30 April (Part 2) - Bexley twinned with Islington? God help us
The last few hours of the month is the best time to slip in a blog that you rather hope won’t be noticed but needs to be said anyway. So here goes…
I can see many reasons to never vote for a mainstream political party ever
again and whenever I deviate from that resolve you can be sure another good reason will come along before long.
For me Rishi Sunak’s sacking of Andrew Bridgen MP
from his party alleging he is an anti-Semite is worse
than total nonsense, it is almost certainly part of covering up the Covid
corruption. What he said (“the biggest crime against humanity since the
Holocaust”) did not in anyway detract from the seriousness of the Nazi’s attempt
to exterminate all Jews, if anything he was reinforcing it by referencing the
worst crime ever, and he was in any
case only quoting what an Israeli medic had said.
After initial condemnation Mr. Bridgen has since been
invited to various functions by the Jewish
community and supported by not a few British doctors. When the MP speaks in
Parliament a Tory bigwig goes around the chamber telling MPs to leave, and they
do. Labour, Lib Dem, SNP and Conservatives alike.
What have they got to hide? YouTube removes Bridgen’s clips from his channel. What
are they so keen to hide? Fortunately Hansard survives.
Similar things happen in Bexley. Conservative Councillor John Davey (West Heath) who once stole
my
joke about Sadiq Khan doing more damage to London than the Luftwaffe and got
his knuckles rapped for it had similar thoughts to myself when the British
Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released
from jail after the British taxpayer paid out £450,000,000.
Nazanin was not brimming with gratitude and reports said she planned to campaign
for the Labour Party. Councillor Davey Tweeted that maybe we should ask for our
money back and I smiled but Labour numpties went wild. Someone complained to Conservative HQ
and the ultra-woke numpties who have wrecked that once great party had John out
on his ear in no time at all. The Lefties who run Bedonwell school booted him out
of the Governors’ office too thereby reinforcing many a view about the sort of
people who infiltrate such offices and their part in the decline of the UK.
That being the case John sat as an Independent Councillor until the beginning of
last week. Evidently the powers-that-be had realised
by then that John Davey was not an avowed racist.
Unfortunately Labour people see racism everywhere and went wild again. While Bexley
Council continues its financial assault on residents and fails with its policies
on the homeless Bexley Labour spends its time writing a Press Release, not on
the things that trouble potential voters like the Cost of Living Crisis, no
they leave
that to Dave Putson the Councillor they kicked out, but on John Davey’s
alleged racism. The longest Press Release ever. (Dave self-funded five leaflets
aimed at helping people to cope with the constantly rising prices. See below.)
The Conservatives nationally are intent on losing their core support and very
successful they have been too but locally Labour seem to be more interested in
niche issues which do nothing to help the people the party was founded to support.
Dave Putson’s (PDF) Cost of Living leaflets…
Energy (General)
Energy (Prepayment meters)
Foodbanks
Landlords
Water bills
Correction. See blog for 3rd May 2023.
30 April (Part 1) - Idiots everywhere
Maybe it was some sort of idiocy to have embarked on a household job which
has evolved into a partial rewire of the whole house. An interesting but costly project
which has taken every spare moment for several months. I am currently held up -
and for the third time! - by Evri’s failure to deliver something vital to
the Belvedere branch of Toolstation from the company’s main warehouse.
Meanwhile Bexley Council has been pushing forward with its various plans to make
our lives worse and more expensive. There will be more motorist fleecing via their
unnecessary yellow box junction fraud, charging to visit the dump more often
than they deem reasonable and concreting over every spare, and not so spare,
space that they can find. Various local facilities will be concreted over; where
will I get my building supplies from when both Pepper’s and Buildbase have gone?
On
the mundane and possibly boring front Country Style are on yet another repeat of
their refusal to replace a broken bin, encourage fly tippers to lift the
unlocked lid and contaminate it. Then use that as an excuse not to empty it so
it eventually overflows and reluctantly come and empty it anyway which they may as well
have done in the first place. It’s only four weeks since the last such episode
Idiots.
The Elizabeth line commuter parking problem has not gone away and drivers who flout the parking
rules have been getting tickets, once within five minutes of the online report,
but road blocking does not incur any penalties.
I have several times had to drive on the footpath which probably does no harm
but so does the bin lorry which probably weighs rather more than my car.
Bexley Council’s
new CPZ plans appear to be designed to make the situation
worse but with Craske in charge we should expect nothing else.
29 April - Councillor John Davey. Tweet or Twit?
So
Felix has gone
and John Davey is back following
suspension for an
ill-judged Tweet. People have strong views about him.
Councillor John Davey took a dim view of Iranian hostage Nazarin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s criticism of Boris Johnson and Co. who she saw as prolonging
her wrongful imprisonment and declared she was inclined to support the Labour
Party. I suppose one cannot really blame her for such a reaction although
perhaps the timing of it was a little unfortunate.
Joker John was expelled from the Tory party for his comment which seemed to me to be a little
extreme given that a Cabinet Member known to have published obscene and
libellous comments about four Bexley residents remains in post but for reasons
unknown John Davey’s Tweet provoked a much stronger reaction as has his return.
The Labour Group on Bexley Council has published
their longest Press Release ever which provides a fulsome
critique of Councillor Davey’s comment and the background to their complaint. (PDF.) Extract below.
Like most people I was wholly supportive of Nazarin and her husband in their
struggle for justice against Government intransigence - the failure to return the money owed to Iran - and
blogged about it more than once but like John was
disappointed by her comments.
Maybe because
I have been called a racist
by a Labour activist - fascist too by another - for totally truthful comment about
my MP I no longer take such accusations as seriously as I should and my opinion of this incident
remains much as it was last October.
Now, if you excuse me I must go and mend my Nigerian neighbour’s fence. Why can’t we all live amicably together?
26 April - Creeps, crawlers and charlatans
As noted last week, Cabinet Meetings
are theatre but so too are some parts of Full Council meetings. This sort of thing happens every time.
You get an ignorant Councillor asking a question to which the answer is already widely
known but designed to pamper the backside of a grandstanding Cabinet Member.
The licker this time is Janice Ward-Wilson who has never before been mentioned
in these pages having in her first year contributed nothing but is now anxious to
display the qualities which inspired the blog title.
Did she not read the Bexley Magazine, see its cover photo, read the Leader’s
Welcome or follow her Cabinet Member hero on Twitter?
As
Councillor Read said on 24th March, Bexley Children’s Service has been turned around completely since
it was condemned ten years ago
(see image below) and he took charge. The big fish does not need his ego to be massaged by the unknown minnow from Crook Log.
OFSTED is not very big on Children’s Service inspections. Bexley last had one
in 2018 and most London boroughs are still
measured by old inspections. This allows Camden, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea,
Kingston, Merton, Redbridge and Westminster to make similar claims to Bexley’s.
Bexley is in the top quartile of London boroughs and that is a great achievement
which it trumpeted widely at the time. But Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson cannot
think of anything original to ask and instead tramps the well worn path of the junior school creep.
The claim and the truth.
Note: The forgoing is inspired by correspondence with that tireless Mayor supporting truth seeker @tonyofsidcup who sent a similar but much longer message to the Councillor so that she might educate herself more successfully before future Council meetings.
I listened to last Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting on the live webcast and didn’t
note a single thing that I thought worthy of a report here. The Agenda was 458 pages
long but the meeting was over in just under an hour which might seem to be
peculiar but it is not when you consider that Cabinet meetings are nothing but
theatre. Everything has been sorted out in advance and agreed among friends.
The matter in hand was the Local Plan and Leader
O’Neill said that it was a “key document including years of work and determines the future shape of our
borough”. The Cabinet Member for Growth said the plan would “protect the borough’s most valued characteristics” and then drifted into
climate change, sustainability and bio-diversity. He had spent £500,000 on it in “specialist advice” alone.
Cabinet Member David Leaf (Resources) was similarly brief but managed to fit in something
about climate change too without explaining how concreting over land achieves that.
Cabinet Member Peter Craske (Places) proved his worth by saying he wished “to echo” what had
been said before and repeat the thanks for the staff who were paid to work on the plan.
Cabinet Member Richard Diment (Education) said he was pleased to see that the
Sidcup traveller site had been recognised.
Councillor Peter Reader (West Heath) also went down the route of offering thanks
for the report but Councillor June Slaughter broke with precedent by asking a
question. It was about “SPDs” and the answer was a simple ‘Yes’ but no one
explained the acronym so a fat lot of good it was for the listening public.
Labour Leader Stefano Borella’s main concern was affordable housing and was pleased that the Local Plan was
sympathetic to it. And with that the discussion was over. One whole minute for every year of the Plan’s preparation. (12.)
There were other subjects on the Agenda; Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion, and
there was yet another Plan up for debate. It had been consulted upon and 92
people had responded. It will lead to “a fairer Bexley”. Cabinet Member went
through his thank you staff routine again. He wants us to be “respectful of
other people’s points of view” which will cramp his style somewhat when he next
attacks Councillor Borella. The Labour Leader thought the Equalities Plan was a
good one and welcomed it, theorising that it was the product of the reforms made by the last Labour Government.
Councillor Taylor (Labour, Erith) said that Bexley Council disadvantaged the
deaf. Meetings are not signed, and not available by transcript and there are no subtitles on webcasts. (But
maybe things are better than they used to be when the deaf were told to “sit
down and be quiet".)
Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) began her brief welcome for the
Equalities Plan and the need for respect etc. by criticising Councillor Borella’s brief speech. Albeit only mildly.
Daniel Francis (Labour, Belvedere) made a wide ranging speech, including race
relations, old people and various faith groups for which the Council does not
make sufficient allowance. Not even for its own Muslim Members.
And that was pretty much it for April Cabinet.
The Local Plan is included within
the meeting Agenda. (39 MB PDF.)
20 April - Bexley. A council built on incompetence and lies
A dozen years ago Bexley Council tripled the price of Residents’ Parking Permits and
Cabinet Member Craske justified the £100 cost by claiming that each permit
actually cost £254 in various administration costs. One might wonder how
inefficient his department could be, but it was of course a money grabbing lie worthy of Sadiq Khan.
Now he is at it again, the excuse being Elizabeth line commuter parking. He wants them to
pay dearly along with local residents whose permits will now be £150 per year
and any who currently avoid it because their cars are away all day will suffer
the Craskian fist. The two restricted hours (11 a.m. to 1 p.m.)
are to be extended to all day. 8 until 6:30.
You won’t be able to pick up your child from Granny when you finish work at five
because stopping for a few minutes outside her house will incur a fine.
All the roads in the existing CPZ both North and South of the railway line will
be affected and there is little need for it. The existing restrictions drive
commuters beyond the CPZ boundary which can be a nuisance to residents but that
is a problem that could be solved at almost zero cost.
The
problem in my road is not the parking as such but the ill-considered
parking. Cars on corners contrary to the Highway Code, cars parked opposite each
other so that access is restricted and nose to footpath parking on narrow roads
which can make pavement driving a necessity.
It would be instantly solved by double yellow lines on all corners and not just
two of them as now. Double yellows on one side of the road only, marked bays in existing laybys
and no parking in turning circles as stipulated by the original planning permission.
I personally have nothing against commuters parking legally in the road as there
is ample off street parking for residents, it is the occasional all day block-in that is bad for me.
The parking problem would be dispersed by leaving the existing CPZ alone and
painting the lines that Bexley Council thought were necessary 20 years ago. They
consulted on it but residents said No Thanks. It being a less dictatorial time
with no Craske in charge the roads were left unmarked.
Bexley Council is currently spending up to £100,000 to prove that Sadiq Khan is
the money grabbing Mayor that he is, imposing new taxes during a Cost of Living
Crisis for no discernible reason. What hypocrites we have for Councillors. Is
that not exactly what Craske is doing here?
Unlike the commuter parking problem at the top of New Road there are no buses to
consider on the largely residential roads nearer the station. The proposals are
an unnecessary imposition and an excuse to fleece residents of yet more money.
Mayor almost bankrupts TfL due to poor decision making, his precept up by 9.7%.
Tory Council narrowly escaped bankrupting Bexley. Parking charges up 30%,
Parking permits 50%, bin charges 20% every year (more than doubled in six) and
Yellow Money Box Junctions everywhere.
The CPZ tax in Greenwich is less than half what it is in Bexley.
The Proposals
Notice is Hereby Given that the Council of the London Borough of Bexley
propose to make the above titled Traffic Order under Sections 6 and 124 of
and Part IV of Schedule 9 to the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, as
amended as amended by Section 8 of and Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Local
Government Act 1985.
The general effect of the Bexley (Abbey Wood Station) (Parking Places)
(Amendment No. X) Traffic Order 20XX would be to:-
Change existing Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) hours of Abbey Wood Station,
which currently operates between ‘11am and 1pm - Monday to Friday’ to ‘8am
and 6.30pm - Monday to Friday’. This includes:
a) All ‘resident permit holder bays’ in:- Abbey Road. Dalberg Way. Fendyke
Road. Florence Road. Fossington Road. Lanridge Road. Manorside Close. Monks
Close. New Road. Overton Road. Rushdene Road. Sydney Road and Woodland Way
b) All ‘business and resident permit holder bays’ in: - Abbey Road and Fendyke Road
c) All ‘resident permit holder and pay by phone bays’ in: - Rushdene Road and Sedgemere Road
d) All ‘resident permit holder and pay by phone and pay and display bays’
in: - Abbey Road. New Road. Overton Road and Sydney Road
e) Convert ‘free parking places’ to ‘resident permit holder only (‘8am and
6.30pm - Monday to Friday’)’ in: - Abbey Road. Fossington Road and Overton Road
f) Convert ‘free parking places’ to a shared ‘resident permit holder and pay
by phone and pay and display bays’ (‘8am and 6.30pm - Monday to Friday’)’ in: - Overton Road
g) Convert ‘free parking place’ to ‘resident permit holder and pay by phone
bay’ (‘8am and 6.30pm - Monday to Friday’)’ in: - Alsike Road (northern kerb line)
h) Convert ‘‘free parking place’ to ‘pay by phone bay’ in: - Alsike Road (southern kerb line)
The general effect of the Bexley (Waiting and Loading Restriction)
(Amendment No X) Traffic Order 20XX would be to:-
Change existing Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) waiting restrictions in Abbey
Wood Station CPZ, which currently operates between ‘11am and 1pm - Monday to
Friday’ to ‘8am and 6.30pm - Monday to Friday’. This includes:
i) Abbey Road. Alsike Road. Dalberg Way. Felixstowe Road. Fendyke Road.
Florence Road. Fossington Road. Harrow Manorway. Knee Hill. Lanridge Road.
Manorside Close. Monks Close. New Road. Overton Road. Rushdene. Sedgemere
Road. Sydney Road and Woodlands Way
The cost of resident’s permit will increase from £20 to £25 for visitor
scratch cards, £36.25 to £47.50 for 3 month permits and £125 to £150 for the
first vehicle. Multi-vehicle supplements apply to second and subsequent
vehicles in each household in addition to the permit price shown above: 3
months £6.25 / 1 year £25.00.
The cost of a business permit will increase from £62.50 to £82.50 for 3
month permits and £200 to £250 for the first vehicle. Multi-vehicle
supplements apply to second and subsequent vehicles in each business in
addition to the permit price shown above: 3 months £6.25 / 1 year £25.00.
The cost of ‘pay by phone’ and ‘pay and display’ charges will remain the
same for the duration.
Copies of the proposed Order, the corresponding Parent Order (and the Orders
that have amended that Order); the Council’s Statement of Reasons for
proposing to make the Order and plans which indicate the length of roads to
which the Order relates can be inspected during normal office hours on
Mondays to Fridays inclusive, at the Contact Centre, 2 Watling Street, Bexleyheath, DA6 7AT.
Further information may be obtained by telephoning Michael Wenbourne on 020 3045 3943.
Any person desiring to object to the proposed Order should send a statement
in writing of their objections and the grounds thereof, to the London
Borough of Bexley, Traffic Services, Civic Offices, 2 Watling Street,
Bexleyheath, DA6 7AT or by email to
traffic@bexley.gov.uk within 21 days of the date of this Notice.
Persons objecting to the proposed Order should be aware that this Council
would be legally obliged to make any comment received in response to this
Notice, open to public inspection.
Andrew Bashford
Head of Transport and Infrastructure
Dated 19 April 2023
Andrew Baskford is of course well suited to doing Craske’s dirty work. To
justify his accident inducing redesign of Abbey Road
he told me that it was in
accordance with Transport Research Laboratory Reports numbered 641 and 661.
TRL let me have a copy of both reports and scoffed at Bashford’s untruthful
assertion. Bexley Council promoted him. Lying is a positive at Bexley Council.
Note: My house is the nearest to Abbey Wood station beyond the CPZ boundary. Am I
missing out on a money making opportunity? Would Photo 2 be a problem?
When,
in 2008, Cabinet Member Craske dismissed every objection to his plan to make Abbey Road
narrower than it was, my son who was at the time the Transport Research Laboratory’s Senior
Consultant on such matters said it was “a recipe for head on collisions” as it
ignored every bit of TRL’s guidance on how to do such things.
And so it proved to be, there have been innumerable accidents since and at least
one fatality that can be laid at Craske’s door. However it is quite a long time
since I just happened to be passing by to see the evidence for myself.
This afternoon was an exception but despite that I have no idea how the crash came
about. The police were reluctant to let traffic pass as petrol was leaking on to
the road. The glass and debris they had helpfully kicked away.
A nearby resident is hidden behind the blue arrow (Photo 1) examining his demolished wall.
Two more photos for my catalogue of Craske’s
Abbey Road safety improvements.
13 April - Thinking about ULEZ, Part 6 - Valley of Decision
Part 6 of @tonyofsidcup’s Magnum Opus on why he thinks ULEZ will be good for London. I think I might be more inclined to support ULEZ if the Mayor and his acolytes didn’t have to resort to lies to justify it.
4,000 deaths in London due to exhaust fumes turns out to be “contributed to” and that in turn may mean ‘died three weeks earlier than might have been the case’.
Why do they find the need to falsify the evidence? As an occasional photographer one look at the propaganda photo (below left) had me asking why
is the visibility of the background not far worse than the foreground? If the fog was that bad near at hand you wouldn’t be able to see into the distance at all, but it is equally obscured.
One click in PhotoShop removed the filter and revealed the rather poor photograph beneath it. Why the need to resort to lies all the time?
And now for @tony…
I
would like to apologise to readers for
the long wait since Part 5. In Part 6, I wanted to tackle the big question
- “Is ULEZ expansion to Outer London a good idea?” - and I found it much harder than debunking the various
ULEZ-related falsehoods, examined in
Parts 1-5. To get to a view that I was comfortable with, I have looked at
air-pollution data for Bexley,
reviewed a scientific-looking paper by ULEZ opponents, had an email exchange with UK’s top
air-pollution scientist - and liberally procrastinated.
As part of this procrastination, I asked Bexley how much money they committed to the legal challenge to ULEZ, pursued by the Tory-run councils
of Bexley, Bromley, Hillingdon, Harrow and Surrey. Earlier, it came to light that Bromley had reserved £140,000. It turns out that Bexley
has set aside £100,000, and already spent £18,000.
I think of £100,000 as money that could have built 5-10 pedestrian crossings to protect
the borough’s children, and see the council’s decision as Bexley Tories doing their party’s bidding at our expense. Naturally, if you oppose
ULEZ, you probably approve of the legal challenge: its merits and chances are hard to judge. Which view is more common? It looks like a
borough-wide
poll would be fairly inexpensive - but neither Bexley nor any other litigant council chose to spend a pound to consult voters before committing
hundred pounds to their own preferred action.
It
may be because the poll wouldn’t have produced the answer that Teresa and Co. wanted. Recall that ULEZ opponents’ best poll showing was 51%
- Part 3 explained why the higher percentage seen in the ULEZ consultation would be grossly misleading as an indicator of the popular opinion,
and anyone pushing it as such must be, to use a colourful Russian expression, “slapped with urine-soaked rags” - and this was achieved with a
manipulative wording that was fair game for a partisan group that commissioned the poll (the City Hall Tories), but beyond the pale for a council.
However, I suspect that the thought to consult with Bexley residents simply never occurred to Baroness O’Neill, and the decision to spend £100,000
of Bexley taxpayers’ money on a publicity campaign to damage the Labour mayor was effectively made at the Conservative Central Office.
“Even if the majority is for ULEZ - a big if - public policy isn’t simply about what the majority wants”, Baroness may scoff. “We do want policies
that benefit the majority, but the minority must be protected. ULEZ fails this test”. I see merit in this argument. While I do not accept that
tax-free air-pollution - or even tax-free car travel - is a human right, l cannot dismiss the fact - and some ULEZ enthusiasts unfortunately do - that for
many low-income owners of non-compliant cars, ULEZ is going to mean genuine hardship.
Imagine a care worker, driving a non-compliant car for work, struggling to feed her household after £300 more comes out of her household’s monthly
budget to pay ULEZ charges. Hunger, or inferior cheap food, damages a child’s health a lot more visibly than nitrogen dioxide or particulate matter.
For some reason, people facing real distress in August do not get much attention from the press. The “journalists” of The News Shopper and similar outlets
appear to be more at ease with middle-class characters like Sue, 65, who favours her sporty Mercedes over the
“bloody inconvenient” tube, or a mechanic specialising in cars like Sue’s.
The most down-to-earth character of anti-ULEZ discourse is the tradesman in a
non-compliant van who tells The News Shopper that ULEZ is going to drive him
out of business. The journalist never asks the tradesman what kind of rates they charge and what kind of hours they work if extra £12·50 a day makes that
much of a dent. As a homeowner, I am very aware of the high rates charged by the Checkatrade brigade, and I am 100% confident that a £12·50 daily charge
can be, and will be, passed on to customers, without much impact on demand.
And then you hear, for example, Bexley Cabinet Member Seymour report
ULEZ-linked difficulties of workers at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I sympathise with
QEH nurses - but then ask what party has made it so that an NHS nurse cannot afford extra £300 pm, or a better car. More recently, what party refused
to fund a ULEZ scrappage scheme in the same way it funded scrappage schemes for other English cities? Of course, it’s Cllr Seymour’s Conservatives,
cruelly inflicting pain on Londoners to turn them against the Labour mayor. But it is what it is, and the choice is not between a “perfect”,
scrappage-scheme-supported ULEZ and no ULEZ, but between the imperfect, underfunded ULEZ and no ULEZ.
Let’s look at Bexley. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, in late 2021, 27% (or just under 27,000) of
Bexley-registered
cars and 55% (or about 5,500) of Bexley-registered LCVs were non-ULEZ-compliant.
(This was over a year ago, and the non-compliant numbers have fallen by now). I am going to ignore LCVs - one in twelve Bexley vehicles
- and focus on cars. With 78% of Bexley households owning a vehicle, per 2021 Census data, I will guess that 20% of Bexley households own
a non-compliant car. Without dismissing pensioners or workless households, I want to focus on working people, who need their car to get to
work, every weekday, and ballpark 15% of those. In 2021, 35% of Bexley residents worked from home - note that the
post-Covid year was not a
usual time - but it would be wrong to take 35% off 12%: we don’t know how to “distribute” the home workers across households. We have the same
problem when we want to exclude people who travel to work without driving - the majority even in Bexley - as we have the percentage of residents,
but not the percentage of households. One has to make another guess. I go with 7·5% - meaning that 7·5% of Bexley households will have to
pay ULEZ charges for their commute to work. Now, most of them will be able to afford £300 pm, but some will find it hard. How many? More guesswork.
I will say a fifth will be poor, giving me 1·5%, or about 1,500 households. They are Bexley’s “ULEZ victims”.
(This back-of-envelope calculation may well be more than Bexley has done to date. The council has set up a bipartisan “task force”, chaired
by the “environmentalist” Cllr Smith, to develop Bexley’s “coping strategy”. Nothing has come out of this yet, but stay tuned for bright
ideas and bold proposals from this A-team).
Now, let’s talk about Bexley’s air
- and counterintuitively start in Bromley. Bromley politicians have been very active in the anti-ULEZ
movement. Sidcup’s gift to Orpington - and Boris Johnson’s man in the London Assembly when Mayor Johnson announced plans for ULEZ - Gareth Bacon
MP has become a regular contributor to The Telegraph, lamenting Zone 1 Khan’s disregard for the bucolic, and
car-dependent, areas like Biggin
Hill. Bromley’s answer to Teresa O’Neill, Council Leader Colin Smith has persuasively argued against ULEZ via interviews and official
statements. Both Bacon and Smith have spoken of Bromley’s clean air. How do they know it’s clean? How many
air-quality monitoring stations
does Bromley have? Let me give you a hint: Bexley has 3. Maybe we can make a guess based on the borough land area. #BrilliantBexley covers
61 square kilometres. Bromley, London’s largest borough, has 150. 3x150/61 = 7·5. Shall we say 7? How about 1. As of now, London Borough
of Bromley has a single air-quality monitoring station, located near the Glades shopping centre. You can see the problem. You can only
evaluate what you measure, and if you don’t measure much - and it is you who decides how much money to spend on
air-quality testing
- there’s less chance of an uncomfortable finding. In very simple terms: no measurement, no problem.
Positively, Bexley has done better in this regard than its richer neighbour, although you will not enjoy learning the reason. Riverside
Energy Park may have “park” in its name - “river” too - but in reality it’s a giant waste incinerator in Belvedere, burning rubbish
brought to it on the Thames. Waste management company Cory built the facility in 2012, and in 2020 gained Bexley’s permission to expand it.
Keen to demonstrate
the incinerator’s cleanness, Cory agreed to finance air-quality monitoring stations around its site. And so we have Belvedere, Belvedere
West and Slade Green sites in the northeast of the borough.
In addition to the three owned-by-Bexley,
paid-by-Cory sites, Bexley “piggybacks” on two monitoring stations that belong to Greenwich
and sit on two major roads as they cross into Bexley. The Falconwood site “watches” A2, while the Sidcup Fiveways site records
air-pollution
levels on A20. In total we get five monitoring stations, two on busy motorways (Sidcup and Falconwood) and three in residential areas
(Belvedere and Slade Green). What numbers do we see? Read Part 7 to find out. [Collective groan]
Links
London Air
https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/Default.aspx
WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines 2021
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/345329/9789240034228-eng.pdf
“Damning New Report Shatters 'Scientific' Claims Made By London Mayor Khan”
https://togetherdeclaration.org/ulez/
“Rainham MP ends campaign against Belvedere incinerator plans”
https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/21478258.rainham-mp-ends-campaign-belvedere-incinerator-plans/
Bexley council: “ULEZ - Member Task and Finish work”
https://bexley.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/743567/start_time/9752000
“ULEZ: West London garage owner fears expansion of £12.50 zone will reduce value of his 27-year-old business by £300,000 and ‘financially ruin him’”
https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/london-ulez-west-london-garage-26284874
“Builder says he’ll lose £3,000 over Ulez which ‘tradesmen can’t afford’”
https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/27/builder-says-hell-lose-3000-over-ulez-that-tradesmen-cant-afford-18355914/
ULEZ Protest in Orpington, by Brown Car Guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twGjux08IMg
ULEZ Protest in Bromley, by Brown Car Guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaiAH7Gq4yI&t=1035s
8 April - Beating the commuter parking problem
There is probably not a lot of point in trying to summarise
the Labour letter
to residents adversely affected by Crossrail Commuters when you can easily read it for yourself.
In my opinion it is not just a question of restricting parking but also of
eliminating dangerous parking, on corners in particular but also the habit of
parking end on to the kerb needs to be prohibited. Long front ends overhang and effectively
block narrow pavements and the back ends of large vans restrict carriageways to a
single lane and sometimes compel driving over the opposite footpath.
There’s no relief at the weekend due to events at Lesnes Abbey.
Some areas at the end of cul-de-sacs were designated as turning circles on the
original planning application but never enforced. They should be. Every resident
has at least one parking space and many if not most have two or more. Only a
very few multi-car owning flat dwellers will need to pay for a CPZ parking permit.
Inevitably there will be a loss of parking spaces but the inconvenience of
having little and sometime no vehicular access to the main road is dangerous.
Can we rely on Cabinet Member Craske making the right decision? Surely no one
can be wrong every single time?
Click extract for complete letter.
6 April - Another Craske failure, inevitably
No sooner had I written “Bexley Council doesn’t care” yesterday but
Councillor Sally Hinkley was at my door (with colleagues Esther Amaning and
Daniel Francis at doors opposite) to show that the Belvedere Labour Councillors at least, do.
Sally’s letter to residents announced that the area North of Lesnes Abbey (me)
will belatedly follow the area to the South and be allowed a consultation on the
scourge of inconsiderate commuter parking. Presumably it will not resemble
the
last Consultation in 2007 in which Cabinet Member Craske decided against
circulating it to all of the affected area but went outside it instead and then
dismissed every single objection.
It is fairly easy, if you have watched Bexley Council as closely as I have, to
deduce that Councillor Craske may be the biggest reason for the borough slowly
declining. Just look at his reason given below for ignoring the Abbey Wood parking problems.
Thanks to the three plus year delay to the opening of the Elizabeth line for
which he erroneously blames Mayor Khan, Craske has had an extra three years in
which to formulate a traffic management plan.
There was no “inevitability” about his failure to act;
surely the lamest ever of his lame excuses? Parking issues have been
a
feature of BiB for the past (almost) ten years and become a significant problem since
24th May 2022. It has been featured widely, everywhere from the local press
to the BBC
and Craske has done nothing apart from drawing his £2,000 a month allowance.
More on the Consultation later. Meanwhile a
couple of Craske non-answers.
5 April - After a ten year wait it is coming back
They
will have to be going some
to have it open this month but work has started on restoring
the Felixstowe Road (Abbey Wood) car park which was ripped up along with its
trees ten years ago. (Photo 1.) Whether it will improve the commuter parking situation is
debatable. Bexley Council is intent on making the Elizabeth line a cash cow and
the increased parking charges (£15 for two hours) are already displacing commuters into residential streets.
Last Monday evening at 18:45 the rectangle of roads formed by Abbey Road, Wilton
Road, Gayton Road and Florence Road was completely gridlocked with cars and buses going nowhere.
It often is but Monday evening was particularly bad. Through traffic on Abbey Road gets trapped too disrupting four more bus routes.
Yesterday when I tried to drive out of Carrill Way I found it close to being
blocked. A lady attempting to drive in the opposite in a large Mercedes gave up
trying to get through the small gap although by approaching at an acute angle I was
able to wiggle through. There was no way that a fire engine could have got
through and it stayed that way all day. Every resident I have spoken to (seven)
have said much the same thing. “I have reported it but Bexley Council doesn’t care.”
We need single yellow lines everywhere and double yellow at junctions. Parking
that is not compliant with the Highway Code results in cars being forced on to
the wrong side of the road on blind bends.
1 April - “Delay, Deny and Hope You Die”
Sometimes
I wonder if my own views on the state of the NHS might be a little extreme; GPs too often
incompetent lazy wotnots and nurses may not be the caring angels of folklore.
When I related how a couple of years ago that my then GP announced he no longer
intended to see patients at all I was called a liar on Twitter, but fortunately I no longer
have to say what I think and instead can report what Bexley GP Bob Gill says.
I knew from watching
his YouTube videos that he believes that the NHS is being
lined up for American style privatisation and that was very much his theme last Wednesday evening.
In the US, if you can get health insurance at all, the policy excess may be in the order of
$10,000 and it doesn’t even buy you good care. The third biggest cause of death
in the USA is medical negligence and the British government recruited the
President of their biggest Health Care company to head up NHS England and elevated him to the House of Lords.
Doctor Bob Gill is not a random social media nutter and backed up every single
one of the statements that may be read below with copies of the original
government documents and videos of proceedings in Parliament and
its equivalents in the USA plus White House interviews with presidents.
My hurried scribbling may not have always accurately recorded the titles of the
various quangos and committees which are furtively working towards NHS privatisation - so have largely avoided naming them - but
the basic facts are as stated. All the legislation is now in place to allow privatisation.
If one discounts Richard Nixon plotting something similar in the USA, the oldest
supporting document was from 1977 when Nicholas Ridley MP presented soon to be
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with
his blueprint for privatisation and specifically the privatisation by
stealth of the NHS. Over the 50 following years the NHS has been systematically
carved up with that in mind. Simply privatising the lot in one go would be
politically unacceptable but piecemeal, through division into autonomous Trusts
etc. makes it feasible.
Oliver Letwin and John Redwood laid further foundations for it in 1988 with their
Centre for Policy Studies and Tony Blair’s Government pursued the same aims with
the ruinous PFIs and the servicing of debts has become a primary reason for there not
being enough beds. Queen Mary’s was debt free so it had to be sold off for
housing to pay for other parts of the same Trust. “PFI is the way that
taxpayers’ money can be sucked out into private hands.”
Doctor Gill digressed to cover the effect on four of his patients all of whom
are now dead. One lady he sent to Urgent Care with symptoms and even I with zero medical
qualifications correctly guessed might be the cause. From there she went to St. Mary’s who sent her home having diagnosed
a virus. As a result of this incompetence the lady spent a year in King’s
College Intensive Care at a cost of thousands per day before dying “a quivering wreck”. (†)
Four London Trusts, all failed miserably.
A young man with a spinal problem was denied a scan and sent home. He became
paralysed and died of sepsis when his problem “should have been obvious to a
first year medical student”. Doctors who care for patients in the old fashioned
way are told they are “too sensitive” and reminded that they should not care
because death reduces costs.
“Mind shattering incompetence” is obvious in our local hospitals and whistle
blowers are shown the door scaring the wits out of otherwise decent staff from
Consultant to Porter. Doctors “falsify the records” because they know that “the
only way to the top is to say the right thing”. “CCGs operate in a way that
might be expected of North Korea.”
For every 80 patients who face A&E delays one is dying as a direct result of
those delays but “when Matt Hancock caused 20,000 deaths and is not in jail” why
should anyone care?
The object of it all is to drive up private profits and under reforms brought in
by Kenneth Clark private providers are allowed to keep the money for themselves
if it is not spent on patients. Hence the title of today’s epistle. Some local
GPs do nothing but employ juniors and extract more than £100k, per year profit from the
business without ever having to see a patient. And then sell the business to
American conglomerates. “The GP’s priority is to maximise
their income and that affects mortality.” Unions such as Unite and the Royal
College of Nursing are complicit in the move towards privatisation and Dr. Gill
pleaded with union members in the audience to complain to their leaders.
A total of 31 medical procedures have succumbed to the financial cuts on top of
which some hospitals are unable to cope with emergencies. There is no
resusitation team or blood transfusion service at St. Mary’s for example.
It was a very depressing two hours.
† I may have conflated two of the four patient reports here. My shorthand was not sufficient to keep up.
