Labour's Shame

This is the letter that was printed in a prime position in the Ham & High recently but was turned down for publication by the CNJ. 

Dear Ham & High

Camden's Labour councillors have regularly blamed the Coalition Government for any shortfall in the Council's performance.  "The Government cuts are to blame" is the regular mantra your readers have learnt to expect. 

But the true nature of the Council's finances was revealed in a written answer to my question to the Cabinet Member for Finance at the last Council meeting before the elections. 

In the last four years the Council has underspent its set budgets every year. The total underspend over that time is £19.2 millions. Most of that money was transferred into "earmarked reserves" but mysteriously most of these reserves have simply grown over time and have not been spent. 

During that same time Camden has closed libraries, cut spending on street sweeping and refuse collections, and cut the grants to the voluntary sector groups that do so much to maintain the social fabric of our borough. 

In total the Council is sitting on reserves and balances that have now reached over £100 millions. Some of this is rightly set aside for capital programme schemes like investment in our schools.

But most of the money is not saved for such items. For example there is enough cash to restore spending on the street sweeping to its former levels, (a source of regular complaints in West Hampstead), and we could better fund voluntary sector groups, plus a lot more besides. 

So the next time you hear Labour's excuse - "it's the Government's fault" - don't you believe them! As my colleague Cllr Matt Sanders tweeted at the Council meeting - "Cllr John Bryant uncovers  a £19m underspend. Labour slash services and blame government, while hoarding taxpayers money." 

That really does say it all. 

Cllr John Bryant
West Hampstead ward
LB Camden

Labour gets it wrong...AGAIN

On Tuesday 21st January Camden Labour abused the scrutiny system to push through an ideological policy to extend Kingsgate School against overwhelming evidence that the case was flawed. 

Labour members ignored the fact that the decision to extend the school by placing an infant and nursery building half a mile away on an industrial estate would put children and parents at risk when travelling to school on West End Lane. They ignored the fact that adding a further transition to pupils' lives when switching from Infants to juniors could impact on their progress. 

Labour also relished the fact that the site would have to be cleared of the current local businesses occupying the site, shipping out well over a hundred jobs from the area. They also ignored the fact that the housing scheme designed to pay for the scheme allowed for no affordable housing, breaking the Council's own planning policy. 

And the final insult to the West Hampstead community was the realisation that although the school could now be paid for by £6.7m funding allocated by the Coalition Government, the current proposals proceeded, unchanged by the scrutiny committee, to make the Council £9.7m profit to spend elsewhere in the borough. 

So West Hampstead gets a potentially dysfunctional school, (with some Kilburn parents losing out on places when the admission point moves northwards),  an over intensive private housing development, no affordable housing to sweeten the pill, and a decimated industrial estate no longer providing local employment. 

The alternative case would be for a stand alone all-age primary school to serve the bulging pupil numbers in West Hampstead, which will grow further on the back of already committed housing developments. The Government money should be earmarked for the school and the rest of the site development could provide for a bigger industrial estate than the one currently proposed. 

Why can't Labour consider this alternative? Because they are ideologically opposed to finding an acceptable partner to lead a Free School or Academy on the site, which is why they were not prepared to use the scrutiny committee for its intended purpose. 

West Hampstead needs a new primary school that will be in place for at least 100 years, but we should not accept this flawed proposal. 

The Co-operative Bank is still getting it wrong

I have been a Co-operative Bank customer since 1975. I opened my first current account with them when at University. Over the years I have opened more and more accounts and I now have a credit card, a joint current account, a mortgage and two business accounts with them.

I have just over three years left on my current mortgage and yesterday asked for a further modest advance to purchase a lease extension. The total outstanding debt would rise to around 15% of the property's recent valuation.

I was turned down because the bank had made a "top-level policy decision" not to extend mortgages like mine that were taken out before 2004. I enquired whether I could apply for a new product to replace my existing mortgage and was told that I had to seek another provider.

So a loyal customer of a bank with an ethical investment policy was being turned down on spurious grounds because of a "top-level policy decision". I am not a high risk to lend money to, and the bank's exposure would be to a modest percentage of a property in a highly desirable part of London.

The decision to withdraw business from me is nothing compared to the "top-level decision"  to withdraw banking facilities to a range of local authorities including Camden which has a turnover in excess of a billion a year. Why would a bank want to deliberately reduce its trade with safe customers?

Something is definitely going wrong with the Co-operative Bank.

Next stop for me is the Nationwide, a traditional mutual, which suits my own ethical stance.

On MPs Pay

All three party leaders should keep out of the debate on IPSA's recommendation to improve MPs' pay in 2015.

Why? Because all three of them earn far more from ministerial salaries (including Miliband who gets a salary as Leader of the Opposition)

The figures for these ministerial salaries were fixed in September 2010 when the Coalition Government cut ministers' pay by 10% and froze the salary levels for the lifetime of the parliament. But they were and still are generous.

If Cameron, Clegg and Miliband want to "cut the cost of politics", then take another cut to ministerial salaries and accept the IPSA recommendations for MPs' pay, which are cost neutral.

                                             Minister's Pay                        Total (with MPs salary)
 

Prime Minister	132,923	198,661
Cabinet Minister	79,754	145,492
Lord Chancellor	79,754	145,492
Government Chief Whip	79,754	145,492
Minister of State	41,370	107,108
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State	31,401	97,139
Solicitor General	69,491	135,229
Advocate General	69,491	135,229
Government Deputy Chief Whip	41,370	106,136
Government Whip	26,624	92,362
Assistant Government Whip	26,624	92,362
Leader of the Opposition	73,617	139,355
Opposition Chief Whip	41,370	107,108
Deputy Opposition Chief Whip	26,624	92,362
Speaker	79,754	145,492
Chairman of Ways and Means (Deputy Speaker)	41,370	107,108
First Deputy Chairman of Ways & Means (Deputy Speaker)	36,360	102,098
Second Deputy Chairman of Ways & Means (Deputy Speaker)	36,360	102,098

I am back - and moaning!

I had not posted on my own account for a while and I now find Google has cut me off from adding to my old blog page!

So here I am on a revised blog design and I have to use my first blog post to moan about HS2. Yes I know Camden has raised countless objections to the principle, the route, the business case, the cost,  and the ridiculous level of disruption it will cause, but a new and different dimension to all this hit me this week when I opened an envelope to find that the building I live in is likely to be compulsorily purchased as part of the construction of the line through Kilburn.

Not that it was particularly easy to follow the language used, but after consulting my architect neighbour we are now convinced we are to be bulldozed to construct - er - well that is not exactly  clear from the unhelpful map they enclosed in our envelopes.

And of course when I send in my reasonable enquiry to the hs2 email address supplied to find out what they intend to do with our building, the routine acknowledgement says I will get an answer in twenty working days - just in time for Xmas.

Meanwhile the publication of the 50,000 pages of documents on 29th November means anyone petitioning against the  Parliamentary Bill will have to read 900 pages a day before the deadline in March to make sure they know what they are petitioning against.

As the lawyer acting to my freeholder said to me yesterday "I've never met anyone who has even been to Birmingham , never mind wanted to get there 20 minutes earlier."

Quite so. As someone who regularly travels to Coventry it is even more galling that if HS2 proceeds as currently planned there will be a reduction in trains to my home town rather than more. So I lose my home and get a worse train service to go with it.

I think that's worth moaning about don't you?

To cheer you up I have included a wedding photo with Nana and my in-laws from the ceremony in Ghana in August.