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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.
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by Paul Scully | Mar 9, 2008 | News |
On Wednesday, I joined Philippa Stroud, our Parliamentary Candidate in Sutton & Cheam and more than fifty supporters of a campaign organised by Jean Crossby and the Sutton Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations. They presented a petition to Downing Street to a fanfare of support as we watched them going in with coaches and cars giving us the occasional honk of solidarity.
The campaign which has attracted cross-party support demands an urgent review of the policy which takes £10m from our social housing rent account to maintain council houses in other parts of the country.
This equates to 19 weeks rent each year that some of the most vulnerable residents in the Borough are paying whilst living in the second-worst housing in London. Only Tower Hamlets has council-owned housing in a worse state of repair. £125,000,000 is required to bring our housing stock up to the Decent Homes Standard. This level of repair in no way equates to opulence or lavish changes. This will mean that our tenants can live in homes without mould and damp affecting their health, with an adequate kitchen and bathroom. This should not be too much to ask in a comparatively prosperous borough but we are working with one or two arms behind our back when the Government props up its marginal seats with extra money creamed off other Councils in the south.
Our Planning, Transport & Housing policy group will be looking at ways of tackling the problem of housing standards with solutions that lie within our remit. This campaign was well organised and very well supported. We are really happy to support the residents in having their say at the very top level. However, as politicians we cannot stop there. We must take a lead and ensure that we have used every channel and innovative idea that is open to us rather than simply sitting back, wringing our hands and blaming others. Leave any thoughts here or go to our Policy Groups web page and join the debate there.
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by Paul Scully | Mar 7, 2008 | News |
Geoff “Buff” Hoon is not the sharpest knife in the Government’s block but as Chief Whip he has the unenviable task of whipping Labour MPs to vote for the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Bill. This piece of legislation contains some very unpalatable items for pro-life MPs including several Catholic cabinet ministers. Normally this would be a free vote so it is asking for trouble to push this through with a 3 line whip.
Today the Telegraph reports that he has granted Cabinet Ministers a dispensation to abstain if they write to him in advance. This is not normally within the remit of my blog but one line of the article made me smile. It was reported that Hoon was “irritated by the failure of some of his side to see the bigger picture.”
Now I am not religious, but for the abstainers I struggle to see what they would consider bigger than the Creator of all things in heaven and earth.
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.
