Category: Ealing and Northfield

I am ashamed to admit that after living in Ealing for almost 20 years that I saw my first performance by the Ealing Symphony Orchestra last night. What a fool! They were great. I hadn’t really noticed them before until the Mayor, the lovely Ealing version Diana Pagan, not the horrid London version, had some tickets and I was quickest to say that I would take them. It is a good sized band and their conductor, John Gibbons, was impressive if you ignore the fact that he made his first entrance and then realised that he had left the right score in the car.

Although many will have come across Rodrigo’s Adagio from his Concierto de Aranjuez before, it is one of those Classic FM standards, the rest of the programme was very fresh and well chosen. John Adams’ The Chairman Dances from Nixon in China was a demanding piece, well executed. It was great to hear the Adagio in the context of the whole concerto with a good young guitar soloist, Morgan Szymanski. A piece by Karl Jenkins called Passacaglia was written as a memorial and was a moving, short string piece. Finally, they did Malcolm Arnold’s 1st Symphony. It was perhaps a demanding finale for the audience and it is not the kind of thing I would play for myself but it was an insight into the dark side of a composer who is usually thought of as being a film composer.

Anyway I will definitely be going again to see ESO again. At £10 a performance it is a steal. Although last night’s programme was all 20th century don’t be put off, they do quite a mixture. They are playing again locally in February and May, see programme. Go and see them.

A vaguely local figure appeared in the Evening Standard yesterday. They reported speculation that Rupa Huq might end up as the Labour candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow, George Galloway’s seat. Local you ask? Kind of.

The local bit is that she is a governor at Little Ealing Primary School which happens to be the school where I am a governor too. We both started at the same time last autumn.

She stood as a Labour candidate in the Chesham & Amersham seat in May 2005 where she came 3rd with 14% of the vote. I think that counts as a sound kicking. I guess the reason that Rupa, Cambridge-educated, Labour BYT, is a school governor in the Ealing Southall constituency is pretty obvious – see Monday’s posting.

Rupa is an academic, a sociology lecturer at Kingston. Her area seems to be yoof culture. I thought it was a bit seventies being a sociology lecturer but it looks like she is retraining as a media studies lecturer so I guess that is progress.

Rupa has her own blog so make your own mind up.

You may wish our MP, Piara Khabra, MP for the Ealing Southall constituency which includes Northfield, happy birthday but you might wonder what he is doing as an MP. I know that we are not supposed to be ageist any more but what on earth was he doing getting elected last year as an 80 year old? Didn’t it occur to him that there were younger, more energetic people available who could fill his shoes, or did he feel that Labour talent was so thin on the ground that he should soldier on as an MP at a time in life when many people are thinking of stopping driving and moving into smaller homes.

Anyway happy birthday Piara Khabra 82 today.

According to the www.theyworkforyou.com website he has done nothing since July in Parliament.

Delivering leaflets this week I came across a couple of fly-tips and decided to test out the fly-tipping service. I have had cause to phone them before but I have never before systematically checked what they do.

On Tuesday I saw builders rubble in Waldemar Avenue and Derwent Road. I called them both in. On Wednesday afternoon when I went out leafleting again I noticed that the Waldemar Avenue fly-tip, about 6 yellow bags of builders rubble, had gone, but the Derwent Road one was still there. I was doing other things on Thursday but I went out leafleting for the last time on Friday lunchtime and the Derwent Road fly-tip, this time about 8 bags of rubble, had gone too.

The service is not perfect. But it works. If you have a fly-tip in your street then call 020 8825 6000 and it will probably be gone the next day. I know it is a pain but if we all work together we can clean up the neighbourhood.

I am on holiday for the next five days so I will be offline until Thursday 9th November.

The re-organised children and young people service has just gone through a large scale Annual Performance Assessment the results of which are published today, see link. This is run by CSCI and Ofsted. A whole load of people pile into this including the Audit Commission, DfES, Youth Justice Board, Health Care Commission and the Adult Learning Inspectorate.

The list above shows how wastefully governed we are but at least they try to co-ordinate all of this meddling in one overall exercise.

The council has improved in this area to the point that it is getting Good and Excellent grades for this service:

The report says:

The services which the London Borough of Ealing provides for its children and young people are consistently above minimum requirements. There is a clear track record of improvement in all areas of its work and in most [areas] Ealing performs better than comparable authorities. The authority works well with its partners to make sure that services are appropriately targeted at those who need them most, and in response to consultations with young people, seeks to deliver them in a coordinated, seamless way. There has been a concerted effort to tackle areas of weakness identified in last year’s APA and there are clear signs of improvement.

There is still room for improvement though and the APA identified 12 areas of improvement:

• the slow rate of referall of young people to CAMHS (mental health services)
• the lack of timely assessments for young offenders with substance misuse problems
• the number of re-registrations on the child protection register
• the lack of timeliness of reviews for looked after children
• attainment at Key Stages 1 and 2
• attainment of Somali boys
• the number of permanently excluded pupils in alternative tuition for more than a year
• the lack of transition plans for children with disabilities aged 14
• participation in looked after children reviews
• over representation of black and minority ethnic young people in the criminal justice system
• the involvement of Asian young people in the Youth Forum
• funding for the youth service

Tomorrow would have been the 15th birthday of Victoria Climbie. She had first lived in Ealing after being brought to England from her home in the Ivory Coast via France. Ealing social services failed to intervene after being told by a relative that Victoria was being abused.

We know what the stakes are.

It is perhaps unfair of me to keep criticizing Benedict Moore Bridger and the Ealing Times. The paid for local paper, the Gazette, is perhaps even worse in terms of accuracy and bias but it refuses to go online so it is hard to rebut. That said the Ealing Times is online so he who lives by the sword …

Today the online version of the Ealing Times has a story covering a report by the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate, part of the Department of Work and Pensions, on Ealing’s housing benefit payments service.

Sometimes Ben exaggerates and sometimes he just repeats their press release without showing any understanding of what he is talking about.

The headline of the Times piece is: “Benefits department must reverse ‘deteriorating performance’”. The actual report says: “The inspection focused on the claims processing aspects of London Borough of Ealing’s benefit delivery as it had reported deteriorating performance for processing changes of circumstances during 2005/06.”

MB’s piece says: “A DAMMING report into Ealing Council’s housing benefits service has blamed poor IT equipment and staff errors for a massive backlog of claims.” The actual report says: “Although London Borough of Ealing failed to meet the Department for Work and Pensions minimum requirements for the average time taken to process new claims and changes of circumstances its performance was improving. The standard of verification of claims was good.”

The actual report says: “In 2005/06, London Borough of Ealing administered some £163.8 million in housing benefits, about 18.6% of its gross revenue expenditure.” BM uncritically repeats the 18.6% figure without understanding that the £163.8 million is provided by DWP not Ealing. Ealing’s responsibility, strangely maybe, is just to do the administration, but DWP pays the bills. To express the benefits payments as a proportion of Ealing spending is plain nonsensical.

Our benefits service could be better and its improvement is a priority for the administration. Meanwhile some of our local journalists could sharpen up too.

From today Ealing residents don’t have to pay for the pink garden waste sacks. See council website.

This year the new Conservative administration in Ealing has made £2.8 million available to improve environmental services in Ealing. The Conservatives said at the local elections that you could go green by voting blue and the free pink sacks are one small part of delivering on that pledge.

Just becasue they are free though don’t be greedy! They are biodegradable so there is no point in having 200 rotting away in your shed.

Last Thursday the House of Commons published a breakdown of MPs’ expenses. On the whole this shows that Ealing’s three Labour MPs are fairly well behaved in the area of claiming expenses.

They all claim pretty much up to the maximum of £104K for their office expenses. I personally think that this kind of spending by MPs should make sure that our Government is better scrutinised so I don’t have much argument with it. This allows you to employ 2 or 3 good people to do research and manage your postbag.

Stephen Pound, Ealing North, only claimed £277 for living away from home last year. Andrew Slaughter, Ealing, Acton & Shepherd’s Bush, only claimed the London supplement of £2,360 and Piara Khabra, Ealing Southall, did not claim anything. Hurrah! Top marks for Ealing MPs in this area although it would be surprising if there were big bills in this area.

On the other hand Joan Ryan, Under-Secretary of State for nationality, citizenship and immigration, is also MP for Enfield North. Maybe she feels that divorce affect immigration process. It’s also important to note a tube home to Enfield North is beneath her dignity. Somehow she manages to claim near the maximum housing allowance at £19,333. So I guess we should be grateful to our own MPs.

Local MPs are also pretty modest with their travel expenses:

• Stephen Pound, Ealing North, £4,431
• Andrew Slaughter, Ealing, Acton & Shepherd’s Bush, £2,391
• Piara Khabra, Ealing Southall, £3,007

All three Ealing MPs spent a bit writing us letters:

• Stephen Pound, Ealing North, £4,181
• Andrew Slaughter, Ealing, Acton & Shepherd’s Bush, £6,358
• Piara Khabra, Ealing Southall, £1,735

Piara Khabra’s level of spending in this area might be so low as to suggest a lack of activity! Indeed our octogenarian MP for Ealing Southall has not done anything at Parliament since last July. See TheyWorkForYou.com. I nicked the retro 50s style black and white photo, left, from the Labour website.

Finally, Piara Khabra scored another zero on the IT front. I guess at 81 all that IT stuff is a bit much. We will be celebrating Piara Khabra’s 82nd birthday on 20th November.