Phil Taylor

This tweet yesterday from Labour council leader Julian Bell is wrong on a number of levels.

Labour are not investing and Bell betrays himself with his sloppy language. The council maybe doing the investing but it is taxpayers’ money they are spending.

What is happening at Oldfield Circus is that your money is being spent as a result of a choice made by a politician. In fact this was not Julian Bell’s choice but his predecessor Jason Stacey’s. Bell is merely trying to get the credit. By their choices you shall know them.

Most of Jason Stacey’s Conservative choices were around improving the immediate environment of the people paying the bills. More road re-surfacing. Cleaner streets. Better parks. Refurbished libraries. The list goes on.

Councillor Bell’s Labour choices are about looking after his own. After schools Bell’s biggest allocation of capital is to spend £16.3 million on the council itself. After that its £5.5 million for a car park for Southall. Under Labour regeneration is limited to Southall, the council gets shiny new offices and there is no cash for libraries.

It’s all about choices. The people choose the politicians. The politicians decide. The people pay.

In his haste to claim credit for Elthorne ward winning Cllr Mahfouz’s recycling competition, Bakhai got the number wrong and had to correct himself. You have got to hit that delete button faster councillor. Full announcement here:

RECYCLING REWARDS – THE RESULTS ARE IN

Five wards in Ealing walk away with big cash prizes for being the best and most improved recyclers.

Elthorne and Hobbayne are the joint winners for best recycling ward, splitting £20,000 for their communities after participation rates in both wards reached an impressive 72.7%.

South Acton takes the top spot for most improved recycling ward, bagging £20,000 to be spent on local improvements. Participation rates improved by 6.1% taking them up to a participation rate of 54.5% as they leap-frogged six places in the results table. Southfields and Northolt Mandeville wards also each pick up a £20,000 cash prize for improving their participation rates by 4.1%.

In addition, Acton Central, Cleveland, Greenford Green, Hanger Hill, Northolt West End, Norwood Green, Perivale and Walpole all improved their recycling participation rates.

The tonnage of waste sent for recycling increased compared with last year thanks to the recycling incentive competition, which was the first of its kind in London.

In the period the competition was running, an extra 370.32 tonnes –of kerbside recycling was collected. This is the equivalent to the weight of 370 classic minis. In total, 2607.72 less tonnes of waste were sent to landfill over the same time period, which equates to savings of
£231,148 in landfill tax. This is down to an increase in recycling and a reduction in the amount households are throwing away.

Councillor Bassam Mahfouz, cabinet member for Transport and Environment, said:
“A huge congratulations to all of the winning wards. This competition has shown that it is possible to improve recycling rates and a special mention must go to South Acton, which improved by such a staggering amount. Recycling is so important, not only for the environment but also to save the council money in landfill tax.

“Thank you to everyone who took up recycling and helped reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill. The money saved can be spent on providing valuable services across the borough. I urge all residents to continue taking advantage of the council’s excellent recycling services to recycle as much waste as possible.”

I quite admire Ealing’s Labour group for setting up their new housing commission. Sounds interesting. It is good to see Labour being imaginative rather than just managing things as they are. I would like to know though if it is a private Labour party venture or an official council initiative that will cost the council money. Up until now there has been a formal scrutiny panel that looked at housing. Labour abolished this in the budget process, cutting scrutiny by 44%, see here. Have Labour abolished official scrutiny committees with opposition representation and replaced them with a Labour only “commission”?

Labour’s commission comprises three Labour politicians, including Newham’s mayor plus a researcher, James Gregory, from the keeper of Labour’s flame, the Fabian Society. They are like the Jesuits of Labour. Another participant is “leading public policy expert” Adrian Harvey. Is he a freelancer? Being paid? Is he also the ex-Deputy General Secretary of Fabian Society Adrian Harvey? All other participants seem to have a kosher housing background.

I was interested to see David Lunts, Executive Director, London Homes & Communities Agency included in the list. I think he is now an employee of the GLA again nowadays. Strange to see a (regional government) civil servant/local government officer taking part in such a politically unbalanced exercise. Lunts has an interesting background. His career seems to have started as a Labour councillor in Manchester where he chaired the Manchester City Council housing committee from 1988 to 1995. Then he worked as an advisor to Labour’s John Prescott at the ODPM before joining Ken Livingstone’s GLA. Looks like a bit of a Labour insider, and he has clearly made a good living at it too. He is doing another housing commission for another Labour borough – Lambeth.

Labour’s commission seems to include no representatives of other parties. Either it is official council business and it should be more balanced or it is a private Labour venture and should be strictly separate from the council.

Today is the last day of the libraries consultation. If you have not yet completed the council’s questionnaire then click here. Their questions are very irritating and their initial presumption of 30% cuts is an outrageous lie. But, please go through their questionnaire anyway. If the council gets a big enough raspberry it will go and pick on someone or something else.

One assumption made by the Labour council is that the tiny, understaffed libraries at Pitshanger (3.9 FTE) and Northfields (3.6 FTE) can be staffed by volunteers as their user groups are nice, middle class people who can look after themselves. From my knowledge of these two communities they are rather busy going to work, raising children, looking after their parents and keeping their homes and gardens looking decent. They are very community minded but they pay £2,000 a year in council tax and something like £6,000 a year in other taxes to keep the council going and they are very resentful that the council wants to use their precious time to replace very cheap librarians.

Of course Labour has a very different model in mind for its heartlands of Acton (12.3 FTE) and Southall (12.6 FTE). The order of the day here is to have hugely over-staffed libraries that are not threatened in any way.

I wonder how many copies of Atlas Shrugged they stock in Acton and Southall.