Dr Sharma Mess

Dr Sharma is retiring . A perfectly natural event. Good luck to him – thank you Dr.Sharma for serving our community so well.

But NHS England (London) have decided not to allow a new doctor to take over. They’ve decided the area has plenty of spar capacity and all the patients can move to alternate practices. Practices that patients can;t get seen at already.

This truly is a bizarre stupid decision by NHS England (London).

When patients and staff said they would hold a demonstration NHS England (London) effectively said ‘so what’. The caring face of the NHS!

If ever a stupid bureaucratic decision screams for GP patients to come with budget with patients able to decide where to take that budget…. The system should be patient led not faceless bureaucrat led who haven’t a clue about local decisions.

Energy Price Myth?

During the last year lots of people have expressed outrage at energy price rises. A competition investigation has just been announced.

Weirdly according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics energy costs absorb 5.4% of average UK household budget in 1982 but nu 2003 just 2.1%. More recently this has risen to 3%. That this is still 29% lower than our mainland European neighbours.

 

East Dulwich New Cinema

I am delighted that the Picturehouse Cinema group have obtained planning permission to open a new cinema in East Dulwich at 116a Lordship Lane – the former St.Thomas Moore Church Hall. And hopefully by Christmas!

Having a local cinema will make going to the cinema much easier. It will mean me and my family will go to the cinema much more often.

This is fantastic news for East Dulwich.

A few have expressed disquiet about this group not paying the London Living Wage. I agree they should pay this and moving towards doing that have made a large wage increase offer of 21.5% towards this. I hope they complete this by the opening.

Will you use this new cinema when it opens?

Empty Homes Myth

We have a housing crisis. Things are so bad that we’ve recently had very high house price inflation.

One cause has been suggested as the number of empty homes for than one year. But over the last four years the number of empty homes has fallen by one-third. In Southwark since I was first  elected when we had 5,500 empty properties it halved. Partly this is the coalition government allowing councils to double council tax and partly because properties are so much more valuable now. This Southwark halving of empty properties has been repeated London wide and represent 0.64% of homes.

For England the empty property number have declined from 2009 316,251 down to 216,050 in 2013 (the latest figures). With 23.236 homes the empty ones equate to just 0.93%.

If you count empty homes empty for just 6 months – repairs, bereavement then the proportion rises to 1.74%. Not a huge proportion.

So if the housing problems aren’t being caused by empty properties – we need to either increase supply or decrease demand….

 

Think again!

Southwarn News editorial 26 June 2014…

“Only in politics could you have someone take up a new position, only to pronounce that it was pretty much a waste of time.

And the comments by the new chair of the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) are so far off the mark you have to wonder how or why he was handed the job in the first place.

For many years, council assembly was a proper debating chamber, where the key issues of the day were hammered out in front of the public and the press. This was then effectively neutered when the Lib Dem/Tory coalition moved decision making to Cabinet meetings.

You can argue that this led to less theatre, more proper decision-making but what it also did was remove the element of debate.

As such, the role of chair of the SOC became of paramount importance – and this paper argued consistently that it should always be occupied by a member of the opposition.

We argues this when there was no overall control of the council – how much more important is it when one party now enjoys a huge majority?

Cllr Gavin Edwards rightly declares that the public doesn’t care. That’s a problem he and his political colleagues should be addressing But he then goes on to suggest that ‘[people weren’t missing much’. That is only true if it doesn’t matter to them what decisions are made about their children’s education, the homes they will live in, the services and benefits they rely on and all that a local council does.

Cllr Edwards should at least be promising to hold his party to account in his new role – rather than rubbishing it. But in truth, the body that scrutinises these massively important decisions should not be controlled by a member of the party that is making them. The administration badly needs to think again.“

NB. The change to a cabinet

Most Expensive Council Meeting Ever?

A meeting to announce thew Labour Cabinet members  in Southwark has been dubbed the most expensive council meeting ever – after costing taxpayers more than £400 a minute.

On Wednesday 11 June Southwark Council held it’s annual constitutional meeting. The £12,500 meeting used chairs, tables and curtains hired in especially for the occasion, but only lasted a total of 30 minutes from start to finish. It means every minute of the meeting will have cost the council over £416.

As a Lib Dem councillor I tried fighting the annual Mayor Making and Constitutional Meeting begin separated out. But Labour refused. This is especially bizarre when Southwark Labour keep telling us how tight money is but then blow £12,000 in 30 minutes.

This is an appalling start to the new four year term they lead the council.

Think what Southwark Council could have done with £12,000. In East Dulwich it could have provided the double glazing, currently being refused, to a council home or two benefiting tenants for several decades to come.

What do you think the council should have spent this £12,000 on?

PS. I was delayed due to child care arrangements and because it was over so quickly didn’t make it in time. I hadn’t realised it would be such a race to attend!

 

Kill Puffins

Transport for London has decided to stop installing Puffin crossings. Horray!

The UK is the only western country to have such a signalled crossing design un the Puffin crossing where crossing pedestrians have no indication or display to give them confidence of their status while crossing the road. Attitudinal research over the last decade has shown that Puffin crossings are unpopular with the public. I can absolutely see why.

Puffin crossing also preclude pedestrian countdown displays being installed which the public do find helpful. To know how long you’ve got to cross after the green man has gone is really reassuring. Several times I nkow it has stopped me crossing when I was tempted to.

For East Dulwich we have several Puffin crossings – Lordship Lane outside the Coop shop, Lordship Lane close to the junction with East Dulwich Grove, Grove Vale clsoe to Goose Green School.

With TfL changing its position we just need Southwark Council to change its position on Puffin crossing so that we once and for all kill them in East Dulwich and upgrade to Pelican crossings with pedestrian countdown displays. This would help improve the walkability of the East dulwich area.

What other measures do you think we could take to make the area more attractive to walk around?

 

2006 Six To Fix

After the recent elections I was going through lots of old papers in post election clean-up. I cam across lots of stuff from when I first stood as a councillor in 2005/2006 with Richard Thomas and Jonathan Mitchell.

We stood on a promise to fix the following six things:

1. New secondary – East Dulwich Harris Boys Academy – OPENED

2. Modernise all street lighting – COMPLETED

3. Longer opening hours – Dulwich Library opened on Wednesdays making it open 7 days a week – COMPLETED

4. Modernise the Dulwich Leisure Centre – COMPLETED

5. Fight to keep East Dulwich surburban and not redesignated as urban – COMPLETED

6. Campaign to keep East Dulwich Police station – SUCCESSFUL 2006-2010 (but since closed by Boris in 2013).

We were hugely successful in getting them all done at the time. Boy did it take a lot of work but making the area is why I was persuaded to enter local politics.

Ring Road Money Pit

I was horrified to read that Boris Johnson has asked TfL to work up plans for a £30bn ring road tunnelled under London.

Apart from the traffic generation and extra air pollution it would cause £30bn is a colossal amount of money.

We could build roughly 6 complete new underground lines in London for this sum. Such a huge expansion in tube lines would bring huge benefit to all Londoners not just the tiny minority that drive in central London.

Or we could build 300 new tram lines across London. A revolution in public transport.

Or we could make every street and road in London utterly cycle friendly and still have many billions of pounds left over.

How would you solve London transport problems with £30bn?

2014 East Dulwich Election Results

The results are in.

Huge thank you to everyone who voted for Jonathan Mitchell, Rosie Shimell and me. Some really lovely feedback on the doorsteps about how hard we’ve worked as a team. But only Rosie and I are still East Dulwich Lib Dem councillors. Terribly sad that Jonathan missed remaining a councillor by 44 votes.

Thank you to everyone who voted. The East Dulwich turnout of residents voting was 43.4% which means 4,053 residents came out and voted.

Also thank you to all the other candidates that stood and all the volunteers from all the parties for working so hard. Also the families who sacrifice family time to enable campaigning to take place.

But the election is over. Rosie and I are here for four more years to fight for East Dulwich residents and to make our part of the world even better. I’m hopeful when Jonathan has dusted himself down he’ll keep giving us his wise counsel. He will be sadly missed as an East Dulwich councillor.

We’ve committed to six big local things to fix – this wont be easy as lib Dems are still in opposition in Southwark:

1. Build two new schools to ensure enough great local school places.

2. New local Police base in East Dulwich..

3. New grove Vale library.

4. Cleaner streets.

5. New East Dulwich cinema.

6. Keep East Dulwich special – working to keep our precious indie shops.

But please tell us what you think needs fixing or improving locally?