Category: Ealing and Northfield

Labour are rolling out the Chameleon Party Political Broadcast again today. Follow link for a preview. It does seem a bit rubbish that Labour are wasting their national TV airtime on a cartoon. Even when they raise issues they are raising the 14 year old ERM exit after they have been in power for 9 years. Maybe they think that by reminding local election voters about supposed past Tory economic incompetence they will forget Labour’s incompetence in every area from prisons and unfettered immigration to the NHS.

Even the Tory incompetence slur is unsustainable if you review the facts:

• in 1992 John Smith and Gordon Brown were in favour of the ERM as were most of the chattering class economics commentators at the time
• interest rates hit 15% for less than a day, they were 10% the day before, 10.5% the day after, 9% a week later and 8% a month later
• the regime of monetary policy that Norman Lamont put in place after the ERM debacle was taken over by New Labour and given to the Bank of England and is the basis for Britain’s relative out performance ever since
• Gordon Brown, being the worst kind of partisan politician, will not acknowledge his predecessors and their permitting Brown and Ed Balls to meet with the Bank of England before they came to power to ensure economic continuity
• the ERM thing cost a lot less than is popularly imagined (ie £3.3 billion estimated by the Treasury see article)
• this figure is only slightly more than the £2 billion plus (see Scotsman or Times) that Brown allowed the Treasury to waste by selling our gold reserves early.

Maybe Labour should tell us how it is going to sort out the Home Office and make our young women safe from being murdered by foreign criminals with long records who seem to be to enter the country easily (and just disappear again after their prison sentences in the unlikely event that they are caught).

chiswickw4.com published some analysis of the Ealing local elections last week. See article.

It seems like there is all to play for. Off out canvassing now. The LibDems seem to have abandoned Northfield and the Labour activity seems pretty desultory. Either they are complacent and don’t think that they need to do much to win or they have given up already.

You might be interested in attending KRA’s public election meeting on Thursday at 8am at St John’s Church Hall. Most of the Walpole candidates should be there. Follow link for poster.

A conversation last night whilst out canvassing last night collided with an article in the Evening Standard today to create one of those moments of clarity that we are all hapless serfs kept in menial servitude by our government.

Last night I talked to a nice lady who was worried about schooling her young children. Her next door neighbour’s child had failed to get into the excellent primary school where I am a governor last September in spite of living around the corner. Now she and her husband were thinking of moving to find better schools although he had grown up in Ealing.

In today’s Evening Standard they reported on a Woolwich survey into the cost of moving. On average it costs £13,000 in London. By far the biggest part of this cost is stamp duty which Gordon Brown has ramped up excruciatingly to clobber the middle classes since Labour has been in power.

So our nice lady in Northfield not only has to persuade her husband to move out of his “manor” to be sure of good schools but they have to pay through the nose for the privilege.

David Cameron is treating voters with more respect than the Labour party. He launched the Conservatives’ Vote blue, Go green document today which shows how well Conservative local authorities have done in the environmental area and how much more they want to do in the future. Read for yourself how Conservative councils have the highest recycling rates and the cleanest streets.

The three Conservative candidates had a busy weekend canvassing in Northfield. The response on the doorstep has been very positive with very few people able to endorse the record of the current Labour council. Many people who would not consider themselves to be natural Conservatives have promised us their votes this weekend. People really don’t want the Tram and the deplorable state of the local environment and the high rate of council tax are big beefs.

A common misconception on the doorstep is that it is a safe Labour ward. The Parliamentary constituency is a safe Labour seat. Overall control of the council is a huge mountain to climb with Labour currently having 48 out of 69 seats. Northfield ward though is easily winnable by the Conservatives. Go look at the results of the last local election on the council’s website.

Labour had 39% of the vote whilst the Conservatives were on 34%. The Labour councillors who won last time only had around 1,200 votes each as opposed to the Conservative candidates who got around 1,100 votes. The Greens and LibDems were nowhere, getting around 600 votes each.

I was delivering leaflets this lunchtime to six roads adjacent to Northfield tube station (Blondin, Niagra, Bramley, Wellington, Julien and York). These are nice roads to live in. Near the tube, near parks, near shops. The council really lets them down though. They all have the same early 20th century street lamps. They all have the same broken pavements and unmaintained roads. There is lots of grafitti and dumped rubbish. The two nearby green spaces, Blondin and Bramley, have tarmac paths rather than flagged paths and the railings are either unpainted or are ugly chain link fencing.

The only bits of public infrastructure that are new are the controlled parking zone signs (these make the council money) and the expensive signs at the entrance to the green spaces identifying them as being run by Ealing council (the council advertising itself).

If the Conservatives are elected they will put £1.8 million straight into the environment immediately by reducing wasteful, unnecessary programmes such as Around Ealing. We will then add another £1.5 million a year to the environment budget. This will mean a £7.8 million uplift in spending on the environment over the next four year council term office. We would expect these roads to look a lot smarter under the Conservatives.

The Conservatives have been doing some research into the LibDems’ policy of local income tax to replace the council tax. They calculate that a typical working family living in London would face an additional bill of £1,446 a year.

According to Conservative research, Liberal Democrat councils in London already charge £221 a year more on Band D council tax bills than Conservative councils, and £53 a year more than Labour councils.

I think we can assume that we will not be seeing the LibDems majoring on local income tax in their leaflets over the next few weeks!