While striding around East Dulwich canvassing and delivering London election leaflets I was told that Ken Livingstone had written a letter to some residents casting doubt on whether Boris Johnson could be trusted with the Cross London rail link and how Boris is bound to overspend.

This happened just at the right time when I was flagging and needed a good laugh.

Now I’m no fan of Boris. But do you remember when London was awarded the London 2012 olpympics. Ken and Tessa Jowell were clearly seen telling everyone it would ‘only’ cost £1.6bn. to put this Olympic jamboree on. Since then the costs have escalated to over £9bn. A parliatenemntary committee has lambasted how poorly run the bid was in terms of costs. They forgot it would costs money for security, VAT, etc. The chairperson of the Olympic Delivery body resigned at the lack of control he had compared to politicians second guessing him and has said he thinks it will cost £20bn.

So for Ken to suggest Boris is incompetent at keeping to budgets is quite preposterous.

Fortunately for me, as a Lib Dem, our candidate Brian Paddick is clearly the best candidate.

Southwark is one of two local authorities in the country taking part in an average speed camera trial. Barry Road was recently considered for this trial. I have had a number of East Dulwich residents complaining about excessive speeding and so have my Liberal Democrat ward colleagues cclr Richard Thomas and cllr Jonathan Mitchell.

Barry Road over the last three years has had two people seriously injured and 28 slightly injured so clearly lots of pain and suffering.  Barry Road at its junction with Underhill Road had six, four around Etherow Street and the school, seven at the junction with Eynella Road.

The requirements to consider a road for the trial included producing speed stats of the current situation. 63,527 travelled along Barry Road between 12 and 20 March. 1.49% exceeded the 40mph speed limit. The average speed was 25.7mph but 20% of vehicels travelled greater than 30mph.

So average speed cameras to enforce the 40mph aren’t really necessary. But changing the speed limit to 30mph to reflect the reisdential nature of Barry Road would seem long overdue.

Apparently plans are afoot to close t he Lewisham Accident & Emergency service.

Where will people who need A&E, who would currently be served by Lewisham Hospital, go?

My guess is they wont go to Woolwich or Farnborough as proposed. My guess is they will travel, in distress, all the way to Camberwell and Kings College Hospital. What particularly frustrating is that Guys A&E was closed with the expectation that many users would go to Lewisham A&E.

Apart from the extra stress on the Kings A&E that users from East Dulwich ward that I represent will experience.  In these times of increased caution about a big terrorist incident reducing the capacity of London to cope with a severe incident is alarming.

The latest board paper on Food Safety for the Foods Standards Agency shows that during the period 2000-2006 food safety did not improve. In fact has been getting worse. The most deadly, literally, issue is E.coli 0157 H7. This bug kills under 5’s and seniors roughly 10% of the time. Those not killed often suffer marginal to total kidney function lose and other issues. 

Southwark Council Taxpayers have faced an average 14% a year tax rise from Labour and Green Members of the Greater London Authority.

Working with Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone, Labour and Green Assembly Members have backed big rises in the “GLA Precept” charged on Council Tax bills. These rises have been much bigger than inflation and have ranged as high as 29% in one year.

I guess we shouldn’y be surprised that Ken Livingstone should do this. One example is bus investment. Before the GLA is cost £30M and took 7 years to get 20% increase in passenger numbers in London. Ken spent £1,000M to get such a rise in 3 years. His impatience is costing Southwark council tax payers a fortune.

GLA Assembly members are there to watch over the mayor and stop him when he goes too far. But Green and Labour members of the Assembly seem to have forgotten this role.

Contrast this with Southwark Council’s Lib Dem-led Administration which has kept average Council Tax rises below inflation each year over the same period.

This year the UK will spend £1.65bn. on British troops being in Iraq.

If the Labour government hadn’t taken us to an illegal war on Iraq, during which 1,140,000 Iraqis have died since we invaded, what could be be spending on better services?

For Southwark we would be keeping home help for residents with moderate needs, the Livesey Museum open, meals on wheels below the London average prices.

How many years will we be pumping money away trying to esacape the consequence of this daft labour war supported by the Conservatives?

During January a Planning Inspector held two appeals about Caffe Nero on Lordship Lane regarding Enforcement Notices to remove illegally installed airconditioning units and against a Change of Use. Caffe Nero also requested that all legal costs be born by Southwark on the basis they thought Southwark Council had been so very unreasonable.

The inspector decision was announced yesterday. She found that Southwark Council should not pay for the appellants costs - so clearly Southwark Council has acted reasonably. She upheld the enforcement notice against Caffe Nero about its illegal airconditioning units and they should be removed. She accepted that evidence from the council that the balance of shops to non shops on Lordship Lane had changed since the original decision and that this unit use as a cafe should be allowed.

Overall, considering the changes Lordship Lane has had this was that best possible decision. Residents have a ray of hope that Caffe Nero will finally resolve the illegal sleep disturbing airconditioning units which have frequently operate 24/7 even when the cafe is closed. What amazing eco credentials Caffe Nero must be aiming for!

The coffee lovers of East Dulwich can sleep easy at night knowing that caffiene will still be available locally.

Hopefully Caffe Nero will now clean up its act and will conform to the planning laws of this land.

Many people think councils collect a bit of rubbish, run a few schools and why does council tax so much for this?

One service that is never thought about unless things go wrong is Trading Standards. One particular area they are responsible for is ensuring all public scales weigh things correctly. One aspect that hadn’t occurred to and is now a national project by the trade body for local government trading standard is that hospital and other health service scales should weigh people and things correctly. Get it wrong and a child is given more or less radiation than they need for their body mass to fight cancer. Get it wrong and a 2g prescription of drugs is perhaps incorrectly 1.5g or 2.5g given and could be fatal. 

The deadline for applications for Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding was midnight last night.

With the support of my Liberal Democrat ward colleagues cllr Richard Thomas and cllr Jonathan Mitchell I’ve applied for various schemes to help reduce emissions in East Dulwich.

The main application is for a home visitor project to talk residents through how they can reduce emissions, reduce fuel proverty and if eligible where to apply for funding. 

More symbolically I’ve also applied for a landmark windturbine for East Dulwich. We just need to find the best possible public building that would like one!  

Yesterday was the deadline for Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding applications. This flagship Southwark Liberal Democrat policy sets aside around £120,000 for each ward for capital projects and circa £5,000 for revenue events type projects.

As with previous years I’ve applied for funding to help reduce crime and the fear of crime. Previous years I’ve led on getting Alterboxes into East Dulwich shops. They’ve helped participating shops reduce shop crime by over 50% and engendered a more local shop community spirit.

East Dulwich ward was slightly better than average for crime being 274th/625 wards in London - 1 having the lowest crime rate in London. For Southwark East Dulwich has 2nd lowest crime rate out of 21 wards.  During the last year East Dulwich has improved slightly and is now 236th/625 wards in London but still no.2 in Southwark. So each resident in East Dulwich has a 8.5% chance of being affected by crime each year that they report to the Police. Still rather depressing. 

So this year I’ve applied, supported by my Liberal Democrat ward colleagues cllr Richard Thomas and cllr Jonathan Mitchell for things to further help reduce crime in East Dulwich. My personal aim is to help East Dulwich become a truely low crime ward, not just compared to other wards in Southwark but compared to London as a whole. To achieve this we will need to halve rates of crime in East Dulwich.

In about 6 weeks time we’ll know which applications won. The real work then begins.

 If you’d like to get involved the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team next meeting is 23 April contact me for further details.