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by Paul Scully | Mar 30, 2008 | News |
I was pleased to see Boris highlighting his pledge to keep the Freedom Pass on his website. There has certainly been a lot of misinformation given by Ken Livingstone and his cronies over the last year or so, suggesting that the concessionary travel scheme was under threat from the Conservatives.
This has never been the case, but Livingstone repeated the claims to divert attention away from the main argument. At the moment, London Councils, an umbrella organisation representing all of the Boroughs administers the cost of running the scheme taking money from each council. Transport for London set the price for the pass. If London Councils feel that they are getting a raw deal, they have recourse to bring it in front of an arbiter; one Ken Livingstone. This is hardly equitable and ensures that TfL can squeeze yet more money away from local control into the centralised pot being dished out from City Hall.
Each party believes that it is a good idea to provide free travel for over-65s and disabled people. However Ken Livingstone has attempted to make it received wisdom that because the Conservatives – who are the largest Party on London Councils by controlling the most Boroughs – deign to disagree with Livingstone, we would make the fantastical jump of scrapping the whole thing. Definitely a case of saying a falsehood enough times to make people believe it!
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by Paul Scully | Mar 23, 2008 | News |
Having consulted on a council budget based on a council tax increase of 4.9%, the ruling Liberal Democrats eventually bowed to our pressure by restricting themselves to 3.4% extra. Each year the Conservative Opposition highlight innovative approaches to reducing the tax burden around London such as Hillingdon where they are freezing tax for pensioners. Each year Sutton’s tax continues its relentless increase with little extra in return for residents.
This year’s increase was pegged back after the intervention of David Dombey’s impassioned plea on behalf of pensioners. I notice that in a recent Sutton Guardian (6 March), Mrs Dombey is campaigning to stop the demolition of a public toilet in the ward represented by her daughter, a deputy leader of the council. Maybe they can succeed where other politicians have failed in getting the Lib Dem administration to listen instead of their traditional ‘consult, consider, ignore’ approach.
Ruth Dombey responded when her father told her how to spend the pounds. Will she act now her mother has told her how to spend a penny?
by Paul Scully | Mar 16, 2008 | News |
Philippa Stroud, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Sutton & Cheam has worked closely with the Conservative councillors over the last year, adding a good brain, relevant experience and an extensive address book to our work. I hope we have been able to reciprocate.
Philippa will play a key role in any future Conservative Government through her work as Director at the Centre for Social Justice, a thinktank founded by former Conservative leader, Iain Duncan-Smith. The CSJ produced a doorstep of a report, Breakthrough Britain with 190 recommendations to follow up the interim report Breakdown Britain which highlighted social problems arising from social breakdown in the UK over the last few years. It looks at such areas as worklessness, debt, addiction and families. Gordon Brown has since adopted 16 recommendations as his own and David Cameron has incorporated 27 into his policy development.
We all know that the economy, public services and foreign policy are vital areas for any government. They tend to be easier to understand, attracting simple headlines and short-term solutions. Areas such as family breakdown are far harder to tackle. Many people I meet, shrug their shoulders and say that society is not what it was in years gone by without really stopping to think why and how we can effect change. It is good that someone is and has the drive and influence to see results.
Philippa appeared on Newsnight at the end of February on the eve of Gordon Brown’s announcement about Welfare Reform. Paxman didn’t need to ask her the same question more than once, never mind fourteen times as she handled herself very well as you can see in the clip above.
by Paul Scully | Mar 16, 2008 | Carshalton Central, News |
On Wednesday night, my colleagues and I heard Ken Andrew speak at the Carshalton & Clockhouse Local Committee about the issues around the proposed changes to Westmead Road. He presented a petition which attracted significant support from residents that would be most affected by the proposals. I was pleased to see a good number of residents at the meeting to tell us their views.
At the meeting, Ken articulated concerns about the changes to the Hail and Ride bus service and the introduction of speed humps. No-one could disagree with making our roads safer – hence my support for the introduction of the two mini-roundabouts and other limited changes as called for in the petition – but the rest of the scheme appears to address a problem that is not there. Lower Road has an accident record that requires some action. However the plan affects the entire length of Westmead Road and unduly affects bus users and drivers.
As previously reported, when this scheme was first presented to me and Eric, we both queried why speed humps remained in the proposal after being clearly rejected in the consultation. We were told that residents only objected to humps because of possible loss of on-street parking and since no places would be lost, there was no reason to remove them from the scheme. This explanation was derived from the comments that a few residents had written. We were not satisfied with this as we believed that there were insufficient comments to jump to this conclusion and so demanded that speed humps were removed from the design.
With many of these schemes council officers come under pressure to push through plans in fear of losing the funding at the end of the financial year. The choice that we had on Wednesday was described as “take it or leave it”. Councillors unanimously voted to leave it, rejecting the proposal. It is unfortunate that we did not have the option to pick and choose the parts of the scheme that residents believed would have most benefit to them, due to the cumbersome bureaucracy of Transport for London.
Ken Andrew and local resident Paul Kelly did a great job in organising the petition and I was pleased to see how well supported it was. We often take this Council to task for not seeking and responding to residents’ opinions and I am pleased that in this instance, residents have grouped together effectively to ensure that their voice is heard. Eric and I will continue to do our utmost to reflect your views and concerns about Carshalton.
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by Paul Scully | Mar 10, 2008 | News |
I walked past this Post Office in London Bridge on Saturday. It was closed as it was early morning and so no-one was around. This is in stark contrast to a few days ago when, as reported in Private Eye, LibDems queued up to have their photo taken with Mayoral hopeful Brian Paddick to save post offices.
Kingston MP Ed Davey, Hornsey & Wood Green MP Lynne Featherstone and a councillor made the pilgrimage to London Bridge to be snapped with Paddick.
Two minor points stick out. With four post offices closing in Featherstone’s patch and five in Davey’s backyard, could they not go along to one of those. Secondly, with 169 post offices in London for the axe could they have not at least found a post office that is at least threatened. The London Bridge post office is not on the list. The sub postmaster must have been confused.
We have all been campaigning to keep our local post offices open but this is another example of a posturing empty gesture from the LibDems that is all about electioneering and nothing to do with the future of our communities. I hope they at least bought some stamps while they were there.
I was pleased to see Boris highlighting his pledge to keep the Freedom Pass on his website. There has certainly been a lot of misinformation given by Ken Livingstone and his cronies over the last year or so, suggesting that the concessionary travel scheme was under threat from the Conservatives.
