The Onion and Newt Gingrich

This story from The Onion made me smile.  I wonder why the UK doesn't seem to have a comedy paper as good as The Onion?

Market Regulation

Paul Krugman has an interesting example of the madness of how money markets operate here.  Yet there are still people who thing it is in principle wrong to have any kind of market regulation.

Car Clubs in Brent

Kensal Rising has a post on car clubs, and how they fit into the policy.  The point about the car club cars being allowed to park anywhere in a CPZ is that you take the car from its designated space, drive where you want to go to park, and then return it to the designated space.  Hence there will still by specific car club spaces.  However, it will make using a car club car much more attractive for people to drive to a CPZ other than their own, and should therefore increase car club take up, reducing congestion.

Why March?

Last Saturday's Independent carried an article by Tim Lott which struck me as epitomising the wrong response to the current government cuts.  It argues that the cuts have to happen sooner or later and the way or the speed at which they are done doesn't really matter.  Hence don't even bother to protest.

Firstly the scale of these cuts may well increase the deficit by destroying economic growth.  Secondly, the cuts, especially to local government, have been front loaded maximising the difficulty of meeting them through greater efficiency or reorganisation.  They are part of an ideology designed to shrink the state on a permanent basis, not a repsonse to economic conditions.

Not only is this worth protesting about, but the TUC March was the right way to protest.  Of course a demonstration is just that it doesn't in itself change everything.  But the March did demonstrate that the Tory line that it is only an unrepresntative group of public sector workers that is upset was contradicted by the sheer number and variety of those involved.

Allotment Waiting Lists in Brent

Some time ago, I posted on the steadily rising waiting list for allotments in the Borough.  I understand that the waiting list is now close to 1,000.  We really will have to look at ways of increasing supply, limiting demand and distributing allotments as fairly as possible as there appears to be no sign of the trend towards ever greater waiting lists discontinuing.

March for the Alternative

Today is finally the day for the TUC March for the Alternative.  We should never forget that the cuts facing Brent Council and other public authorities are not inevitable, but a matter of choice.  The Con Dem coalition want these cuts to implement their version of warmed over Thatcherism, and they have deliberately targeted Labour Councils for political reasons..

The more people who turn up to the March, the more impressive will be the signal sent to the government.

Another Teather U Turn

The Willesden and Brent Times reports on Sarah Teather changing her position on human rights here.  My main quarrel with this is with the first sentence: "Sarah Teather has been accused of going back on her pre-election promises for a second time since entering government."

It is not the "second time".  As well as breaking her long standing commitment against tuition fees, she and her fellow Liberal Democrats have broken their promises not to raise VAT, to implement Building Schools for the Future, not to cut public spending too far and too fast because it would cause massive economic damage and a whole host of other issues.

It would be far more newsworthy if the Willesden and Brent Times could find an example of Sarah Teather keeping a promise for a second time.

Willesden Junction in the OAPF

Disappointing to see such a limited appreciation of the area around Willesden Junction in Boris Johnson's Open Area Planning Framework for Park Royal.  In particular very little detail on the possible effect of a station for Crossrail and the proposed High Speed Rail Link.

Pollution Around Willesden Junction

There is still alot of concern around smells drifting on to Tubbs Road and elsewhere from the other side of Willesden Junction.  I don't know if these are linked to the PowerDay site or not, but I have spoken to the Environment Agency about it.  they have a problem with enforcement in that they need verified claims of smells in order to act.  Therefore it would be useful if residents could keep a log of any problems.  Of course, that still leaves the issue of verification, but it is a start.

Return to the Mayor

A commenter on my Mayor post asks whether the cost of the office can be cut back.  It is worth remembering that the office covers not just the Mayoralty, but also Brent's training for elected members (where the Council recently got an award from London Councils).  Comparison with other Boroughs is difficult as the office of Mayor can cover very different things, but the Mayor of Brent is said to be among the cheapest in London.

Eric Pickles and Council Publicity

The Local Government Chroncile covers some of the confusions in Eric Pickles pronouncements on Council publicity.  Essentially, I don't think it possible to severely restricit both the quantity and methods by which Councils communicate tot ehir residents, and simultaneously champion effective engagement with those residents.

Final Well London Event

Well London will be holding its final event _ open to all _ in Tubbs Road Pocket Park on 26 March from 2pm to 5pm to celebrate the end of the project.  If you are not going on the anti-cuts March, please come along.

The Anti-Green Greens

I see Martin Francis, erstwhile Green Party candidate in Brent North, has called for some Harlesden's green space to be built on, albeit with a building with a "very small footprint."  What is it about the so called Green campaigners in Brent that makes them campaign against environmentalist objectives?  Martin's party colleague in Brent Central last time and numerous other elections before advocates abandoning the Civic Centre apparently unfazed by the effect that that would have on the Council's carbon emissions.  Brent Friends of the Earth fought the Council's proposals to increase recycling tooth and nail, throwing in a number of absurd accusations to boot.   The same group opposed our very modest proposals to link CPZ charges to vehicle emissions.

What makes these people think that they are environmentalists?

Ward Working and the Budget

During the budget process a number of people have suggested raiding the Ward Working budget to pay for other items.  I think this fundamentally misunderstands the logic of ward working.

Ward working was set up under the last Labour administration in Brent, which plagiarised adapted the idea from Newcastle.  It is fundamentally about community engagement rather than handing out grants.  For this reason, complaints that it has too large an "administrative" budget are misguided.  The supposed "administrative" budget is in fact an engagement budget.  Propoerly engaging with the public and finding out what the community wants, especially in such an extraordinarily multi-ethnic and fast moving community as Brent, is no easy task.

The £20,000 grant that each ward is allocated is there so that when an issue is identified, there is at least some money available to address it.  As most problems require money to solve, an engagement process that had no money attached, would risk seeming impotent.  For the same reason, the ward working budget for each ward cannot be entirely swallowed up by one project.  If money was entirely allocated at the start of the year, or subject to an understanding that it would always be handed to the same groups, it would cease to be useful as an engagement tool.

Over-management at Brent Council

One of the canards that Eric Pickles and his ilk like to put is that numerous Council officers are paid more than the Prime Ministers.  This is such an obvious distraction tactic from the Tory led government's responsibility for the Cuts programme that I am surprised people fall for it, but maybe it is worth addressing.

The first thing to say is that it is probably literaly untrue.  David Cameron gets (I believe) £142,000 per year as Prime Minister.  That job does not sufficently fill his time so he also gets paid as MP for Wirtney.  As a MP, he is also entitled to various allowances, although I dare say he no longer claims for wisteria trimming.  In addition, as Prime Minister he gets the use of Downing Street, all kinds of travel and of course the use of Chequers.  I have never hired a stately home, but I imagine it would be quite expensive.  All in all, I would think his vartious emoluments are well beyond what any local authority officer is allowed to claim.

In Brent Council, it is true that we have identified that we have more management layers than we should, but the idea that we could find more than £40 million simply be eliminating "waste" is absurd.  We currently have a staffing review specifically designed to bring our management spans to what PWC have advised us is a more appropriate level.  We have already abolished the most egragious example of bureaucracy in the Council.

This was the so-called "Business Transformation dEpartment" created by Paul Lorber to oversee efficiency changes under a highly paid officer head hunted from another authority.  Although its task was supposed to be reducing management layers, it was overloaded with expensive management staff.  Indeed the unit had more managers than it had people to manage.  Unlike the most recent budget, its abolition was not greeted with demonstrations outside the Town Hall.

Alternative Vote Polling

According to the excellent UKPolling Report, the opinions of people on the Alternative Vote vary quite wildly according to how the question is phrased.  Whatever, the merits of the different systems, that is surely a powerful argument against the whole concept of referendums.

Roads and Pavements

I am glad to say that the top third of Furness Road is finally going to get resurfaced in this coming fiancial year, rather than just patched.  The Council decides its schedule of carriageway and pavement resurfacing on the basis of engineers surveys and public complaints, and Furness Road has finally been scheduled.  As you can see from the photo below, there are almost more potholes than road surface and the patching that was done last winter is already wearing away.

The other Kensal Green street to get some work will be Ancona Road, where the pavement needs to be renewed.

Paying for the Roads

Later on I will be going to the Brent Council Executive, where one of the reports will be on the coming year's investment in Borough roads.  This is separate from the Transport for London funding that makes up a lot of what we spend on transport, and comes from "unsupported borrowing."  In other words, we borrow money and fund the interest payments from our revenue.  At some point this model of funding will have to change, as a greater and greater proportion of our revenue risks being swalloed up in interest payments.

Artistsandmakers

I was interested to visit the artistsandmakers.com project in Peel Precinct in South Kilburn recently. They are renting what was previously a derelict shop down there, and doing a variety of poetry and oral history related projects down there.  They also publish a guide for anyone who things they might be interested in a similar project.

David Cameron and the Enemies of Enterprise

David Cameron's "enemies of enterprise" speech of a few days ago really depressed me, as it shows what a right wing ideologue we have running the country.  It rolled out the same tired Tory lines that government is simply paprasitic on the private sector.  It ignores that obvious value of public services like the NHS, education transport and so on in order to pretend the entire public sector accomplishes nothing.  What is really amazing though is that he is still blamed regulation, and pretending it has no useful role.

Did he not notice that the financial crisis and the consequent economic disaster were created by banks that took unsustainable risks because nobody was regulating them effectively?  Failing that, does he not remember other cases where an industry held its supposed regulator in thrall, e.g. the farming industry prior to the BSE crisis?  He seems just to be recycling thatcherite dogmas without any reference to reality.

He also made quite a misleading point about public sector procurement, suggesting that it is simply a set of meaningless rules.  In fact a lot of the procurement rules are (a) about securting value for money (b) driven by European regulations that are intended to open up the European Union for Free Trade, which Mr Cameron is upposed to favour.  Simply wishing them away is not a serious option. 

More sensible would be to do what Brent Council has been doing with the Civic Centre;  Training smaller firms in how to bid for contracts within the procurement rules.  But of course Mr Cameron wouldn't want to know about that, as it is an example of the "enemies of enterprise" actively helping the private sector.