Andy Slaughter has just asked Prime Minister David Cameron during a rowdy session of Prime Minister's Questions dominated by the Liam Fox affair about the NHS cuts I reported here, and first reported by the Independent newspaper.
The reality, said Mr Slaughter, was that Imperial Healthcare Trust has to make 5% year on year cuts over a period of the next 5 years - a quarter of its overall budget. How did that square, Mr Slaughter wanted to know, with the Government's pledge not to cut health services?
The Prime Minister was withering in his response, quoting Labour's new Health spokesperson Andy Burnham MP, who had apparently said that it was "irresponsible to increase NHS spending in real terms". Mr Cameron said that he and his Government disagreed, and sat down to rowdy cheers from the Conservative benches.
Boris Johnson was ambushed by West Kensington residents, furious at the prospect of being evicted from their homes in order that property developers can move in as part of our Council's plans to redevelop Earl's Court.
The conference, which is supported by H&F Council and the Fulham Chronicle, had clearly not banked on people power as the Mayor of London was unceremoniously handed a leaflet by West Ken & Gibbs Green resident Rita Vlahopoulou, who asked Boris Johnson for the right to vote on the demolition proposals.
Not quite the PR either our Council or the Chronicle were looking for.
So it something of a turn up for the books that blind and visually impaired people will now be allowed to use their guide dogs on the tube after a bye-law was lifted last week. This rights a ridiculous wrong under which TfL did not allow guide dogs on moving escalators for fear of injury.
Thanks to the work of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association TfL has now agreed to amend the law and the Government passed it recently, meaning that from last Wednesday guide dogs have been permitted.
Boris Johnson welcomed the move by saying:
"The modernisation of this antiquated byelaw helps make the Tube more accessible for all and is the fruit of some excellent collaborative work between Transport for London and the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association."
While Caroline Pidgeon, Leader of the Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly said:
"The ban on visually impaired people being able to take guide dogs on to moving escalators on the Tube and other parts of London’s transport network is outdated and wrong.
“There is clear evidence that trained guide dogs and other assistance dogs can safely use moving escalators. Having campaigned on this issue I am delighted that this change is finally taking place.”
Remember this story I wrote following the Independent's report on the closure of Charing Cross Hospital?
At the time it was pooh-poohed by the local media who accepted the vague assurances from Imperial Healthcare Trust, prompting some scornful tweets.
Now it seems those assurances have fallen to sand and the closure plans are very much on, prompting a rearguard action from Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh, who has said:
“The Trust has a massive £50 million budget deficit and is conducting a major review of where hospital services will be located in the future. It is clear that the 24/7 A&E at Charing Cross is under threat of closure and Imperial cannot be surprised at the growing public concern about their plans.”
I hope all politicians from across the board fight this decision, but in the meantime it might pay to ask a few more questions when you get vague assurances on things.
The High Speed interchange at Old Oak Common is in serious doubt after the Transport Secretary described the area as a "wet suburban station somewhere in north west London" where passengers would have to "lug your heavy bags down a couple of escalators along 600m of corridor and then change trains at a wet suburban station somewhere in north west London. That is not an option."
Not an option.
Quite a difference from the spin our Council have been putting on things with a slick new video which you can see above, which emphasises the prospect of 10,000 new jobs and 40,000 new houses - and it's a line which our local media have swallowed whole. But a blog reader has written in to point out that the commentary on the Council's video chooses their words carefully:
But the blog reader notes that the voice over on the Council's video "carefully expresses an interchange station to LINK with Crossrail which is not the same at all"
No, it's not. And it's also interesting that the Crossrail route map does not have any station called "Old Oak" on it either. So not even an interchange with that, it seems.
"This announcement is something of a setback for the redoubtable team of Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh and Cllr Mark Loveday at the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, who have been pushing Old Oak and its "huge regeneration potential", ably assisted by the crew at the Park Royal Partnership and the West London Partnership, at MIPIM and elsewhere".
"What a shame that Philip Hammond missed the point of not just linking HS2 to major transport connections but seriously unlocking a major developable site in public sector ownership, tapping into the economy of Park Royal and putting homes along underused canal sides".
But our Council remain pumped up about their vision, and its difficult to argue with anything that would regenerate what the video rightly calls an area of high deprivation. Here's Cllr Greenhalgh, Leader of H&F Council:
“HS2 is the fastest way to deliver much need new homes, jobs and opportunities in one of London's poorest areas and the case for an interchange station at Old Oak is overwhelming.”
“The Old Oak super hub is vital to making the overall HS2 plans work properly as it will relieve pressure on central London terminals, like Euston, that will not be able to cope with the huge number of additional passengers on their own.
The YouTube clip clearly shows how HS2 could be the catalyst to create Park Royal City. This is a once in lifetime opportunity to transform a sometimes forgotten part of London from a Bermuda Triangle of inactivity into a thriving new city.”
In fact as I reported here they have already commissioned leading architect Sir Terry Farell to come up with a vision for the area, some of which is expressed in the video.
But what, then, is the implication of Old Oak Common actually NOT being the direct interchange with HS2?
Monday 1430 UPDATE - The Council press office have been in touch to point out that the quote from the Transport Secretary is 15 months old, and that, as a spokesperson has just told me,
"things have moved on significantly since then. In fact, using Old Oak Common as a high speed rail interchange is a key component of the Government's "recommended route" for HS2. See a link to their website here: http://highspeedrail.dft.gov.uk/proposed-route"
"The DfT's consultation has just finished and we hope the Transport Secretary will confirm Old Oak as an HS2 station later this year. If the whole HS2 project proceeds as planned an extra Crossrail station at Old Oak will definitely be part of those plans as it will provide the vital interchange needed to take further pressure of central London stations".
"You will see that the link to the DfT currently reports: 'The Government's view is that the route recommended by HS2 Ltd, following its additional work on mitigating environmental impacts, appropriately balances the benefits and impacts of such a line, and provides a better solution than any of the alternatives considered. For this reason, the Government believes that this route for an initial London to the West Midlands high speed line should be taken forward, as the first phase in the development of a national high speed rail network.'"
I'm grateful for the update but it still doesn't change the careful wording of the video - and I note the Council press office still use the word "hope" - not quite the (intended) implication of the video which implied it was all done and dusted.
Equally the route map on that website does not clearly show Old Oak as being an interchange station, unless I have not read it properly.
Interestingly MPs will be debating the HS2 line route this coming thursday in the House of Commons - we should all be interested in the outcome of that and I hope Andy Slaughter as the local MP puts party politics to one side and supports the scheme. I also hope the Secretary of State does what H&F Council want him to do as well - but my worry is that trying to bounce him into doing so by putting out PR materials that give the impression that it is inevitable raises expectations locally without any guarantee that they will be met.
Next Saturday night you have an opportunity to meet your fellow Bushers at a music event some of them are staging at the Raving Buddha bar. Now, first things first - it's free. And if that doesn't do it for you, then have a read of what one of the chief organisers, Chris Petzny, has drafted below.
I first met Chris and the other people involved in this on one of the monthly "tweet ups" (or social evenings organised via Twitter, for those of you that haven't had your language infected by social media yet) and I can vouch for the fact that they are a top class bunch of people.
Which, I have to say, was a worry for me before I went along to our first get together all that time ago last December. With doubts soon dispelled by the fact that all of them were a) normal and b) quite good fun, I've been to several more since. And so should you. Starting with next saturday - now read on:
Return of the Urban Jungle
This coming Saturday, the 15th of October sees the Raving Buddha on Goldhawk Road host the return of Urban Jungle. For one night only we are reuniting some of the best DJs for a free journey through the land of 90s drum & bass.
But this is no ordinary journey. It all started thanks to Twitter, a noisy neighbour and the local W12 community...
Not so long ago one of the Shepherd's Bush twitterati @NelsMels, had to contend with a neighbour repeatedly and loudly playing 'No Woman No Cry' late at night. @NelsMels suggested on Twitter that some old skool drum & bass might work as revenge a means of drowning out the offending tune. I added a few bass laden suggestions of my own, as did @chrishampson and before we knew it we were reminiscing about some of our favourite 90s drum & bass tunes.
Then we thought we should get together somewhere, bring our favourite tunes and have an evening of drinks and drum & bass. As we discussed this idea, more and more W12 tweeters wanted to join in and since none of our homes are exactly palatial, the idea of hiring a venue was born. @NelsMels used to DJ and even owned a couple of drum & bass labels, so she got on the case and before we knew it, the Raving Buddha was chosen and booked.
So in the best 90s drum & bass tradition, we moved from front room to dancehall and we have the following DJs lined up and we may even have a few surprise special guests:
XO (Last.Fm, Bassdrive, Dogs On Acid)
Tendai (Swerve, Groove Connection)
Nexxi (G2 & Gain Recordings)
Zinga
Immortalmindz
Plastic
Ben Kei
J-Potz
DJ Lync
We are unbelievably excited, come and join us, it's free!! Look for #bushw12 #dnbnight on Twitter or follow @cpetzny and @NelsMels OR 'like' our Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Urban-Jungle/244247792275388 Sadly @chrishampson has a work commitment in sunny Hollywood, so won't be able to join us. We'll miss him…
Big thanks to everyone who has so far helped and encouraged our behaviour.
Sky News has a piece on Trinity Mirror, publishers of the Fulham Chronicle, on Trinity Mirror's habit of hacking phones. Don't expect to read about this in the Chronicle.
This blog has taken me to some eye opening places in our locale, and I found myself wandering underneath Hammersmith in the sewers one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of Thames Water. I was there to see Hammersmith's pumping station, which pumps millions of tons of poo every year, descending on W6 from an arc stretching across much of North London including Brent and Camden southwards.
That's a lot of sewage and as any regular reader of this blog will know, the system simply cannot cope. For between 50 and 60 times per year the sewage is simply released into the Thames - we were told before we descended underground that in June this year alone this had hapenned five times. It's this constant pollution of the river that has resulted in London being threatened with fines by the European Union, for example, unless it cleans up its act.
Having visited one of London's other sewers last year, this time the Fleet River in central London, I have to confess to being a bit over-confident of how I'd be able to handle the smell. The Fleet is one of the city's "lost rivers" and the sewer was built in the 1850s by Joseph Bazalgette along with most of the network, I spent most of my time admiring the brickwork which is still very much intact.
But Hammersmith was fields and farmlands in the 1850s so these sewers are just concrete caverns - and without a fast flowing underground river the sewage is sloooooow moving. I have to say I nearly gagged when the smell hit me at the bottom of what was a very deep and narrow climb down into the depths. And then the first thing you need to do is balance, because underneath your feet is what the sewermen showing us around politely referred to as "silt".
sinking feeling
The pumps themselves resemble massive bells about the size of a house which should get across the scale of what they do. When the sewage overwhelms pumping stations even of this size you are talking about 24 tons of raw untreated sewage entering the river - per second. Residents of the Bush, particularly those living on Askew Road, have also been flooded with sewage when the flow is so high it just backs up the pipes and enters properties. In Hammersmith itself that problem is even worse.
The proposed solution is the Thames Tideway Tunnel - and its own scale is also gigantic. A huge underground sewer that flows deep underneath the river and inside which you'd be able to fit two double decker buses would shift the Capital's brown stuff to Beckton in the east to be treated. But to build that, which will take years and add £65 per year to all of our bills, Thames Water need an entrance site. And therein lies the problem.
Nobody wants it in their backyard, which is hardly surprising. Our own Council has not covered itself in glory on this issue by spending lots of taxpayers cash churning out stories that they knew themselves at the time to be false. First they said that Ravenscourt Gardens was threatened, then Furnival Gardens. In fact not only did they know Furnival Gardens was not on the cards, but they now want to destroy it themselves by allowing property developers to build a bridge in it as part of a scheme on King Street that the residents don't want.
As a result of these cack handed tactics our Council finds itself isolated, with the Mayor of London, other riverside councils and both the last and current Government all in favour of the tunnel. It also means that the "independent" commission they have established is widely seen for what it is. I'm told by a mole that the commission will come out and say it's all too expensive and blame the European Union for threatening to levy fines.
Our Council went into propaganda overdrive when Chris Binnie, a former architect of the scheme, appeared to suggest that it had all been a terrible mistake and that really a much shorter tunnel would do. But sources at Thames Water point out that Mr Binnie has not been involved with the scheme since 2006 and in any case is suggesting that flows into the Thames are decreasing - in fact they are increasing. He also does not address how a shorter tunnel would do anything to shift the sewage that would still be released into the Thames - the problem with the river is that it is tidal - and Thames Water have a scary visual that illustrates how a brown slick simply moves up and down the river with the tide, inching its way towards the sea. And that stuff smells.
So expect the fire and fury from Hammersmith Town Hall to continue, especially when their "independent" commission launches its findings towards the end of this month.
But in the meantime spare a thought for the blokes working down the bottom of Hammersmith pumping station, who showed me some of the more bizarre things they find down there, including a plumbers pipe I saw wedged against the wall! They also regularly come across needles and other nasties while spending much of their time clearing the enourmous number of rags, nappies and of course fat that people put down the toilet, in many cases illegally.
One of the things you notice straight away about the people who work down the sewers is a very keen sense of humour - they have words for things that wouldn't find their way on to a family blog like this but are very very funny. And they don't seem to care much about who you are either -you can have as much status as you like on the surface but when your knee deep in poo in a reeking dark sewer, all of a sudden you're all pretty much the same!
Here's a couple of them talking to me in December last year about their lives, and how climate change is already affecting what they do - well worth a watch:
“I am proud to have stood on a platform of cutting taxes” said the man introduced to a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference this week in Manchester as “one of the best known and most radical Council Leaders”. It was of course Stephen Greenhalgh who shared a platform with Chelsea & Fulham MP Greg Hands, also the Parliamentary Private Secretary to George Osborne, the Chancellor.
The title of the meeting was an anorak’s dream – “Local Government – are we being radical enough?” Cllr Greenhalgh rose majestically to his feet and declared “No.” before resuming his seat, provoking a flicker of panic across the chair of the meetings face – it was of course a joke, and the big man continued on to deliver a speech that was far from being anorakish and actually made a lot of sense.
It was a big problem, he said, that the way local government is funded divides an elected local authority from the people who elected it. This is because faceless civil servants sitting in central government decide how much central funding local authorities receive based on formulas that nobody – perhaps including them – actually understand.
And hang on, where does this “central funding” come from – not some magic pot – no, said Cllr Greenhalgh, it comes from local people as well. His argument was in favour of sweeping away the civil servants and allowing local authorities who promote economic growth in their local areas to keep the proceeds of that growth to use according to local people’s priorities. Not to do so was not simply a problem of not delivering the right services, it was a basic challenge to local democracy he said.
Cllr Greenhalgh actually described calling “friends in high places”, referring to Mr Hands, as one of the means by which H&F had managed to ensure that they could deliver the tax cuts without losing some of its grants from central government. We saw this dramatically revealed in a hand written note to Planning Minister Greg Clark over the West Kensington estate, recently of course. So it was useful to have such friends, said Cllr Greenhalgh, but it shouldn’t be necessary – the system should be straightforward, simple and rooted in local areas. In other words, he said, local government needed to be “freed” – leading to more responsive authorities, incentivised to “go for growth” in the local economy and to use the proceeds to improve local people’s lives.
The fact that H&F had reduced taxes year on year by 3% and delivered on local people’s priorities was, Cllr Greenhalgh argued, the reason why they had won the last local elections – and he drew pointed comparisons with some nearby Labour run authorities who tax proportionately more and yet, he claimed, deliver much less.
This was very much in keeping with what central Government has in mind and Greg Hands paid fulsome tribute to Cllr Greenhalgh’s tenure at the top – he described the cheers he’d received from the Tory benches in the House of Commons when he declared that one of his local authorities had been successively cutting taxes. He had of course himself been the Conservative Opposition Group Leader in H&F for the 2002 elections won by Labour, and you got the sense that still rankles.
Mr Hands continued on the theme of pride by noting that both he and Cllr Greenhalgh had recently been declared among the top 100 influential people in local government, but he continued to say how his friend was there to “challenge”. He said Cllr Greenhalgh regularly challenged central government on its plans and ways of working, and paid tribute to his courage in doing so.
“It took a lot of balls to stick your neck out at the time and go against the grain”, said Mr Hands referring to Cllr Greenhalghs determination to cut council taxes, saying that central Government had not in the early days decided that council tax cuts were the way to go. The implication was clear – George Osborne’s announcement this week of a council tax freeze across the UK, and the clear determination from central government to bring those taxes down at local level was at least in part because of Cllr Greenhalgh’s pushing them to do so.
So here we have another example of how H&F is at the centre of Tory thinking on how to deliver local government across the UK, and the reason why the spotlight is set to continue on our small neck of the woods.
I had to leave the meeting early to get back to the day job (apologies due to Greg Hands for not staying to the end of his speech!) but it left me with the thought that Cllr Greenhalgh in particular would do well to show a bit more of this side in public locally as he does at national level. It is clear he is a combative and challenging thinker who has an agenda to reshape the way local government works – that is a good thing and much of what he says makes a lot of sense. But the face that local people often see, particularly those on the receiving end of our Council’s notorious local planning decisions, is of a combative Council Leader …. determined to combat them.
Greg Hands made the comment that the overall level of council tax spending across the UK has declined by 4.4% - but he challenged anyone to show examples of actual service delivery having fallen by 4%. This was the agenda of do more for less – and its clear we are going to see an awful lot more of that in H&F, with the eyes of the country upon us.
