Categories
Parking Services

Parking tickets halve under Tories

Tonight the Evening Standard is covering the story of the release by London Councils of figures for parking tickets across London showing that overall parking tickets are down 11% in a year and 22% in two years. The change in Ealing has been even more dramatic.

I was in charge of Parking Services, the people who give out tickets, for two years until May and I am proud to say that I presided over a massive reduction in the number of tickets given out by the Borough. In their last year in power Labour gave out 383,667 parking tickets. Under the Tories this number fell to 194,907 last year, a drop of 49%, or almost half. The current Labour portfolio holder for parking is Bassam Mahfouz. He has spent a lot of time over the last four years trying to make black white. We will keep an eye on these numbers and see if he can keep a similarly tight lid on the parking people.

For details see London Councils press release here.

Categories
Communications disease National politics

Ads hit half billion for second year

When the country is going to the bad at a rate of £155 billion per annum, or roughly £5K per worker per year, it is a relief to find an area of government spending where you can happily slice out some hundreds of millions and stop bugging people too. Last year all of those irritating, hectoring government commercials reminding you to pay your TV licence and tell the revenue that your circumstances have changed cost £532 million. This was admittedly down from previous year’s record of £540 million, see the annual report of the Central Office of Information published today here.

Gordon “end of spin” Brown managed to spend £1 billion in two years puffing himself and all of his works. In the Major years government ad spending was more like £100 million per annum, you can see all of the histrorical figures here (scroll down to bottom).

According to this year’s annual report:

A general election was called in April 2010 and the majority of government marketing and communications was halted during the election period. The new Government, formed in May, implemented an immediate freeze on government advertising and marketing spend.

Government will continue to commission campaigns this year, but only where there is an essential need to do so. Exceptions will require approval from relevant directors of communications or from the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, depending on the budget.

That is what I voted for! At last some sanity.

Categories
Uncategorized

On LBC tonight

I am doing the politics slot on Petrie Hosken’s show on LBC 97.3 FM again tonight from 8pm to 9pm. This will be the fourth time I think. Not sure what we will talk about given that we are on the verge of the silly season. Scools out last week. Parliament out this. The awful Ekram Haque “happy slapping” case will figure I guess. A 67 year old grandfather killed by three poisonous creeps who showed no remorse. Happy slapping is an awful term. Negligent homicide might be more useful.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/10177795001?isVid=1

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Now Bell is leader he could stop the lies

The new council leader, Julian Bell, was interviewed in the 16th-31st July edition of Maya News recently. Maya targets the Indian expat community in the UK. The picture and quote below are taken from the article.

During the election campaign the Labour party went around council estates telling a pack of lies about the Conservatives’ proposals to make sure that council tenants got some decent services. You might have thought that now Bell was leader he would show a bit of dignity and stop lying. Bell knows full well that every single prospective bidder for outsourcing the housing service was a non-profit making housing association. Time for the lies to stop Cllr Bell.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Forget the London Living Wage

We had a long meeting at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee tonight – almost three hours long. It was not without its drama though, however fleeting.

The Conservative opposition “called in” a couple of cabinet decisions from the cabinet’s 22nd June meeting. One of them was the decision to go out to tender for repairs and maintenance of council housing. See here.

For the second month running Labour’s housing spokesman, Hitesh Tailor, was having to defend Labour’s housing policy. The council hopes to save 10-15% from its £7 million repairs and maintenance contract. The Conservative group is suspicious that the new administration will try to justify its decision to bring housing management in house with savings it could have made regardless of who did this job.

In his presentation Tory group leader Jason Stacey asked to what extent Labour would use this opportunity to deliver on two of its manifesto promises:

A revamp of the [council house] repairs service with additional craftsmen to do the repairs and less bureaucracy to reduce delays.

Firm support for the London Living Wage for all Council staff and contractors.

Cllr Tailor’s answer evaded these two points so I pressed him on them when my turn came. Tailor refused to commit to the London Living Wage for this contract and Pat Hayes, the officer responsible who had turned up to baby sit Tailor, explained that the selection criteria would include issues such as local labour, apprenticeships and the proportion of work that can be subcontracted.

So, it seems that Labour’s promises of more craftsmen working on council house repairs is being translated into apprentices working at minimum wage levels. Oh dear!

As I pointed out yesterday if Labour’s manifesto promises did not make it into the “Immediate Priority” box then they ain’t happening. Tailor’s answer today proves that the London Living Wage promise is worthless.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Labour’s manifesto gets shredded

The main order of business last night at the council meeting was discussion of the council’s corporate plan, see here. As Labour have just got into power the document is essentially a rehash of the Labour manifesto, see here, with some topping and tailing by council officers. Or at least that is what it looks like at first glance.

It is always worth reading the financial section of such reports. Here it talks about:

… a small number of priority project, which have been funded from within current budget allocations …

If you look again at corporate plan you will see that the only things that are going to get done in this plan are those in the “Immediate Priority” boxes unless perhaps if they are things that will cost nothing. Everything else is unfunded and can therefore be considered kicked into the long grass.

Yesterday afternoon before the council meeting I spent a couple of hours going through the 114 promises made by Labour in their manifesto. How many do you think made it into the Immediate Priority boxes? 100? 90? 80? No, only 22 or a mere 19% of Labour’s manifesto promises made it through this first encounter with reality. We can safely ignore 92 of Labour’s promises because they ain’t going to happen any time soon.

If you look at page 3 of Labour’s Manifesto they made 5 key pledges. How many of these survived the cull I wonder? Answer one and a half out of five. Under crime they talked about more uniformed officers which made the cut but CCTV didn’t. Schools investment didn’t make it. 3,000 affordable homes didn’t make it. 24/7 Grimebusters didn’t make it. Thankfully the council tax pledge did get through. But still, a shocking case of promising more than you can deliver – the age old Labour disease.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield Uncategorized

Street cleaning slips

In his speech on the corporate plan the Conservative group leader, Jason Stacey, pulled up the new administration on their performance on street cleaning.

The council’s benchmark for street cleaning is that at least 90% of roads inspected in a ward should be rated A – this is means that effectively you cannot really see any rubbish or detritus. In the four months before the local election the previous administration managed to get every ward in the borough over this hurdle. It was important to us. It was what we set out to do. Cllr Stacey shared figures with the council showing that 12 wards (Cleveland, Ealing Broadway, Ealing Common, Elthorne, Greenford Broadway, Greenford Green, Hobbayne, Lady Margaret, North Greenford, Northfield, Northolt Mandeville and Perivale) failed to meet the standard in June.

The new man responsible, Cllr Mahfouz, pronounced himself “livid”. Quite right. The Tories did manage to clean up the borough but I can’t tell you how much effort it took. Anyone who thinks that you just draw up a contract and sit back seriously underestimates the task. You have to keep endlessly hassling to get what you want and it is only by prioritising the hassling, which to their great credit Cllrs Stacey and Emment did, that you get the result. Maybe it shouldn’t be this way, but it simply is. Cllr Mahfouz needs to keep up the pressure. Tedious but necessary.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Lost promise

One notable manifesto promise has disappeared altogether in the process of turning Labour’s manifesto into the corporate plan. In their manifesto, under the heading Value for Money, Labour said it would:

Reduce the Council’s bloated communications budget and stop money being wasted on party political propaganda

In their first month in power the Labour cabinet attended 9 photoshoots and spent £1,700 on photographs. I think we can assume that this promise is a dead parrot. Ho hum!

Categories
Health, housing and adult social services

BBC spinning for Labour again

I got home this evening and tuned into BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme to catch up with the news. I listened to the piece on Andrew Lansley’s proposed reforms of the NHS with interest. My antennae started to twitch as I listened to Frances Crook who was a non-executive director of a NHS PCT trust. Was this the voice of an independently minded practitioner? Oh no! The BBC had managed to roll out a Labour place(wo)man. According to Wikipedia:

Frances Crook OBE (born 18 December 1952) is the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Appointed in 1986, she has been responsible for research programmes and campaigns to raise public concern about suicides in prison, the over-use of custody, poor conditions in prison, young people in trouble and mothers in prison. She writes articles for the national media, and frequently does interviews on radio and television news.

Frances Crook was the campaigns co-coordinator at the British Section of Amnesty International from 1980 to 1985.

After taking a history degree at Liverpool University she qualified as a teacher, working in secondary schools in Liverpool and London until 1980. She was twice elected as a Labour Councillor for East Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet, serving from 1982 to 1990. She was a Governor of the University of Greenwich for 6 years and chaired the Staff and General Committee, retiring in 2002. She was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 1997.

Jewish by birth, she lives in London with her daughter Sarah.

Crook was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.

So, ex-Labour councillor who gets a salary from a Primary Care Trust (PCT) doesn’t like Tory health reforms which will see the back of PCTs. Big surprise. Shame on the BBC for passing off a Labour politician who is already bought and paid for as an independent voice. Typical.

No doubt the BBC spotted Crook as a result of her article in the New Statesman earlier this year.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Milliband still confused

Back in May I published a letter from David Milliband to the old Tory leader, Jason Stacey, congratulating him on winning Ealing Council – I wish. Apparently David Milliband still does not know his back side from his elbow.

Local Labour activist and failed local council candidate for Walpole ward, Rupa Huq, breathlessly reported on her blog yesterday that she has hosted a “house meeting” for Milliband the older. The audio linked by Huq has Milliband describing Huq as “Councillor Rupa Huq, the Deputy Mayor of Ealing”. Huq is clearly not a councillor although she was appointed to be the Deputy Mayor, Councillor John Gallagher’s, consort.

Interestingly Huq describes the meeting as “a grassroots community bottom-up initiative in conjunction with the London Citizens campaign” whereas Milliband calls it “12 Labour party members”. I have to say that I always considered London Citizens to be a Labour front organisation.