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News and Comment May 2023

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22 May - The message from Bexley’s Lady of Lords

The last Leader’s Report to Council was nearly a month ago but still relevant. She said that the Mayor would be sending a letter to the King and visiting a number of Coronation street parties but very quickly moved on to congratulating the Council on “the terrific OFSTED result”.

Then it was the less well known issue of the Park View Care Home fire but there had been “absolute sterling work by our team. Every one of the residents had been placed by eight o’clock that evening. Absolutely amazing.”

Teresa O’Neill said that the opposition would groan but but the Council was elected to oppose the ULEZ scheme and residents made the same decision during the consultation which the Mayor decided to ignore. He has gone ahead with camera installation in the borough despite the Council’s objections. (I saw them being sneakily installed near The Cob roundabout at dawn yesterday morning.)

The Leader said that the Mayor is determined to hit the most hard pressed residents hardest and says it is OK to pollute if you can afford it. Later she remembered that the new Superloop bus services go nowhere near the North of the borough which has the highest proportion of non-compliant cars.

Councillor Borella (Labour, North End) jumped in to put his pro-ULEZ pro-taxation views by saying there was not enough air quality monitoring in Bexley. His ward is full of “dirty traffic” and the Conservatives do nothing about City Airport expansion which allows pollution to blow across the whole borough. (So the air quality figures for Bexley are due more to Frank Whittle than Rudolph Diesel? Does @tonyofsidcup know?)

He referred to Bexley Conservatives’ְ insatiable appetite for taxing motorists with their outrageous parking charges designed to curtail local shopping and the proliferation of yellow box junctions which serve little purpose other than to raise revenue.

Just like Khan ordered his ANPR cameras before conducting the ULEZ Consultation Bexley Council has installed ANPR at the recycling centres before any such order to restrict access has been signed.

On less firm ground perhaps Councillor Borella returned to the allegedly “racist remarks made by Councillor Davey on Social Media. Will the Leader condemn them?”

Bexley is no longer the top recycling borough and it is due to poor management of the contracts.

The Leader said there is air quality monitoring in North End Road but the Mayor had withdrawn funding for it and made “ridiculous” assertions about the Council’s data recording which avoided the nonsense of comparing recent times with the Covid period. It didn’t suit the Mayor’s biased agenda.

Yellow Box JunctionsThe Leader added that ULEZ is not comparable to Yellow Box Junctions because one is a choice and the other is not.

Councillor O’Neill said that Councillor Davey’s Tweet was not racist. The Monitoring Officer (and BiB) had said so.

Cabinet Member Craske responded to the ANPR issue by saying that he had told the Labour Group what was to happen before he took any action and they did not respond. Similarly they are on record as saying they have no criticism to make of Yellow Box Junctions.

He is “devastated” that Bexley has lost its position as top recycler and the reason is the Summer 2021 strike which the Labour Group supported.

Councillor Wendy Perfect (Labour) said the Yellow Box Junction at John Luton Court is very difficult to negotiate and is nothing but a Cash Cow. The Leader appeared to be sympathetic to that view.

Councillor Steven Hall (Conservative) asked if there was any recent comment by City Hall on not wasting money by comparing Covid pollution levels with more typical ones. She instead highlighted the Mayor's lies about the allegedly low number of non-compliant cars which had been discredited by both the BBC and the RAC. The true number is 700,000 in Outer London alone.

Note: Some of the comments attributed to Councillors O’Neill and Borella are interpreted summaries of longer speeches, hence the lack of quotation marks.

I was unable to locate John Luton Court but the Labour Group quickly advised that Wendy said “John Newton Court” which is in Welling. Hasn’t Welling got enough to contend with without being attacked by Bexley Council? On the very few occasions I’ve walked past the shops in Welling I thought they were an interesting selection but there is no way I would go there by car and risk a cash grab by Bexley Council and there is no direct bus service from Belvedere/Abbey Wood. (Three packages coming from Amazon later today. Bexley Council think their policies have no effect on the borough. As usual they are wrong.)

 

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