Category: Ealing and Northfield
The Guido Fawkes blog has picked up the story of Ealing Southall MP, Virendra Sharma’s £5,000 Indian government sponsorship deal. Guido has found a video of the party in question and even a copy of the cheque for £5,000 from India Tourism, see here.
The Northfield Safer Neighbourhood have put out the following warning this morning:
My cabinet papers arrived yesterday and when I flipped through them I didn’t really get excited about Item 12 – Environmental Services Contract – Service Improvements and Future Options. Read it and weep.
Tonight, working my way through them it dawned on me that this paper describes the stupidest decision the Ealing Labour group is ever likely to make. Charging residents a new £40 garden tax is electoral suicide.
Overall the move will rake in £1.1 million per annum although it will cost £720K to set up. More importantly it will probably see the borough’s hard won recycling rate go backwards by 1%.
The Tories warned of the implications of Labour’s shiny new contract back in July. Coming next, Labour rips up its manifesto and introduces fortnightly collections.
This change was thought up by some group of idiot accountants and middle managers. Labour should have had the sense to say no. Apparently not. Boom!
On Monday 22nd I blogged about allegations that Ealing Southall MP, Virendra Sharma, has been sponsored by the Indian government. I wrote to him that day as follows:
Dear Mr Sharma,
You will be aware of stories in The Indian Express and Pardes Weekly referring to a donation of £5,000 made to your 2010 election campaign by Indiatourism of
7 Cork Street , London WIS 3LH, essentially the government of India.I would be grateful if you could explain why this item is not recorded in the Parliamentary register of members’ interests under your name. You will appreciate that the sponsorship of a UK MP by a foreign government is just the kind of item that should be recorded in the register.
I would also be grateful if you could confirm that this donation was included in your return to the Electoral Commission regarding your election expenses.
Yours,
Phil Taylor
Ward Councillor
Northfield Ward
London Borough of Ealing
Since I wrote I have been looking into the Electoral Commission’s requirements for disclosure and apparently these end on election day so victory parties and their sponsors are not required to be disclosed to the Electoral Commission which seems a bit strange. There is still though a requirement to register the interest on the Parliamentary register of members’ interests.
As it happens I have just received a “vehement denial” from Sharma. We all know that it is the lie that gets you in the end, not the original offence. I hope for his sake he knows that his campaign/constituency party did not benefit from Indian government sponsorship or it will be curtains for Sharma.
Dear Cllr Taylor,
Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying to your email dated 22nd August 2011. I was out of the country and therefore not able to reply earlier.
I vehemently deny the false allegations that you refer to in your email and that have appeared in various media. I have never received a donation from Indiatourism and have therefore never been liable to make a declaration in the Parliamentary register of members’ interests.
I am in the process of obtaining legal advice in relation to this matter and would ask you not to repeat these false allegations.
Yours sincerely,
Virendra Sharma MP
I note that Sharma’s denial is narrowly drawn: “I have never received a donation from Indiatourism …”. If you don’t think that £5,000 is a big deal you should be aware that the campaign limit in the immediate period before the election for a constituency of the size of Ealing Southall is £10,387.90 and Sharma spent 98% of it. £5,000 is half of what he was entitled to spend.
I am sure that Sharma did not personally pocket £5,000. I would like to know how big this party was and who paid for it. I can feel another e-mail coming on.
Categories
Barclays puts things right?
I have just received the following e-mail from Barclays:
Dear Mr Taylor
Thank you for your e-mail of 1st September which has been forwarded to me as the Area Director for the South Ealing Branch.
Firstly, please accept my sincere apologies for not addressing the issue immediately. I fully understand your concerns and have taken appropriate action to ensure the pavement outside the branch is not used for parking
Our Suppliers have been contacted and expressly advised they are not permitted to park on the pavement and have ensured us they will notify their drivers. Additionally, our branch staff will ensure that suppliers and contractors are not parking their vehicles on the pavement, and are directed to appropriate parking areas.
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
Yours Sincerely
Nigel Taylor
Area Director
Heathrow
I hope that this marks the end of this spate of incursions on the footpath outside the bank. Please let me know if there are any more.
Categories
Barclays still in the wrong
Last week I chastised Barclays for letting G4S park their armoured van on the pavement outside their South Ealing Road branch. Although armoured vans have various concessions from obeying the rules that the rest of us road users have to observe they are still not allowed to mount the pavement and put pedistrians at risk.
Local resident Mark Vale reports that G4S have repeated their mistake of last week. See his post on ealingtoday.co.uk here. He allowed me to reproduce his photo above.
I have written again to Barclays today. I wrote last Thursday. They called on Friday to tell me it would get sorted. Clearly the message did not get through. Today I went into the branch to talk to them and wrote to the head of UK retail banking.
Barclays Bank on South Ealing Road has been misbehaving again, or at least their Los Angeles paving contractors have. Maybe I shouldn’t have a go at the last remaining high street bank branch on either South Ealing Road or Northfield Avenue but they need to learn the rules like everyone else and get off the pavement.
Today, I have written to Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma to ask what happened at the party held to celebrate his victory at the general election last May. According to an article in The Indian Express a contribution of £5,000 was made by Indiatourism, an arm of the Indian state. It is quite beyond me how this event helped to promote Indian tourism and even worse I can’t comprehend why a UK MP would want to take such a large donation from a foreign government. The story has also been covered by the local Pardes Weekly magazine, click image below to enlarge (find details at www.pancardseva.co.in).
Looking at the Parliamentary Register of Members’ Interests information at theyworkforyou.com I can’t see any indication that Sharma has declared this donation. I have asked Sharma why this item is not in the register of member’s interests and to confirm whether this amount was included in his election expenses. I can’t see how this party was not part of his election expenses. Sharma’s own facebook wall confirms many of the details along with the senior Labour figures who were dining out at the expense of the Indian government.
Phil Taylor 