Interesting to look at the voting records on the draft Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007, which passed through the Commons last night, by 310 to 100.
Interesting because 85 Conservative MPs voted against. Only 28 Tories voted for the regs, including Cameron. Of those 28, only 6 were from the 2005 Conservative intake (of 51 MPs), which suggests that all is not as it should be in Cameron’s made-over Conservative party.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Sunday, 18 March 2007
Tories, Lib Dems and police
Interesting to read recent comments from Nick Herbert MP, Conservative shadow for policing, who said: “We do have the best resourced police service, more police officers and other stuff that we’ve ever had in this country before.”
Contrast that praise for the police, and the tacit acknowledgement that Labour has invested massively in policing, with the snipes the Lib Dems in Lambeth have been making at police recently.
Labour in Lambeth is investing in 22 PCSOs, ensuring they are fully trained by their implementation date (in April) which will mean that there will be 85 fully trained PCSOs utilising over 30 powers on the streets of Lambeth, divided equally across the 3 police sub-commands. The police support this move, which is why they have come in for flak from the soft-on-crime Lib Dems.
Our increase in PCSOs will further increase the already higher number of police patrolling staff we have in Lambeth (953), in comparison to Lib Dem Southwark (836)
Contrast that praise for the police, and the tacit acknowledgement that Labour has invested massively in policing, with the snipes the Lib Dems in Lambeth have been making at police recently.
Labour in Lambeth is investing in 22 PCSOs, ensuring they are fully trained by their implementation date (in April) which will mean that there will be 85 fully trained PCSOs utilising over 30 powers on the streets of Lambeth, divided equally across the 3 police sub-commands. The police support this move, which is why they have come in for flak from the soft-on-crime Lib Dems.
Our increase in PCSOs will further increase the already higher number of police patrolling staff we have in Lambeth (953), in comparison to Lib Dem Southwark (836)
Saturday, 17 March 2007
lights, camera, inaction
I did a street stall in Streatham Vale this morning, and the predominant issue people raised with me was what I expected – the new traffic lights. There are now three sets of lights within 100 yards, and they have been turned on without being phased properly by Transport for London. My Labour colleagues and I, and the Streatham Vale Property Occupiers’ Association, have been nagging the Transport folk at Lambeth to pile the pressure onto TfL to get things sorted. However, the lights are still unphased and a number of people have been issued with tickets because they got stuck in the yellow box when the lights suddenly changed. While I was doing the stall, the traffic stretched from one end of the Vale to the other, all noise and fumes. The weather forecasts suggest the weather on Monday will be arctic, but I am having a site meeting at 9am with officers and residents to make sure everyone understands the problem thoroughly and find some solutions.
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
Clapham Common debates next Labour leader
I was asked along to the Clapham Common branch meeting this evening to take part in a debate about the next Labour leader. No “moments of madness” here. It was a really interesting discussion, and as well as a positive comparison between Blair and Brown, and some observations about the challenges facing Brown when (I would say if, but when is more realistic) he becomes leader and Prime Minister, I made the point that with one leader stepping down and another about to be selected, a debate about the future direction of the party was timely and healthy.
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Streatham Area Committee
At the Streatham Area Committee this evening, frustrations around the latest delays to the Streatham ice rink were voiced loud and clear by the handful of residents who came. It was irritating that no officer from the council was there – as they should have been - to respond to questions. It was also irritating that nobody from Tesco was present, as they are, shall we say, at the centre of this project.
Luckily, knowing he would want a chance to set the record straight after much misinformation and rumour-mongering from the opposition, I had asked my Cabinet colleague Cllr Paul McGlone (Regeneration and Enterprise) to come along and he was able, within the constraints of commercial confidence and legal negotiations, to explain the complexities of the situation.
The key thing is that the £1.2 million needed to fill the funding gap we inherited is secure in Labour Lambeth’s forward plan. There are big tensions between the existing planning permission, how we can achieve the most desirable outcome for local residents, customers and other local businesses and the most logical way of building such a complex project.
As a Streatham councillor I have always been clear that there should be continuity of ice provision in Streatham. That is what residents and skaters want. The scheme also requires a number of permissions and licences – not all of which have been secured (because these processes take time, as if this process hasn’t taken a huge amount of time already, even allowing for four years when the Lib Dems seem to have sat on their hands and left the negotiations to officers), and the cost of building large projects is accelerating, partly as a result of the Olympics.
Nobody can deny the invaluable resource that the ice rink has been in the past and must be for Streatham in the future. It is aggravating to see the existing rink deteriorating state, and I would urge Tesco to listen to the people of Streatham and work with Lambeth to expedite the new facility that local people want – after all, these are the very people Tesco want to shop in their store.
Luckily, knowing he would want a chance to set the record straight after much misinformation and rumour-mongering from the opposition, I had asked my Cabinet colleague Cllr Paul McGlone (Regeneration and Enterprise) to come along and he was able, within the constraints of commercial confidence and legal negotiations, to explain the complexities of the situation.
The key thing is that the £1.2 million needed to fill the funding gap we inherited is secure in Labour Lambeth’s forward plan. There are big tensions between the existing planning permission, how we can achieve the most desirable outcome for local residents, customers and other local businesses and the most logical way of building such a complex project.
As a Streatham councillor I have always been clear that there should be continuity of ice provision in Streatham. That is what residents and skaters want. The scheme also requires a number of permissions and licences – not all of which have been secured (because these processes take time, as if this process hasn’t taken a huge amount of time already, even allowing for four years when the Lib Dems seem to have sat on their hands and left the negotiations to officers), and the cost of building large projects is accelerating, partly as a result of the Olympics.
Nobody can deny the invaluable resource that the ice rink has been in the past and must be for Streatham in the future. It is aggravating to see the existing rink deteriorating state, and I would urge Tesco to listen to the people of Streatham and work with Lambeth to expedite the new facility that local people want – after all, these are the very people Tesco want to shop in their store.
Monday, 5 March 2007
shopping with a sixteen-year-old
I took my niece, who is sixteen (and, arguably, sweet), out shopping today to buy some new clothes. This meant a lot of hanging around outside fitting rooms in various shops waiting for her to emerge in umpteen pairs of jeans, most of which looked the same to me.
We had a nice day out, and it was good to spend time with her, as I hadn’t seen her for a while. We chatted about her lifeguard training and had a good laugh at some of the weirder garments on display in the shops. But it’s almost impossible to take a day off. My phone was going at regular intervals, so I often found myself in the middle of two conversations like this:
“Hi John. Oh, hi, love. No, not you. Yes, they’re cool. No? They look like they fit to me. Sorry, John, say that again, no I wasn’t talking to you just then. No, it’s ok, I can talk. Sorry – say again? No, not you, love. Not you, John. Are you pleased with them? What’s that face for? Sorry, John, yes it sounds like a good idea, let’s do that. Maybe you can get them taken up. Yes, the jeans. No, it’s ok, I can talk. Well, try the other ones on then. What’s the timescale for that? And hurry up this time. No, not you. HOW much?!”
We had a nice day out, and it was good to spend time with her, as I hadn’t seen her for a while. We chatted about her lifeguard training and had a good laugh at some of the weirder garments on display in the shops. But it’s almost impossible to take a day off. My phone was going at regular intervals, so I often found myself in the middle of two conversations like this:
“Hi John. Oh, hi, love. No, not you. Yes, they’re cool. No? They look like they fit to me. Sorry, John, say that again, no I wasn’t talking to you just then. No, it’s ok, I can talk. Sorry – say again? No, not you, love. Not you, John. Are you pleased with them? What’s that face for? Sorry, John, yes it sounds like a good idea, let’s do that. Maybe you can get them taken up. Yes, the jeans. No, it’s ok, I can talk. Well, try the other ones on then. What’s the timescale for that? And hurry up this time. No, not you. HOW much?!”
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
February - a month to challenge Lambeth
It has been an extremely hard month for the Labour administration and Lambeth police, with the murders of 16 year old James Smartt-Ford at Streatham Ice Rink on 3 February and 15 year old Billy Cox at home in Clapham on Valentine’s Day. We organised public meetings to listen to the concerns of the community, which were intense, emotional occasions which allowed people to share their fears and ideas.
The eye of the world’s media was fixed on South London and gun crime, particularly with the further killing of Michael Dosunmu, aged 15, in neighbouring Southwark on 6 February.
Three teenagers who had no idea they would never see March.
In Lambeth we have been very clear that the answer to this terrible waste of life lies in the community. We as council can do all we can – and we will - the police can do all they can – and they will - but in the end it is behaviour that needs to change and families that need to become stronger, taking greater responsibility for their young people.
That’s a tough message, hard to say and hard to hear, but it’s true.
The faith community has been an excellent support over the past few weeks, and the march which took place between Peckham and Brixton, which Cllr Steve Reed, Cllr Lorna Campbell and I took part in, was a testament to the growing sense that together with police and the community we must stand, as one, to eradicate gun-enabled crime from our streets, and to encourage young people, in the words of participants in the recent protest march between Peckham and Brixton, to “pick up your future and put down your gun.”
It was encouraging to visit a youth project called The Palace in Streatham Hill (their website is at www.palaceroad.com) which is just starting up, having had to wait for Section 106 monies to be released to them for necessary works on their building. I went away and made some calls and wrote some emails and the delay seems to have been sorted, so I was pleased to assist Glen Neil, the director, to get things moving.
On my visit I met an award-winning film-maker called Alastair Pirrie, who works with the youngsters on film projects, and who proposed to me a film on gun crime to be shown in all Lambeth schools. Called “Fast Train to Fool City”, it has been made by young people in a very short time, calling in all sorts of favours from professional crew members, and hopefully it will send out a strong message that guns are not cool fashion accessories, but evil instruments of death and waste.
I spent a lot of the month in negotiation on the tasking and deployment of the new PCSOs we are buying in to replace the council warden schemes, including a scrutiny call-in of the decision which had very little to do with scrutiny and was essentially just an excuse for the Streatham Lib Dems to attack the Labour administration and Lambeth police for trying to make the streets safer and have them patrolled by people with appropriate powers and police back-up.
The Labour administration held a sustainability conference, where local people concerned about climate change could come in and talk to experts, as well as put forward ideas for things Lambeth could be doing better – turning down the ferocious heating in the Town Hall would be progress – and watch the Al Gore film, “An Inconvenient Truth”. Labour announced a 20% cut in carbon emissions in Lambeth in 5 years, which is ambitious and, I trust, achievable. This includes staff walking to work or using public transport rather than their car, which obviates the need to make streets safer.
The Town Hall was also the scene, on 28 February, of a 450-person demonstration against proposed changes in eligibility criteria for adult social care, timed to coincide with Full Council. It’s a proposal that has been put forward very reluctantly and we are still looking at avenues which might allow us to avoid this change, including enlisting our three Labour MPs to lobby government. Nonetheless, Full Council was a night for difficult speeches, emotional arguments, and decisions, despite Liberal Democrat efforts to cynically divert attention from their responsibility for the financial mess Labour inherited, a mess which has brought us to this point. It’s also important to remember that there was no financial cut in care services. We are putting in an extra £1.9million. The problem is, even that huge amount is not enough to meet the growing demand.
There are two separate elements to this issue. Firstly the eligibility criteria and secondly the reductions in voluntary sector funding. On the latter of these two issues, Cabinet colleagues and I are absolutely clear that savings are unavoidable. If local circumstances (including the financial mismanagement of the previous administration which left virtually nothing in reserves) and national spending settlements are forcing Lambeth Council to tighten its belt in a number of areas, it is right and realistic that some of these savings must also be made by the voluntary sector. Of course these savings should not be made without regard to the important service provision of the voluntary sector, but those organisations cannot be hermetically sealed from the spending pressures we – and many other local authorities – face.
Failing to take these decisions would have left the Council unable to balance its budget. People may doubt our hearts and our values, but we had no alternative given the massive rise in demand and costs which we had no way of paying for as a result of Lib Dem recklessness in setting a 0% Council Tax increase last year as a cynical election bribe, as if anyone could forget their cumulative 38% Council Tax hikes in the previous years.
In the midst of this, the Audit Commission published Lambeth’s CPA rating, taking a star away. This judgement, based largely on assessments carried out before Labour was elected in May 2006, puts us in the eccentric position of now being a one star authority which is “improving well”, with 75% of services getting better.
Ah well, we always knew it would hard to close the book on the damage of the Lib Dem years. The one star is their final chapter.
2 Comments »
Displaying results 1 to 2 out of 2
Gina said,
Streatham
Tue, 20 Mar 2007 - 11:12 AM
I can't believe that the Lib Dems are attempting to say that they prefer 'wardens' to neighbourhood policing. I have NEVER seen a warden in my life and in fact did not realise they still existed. Good on you for being brave enough to face down the Liberals opportunism in order to get a better deal for local people. Why are the Lib Dems so anti-police?
John said,
Mon, 19 Mar 2007 - 9:58 AM
The lib-dems were delivering leaflets yesterday saying that the poor star rating was all labours fault. Labour needs to counter this with their own leaflet. Also people in Streatham and other area affected by kerb-crawling need to be enlightened about the Liberals attitude to the issue. Basically they want to decriminalise it. People in the areas affected o have the right to know about the rubbish the Liberals are spouting.
The eye of the world’s media was fixed on South London and gun crime, particularly with the further killing of Michael Dosunmu, aged 15, in neighbouring Southwark on 6 February.
Three teenagers who had no idea they would never see March.
In Lambeth we have been very clear that the answer to this terrible waste of life lies in the community. We as council can do all we can – and we will - the police can do all they can – and they will - but in the end it is behaviour that needs to change and families that need to become stronger, taking greater responsibility for their young people.
That’s a tough message, hard to say and hard to hear, but it’s true.
The faith community has been an excellent support over the past few weeks, and the march which took place between Peckham and Brixton, which Cllr Steve Reed, Cllr Lorna Campbell and I took part in, was a testament to the growing sense that together with police and the community we must stand, as one, to eradicate gun-enabled crime from our streets, and to encourage young people, in the words of participants in the recent protest march between Peckham and Brixton, to “pick up your future and put down your gun.”
It was encouraging to visit a youth project called The Palace in Streatham Hill (their website is at www.palaceroad.com) which is just starting up, having had to wait for Section 106 monies to be released to them for necessary works on their building. I went away and made some calls and wrote some emails and the delay seems to have been sorted, so I was pleased to assist Glen Neil, the director, to get things moving.
On my visit I met an award-winning film-maker called Alastair Pirrie, who works with the youngsters on film projects, and who proposed to me a film on gun crime to be shown in all Lambeth schools. Called “Fast Train to Fool City”, it has been made by young people in a very short time, calling in all sorts of favours from professional crew members, and hopefully it will send out a strong message that guns are not cool fashion accessories, but evil instruments of death and waste.
I spent a lot of the month in negotiation on the tasking and deployment of the new PCSOs we are buying in to replace the council warden schemes, including a scrutiny call-in of the decision which had very little to do with scrutiny and was essentially just an excuse for the Streatham Lib Dems to attack the Labour administration and Lambeth police for trying to make the streets safer and have them patrolled by people with appropriate powers and police back-up.
The Labour administration held a sustainability conference, where local people concerned about climate change could come in and talk to experts, as well as put forward ideas for things Lambeth could be doing better – turning down the ferocious heating in the Town Hall would be progress – and watch the Al Gore film, “An Inconvenient Truth”. Labour announced a 20% cut in carbon emissions in Lambeth in 5 years, which is ambitious and, I trust, achievable. This includes staff walking to work or using public transport rather than their car, which obviates the need to make streets safer.
The Town Hall was also the scene, on 28 February, of a 450-person demonstration against proposed changes in eligibility criteria for adult social care, timed to coincide with Full Council. It’s a proposal that has been put forward very reluctantly and we are still looking at avenues which might allow us to avoid this change, including enlisting our three Labour MPs to lobby government. Nonetheless, Full Council was a night for difficult speeches, emotional arguments, and decisions, despite Liberal Democrat efforts to cynically divert attention from their responsibility for the financial mess Labour inherited, a mess which has brought us to this point. It’s also important to remember that there was no financial cut in care services. We are putting in an extra £1.9million. The problem is, even that huge amount is not enough to meet the growing demand.
There are two separate elements to this issue. Firstly the eligibility criteria and secondly the reductions in voluntary sector funding. On the latter of these two issues, Cabinet colleagues and I are absolutely clear that savings are unavoidable. If local circumstances (including the financial mismanagement of the previous administration which left virtually nothing in reserves) and national spending settlements are forcing Lambeth Council to tighten its belt in a number of areas, it is right and realistic that some of these savings must also be made by the voluntary sector. Of course these savings should not be made without regard to the important service provision of the voluntary sector, but those organisations cannot be hermetically sealed from the spending pressures we – and many other local authorities – face.
Failing to take these decisions would have left the Council unable to balance its budget. People may doubt our hearts and our values, but we had no alternative given the massive rise in demand and costs which we had no way of paying for as a result of Lib Dem recklessness in setting a 0% Council Tax increase last year as a cynical election bribe, as if anyone could forget their cumulative 38% Council Tax hikes in the previous years.
In the midst of this, the Audit Commission published Lambeth’s CPA rating, taking a star away. This judgement, based largely on assessments carried out before Labour was elected in May 2006, puts us in the eccentric position of now being a one star authority which is “improving well”, with 75% of services getting better.
Ah well, we always knew it would hard to close the book on the damage of the Lib Dem years. The one star is their final chapter.
2 Comments »
Displaying results 1 to 2 out of 2
Gina said,
Streatham
Tue, 20 Mar 2007 - 11:12 AM
I can't believe that the Lib Dems are attempting to say that they prefer 'wardens' to neighbourhood policing. I have NEVER seen a warden in my life and in fact did not realise they still existed. Good on you for being brave enough to face down the Liberals opportunism in order to get a better deal for local people. Why are the Lib Dems so anti-police?
John said,
Mon, 19 Mar 2007 - 9:58 AM
The lib-dems were delivering leaflets yesterday saying that the poor star rating was all labours fault. Labour needs to counter this with their own leaflet. Also people in Streatham and other area affected by kerb-crawling need to be enlightened about the Liberals attitude to the issue. Basically they want to decriminalise it. People in the areas affected o have the right to know about the rubbish the Liberals are spouting.
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