Tubbs Park Work Starts

I am glad to hear that work will start on Tubbs Road Pocket Park on Monday 11 October. Fortunately, the project was sufficently advanced that Sarah Teather's cuts to PlayBuilder funding (whioch partly funds it) don't apply. However, Sarah Teather has succeeded in cutting the scheduled work to Bramshill Park a short walk away. I hope that the electorate make their gratitude clear to her at the next election.

Big Society Deflates

According to the Guardian, the Tories have had to abandon a series of meetings to promote the "Big Society". Apparently, the first one they had was dominated by people complaining about all the spending cuts the new government has imposed. I can't feel very much sympathy for the Tories or their Liberal Democrat sidekicks here. They are really the victims of their own ideology that the public sector plays no useful role, whereas if they paid attention to how things work, they would know that actually the voluntary sector is often underpinned by all kinds of support from the public sector.

Ironically, the "Big Society Network" that the Con Dem government has set up appears to be an example of this. Five of its staff are civil servants on secondment, and they appear to use Department resources for communication. If the government resources are cut by 25%, that will feed into the supposedly separate voluntary groups, and David Cameron will end up undermining his own campaign.

High Speed Link Through Old Oak Common

It looks as if the Tories are accepting both the need for the high speed rail link to Birmingham and the route using Old Oak Common. If so, that could mean a major regeneration opportunity for the area around Willesden Junction, including Harlesden Town Centre.

Made in Dagenham

Germaine Greer has a somewhat grumpy piece in the Guardian on Saturday about the Made in Dagenham film. Made in Dagenham covers the story of a strike for equal pay by women at the Ford plant in 1968. I wonder whether there will ever be a film about Brent's Grunwick Strike. This was a strike by mostly Asian women in protest against their sweatshop conditions, and was a cause celebre at the time as Union support came in from all over the country. The site of the old factory is up by Dollis Hill Tube, and has now been redeveloped for housing.

Harlesden Town Team Tonight

The Harlesden Town Team are meeting this evening at the Salvation Army place in Manor Park Road. Unfortunately, I cannot go because I am presenting on Brent Council's new waste management proposals in South Kilburn this evening, but I hope anyone who is free makes it.

Child Benefit Means Tested: A Lib Dem Victory

George Osborne has pledged to introduce means testing for child benefit. This idea was floated by Nick Clegg in his "Savage Cuts" interview before the election, although he subsequently back tracked. Sarah Teather also has form in this area of course. However, I suspect that the cuts in child benefit will not feature in many of Sarah Teather's leaflets to the voters of Brent Central.

Ward Working

I have blogged before about Neighbourhood Working, which is now changing back to its old name of Ward Working. Lots of people used to get confused between Neighbourhood Working and Neighbourhood Watch. This is the scheme where ward councillors are allowed a small fund to spend on community projects in their ward. We still have some money so if you have any ideas let me know.

Incidentally this is another example of a Paul Lorber U-turn. In opposition, the Brent Liberal Democrat leader declared "Scaling down ward working is not enough; it must be scrapped." Once the Liberal Democrats and Tories formed an administration in 2006, he cut the budget for each ward to 20,000 pounds and changed the name to Neighbourhood Working, but allowed the project to continue across all wards in Brent. It is almost as if he felt honour bound not to do whatever he promised the voters he would.

Health and Climate Change

A European report has been published reminding us that improving pollution is not just about climate change but also public health. In fact, the savings from reduced medical spending are likely to cover a significant proportion of the cost of the pollution reduction.

The End of the £25 Charge

Today is the day that Brent Council ceases to charge £25 for bulky waste collections. We are going back to the old (pre Liberal Democrat) system of up to three collections each year, each collecting up to five items.

Brent: Fairtrade Borough?

I hope that we will soon have a firm timetable for Brent to become a Fairtrade Borough. We have been trying to this for ages, since Peter Lemmon was Mayor, but (as with so much else) progressed slowed to a crawl under the Lib dem / Tory administration.

The most difficult parts are likely to be getting more schools to register an interest, getting a wide range of religious organisations on board, and finding at least one big employer to sign up.

Brent Recycling

Currently, I am doing a lot on Brent Council's new waste strategy. Indeed, I will be doing a presentation at the Harlesden Area Consultative Forum this evening on the subject. One of the issues people have asked me about is a reuseable nappy scheme. The Strategy has that as an option. the two things we need to find out more about are the costs, and how we would engage enough parents to make it worthwhile.

Fortnightly Bin Collections

I see Brian Coleman is denouncing fortnightly bin collections as a potential fire risk, but I don't see why. Our proposal is to replace the green box with a much bigger recycling bin, keep the grey bin and the organic bin (introducing a new food waste bin for those household currently without. Why would vandals be more likely to set fire to a larger bin than a green box?

Incidentally, the reports on Brian Coleman's comments make the common mistake of assuming that savings from the scheme are driven by fewer bin men and vehicles. In fact, the savings come from diverting waste from landfill disposal (the most expensive way of getting rid of it) to recycling (much cheaper). I don't think the total number of vehicles and bin men will be much different.

What will be different is that the proportion of waste that is recycled will go up enormously. If you look at the most successful recycling authorities in the UK, they almost all use some version of a fortnightly collection. Thus, Tories like Eric Pickles and Brian Coleman are denouncing the only policy that has been shown to be really successful in increasing recycling. At the same time, the Tory government has kept the landfill tax in place, forcing local authorities to recycle more. Of course this may just the Tories being muddled, not understanding that their policies are going in opposite directions, or it may be more Machiavellian. They may will the end of greater recycling, but want to put any political flak on to local authorities.

Urban Design Guide

Some time ago, Brent was going to pass a new urban design guide to give consistent standards in improving the public realm. Unfortunately, this has been delayed through another round of consultation, but it should come back in time for the October Executive, no doubt full of "naked streets" and "shared surfaces" type ideas.

Elms Court Allotments

Paul Lorber and his Liberal Democrat colleagues have reputedly been protesting about the de-designation of the Elms Court allotment site for housing. What makes this odd is that they were the ones who withdrew its designation, back in May 2009. You can find it in 2.10 of the report. Both Paul Lorber and James Allee are noted in the minutes as speaking on the report. The only deviation of the current decision that springs to mind from their decision is that replacement allotments have now been identified. Could it be another case of Brent Liberal Democrats doing one thing in office and the opposite in opposition?

Tubbs Road Clean Up Day

It had been planned that Tubbs Road would have a clean up day on 2 October. Unfortunately, the logistics mean that has to be postponed. We are still keen to do it, just at a later date. This is supported by the three Kensal Green Councillors through Ward Working funding (formerly Neighbourhood Working). There was quite a successful clean up in Rucklidge Avenue a short time ago, and this is the same sort of thing. It also gives us an opportunity to publicise the abolition of the £25 charge, which will no longer be charged from 1 October.

Littering

I was told recently of a Keep Britain Tidy survey that found that only 4% of people admit to littering at any time. This is interesting as it does indicate a widespread acceptance that littering is wrong, with almost everyone being ashamed to admit to it.

Alternatively, if all the litter really is being left by only 4% of the population then they must be a dedicated group of people who spend hours doing it, like Flanders & Swann's Broken Bedstead Men.

Liberal Democrat Economic Policy

Larry Elliot has a reminder of the Liberal Democrats' previous record European economics. What this indicates to me is not so much a wrong analysis as a tendency to follow fashions whithout analysis. During the election, the Liberal Democrats were similarly following a fashion in arguing for a fiscal stimulus. In government, it suddenly became fashionable to go for austerity, although I would have thought the weakness of the Eurozone and the petering out of Obama's stimulus actually strengthened the argument the other way. One could go back further to when Nick Clegg was calling for "savage cuts" only to backtrack later on.

Video on Flytipping

I went to see a video by BTSWC, working with Groundwork, on flytipping at the Unity Centre on Church Road. It is now online, and you can see it here.

HMOs

The Con Dem government is apparently taking another retrograde step. Landlords will now be able to create houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) for up to six people without planning permission.

This is likely to create much lower living standards for the tenants. Just before the election, the Planning Committee considered a case in Dennis Avenue in Tokyngton where the landlord wanted to convert to a HMO. The application was refused because he wanted to give some of his tenants as little as half the space normally allotted to people living in flats.

My colleague Cllr Lesley Jones has long been fighting HMOs in Willesden. She is particularly interested in how they change the character of an area, leading to fewer residents with a long term stake.

Harlesden Town Charter Now Online

The Harlesden Town Charter is now available online here. I gather this is a temporary address for it. Not quite sure why it has taken Brent Council so long to get it on the web site, but at least you can see it now.