28 February - Virtue signalling leads to needless loss of life

Louie French is right on this one isn’t he? My MP’s poor judgment along with that of others, makes her indirectly responsible for a vicious murder just a couple of miles from her constituency boundary. Why do some Labour MPs so often act against the best interests of their constituents and the population at large?

Abena Oppong-Asare was one of dozens of MPs from several parties who are against the deportation of criminals. “A disgraceful policy” she still says while Nathaniel Eywu-Ago paid with his life.

News Shopper today.

 

27 February - Our useless Council, again

While we wait, if you are, for @tonyofsidcup’s fifth installment of ‘I love Sadiq’ or the Public Cabinet meeting report there is nothing left but to attempt to shame Bexley Council again for its uselessness when it comes to regulating commuter parking around Abbey Wood station. Presumably they would rather issue PCNs than lift a finger to help its taxpayers.

What a shower they are, Councillors too.

I have not been reporting illegal parking by residents because nearly all of it occurs only as the direct result of inconsiderate Elizabeth line commuters. However I think I may have made an exception in this case because the van was not only forcing pedestrians into the road on a busy corner, it was in combination with the white van seen in the background, blocking the road for all but the smallest vehicles.

Fortunately someone beat me to it because the van was ticketed barely five minutes after Photo 1 was taken.

Because the (background) white van parks end on and Bexley Council refuses to do anything about road blocking it can sometimes be difficult for me to drive home.

The easiest solution is to make use of the dropped kerb on the corner and mount the pavement as far as the next dropped kerb. When of course the dropped kerb is not blocked by another vehicle.

The two vans share an owner and once again the wanton disregard for societal norms may be traced to ‘cultural diversity’. Sooner or later decent people will rise up against it.

 

24 February (Part 3) - Book Buster

It was known four years ago that the new Sidcup library planned for the old Blockbuster site would be smaller than the one in Hadlow Road because Bexley’s principal StoryTeller admitted as much four years ago when facing the unfortunately named Sidcup Library Action Group. Sidcup Councillor June Slaughter had said the same even earlier.

But how much smaller is it? Quite a lot actually. The implication that it might be just a bit smaller is well wide of the mark. 55% of the floor space has been lost.

To be more precise, Hadlow Road extended over 694 square metres and the Storyteller shrank it down to 316 square metres.

Note: information from a Freedom of Information request submitted by @tonyofsidcup.

 

24 February (Part 2) - Someone needed to be locked up

The ultra observant may notice the Padlock in the Bonkers address bar. http:www,bexley-is-bonkers.co.uk now automatically switches to https. Not likely to affect readers in any way as there are no security issues on Bonkers, on occasions not even a Cookie, but maybe the Google indexing will improve. There was a time when a search for Bexley Council would put Bonkers second only to the .gov.uk site.

The site was unfortunately off air for half an hour because of an unwanted double entry in a configuration file.

 

24 February (Part 1) - Our useless Council

Yesterday I was blocked in for a total of 13 hours by Vindex Systems (08707 111 111). Fortunately I had no plans to use the car nor were visitors expected. Vindex Systems did not respond to Twitter messages or an email providing further proof of what sort of company it is. Will they be notified of the PCN? I have no idea, never had one myself.

Today Samson Close was inaccessible to CountryStyle’s refuse truck because of the regular corner parker PF13 ZUD who thinks it is acceptable to ignore the Highway Code; but why should he do otherwise when Bexley Council and the police condone it?

The driver was unable to reverse past the white car without striking the dark one on her left. Meanwhile another refuse truck could not get out of Coptefield Drive

The villain of the piece is of course Bexley Council which is content to sit on its bum doing nothing, and the three local Councillors who ignore the problem.

Several neighbours in my own and adjacent roads report how their complaints are ignored as does the resident who used to be our Councillor.

 

23 February (Part 3) - Site additions

The NHS is doomed
As promised, herewith some of the literature available at yesterday’s Cost of living Crisis meeting. It reveals that the Head Honcho of NHS England advised Tony Blair in 2002 and perhaps worst of all, is Vice-President of the USA’s largest health insurance company. The alleged “lack of transparency and honesty” goes well beyond Bexley Council now.

If people such as my 40 year old friend has to pay for his own scans and was said to be within two hours of death when getting himself to A&E there is a Cost of Living impact on both him and the country. The ruling politicians are for the most part either incompetent or corrupt. One must suspect both.

Thinking about ULEZ
@tonyofsidcup’s thesis on ULEZ which has appeared on Bonkers in four parts - so far - over the last couple of months has been reconstituted as a single page - if you have sufficient time to read it all in date order. It is identical to the individual blogs as they and the combined page all access the same source data.

Meanwhile the following letter from a Labour supporter to his party leader appears here thanks to a pointer from Bexley Cabinet Member Sue Gower. A Welsh MP subsequently tried to belittle and discredit Sue as one might expect from a nobody MP from Wales.

Dear Mr Starmer,
I’m writing to express my extreme concern at the proposed ULEZ extension by Sadiq Khan & to request your personal intervention to stop this. The extension of ULEZ to outer London Boroughs is totally unnecessary. It is simply a ‘cash grab’ by the London Mayor to help refinance TFL. It will have a negligible impact on air quality but a massive impact on people’s quality of life.
Astonishing that this man represents the Labour Party, a party I’ve proudly voted for over the last 40 years. The Labour Party has history in supporting the working man yet Khan seems determined to deliberately cause hardship to the very people he should be helping simply because they’re an easy target without the means to fight back. I would like to you to investigate several points:
Firstly, why was there no mention of the proposed expansion of ULEZ in his manifesto before the last mayoral election? This is surely, even ignoring the above, morally unacceptable?
Secondly, Mr Khan promised he would honour the result of the ‘consultation’ regarding ULEZ. The result of this ‘consultation’ is distinctly suspect with many accusations of suspicious voting behaviour & counting irregularities. If the ‘consultation’ didn’t even get a result until the end quarter of 2022, how are cameras already being erected by TFL in Jan/Feb 23?
Surely they would need to be a discussion on what kind of cameras they will be and a bidding process for the contract to supply and fit them? I suspect Khan had no intention of letting the ‘voteְ’ go against him and pre-empted the contract approval. This is clearly unacceptable.
Thirdly, if the mayor genuinely believes that the affected vehicles are killing people, why is it OK to keep killing people as long as we pay him £12·50 per day to do it?
Fourthly, the ban of sales of petrol and diesel cars comes into force in just a few short years.
So there is absolutely no need for this policy as there will be a natural reduction of internal combustion engine vehicles over time. There are many more points I could list including lack of public transport in outer London areas, safety of people travelling after dark.
Crime rates rising fast (on this mayor’s watch!); the effects on people already suffering the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation etc. However one last point, and a very important one for the Labour Party. As I said at the start, I’ve been a Labour voter all my life but I will not stand by and watch this attack on the working class by a party meant to support them. And I suspect there are an awful lot of people like me.
Use your authority to reign in this tinpot dictator ruling London.
Yours faithfully

Probably it is naive to expect one tinpot globalist to rein in another.

 

23 February (Part 2) - Reclaim the NHS

Dave Putson kindly let me know that Dr. Gill had to defer his appearance at the monthly Cost of Living Crisis meeting and that he had secured the services of Frances Hook who would deliver a similar address.

As I did with the doctor I Googled the new name and found an octogenarian retired midwife and member of the Communist Party.

I am in no position to negatively pontificate on membership of the Communist Party because two of my in-laws were best mates with Willie Gallacher the former Communist MP for Clydebank and they were decent enough people - for in-laws.

Dave had stressed that Frances should not be considered his second choice after Bob Gill but a serious and knowledgeable campaigner in her own right - and he wasn’t wrong.

I was expecting the usual diatribe about the sorry state of the NHS to be the fault of the evil Tories but the message was far wider than that. The decline, she said, had started 30 years ago, accelerated under Blair and Brown and the Tories have followed their lead.

Once again I did not take notes and Frances was softly spoken and I hope the following is accurate. She seemed to share my view of front line staff some of whom she didn’t think were good enough to be employed in first world health systems.

Maybe she had in mind the ‘Nurse Specialist’ who wrote to my GP with a copy to me including a load of inaccurate tosh. I wrote a reply and decided to hand deliver it to Queen Elizabeth Hospital Urology Department. Having arrived there I said “this letter is for Josephine” - not the real name. “Josephine is standing right there” I was told with a finger pointing at a lady no more than four feet away. However Josephine said she could not accept the letter as I had not made an appointment with her to hand it over. Fortunately the nearby receptionist bearing a suitably bemused look was happy to accept it from me.

Frances said that the Health and Care Bill which has received Royal Assent paves the way for an American style Health Service, one which bankrupts half a million citizens a year because they cannot pay their medical bills.

Some parts of QEH are already fully privatised, I think A&E Triage may have been mentioned but no doubt Dave will correct me if I am wrong. The NHS letters I get quite regularly offering dental, optical and prescription services are all from private companies who have bought the right to use the NHS logo in order to make a profit from your ill-health.

Will a Labour government save the NHS? No chance was the very definite message! Labour is responsible for many of the present ills. The £52 billion interest bill on PFIs etc. Frances the Commie shares the opinion of Malcolm the Tory about Starmer and Co. Worse than Sunak in my opinion which one might think is an almost impossible feat to achieve. I am pretty sure that Frances said that Starmer and his Health Shadow Minister Wes Streeting have both accepted funds from American health providers.

There was an implication too that GPs have lost their way and Bexley Group Practice is all too typical of their lack of care. (I have recently been made aware that they are being pursued by an MP for their uselessnesI)

I picked up a few of Dave’s NHS leaflets and later today they will be linked from here.

Doctor Bob Gill will be telling a similar story on 29th March. It should be more than a little interesting.

Meanwhile I didn’t hear anything about the Cost of Living Crisis last night; its subject was too close to being the ‘Cost of Dying’. Maybe I shouldn’t mention the 40 year old friend with untreated kidney stones which are now causing liver failure and the earliest hospital appointment he can get is mid-April. It’s enough to make anyone a Commie.

 

23 February (Part 1) - Vindex. Delivering Traffic Management and much more…

This van, sometimes a smaller one in the same livery, is parked inconsiderately in my road pretty much every day. Invariably all day. Presumably an Elizabeth line commuter,

Today he has blocked my access to the road along with that of all the residents living opposite. At least four more families.

Has the driver no shame? Is he a credit to his company? Would you do business with a company happy to employ such an uncaring individual?

The real problem however, as stated so many times before, is Bexley Council which has refused to even discuss helping its taxpaying residents by painting yellow lines in turning circles and in accordance with the Highway Code, around blind corners.

Note: Ticketed 75 minutes after making report to Bexley Council.

 

20 February - Déjà vu : Illegal Council spy cameras again

Very long term readers may remember when NoToMob members were frequent visitors to Bexley. NoToMob is a group of parking experts who had discovered that Bexley did not have the necessary certifications for its CCTV spy cars and there are dozens of references on Bonkers to their activities within the borough.

Needless to say Bexley Council lied their socks off but eventually did get their cars licenced correctly so that they could legitimately issue fines.

I am rather late to this particular party but it would appear that the same applies to bus lane cameras in London and everyone who has appealed to the Adjudicator has had their bus lane fine overturned. A 100% success rate because the cameras are illegal.

There is a debate on their website as to whether NoToMob should go public on the issue or continue to quietly appeal individual cases. The former would probably see Councils scrambling to close the legal loophole to the detriment of even more drivers.

If one went down the Appeal route it would be necessary to gather all the relevant legal issues from the forum discussion. Several Councils admit to not enforcing bus lane cameras. Have Bexley even got any?

Probably I should create an Index to the innumerable NoToMob blogs but where does one find the time? My three days of absence from BiB was caused by modern technology. Friday and Sunday playing with it, Saturday buying more! I enjoy it but the friend I was helping did not have much of a clue about what I was doing.

When my Dad bought a TV in 1950 or 1951, I forget which, you just plugged it in, waited for it to warm up and Muffin the Mule flickered into life. It was pre-tuned to Alexandra Palace and needed nothing other than an aerial and a power socket.

When he updated it in 1960 it was much the same except that it had a rotary switch which had to be set to either Channel 1 (BBC) or Channel 9 (ITV). Now we have Smart TVs.

Stick it on the wall, connect it to the internet and accept the Terms and Conditions. Autotune Freeview, Freesat and generic satellite. The latter takes ages and finds about 1,000 channels,

Set up BBCi Player and ITVX both requiring registration and acknowledgment of an email which was never received by gmail. Set up a dedicated email address on my own server and try again. Then type the address and password into the TV using an onscreen keyboard and the TV remote. Several mistakes later it all works.

Same for YouTube and Netflix which were both trouble free. Prime Video required a phone call so didn’t bother.

Install another Ethernet link to accommodate the new TV, the old one was too old to need the internet and the wi-fi is slightly dodgy.

Install USB hard drive to act as a recorder. Didn’t work, serves me right for buying a Chinese USB3 device for under £40 instead of a Western Digital unit for £59. Probably that is made in China too but at least it has a proper USB3 connector instead of something you might find on a phone.

Successfully paired Bluetooth devices after replacing their flat batteries but the hearing loop for a deaf member of the household was more of a problem. The TV has no analogue outputs and the hearing loop has never heard of digital, hence the Saturday off hunting down an adapter.

Replace all HDMI cables because they were Version 1 and the latest is version 2.1. Check, using my own UHD Blu-ray player, that the system will pass 4k signals rather than only basic HD. All OK.

I think it is all done now but the owner is old enough to be aware of John Logie-Baird’s madcap experiments. (Revolving mirrors no less!) How are such people supposed to cope with modern life? However Santander recognised the problem and tried to keep him on the straight and narrow. They declined his Debit Card even though there was enough money in his current account to buy 30 televisions. When he got home and phoned them they were unapologetic. I think they may have learned a few new rude words.

Santander. UK’s worst bank.

 

15 February - Thinking about ULEZ, Part 4 - A Beautiful Mind

N.B. There is a composite of all four (so far) of @tonyofsidcup’s ULEZ articles available here assembled into chronological order.

I have always believed in giving both sides of every story whenever possible which may explain why BiB has never been totally Labour or Conservative supporting. As my MP said to me once, “you a more a plague on all their houses sort of bloke” and she was right. Having said that I find it impossible to see any merit in Sadiq Khan’s plan to extend the Ultra Low Emission Zone to the country lanes of Bromley and in some places beyond the M25. I know all politicians lie but the Mayor takes things to extremes, misquoting and cherry picking the Imperial College findings for example.

But a promise is a promise, here is the penultimate and unexpurgated episode of @tonyofsidcup’s eulogy to London’s worst ever Mayor and you can safely assume I agree with very little of it. I nevertheless found it interesting and learned some things I didn’t previously know. It is certainly a well researched piece from someone who may once have aspired to drive a Lada or a Trabant but he appears to totally ignore the fact that vehicle pollution pollution is rapidly disappearing anyway and the cameras can only be justified if the plan is London wide road pricing, something predicted on Bonkers a long tIme before it became mainstream thinking.

A faint memory of my past life as an American PhD student is attending lectures by three economics Nobel laureates. Even in the field of Nobelists, the three were genuine titans who transformed their fields and had a far-reaching impact on the world. Robert Merton was a founding father of quantitative finance, celebrated by academics and by Wall Street “quants” driving the world’s financial-derivatives industry. Robert Lucas was the world’s pre-eminent macroeconomist, who changed the way economists model the economy as a whole, and the way governments and central banks think about managing booms and recessions. Finally, John Nash made a crucial contribution to game theory - the science of repeated negotiation - and, even more impressively, was played by Russell Crowe in the 2001 Hollywood movie “A Beautiful Mind”. The film told the true story of a brilliant scientist struck in his prime by mental illness (schizophrenia), and overcoming it after a long, heart-breaking struggle.

I thought of “A Beautiful Mind” when reading a Telegraph article penned by a fellow Sidcup resident, Mr Gareth Bacon, the Member of Parliament for Orpington. As some readers will know, before becoming an MP for a Bromley constituency in 2019, Mr Bacon had been a councillor for Sidcup’s Longlands Ward - not just a councillor, but a Bexley Cabinet Member and the Deputy Leader. I moved to Sidcup in 2017, and did not start paying attention to local politics until 2020 - there was a local issue, the local councillors (including Mrs Bacon!) seemed uninterested, I became frustrated but also curious about the Bexley council, and it snowballed from there - so Mr Bacon’s Bexley period passed me by. Now, I see occasional, favourable references to him on the Bonkers blog - for example, he is credited for Bexley’s recycling prowess. A Google search finds a 2015 Evening Standard article that names Mr Bacon “the capital’s highest paid councillor”, collecting £108,000 from four (!) public posts, including his roles at Bexley and the London Assembly, and being Mayor Boris Johnson’s (oh, the happy days!) appointed person on the London Fire Brigade.

(The link says “I am worth every penny”, says a £108,000-a-year politician”, but I don’t see that line in the text. Interestingly, the 2015 article is by Pippa Crerar, who became Britain’s most-talked-about journalist in 2021, when she ushered in Partygate with a report of a lockdown-breaking Christmas Party at Downing Street. For good measure, she also brought down GLA Conservatives’ Shaun Bailey, with a lockdown party of his own. Standing next to Bailey in an infamous photo was Bexley councillor Adam Wildman).

It rubbed me up the wrong way when in 2021 Mr Bacon showed up in The Private Eye’s list of councillors who continued to claim their allowance after election to Parliament - note whose name comes before his! - while, according to Bexley Labour, failing to attend council meetings.

These days, I am not overly enthused about Mr Bacon spending £550 of taxpayer money every month on an assistant to watch his web site and social media. (Sadly, I was banned by said assistant on Twitter, after jokingly suggesting that Mr Bacon’s endorsement of Kemi Badenoch in the Conservatives leadership contest could be a hostage situation, given Mrs Bacon’s employment in Badenoch’s office). To be perfectly frank, I feel that Mr Bacon could show a little more restraint when reaching into the taxpayer’s pocket. At the same time, he strikes me as a highly intelligent man, quite distant from the Neanderthal wing of Conservative Party, represented by people like Jonathan Gullis. (Seen sitting next to Mr Bacon and our own Mr French - patriotically masked - on the image below). This is why what I read in The Telegraph was worrying.

As far as I know, there are now two Telegraph articles published by Mr Bacon, with the later one out just yesterday, on February 13. It was the earlier article from December 27, 2022 that caught my eye. It opened with this:

“Sadiq Khan’s latest plan to make it harder to drive should worry us all. It’s the worst assault on motorists we’ve ever seen. The London Mayor is determined to price working people off the roads and has ignored their overwhelming objections, giving them no choice, time or opportunity to avoid a ruinous bill. If Mr Khan gets away with this, any other city or regional mayor can impose reckless driving charges across the country. It must be stopped”.

Let’s look past the “overwhelming objections” bit, the false Tory claim addressed in the previous post. (It is true that lower-income respondents in the TfL ULEZ consultation were more opposed to ULEZ than higher-income ones, but consultation respondents were strikingly unrepresentative of London’s population in the first place. Mr Bacon is putting his words in the mouth of the average working-class Londoner). It is the next sentence that worries me. “If Mr Khan gets away with this, any other city or regional mayor can impose reckless driving charges across the country”.

What’s wrong with this proposition? Why would the ULEZ expansion open the floodgates? After all, it is an expansion of an existing ULEZ - a second expansion, even. Recall that efforts to “price working people off the roads”, as Mr Bacon puts it, have been made for a long time. The “congestion charge” was introduced, by Mayor Ken Livingstone, on February 17, 2003, almost exactly 20 years ago. In 2017, after a record air-pollution spike in January, Mayor Sadiq Khan enacted the “toxicity charge” in October. Finally, in 2019, the toxicity charge was replaced by ULEZ. (Wikipedia says that the plans were made by Mayor Boris Johnson, but I will let you verify the claim). Who was the leader of GLA Conservatives when T-charge and ULEZ were introduced? A certain Mr Gareth Bacon. By the time of ULEZ’s first extension, in 2021, he had vacated his leadership role, but remained an Assembly Member. Without a doubt, he played an active role in these developments. Does he not believe those changes to be “the worst assault on motorists we have ever seen”? Or does he simply not remember?

It is not just events before his move to Westminster that Mr Bacon seems to have forgotten. The Orpington MP appears to be unaware of high-profile, controversial policies pursued by his own party.

One can begin the story with the Environment Act of 1995, which committed the UK government to develop the Air Quality Strategy, last updated in 2007. (To recall the first post in this series, 2007 is when Bexley Air Quality Management Area was declared). In 2008, the European Parliament issued the Ambient Air Quality Directive, imposing binding air-quality limits on EU member states. UK, alongside some other countries, consistently breached the nitrogen-dioxide limit, in multiple areas including Greater London, and in 2014 the European Commission began “infringement procedures” against the UK government, with the case progressing to the European Court of Justice in 2018. In 2021, already after Brexit, the court found that the UK government had failed to fulfil its obligations.

By that time, the government had a legal setback at home as well: in 2015, the Supreme Court told Whitehall to urgently develop a plan to achieve compliance with EU’s limits, which became part of the British law. Maybe this is why in the mid-2010’s, the UK government finally got serious about air pollution. In 2019, the Clean Air Strategy and the National Air Pollution Control Programme were published, and year 2021 saw the Environment Act, which set a number of quantitative targets in areas including air quality, with particular attention given to the particularly hazardous (pun intended, though the subject is genuinely grim: this is the stuff that causes cancers and heart attacks) particulate-matter pollution. The Office for Environmental Protection was set up - they are the people who will hopefully be asking Bexley about the missing-for-16-years Bexley Air Quality Action Plan!

Finally, the Clean Air Zone framework was developed, allowing - indeed, requiring - councils with high levels of air pollution (mainly NOx, as it is mainly produced by cars and “stays local”, unlike PM, which comes from different sources and travels far and wide) to limit polluting car traffic. One can find online references to “charging” or “non-charging” Clean Air Zones, but the current CAZ legislation refers only to “charging” CAZs, where owners of particular vehicles are asked to pay for entering the zone. (A “non-charging”CAZ is when a council tries to clean up the air without asking drivers to pay). Within “charging” CAZes, there are different classes, depending on what types of vehicles are charged. Class D is the one where “regular” cars, i.e. not taxis, have to pay. Since 2021, a Class D zone covers much of Birmingham. Since 2022, a Class D zone applies in central Bristol. Class C zones, “forgiving” to non-taxis, exist in Newcastle, Sheffield, Bath and Bradford. Notably, in Bristol, the local council tried to “water down” the CAZ but was overruled by the government! The same thing is now happening in Manchester (led by Labour’s Andy Burnham) where the local council has pointed to the cost-of-living crisis and tried to reject a CAZ, replacing it with a “non-charging” zone. The government has pushed back, arguing that it wasn’t good enough! The Manchester CAZ did not go ahead for now, but it is definitely happening.

If the news from Manchester makes you think “If Manchester managed to postpone the CAZ, why can’t London postpone the ULEZ expansion?”, I am fine with that. I would like to draw your attention to a different takeaway. The UK government - for 13 years now led by the Conservatives - is at long last serious about air quality and is working to cut car emissions across the nation. London is leading the way, but is moving as part of a national trend, a national policy, guided by national targets, some of them distant (2050), some close (2040), some very close (2030). When Gareth Bacon MP tells you about Sadiq Khan waging a war on motorists, politely ask him “Are you forgetting something, Gareth?” and tell him about what you just read.

PS. And do watch “A Beautiful Mind”: Russell Crowe is Australia’s national treasure.

Links
“I can juggle four public posts, says £108,000 a year politician”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/i-m-worth-every-penny-says-ps108-000ayear-politician-10069317.html
Gareth Bacon’s Wikipedia profile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Bacon
London Congestion Charge (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
London Ultra Low Emission Zone (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Emission_Zone
UK Air Quality Strategy for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-air-quality-strategy-for-england-scotland-wales-and-northern-ireland-volume-1
UK infringes on EU air-quality limits, 2014
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_14_154
Supreme Court tells the UK Government to act on air pollution, 2015
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/29/supreme-court-orders-uk-to-draw-up-air-pollution-cleanup-plan
Clean Air Strategy
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-air-strategy-2019
UK National Air Pollution Control Programme
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-quality-uk-national-air-pollution-control-programme
Clean Air Zone framework
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-quality-clean-air-zone-framework-for-england/clean-air-zone-framework
Clean Air Zones in UK (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Zone
Manchester Clean Air Zone postponed
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/clean-air-zone-charges-highly-26212421

 

14 February (Part 5) - MP shows signs of becoming an independent while an old Tory drifts towards the left

It crossed my mind yesterday that it has been a long time since I had heard anything about my MP Abena Oppong-Asare. Someone mentioned her as being an unexplained absentee from Dave Putson’s Cost of Living Crisis meetings and wondered why but apart from that nothing. I suspect it is because Bexley Councillors are caught between a rock and a hard place over ULEZ and the MP is similarly placed. In my opinion they have to toe the party line which appears to be let’s hammer the poorest member’s of society while not believing a word of it.

I did have a conversation around rather than about the issue with one of them which I interpreted as confirmation that they, or at least one, knows how costly Sadiq Khan is.

@bexleynews is renowned for its lying but I doubt even they would quote what an MP may have said unless she had. Abena’s comment - “people are going to be worse off” - if she actually does something about it, must be welcome news to many in her constituency. She is well aware that it is not the wealthiest.

To that end Abena has also issued a Cost of Living Crisis brochure which you may download from her website. (Scroll to the bottom for the PDF.)

Among the many failures of the Conservative Government I feel their failure to recognise the financial impact on those at the opposite ends of the social spectrum to Sunak and Hunt will ensure their demise which is why BiB provides limited support to Dave Putson’s meetings. Ultimately this government has to be made to see sense or be brought down, it is just that I am not as sure as Dave is of how best to go about it.

Due to government policies large numbers of people cannot afford to pay their electricity bills but because I was able to take advantage of their Net Zero subsidies and capable of installing electrical gadgets myself I have squeezed my electricity bills down to around fifty pence most days. And that includes the standing charge.

I suppose it should reinforce my life long inclination to Conservatism but in practice it does the reverse. It is simply unfair and nonsensical. Shame that Labour still looks to be an even worse prospect.

 

14 February (Part 4) - Never mind the quality, we can’t afford to pay for it any more

I have been reminded that there has been no report on the Adult’s Social Care Scrutiny meeting held a month ago; the fact is that it was close to being unmitigated bad news and included nothing revelatory.

Cabinet Member Seymour said that the service was “in a very critical state” particularly regarding hospital discharges and re-enablement packages. As always there is a grave shortage of staff especially among experienced social workers and occupational therapists. “The future is not looking rosy.”

The long term effects of Covid remain problematical.

Labour Councillor Nicola Taylor (Erith) was critical of the way that budgets had been presented because it is “fluid” and a summary is not good enough for proper Scrutiny. She was told that all the detail had been separately published but some things are fast moving as she implied.

The Director admitted that the borough had reached the stage where it was having to balance the quality of care staff it could find against what it could afford to pay for. The care providers also had severe staffing problems. (Which government minister decided to sack unvaccinated workers a couple of years ago? Sajid Javid.)

One has already given rise to to “health and safety concerns and this is taken extremely seriously”.

The Cabinet Member said that things are on course to get worse when care workers cannot afford to run their cars due to the proposed ULEZ extension. “The Mayor is making an absolutely appalling attack on working people and anyone who supports him should be utterly ashamed of themselves.”

 

14 February (Part 3) - Bexley Group malPractice

I received a long story about Bexley Group Practice yesterday, suffice to say that I am not alone in thinking that it must be the worst GP surgery in Bexley if not in London.

Later the same day I received a celebratory message from Google to say my review which followed the GP’s failure to call me after a hospital request to do so, had now been read 500 times.

They never did call to make an appointment but I have moved to a different surgery now; hopefully one that isn’t content to leave patients to die.

 

14 February (Part 2) - Thanks Elon

The censorship that affects Social Media platforms has reduced a little since Elon Musk bought Twitter but technically it has had its problems. One account holder that I follow changed his name to something rather rude to make a short term point just before Twitter disallowed further name changes, and causing him to be the subject of much ribaldry until Elon had the algorithm corrected about a month later.

For several weeks past I have been subjected to sometimes pornographic jokes from an account I had previously never heard of and certainly wouldn’t follow.

Journalist Andrew Neil is evidently suffering much the same; we are being shown Tweets we would rather not see because someone we follow is liking them.

I am on the receiving end of mild porn because two people I follow are liking it. One is a Councillor and the other a lady known to Council watchers who probably considers herself to be a pillar of the local establishment.

I think I will stop ‘liking’ Tweets because it may give away more information than I had bargained for.

 

14 February (Part 1) - Khan is a liar

On the left is St. Paul’s Cathedral from my office window in the mid-1970s. On the right Wren’s masterpiece in more recent times. Can there be a clearer illustration of how much cleaner London’s air has become over the years?

How can Shirley Rodrigues, Deputy Mayor for Transport, have the gall to say in today’s Daily Telegraph that poor air quality is killing 4,000 Londoners a year? (†) The same figure recorded as having died in the 1950s when sometimes you could literally not see across the road. (Presumably because her job depends on big time lying.)

Switching subjects - but for a reason - I am not a big user of the Elizabeth line. Once a week basically, every Monday and it may just be bad luck but I find it unreliable. I don’t think there has been one journey this year which has been unaffected by minor disruptions, 20 minute service gaps, that sort of thing. On one occasion I had to find another route home as the public address system was proclaiming no Abbey Wood trains for the foreseeable future.

Last night was a problem yet again. I walked to Abbey Wood station just after six o’clock to find Florence Road and Gayton Road pretty much solid with cars, a sure sign that the Elizabeth line had failed again.

Most were parked on the footpath and most drivers had their engines running in order to keep warm. I didn’t linger too long as the air was thick with petrol fumes. I counted 32 cars by the time I reached the Wilton Road steps from which I could see a lot more.

Those I passed in Florence and Gayton Roads all sported registration plates which indicated they were ULEZ compliant which means that Khan’s abuse of statistics and power will achieve nothing. Until he tightens the rules still further that is.

The stench was still pretty bad while I waited for a train on Platform 4. A train eventually left for Reading at 18:38.

What is Bexley Council doing about the problems around Abbey Wood station? I know someone who lives in a house at the station end of Wilton Road. They are effectively cut off from their home and dare not have the windows open.

Khan is a liar? That is the most polite description I have heard recently. “Evil little runt” from a pub quiz last week and dare I mention this? Yesterday alone two ladies, neither of whom has ever met the other, and unprovoked by me were wishing him dead. (Graphic description censored.)

Maybe I know the wrong sort of lady.

† An FOI request said the true number is one.

 

12 February - GP. Gill Postponed

Doctor Gill has had to defer his appearance at Dave Putson’s meeting on 22nd February. Put 29th March in your diary in addition to Wednesday week.

Fortunately Dave is well connected in the world of medicine and secured another NHS campaigner, one Frances Hook, to speak on the 22nd. Frances has been a long time campaigner and is, or certainly was, Chair of the local ‘Keep our NHS Public’ group.

‘Cost of Living Crisis’ meetings are held at 7:30 p.m. in the Abbey Wood Community Centre on Knee Hill on the last Wednesday of every month.

 

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9 February - Earth shaking. Turkish news and Covid news

Turkish Earthquake
Not being a TV watcher myself I have been spared seeing footage of the devastation caused by the powerful earthquakes in Turkey. 7·8 on the Richter Scale followed by 7·5 a few hours later, however I have seen some harrowing scenes via Twitter etc. They are quite bad enough.

We have two Turkish Councillors in Bexley, one has been friendly whenever our paths have crossed and the other is one of those who has never so much as glanced in my direction.

Two years ago the helpful one found my phone number and called to offer assistance to someone whose plight had been reported here. I sneakily kept his mobile number on file and presuming he must have family ‘back home’ and being concerned that he may have been bereaved I cast caution to the wind and called him. Fortunately no one especially close to him has been injured or worse but he knows of some who have not been so lucky.

As you might have expected from such a helpful sort of guy he is involved in the collection of items that can be shipped out to Turkey.

Winter clothing, coats, hats scarfs, gloves, shoes, blankets, baby clothes, nappies and baby wipes are desperately required. No rubbish please, it takes too long to sort and dispose of items which are dirty or threadbare.

If you have some which can be passed on they are being collected between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. next Saturday 11th February at the Girls School in Blackfen Road, Sidcup DA15 9NU. Not far from the Shell garage.

I am assured that parking won’t be a problem.

Parking again
My zero tolerance approach to local commuter parking is being assisted by a couple in the next road who have been doing the same thing. Some days the parking is inconsiderate rather than rule breaking but no one is interested in upholding the Highway Code any more so such drivers get away with it.

The attached photo is the only one from this morning’s haul. Bexley Council was on the scene quite soon after the report was made.

The hope is that enough lessons will be learned by drivers to have an impact on their behaviour while Bexley’s Highways Department twiddles its thumbs and looks the other way.

Meanwhile I calculate that my camera has earned Bexley Council about twice as much money this year as they have extracted from me via their 25th worst Council Tax rate in London.

SloppyStyle recycling
The fake CCTV notices that SloppyStyle put over the nearby bins have succeeded so far in suppressing thoughtless fly tipping but a problem that has existed for many months remains unresolved.

The lid on the paper bin has not been locked for getting on for a year so it is easy to lift it to take a photograph or fill it it with plastic sacks, canvas bags or miscellaneous ironmongery.

Then SloppyStyle will deem it contaminated and not empty it and it will be at that point that the fly tipping will become more obvious.

Covid sceptics
My second Astra Zeneca Covid-19 injection caused me a worrying bad reaction but when I went to the doctor about it I was fobbed off to a nurse who apologetically told me she was under instructions not to refer vaccine injuries to hospital. The useless Bexley Group Practice again.

It was around that time that I decided that government was lying to us and I started studying the Covid statistics more closely, but not as closely as Doctor John Campbell who has been analysing health issues for 30 years and published more than 2,000 YouTube videos. Recently he has been taking a long hard look at Covid statistics.

The video linked here, in the space of 20 minutes, takes you to the data published by government, pharmaceutical companies and the World Health Organisation. The doctor never actually says so for fear of being ‘Cancelled’, but if you put all his official information together you can clearly see what I have long suspected. With Covid as with most things, all governments are lying and sweeping huge numbers of deaths under the carpet.

My own ‘vaccine injury’ has almost gone away now.

 

8 February - The increasing cost of living

It is relentless isn’t it? Every visit to the supermarket provides another surprise and Jeremy Hunt, the out of touch Chancellor, appointed by the out of touch and unelected billionaire Prime Minister, currently plans to increase the duty on petrol and diesel by 23% and lift the energy price cap by a similar amount in a couple of months time.

Labour politicians are tackling the problem from both ends, Sadiq Khan has a 10% Council Tax increase in the pipeline and for the poorest members of society a £12·50 daily charge to move their car, but locally they are making an effort to be of more help. They issued a Press Release about the crisis on Monday which includes a link to their explanatory leaflet which refers to a number of other organisations which might be able to help the near penniless.

Linking to those organisations is probably the only practical way of providing the information as it might be less than easy to follow - and there is little point in reinventing the wheel.

The linked booklet is clearly a National production tailored for local use whilst former Belvedere Councillor Dave Putson took the initiative with his own leaflets and began distribution in mid-January. They are split into five subjects as follows.

Energy (General)
Energy (Prepayment meters)
Foodbanks
Landlords
Water bills

All the above documents are in PDF format.

Dave Putson will chair another of his Cost of Living Crisis meetings in Abbey Wood on 22nd February.

 

7 February - Thinking about ULEZ, Part 3 - People Will Talk

Another guest post from @tonyofsidcup.

The last paragraph of my previous post said:

“Well, 59% or 68%, no matter - clearly, majority of Londoners oppose ULEZ, and that’s why Khan ought to cancel ULEZ!” No, and no. This is actually the key point in the whole ULEZ consultation business, and one that Fortune and Friends try hardest to avoid. Let’s hit it on the head in the next post.

This is the next post, and this is the big, two-pronged lie: the average Londoner opposes ULEZ, and Sadiq Khan improperly overruled the public opinion to push through his unpopular policy. In reality, the average Londoner favours ULEZ - the average Inner Londoner, already within ULEZ so unaffected by the expansion, favours it, while the average Outer Londoner gives you a different answer depending on how you ask - so Mayor Khan is going with the public opinion, not against it.

If you watch on YouTube the exchange between Sadiq Khan and Peter Fortune at Mayor’s Question Time (see Links below), you will hear the mayor repeatedly say: “A consultation is not a referendum”. To me, it means three things.

First, it is about the decision-maker. With a referendum, the voters decide: before votes are cast, people agree that the choice with the most votes will be implemented. With a consultation, it is the body that sponsors the consultation that makes the call. There is no commitment to go with the most popular choice.

Second, it is about the purpose. A referendum aims to reveal the most popular choice and to produce a decision. A consultation aims to draw out the arguments “for” and “against” and to inform a decision. Recall those group emails, the subject of #TheUlezScandal version 1. 5,000 people saying “no” in a referendum is 5,000 votes. 5,000 people emailing identical text to consultation organisers is merely one set of arguments repeated 5,000 times. (If there are any arguments advanced at all).

Third, it is about representativeness. A typical referendum captures a large fraction of the voter population, and is accepted as representative. If, for example, Bexley Conservatives get 51% of the votes in the 2022 election - “decisive victory”, according to Teresa O’Neill - we accept that the share of voting-age Bexleyites favouring Tories is close to 51%. A typical consultation involves a much smaller fraction of eligible voters, and tends to attract people with strong views (enough motivation to complete a questionnaire), leaving out the crucial, broad middle. For this reason, “projecting” the consultation-produced percentages of “ayes” and “noes” on a particular yes-or-no question to the entire population is a terrible idea. You want to gauge whole-population “for” and “against” percentages, but a consultation gives you those for “strongly for” and “strongly against”. The two sets are completely different, and may point in opposite directions.

(Statisticians talk about “self-selected” surveys, and “self-selection bias”. The self-selection bias is distinct from the normal statistical uncertainty, when you estimate “population” quantities based on a sample. The latter is less of a problem: the wonder of statistics is exactly that you *can* reliably extrapolate from a sample. The catch is that your sample needs to be representative, or “unbiased”. A “good” sample of 1,000 people will let you make decent predictions about a population of millions. A “bad” sample with 100,000 people will be worthless).

With this in mind, let’s have a look at the ULEZ consultation. First, Mayor Khan never promised to follow the majority opinion. One can accuse Khan of not making “Do you support ULEZ or not?” the consultation’s question 1, but maybe that’s a difference between a single-question referendum and a many-questions consultation. A respondent could express their rejection of ULEZ in Question 13 - “We are proposing to expand the ULEZ London-wide on 29 August 2023. What do you think of the implementation date?” - by choosing “Should not be implemented”. Discussion of feedback received through the consultation is presented in AECOM’s report to the mayor and runs to dozens of pages, with a number of specific ULEZ plan changes linked to that feedback. To claim that the City Hall dismissed the consultation input would be disingenuous.

Finally, the question of how representative the consultation sample was of London’s population - and just to clarify, a fair proportion of responses came from outside London - can be answered with a single chart from that report, showing that 42% of respondents were owners of non-compliant cars from Outer London.

Figuring out this group’s share in London’s population is tricky, but it is abundantly clear that it is not close to 40% - my guess, based on Bexley data, would be 10-15%. (Note the distinction between individuals and households, and remember the households without cars). It is accurate to say that 68% of ULEZ consultation respondents opposed ULEZ. It is, however, grossly misleading to say - as GLA Conservatives did - that 68% of Londoners voted against ULEZ.

To gauge the average Londoner’s stance on ULEZ, you need proper surveys. Only two have been done, both by YouGov, the market-leading polling agency established by the former chancellor of ill repute Nadhim Zahawi.

The first survey was commissioned by the GLA (i.e. the City Hall, or Khan if you like), ran in July, and repeated the consultation’s Question 13:
We are proposing to expand the ULEZ London-wide on 29 August 2023. What do you think of the implementation date?

● It should be implemented, but at an earlier date
● It should be implemented at the proposed date
● It should be implemented, but at a later date
● It should not be implemented
● Don’t know

The second survey, done in November, was commissioned by GLA Conservatives and had this text: To generate additional revenue for Transport for London, the Mayor of London is proposing to expand the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to a wider area than it currently is. This means non-compliant vehicles have to pay a £12.50 daily charge for driving within Greater London. Do you think the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) should or should not be expanded?

● It should be expanded
● It should not be expanded
● Don’t know

The Tory-commissioned survey employs a “leading question”, suggesting a specific motivation for ULEZ expansion: “to generate revenue”. This is not an honest polling practice, but it is a very effective one, which is why it is used.

 The two polls have produced very different results. In the Tory poll, 51% oppose ULEZ (“Decisive victory!”, says Teresa O’Neill), and 34% support it. In the GLA poll, 51% of Londoners support ULEZ (“Decisive victory!” says Teresa O’Neill again, looking a little confused), while 27% oppose it. In essence, you get opposite results. For Outer London only, the GLA poll has 46% “for” against 34% “against”; the Tory poll has 59% “against” and 29% “for”. The truth is somewhere in between.

Personally, I think that it is closer to the GLA numbers - because the Tory poll was so manipulatively worded, it should be “down-weighted” - but you may disagree and move the mark closer to the middle. I think we both will conclude that ULEZ is the winner in Inner London, and in Outer London the split is near 50/50.

So there you have it. GLA Tories’ allegations of #TheULEZScandal are worthless - a ”smokescreen”, as Sadiq Khan put it, a deception aimed at the vast majority of people with zero interest in learning the details. The percentage of anti-ULEZ responses to the consultation’s Question 13 was predictable in advance, and, because of this, irrelevant to the decision-maker, i.e. the mayor. Limited polling showed support for ULEZ in Inner London, and neutral or moderately anti-ULEZ sentiment (concentrated among older and less educated voters, already undisposed towards Khan) in Outer London. Under the circumstances, both an idealist and a cynic would advise the mayor to proceed with his plan, and so he did.

What would a scientist say, though? Never mind the prone-to-manipulation public opinion - is ULEZ expansion a good idea on public-health grounds? Before we tackle that million-dollar question, let’s devote the next, short post to a falsehood that has circulated within the anti-ULEZ discourse and was recently shared, on the pages of The Telegraph, by one of Sidcup’s finest minds, Gareth Bacon MP.

Links
A good article discussing ULEZ consultation and polls
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/01/23/driver-lobbyist-group-targeting-sadiq-khan-over-clean-air-plans-is-funded-by-road-haulage-industry/
AECOM “Report to Mayor on ULEZ expansion and future Road User Charging proposal” (analysis of consultation responses)
https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/15619/widgets/58629/documents/34558
ULEZ survey commissioned by GLA, July 2022
https://ehq-production-europe.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/1756f85d90ec076d413af3d3c7132d9f
ULEZ survey commissioned by GLA Conservatives, November 2022. (Summary only)
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/n7yjacvt7e/GLAConsResults_221115_LondonULEZ_W.pdf

 

6 February - Tirana-on-Thames

According to Ms. Richardson there’s about 120 boat people holed up in Bexley and using Home Office statistics one might guess about 100 are Albanians and while here they have to live somewhere. Only old soldiers sleep in shop doorways.

So attention residents of Thanet Road, Erith and nearby Brook Street. A Mr. Shkembi has applied to turn two existing houses into HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupation) and has told Bexley Council that he expects to spend up to £2 million on each of them and accommodate five people in both.

That is one hell of a lot of money to spend on a house very little bigger in floor area than mine. This particular Albanian has done very well for himself.

It is going to become some sort of palace obviously but the planning application only lists what is not going to be provided. All we know from it is no parking spaces, no electric heating, no air-conditioning, no solar panels, no heat pump, no EV charging points, no fibre internet, no new trees or hedges and no change to floor areas. If approved it starts building next month to be finished by May. Has Dulux increased in price that much?

Planning applications 23/00171/FUL and 23/00170/FUL refer.

 

5 February - Going Places

Chairman Cheryl Bacon opened the Places Scrutiny meeting by announcing that she was losing her hearing which was sad to hear as it is far more debilitating than one might imagine. My best friend is very deaf and when, not so long ago, I temporarily lost mine totally in one ear, it was not a pleasant experience, far from it. I wasn’t sure I was going to get it back but with a loud pop I eventually did.

She asked Councillors to use their microphones properly and of course one didn’t. Peter Craske (Conservative, Blackfen & Lamorbey). Cabinet Member Craske has form for not using his microphone and back in 2012 set out to deliberately inconvenience a deaf member of the public by refusing to do so. Bexley Council lost an Equalities Commission complaint following that meeting and maybe Councillor Craske has learned his lesson. This time he spoke into his microphone when Cheryl reminded him of her deafness.

Councillor Chris Ball (Labour, Erith) asked about the financial risks associated with temporary accommodation particularly those arising from men in rubber dinghies. Council Officer Jane Richardson said that the data coming from the Home Office was not good and arrived late. She thought they might currently number in the region of 120 in Bexley but there is no family data. Those coming from Afghanistan are more regulated and there are currently five Afghan families in Bexley houses and rising. Other boroughs might be sneaking them in unannounced too “and London is full really”.

Councillor Patrick Adams (Conservative, Blendon & Penhill) asked if there was funding for pedestrian crossings particularly around Hurst Road. Highways Manager Andrew Bashford blamed the bad weather for the planned survey not being conducted but hoped that it might go ahead in February. There is also some hope that National Grid which is currently tunnelling under Bexley might be able to fund a crossing.

Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) asked how much funding will come from TfL, and when, and returned to her favourite subject, recycling, She thought residents needed to be educated more and June is probably right.

Cabinet Member Craske said £1·5 million will come from TfL. The recycling manager said he would take the recycling comments on board.

Councillor Mabel Ogundayo (Labour, Thamesmead East) said that garden waste subscriptions are declining while the costs increase. What is being done to reverse that? The decline was blamed on strikes.

Mabel also asked about the provision of car washing facilities in under-used car parks. There are none in Council run car parks at present but that is under review. Similarly more Amazon style lockers might be introduced.

Councillor Cameron Smith (Conservative, St. Mary’s & St. James) raised the issue of commuter parking around Abbey Wood station and whether parking revenue might decrease if the expanded ULEZ deters motorists from driving in London. No one had studied the issue and no one could offer an estimate.

Moving to housing, Councillor Frazer Brooks (Conservative, Falconwood & Welling) asked if there had been any problems in Bexley with Ukrainian refugees housed by agreement in private homes losing that accommodation for any reason. He was told that there are between 200 and 300 such individuals in the borough but there could be no comprehensive answer because the relevant department was not represented at the meeting. Hosts are obviously encouraged to maintain their arrangements given the London-wide housing pressures.

The car parking issue got another airing. Councillor Rags Sandhu (Conservative, Bexleyheath) surprised me by asking when the Felixstowe Road (Abbey Wood) car park would be reopened; I thought it had been given to BexleyCo for housing. With luck by April was the answer. The Agenda reveals the Council is expecting to take nearly half a million a year from it so the question must be which idiot kept it closed after Network Rail moved out more than four years ago.

Councillor Smith asked why the Thanet Road (Bexley) car park usage is predicted to fall by two thirds but the income rise by 50%. A number of guesses were made but most likely it was a mistake. A more useful question was “are charges still competitive with private car parks, they certainly aren’t in Bexley Village?” Another review was promised.

In response to a question from Councillor Brooks, Cabinet Member Craske said there were no plans to close any car parks “but didn’t rule it out in the long term. We would if one was not being used but we are not in that place”. Usually Councillors are content with vague answers but not Frazer Brooks. “What constitutes not used?” Zero usage, a percentage drop, what? Councillor Craske continued with his theme. “it will be self evident when the time comes”. The Council is looking at “dynamic pricing”.

Still on the subject of roads and similar it was revealed that a Road Safety Officer is to be recruited soon, a development marred somewhat by the recent resignation of the Head of Road Safety. The school road safety situation may have been improved by ‘Work from Home’ which allows more children to be driven to school. Strange to find a Council favouring driving over walking but probably it is safer.

There was an apology for the disruption in recycling services during December 2022 and beyond and it was blamed on icy conditions. No crews went out for seven days and then 35% of the work force went sick. The enthusiasm for SloppyStyle Recycling was not exactly overwhelming. “Residents are right in saying that other authorities are managing better … but they are less efficient.” In the context of the overall discussion that was not quite as crazy as it sounds.

Councillor Slaughter said there was evidence that the on-board (the refuse truck) technology did not correctly reflect the missed bin situation on the ground. Agency staff got the blame for that, in December it was at the 33% level. The Chairman said that SloppyStyle needs to do better. Deaf or not, Cheryl is on the ball!

 

4 February - Your next GP appointment

As an old timer I am supposed to have a named GP to look after me, actually I’m not sure you have to be old for that any more.

In practice I have never had a named GP (not even at my new surgery) and apart from the doctor from Welling who accepted the Government’s shilling to spread Covid propaganda, I couldn’t name one since mine died 20 odd years ago.

Until last month that is when former Councillor Dave Putson name dropped Doctor Bob Gill. He, it turns out, is quite famous for knowing exactly how the NHS is organised and is convinced it is being sold off by relative stealth.

If you watched his YouTube video and were intrigued by it all you may wish to see him in person. In something of a scoop Dave Putson has secured his presence at his next ‘Cost of Living Crisis’ meeting. No entrance fee.

Meetings take place in the Community Centre on Knee Hill in Abbey Wood at 7:30 on the last Wednesday of every month so that makes his date with Doctor Gill the 22nd February. See you there.

 

3 February (Part 3) - The downside of the Elizabeth Line

I don’t mean being stranded just before 11 p.m. in Central London without any Abbey Wood trains as happened again last Monday but the effect it has on the local parking situation. The traffic below Abbey Wood station around 6 p.m. is amazing. Solid and almost static traffic in all nearby roads.

On train strike days things can be even worse. The cars shown here both got tickets after being reported by a resident in Carrill Way.

The parking enforcement lady said that commuters are driving from as far away as Sevenoaks to be able to get to work in London.

As far as anyone can tell, Bexley Council is turning a blind eye to the situation and presumably the penalty revenue makes that inevitable.

 

3 February (Part 2) - Phantom video

After years of abuse by fly tippers Bexley Council has at last got off of its backside and done something about the problem in Coptefield Drive. Not a lot, but something.

They have erected four warning notices, with permission or not I have yet to find out, but these are privately owned flats and Bexley Council should be careful about going around screwing notices to property that is not theirs. The fence belongs to the leaseholder but the brown wooden door is in private ownership. If it was mine I’d be asking for compensation.

If there really is a camera in operation it is exceptionally well hidden. There are of course such things as battery operated cameras and some are tiny but they do not have a long life and there is no sign of any power or data cables anywhere.

I doubt any of the residents would want to supply Bexley Council with free electricity and the leaseholder’s communal area is some distance away and there is definitely no power cable coming from it.

I suspect it is all scare tactics but welcome nevertheless.

 

3 February (Part 1) - Not content with wrecking London, Sadiq Khan is on a mission to spread his misery worldwide

This probably explains a lot…

Why would a Mayor, even one as unintelligent as Sadiq Khan, be so keen to impose unacceptable and unjustifiable taxes on London when there is a decent chance that it will see him out of office next year?

Because, it would appear, he heads up a global organisation which aims to take the ULEZ world wide. As such he can’t back down because he has promised a bunch of fellow Net Zero loons that he will not.

Take a look at c40.org and see the New World Order in action.

He is virtue signalling on the world stage.

 

2 February (Part 2) - The Cabinet meeting report. The consensus was that it makes for sombre reading

This week’s Cabinet meeting had me reflecting on how much better run Bexley Council’s meetings are than twelve years ago when I attended my first. Maybe it was because in 2010 I still had some memory of how businesses ran meetings that I judged them so harshly or it might be that in 2023 I have grown accustomed to the way Bexley Council operates. Whatever the truth of it, and possibly I am getting soft in my old age, I came to the conclusion that Bexley’s Cabinet meeting on Monday was a reasonably competent affair despite the fact that I have documentary proof that three of them are prepared to lie to save their own skins when necessary. In fairness I should add that all of that is more than ten years ago.

As usual the main subject was finance which is not the most exciting of subjects but fortunately there was a ULEZ spat towards the end of the meeting to liven things up somewhat.

The current financial year has so far seen an overspend of £2,912,000, a figure that has been steadily rising and now 2% above budget. As always it is due to Social Care costs being far too high due to exceptional demand plus some Court decisions that went against the Council. There has been some Government help but obviously not enough. Council Tax collection rates are a little under target which doesn’t help. Cabinet Member David Leaf thought that the current position was “a good achievement all things considered” but reminded his colleagues that the £2·9 million overspend masked an underspend on housing.

Cabinet Member Richard Diment added to the overspend woes by revealing that Education has gone well over budget and likely to be £3·5 million above it by the end of March and nearly all of it is due to the increased cost of SEN travel. User numbers have gone from 634 to 833 in only five years and costs have risen further due to inflation and the shortage of service providers. Each child requiring transport costs many thousands per year with out of borough destinations averaging £5,000 more than in-borough.

Cabinet Member Sue Gower related how housing incomers requiring large houses can cost literally millions of pounds each.

Council Tax will, subject to formal rubber stamping, go up by another 4·99% in April.

Labour Leader Stefano Borella summed it all up with the word sombre and went on to blame 13 years of Tory Government which is difficult to refute. Why he found it necessary to drag the tax avoiding Nadhim Zahawi into his argument disappointed Baroness O’Neill and probably everyone else. She had no argument with the word sombre.

Councillor Leaf also struck a political note but a more relevant one; that Sadiq Khan will again take a double digit Council Tax increase taking his impositions to a 57% increase since Londoners foolishly elected him.

Councillor Craske announced that he will not be raising car parking charges by 30% this year. Maybe he has belatedly recognised the Law of Diminishing Returns

It was Councillor Caroline Newton (Conservative, East Wickham) who first uttered the dreaded acronym ULEZ. What impact will it have on Council services and finances and has Khan delivered any benefits to Bexley?

Counclllor Borella (Labour, Slade Green) countered by asking what impact Liz Truss had on Bexley residents, a much bigger one than ULEZ he estimated on top of which some of Bexley Council’s fees and charges are going up by 100%. (Actually 163% in one case.)

It was Cabinet Member Seymour who raised the stakes further on ULEZ. “It is a tax founded on falsehood and myth. The Mayor is ferried around in three Hummers and concerned about air pollution” and there are claims that up to 40% of children in hospital are there because of respiratory problems but it being Winter there are a lot of coughs and colds around.

The figures are being “spun” by a Labour Mayor who cannot balance his books and bailed out with millions from Government. He has no idea of what it is like in the suburbs and how may people have no alternative but to drive. “It is nothing to do with health.”

For care providers the result will be catastrophic and the service will collapse. The Mayor is taxing those who can least afford it and “members opposite cannot really think it is acceptable.”

But Councillor Borella did and returned to the 30% parking charge increases which have a big effect on the poor as do hospital parking charges and the coming fuel tax increases. How being against these extra charges but in favour of the ULEZ Tax is perhaps a strange position to adopt. He claimed that come the next election people will not vote based on ULEZ, it will be housing and other things. Well they certainly did not vote on ULEZ at the last mayoral election because it was not in the Labour manifesto.

The Council Leader said she had received heartbreaking letters from people who will not be able to care for relatives or afford £300 for a month of hospital visiting which is where Councillor Borella reminded her that once upon a time she was in favour of pollution taxes. I was surprised she did not remind him that pollution levels have reduced considerably during the past twelve years and the restrictions were fare less draconian that Khan’s.

Cabinet Member Leaf managed to answer one of Caroline Newton’s questions. Sadiq Khan takes £36 million from Bexley residents annually. He also said that the increased fees and charges average 2% while in Greenwich their target increase is 10%. Having looked through all the new fees it is obvious that those being increased are going up by much more than 2% on average, in fact few are that low, but the average will be offset by the freeze on car parking charges. It looks like deception continues to be alive and well in the borough of Bexley.

 

2 February (Part 1) - Classroom fat cats

I have not been a fan of the so called teaching profession ever since I was old enough to realise that me being teacher’s pet in primary school was nothing to be proud of. While I was being favoured some of my friends were terribly abused.

Some might think I would be likely to speak up for them because 100% of my cousins were teachers if I ignore the fact that one moved into teacher training and another to a wholly administrative role. Two of their children are teachers too. 50% of my aunts were school teachers and 100% of my female in-laws. Two were head teachers and another was not only a teacher, her husband was as well.

As far as I can judge only one among my own family is a rabidly left wing. One dabbled with the Lib Dems for a while but was suitably disgusted when the party refused to accept democracy in June 2016. The Scottish in-laws on the other hand were so far left that they regularly holidayed in Moscow as guests of the Russian Communist Party.

But none of that was what really put me off of teachers as a whole. In the late 1960s and early 70s I worked on the second floor of a building in central London which was on the marching route to Whitehall. I don’t remember how many times it happened but the teachers would march by anxious to demonstrate to everyone that they were scruffy loud mouthed hooligans.

Nothing ever happened to change the opinion formed back then and certainly not what I observed last Tuesday evening.

Newspaper headlines.

Tuesday evening found me in a pub as part of a quiz team. Around the adjacent table was a team of six teachers celebrating the next day off school and time to recover from a hangover. All females and all well enough paid to order steaks and things and wash it down with beer. Five of the six ranging in age from a guessed mid twenties to maybe 45 were grossly over weight. It was not a pretty sight.

I doubt any of them had ever been inside a food bank unless perhaps they have found one with double swing doors.

There were only nine quiz teams and mine managed only a poor fifth place but three of us was more than enough to beat six teachers by a decent margin.

 

1 February - School transport costs are rising

Listening to a recording of Council meeting while driving is not yet against the law and in any case the M25 and M4 traffic was remarkably light on Saturday morning. However, I learned little of general interest.

School Transport for Special Educational Needs Children was perhaps an exception and has an impact on the taxpayers’ pocket which may not be immediately apparent to them. Demand constantly rises above the budget and fuel costs have been rising. I am not sure what it says about rates of pay but Bexley’s drivers are lost to Amazon who are reputed to pay peanuts.

One mitigation is to not to send children long distances and Cabinet Member Richard Diment is working on that. He has also managed to lay his hands on an extra £2·3 million for the coming year and he is optimistic that the Department for Education will cough up more.

Councillor Andy Dourmoush (Conservative, Longlands) is not one for platitudes so he asked exactly how some of the projected savings could be achieved and cast doubt on the inflation assumption of 2·76%. Each percentage point above that will cost £269,000. “It doesn’t add up.”

The Council Officer said the assumptions are being revised and a rate just under 5% is likely to be adopted. I sometimes think that only Councillor Dourmoush is able to look beneath the reassuring headlines.