Brunswick Park By-election

One week more of campaigning for the Brunswick Park by-election in Camberwell.

We have a great candidate in Kate Heywood. Campaign literature and canvassing have been going well. It has been a real shock at how crummy the Brunswick Park area feels. Really quite an unpleasant surprise how much graffiti, dog poo, and other eco crime around. I’ve reported over a dozen problems and gradually getting them fixed.

One good thing about by-elections is an area gets a lot of committed Lib Dems along to report all the problems they find. The fixes lag behind but the area will feel cleaner. If Kate wins this level of caring and fixing will become the norm.

Fingers crossed.

More local Labour mess

I was horrified to read Friday’s South London Press and discover that 8 Lambeth Labour councillors hadn’t been paying council tax for more than two months. So bad that they weren’t allowed to vote on the annual Lambeth Council budget!

I used to be the Southwark Liberal Democrat chief whip. Such a situation wasn’t possible. We’d have expelled councillors from our group for such outrageous behaviour.

It will be interesting this coming Tuesday to see if Southwark Labour also have this problem to add to Southwark Labours already long list of problems.

More Civil Liberties restored

Amazing list of civil liberties restored:

– Reform the vetting and barring scheme

– Remove convictions of gay men for consensual acts

– DNA samples deleted for innocent people from Police databases

– Reduction to 14 days for terrorist suspects.

– Scrapping section 44 powers used to stop and search hundreds of thousands of innocent people

– Rogue wheel clamping stopped

– Schools kids no longer fingerprinted without parental consent

– Fraud trials held with juries

And these are just the headlines. Liberal Democrats in action from within the coalition.

Exciting by-election

Camberwell Liberal Democrats have selected a fantastic local candidate to fight the

Brunswick Park by-election as the party’s candidate on March 10th. Kate is actively involved in local community groups, including as a former management committee member of Bradfield Youth Club on Southampton Way and of All Saints Church, Peckham. 
She’s lived in the area for 8 years and has made a real point of getting stuck in and involved.  She is making 3 pledges to local people:

1. To clean up Camberwell, tackling everything from dog fouling to housing repairs.

2. To listen to local people, and be an independent voice for residents.

3. To work all year round for all residents, including holding regular advice surgeries.

About a year ago I was talking to a senior council officer after reporting a lot of graffiti in the Camberwell area. I was asking how it had obviously gone un noticed for so long until I reported it. Their response was that the residents and councillors of Camberwell didn’t seem to mind and weren’t as fussy as Dulwich. I suggested they’d given up trying with that type of attitude. Either-way, that’s about to well and truly change if Kate gets elected!

Online Councillor of the Year 2011

Last night I had the very good fortune to be awarded by the local Government Information Unit Online Councillor of the Year award 2011.

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Sadly this isn’t for my fabulous blogging or mind blowing tweets. Its recognition for all the efforts I put into serving residents of East Dulwich online via the East Dulwich Forum. Effectively its like an online surgery but held publicly. Where a problem or issue is private people either start by contacting me privately or we move into private mode.

Since I started actively working in this way 18 months ago via the forum over 43,000 visits to the main thread and 1,400 posts. With such a high turnover of posts huge gamut of topics covered. I’ve learnt lots and hopefully I’ve helped many many people.

I didn’t get to make a thank you speech so being a little self indulgent I’d like to thank my family who put up with me begin a councillor – I’m not always their for the mas a result and they take it with good humour and are still supportive. I’m a very lucky man. To all the Lib Dem colleagues – it is a great local team and their pearls of wisdom and help practically are invaluable to me. And last but definitely not least all the council officers, other residents, local Police and others who help me find the right answers to fix problems or just point people in the right direction. Fantastic.

The academic team of Hugh Flouch and Kevin Harris from the http://networkedneighbourhoods.com/ have studied my online work. They show that over 50% of EDF residents attitudes to councillors have improved, and over 20% of attitudes towards council officers and the local Police have improved. So hopefully we’re doing something right.

Southwark Housing – will it be less local?

As part of the proposed Southwark Labour budget cuts they’ve chosen to close all eight local council housing offices. All housing management will take place from

Tooley Street

in the very north of the borough and new offices to be found and rented in the Peckham area in the centre of the borough.

Any contact with council housing officers will be via another telephone call centre, via the internet or face to face at one of these two new housing locations or a pre arranged visit for those less able bodied tenants. It probably spells the end of Area Housing Forums – the Dulwich one is really effective at highlighting local problems, sharing experiences between local estates and getting local councillors engaged.

I can see a lot more time in the future by council officers spent travelling. I get the merits of centralisation for those bits of Southwark that involve few site visits. And for some of the housing function centralising those into one location makes sense. But by definition housing officers should be spending most of their time out and about visiting residents in council homes. Keeping them devolved in local offices makes more sense in helping to keep such officers out there OR they stay in the new central ivory towers and have much less idea of what’s going on.

Finding a new Peckham office to rent seems really strange idea. You only need a smaller local office than the current one.

What do you think possible to reduce costs while creating an even more local service?

Lib Dems win bank bonus rules

We’ve all felt bruised by how rapidly bankers have bounced back from an economic abyss to being bailed out by trillions of public pounds, dollars and euros to now paying mega bonuses again. 

National Governments such as our own coalition have tried encouraging limits via the £2.5bn Bank Levy and public moral imperatives with varying success. 

But the Lib Dem Euro MP Sharon Bowles has led the introduction of actual tougher new rules on bankers’ bonuses covering the European Union. 

The key points are pensions being paid at least 3 to 5 years after the employee has retired or left. This will stop abuses like that by Fred Goodwin, the former Chief Executive of RBS, where bankers walk away with bonus-style pension pots even if their bank fails. 

Banks will now also have to pay between 40%-60% of their bonuses in contingent capital (a form of debt which turns into equity if there is a crisis) or shares deferred for at least 3 to 5 years. This means that if the bank suffers heavy losses, bankers’ bonuses will automatically take the first hit. So gaining bonuses from short term risk taking will now be discouraged. 

Banks will also be forced to publish bonuses over €1 million Euros. This should also have the happy side effect of employee seeing if such bonuses are fairly given. 

No one can accuse Lib Dems of doing nothing on bankers’ bonuses.

‘Leading Labour councillor quizzed by police over grooming child for sex’

Shocking that the circumstances around now former Cllr John Friary’s sacking on Wednesday as a cabinet member for Southwark Council and resignation on Thursday have been revealed as suggestions of grooming a child for sex. But he was, perhaps still is, a school governor and volunteers at an after school club. I hope it’s all a horrible mistake but I can’t imagine the Police not thinking their absolutely sure. Appalling.

Added to newly elected in May Labour Cllr Keadean Rhoden convicted of her second housing benefit fraud and forced to serve 200 hours community service.

Added to newly elected in May Labour Cllr Stephen Govier who has been suspended from the national Labour party under very mysterious circumstances. (Now clear it was for shooting someone in the head in California and his parole appears to have ended June 2005 within 5 years of his election in May 2010 which if he’d committed the offence in the UK, Channel Island or IoM would have exempted him from standing. technically he’s ok legally but morally clearly not and should never have been allowed to stand by Labour).

Added to Cllr Abdul Mohammed never correctly completing a Declarations of Interests form – and I’ve looked back to 2007 as far as record go back – which allows people to see if a councillor would benefit from any of the decision they’re involved with.

Could something fundamentally be wrong with Southwark Labour party?

To lose one Labour Councillor may be regarded as a misfortune for them, but to lose three looks like more than carelessness….It looks like complacency of the worst kind.

Be afraid, be very afraid

Recently the Labour Cabinet member councillors in Southwark went ‘back to the floor’.

It now appears whichever floor they each went back to is to receive significant cuts.

Cllr Barrie Hargrove went litter picking – which is now cut back from daily to every other day for a 1/3rd cuts.

Cllr Veronica Ward spent an afternoon on the mobile Library – it’s now completely cut. So all those housebound residents previously served by the mobile Library will no longer have any such such service.

Cllr John Friary spending part of an afternoon after school closing time out with Community Wardens – again 1/3rd cuts with no community wardens in the south of the borough anymore. Presumably he thinks nothing bad ever happen down here.

So if you run anything or value any of the services in Southwark never let a Labour cabinet member visit – they’re probably on the prowl finding more things to cut to fund their wild election promises.

Funnily enough this contrasts sharply with their leader Cllr Peter John. Wherever he goes he seems to offer a million or two million pounds. He visited the Herne Hill Velodrome – first he offered £25,00 to help save the Velodrome which has now turned int o a £2M Olympics fund. He met youngsters and has now stated he’ll created £1M fund to help sponsor apprentices or 9 under graduates. So if you get the chance ot meet him make it clear whether you expect one ot two million from him.

‘Open season’

Fascinating article by Peter Preston in today’s Observer newspaper.

He highlights that right wing newspapers boost circulation when a Labour government they’re criticising. Stated for example The Daily Mail boosted by a million copies a day since the 60’s when Labour in Power and lost half a million when tories in power and not able to criticise them. Flip side example of Daily Mirror’s decline being twice the rate when Labour in power who they largely support.

He then points out the risk that all newspapers might be defending their market share by feeling able to criticise big time a coalition. that could explain the current sport of coalition bashing!