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by Paul Scully | Feb 7, 2008 | News |
The LibDem Council have just completed their six-week consultation on this year’s budget. This meaningless exercise managed just 22 responses from the 180,000 residents of the Borough.
In order to show that people were interested in what tax they paid, I was joined by four colleagues on Sutton High Street and obtained 26 responses in a mere ten minutes.
This equates to one ten-thousandth of the population and our level of Council tax hinges on this. The Council needs to consult properly or give up the pretence. If the LibDem Councillors had just taken one form each home to get a neighbour to complete it, they would have got a better response.
I addressed the Council Executive (the inner LibDem Cabinet) on Monday, insisting that they stop demeaning the idea of consultation by either doing it properly or not at all. The questions were in the mould of American-style “push polling” which is not interested in your answers but passing on political messages within the question. Take this one for example: “Do you agree that any increase in council tax should be kept below the Government’s national limit of 5% even though the grant the council is receiving from the government does not cover inflation?” I was surprised that 8% of respondents answered no to this. Firstly because, I find it amazing that anyone would want to see a rise of more than 5% and secondly because this equates to 1.76 people which makes me question who the 0.76 of a person was.
We go through this dance each year, with the LibDem Council buttering us up for another above-inflation increase. The budget that has just been consulted on, shows a Council Tax increase of 4.6%. If the increase comes in any lower than this, whilst extremely welcome, it will mean that the consultation was carried out on a totally different budget. Not that the vacuous questioning contained in the questionnaire would have to be changed, just the background papers.
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by Paul Scully | Feb 3, 2008 | News |
With a by-election only a few weeks away, I have been spending a lot of time in Cheam recently. Many people will think of it as a wealthy village with Jeremy Vine and Harry Secombe as previous residents and home to the fictitious Railway Cuttings of Tony Hancock. Nothing much else happens in Cheam does it?
As in most parts of London, traffic spoils what is a picturesque village centre but the beautiful church spire dominates the landscape reminding passers-by that Cheam has a long history dating back to at least 1018.
The congestion is not the only modern scourge to come to Cheam. I was astounded to read of a man attacked by a machete-wielding thug on New Year’s Day. It is a testament to the proliferation of such crime in London that the yellow sign appealing for help has quickly become part of the furniture on the Cheam by-pass.
Sutton Police do a great job but they need far more help from the Mayor and central government in particular. We need to tackle gang violence in London. Nearby Croydon suffers terribly from this. Fortunately Carshalton only has comparatively minor antisocial behaviour problems from groups coming from Waddon and beyond. Left unchecked, this will get worse as gangs are able to get away with more and then look beyond their current boundaries. Police bureaucracy is a perennial source of moaning but rarely gets tackled. It takes 25 minutes for a police officer to complete a foot-long form every time someone is stopped in the street, even if only to account for themselves. I’ll be pushing Boris to keep talking about how he will deal with this head-on when he is Mayor for London. We have to keep the crime in Sutton in perspective. We are not a Hackney or Tower Hamlets but there is nothing wrong in demanding that we are as safe as we can be in our homes, streets and parks.
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by Paul Scully | Feb 3, 2008 | News |
Residents in Cheam were shocked and disappointed to read that Cheam Baths may be earmarked for closure by the LibDem Council as part of their leisure centre strategy. Instead, residents and schoolchildren who want to use the second most popular centre in the Borough will have to travel to Sutton or even out of Borough to Merton and Epsom.
At a recent Council meeting Graham Tope, LibDem spokesman for Leisure, justified the significant recent price hikes but refused to give a cast-iron guarantee that the centre would be retained. John Kennedy said in response that Lord Tope has gone from “the Cardinal Wolsey of the LibDems to the Gordon Brittas of Leisure in Sutton.”
Jonathan Pritchard, Conservative candidate for the upcoming Cheam By-election said afterwards “Local people want local leisure services, they don’t want to be forced to travel across the borough or to neighbouring boroughs. The threat looming over Cheam Baths will particularly impact on local residents, Cheam schools and the leisure centre staff. The Council needs to be up-front about this instead of claiming they simply don’t know.”
Cheam Leisure Centre has the second highest footfall of all the Leisure Centres in Sutton behind Westcroft. Both centres need a lot of money spending on them to bring them up to scratch but the LibDems seem to be heading for the nuclear option by replacing them with a single centre in the middle of Sutton town centre. The consultant’s report has been sat on a desk since December and any decision has been pushed ever further back to Easter. This could have a significant effect on Carshalton as well as Cheam.
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by Paul Scully | Feb 3, 2008 | News |
As I was working in Westminster on Friday, I was summoned by a friend to watch a spectacle planned outside Downing Street. Simon McGee, from the Mail on Sunday met up with “Britannia” to present a petition to No. 10 demanding that the decision to drop Britannia from the 50p is reversed. You can read Simon’s version of the morning here.
The Mail on Sunday have the support of 30,000 residents. Britannia couldn’t get her trident past the metal detectors so Simon had to pass on the views of so many himself.
Although Britannia has featured on our coins for some 336 years, she has had some time off for short-run commerative 50p coins. However, continued erosion of our sovereignty and civic pride means that people seek to retain these comparatively small symbols of tradition and nationhood. They are right to campaign against this move by a government who truly believe that history books all start from 1997.
by Paul Scully | Jan 23, 2008 | News |
Excellent article on the Sutton Guardian website this afternoon which you can read here.
The Sutton LibDem MP has sent out a magazine resembling the sort of ‘Real Lives’ magazine that usually has articles like pets uncovering extra-marital affairs and Britain’s Biggest Love Rat etc. Have a look at an example and play spot the difference.
Despite the LibDem Chief Whip failing to save a single post office from closure and, indeed losing the whole postal town of Cheam, twenty two posed photos appeared in the glossy tome. The Guardian article in describing it as exhibiting new levels of narcissism, pointed out that Rembrandt may have turned out 40 unvarnished self-portraits but at least the versatile Dutch master spread them over half a century.
Sadly I often remind myself of the epithet “Politics is showbusiness for ugly people.” Ploughing out this sort of lightweight newsletter doesn’t really help politicians from any party raise people’s expectations of us.
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by Paul Scully | Jan 22, 2008 | News |
Beleagured Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone seems to be using the main website covering the Mayor’s Office, the GLA and other London bodies as his own personal rebuttal service.
There are 17 rolling links on the front page of the website, 10 of which are defending Livingstone in the face of fierce criticism by the Evening Standard, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, BBC’s Politics Show and – let’s face it – anyone with a voice.
His tenure of the mayoralty has been shown to be shabby, deep in the mire with some very shady characters stretching well beyond London. Even his triumphant cheap fares for Londoners is being subsidised by some of the poorest people on the planet in Venezuela so that he can strut the world stage and dictator Hugo Chavez can find a friend.
Boris described Livingstone as being like Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now, yearning for the end. It’s an end which can’t come soon enough for Londoners.
The LibDem Council have just completed their six-week consultation on this year’s budget. This meaningless exercise managed just 22 responses from the 180,000 residents of the Borough.
