Phil Taylor

Yesterday evening, after a 3.5 hour debate, the Featherstone High School governing body voted by a considerable majority to go Academy. This took place in the face of a huge campaign by all the Southall Labour councillors and the NUT to persuade them otherwise.

Between them the local MP, Virendra Sharma, his researcher and council leader Julian Bell and all of the Southall councillors have shown themselves to be stubbornly old Labour. In running with the SWP dominated NUT they have shown themselves yet again to be pro-producer and anti-resident/parent/pupil/consumer. Congratulations to the Featherstone governors for standing up for their school and their community.

This is a very strange story.

On 23rd February 2010 the cabinet, under the then Tory administration, agreed to implement a CPZ on either side of Horn Lane in Acton. It decided to do both parts of the zone; a core area and an outer area. It really was a bit of a no-brainer. You either did both or none. Whatever the merits or demerits of a CPZ in this area doing a bit of it was simply bad government.

This week there has been a coverage in the Gazette and comment on www.actonw3.com about the implementation of a part of the Friar’s Green CPZ but not the whole thing.

The outer area will be in big trouble the day the core area becomes operational. We know this from previous experience, eg the Ealing Dean scheme, JJ. The original cabinet decision was made in public and the merits of the case were discussed in public. The cabinet decision came with a map which illustrates clearly why doing half the scheme is nonsense.

The current Labour cabinet member, Bassam Mahfouz, seems to be ignoring this decision. He is simply not entitled to. If he wants to supersede a properly formed cabinet decision he needs to get another one through cabinet, not simply ignore the previous one. It is a scandal that it has taken the council 18 months since its decision to implement half the scheme.

One can only speculate as to what the administration is doing. Mahfouz may just think he knows better than residents. Who knows? It is all murky, undemocratic and so typical of Ealing Labour.

I will raise this with the council’s, Director of Legal & Democratic Services, our chief legal officer, Helen Harris.

This week’s Gazette covered the continuing campaign by the Southall Labour dinosaurs against Featherstone High School becoming an academy. The ambitious management team there want to push their school forward and the matter will be decided at a governing body meeting on Tuesday night. The Southall Councillors, the Labour council leader Julian Bell and the local MP Virendra Sharma have all been leaning on the governors. Apparently Sharma asked to speak at the governing body meeting – ridiculous.

The front man of the anti-campaign, dubbed Southall Against Academies, is Stefan Simms, Socialist Workers Party member and deputy secretary of the Ealing NUT branch. Simms lies casually that moving to academy status is privatisation. It is not.

Academies are OK for Labour Hackney. Mossbourne Academy which replaced the “worst school in Britain”, Hackney Downs, led by the inspirational Sir Michael Wilshaw, saw 10 of its students get offers from Cambridge last year. Now they call it “the best comprehensive in the country”. Southall Labour aren’t interested.

In Ealing Drayton Manor and Twyford schools are actively considering becoming academies. Indeed we already have the West London Academy. The Labour council will undoubtedly opt to have an academy structure for the new high school in Greenford and the new primary school in Acton on the site of the Priory Community Centre. Academies are fine for Ealing Labour but Southall Labour aren’t interested.

A Southall teacher, Peter Hyman, an ex-speech writer for Tony Blair and deputy head at Greenford High School is trying to set up a free school in Newham. Southall Labour aren’t interested.

The spiteful old farts of Southall so value their own place and prestige over the life chances of their own young people that they are not prepared to let Featherstone fly. Shame on them.

Back in March I pointed out that the council’s scrutiny budget had been cut by £55K. This would result in the number of scrutiny panels falling from 9 to 5, a cut of 44% in outputs.

In May I reported on Labour’s housing commission. This looks like a Labour love in with two members drawn from the Fabian Society (the Jesuits of Labour) plus three current Labour politicians and one ex-Labour politician turned highly paid civil servant. No opposition voices whatsoever.

At the last council meeting I asked a few questions on this, see question 44 here.

Question: How much will the housing commission cost the council?
Answer: The Housing Commission has a budget of £25k in total. None of the commissioners are being paid or receiving expenses.

Question: When will it meet?
Answer: The Commission has met four times in total so far – with a further three meetings planned.

Question: Will there be any public meetings?
Answer: We are intending to hold appropriate public forum to review the commission’s recommendations and conclusions.

Question: When will it report?
Answer: The final report will be available towards the end of this year.

Question: Who will approve its Terms of Reference?
Answer: The Terms of Reference have been approved by the commissioners.

Regular people not invited.

Tonight at cabinet the council is talking about the libraries again. The Labour cabinet has signed off a draft libraries strategy that will see the four threatened libraries reprieved for the time being at least. Cllr Millican, the leader of the opposition, asked that the threatened libraries be specifically protected in the strategy. The Labour finance spokesman, Cllr Johnson, urged the cabinet not to include any such protection in the strategy and the paper was agreed without a definitive statement protecting all of the libraries from closure.

The Labour group have been dreaming about Cllr Millican. Cllr Reeves, the Labour whip, told the meeting that:

I have a dream of Cllr Millican being the chair of the friends of Northfield library.

Shortly after that the leader, Cllr Bell said;

I have a vision of Cllr Millican chairing a Northfield library trust.

Strangely Bell and Reeves are not dreaming about their future involvement in Greenford and Northolt libraries respectively. Neither have they worked out a common language to describe the future of libraries in the borough.

The draft strategy talks about spending the £570K receipt from the sale of the Birth of Eve painting on the libraries strategy. I am not sure that this is what the public was expecting. The money will be spent on a raft of sexy technology such as wi-fi, Apple Macs and Sony e-Book Readers. All of this kit will be junk in five years time. There is not is not a single word in the report about any user demand for these facilities and no hint of a business case. The Southall car park approach again on a smaller scale. Let’s do something flashy, don’t worry about whether it is good value.

The strategy talks about saving £53K by taking 25 library opening hours and justifies this by pointing out that 32% of consultation respondents agreed that hours should be curtailed. The report failed to mention that 52% disagreed.

Over a year into the new administration and all we have on libraries is a hugely flawed draft strategy. Labour are floundering, not ruling.