29 July - Safer Streets Summer
Thanks to Labour Leader Stefano Borella we can now see
the Conservatives’ amended Motion which criticised President Trump’s nasty
little man for failing to provide London and Bexley in particular with as many
police officers as he could have done given the level of Government funding.
The original Motion may be seen in
the report on the
sham debate.
The Labour Group famously took no part in the debate because they were given no
opportunity to draft an Amendment. A 15 minute recess is grossly insufficient to
come up with a form of words which puts a convincing counter-argument
which is water-tight. The Tories beg to differ but they put Labour in an
impossible position which few will defend.
Conservative’s amended Motion presented to Council without prior notice. Click image for Labour Press Release. (PDF)
The Labour Group
circulated a Press Release yesterday which for some reason best known to themselves
is dated 16th July, the date of the Council meeting. I would venture to suggest
that there was no time that evening to prepare three pages of Press Release but
never mind, what did they have to say for themselves?
In direct contravention of the Conservative claim that police numbers are fewer
than they could have been, Bexley Labour said the town centre will see “an
enhanced police presence” under a Mayoral scheme called Safer Streets. 500 more across the 32 boroughs. Criticising the
decision to deprive them of advnace notice of the Motion they said…
“Bexley Conservatives deliberately decided not to show us before the meeting the
changes they wanted for their original motion. This is why Bexley Labour group
walked out of the debate because this administration doesn’t believe in fair
debate, is tired, has run out of ideas and just want to play pathetic political games.”.
Hard to argue with that. Tired, no ideas and against fair debate perfectly describes the current
situation and in some respects the past 19 years. How many petitions have been
debated? None. Never forget that Full Council
meetings have always been a carefully rehearsed political game.
According to Labour, knife crime is down by 18%, burglary nearly 18% and
theft nearly 16%; figures obtained by comparing April 2025 with the same period
last year. Rather more surprising is that it is claimed that knife crime is down
by 21% since Boris Johnson was Mayor. (In the small print it says the
statistics are not comparable.)
Safer Streets runs from 30 June until the end of September.