450,000 extra homes for London?

A recent Tory think tank report (Policy Exchange) recommends that Londons suburbs expand by 450,000 extra homes to house an extra 1,000,000 people. In essence this tory report suggests that rather than try helping to expand businesses outside London, especially in the North West, the nation should give up and encourage mass migration to London.
For Southwark we have already been set targets to build a huge number of extra homes (from memory 13,000). Such a proposal to add the requirement for an extra new 15,000 home build in Southwark is just weird.

In other countries they improve the infrastructure to attract or retain business. An alternate would be to make transport links from northern england to the SE so good little point in relocating to the south east. In France, Spain, Germany they have been rolling out high speed rail networks with this intention. They’ve been successful at spreading economic benefit and increasing national cohesion.

450,000 homes would cost minumum around £120bn to build without services or six times the price of a one high speed train line from Scotland to London.

We need a central government with more vision and humanity than mass migration from northern england to London. We need to start catching up with continental governments. Often these continental countries have lower per capita incomes than us yet they manage to fuind such transport schemes.

Pocketable metal detectors

The East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team have requested that the East Dulwich councillors via our Crime Reduction fund buy two trial pocketable metal detectors. The beauty of these is that they can be carried easilly in a pocket. If/when officers stop someone and search them they can use a metal detector and reduce the level of intimacy of a manual search, reduce the time it takes and increase the likelyhood of finding any hidden metal items.

Even detecting one extra knife and taking it out of circulation will have made this funding worthwhile.

We await the results of this initial trial.

Oil price hell or heaven?

In America petrol prices have reached levels once considered unimaginable equivalent to 50p a litre! This price is double what it was for Amercians in 2004 and has resulted in swift dramatic increases in public transport of +10->15% in just one year. In some instances such switching has been far more dramatic +35% in Charlotte.
For the first time in 30 years Amercians drove less miles one year compared to the next. Down -4.3%.

So are such high oil prices hell? clearly not from an environmental perspective.
Ford have described the prices as having helped the car industry ‘reached a tipping point’ and the SUV 4 wheel drive vehicle as an ‘endangered species’. The American car industry are also describing how they need such high prices sustained over time to justify the huge investments required to move from large inefficient fuel guzzling vehicle manufacture to hybrid efficient car vehicle production.

So are such high oil prices heaven?
Real term increases in the price of motoring will see everyday decisions and choices being made where the car wont win as often. People are choosing to walk, cycle and use public transport more often. These are all good social and health enhancing choices. Personally I need the extra push.

But for those who have made big life choices based on cheap oil – living some distance from services and shops – it must feel like hell.

10p deposit

At the latest Womad world music festival, the 26th, they wanted to reduce litter. They used an old idea of a deposit. Their version being a 10p deposit for every paper cup beer was served in. Anyone who took their cup back received 10p. Some kids earnt over £60 a day tidying paper cups.
The organisers must have been chuffed as it was a complete success and it cost them nothing for this very tidying up. The only people to suffer were hardcore litterers who could’nt be bothered to recycle paper cups.

What can we learn from this in nomal high street terms we can use in East Dulwich. Returning to bottles having a deposit and return value would further improve current levels of recycling. Perhaps similar for cans.
We just need to persuade central government to implement such policies. With it current levels of unpopularity I see little chance of this.

Inflation and Pay Rises

Today Retail Price Index inflation is reported at 5%. Ouch!

National pay negotations for local government employees appear stuck around 2.45%. So a real term pay cut while they help councils deliver productivity gains ahead of national government ‘Gershon’ targets (while that same national government fails to meet its own productivity targets).

The same week it’s revealed that 26 London MPs voted themselves a 9.4% basic pay rise and Cabinet ministers a 4.3% pay increase. Which also means a mega pension increase when they stop being MPs.

Shouldn’t MP salaries be linked to average earning and pensions. They be very motivated to implement policies that boost wages and pensions.

Well done Southwark Primary Schools

The latest Key Stage 2 results for Southwark Primary Schools – key stage 2 – show fab results this year.

English +3%,   Maths +4%,    Science +2%.

Nationally, schools have improved on average by +1%, +1% and 0% respectively. So Southwark is catching up with the national averages. This years results build on several years of Southwark schools catching up.

WELL DONE – pupils, parents, teachers, assistants, governors and head teachers. What a great team effort must have been taking place

Still lots more to be done before every school in Southwark is better than the national average… 

Beware international bodies bearing loans

After World War 2 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help countries in financial difficulties by lending money to tide them over. Laudable idea to give countries stability.

Unfortunately the conditions of such loans are often very painful. A recent study has shown 21 countries lent money by the IMF see an increase in deaths due to Tuberculosis. Kind of a measure of the health care systems in such countries.

The conditions are usually a drastic reudction in government spending on things like health care. This says to me that IMF conditions, programmes and ideology experiments on countries not taking into account the overal bigger impacts. Loosing large numbers of citizens in poor countries due to reduced health care provision is bad for economies. 

This could explain why the IMF is singulalry so unsuccesful helping poor countries succeed.

Knife crime

Last year for England crime dropped by 10% nationally but knife crime is still a problem. 22,151 reported knife crimes occurred with half of these in inner London, Manchester and Birmingham.

To help the East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team find knives before they are used to commit a crime the East Dulwich councillors are using Cleaner, Greener, Safer funds to purchase a metal detector wand so small it can fit in a shirt pocket. T

Hopefully this little device will work as hoped and help the local East Dulwich find any knives out their. Hopefully, they wont have any to find. Even finding one knife will be a huge success.

If this devices proves useful we’ll fund others.

20 mph

Oxford has announced it is plannning to introduce Brtain’s first city-wide 20mph speed limit next year on all residential streets. Oxford is small city. Fitting considering the Cowley car factory history dominating the non academic side of the economy for so many years.

Ubiquitous 20mph in residential streets is exactly what we’re working towards in Southwark. East Dulwich latest 20mph zone is being worked on now centred around Friern Road.

I recently visited Portsmouth which I udnerstood to have implimented such 20mph zoning but spotted little evidence. Shame.

The next step will be considering implementing 20mph zones even where no speed humps and bumps have been built. Even doing this has just with 20mph signs has been shown to reduce average and extreme speeds.

Watch this space…

100 years of state pensions

August 1908, one hundred years ago, the Liberals’ landmark Old Age Pension Act received its Royal Assent and became law. A little bit of Liberal Democrat heritage to be particularly proud about.

I find it hard to imagine our country before the civilising affect of a state pension ensuring all older citizens are able to retire. The value of that pension over the last two decades has rapidly declined compared to average wages. That is sad.

The number of retired people has also shot up. But the principle is still present. A pension. I often wonder if I’ll make it to retirement age – burning the candle at one end with a busy job, the other end having a young fmaily and in the middle being a councillor trying to make things better.

Happy 100 years of pensions.