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Lazy Islington LibDem blogs: follow my leader

I was recently quoted in an article in the Islington Tribune highlighting how Islington Council Leader (Lib Dem) James Kempton had abandoned his blog because nobody was reading it. After narrowly keeping their grip on power after the 2006 local elections, Islington's Lib Dems claimed they had learnt their lesson, that they needed to listen to the people of Islington more.

Starting a blog was one of Kempton's means of listening. A blog can be a powerful tool for leaders if used properly. Putting yourself into the social media sphere means you are prepared to take part in a conversation, not just to talk at people. A blog lets people make their point and to engage their leaders in a debate.

Kempton gave up too easily, had he tried harder he might have found that it was worth listening to his electorate. They might have given him some ideas. However, he chose to give up, perhaps because listening is not that important to him, rather, he would prefer to say he is listening and hope people think that is enough.

Kempton stated in the article that if people wanted to keep in touch with him online, they could check his Facebook page. FYI, Kempton's page shows he has 126 "friends". Not many have taken him up then. Further analysis of his friends list shows that virtually all of them are fellow Lib Dem members (Bridget Fox, Meral Ece, Nick Clegg...). Not really a cross section of the public.

One of Kempton's IslingtonLib Dem colleagues, Meral Ece, has been succesful at blogging, despite not having a whole "executive support" office to support her, unlike her boss. Kempton didnt even have to write or promote his blog, that is the job of his support team.

In the interview for the article I mentioned that another of Kempton's colleagues, Islington South Parliamentary candidate Bridget Fox, had started blogging for The Guardian as a result of her personal blog. I checked her Guardian blog today and noted that...it has died too, just like Kempton's. Fox's Guardian blog hasn't been updated for four months. Whoops. I shouldn't have mentioned that. Her personal blog does get updated though. You can find that for yourself.

Johnson blows off at Vaz

Yesterday's news that Boris Johnson had irked Commons Home Affairs Committee Chair Keith Vaz over his knowledge of the Damien Green affair and that he then followed this with a tirade of the f-word should suprise nobody. It disappoints me. Our Mayor should be able to get his facts right. First he should not mislead Vaz in the first place over when he did or didn't call David Cameron on the day Green was arrested. If you don't know the facts, don't pretend (Some people call pretending lying). That aside, swearing in parliament shows a poor understanding of the standards required of those in public office.

Even the Evening Standard has covered this. As usual, Tory Troll has shamed my attempt to cover this story.

Council tax under BJ

Boris Johnson has taken time out from re-announcing things that were already happening bfore he was elected (cycle hire scheme, London Recycling network, public open space to be the legacy of the Olympic park) to finally announce that he is sticking to one of his election pledges. The mayor's portion of council tax will be frozen. Hurrah! This will have little effect on frontline services. Hurrah! Oh, but this will only mean that I will "save" about 11p a week against what loser Ken had proposed. Oh. Not that special really.

If Londoners are to get 'more bang for their buck' as promised by BJ we need to actually see more evidence than this. If the Mayor's budget has been 'cut' by 15% then why haven't my bills?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7884000/7884131.stm?

Norfolk nonsense

I logged onto the site where Norfolk really matters, the Eastern Daily Press, and found a laughable account of a place called London. In this city they speak of, the highlights include the London Dungeon, Madame Tussards and "Romanian gypsies brandishing sedated infants." The buses are beset with an "appalling tide of violence" caused by having to sit in traffic. If everyone is being forced to go to Madame Tussards then perhaps that is why the bus travelling public are revolting? Does anyone from London even go to look at wax models? Or perhaps they are just angry that they aren't going to the Mustard Shop in Norwich?

South West Trains to accept Oyster pay as you go after all

After much wrangling and feet dragging, I note with pleasure that South West Trains has finally agreed to accept Oyster pay-as-you-go. As someone who frequently travels from North East London to South West I've often been delayed by having to break my journey at Vauxhall or Waterloo to buy another ticket. Long queues and additional costs add to the inconvenience. This has taken far too long and clearly wasn't something that Stagecoach SWT were keen to adopt, even though Transport for London has picked up the £40m bill.

Cross River Tram

Boris Johnson doesn't think the Cross River Tram is worth investing in. Funding for any infrastructure projects won't be easy in the current financial climate. However, investing in the future will help London become more prosperous in the long term. London did this in the 1930s and for those of us who agree with Gordon Brown that doing so again, missing out on a project that had already been heavily invested in seems at best a waste and worst a missed opportunity.

Southwark Council has been vocal in opposition to Johnson's decision to scrap the project. Johnson come into office claiming to be a mayor who would listen to the boroughs rather than dictate to them as he claimed Ken Livingstone did. Southwark's Lib Dem leader Nick Stanton claims that Johnson failed to consult with his council when he planned to scrap it.

Stanton is seeking support from other affected councils. I don't expect the Department for Transport to provide capital funding without the crucial TfL contribution from the mayor, or private funding. I expect Stanton's worthy fight to fail because the mayor isn't interested.

Perhaps spending valuable funds on the unnecessary Boris Bus might have allowed the mayor to contribute to the Cross River Tram. However, he has shown little appetite for funding projects that benefit those who voted for Livingstone, as Southwark, Lambeth and Camden (the areas to benefit most from the scheme) all did.

Read more:

• Southwark News
• London Reconnections
  

WASP councillors?

The Local Government Chronicle reports today that the average age of councillors in England is now 59.

In their 2008 annual National Census of Local Authority Councillors the Local Government Association asked our locally elected representatives a range of profiling questions. The results reveal a clearly defined image of England's councillors:

• 97% are white
• 87% are over 45
  
• 68% are male

It is not surprising that our town halls are run by older, white men. That doesn't make it right. Turnout for local elections is typically very low, at around 35%. Engagement in local politics isn't exciting for many busy people. However Local politics can never enthuse voters if it doesn't both change it's image and start to look more like the communities it represents.

I like to think that my pitch that as a young man I could offer representation of young people in the place of experience, at the 2006 local elections, helped me to significantly increase the Labour vote.

All of the major parties need to ensure their candidates look like the people they will represent. We need more young people, more women, more different people. I hope that I won't look at the same survey in ten years and see the same results.

Paris, 1970s

How do you spell Isllygnton?

As one who is frequently irritated with the poor use of grammar and punctuation on pubilc signage, this news from Islington amused me. Hazellville Road in the borough appears with different spellings on street signs, bus stops and council improvement notices. If only the sign writers could have added extra apostrophes it would have been complete...

• Islington Gazette
• Evening Standard
  

Bendy buses

Having used a 149 bus last night from Seven Sisters to get to White Hart Lane and suffered the crowds I was reminded of the reason they were introduced int he first place. Bendys have the largest capacity of any passenger bus on the market. They were introduced on the routes with the highest demand, like the 29, 38, 73 and 129.

Boris Johnson was elected stating he wanted to rid London's streets of bendys. He was also elected stating he wanted to give Londoner's "more bang for (their) buck." Scrapping the bendys was meant to make London's streets safer for cyclists, however, when pressed by the London Assembly, Johnson was forced to admit that bendys had killed no cyclists on London's streets. It now transpires that not only will scrapping the bendys not make London's streets noticably safer, the replacements will also cost Londoners more (thanks Boris Watch).

The new buses will be smaller, there will be more of them on the roads causing more congestions and they will cost more, with no discernable safety benefit. Is this the "common sense" politics we were promised by the mayor?

Further reading recommended at the Tory Troll.

Can a recession ever be a good thing? Part 2

Boris Johnson and the Evening Standard have now got in on the act of trying to cheer us all up about the recession. In an article headlined "Mayor: London can benefit from recession"Johnson outlines what he perceives to be the benefits of a recession:

●The fall in house prices would mean London's £5billion housing budget, which will help homeowners avoid recession by taking temporary equity stakes in their property, would go further.

●Tourism and exports would be boosted by the fall of the pound with London representing greater value for money for foreign visitors and investors.

●The brightest graduates, especially scientists, who might otherwise have gone to work in the City, could look for work in the public sector, particularly teaching.

●Workers with more time on their hands because of the downturn could help tackle knife and gun crime among young people by volunteering.

I spoke on this subject in December for BBC Radio Five Live's Richard Bacon show. My premise then and now is that whatever "benefit" side-effects of a recession may bring, it is inherantly a bad thing.

Our market economy is based on work. Work pays for food and shelter and to keep the rest of the economy going by allowing people to buy goods and services. Without work this collapses.

I'd prefer my mayor to be talking about what he plans to do to help Londoners through tough economic times, rather than telling them not to worry. Can't afford to go on holiday any more? Don't worry, you can look at all the tourists in London instead, taking advantage of the cheap pound. Great.

Johnson must be wrapping himself in a coocoon if he believes a recession will help tackle crim by providing more volunteers. Basic sociological theory suggests that unemployment leads to poverty and poverty is a drving force behind increasing crime.

If johnson is to really show that he intends to govern for all Londoners then he needs to start showing that he understands the stresses and pressures most of us are under. He isn't doing that. I don't expect him to do that. He doesn't know how.

Boost your worker productivity

New Portable Sewing Machine Lets Sweatshop Employees Work On The Go

Blog returns no thanks to BT

After having moved house meaning no broadband there followed a five week palaver with BT. I was then away for Christmas so I've had very few opportunities to write recently. I apologise, but I'm back on the game now.

The only reason I wanted a BT line was because it is a pre-requisite for a new Sky installation. Sky Sports is a pre-requisite for me, I need my cricket and football. I also need my broadband to work and write this.

I live on a small side street of three houses that shares the post code with the side of a main residential street. When I set up my BT account I was presented with the common question "what is your post code and house number sir?". To which I replied "that won't work as there are two number Xs on the same post-code." "That is fine, what is your address" replied the BT telephone executive. I gave the proper address and set the account up. The bills and paperwork arrived correctly. I had no reason to worry.

BT told me the line would be active by a certain date. When I tried the phone line after that date it was dead. Sky came and the installation failed because the BT line didn't work. I managed to circumnavigate the lack of a BT line to get Sky working. I called BT who promised to send an engineer the next day to fix the line. Sure enough, that Saturday morning in November BT texted me to assure me the problem was being investigated.

That afternoon the line didn't work. I called BT again and they promised to investigate further and send another engineer if needed. I hadn't been told that access to my property was needed, so I was surprised to find that engineer number two had left a "sorry you were out" card. Apparently the problem was deemed to lie in our property. When I pressed BT for information on the fault though, BT had no idea.

Another engineer was booked. My housemate came home early from work and waited. BT man didnt knock on the door. I called BT again. They "looked into the problem." They booked engineer number four. I asked why number three hadn't arrived. BT had no idea.

BT engineer number four was booked with explicit instructions to call my mobile when he arrived on another Saturday staying in. Four was only booked after four phone calls. I waited and waited. I even chased BT to remind them they had promised me an engineer. They confirmed. Four failed to show up. I hollered. I called BT and told them to tell me what was going on. BT had no idea.

Engineer five was booked for another weekday afternoon slot and housemate number two stayed in from work. Five called me in the morning to tell me he was outside. I asked if he was at a restaurant. He said nobody was in. I told him he was at the wrong address. BT had no idea but I had an idea. The engineers were failing to go to the correct address. Five investigated and said a hoist was needed for further innestigation. We couldn't take any more time off work and hoists were not available at weekends. When could this be fixed? BT had no idea.

Engineer six was booked after a number of robust conversations with my personal claim handler. I was now getting special attention, but I still didn't have a phone line or broadband. I was told my my special advisor that I had a white front door. The restaurant over the road, the other number X with the same post code has a white front door. Mine is grey, almost black. The BT engineers had either been lying, bluffing of been going to the wrong address.

I had also spent a total of four days waiting for phantom engineers and now had a fifth to look foward to. Six turned up on time and called me from the restaurant over the road. I told him to check my address more carefully and to cross the road to where I actually lived. I told him the history and that the line wasn't active. He checked. I told him to try to turn on my line and not that of the restaurant. He did. It worked. BT had turned on the wrong line and it took:

• A month to fix
• Six engineers + an unused hoist
• Four working days off work
• Over three hours of phone calls

BT has given me the most appalling customer service I have ever experienced. Incompetant. They had no idea what was going on. Each part of the business had no idea what the other was up to or had done. This is the first time I've been a BT customer. I will cancel my account at the first opportunty and will never return. First I will be calling them to remind them that I won't be paying their first bill. I bet BT have no idea.

I'm glad to be back blogging.

David Cameron calls for broken Britain

I always said the Tories wanted to break Britain's social fabric. Now we have the evidence from the independent BBC.

With Ken Livingstone on LBC

On Saturday I appeared on Ken Livingstone's LBC show to talk about the week's news and that day's newspapers. It was good to see him much more relaxed than he'd appeared in the mayoral elections a few months ago.

We discussed the arrest of Damien Green. Ken was interested to know why Boris Johnson had been informed when he didn't see it as a matter for the mayor. Clearly this depends on the role of the mayor in the Metroplitan Police Authority. This has become rather ambiguous and disputed. It looked like Johnspn had abused his power over the resignation of Sir Ian Blair, while he now has a job on his hands to keep the Met onside. The Deputy Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has been heavily involved in Green's arrest and now it looks like Johnson won't want to work with him either.

There is a simple solution. That is for politicians not to get involved in day to day policing. They must remain independent to protect them from political interference and protect us all from any sort of mob rule.

Read further on Tory Troll.

I also discussed with Ken the future of New Labour. It has been widely reported that he sees New Labour as dead as a result of banking crisis. He likened me to Peter Mandelson. I laughed. Thing is, I agree with Mandelson that New Labour is still alive. People often forget that Gordon Brown was central to the whole New Labour project. Without him it wouldn't have been possible at all.

I hope to pick this up with Livingstone again soon. LBC, 97.3, London's conversation, Saturdays, 10:00.

Can a recession ever be a good thing? Richard Bacon show discussion

Yesterday Andrew Lansley, Tory Health Spokesman, was forced to withdraw a blog entry stating that "Interestingly on many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend time at home with their families." Last night I spoke from the panel on Richard Bacon's BBC Radio Five Live show about this. Saying recession is a bad thing. David Kuo said it can be.

Lansley was both misguided and insensitive. It shows that many of the Tories haven't changed. At the 1997 election the Tories said of the harsh economic climate a few years earlier "yes it hurt, yes it worked." Their premise is that job losses are a price worth paying for a stronger economy. Kou agreed, saying that many jobs are worthless. I disagree.

Our economy is based on work providing enough to pay for our living costs. Without that most people's lifestyles will fall apart. We saw in the 1980s that many families and whole parts of Britain never recovered from the closure of industry.

I accept that many people naively thought the economy, house prices and the stock market would grow continuously. This is clearly not the case. However, a recession will be bad for families, under financial pressure and facing the threat of losing their homes and jobs.

The side effect of recession is poverty, often higher crime, family breakdown, higher alcoholism and drug taking.

Of course there will be some positive side effects of recession. People will become more frugal, use less energy and waste less. This is a good thing. However, this is a nasty lesson to learn and one most people would rather avoid. I'd like to have the same discussion in a year's time and see whether the callers to the show still agreed that recession would be OK, once they'd had to suffer the effects.

You can listen again to the show here and clicking on Wednesday.

Pre-budget report

My first thoughts on Alistair Darling's Pre Budget Report are that it clearly presents the country with clear water between Labour and Tory.

Labour has put together a package that at the very least seeks to stimulate the ailing economy. This is set against a Tory Party that cynically states the solutions won't work. The Tory solution is minimal action because they don't believe in government as the answer to problems. The Tories have retreated to their ideological home ground of minimal government and laissez-faire economics.

It is simply not acceptable to allow banks to go to the wall or to leave the poor and low earners without any help when help is available. Labour is certainly trying. Peeling back the surface and starting to look at the details and the picture becomes a little murky. Clearly high levels of public borrowing will have to be paid for over many years. Borrowing increases to levels higher than in previous recessions. However after previous recessions, such as in the 1990s, the government of the day didn't seek to stimulate the economy like this. The economic threat globally was not as great. Darling has sought to make higher earners pay for the borrowing, in future years. This could work and is certainly fair, however is dependent on Labour winning the next election.

Brown and Darling have taken a huge political gamble. It was one worth taking because it offers a glimmer of hope at a time when the Tories have offered nothing.

Time for a change in Islington?

With change on the world political agenda, closer to home, in Islington, it looks distinctly possible. Islington Council has been run by the Lib Dems for the last seven years. After being decimated in 2002, an amazing fightback saw Labour within one councillor of regaining the council. The Lib Dems have since run the council on the casting vote of the mayor. Last week's resignation of cabinet member for finance Andrew Cornwall threatens to tip the balance inthe town hall.

My Labour Party colleagues, notably Cllrs Catherine West, Richard Watts and Paul Smith have been persistently aiming charges of wastefulness at the Lib Dem leadership. It is good to see one of them agree.

Do the Lib Dems allow Cornwall to stay in the group? They are not known for their forgiveness, however at the same time I can't imagine them pressing the nuclear button: kicking Cornwall out and losing control over what they dubbed the flagship Lib Dem council.

Cornwall won't join Labour. He has just been responsible for selling off scores of council property and was heavily criticised by Labour for doing so. Whether he might vote with Labour remains possible. It all depends on how deep his rift with the rest of the Lib Dems is. I'll be at the council meeting on December 4 to find out.


Further reading:

• Conservative Home
• Islington Tribune
  
• Suz Lamido

Ken launches Progressive London

Ken Livingstone was never going to go quietly. Not content with a regular slot on LBC radio and newspaper columns, Livingstone has now formally set up Progressive London.

The stated aim of Progressive London is to keep together the coalition of anti-Tory votes that Livingstone sought to keep him in office. Uniting politicians and activists across party lines is ambitious. There will be some who see this as Ken's declaration of candidacy for the 2012 elections. Mobilising a campaign for 2012 it might be, mobilising a campaign for Ken, I'm not sure. Ken might want that, I don't think it is that feasible. Labour will need to make a new choice and do so in two ore three years time.

For any alliance to work will require a common enemy. Boris Johnson will therefore need to keep antagonising those who didn't vote for him. Increasing transport fares in January will help, as will the bungled handling of Sir Ian Blair's stepping down as head of the Metropolitan Police. If BJ hadn't exercised powers he didn't hold in making Blair's position untenable, there would be no row over how much he is being paid to quit. I'm confident that the common enemy will remain, however an alliance also needs common solutions.

Common solutions stem from a shared vision. So far Ken's alliance looks like one that can run. It should do because so far the backers are predominantly Labour, with a smattering of Lib Dems and Greens. I'll be interested to see if the alliance can really take on a cross party feel. If it does, it will stand a chance of being listened to as something more powerful than simply Ken Livingstone's mouthpiece.


Further reading:
Pippa Crerar's Evening Standard blog
Tory Troll: one of the speakers at the Progressive London conference in January
Dave Hill
Liberal Conspiracy
Mayorwatch