Phil Taylor

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.