Categories
National politics

The Ealing jobs miracle – unemployment falls below 5,000 – half what it was

Unemployment in the London Borough of Ealing, as measured by the claimant count, has fallen below 5,000 for the first time since June 2008.

NOMIS All October 2015

Ealing’s unemployment peaked at 9,580 in September 2009 as the post credit crunch recession worked its way through the economy. Since then unemployment overall in Ealing has halved and fell below 5,000 to 4,910 in September. This is the first time Ealing’s claimant count has been below 5,000 since June 2008 when it was 4,950.

If you want to see where the data comes from all you have to do is go to the ONS’s nomis database.

Expect to hear much rejoicing from our three local Labour MPs and the Labour council leader. Or not maybe.

Categories
National politics

Human rights industry touting for business

The left wing press is bigging up another of those round robin letters this morning.

Somehow the BBC seems to be unembarrassed and unapologetic about running in this company.

If you do go to the original material and look at the list of signatories it all becomes clear. All the usual lefty suspects such as Geoffrey Bindman, Helena Kennedy and Michael Mansfield are there. Indeed 9 officers of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers are there.

Usual suspects

If you are in any doubt about what is going on here then the signatures of 52 lawyers from Doughty Chambers should convince you. They say:

Doughty Street Chambers is probably the largest and most wide-ranging civil liberties legal practice in the world.

There are 43 signatures from Matrix Chambers with their “progressive outlook”. The Blackstone Chambers provides 32 signatories.

Even a cursory look at the list tells you that this letter is about the human rights barrister industry touting for business.

Categories
National politics

Labour’s Jon Ashworth keeping up the fibs on housing

In response to David Cameron’s speech this morning the Labour Party bashed out this press release allegedly penned by Jonathan Ashworth MP, Shadow Minister without Portfolio. Without scruple more like.

I know the housing numbers so his housing claim leaps out as being disingenuous. Well plain mendacious really.

He says:

You can’t claim to care about the housing crisis when you’ve overseen the lowest level of housebuilding in peacetime since the 1920s.

How did that happen? There was a little thing called the credit crunch.

If you want to know what happened to house building in our country in recent years go and look at the DCLG Live tables on house building, in particular Table 212 House building: permanent dwellings started and completed, by tenure, Great Britain (quarterly).

Permanent dwellings started per quarter from Table 212

If you go and dig in the data the low point for housing starts in this country was Q4 2008 when only 20,660 homes were started. The record of the Coalition in the period Q3 2010 to Q4 2014 (latest data) is an average of 34,104 starts per quarter 65% higher than the Labour low point.

Ashworth knows he is talking rubbish. He is hoping that no-one notices.

Categories
National politics

No perspective on homelessness

I saw this from Radio 4 World at One’s Martha Kearney today:

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Of course voices on the left were jumping all over it pretty quickly:

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Another one of those terrible Tories stories. Kearney said “New figures” but it did sound a bit familiar though. A quick Google search threw up:

The driver for this coverage is these statistics published today.

Temporary accommodationThis chart from the report shows that we have been here before. Homelessness, in terms of households in temporary accommodation was worse than it is now from Q2 2000 to Q4 2009 inclusive. So Labour’s record was very poor. Homelessness was worse in relatively good times than it is now. It is increasing but it would be nice if the BBC could give us some perspective on the driver of these changes.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Labour shifts left, Sahota bows dutifully

Local property magnate, health entrepreneur and part-time politician Onkar Sahota has quickly got on board with Labour’s suicidal lurch to the left. You would expect anyone as commercially minded as Sahota to be on the right of the Labour party and that was reflected in his choices in the recently concluded round of Labour party internal elections.

He backed Yvette Cooper for the leadership and Tessa Jowell for the London mayoralty.

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Nothing if not flexible, Sahota has been quick to accept the new reality.

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Categories
London

Tessa wants to keep your £20

The Olympic Precept was put in place by Tessa Jowell when she was in charge of the Olympics as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the Labour government. It has been costing London council tax payers about £20 a year since 2006 and is due to come to an end next year.

Famously Ken Livingstone likened the £20 a year levy to being the equivalent of a Walnut Whip or 38p every week. This was typical of Livingstone’s careless, jocular approach to taking your money.

In his last budget the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, promised to give the money back to Londoners in the shape of a cut in the GLA Precept (which is added to council tax bills and collected by your local council on behalf of the GLA). The budget document says:

Olympic precept in budget

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Labour’s leading candidate to be the London Mayor, our Tessa, has been promising to put £61 million into Sure Start. She lays claim to the original programme but is less keen to lay claim to the Olympic Precept we have been paying for ten years in London. Now she says she doesn’t want to let this cash go. Although she fails to spell it out clearly what she is proposing is that the £61 million will be paid for by adding £20 a year on your council tax, £20 that Boris has promised to stop taking from you. Tessa wants to keep your £20.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

One open letter deserves another

Today the reasonable wing of the Ealing Labour party has come out in favour of Liz Kendall for leader of the Labour party. All well and good. Today council leader Julian Bell issued the “open letter” below:

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Now at least the Ealing lefties will know who to knife at the next selection meeting.

Wasting no opportunity to get one of his favourite political lines in Bell says:

As Councillors from Ealing we know how hard the Tory government has hit our Borough. Ealing Council funding has been cut by £183m between 2010 and 2018 – that is over 50% of our budget…

This is a total misuse of words. Any normal understanding of the word budget is that it is the total amount you have to spend and what you spend it on. In reality Ealing Council spends in the order of £800 million a year but they are shy of saying this because it makes cuts that the council has had to endure sound too small. Is it really credible that Ealing Council is going to be half the size it was in 2010? No. I last looked at this last summer and the council’s expenditure since 2010 had essentially been flat in cash terms.

The council may well have lost something like half of its central government funding, which is extremely painful, but its council tax revenue has been going up in spite of the freeze, due to new building among other factors, and it has ramped up prices for council services considerably (£10 million of the “savings” in the last council 2010-2014 were price rises, so no cuts at all, just price rises replacing government grant).

Rather than write an open letter to Bell who will either not respond or who will fail to give me an honest answer I have written To the Chief Executive of the council, Martin Smith.

Letter to Martin Smith 17th August 2015

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

The Ealing jobs miracle – youth unemployment only a quarter of what it was

Unemployment in the London Borough of Ealing, as measured by the claimant count, peaked under Labour in September 2009. Since then unemployment overall in Ealing has halved and youth unemployment is down almost 3/4. If you want to see where the data comes from all you have to do is go to the ONS’s nomis database.

NOMIS All June 2015

In May 2010 the claimant count (those people on JSA) was 8,810. In June, the last month for which data is available, the claimant count was 5,005. That is a fall of 43% since May 2010. The claimant count peaked at 9,580 in September 2009 under Labour. It has fallen by 48%, pretty much half, since.

NOMIS Youth June 2015

The picture with youth unemployment is even better. In May 2010 the youth claimant count was 1,780. In June the youth claimant count was 685. That is a massive fall of almost two thirds, 62%, since 2010. The youth claimant count peaked at 2,450 in September 2009 under Labour, a fall of 72%, almost 3/4, since.

I look forward to some rejoicing from our local MPs on this topic but I suspect I will be disappointed.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Ealing Labour still too complacent on school performance

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I have criticised the council and the local Labour group for their complacency with respect to school standards before.

At the last council meeting on Tuesday 9th June the councillors discussed the Corporate Plan, click for papers. Acton councillor Dan Crawford enthusiastically tweeted in approbation of the Labour education spokesman Binda Rai. Either he garbled what she was saying or Rai doesn’t understand her brief. 91% is the current year target for outstanding/good primaries.

Ealing Conservative Press Release 17-6-2015

In a press release today the local Tories point out that as good as the performance may look to the casual observer it still potentially leaves a staggering 9,500 children in schools that are not good enough. We need to get angry about any school that is not great.

Categories
National politics

London Labour MPs not going for Burnham

According to the latest list of Labour MPs endorsing possible leaders of the Labour party published by the New Statesman no London Labour MP has yet endorsed Andy Burnham. Indeed the Daily Mail points out that “Labour leadership favourite Andy Burnham has failed to secure support of a single MP south of Stoke”.

In London 16 out of 45 Labour MPs have come out for a candidate. 2 for rank outsider Mary Creagh, 6 for moderniser Liz Kendall and 8 for Brownite safe pair of hands Yvette Cooper.

West London MPs seems to be going for Cooper in a big way with Ruth Cadbury, Virendra Sharma, Stephen Pound and Andy Slaughter all coming out for her. No sign of the preferences of Ealing newbie Rupa Huq. Will she be the first London MP to back Burnham and his union approved campaign?