Category: Ealing and Northfield

The council has just published the European election results for the Borough, see here. They show a solid performance for Ealing’s Conservatives. More people voted for the Tories in 2009 than in 2004. The Tory vote share went from 22.8% to 25.6%, a rise of 2.8%. Across London, see posting below, the Tories lost 5% of their voters. In Ealing we held on to our voters and actually added a few (18 to be precise). This sounds unexciting but look at what happened to Labour.

Labour’s vote share went from 32.0% in 2004 to 25.7% in 2009, a drop of 6.3%. This means that Labour lost 7,354 votes or 28.3% of their total vote in 2004. Across London Labour lost 20% of their voters but they performed even worse in Ealing.

Labour still “beat” the Tories by 107 votes. A somewhat pyrrhic victory I think. In 2004 they beat the Tories by 7,479 votes. Once you take out the UKIP/Euro factor Ealing still looks like a safe Tory borough in spite of the negative effect of the Westminster expenses scandal. As soon as Gordon Brown sorts his head out and resigns we will have three Tory MPs in Ealing.

Up until now, unless you count the vile Keens, Ealing’s local Labour MPs have escaped censure in the expenses scandal. Being a Tory I don’t agree with them on many isssues but Pound, Sharma and Slaughter have been pretty good on the whole with the expenses thing it appears.

Today Stephen Pound gets it in the neck from the Daily Mail. I like Stephen. He is always jovial, courteous and very human. He turned up at last week’s annual council and he sought me out to help me with a matter concerning one of my residents. I don’t like the Mail. But the facts speak for themselves. It looks like Pound has either been over-claiming horribly for mileage or he spends 6 hours a day in the car on a regular work day. Sorry but there is something wrong here.

Pound’s main opponent at the next general election will be Ealing Tory councillor Ian Gibb. Ian was quick to follow up the Mail story this morning with his own blog posting here.

Only on Friday Pound was on the Today programme saying that MPs did not deserve sympathy, adding: “It’s nobody’s fault except our own.” Yep.

Last Thursday, whilst I was still on holiday in Virginia seeing the in-laws, I did this posting on Councillor Sharma’s Janus-like abilities when it comes to voting. It seems that this posting and the comments on it are hurting because I seem to have had more comments than usual and three new first name only commenters who are busily defending Sharma.

Someone called Jot has commented three times. He is obviously a believer though:

… since coming to power Mr Sharma has done more for the local area then any Conservative candidate could ever do.

His ardour may be explained by the fact that he commented from an IP address registered to the Houses of Parliament. All three comments were made early afternoon in what one might call prime working hours. Is Jot being paid by Councillor Sharma to make these comments? If so is that really what staff allowances are for? A new twist in the expenses saga maybe? Maybe he is just an intern. Perhaps someone can identify Jot for us in the comments?

Maria has only commented once and I can’t identify her from her IP address or e-mail. She may well be the genuine constituent she purports to be. Perhaps she can tell us who she is and what prompted her to write in the comments too?

Finally, and most interestingly, we have Bob. Bob is using an IP address registered to the London Borough of Ealing. He has commented four times in the last three days in prime working hours. Council employees really shouldn’t be surfing in working hours and it is unwise in the extreme for them to be commenting on political matters. The e-mail address Bob gave indicates that his surname is Sharma. Any relation? Please do tell.

I often don’t allow comments which are anonymous or only include a first name unless they are funny. These comments aren’t intended to be funny …

I missed this story in the Sunday Times over the weekend. It covers improvements to traffic congestion that my colleague David Millican is making and focuses on the removal of traffic lights in particular. Millican had a piece published on the ConservativeHome blog today that covered the background to this story, see here.

It takes a while for these things to get into the press sometimes. This was discussed at the last Cabinet meeting on 7th April. You can see the paper here with all the details.

As is usual with these things go straight to the table at the back. We are spending £200K on some small schemes to reduce traffic congestion. We know that the Residents’ Survey showed that congestion is a big issue for a large proportion of people in the Borough, see graphic below, this scheme is a start to tackling this important issue.

The topic is also covered on the Ealing Today forum here. Robert Worley heard the item being discussed on Radio Five on Saturday night. As ever grumpy old Eric Leach gets it wrong again saying: “The story is not on the Council’s web site”. The council’s press release, issued on April 8th, is here.

Last Tuesday Labour MP for Ealing Southall and local councillor, Virendra Sharma, made a rare appearance in the council chamber. Sharma claims to be much too busy to attend very often due to Parliamentary business. He also makes a right fool of himself when he does. Last Tuesday he was defensive to say the least as he was constantly challenged by the Tory group for his lack of attendance.

Yesterday, whilst the government lost the Ghurka vote in a large rebellion, Sharma managed to stick with the government whip and voted against the Ghurkas after having spoken and voted for them in our own council chamber. What a prat?

Ealing Council Leader, Cllr Jason Stacey, said:

Many Gurkhas attended the council meeting on the 21st April and they heard Mr Sharma speak in favour of their cause and all parties represented on Ealing Council voted to support the motion in favour of the Gurkhas campaign. How can an elected MP and Councillor speak and vote one way and then just eight days later do the complete opposite? Mr Sharma can try all he likes to wriggle out of this one but many Gurkhas in this borough will feel completely betrayed by an MP who has treated them with such contempt.