Leader's weblog

Labour Got Stuffed in Vassall

Cllr John Whelan — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:25:00 +0000

The wheels are coming off the New Labour trolley in lambeth. Mired by the stain of corruption from their allies in City Hall, and the growing evidence of wrong doing in Lambeth by political allies of the Mayor for London, Labour unsurprisingly got hammered in the Vassall Ward by-election. They lost it on an 11.5 per cent swing, enough to lose them all but a handful of seats in 2010. And not a good omen for Labour in the London-wide elections on May 1st - any humility or apologies, no way.

At the count, the Labour big wigs looked like condemned-to-death prisoners in an exercise yard minutes after they had been sentenced to hang. Dead men and women walking and that was before a ballot box had been opened. Normally, Labour top brass, such as Tessa Jowell MP with a country home, go quickly to Southwark when there is an electoral disaster on the cards, but not last week. Actually, the winning Liberal Party's leader was noticeable by his absence. That's confidence for you.

The bottom line is that there is always a worry when politicians imagine they are going to rule for 1,000 years in our borough and a few Lambeth officers should take note. They are far too identified with New Labour in general for their own good in an era when no one can guarantee that Brown will win the next general election. Maybe, they will start talking to Opposition parties or at least keeping us in the picture as they whole Labour edifice collapses. Let's not hold our breath.

But, it's not the fault of our gas-guzzler driving senior people who nevertheless tax people with ordinary motor cars despite driving high-performance vehicles themselves. It's always the same every time Labour take office in Lambeth so it's worth remembering what happened - Labour's millennium in 1990 all ended in tears in 1994 with a hung council. So they came back for four years in 1998 for another 1,000 years. Oh dear, slaughtered again in 2002 with an Opposition coalition - they pleaded with each party in turn to be the marriage partner, but got jilted and had to sulk for four years.

Nevertheless, another chance from the voters in 2006. Only this time a Conservative-Lib Dem council had sorted out nearly all of the mess so all they needed to do, they thought, was leave it to the highly-paid officers, plus invest in loads of spin doctors, press wonks, and party hacks to do the menial jobs. In the meantime, just pay themselves more and avoid the detail.

What we expected was trumpets and cymbals to usher in those 1,000 New Labour years in 2002. But first they decided to up the home care charges for the vulnerable from £7.50 an hour to £17 an hour and then amazingly to £20 an hour. After that came all their pet projects most of which were based in Brixton. In the meantime, the debt collectors were knocking on the door so the council tax had to go up 4.75 per cent - the highest in London in 2008.

Nemesis.

What's the Point of a Used Political Condom?

Cllr John Whelan — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Our cash strapped citizens in Lambeth look forward to another year of hard Labour in 2008, safe in the knowledge that a leading Labour Cabinet member is organising cookery lessons for disadvantaged children. Sounds admirable and at least it's a change from cooking the books. Christmas and the early new year is, of course, a good time in which to bury bad news or indeed for Labour councillors to start listening to David Cameron.

Yet it seems only yesterday that Labour was organising hordes of foul mouthed tee-shirted children and their bully boy parents to lobby the previous Conservative-Liberal administration with abuse in the name of the proposed Nelson Mandela Secondary School for BrixtonHill.

In a sudden U-Turn just before the Christmas shutdown, when our highly paid officers (three at the latest count) fly off to the sunny Southern Hemisphere for rest and recreation, Labour ditched its erstwhile allies and offered instead a new school in Tulse Hill only hundreds of yards away from at least two other secondary schools.

And what a difference a year or so makes. When it was voting time in 2006, the Brixton Hill Mandela School option made absolute sense to Labour, especially if some of its more naive supporters were prepared to stand for election against Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates. They did - generating huge publicity for Labour in the press - but got virtually no votes or I'd imagine even a thank you letter from the victorious Comrades. After all what good is a used political condom to anyone the morning after the indecent proposal?

This cynical Faustian pact was always bound to disintegrate. Instead some GB pounds 100,000 of tax payers money was spent validating the same numbers that had been available to the previous administration. Land assembly alone for Brixton Hill would cost GB pounds 25 million. As it is the new Tulse Hill Hill option will cost more than GB pounds 10 million and puts the Territorial Army base at risk.

The most sensible option is to invest money in existing secondary schools to provide extra places. That seems like a vote of confidence in the present and helps to future proof the next generation. At least five existing Lambeth secondary schools have to physical capacity to take more students if funding can be arranged over and above the current Building Schools for the Future programme. Perhaps there will be another U-Turn - oddly when David Cameron visited Brixton for a major policy announcement a prominent Labour woman councillor was present. A spy in the cab - maybe? There was no heckling so I think she may have got the message and there are rumours of at least one possible defection from Labour's Class of 2006.

Labour's 2007 Remembrance Sunday Shame

Cllr John Whelan — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:06:00 +0000

What is it about Labour that they can't get their act together once a year in Lambeth for Remembrance Sunday? There are honourable exceptions, of course, and notably the MP for Vauxhall who not only takes part, but looks the part, in a smart perfectly tailored black coat and matching hat.

However, whatever your views about the current war in Afghanistan and the continuing U.K. presence in Iraq, remembrance is about sacrifice, about men and women responding to their government's instructions, and about the lost generations that preceded them in the conflicts of the 20th century.

At City Hall on the Friday before Remembrance Sunday, a dozen soldiers - men and women - from the Mercian Regiment just back from Afghanistan were applauded by the assembled VIPs and members of the British Legion. From that single regiment nine were killed and 17 seriously wounded - a sobering revelation - but when you looked into their faces they were just ordinary soldiers responding to their nation's call to arms.

Which is why I can't forgive Labour for the disrespect and lack of care they display when they run the show in Lambeth. No body had bothered to check the war memorials in the town hall for spatters of cream paint left behind by careless decorators. No doubt whoever is supposed to monitor the project is paid mega bucks but they were still spattered with streaks of paint this morning.

And then it's Labour councillors themselves sent by their political bosses to attend every memorial service going in the borough regardless of their community ties. One arrived at 11.45 a.m. for a service that had started at 10 a.m. - perhaps he overslept. In another case a Labour member wore a pair of sneakers to lay a wreath. He wouldn't have been admitted to the Fridge night club in that kind of footwear. As for the ceremony at Albert Embankment at the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade - not a single Labour member showed his or her face.

I heard a moving story on Sunday morning from one of our local Muslim leaders of how his father fought and suffered for the British Army in Burma during World War II. He spent four years a POW of the Japanese, and then became part of the new Pakistan army after the war. Our iman remembers what distress this brought his mother in the Punjab especially as her husband's letters took months to arrive.

It gave us something in common - my father was also part of the "forgotten" 14th army in Burma. Yesterday I was proud to wear his Burma Star on my right breast - as prescribed by the Bristish Legion - in recognition of both my father's and our iman's father's service and sacrifice to ensure all our freedoms.

Legend of a Priest Who Crucified Lambeth Council

Cllr John Whelan — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:24:00 +0000

He was a parish priest first and foremost, but to others he is a legend. Canon John Devane who has retired after 37 years a parish priest in West Norwood was a veteran critic of Lambeth Council. His weekly sermons were usually prefaced an anecdote about yet another outrage by the pen pushers at the Town Hall. As Roman Catholic diocesan representative on the Education Committee in the early 1990s, he aroused the then Director Beb Burchell to explode: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest," echoing King Henry II's furious outburst about his saintly Archbishop of Canterbury.

Neither was Canon Devane willing to go to an unquiet grave. His last major campaign against petty bureaucrats at the town hall was over his wish to have Christian burial in West Norwood Cemetery. "Parishioners can either come to my grave and pray if they liked me, or dance on it if they don't," he quipped.

Cemetery officers tried to deny this wish claiming the cemetery was full and that making an exception would create a precedent. Then they offered him a berth to eternity next to some Anglican nuns in the Church of England reserve. Fortunately, Labour was temporarily out of power and common sense prevailed when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration overruled the officers and granted his wish - unheard of now Labour is back in office.

Canon John Devane who hailed from Kilkenny in County Kerry in Ireland is a life long teetotaller who nevertheless liked nothing better than to entertain - parishioners, teachers, councillors, and not always the great and the good. He rebuilt the finances of his parish through shrewd husbandry of the pennies as well as the pounds, but also threw his heart and soul into youth work and Catholic education. He was chairman of governors and St Francis Cabrini Primary and also at Bishop Thomas Grant Secondary. Buying the site of the church car park was he reckoned his shrewdest decision.

Never afraid to take on the authorities, Canon Devane defied his own bishops by taking all but one of the Catholic schools grant maintained in the Tory years to give them independence from a notoriously anti-church school Labour council in Lambeth. However, Canon Devane's waggish, and sometimes sardonic humour, defused many a confrontation. His knowledge of headteachers, parents, pupils, and youth workers was second to none. At times garrulous and slightly petulant, Canon Devane knew when to walk away and turn the other cheek. After all his faith sustained him through even the darkest hours.

Courageous through ill health in his later years, Canon Devane was determined to enjoy the parish's centennial before retiring or going to the Purley Gates. Any evening with him produced a fund of clerical stories usually jokes at the expense of other Irish clerics or bishops one of which concerned a cigar and an Irish pub that closed for business while a bishop had a Havana. Another was about contacting a parish priest in a remote district of Ireland where cremation was unknown. Instead of driving to meet the newly arrived relative with the deceased's cremated remains in a jam jar, the unworldly cleric sent a horse-drawn hearse thinking he was receiving a coffin. Another concerned how he financed a new carpet in church. "Well, this lai-dy hayer--dress-her," he drawled in his unreconstructed Irish accent, "came to con--fession in South London because she didn't want anyone in her par--ish to hear about her sins. And dat's how I came by the car--pet as part of her pen--ance."

He often told his parishoners, perhaps in jest, that he didn't want any bishop conducting his funeral mass, but when they visited St Matthew's on special occasions he was always a model of courtesy and welcome, controlling the order of service with hand signals and what to the initiated might look like unseemly gestures. As it turned out, Canon Devane outlived several bishops and even presided over the choice of the current Archbishop of Southwark. It was fitting that Bishop Lynch was full of humour at his farewell service even promising to sshow this bloh to the Archbishop. No one was ever sure of Father Devane's politics, but he was always on the side of those elected by the people who fought for the people. As for me brought up in a family that revered priests, I was never able to imitate by fellow councillors call Canon Devane by his first name - to me he was always "father."

Hoey Puts Her Hunting Boot Into Labour Lambeth

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:40:00 +0000

Our most feisty Lambeth politician is the veteran independently-minded MP for Vauxhall Kate Hoey. It's sometime hard to believe that this pro-hunting right-wing Labour MP is really one of the Comrades given her voting record: anti cannabis, anti casinos, anti 24-hour licensing, and pro grammar schools in Northern Ireland at least.

It is no secret at Westminster that she does not see eye to eye with her sister MP for Dulwich and West Norwood and if there is a controversy Kate is bound to be in the heart of the storm. On one occasion attending a Holocaust Day commemoration at the Town Hall, she muttered cattily under her breath about some very ungodly matters including the dress sense and hair style of a leading public servant on the podium and then sang lustily an Anglican hymn that reminded her of school assembly.

Yet Kate is very often on the money when it comes to taking our Labour-led Cabinet to book. "They're very cocky," she exclaimed a few months before the last local elections. She then agreed to have her photograph taken for publication with a Conservative candidate she liked in his leaflets against her own candidates. Her own re-selection for Parliament was by all accounts a difficult piece of navigation, but it seems that at the 11th hour her critics took their tanks off her lawn. Otherwise, she had told contacts in other political parties she was planning to stand as an "independent Liberal Conservative," which is in itself an unusual combination although perhaps not to someone brought up in Ulster. Oddly enough had she stood as an Independent I'm sure many voters who normally support other parties than Labour would have backed her.

So where has the girl from over the Irish Sea done good? Tell the truth the way Labour doesn't like it , I guess. She told The Commons last week:

"There has recently been a ballot in Lambeth for an ALMO [see previous blog] and I was ashamed by the way that my borough handled it. The ballot form was biased and set out in a way that was clearly one sided. Something like GB pound 400,000 was spent on glossy brochures, DVDs, and all sorts of things that were sent to tenants, and they amounted to propaganda as to why the tenants should have their housing put out to an ALMO."

Carry on, Kate!

Ballot As Fishy as the 1950s Docks in Hull

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:21:00 +0000

Labour came in last year on a promise to improve the housing service for our long suffering tenants and what's happened? They are about to cut the emergency out of hours repairs service and the Handy Persons scheme in a desperate bid to stave off bankruptcy.

In the meantime in a ballot worthy of a banana republic, Labour is claiming that a majority of its residents living on its estates want to transfer themselves to an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO). Why have the wheels fallen off the Labour bandwagon quite so quickly?

One of the answers is that Labour doesn't like any kind of scrutiny and is too slow to open the books when things go wrong. Overspending on the housing revenue account by GB pounds 2.1 million for the year ended in April 2007 smacks of incompetence, especially as it was supposed to be GB pounds 2.5 million in the black. They can hardly blame anyone but themselves, but no doubt they will given their GB pounds 150,000 team of spin doctors at least two of whom used to work full time for Labour.

It seems that the district auditor has also caught the Labour Party cooking the books and processing revenue receipts - such as costs for building maintenance - as capital receipts. This may not mean much to many people, but as far as bean counters are concerned it's serious. The auditor has ordered GB pounds 2.3 million of expenditure be restored to the housing revenue account, which is supposed to be spent on housing and for no other purpose.

Finally, the ALMO ballot is about as fishy as the docks in Hull used to be when I was growing up in the 1950s. The 51% to 49% alleged result actually involved the leaseholders voting 'No' by a large margin of 57.5% to 42.5% and some 1,505 ballot papers were returned marked 'don't know.' Hardly a convincing mandate, especially given the complaints from some residents that they never received a ballot paper.

UPDATE: Vauxhall's Labour MP Kate Hoey has submitted a Parliamentary Early Day Motion that "notes with dismay the balloting process undertaken by Lambeth Council".

Blazing Row With Livingstone Over White Men

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:26:00 +0000

What is it about being a middle aged white man that makes you feel part of an endangered species? In this case the Labour Mayor of London - himself a middle aged white man and formerly resident in my ward - refused to reappoint six of the seven Conservative nominations to the London Fire Authority and all three of the Liberal Democrats. They are, of course, white men. His grounds for doing this was to improve the gender balance and more importantly to improve the ethnic minority representation of those who serve on London's strategic fire and rescue organisation. The Labour, Green and One London (formerly UKIP) nominations were accepted.

Perhaps I should declare an interest, dear reader, as one of the nine white men being discriminated against by the Mayor having served on the authority since 2002. I have dedicated the time I spend on this in memory of 16 of my friends who were murdered by Al Qaeda sponsored terrorists in the World Trade Centre on 9/11 together with a much large number of firefighters.

Although all the Labour representatives on the London fire authority - apart from the woman chair - are from the ethnic minority this has only been the case for a relatively short time since until a couple of months ago one place was occupied by an elderly white male councillor from Camden. As far as is known, Labour has no democratic process for choosing its fire authority members, while the Liberals have a full ballot of their London councillors and the Tories have a ballot of their borough leaders.

The outcome of several days of legal cross fire was a partial climbdown by the Mayor, but four of the white males have only been reappointed until August 31. I can't help feeling that my 16 friends who died on 9/11 - no trace of any of them was ever found - would not have cared about the race, religion, sexuality, or colour of the New York Fire Authority members or firefighters who tried to save them, only that they were the best people for the job.

'Return of the Swamp Thing' to Labour Lambeth

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 27 May 2007 13:25:00 +0000

Lambeth under Labour is once again a by word for complacency and arrogance after four years between 2002 and 2006 when the joint administration involving the Conservatives started a major clean up and clear out. Honourable exceptions exist, but for many people the idea of bringing back Capita to run part of the revenue and benefits service is just the final straw.

No. 10 Downing Street's favourite outsourcing company was an ardent supporter of New Labour when it came to office and it is hardly surprising that once Labour returns at local level the company is quickly back in the frame. You only wonder who gives the orders. There is, of course, a technical justification of sorts, but the politics of it are almost beyond belief.

So let's fast track back to 2001 when Labour's first honeymoon with Capita ended in tears. The Guardian reported:

"Lambeth claims its benefits service has deteriorated since Capita's seven-year contract began in 1997. It says the problems peaked in April last year when it faced 55,000 outstanding queries and the quality of the service remains unacceptable."

And the link with New Labour? Let's go back to The Guardian again only reporting in 2006 about donors to the Labour Party.

"One of those named was Rod Aldridge, head of support services firm Capita, who passed Labour £1m in loans. His company undertakes considerable business for the government. He insisted the one-year loan was a personal matter on commercial terms."

So that's alright then?

Only a Cabinet with the sheer brass neck of Labour Lambeth would reappoint a failed contractor with a high profile connection with loans to the Labour Party to return and operate the service again. No doubt there is a business case for doing this and officers are not there to give advice to elected members about political fall out. To my way of thinking though this nightmare is as scary as "The Return of the Swamp Thing."

But that isn't all. Local residents have been poorly served not only by "revs and bens" but in other areas of service delivery - notably transport. Again there are honourable exceptions, but we are talking here about a Council which can't even handover work properly when a key project manager dealing with a new parking scheme left. If that happened in the private sector company where I work in the daytime, it would be P45 time.

Irritable Jowell Syndrome

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 20 May 2007 16:26:00 +0000

It's been a busy week in the Dulwich and West Norwood Parliamentary constituency with well attended local public meetings about planning applications and two separate mass petitions to save the West Norwood Farmers' Market and the Flower Stall in Norwood Road.

As I write, I've got a letter given to me by a constituent addressed to our high flying Labour MP about saving the flower stall, which says "it is to us what Eros is to Piccadilly Circus." It hasn't got a stamp on it so I expect that will cost me 32p.

There isn't much evidence that she'll be around to read it judging by her "Tessa Jowell: My Week" column in that Labour loving newspaper The Independent. Let's see last Sunday she spent in Brighton with her chum Polly Toynbee and then dined with Lord Falconer. Monday - it was a Labour party dinner and she's backing Hazel Blears for deputy leader. Tuesday - off to Merseyside and enjoyed a "lovely dinner" with luvvy film director Anthony Minghella. Wednesday it's a visit to Barking Abbey school. Finally, Thursday sees the watchdog of our local community here in West Norwood swanning off to Cannes for the film festival doing wonders for her carbon footprint.

Doesn't sound as if she had much time for her constituents what with all those "darlings" at the film festival. They don't figure anywhere in her diary. So I thought I'd remind her about the problems that were raised in my advice surgery on Saturday morning - depressed woman wants to be rehoused due to racist taunting on her estate; elderly man worried about bogus council officials calling him for his bank details; a leaseholder with an unresolved dispute over decorating costs going back to 2004; a business man with a complaint against Thames Water - the most uncooperative utility in the world; and an elderly woman angry that the police have failed to investigate a complaint she made, well there's a surprise.

Those are on top of the 30 or so requests for help I alone received by e-mail while our MP was away in Liverpool, Cannes, and Brighton. I think I've read somewhere that MPs get quite long holidays, but I never thought it was on a 365-days a year basis. Funny old world.

Labour Verdicts on Dying Administrations

Cllr John Whelan — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:58:00 +0000

It took a call from the warden at a Lambeth sheltered housing scheme telling me about the death of an elderly constituent to realise how worrying the threatened changes to care packages are for the elderly. "The anxiety about change hastened her death," he asserted, repeating it several times in a short telephone conversation. At the Lambeth budget setting meeting in February the Labour administration delivered a 'double whammy' blow to the elderly and the vulnerable of the borough by increasing social care charges by more than 120 per cent while at the same time tightening the eligibility criteria.

Is this any way to treat older people - the generation that lived through the Second World War and its aftermath? There are a series of so-called consultation meetings planned for the month of May, but no one believes anything will change as a result. Confidence in this administration because of its unwillingness to listen to people is at an all time low. In any case people are already dying as the call from the warden indicates.

Lambeth, in common with the rest of London, had no opportunity to go to the polling stations this month but the verdict elsewhere in England was pretty decisive. There are 89 councils where there are no Labour councillors at all. The Tories won control of 38 more councils, including Warwick the very last to declare on May 8. With 900 more councillors the Conservatives are by far the biggest party in local government.

So I thought I'd share with you an e-mail from Labour MP Jon Cruddas which somehow got forwarded to me. This seems to becoming a habit because a Labour councillor recently sent me his ward activist list by mistake - they have all been targeted for conversion to the Tory cause. Mr Cruddas writes in a rare moment of Labour honesty:

"Dear friends,

Last Thursday, the Tories won 41% of the vote compared to Labour's 27%. Despite some bright points in areas like Thurrock, Sandwell and Tyneside, and despite the hard work of activists and candidates, we lost almost 500 councillors, and many Scottish MSPs and Welsh AMs too. In the days since the election, some people in the press and the party have insisted that the results "are a springboard" to the next election. I disagree."

He follows this with a call to action to his party workers. Arguably, it is already too late to save a dying government.

Labour Lambeth's Lousy Deal for Edna, Winifred, and Sharon

Cllr John Whelan — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:48:00 +0000

Days since Lambeth Labour Leader filed a blog - seven
Days since Lambeth Lib Dem Leader filed a blog - 69

It came home to me on Saturday at a busy 'surgery advice centre' what a lousy deal the residents of Lambeth Council-owned estates get from their landlord especially those who live on small estates without a big voice in the tenants movement.

You'd think that the seventh biggest social landlord in the country would have some world class players in its management team - a Beckham or two perhaps - especially in view of how much our Labour masters pay them. It's wrong to generalise, of course, because there are some rapidly eroding islands of good practice among the officer ranks - we just lost a really great area manager here in Norwood called Bayo. Yet it's hard to beat the tale Edna, Winifred and Sharon told me (names have been changed to protect the innocent and in any case my Mum's middle name was Winifred).

Winifred's flat has a new source of running water only it's not from Thames Water. It's pouring in from the flat above which has been 'sublet' by the tenant who is living somewhere else with his girlfriend and no doubt claiming benefit there. But when Winifred spotted two Lambeth housing officers they 'didn't want to know' because they were there to 'investigate' something else and said 'ring the office.' Not exactly the 'can do' style of management. Neither were they interested in hearing about the flat that has been empty for two years just along the corridor.

Edna's problem was rather different. The gasman came to inspect her boiler on Friday, but as he was only 'health and safety' he just switched the whole thing off and left saying - you've guessed it - 'ring the office' - because he didn't want to know. As a result, Edna now has no hot water until someone turns up from repairs in a week or two. The scandal is that the boiler is the same one installed when the property was built 30 years ago and is costing her a fortune to run. Yet I believed all that council junk about energy efficient heating systems that reduced the carbon footprint.

Last of all there was Sharon. Her problem is anti social youths making her life a misery and threatening anyone who tells them to stop making a racket including her pregnant daughter. And you've guessed it when she rang the office 'they didn't want to know.' All these residents tell me they never see the community police team heralded with lots of backslapping by Labour politicians who regularly write sanctimonious rubbish in the local newspaper about initiatives that make no difference to anyone. Now I happen to know that our local police team make a real effort, but without the active support of highly-paid council officers and intelligence from the housing service they can't make a decisive impact especially with the small minority of anti-social tenants.

How come all these good folk turned up at the surgery from the same estate? It may have had something to do with the community newsletter we put round as councillors the previous week-end. As far as we're concerned Sharon, Edna, and Winifred represent the good solid residents living on our estates who deserve a lot better than what Labour gives them. And we're actually going to do something about it by inviting them to our joint advice centre with the police next month as well as by goading the housing officers with our members' enquiries.

Speaking Up for Small Businesses in Lambeth

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:13:00 +0000

Days since other Party Leaders in Lambeth updated their blogs:

Labour - eight days
Liberal Democrat - 61 days

The time has come to speak up for the small businesses in our high streets in Lambeth. Many of them are in danger of disappearing under the sheer weight of 'samey' brand names, fast food outlets, and the ubiquitous supermarkets. If the big biggest retailers had it all their own way in West Norwood, we'd only need three or four of them to sell everything, to everyone, everywhere.

Much to my surprise a leading bicycling community activist in my ward has apparently swallowed the gospel according to the supermarket chains. He writes in the local press that he sees little value in a flower stall that is apparently an inconvenience as far as one major retailer is concerned. But, there are other voices in our community that value 'flower power' since more than 1,000 people have signed a petition calling for the flower stall by the cemetery gates to remain where it has been for the past 100 years. Cynics might say that people will sign any petition, but it does seem that the flower stall is regarded as a local treasure and highly valued by its customers.

A survey of my constituents in the neighbouring streets backed that priority with only a handful of people saying they wanted more supermarkets. Quite apart from anything else, the flower stall is a business that has been recognised for excellence by London's leading daily newspaper and is patronised by all sections of the community especially visitors to the cemetery. I should know, I go to enough funerals as leader of the Conservative Group on Lambeth Council.

In any case, West Norwood has already been 'supermarketed' with two supermarkets only a few metres from the old Jack Stamp's pub. Another one at Park Hall Road is even more convenient for residents such as my bicycling constituent and community activist - a self nominating profession which keeps the local newspapers busy for the price of a few beverages in local watering holes.

It is absolutely common ground that West Norwood's shopping offer could certainly do with improvement, but that means encouraging more independent retailers, such as the excellent fish shop, deli, fruit and veg sellers, photo shop, banks, and the existing supermarkets. Isn't it time someone took up the gauntlet for independent retailers?

The 'Gas Person Cometh' in Herne Hill

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 15:12:00 +0000

Herne Hill is an up and coming mini town centre straddling the border with Southwark where shopkeepers and residents have aspirations. Its energetic and well organised Herne Hill Forum acts as a local area assembly and sounding board with regular turnouts of 200 people or more.

Imagine the disappointment then that must have followed the re-election of two Labour councillors last May who despite their local profile don't appear to be anyone's first port of call when people need help. One of them is even a Cabinet member with a whacking special responsibility allowance who clearly needs to spend more time in the ward and less in the town hall balancing the books.

Instead it's the Conservatives who've been asked to help do something about the fact that shopkeepers think Lambeth Council seems to be hell bent on "driving the retailers out of business." So what do they say - loading and unloading for traders is becoming "impossible for all shops, bars and pubs in Railton Road; parking bays were meant to be sorted out last November but has still not been done four months later; CCTV cameras were supposed to prevent street crime in Herne Hill but only seem to issue parking tickets."

Having documented the grievances, we'll now monitor how quickly anyone from the Council responds. One of the complaints is in the old Flanders and Swann category of the 'Gas person cometh' - "a man came and started to paint some gray railings black, ran out of paint, and then never came back leaving the railings a piebald colour." Oddly enough that was the first point the Council officers responding to these complaints picked up on, probably because it doesn't require a statutory notice to fix it - just another pot of paint which is actually on sale less than 25 yards from the railings.

Puss Got It Right About Council Fat Cats

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:04:00 +0000

'Puss' got it right - the feral moggie who took up residence in the basement of Lambeth Town Hall over Christmas correctly spotted that the place was full of 'fat cats.' The spin doctors denied that 'Puss' was acquiring 'squatters rights' and shortly after 'Crisis at Christmas' shut up shop until December 20 2007, Puss mysteriously disappeared.

The rumour is that 'Puss' accepted a redundancy package with a compromise agreement to prevent the tabby mog selling out to the tabloids with an exclusive on 'town hall nights.' Puss is now being advised by Unison officials and may will take the council to an employment tribunal for high rights abuses, bullying, and constructive dismissal.

With tax bills rising above inflation, Labour Lambeth is paying huge wages to loads of its staff - eight of them earn over GB pounds 100,000 a year plus generous holidays and gilt-edged pensions. And Lambeth is the worst borough in London according to the Audit Commission. With half the borough's children living in poverty, and 85 per cent of those in poverty in single parent families, you need to draw a deep breath at this pay bonanza for a failing council.

All this comes on top of budget proposals from the New Labour majority on the council, which will see services to poor, elderly, and disabled people cut. Labour has sparked widespread anger by considering charging for home care services and removing respite help for carers in an attempt to balance its budget, while increasing council tax bills by the maximum allowed by the government of 4.99 per cent.

People Power Shames the Comrades

Cllr John Whelan — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:43:00 +0000

It was the day 'People Power' shook its fist at our New Labour Leaders - when 500 of the elderly, the disabled, and the vulnerable marched in protest at the huge increases in home care charges proposed by our masters.

Lambeth Town Hall has seen many 'demos' in its time - usually organised by 'Spartist' types straight from the scrapbooks of Old Labour or feral Maoist children in matching tee-shirts goaded on by unsmiling bearded lefties and shaven headed Labour councillors. Rarely, have so many real people marched to show their disgust - one woman hobbled two miles there and back on crutches from her Vauxhall home in the rain.

Predictably, our masters failed to budge an inch from their determination to raise home care charges by some 120 plus per cent and to tighten the eligibility criteria as well. They also proposed slashing cuts in grants to voluntary organisations - the very people who do the caring when the Council refuses to pick up the tab. Yet there was another way, and even a third way. The increases in charges and cuts in voluntary organisation grants were all avoidable.

Both the Conservative and the Liberal alternative budgets offered other savings that would remove the need for penalising the elderly and vulnerable. Only the Conservative budget was unqualified by the finance officers advising the Council. Nevertheless, had Labour councillors exercised any degree of common sense they would have 'picked and matched' from the alternative budgets and balanced the books without punishing the most vulnerable people in the borough. Sadly, when it came to the crunch they all voted like muppets for the Labour package. Their eyes said one thing - their votes another.

Despite our masters' uncaring public image, the situation could still be salvaged. Two days after the debacle, I met privately with the Labour Leader and offered him support in any cross-party initiative to avoid increasing the home care charges and cutting the voluntary sector. Let us hope and pray - and watch this space. There is just enough time to think again - but don't hold your breath.

Paying Through The Nose for Labour

Cllr John Whelan — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:56:00 +0000

Our Labour bosses who now meet as a Cabinet in the afternoons when most people are at work have pulled no punches in hitting the elderly and vulnerable hardest in their first budget. It also means they won't be bringing children to demonstrate as they did in 2005 because they're all at school until after 3 p.m.

If you live in an average home the Council Tax bills dropping through your letter box early next month will be a tad under 1,200 pounds. Last year the previous Conservative and Liberal administration managed a tax freeze in the Lambeth element of the Council Tax while Labour proposed a cut in council tax through a series of ranting speeches that had no properly constructed table attached with the specific details.

But, lo, history has been rewritten. In his speech at the afternoon Cabinet on February 8 the Leader of the Council criticised the previous administration for NOT raising council tax to allow for inflation when his proposals in 2006 would have CUT the council tax not freeze it. The Labour proposals last year were put together by a journalist - and we all know that the press exercises power without responsibility. Perhaps this is less important than the rising tide of anger about the proposed huge increases in social care charges for the elderly and the voluntary sector.

Despite some hand wringing, nothing has emerged from the Cabinet about how it plans to mitigate the effect of these cuts on elderly people and their carers. The proposals on February 8 were unchanged from the previous Cabinet meeting on January 8, (surely some mistake?).There are plenty of proposals in the alternative Conservative budget amendments that would help reduce waste and leave resources to spare that could restore the cuts. They could start with their own bank accounts and revisit some of the huge allowances that have paid to the administration's payroll vote. Looking at the council agenda for budget setting on February 28, which contains a proposed debate on Palestine and Israel and a jibe at Tony's mate George W Bush, they are clearly more interested in foreign policy than local residents.

Throwing the Book at Labour

Cllr John Whelan — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:10:00 +0000

Our socialist masters are once again reviewing the Lambeth Library Service. Famously, in 1999 when they were last in power the libraries were described by the then Chair of Environmental Services Councillor Torren Smith, in a moment of rare frankness, as "the worst library service in Britain." He's still on the council but these days operates in the relative backwater of town planning - a tautology if ever there was one.

Oddly, enough the planning service has a problem with libraries where they are supposed to lodge copies of new planning applications. The only problem is that at times when people are actually at home such as between Christmas and the New Year the highly paid administraton at Lambeth Town Hall "forgot" to send the plans out on the van before disappearing for turkey and mince pies at their non denominational Winterval celebrations.

Getting back to the serious issue, the radical 1999 "Frank Quigg Plan" named after a past director long gone away to become an artist was aimed at cutting the libraries to five and re-opening them as "super libraries" with round the clock opening hours. It has to be wondered how the gallant librarians would have kept the dossers and drug dealers out of the libraries in the wee small hours of the night. In the end, a couple of smaller libraries closed, but Labour lost office before it could implement the ground breaking 24/7 philosophy of libraries. Chance would have been a fine thing given the Stalinist attitudes of some of the service providers. Did you know that some libraries in London still close at lunchtime because as in Lambeth they are producer rather than consumer oriented.

This time the 'review' has distinguished outsiders included in the panel, but no opposition councillors are seated at the table. The service will have to explain to our residents why our libraries consume GB pounds 5.3 million of public money a year, of which GB pounds 1.1 million is spent on 'head office' costs. So I thought when given these figures by finance officers, only to be told yesterday by other officers that there were other figures that are different. It is no good holding your breath about figures from Lambeth Council because there is little transparency or accountability under New Labour. It's not as bad as Mayor Livingstone though whose share of your council tax is up 147 per cent since he won power. Londoners living in average family houses will be paying GB pounds 304 for his services in the next financial year.

Labour Only Do It In The Afternoon

Cllr John Whelan — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:03:00 +0000

Our citizens curious for knowledge about what our Labour masters and mistresses have in store for them will now have to flock to the Town Hall in the afternoons to hear words of wisdom from their leaders. Cabinet meetings for the next three months will start at 2.30 p.m. to enable Labour bosses to 'nod through' the business without the unnecessary presence of our citizens most of whom will be at work or caring for relatives or children. Our highly paid officers will be able to have the evening off watching soccer or getting to know their families.

Not since the dark days of the Blitz has the Cabinet, or its previous incarnation, met in the daytime. Any elected Opposition member, or citizen for that matter, who works in a school or in a job with fixed daytime hours is disenfranchised. Clearly, we won't be seeing mobs of sinister tee-shirted children marshalled by aggressive stewards jeering at the Cabinet as used to be the case when Labour were in opposition. Remember when they dressed children in bin liners to shout abuse at H.M. The Queen much to the anger of one of our head teachers who silently wrote down the names of the children from his school who he recognised on TV?

Sadly, the past is also no guide to our future. With budget making fast approaching and stealth taxes on the horizon it seemed a good moment to review what our masters proposed just 12 months ago. Lo! They advocated the demise of Lambeth Life, our monthly information bulletin from the Town Hall, whose newsprint is so costly you can't even light a fire with it. The elimination of jobs in the press office was another cut proposed by Labour's veteran finance guru who works for The Times business pages and vast reductions in agency staff as well as IT projects being put on hold plus job cuts in policy and performance.

When May 5th dawned, of course, all these initiatives were forgotten in the grab for power. The Times business journalist had returned to his role of writing about capitalism. Lambeth Life still comes through some of our letter boxes with pictures of our new leaders adorning every page. Curiously, the same department who publishes it used to say no pictures could appear of politicians. New posts have been created in the miscommunications department and that temp somewhere in the town hall who came from an agency to do the photocopying last summer was still here at Christmas. New figures show that it costs more than GB pounds 2,000 a year to pay for every paper pusher working in the town hall - and that doesn't count the new offices refurbished over Christmas at vast expense to the tax payer.

Our tax payers are in for a hard time with Labour extracting the maximum council tax increase permitted by their government of 4.99 per cent with an extra two per cent to cover Mayor Livingstone's foreign policy initiatives in Venezuela. In the meantime waste and excess is tolerated. The cost of borrowing a library book in Lambeth, if you can find one in any of the libraries, is GB pounds 10.29 compared to GB pounds 3.64 in neighbouring Wandsworth where it is rumoured there are books. The figures, courtesy of CIPFA, were published last week although data from the most efficient library at Upper Norwood was not included, despite the authority spending GB pounds 1.1 million a year on headquarters library mandarins.

Celebrating Conservative Success in London

Cllr John Whelan — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 14:35:00 +0000

Conservatives are often rather backward in coming forward to celebrate their progress in local government. London is no exception. Yet it is becoming clearer by the day that Labour realises we are now the dominant party in both London and local government nationally for the forseeable future. The actions of the Labour government in adding to Mayor Livingstone's powers show how desperate they are - only through Livingstone's mayoralty can they retain any dominance over London politics.

But Labour is also losing its grip. At last week's meeting of the London Fire Authority Livingstone's chairwoman - the GLA Assembly Member for Lambeth and Southwark - had the rug pulled out from under one of her pet projects - the GLA Labour Brussels Office. Taking advantage of an absence of two Labour members, Conservatives voted to withdraw funding on the basis that the authority is about fire and rescue services in London not Belgium.

Indeed Conservatives now control 16 out of the 32 London town halls with a joint Conservative administration with the third party of national politics in three more. If you look at the political map of London, Labour has retreated into its fortress boroughs in parts of East and North London. In East London they are under threat from an extermist nationalist party, largely because of decades of taking absolute power for granted. There is no Labour council west of a line drawn between Sutton and Barnet.

As for the 'Ming Emperor', his Party has very little to celebrate. In May, in their three flagship boroughs, Liberal Democrats narrowly held Sutton and Kingston, but lost overall control of Islington. As the Kingston and Sutton results show, Conservatives can go head to head with Liberals and win.

Londoners have only a bleak outlook to face from City Hall with a huge increase in fare rises on public transport in London - 33 per cent in the past year alone. Essentially, by shunting NHS costs onto London's boroughs, the Government has turned the council tax into a health 'stealth' tax.

In Lambeth, the elderly are facing a 132 per cent increase in the cost of social care. The new Labour zealots at the town hall are enthusiastically enforcing the philosophy of Gordon Brown before he has even moved next door to No 10. It won't take long before the voters see that the promises made last May were as worthless as the manifesto they were written on. And as for the Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, instead of living in South Africa under the stars for her long Christmas holiday working on a sports project, it might be a good idea to spend the odd night in her constituency visiting a multi use games area.

Family Friendly Labour - Never on a Friday Night

Cllr John Whelan — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 18:31:00 +0000

Our leaders have followed their massive pay hikes by adopting new 'family friendly' policies - the Cabinet Member for Housing has taken an enthusiastic lead by telling the Lambeth Tenants Council that he couldn't attend their most important meeting of the year because Friday was 'family night.' It rather begs the question as to why everyone else had to turn out on a wet January night - perhaps they don't have families' - but our masters often tell us 'do as I say, not do as I do.'

As forecast, our long suffering citizens are in for a 'double dunning' in the Spring with parking permits for residents living around commuter stations rising by nearly 100 per cent to GB pounds 115. This 'stand and deliver' strategy has already been described by many residents as 'highway robbery' especially as it's disguised in the fig leaf of 'green policies.' Although gas guzzlers will pay more in controlled parking areas, most people with bigger vehicles live in areas where there is either no controlled parking zone or abundant off street parking.

If the Cabinet Member for Housing was instantly unpopular for ducking out of a showdown with tenants over proposed rent rises, the Cabinet Member for the Environment was at least blessed with a rush of blood to the head and had an honest moment or rather a 'Ratner Moment.' Talking to what will be described as an 'informed source' to protect the innocent she admitted that it was fairly breathtaking to increase the charges at Lambeth's leisure centres by 25 per cent. The Ratner link? Although widely regarded as 'tacky', the Ratner shops and their wares were nevertheless extremely popular with the public, until Gerald Ratner made a speech at the Institute of Directors in April 1991 describing them as 'crap.' You've guessed it the unlucky Cabinet member described Lambeth Council's leisure centres as 'crap.' That will go down very well with the people who work there, one of whom reads this blog.

We Waited Until After Xmas for the Bad News

Cllr John Whelan — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:34:00 +0000

It's a New Year for our citizens here in the south east Lambeth, but the same old rotten service from Labour Lambeth Council. You're not surprised? Well the sting in the tail is that it's going to cost you more. The Lambeth chunk of the Council Tax is set to rise by 4.99% in April, while the Mayor of London is taking another 5.3% off Lambeth to pay for his bloated bureaucracy at City Hall and plans to celebrate Fidel Castro's golden anniversary.

Needless to say, the builders have been at work over the Christmas holidays at Lambeth Town Hall creating luxury office suites for a total spend of GB pounds 52,000 with furniture worth GB pounds 28,000 thrown in. As if to make it sound better, officers say the Chief Executive is going to have a smaller office. Perhaps this is because on the face of it he spends less time in the Town Hall than most of his predecessors since Heather Rabbatts. I feel sure that's because he is working wonders in Whitehall on behalf of the Labour administration.

Either way, Lambeth is a soft touch for building contractors judging by the amount of time I observed their operatives actually spend on the job while not smoking outside the building. However, at least one of them must have a big heart because the Town Hall cat resident in the basement is receiving regular cat food. The press office deny that 'Puss' is resident there - my digital photos prove otherwise. Labour Lambeth has the kind of spin doctors who would have denied that the holy family was in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

What does make me angry though is that while holidaying senior officers get better office equipment and furniture, the elderly residents of Skiffington Close in Tulse Hill have recently been told that there are no plans to decorate or refurbish their bungalows, which have not been painted for 25 years.

The only antidote is to get out there and do something about it. This afternoon, I delivered among hundreds of others two leaflets to the spruce and well decorated home on Gipsy Hill of one 'Edward Knight' former left wing firebrand leader of the Council in the 1980s and intimate of the current Mayor of London.

One of the uncelebrated events of 2006 was the 20th anniversary of 'Red Ted's' resignation on the instructions of the District Auditor for failing to set a rate. Judging by the smart and well lettered 'Edward Knight' on his nameplate, he can't have done badly from his disastrous tenure of office.

The leaflet was all about saving the Upper Norwood Library. I wonder what Ted'll make of our criticism directed at Labour's Councillor on the library committee for 'failing to vote to set a budget?' Leopards don't change their spots do they.

Remembering 'Super Mac' 20 Years On

Cllr John Whelan — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 13:47:00 +0000

It's the 20th anniversary on December 29 of the death of former Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who was born in Brixton in 1894. Many Lambeth residents associate Sir John Major with Brixton in the ranks of our former prime ministers, but 'Super Mac' as he was labelled by the cartoonist 'Vicky' was by common consent the greater of the two.

Like the current leader of the Conservative Party, Macmillan went to Eton followed by Balliol College, Oxford, but also served in the Grenadier Guards during the First World War and was wounded on three occasions. During the Battle of the Somme, he spent an entire day wounded and lying in a foxhole with a bullet in his pelvis reading the Greek writer Aeschylus in the original language.

Coming to power after the Suez Crisis, Macmillan presided over a period of prosperity in the late 1950s best paraphrased as 'You've never had it so good,' although his exact words were "let me be frank about it - most of our people never had it so good." He was witty and famously unflappable. Responding to a remark by the Labour Leader Harold Wilson about not having any boots in which to go to school, Macmillan retorted, "If Mr Wilson did not have boots to go to school, it is because he was too big for them." When asked what was the greatest challenge for a statesman, Macmillan replied, "Events, my dear boy, events." Asked by President Kennedy whether it was true that his wife [Lady Dorothy] liked a drink or two, Macmillan replied, "If you think she's bad, you should have known her mother."

Macmillan retired from politics in 1964 and it was a decade later when he accepted a peerage as Earl of Stockton. A year before his death at the age of 92, Macmillan made a memorable speech at a dinner held by the Tory Reform Group (TRG) in which he appeared to criticise the Thatcher government's privatisation policy. "First of all the Georgian silver goes. And then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go." Profitable parts of the steel industry, and the railways had been privatised, along with British Telecom. "They were like the two Rembrandts still left." A few days later, he went to the Lords and explained that he was not against privatisation, but critical of the way the proceeds had been used as 'revenue'. Click here to hear the speech in full on the TRG weblog.

But like an old fox, Macmillan was wily and not afraid to stir controversy. In the Lords, he praised the miners then on strike, asserting that they had "beaten the Kaiser's Army" and "beaten Hitler's Army." In the last month of his life, he observed of his first parliamentary constituency: "Sixty three years ago...the unemployment rate in Stockton-on-Tees was then 29 per cent. Last November [1986] the unemployment rate [there] is 28 per cent. A rather sad end to one's life."

Bah Humbug to the Labour Lambeth Xmas

Cllr John Whelan — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 14:13:00 +0000

Our diverse borough, with more churches than any other in London, is being treated to a display of Christmas humbug by the Labour Party not known since the civic service was abolished in Ted Knight's time. First the Comrades put up last year's 'Happy Christmas' banner over the entrance to the Town Hall, which was commissioned by the Tory-Lib Dem administration in 2005, and then Labour's spin doctors claimed they'd restored Xmas. Next a Labour Cabinet member went to a Xmas service at a Lambeth crematorium and in a joint welcome with a senior member of the clergy started off by emphasising her Labour Party credentials - many eyebrows were raised in shock. In death there are no political parties. In remembrance of loved ones, we are all 'one nation' from the Cenotaph to Lambeth Cemetery. What is all the more remarkable is that this is the Party that until recently, and with honourable individual exceptions in Lambeth, rarely went to church, and still has an ideological dislike of church schools and faith-based education from the relevant Children's and Young Persons Cabinet member downwards.

As we look towards the New Year, our long-suffering citizens have little cheer to anticipate. We are living under a tax and spend administration that rarely listens to reasoned argument. Former Labour councillor in Lambeth Ken Livingstone is proposing an inflation busting 5.3 per cent tax rise from City Hall. Labour's highly paid officers also tell us that 'not enough people are dying because of the mild autumn and that funeral charges may rise'. Was that a day, perhaps, to bury bad news - tucked away on an inside page of the Tuesday South London Press which few people read? We have also discovered, via official reports, that the cost per head of accommodating our bureaucrats in the Town Hall is GB pounds 3,600 a year. The principal council buildings are collectively only 70 per cent occupied - wasting GB pounds 2 million a year of our money.

In the meantime a tide of anger rises among our 33,000 tenants who are still being denied a ballot on whether or not the Labour Party should sell the roofs from over their heads. Even the Labour MP for Vauxhall, 60-year-old Kate Hoey, thinks they are making a mistake, but our New Labour leaders dismiss her as a fiery maverick. Perhaps that's why some Tories vote for her.

Finally, as Xmas gets under way - a traditional time for caring for the homeless whether in a manger in the Holy Land or a shelter run by the Sally Army - let's spare a thought for 'Puss'. That's a feral tabby cat which has taken up residence in the underground car park of the Town Hall - it had heard that fat cats occupy office space in the Town Hall. Despite my finding it there overnight for the past week, Labour spin doctors deny it is resident. When I e-mail them about it there is a deafening silence. As for me - I'm going to call up the cat rescue service, if it hasn't gone by Boxing Day. The Labour spin doctors won't be around then having all disappeared to the ski slopes.

Collective Punishments on Lambeth Citizens

Cllr John Whelan — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:27:00 +0000

Our long suffering citizens are being lined up for yet more punishment from our masters. First, our secondary schools are being starved of resources, except for a handful of institutions favoured by the 'Blair Babes' running the education service. One angry secondary school headteacher, who I interviewed last Friday, described some of our Council's officers as "incompetent" and told how she'd been hectored by a Labour councillor who told her Lambeth had no need for more faith-based school places, but needed more places for the children of the middle classes. The particular school in question is much favoured by parents from all walks of life especially our black community and has eight applications for every place. It is not likely to get any resources under the so-called Building Schools for the Future programme until 2009. Some of the metrics used here have been changed to protect the innocent from reprisals.

In the Shrek movies, they had a particular name for the 'Blair Babe' fantasists in our Town Hall who think church schools are unpopular - 'the land of far far away'. But in the meantime, our customer friendly Comrades have been lining up collective punishments for those areas in the south of the borough that don't vote Labour at local elections. Gone is the proposed GB pounds 500,000 in Norwood lesiure facilities. Cut is the proposed GB pounds 1.387 million investment at the Vale Street recycling site, a popular facility that badly needs a makeover to keep local people satisfied about its green credentials. Slashed is GB pounds 500,000 of investment in street wardens and cut to GB pounds 100,000 are the budgets for the area committees which are especially well attended in Norwood and Streatham.

Hardly any of these proposed 'deletions' from the budget have any impact on Brixton or Vauxhall, but motorists everywhere are not going to escape unscathed. Not only are there plans for differential charging based on the size of engines, but there are strong indications, leaked to Conservative members by some of our more upstanding officers, that the GB pound 60 parking permit will have its price at least doubled and perhaps put up even more. Our people are told that this will be offset by improvements in the parking service where courtesy and fairness are now the proper way of working. Yet only the other day I received a letter from a woman in Deronda Road who says she lived in Czechoslovakia under Communism. The sight of a marauding pack of traffic wardens (they operate in threes like buses) makes her wonder whether they are coming to get her or a neighbour. It can only be a matter of time before everyone is hammered.

Labour's First Big Test - We Can't Wait

Cllr John Whelan — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 10:07:00 +0000

Our citizens are waiting with nervous anticipation for Labour's big test at the autumn council meeting this week. If the Comrades succeed in their aim of denying our tenants a ballot over the Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO), bonfires will be lit for the ritual burning of their election manifesto, which is silent on this contentious matter. None other than Comrade Kate Hoey, the feisty Ulster-born Labour MP for Vauxhall, thunders in her latest newsletter that tenants must have a democratic say in the future ownership of their homes through a proper ballot. How will the Houdinis of the Labour front bench wriggle out of this one?

Labour hates Council meetings and Area Committees where our citizens can vent their spleen on their rulers. Whereas in their wildnerness years they brought delegations to the meetings now they are less keen on hearing the voice of our people. That is why the ALMO meeting was rolled into the regular council meeting to cut down the time for debate. In an almost incomprehensible document attached to Wednesday's agenda the popular Area Committees are to be scrapped: the smart money is a return to a 'local governors' system in Lambeth favoured by Labour in 1998-2002 and not dissimilar to how the Blair government runs southern Iraq.

This extract from Scottish civil servant Rory Stewart's account of a year as a governor of a province in Iraq post Saddam is instructive: "It was vital that WE selected the right councillors, for they would have to guide the province through the first few months of independence [for this read Labour rule in Lambeth] with very little support from the centre."

It would also be worth our people taking comfort by reflecting on Machiavelli's warning in The Prince Chapter 19 'What will make [the ruler] despised is being considered inconstant, frivolous, effeminate, pusillanimous: a ruler must avoid contempt as if it were a reef.'

Another piece of stealth attached to the back of the council agenda is the huge pay hike Labour councillors are proposing to award to their leaders with the Leader himself drawing GB pounds 38k plus GB pounds 10k in ordinary allowances. It is unlikely, in my opinion, to be debated but nodded through at the end of the meeting. While some of the 'payroll vote' within the administration are jobless a few are being tempted to combine well-paid part-time jobs in the real world with these new allowances. Rumours, no doubt untrue, reach me that up to a dozen Labour members have reservations about the size of some of the new allowances. What is sure is that the doubters will not have the strength of mind to vote against this sleight of hand.