Category: Ealing and Northfield

The Gazette gives space to an opinion piece by Darra Singh this morning covering his role as Chairman of the Government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion. The piece is clearly a straight lift from the Department for Communities and Local Government website of his speech on 24th August. If the Gazette was a student it would be accused of plagiarism rather than laziness. They don’t say the piece came from Darra so we can assume it did not.

The Gazette also shows laziness of thought in its Voice of the Gazette piece. They suggest that “Recent reactions to mass migration as well as terrorist attempts on transatlantic flights show a worrying move by society to the right”. Apparently “This must be stemmed urgently”. The writer of this piece, the editor presumably, would be taken apart by any 6th form debater. It is lazy and insulting to equate racism with the right. If migration is currently a political issue there are many voices on the “right”, at least in business and commerce, that are all for it. Last year’s 7/7 massacre has pushed security up the agenda which is hardly a “right-wing” response, it is self-preservation.

I am sure that the Gazette gets lots of cranky calls from silly old racists. I have an old boy in my ward who usually makes negative references to coloured people as soon as he gets warmed up. I have yet to point out to him that people like him, with such heavy Eastern European accents, might be viewed in a similar light by some people. We are all different. Great!

The Gazette asks that Darra Singh “must do what it takes to stabilise and enhance multiculturism (sic)”. The list of people that are disowning multiculturalism now includes Ruth Kelly, Trevor Phillips, Michael Nazir-Ali and George Alagiah. Multiculturalism has not allowed us to take our differences and build an unassailable unity. This is the challenge for Darra’s commission. Maybe the Gazette needs to move on if it is to contribute towards the debate.

Bank holiday Monday is a strange day to see new policy initiatives floated. Today the Telegraph was reporting on a proposal to charge people for the rubbish they throw away, ostensibly to improve our recycling rates. They are reporting on an IPPR paper which was made available on a Sunday.

This really is the dumbest idea. There is enough fly-tipping in Northfield, Ealing and London without giving people an incentive to chuck rubbish out on the street.

For many people the only council service they actually see happening is rubbish collection. The council takes a couple of grand off them and they get their rubbish taken away. Maybe they will see a street cleaner occasionally. People are already disillusioned with the value for money provided by the council. This is a recipe for mass disengagement with local politics. Once people pay for this service they will soon vote to give the service to a private contractor and tell their council to bog off.

Tonight Darra Singh, our council’s chief executive, was interviewed on Radio 4’s PM programme. He has been appointed as chairman of the government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion. He was harried mightily by Eddie Mair to say something controversial. Although people like Ruth Kelly (not to mention Trevor Phillips, Michael Nazir-Ali and George Alagiah) are rowing back from multiculturalism Darra did a manful job of stonewalling him.

Note picture from Ealing Times website.

I went out with ECT this morning to understand their grading process better. See previous post.

I spent an hour with Jon Sharkey (senior ECT management), Steve Hodges (manages Ealing’s street cleaning) and Robby Kettle (local supervisor). We covered 16 streets.

The grading process is pretty uncontroversial and we agreed about what the grades should be. What became clear though is that they grade after cleaning. ECT’s grades are an internal quality control process rather than a process a customer might undertake. This perhaps explains the mismatch between residents’ perception and the grades ECT gives itself. Note though that a 5% failure rate (on Northfield figures November-August) in any manufacturing process would be considered 2/3 orders of magnitude too high.

One issue that came up was cleaning around parked cars. Apparently officers are looking at parking restrictions. This is just mad and residents will hate it. We need to work out how to persuade residents to leave a margin of about a foot when they park on a street cleaning day. This assumes that residents know when their road is due to be cleaned. One of our manifesto pledges was to put signs on all roads indicating when they would be cleaned. One thing is for sure: residents cannot hope to get their roads cleaned properly if they park right up to the kerb on the day their street is cleaned.

Mark Nicholson, the Conservative candidate for Ealing Southall at the last election, has been engaging in some extra-curricular activity. As secretary of the Bow Group, a right of centre think tank, he has been looking at the education field and has published a
paper entitled “A for Effort, D for Results” yesterday.

He points out that education spending increased 54% in real terms between 1997 and 2004. That is great but much of it was wasted in excessive public sector inflation because teacher numbers only went up 9% between 1997 and 2006. How depressing. All the time remember that school numbers have been falling.

Worse than this much of the increase has been wasted on the bureaucracy.

• Under 5s up 88% Good
• Primary up 40% OK
• Secondary up 49% OK
• Bureaucracy up 77% REALLY CRAP

It is a shame that our superannuated MP, Piara S Khabra, cannot make the same quality of contribution to public debate. He has not bothered to speak in parliament since November last year and has restricted himself to questions since then.

ECT, our street cleaning contractor in Ealing, have today kindly sent me a summary of their assessments in Northfield since the start of November last year until yesterday.

StreetCleansing.pdf

On the face of it everything seems rosy. They have done around 900 assessments. About 1/3 are grade A and most of the rest are grade B with a small minority of assessments worse than grade B. When a street is assessed as being worse than grade B it gets special priority.

These grades were set by the Environmental Protection Act 1990. You can see photos of what they mean in practice at the DEFRA site.

I do think that there is some kidology going on here. The grades are very demanding. If this report said 1/3 of streets were grade B and 2/3 were worse we might think that this was a fair assessment.

Ealing council’s Director of Street Environment, Joe Tavernier, says: “Each street in the borough, and therefore every street in Northfield Ward, is scheduled to be cleaned at least once a week. The busiest thoroughfares in the borough are actually scheduled to be cleaned several times a day. Street cleansing frequency therefore varies from several times a day to, at least, once a week. In all instances the output standard is defined as the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA) grade A. This translates as free from litter.”

He may have convinced himself but he has not convinced me.

I have requested that ECT takes me out when they do their assessments so that I can get a feel for whether they are being objective.

Darra Singh, our council’s Chief Executive, is profiled in the Society pages of today’s Guardian. He has been appointed to be the chairman of the government’s Commission for Integration and Cohesion.

At the last council meeting it was announced that Darra’s remuneration for this activity would be split between the Mayor’s charities and Ealing council itself. We pay Darra a whole heap of cash and I would rather he was fulltime really but I think that the commission will be well led.

By the way the only time I look at the Guardian is to look at how stupidly thick and expensive their public sector jobs pages are on a Wednesday. If public bodies were not pouring £100Ks a week into Guardian Society the paper would go out business tomorrow.

At last night’s Cabinet meeting Ealing’s new council got on with its maifesto delivery programme by moving forward with the following programmes:

• alley gating
• Showcase Streets
• free garden waste collection and cardboard recycling.

In Friday’s local papers they covered the fact that Ealing council has managed to take two direct debit payments from people this month (see Ealing Times story). This is a good old fashioned cock up. Someone pressed the wrong button and an old file got sent to the direct debit people (BACS). This will cause a lot of people to scratch their heads and moan about the council and a few will incur bank charges as a result of going overdrawn. The council sent the money straight back and has promised to reimburse anyone who incurs these charges. Fair enough. Some people have pointed out that the council will benefit from interest on the money. Yes, probably, but the amount is likely to be more than used up in compensating people and the extra admin involved.

I would quite like to know who pressed the wrong button but the officers close ranks in cases like this and are unwilling to give up the name. They are probably right in this case as it sounds like it was just finger trouble! Council leader Jason Stacey did the right thing by publicly apologising at the start of the council meeting last Tuesday.

Another story both papers covered was the proposed increase in allowances for all councillors including Jason. Although Jason’s allowance is going up considerably it will still only be £38,950 compared to a recommendation from the Association of Local Government that leaders should get £51,191. See Ealing Times story.

Although I work with and admire our chief executive, Darra Singh, and our executive director for finance, Richard Ennis, it is worth pointing out that Darra probably earns 4 times what is proposed for Jason and Richard probably earns 3 times Jason’s allowance. Whilst Jason was standing up to apologise Darra and Richard sat there and watched. Quite right as they are not councillors and not entitled to speak. But maybe Jason earns his cash too!