forum is so quiet when it is dominated by the frequent complaints of Ealing’s leading miserablists Arthur Breens and Eric Leach.  Their latest group moan is directed at the restoration of Walpole Park, Ealing’s most used public park which is used by 15% of all respondents to the residents’ survey.

Somehow Leach can reconcile complaining about the state of the fountains and the council finding the money to fix them from the Heritage Lottery Fund (£2.4 million) and Section 106 contributions from the Dickens Yard development (£2 million).  He calls the later “obscene”.  Leach wants new toilets. He will get those too.  

If you look at the overall master plan for the park it delivers rather more than renewed waterworks.  It delivers a gracious park that will serve as an elegant setting for the Soane house which is unarguably the most architecturally important building in the borough.  The current park is a mish mash which has built up over time ignoring the relationship between the house and the park and destroying views with a random collection of structures.  Under the Tory administration we did some small works such as removing the redundant stage and replacing paths. The master plan will go much further.  

Is it extravagant? Maybe.  The master plan is a reasonable list of things to do with the money if Leach and co. care to read it.  Walpole Park has been listed grade II by English Heritage since 1987 see here.  The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is picking up the largest part of the bill.  Their funds can only be spent on heritage so  I congratulate the council in bringing this sum to Ealing to improve our most important park.  Would the glum boys have Heritage Lottery cash spent on something else? Somewhere else? Again the Section 106 funds for improved parks?  What is wrong with that?

Leach’s misery mate Breens asks “where did this grand idea come from?”. I can tell him that it was the last Conservative administration in Ealing.  One of our last acts as an administration was to sign off this Heritage Strategy which clearly identified Pitshanger Manor and Walpole Park as our highest priority.  It was this clear-sightedness and willingness to invest in the Borough’s heritage assets that encouraged HLF to assist with this project.  Both the former leader, Jason Stacey, and I worked hard to push these projects forward and the current Labour administration is more than happy to carry them on.  I have no problem with that.  If glum and glummer want someone to blame they can blame Jason and me.  No problem.  

On Friday 2nd September Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma wrote to me to “vehemently deny” allegations that he had received a £5,000 illegal donation from Indiatourism towards his victory party on 23rd May. Sharma’s denial was narrowly drawn and failed to explain his function at all which might have reassured his constituents. Therefore I asked him for futher details, see below:

Dear Mr Sharma,

Thank you for your kind reply.

In order for people to understand the background I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions for me:

– Did a party to celebrate your election victory take place at Monsoon on the evening of 23rd May 2010?
– If so how many guests were present?
– What was the rough overall value of the function? £10 per head? £20 per head? What was included? Food? What kind? Drinks? Was there a pay bar?
– Was it an official constituency event? A private party thrown by a supporter? Please explain.
– Were tickets sold? If so what was the asking price? How many were sold? Was it invitation only?
– Please provide a breakdown of all costs.
– Please provide a breakdown of all income.

I am sure that if you lay out all of the facts associated with this party clearly it will put people’s minds at rest.

Thank you in anticipation.

Yours,

Phil Taylor
Ward Councillor
Northfield Ward
London Borough of Ealing

As of 9:34pm this evening it has been three weeks since I raised this very reasonable list of questions with Virendra Sharma. It is a shame he refuses to explain what happened.

In the Gazette this week Ealing North MP Stephen Pound talks about the proposed boundary changes:

My initial delight at the prospect of just about the safest Labour seat in the known universe is tempered by the fact that my home ward, Hobbayne, will be ripped untimely from its natural home in Ealing North and cast away to the new and heavily blue-tinged central Ealing constituency.

I will not even be able to vote for myself if these proposals are approved and as one who takes some measure of pride in always having lived in the area I represent this is as wormwood and gall to me and leaves a bitter taste.

I am sure that Pound has enough Bible learning to know he was quoting the Book of Lamentations 3:19 from the Old Testament which is attributed to the sad, moany old prophet Jeremiah.

Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

Pound is being somewhat hysterical I think to compare his being mildly discomfited by not living in his newly drawn safe Labour seat of Greenford and Northolt with the Babylonians destroying Jerusalem and burning King Solomon’s Temple to the ground, which had stood for approximately 400 years.

Pull yourself together man. I am sure that the majority of Hobbaynians will be singing Hosannas to the Highest for their deliverance.

Go and see the new skate park at Gurnell Grove on Sunday. They are having an opening event from 10am to 5.30pm run by the Ealing Skatepark Association, the enthusiasts who helped the council to put this project together. See details here and here. Congratulations to Piers Leigh and his fellow enthusiasts for getting to where we are now.

It is somewhat sick making to see the Ealing Labour Group trying to own this project since it was Labour activists who scuppered the original Elthorne park site and delayed the project for a year, see here. The old Tory administration worked with the skaters and really pushed this project along. It was Ian Gibb and I who signed off this project with much support from the FORMER leader Jason Stacey (he hates me calling him the old leader).

With this tweet Labour’s Cllr Bassam Mahfouz demonstrates that he does not understand the service that he is in charge of. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the title.

When the council works out participation rates for re-cycling it sends a man or woman with a clipboard down your street. They tick the number of re-cycling boxes or pink re-usable bags outside the houses in your street. This number gets divided by the total number of dwellings to calculate a participation rate. When Mahfouz says only 25% use the service he misunderstands completely.

We use the garden waste service 3 or 4 times a year. The rest of the year everything goes in the compost bin. It is only when we have a big day in the garden and the compost bins (we have two big ones) get filled up that we start on the re-cycling bags. It is unlikely that we would have ever have registered in any survey of participation.

This is the greenest approach. The bulk gets composted. Peaks get handled by the re-cycling service. Re-cycling all garden waste is pretty dumb. Carting around stuff that can be composted in your back garden and used there is silly.

Labour’s new charge will change my behaviour. Instead of using the garden waste service 3 or 4 times a year I will simply bag up my excess in black sacks and leave it out for the bin man.

Mahfouz’s changes will break something that works, reduce the recycling rate in the borough and cost money in additional land fill tax. Labour needs to think again. Threatening people that the only alternative is fortnightly collection of rubbish is just a form of bullying.

It is worth noting that the council has done well with its new contract for waste, street cleaning and grounds maintenance. It makes good a rather poor contract made by the previous Labour administration when one of the executives of the contractor was a Labour cabinet member. As a result the council is due to save £3.5 million from this contract. The Labour cabinet has decided to snatch another £1.1 million. They are pressing too hard on this universal service. They should look elsewhere and stop threatening people.

A positive approach would be to educate people about compost bins and offer a free and easy system for collecting excess. This would save the council money and maximise the best possible re-cycling – composting your own waste and re-using at home without any transport. It does involve some heavy spadework every six months or so though! The £40 wheelie bins will ingrain a bad habit of “re-cycling” all garden waste.

At tonight’s cabinet meeting the Labour council agreed their £1 million garden tax and the Tory group issued the following press release:

Labour Announces £1 Million Garden Tax

Ealing’s Labour Council will impose a £1million garden tax by charging residents £40 a year for a fortnightly garden waste collection.

Cllr David Millican, Conservative Group Leader, said:

“It is outrageous that Labour will charge £40 a year to collect our garden waste and then only fortnightly. This is a Labour choice and not a Conservative choice.

Our borough is the Queen of the Suburbs and we want to encourage more people to improve their gardens and do their bit for the environment. This £40 tax will stop a lot of people recycling their garden waste.”

Labour’s has chosen to implement this tax as they say it will remove the cost of the garden waste collection from the Council Tax payer who does not benefit from the use of the service (i.e. those without a garden). However, this is nonsense. Is Labour really saying that that people without children should not be paying for schools?”

There has been a lot of discussion of this move on the www.actonw3.com forum and the www.ealingtoday.co.uk forum. On the later you can see contributions from Labour’s environment chief, Bassam Mahfouz, and the old leader of the council, Jason Stacey, who put in the current system which works and most people really like.

Reports of the death of deference have been greatly exaggerated apparently. Yesterday MPs got to see the proposed Boundary Commission changes at noon. The Electoral Commission only let the public see them at midnight.

The Boundary Commission’s embargo was destroyed by the Guido Fawkes blog publishing the whole thing at 3:04pm yesterday afternoon. Quite right. The Boundary Commission was very silly. Their job is not to bend at the knee to MPs. The people pay. The people should see first. Note to Boundary Commission: This is the 21st Century.

The result for Ealing looks very interesting, if you are a political nerd like me. The maps of the five proposed constituencies that touch Ealing are listed below:

• Ealing
• Greenford and Northolt
• Hammersmith and Acton
• Southall and Heston
• Wembley and Perivale

If these changes stick Ealing residents will not feel much has changed I suspect even if 9 wards have a new MP.

The Ealing constituency is a gift to Angie Bray. Overnight she has a safer looking seat. To give you a feel the constituency would have 19 Tory councillors, 6 Labour and 2 LibDem if the current voting patterns were repeated in 2014.

The new Greenford and Northolt seat would be easily in Stephen Pound’s grasp if he wants it. He will be coming up to his 67th birthday in 2015. This will be another safe seat probably with 19 Labour councillors, 4 Tory and one independent if the current voting patterns were repeated in 2014.

The relatively youthful Andy Slaughter, he will be 54 in May 2015, looks like a shoo-in for the Hammersmith and Acton seat proposed. Again, on paper, this looks like a pretty safe Labour seat with 18 Labour councillors, 9 Conservative councillors and 3 LibDem councillors if the current voting patterns were repeated in 2014. It would be foolish though to underestimate the power and enthusiasm of the Hammersmith and Fulham Tories who will dominate the Blue team in this new seat. Slaughter may well be in for a rough ride.

Virendra Sharma would probably get the fabulously safe seat of Southall and Heston. At the next election Alan Keen, MP for Feltham and Heston, and half of the Vile Keens duo, will be 78. Sharma will be a relatively sprightly 68. To give you a feel for how safe this seat would be 27 out of 27 councillors would be Labour ones if the current voting patterns were repeated in 2014.

Perivale residents will perhaps feel more estranged from Ealing in their new home of Wembley and Perivale which is a new version of Barry Gadiner’s Brent North constituency. This looks like a potentially safe Labour seat where 16 out of 24 councillors would be Labour ones if the current voting patterns were repeated in 2014, leaving 4 Tory and 4 LibDem. It is worth noting that before 1997 Brent North was a Conservative seat held by Rhodes Boyson so there may be room for upsets but the demographics have been consistently moving against the Tories for years now in this area. Gardiner will only be 58 in 2015 so might have another term or two in him.

I can’t see any of the local MPs being particularly upset about these proposals however much Stephen Pound may huff and puff about how complex it is. He would much rather the whole thing didn’t happen and the Tories had to overcome a 10% hurdle to get into power. It will though introduce a lot of upset for the local parties which will have to reorganise themselves. Ealing will encompass one complete constituency and four partial ones. It will make political organisation much harder and I am sure that people in parts of the borough will feel really neglected. For instance Ealing Tories are very unlikely to devote much effort to the Southall wards. The Ealing CLP will feel like a very small band of brothers. I don’t see an ambitious young man like Labour’s Bassam Mahfouz standing in Ealing in 2015. Perivale will look north, not south across the A40. For those who feel disenfranchised by first past the post in Ealing that feeling will only deepen. Ealing Borough will remain no place to be a LibDem. I suspect that the changes will be a good thing in the long run. They should give political hacks like me the opportunity to explain the changes to people and to engage with new groups. We’ll see.