Immunisation in Brent

A few days ago, I went to an interesting meeting on immunisation with a speaker from the NIBSC. Brent has a pretty low rate of immunisation even by London standards. I was shocked to be told that the database on child immunisation is so poor that it is holding back any major efforts to improve the vaccination rate. Apparently the cuts to the number of health visitors, together with the use of a paper based system, meant that a lot of the data simply did not get recorded. Another case of unintended consequences.

However, the NIBSC speaker spoke more generally on the suspicion that many people have over vaccination. As well as the MMR example of a few years ago, he cited a seventies scare about pertussis (whooping cough). Essentially, whooping cough outbreaks slid strongly downward as a result of a vaccination programme until about 1975. In that year, there was a scare that the vaccination caused babies to suffer permanent neurological damage. The scare led the take up of vaccination in England to drop from about 80% to about 30% over three years. Naturally, this was followed by a sharp rise in whooping coughs and a number of children died. Scarily, it took about 15 years for the immunisation rate to recover. So, like the MMR scare, a rumour was started fairly easily, caused tremendous health problems, and those problems took a huge time to recover from.

The worry is that these scares seem to be ignitable out of very little, and the actual arguments don't seem to matter very much.

Dr Wakefield's research was pretty ropey scientifically, but his assured manner seemed to count for more. Many people seem to have an ingrained distrust of medical experts, surprising given the popularity of the NHS. There also seems to be a fear of taking official medicine that sits bizarrely with peoples' willingness to consume all kinds of other things. The argument that taking your MMR doses all at once would overwhelm your immune system suggests that the number of things in a slice of Camembert should finish you off for good.

In Brent, we also apparently have rumours spreading in from other parts of the world. In 2005, some predominantly Muslim parts of Nigeria had a movement to stop the polio eradication programme, as it was thought to be a western programme to sterilise people. As a result there was an outbreak of polio that quickly spread across several countries. I have been told that similar rumours have circulated in some Brent Mosques.

It is difficult to see how these fears can be countered by rational argument, since they are inherently irrational. The two ways I can think of to improve the immunisation rate would be engaging health and education workers, and peer groups through the Children Centres. However, I still don't see these as total solutions.

Localism?

Brent's Chief Executive Gareth Daniel has a Local Government Chronicle piece HERE on the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). As well as the standard local government compliants about the length of time and resource it takes to report to government inspectors, it raises an issue over accountability that has been troubling me for some time.

The idea of the CAA and local strategic partnerships is that the Council co-ordinates various partnership agencies which agree a common strategy. It doesn't take much account of the differeing priorities of the partners. It also removes priority setting from elected members. There is currently very little oversight by elected members in this process. It also cuts directly against the push to make local authorities more responsive to residents, either directly or through their councillors. The danger is that the agreed priority of the partnership and the Audit Commission will carry on independently of attempts by the public or members to influence it. I am not sure what the solution to that is, but all political parties need to recognise the problem if there really is going to be any kind of new "localism".

Why is Britain's Political Debate so Immature?

I hope the Party Conference season will clear ground for some actual policy debate. Currently, all the political parties aren't really addressing the balance sheet problems of the government, or what will be needed over the next Parliament.

Normally, I would go into a diatribe about how Brent Liberal Democrats stand for nothing at this point, but instead lets look at David Cameron.

In the run up to the 1997 election, I well recall how Labour was questioned over and over again about its spending plans. Details like the Yacht Britannia were picked over. Now, Cameron seems to get away with nothing very much.

His speech on cutting the cost of politics (which dressed up a number of measures designed to help the Tory party, like reducing the number of seats) came up with only two sets of proposals. The cost cutting package was worth only £120 million, hardly a significant contribution to the budget deficit, but he wasn't really pressed to come up with more.

The other scheme, cutting ID cards, is also an old Lib Dem standby. I have always thought it rather odd,as I understood that each ID card would be distributed on receipt of a fee, like getting a passport. If you have abolished the ID cards, presumably you can't charge people for getting them. So where is the saving?

All three parties need a media that really does it job of scrutinising their policy proposals instead of concentrating on gossip and personal indisgressions.

Boris Johnson's Emissions Failure

Simon Fletcher has a post on Boris Johnson backtracking on the Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) HERE.

I have a question on this at the next full meeting of Brent Council. From a Brent perspective, Boris' view gets even stranger. The Tory / Lib Dem administration in Brent is mooting demolition of a number of properties on the North Circular Road at great expense because the pollution is so bad as to make them virtually uninhabitable. Certainly, the pollution is linked to respiratory diseases in that neighbourhood. Most of the pollution is caused by vehicles going through Brent from elsewhere i.e. the vahicles that might be affected by Boris Johnson imposing a LEZ.

It seems that the right hand doesn't know what the further right hand is doing.

Baroness Scotland

I don't have much time for the attacks on Baroness Scotland. She seems to have committing some fairly minor errors in failing to photocopy documents.

Admittedly, she might reflect that if it was so easy for the Attorney General to fail to comply with the law she herself introduced, perhaps other might have trouble, but all this talk of resignation seems vindictive. If it were a private businessman making this sort of mistake, would we really have newspapers and politicians claiming that a £5,000 fine was not enough, and that they should be forced to resign from their company? Given the shortage of talent in Parliament, do we really want to force someone of proven ability out over something they may not even have directly dealt with themselves?

Brent Council: Lower Emissions in Transport?

Cutting carbon emissions has been made a major priority by the Labour government. So far Brent Council doesn't seem to have many new ideas on how to do this.

However, there is a big opportunity in Brent's Transport fleet. The Council has a fleet of about 120 minibuses that are used either to take adults to Day Centres, or children to school. These have traditionally been bought on a ten year period before being replaced, but the Council is now thinking of switching to a seven year period for each vehicle. This would mean that a large proporition of the fleet would have to be replaced in the next year or two.

Why not replace them with alternative fuel vehicles that would cut carbon emissions.? They usually have a very short route (inside the Borough). If there is a need for a depot supplied with the specific fuel concerned, they normally do a round trip. They might even be cheaper to run. So far, the Liberal Democrats in Brent have rejected even considering the idea, but I hope to wear them down over time.

It is the kind of thing an ambitious Council would jump at, and the kind of thing that the dullards currently in charge of Brent would not.

Dumped Rubbish and Streetcare

Should you see dumped rubbish on the streets in Brent, you can report it to streetcare on streetcare@brent.gov.uk or by phoning 8937 5050. If it is on the public Highway (either the road or the pavement), Brent Council has to remove it for free, as they did with this furniture I found on All Souls Avenue.



Of course, before the Liberal Democrats and the Tories took over Brent Council, the Council would also have taken it away from your garden for free. Once the Lib Dim / Tory coalition was formed, they introduced a £25 charge for taking your old furniture away from your house. Could this possibly be linked to furntiure being dumped on the streets?

Kilburn Neglect

I have been reflecting that the recent planning permission for the Kilburn State is probably the first major piece of good news that Kilburn High Road has had for years.

Back in 2006, the new Lib Dem / Tory administration closed the One Stop Shop in Dyne Road. This was supposedly because the rent was too high, although the Council continued paying for the empty building for some time afterward. The One Stop Shop got moved down to the Ancient Order of Foresters in Kilburn High Road, a not terribly suitable location. We were assured at the time that this was temporary, but the Kilburn One Stop Shop still has no permanent home. I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that the office has been allowed to wither on the vine as a cost cutting measure.

The new Brent administration also decided to cut funding for the Town Centre Manager (which had been shared 50/50 with Camden). Fortunately for us Camden carried on paying the full cost. If I were a Camden Council Tax payer I wouldn’t be very satisfied with that, but that is up to them. I understand that they are now getting tired of subsidising Brent and about to cut the service.

Then we had the recession hit, with several of the Kilburn High Road shops going out of business and being left empty, dragging the area down further. If the proposed major new development of Brent Cross Cricklewood (BXC) goes ahead, there is a real danger of even more life being sucked out of the area.

Kilburn High Road is supposed to be one of our key shopping centres, yet we don’t do much to promote it. This is partly because it is the victim of the same kind of Borough issues as Kensal Green, but also because it is given marginal weight within the administration.

I recall asking Irwin Van Colle (The Tory Lead member for planning) about drawing up a Supplementary Planning Document to encourage development in the area. He basically said there were more important priorities. As a Tory living in Barnhill he has little interest in the south of the Borough. Unfortunately, the Lib Dem councillors for Kilburn carry little weight within their own party. I don’t think the Lib Dems expected to get any seats in Kilburn so they put two of their weakest candidates there. Derek Jackson is one of several more or less silent members on the Lib Dem benches. Cllr Anthony Dunn is vocal, but his style is such that I don’t think he has much respect even within his own group. Interestingly, he appeared in lots of leaflets in Queens Park in the run up to the last local elections, which led me to expect him to stand in that ward. He switched to Kilburn only at the last moment, and I have always wondered why.

Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug, one of the greatest benefactors to humanity of our time, has died. You can find out more about him on wikipedia HERE.

Glum Councillors

Courtesy of Theo Blackwell, who will be much missed when he stands down as a Camden Labour councillor, I was delighted to see this web site specialising in photos of unhappy looking councillors. I will be sending them some Brent Liberal Democrat images soon. I wonder if all the glum councillors share the Brent Liberal Democrat habit of implying that the incompetent Council responsible is being run by someone else?

Liberal Democrat Impracticality

As it is Liberal Democrat Conference week, why not another posting on my favourite political party?

This time I am pondering why the Liberal Democrats never seem to consider administrative costs in their policies.

One example of this would be the Caribbean flights issue. Dawn Butler MP is lobbying for the Jamaican government line, which is to reband Jamaica and other West Indian islands alongside Washington so that the cost of travel remains. The Lib Dem line is to introduce a per plane/ per flight tax that would ironically be more expensive for people going to the Caribbean, but also sounds a lot more complicated to administer.

Another would be the proposed local income tax to replace Council Tax. This has been criticised on various grounds, including hitting some poorer people very hard, but it would also be very difficult to administer. Would you be taxed where you lived or where you worked? On your total income or just your salary? In any case, it would be much easier to evade and therefore the administration costs would be far greater.

One explanation of this would be that the Liberal Democrats have always been a party of opposition and therefore they just don’t think about the practicalities. However, these days they have a strong local government base. Surely not all these Lib Dem councillors can be as divorced from their local authorities as the ones in Brent are?

Can anyone think of an explanation?

Sarah Teather's Contradictions

I have criticised Brent Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather for her silence on big issues like the John Kelly Schools rebuild. I suspect she will be also be silent on her Leader Nick Clegg’s desire for “savage” cuts in public services. According to the Guardian on Saturday, these may include means testing child benefit, withdrawing tax credits from the middle class (I will be interested in the specifics on that), a long term freeze on public sector pay and scaling back public sector pensions. They are even rowing back on the “scrap tuition fees” line that they have peddled for so long.

Teather meanwhile is still going round demanding more spending. As Housing spokeswoman she routinely calls for more public sector housing spending out of general taxation. More recently, she has argued that Brent is not getting enough money for schools. Since Brent got the second biggest increase in education spend in England this year that suggests a massive increase in school budgets, which would be simply unachievable. As always with Brent Liberal Democrats, they are saying what people want to hear and avoiding anything that might be unpopular.

Her profligacy in spending promises rather undermines her party’s attack on the Tories for an alleged £53 billion of unfunded spending pledges. If the Liberal Democrats were under more serious scrutiny la Teather would get into trouble for undermining her own party line like this.

Teather’s problem is that she represents a broadly Labour area where Nick Clegg’s semi-Tory approach does not go down well. Nick Clegg can’t, and probably doesn’t want to, want to adopt Teather’s approach. Partly, Teather always goes for easy populism and Clegg is trying to get people to take the Liberal Democrats seriously as a party of government. Secondly, the threat to existing Liberal Democrat seats comes mainly from the Tories. The kind of voters that the Lib Dems need to limit their losses next time round are the sort who like the “shrink the state” rhetoric of classical liberalism.

That really leaves Teather rather out on a limb in her own party.

Liberal Democrats and Post Offices

I haven't given an example of Brent Liberal Democrats breaking their promises for, well, days, so I thought I would talk about Post Offices.

Anyone who reads their literature will know that the save the Post Office line is a standard Lib Dem line. Indeed I recall during the Brent East by election a Lib Dem leaflet headlined "9 days to save Brondesbury Post Office". Brondesbury Post Office closed a few days after polling day, and let's face neither Sarah Teather or anyone in her team could possibly have believed that they would prevent its closure by winning the by election.

In fact, the Liberal Democrats never really do anything to help prevent branch closures. I once went to a briefing about Post Office closures with George Hooper in Brent Town Hall. This was back in 2004. Sarah Teather, who was also there, announced that none of her lobbying on Post Office closures ever worked, although of course that doesn't prevent her from claiming that it does.

Flashing forward to the 2008 Queens Park by election, I recall that the Liberal Democrats put out literature claiming that the branches in Queens Park were under threat. There was a closure programme at the time, but none of the Queens Park branches were named, as I am quite sure that the Liberal Democrats knew. However, the Liberal Democrats spreading lies that they were going to close almost certainly hurt their business (Once a branch is announced as closing, the business starts moving elsewhere even before it goes). Thus, not only did the Liberal Democrats do nothing to help the Post Office branches, they actively attacked them.

Aside from that, the only activity I recall the Liberal Democrats engaging in during that round of Post Office closures was an attempt to wreck Dawn Butler MP's event on the subject. Dawn held a meeting in St Mark's Church Hall, which I chaired. The Post Office branch on Harrow Road NW10 was under threat. The Liberal Democrats tried to pack the meeting with rent-a-mouths from other parts of London to criticise her. Personally, I think they just made themselves look foolish, but perhaps if they had engaged on the issue that branch might have been spared.

I also recall the Overview and Scrutiny meeting that Cllr Lesley Jones organised for representatives of the Post Office to come to. Lots of local councillors like myself lined up to plead for the branches in our own wards. The exception was Conservative councillor John Detre who declared that he hated the Post Office, and that he was looked forward to the election of a Tory government that would privatise the Post Office and close more branches. The Post Office people were pretty gobsmacked at this, but he really wasn't joking. The Liberal Democrats and Tories have now elected him as Lead Member for Regeneration, so he will be leading on any future threatened Post Office closures.

The one thing you never read about in a Liberal Democrat leaflet on Post Offices is their actual policy, which is to privatise them. The idea is sell off the profitable bits and use the proceeds to subsidise the existing network. What is missing is any idea about what to do when the proceeds run out and you are left with a wholly unprofitable retail network with an outdated business model.

Kilburn State Cinema

The nicer note from the Planning Committee on Wednesday was the Planning permission for the Kilburn State Cinema. This is Brent's premier listed building, near the junction of Willesden Lane and Kilburn High Road. It has been severely underused for years, but now a church wants to take it over. That gives the advantage that they will be using it in a similar way to the original intention (i.e. they won't sub-divide it. They are also likely (and required by the planning permission) to make it available for community use. Having the building active should also encourage footfall and regneeration on Kilburn High Road, which I think is Brent's most neglected shopping centre. There will, of course, be transport issues but given the accessibility of the site I believe these will be manageable.

Tenterden Sports Ground MUGA

I went to one of Brent Council Planning Committee's most riotous meetings on Wednesday. Quite the most tempestous Planning Hearing I can remember. There is a new MUGA propsed for the Tenterden ground in Kenton ward, and one Cllr Robert Dunwell has obviously been whipping up feelings about it.

Many of the people there, who I assume seldom come to Planning meetings, seemed to think they had been invited to a public meeting, and constantly interrupted, shouted down other people and generally sought to intimidate the committee. In fact Planning Hearings have quite strict rulings as to who can speak, and for how long. It is more akin to attending a magistrates' court than a public meeting.

It is striking how people who shout loudest about democracy are frequently those who least respect the rights of others.

Graffiti at Kensal Green Tube

Another gift from Tory rail privatisation: graffiti at Kensal Green station. All right, the Tories didn' actually put the graffiti there but the way they privatised the railways made it a lot harder to get off.

The reason is that the train operator only leases the platforms and the ticket office area. The rails and the land beneath the platform, the tunnels and the area of the roof and above (where you can see the graffiti vandals have been busy) are still the responsibility of Network Rail.

This roof area has been cleaned before and it has been cleaned since this photo was taken, but it does feel like a Labour of Sisyphus.

Kensal Rise Library Homework Club

Kensal Rise Library will be getting a new Homework Club, mostly paid for out of Kensal Green's Neighbourhood Working fund. The Homework Club is being run with charity Volunteer Reading Help. The Homework Club will operate on Tuesdays from 3.30pm to 5.30pm, and is a good example of the kind of initiative that Neighbourhood Working is supposed to encourage. You can contact Kensal Rise Library at Kensalriselibrary@brent.gov.uk.

Friends of Odessa & Palermo Road Party

On Sunday, I went to the Friends of Odessa and Palermo Road party in Furness Primary School, which was a really good event. As you can see from this photo, we persuaded Dawn Butler MP to come along too. She is seen here with some of the organisers.

Brent Council and John Kelly Schools

Labour made another attempt to get Brent's Liberal Democrats and Tories to return to their previous policy of a full expansion of the Crest Academies (formerly John Kelly Schools). After a chaotic debate, the Tories and Liberal Democrats voted down our motion to buy more land so that it had greater sports facilities (which Ofsted has identified as the schools' Achilles heel).

Prior to the vote, we were told at great length that Brent is short of school places. As usual the Liberal Democrats blamed the government for not giving enough money without mentioning that Brent has persistently had some of the highest increases in education spend in England (This year, for example, we had the second highest increase).

One of the several reasons for wanting the extra land is that construction would take less than two years rather than the four years planned by the Liberal Democrats. There is some evidence that the school is already seeing parents turning down places. If it becomes a building site for four years, I would think the number of refusals can only increase, and many pupils will be left without a school place. That is one way in which the Liberal Democrat plans for the Crest Academies are stored up a disaster for the future.

Furness Primary School: 5pm start

Tonight, we will be doing another Neighbourhood Working walkabout. It starts outside Furness Road Primary School at 5pm and is supposed to cover Rucklidge Avenue, Park Parade, Leghorn Road, Cholmondeley Avenue, Wrottesley Road, Radcliffe Avenue, Ancona Road, Spezia Road Odessa Road and Palermo Road ending at the junction with Wrottesley Road.