Thanks to Ealing Times we now have Ealing TV.
Click left to see their report on the clearance of 33 Creighton Road by the council last week.
The Times’ Benedict Moore-Bridger is to be congratulated on what he has achieved with a simple camera and some pretty basic recording equipment.
The local press will never be the same again.
In the spirit of public participation AM Roger Evans is asking on his blog for the public to forward him ideas for questions to ask the London Mayor.
My suggestions to Roger are:
Building on the answers from the Mayor about TfL’s £78 million comms spending and its breakdown I would like to have a complete breakdown of all comms spending across the GLA and all the GLA family including LSCP, the Olympic bodies and so-called “programme budgets” within the LDA and the GLA itself for 2005/6 and budgets for 2006/7. This should include anything that has a London or London Mayor logo on it. The LDA for instance pay their £500K contribution to the Londoner from programme budgets not overheads. I suspect there are other bodies buried in the programme budgets.
Another question I might ask the LDA is to categorise their programme budgets as follows for last year and the budgets for the current year:
The Association of London Government distributes about £30 million in grants on behalf of London local authorities. For our borough this means broadly that we distribute about £1 million in grants and give another £1 million to the ALG to distribute on our behalf.
Since May this year when the London local elections changed the majority on the ALG, the ALG has been discussing the distribution of these grants. Most boroughs do not like having these decisions being taken out of their hands and would like to see this cash repatriated to the boroughs. The overhead of grants administration at the ALG is way too high as well.
The people that receive these grants are obviously up in arms and Mayor Livingstone sees this as an opportunity to get his hands on the cash. He loves using our taxes to buy our votes and here is another £30 million worth. According to a press release his PR army issued on Friday he has written to Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to ask for the transfer of voluntary grants funding to the Mayor’s Office “in order to protect London-wide grants now under threat from cuts”. In other words give me the cash and I will spend it on buying votes like I did when I ran the GLC.
The Mayor’s dim press people make the mistake of putting a link to the list of grant recipients in their press release. The list goes a long way to destroying the case for this kind of central distribution. For one thing many of the recipients have the names of boroughs in their name – why can’t they be funded locally? For another too many are arts groups that need to sell tickets to real punters.
I don’t usually cover education issues but I could not help having my mind boggled by this story in the Telegraph today.
Brighton and Hove are a minority Labour governed council. Although the DfES supported the application of the first Montessori school in the country to join the state sector the council and the schools adjudicator were against. The schools adjudictor said: “”With its new facilities, it might prove attractive to more families.”
Sounds just like John Prescott and his comments about the problem with good schools was that everyone would want to go there. Better crap schools for all than a situation where some schools can actually provide an example of how to do better. Old Labour is alive and well on the south coast.
A large part of the Northfield ward is out of bounds today due to a fire at a food outlet in South Ealing Road last night. This has caused pretty extensive road disruption but no casualties thankfully. A large exclusion/evacuation area was declared because of acetylene gas cylinders being found at the site. More details on the council’s website.
I approached the area along Pope’s Lane at around 2pm this afternoon. The police are letting traffic get right up to the tape and then directing you right into the Trees estate. This is really bad traffic management as it is going to send a lot of frustrated drivers racing around the estate trying to get out. I have called Ealing police station to be answered by someone in Hendon. The SNT team are also on voicemail. Hopefully the message will get through and they will start deflecting people a little earlier.
Today the Joseph Rowntree Foundation publishes a report that finds that two million households in England struggle to pay their council tax each year. The fact that three million summonses are issued each year for non-payment of council tax drove it to this conclusion. The report found that the majority of people having difficulties paying their council tax are working people on low incomes and in low-value housing. The report found that one in four households in band A (the least expensive properties) receives a summons, and one in seven in band B, but fewer than one in ten in bands E-H.
Council tax is therefore hitting the poor hardest. Council tax bills have doubled over the past decade, far outstripping wage increases. The Trust leaps from this analysis to say that lower council tax bands should pay less and higher ones more. No, we need to make sure that council tax stays under control so that we are all protected from out of control council tax rises. Ealing council will be doing its bit to ensure that Ealing people have sensible and small rises in future.
This morning at 10am I joined staff from the council to see them tackle 33 Creighton road. The resident here has effectively turned his home into a fortress piling up large amounts of building materials and rubbish in his front garden, the alleys to the side and rear and his rear garden. Although I was glad to see the council taking action I felt sorry for the chap having his home intruded on. We do have to consider the neighbours though who have had to put up with this eyesore for over a year.
The process has been somewhat long-winded. A planning enforcement notice was served at the end of March this year. What with legal notice periods and the time taken to co-ordinate various groups of people it has taken fully six months to get to this stage.
We can only hope that the resident will now stop pilling this material up. Whilst we would love to leave him alone he can be sure that we wil be back if he does start again.
The title of this council committee is not very glamorous but its work is important. I am one of five Conservative members. There are four Labour members.
Last night we had a full agenda covering:
In attendance last night we had the chief executive of Ealing Hospital, the chairman of the PCT, a director of the WLMHT, the cabinet members for Children’s Services and Adult Services & Housing and the Chairman of Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
The work of this committee is pretty demanding as the issues are complex and highly political and the papers are very hard work. The Better Government for Older People paper last night was particularly jargon ridden and hard to digest.
The Tory chairman of this panel, Clifford Pile, is very capable and his Labour deputy, Jasbir Anand, made frequent and impressive contributions in the first two meetings. The Labour group really let themselves down last night though. All four members failed to turn up. Councillor Anand did manage to get Councillor Dhami to stand in for her but he felt unable to make any contribtuiton whatsoever to the main meeting. Two of the Labour members have failed to turn up for ANY of the first three meetings of the panel. The people of Ealing, and in particular the people of the Southall wards, who suffer the greatest health inequalities, are being badly let down by these councillors.
Scrutiny allows opposition councillors to make a real impact. It seems a shame that the Labour group can’t come up with four councillors who can make a contribution.
I reported on this in May when they only had 375,000 signatures. They have just topped the million mark. Apparently only 15,000 of them were Brits so it is not only the Brits who can’t stand the EU waste machine.
www.oneseat.eu was set up by Cecilia Malmström, member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Liberal Party, to mobilise support for getting rid of the Strasbourg seat of the European Parliament. It costs European taxpayers approximately 200 million euros a year to move the Parliament between Brussels in Belgium and Strasbourg just over the border in France.
Well done to Cecilia for getting the million. I hope she takes it further now. Goodbye Strasbourg.
In a letter to the Ealing Gazette last Friday a man called John Messer of Northolt called the current administration “this thieving Tory council”. We have more important things to do than get into legal fights with Messer and the Gazette but these people need to grow up a little and moderate their language. No wonder people get turned off politics.
The Northala Fields scheme is great and a credit to the previous administration. It looks like Phase 1 of the project will come in with a £690K surplus. The Labour group and the consultants involved, who perhaps are not as disinterested as they might be, would like to spend this surplus raising more cash to undertake an ambitious Phase 2. In doing so they would put at risk the surplus generated to-date in order to raise further cash. Whilst the speculate to accumulate spirit is admirable in some ways it is not prudent. Phase 2 is high risk and will cost the council £1.8 million in the best of all possible worlds and maybe £4.6 million in a worst case.
When Phase 1 ends the park will be left with some notable missing components such as loos, signs and a children’s playground. The Conservative council has prudently decided to take a bird in the hand approach. We have a surplus. Let’s spend it on delivering these missing components so that we can all enjoy the park next year. Sure it would be great to have a more ambitious project but the money ain’t coming from the Lottery in the run up to the Olympics so get real.
The council is taking a sensible approach and the scheme’s opponents are using half truths and scare tactics to get people excited. The council’s priorities are clear and splashed all over the website.
Labour may want to play double or quits with public money but we would rather bank the winnings for Ealing and get on with governing. When we have got the basics right we can afford to be a bit more ambitious. The reason Labour lost the last election was because they lost sight of the basics. The vision thing is fine but not if your street is strewn with rubbish and your mum can’t get help from social services.
If you want some more facts as opposed to smears see Jason Stacey’s statement on the council’s website.
Phil Taylor 