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had withdrawn funding for it and made “ridiculous” assertions about the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.
The 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.)