Bushstock 2012 Unveiled

Bushstock 2012 has been unveiled and will be taking place across five venues in June this year, following the phenomenal success of last year's event. St Stephen's Church, the Defector's Weld, Bush Hall, Ginglik and Shepherd's Bar will play host to bands including Dan Croll, David McCaffrey, Lanterns on the Lake, Marcus Foster, Pale Seas, Rae Morris, Raghu Dixit and Sarah Jarosz.

Get yer tickets here.

The organisers have produced the vids above and below which are well worth a watch for a unique insight into how some (admittedly very strange indeed) people see the Bush!

Murdoch sells Sun in Shepherd's Bush

This Sunday one of the most controversial media men in the world was in the Bush flogging the Sun according to Roy Greenslade of the Grauniad. Sales at WH Smith in Westfield were roaring, apparently, and the man at the centre of the phone hacking scandal thinks that over 3 million copies were sold.

So there we are folks, the Bush at the centre of things again! Watch out for an irascible elderly man outside the central line this morning, complete in those red caps and capes the Sun sellers have, demanding your 30p or whatever it costs for a copy.

And do change your voicemail pin from time to time.

Private Eye: H&F Council in tax trouble

Well, it's another of what has become our Council's weekly appearances in the Rotten Boroughs section of Private Eye.

Following my article which raised questions about the tax arrangements of the authority the satirical magazine ran this piece - this week it seems they've delved further and found that Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs think that there are many other cases to answer at Hammersmith Town Hall.

The likely punishments for tax avoidance involve fines - which would be paid witth your cash. 

Oh, and my favourite Top Tory is in trouble for swearing. I've raised Greg Smith's exuberances once or twice before and it doesnt come as any surprise that his opponents have taken advantage of his potty mouthed outbursts. But to be frank I think they should leave him alone, I think it's great to have politicians who are not boring cardboard cut outs!

But their repeated appearances in the Eye will be very f*%^ing unwelcome for the press team down at the Town Hall.

Boris Bikes in the Bush: £2million

Boris on tax payer funded bike

Has our Council been stumping up your cash for Boris Bikes? I think we should be told. My excellent fellow blogger over at MayorWatch has uncovered some disturbing evidence of how hard-pressed council tax payers have been funding the scheme, which is a flagship of Boris Johnson's re-election campaign, despite the fact that Barclays Bank are given lavish credit by TfL.

Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest boroughs in London, has had to provide £2 million for the luxury of the bike scheme, while in the western extension which includes Hammersmith & Fulham we now know that Wandsworth were told that their participation in the scheme was “conditional on the Council making a financial contribution of £2 million.” So it seems reasonable to assume that our own Council has handed over £2 million of our cash too, as it seems to be the going rate. 

So where has this money come from? Around £500,000 appears to come from the Local Implementation Plan (LIP) scheme, under which money is allocated for local transport improvements. So in other words money that would have been used by H&F to fund other transport improvements such as bus routes or road repairs has probably been used to gain the sexy rows of Boris Bikes instead. 

I say probably because I have asked the press office about this and they haven't replied. Perhaps this article will jog their memories. My question, dear Council, is this: how much money have you contributed to the Boris Bikes scheme to bring it to the borough? Is it the £2 million bill being paid out by other local authorities? 

The other funder of the scheme, apparently, in our neck of the woods is Westfield. The Centre is to provide funding that will allow what the PR men are calling "an early taster" of the western expansion by extending Barclays Cycle Hire to the shopping centre by spring 2012. Just around Mayoral election time. Approximately twelve new docking stations will connect the existing cycle hire zone to Westfield White City and six docking stations will potentially be on the grounds of Westfield London itself.

All good stuff - but how much are they providing to the scheme? Unclear from this press release which lavishes praise instead on Barclays for upping its stake to £50 million. It was reported as being £4 million by the Fulham Chronicle at the time, but no mention was made of the contribution by local tax payers. I wonder if they even asked. The reporter who wrote the story has represented his newspaper's Twitter feed with a pic of him n' Boris ever since.

Is H&F really the only borough in all of London taking part in the scheme not contributing any tax cash? I doubt it. 

Boris spake thus at the time of the H&F announcement in July last year:

“My thanks go to Barclays for the benevolence they have demonstrated with their latest bestowal of funds and I am pleased that we can confirm the extension of their sponsorship agreement. By working together we are putting thousands more Londoners on two wheels. 

“My thanks also go to the Boroughs who have been champing at the bit for an expansion of this scheme, and to Westfield London for providing an investment that from next year will enable hordes of shoppers to make the journey to their glittering halls by the cleanest, greenest and most enjoyable form of transport available.”

Classic Boris there, but strangely no mention of the role of the Council tax payer and their contribution. Don't they deserve a bit of Boris' oratory in recognition of the large tax bill they are shouldering to support the scheme? Or is that the bit the Mayor would rather not talk about?

As MayorWatch points out:

"The fact that boroughs contribute to the cycle hire scheme isn’t some hitherto undiscovered secret, but it’s also not a widely known fact thanks in part to TfL’s publicity machine. 

"Press releases and publicity are focussed on achieving the maximum publicity for the Mayor and TfL’s preferred financial backer to the near exclusion of all others". 

"But while Londoners are encouraged to be thankful to a headline corporate sponsor, it’s their local councillors, employers and developers who are funding much of the scheme’s growth".

And as we saw from the Tory election leaflets being handed out by some of H&F's finest yesterday at Shepherd's Bush tube station, Boris intends to talk a lot about transport and cycling. So I think a fair question to ask, ahead of that election, is how much have we the taxpayers paid towards the acquisition of a row of shiny Boris Bikes outside that same tube station, just in time for polling day? 

Meanwhile the Chief Executive of Barclays Bank, who get to have their branding plastered all over the bikes throughout London in an Olympic year, was paid a £6.5 million bonus last year. That's bonus - i.e. on top of his salary of £1.1 million. They have our undying gratitude.

23/2 UPDATE - EXCLUSIVE: The Council have just responded to this article by admitting they DO plan to spend £2 million of your money on this scheme. Here's a statement I have just been sent by a spokesperson:

"The council is not paying anything towards the Westfield extension of the Mayor's cycle hire scheme, which goes live next month, as Westfield are paying fully for that.  

“However, we have agreed along with other boroughs - such as Wandsworth - to contribute up to the equivalent of £2million towards the full stage 3 extension which is set to be rolled out from the Spring of 2013 as we recognise the importance of having a variety of methods of getting around our small, congested borough. 

“This will be found in a variety of ways including developer funding through section 106 and in kind support such as officer time and use of premises. 

“A large number of borough residents are already registered users of the existing scheme and more than 200 residents responded to our request for possible hire station locations in the borough, so we know that there is a large demand for an extension of the scheme.”

So now we know - £2 million is a the price tag you will be contributing to a scheme that, on current stats, few of you will use. Phrases such as "in-kind support such as officer time", for example, are surely a bit of spin - it means that officers whose salaries you pay will not be doing what you pay them to - that is a PR man's line to disguise expenditure.

There is a perfectly legitimate argument to make that this is a worthwhile investment in a green form of transport - all I have tried to do by looking beyond the PR is to unearth the true cost. Sadly other press outlets seem just to cut and paste the press releases they get sometimes.

28/2 UPDATE - ...bringing up the rear on this story, as ever, is the Fulham Chronicle who swallowed a Boris press release and didn't ask any searching questions. Their story does not refer to this blog (surprise surprise) despite the fact that building on MayorWatch's story it was my questioning that got the info about the £2 million cost to H&F. Funny how the media works - but even funnier that their advertising of this "new" story on Twitter provoked something of a backlash among locals, narked by one journalists furious Tweeting!

Boris fields searching questions from the star-struck Chronicle

Meanwhile one of their reporters continues to feature the blonde one on his newspaper's Twitter feed as he has done ever since he met Boris at Westfield when he swallowed Boris' line about the Boris Bikes not costing us a penny. Is this wise in a Mayoral election year?

19 MARCH UPDATE - Well our Council will have to formally debate the £2 million cost of Boris' tax payer funded Bikes this evening, thanks to a motion put forward by Shepherd's Bush Labour councillors Andrew Jones and Askew cllr Lisa Homan. The motion, which will be voted down by the ruling Conservatives, reads as follows:

SPECIAL MOTION NO. 1 – BORIS/BARCLAYS BANK BIKES

Standing in the names of: 

(i) Councillor Lisa Homan
(ii) Councillor Andrew Jones

“This Council believes that its reported £2 million contribution towards the Boris/Barclays Bank Bikes schemes is a terrible waste of money and determines NOT to contribute a single penny of LBHF money towards the Boris/Barclays Bank Bikes scheme. We urge the London Mayor to find private sector funding to make this scheme work and deliver value for money.

The Council believes it is a priority to cut all council taxes and this money could better be used to do that or be put towards other local priorities such as reversing the cuts to police sergeants, paying off debt, or improving other local services and facilities in line with residents’ wishes.”

Inside Out London: Council shamed

Greenhalgh: reduced to pleading "extra retail space"

Last night's BBC Inside Out programme is a must see for anyone wishing to understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to the Goldhawk Road row of shops that our Council and developers Orion wish to demolish, in order to construct 212 luxury flats on top of the next-door market. Against the evident pride and richness of the historic row of shops on Goldhawk Road was contrasted the bully-boy tactics of our Council and their property developer friends.

Shop owners from Cooke's pie & mash, Zippys Cafe and the fabric shops all explained, together with a local resident, the ways in which the Council had basically ignored them in their pursuit of the development. I was disappointed the programme missed the fact that Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh, who was reduced to saying that the "new units" the shops would be offered would have "extra retail space", had actually promised at this public meeting not to let the shops be demolished if the shop owners didn't want that.

That is one of the biggest broken promises of his time in office as far as Shepherd's Bush is concerned. And as the programme went on to point out, the shop keepers themselves will be unable to pay the rent in the new modern units - having been forced from being freeholders to tenants in a luxury premium rate development. But who cares about that when there's millions to be made.

Watch it - and remember that there are now only two things that can save this historic piece of London: the judicial review on May 15-16, or the prospect of Ken Livingstone taking over from Boris Johnson. I'm no fan of Ken, personally, but it's quite clear that he seems to be the last hope for the Market.

Handbags: Tories accuse Labour of wasting your cash

The Handbag: Thatcher's weapon of choice

The ruling Conservative group on H&F Council has taken a bit of a battering over allegations of tax evasion and criticism of their decision to spend money on booze ups for a leaving Chief Executive who himself was the 17th highest paid in the United Kingdom and who the Government said was over-paid.

They say attack is the best form of defence and one of the Councillors seen as a leading contender to take over from departing Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh has launched a stinging attack on the local Tory blog, which charges the Labour Opposition of being, well, a bit lazy. Worse still, he says, their laziness in not turning up to meetings has cost you the tax payer cash, as meetings have had to be rescheduled and decisions delayed. Labour retort that this is a bit rich coming from a party who intentionally bring meetings to a close in order to "go to the pub" and suggest that this attack has more to do with the H&F Conservative leadership race than anything else. Read the exchange for yourself below - you won't find it reported anywhere else...

Here's the charge sheet from Councillor Andrew Johnson, Cabinet Member for Housing:

Do we really get value for money for Labour’s £164,340 a year?

Good question and one that really needs to be explored further. We, or to be more specific you, currently pay the Labour Group £164,340 a year to oppose. But recently a worrying trend is starting to develop within Hammersmith & Fulham. For it seems despite pocketing not insignificant sums of money, that senior members of the opposition are not bothering to show up to critical meetings or hold the council to account. Failing, for example, to attend key meetings, such as Cabinet when important decisions are being taken, or even recently by failing to table amendments to the Council’s budget as it was being discussed at scrutiny meetings.

Now it might seem rather strange, as a member of the administration, for me to condemn the opposition for failing to hold us to account and scrutinise what we do. But the point remains that in a democracy we need an effective opposition to hold us to account. Especially when they are getting paid additional money for supposedly doing it!

An example of this was a recent Cabinet meeting which, among other things, agreed to set the level of rents and other charges for our council tenants for the coming year. Clearly, not an easy process, given the significant financial constraints of the current economic climate, but something you would have expected the opposition to attend to ask questions, or even propose an alternative. Yet on the night all we saw was a row of empty chairs opposite. Not one Labour Councillor showed up, which is strange considering they always claim to have such a big interest in housing. Strange, but sadly not unexpected.

It seems as though they have either given up, which doesn’t say much for their courage of conviction and staying power. Or they simply realise that this Conservative controlled council is on the right financial track and they have no alternative to offer. Whichever way you want to read it, it is not good for either the conduct of council business or for residents getting value for money from their elected representatives by this failure by the Labour Opposition to do its basic job – oppose!

Next week we have Budget Council, where we will set the budget and level of council tax for the coming year. It will be interesting to see if the opposition actually do table some amendments, or even an alternative budget – they are entitled to do so but never have. I rather suspect they will not, based upon recent performance.

Often it’s all too easy to criticise without having a credible alternative in place, yet our opposition are not even doing this.

So if you happen to spot one of them, perhaps you ought to ask them why. After all it’s your money they’re claiming, for not doing their job!

Tough stuff - but Labour Leader Stephen Cowan has a different view and comes out swinging himself. He told me yesterday that:

Hammersmith and Fulham’s Labour Opposition has become famous for holding this now infamous Conservative Administration to account. Our vigorous approach has included forcing local Conservative councillors to give back their secret 18% salary rise; we’ve made them reverse their decision to cut police numbers in the ward with the highest crime; we’ve exposed exactly how local Conservatives are bending over backwards to help property speculators blight the Borough; we uncovered nearly 600 new stealth taxes they've introduced; and we’ve uncovered their morally corrupt practice of bringing back former local government retirees as £300k a year “consultants” (plus pensions) which has therefore put them on the wrong side of UK tax laws. We continue to work closely with local residents to hold the Conservatives to account and demonstrate when they fail to be honest or when they break their commitments to the public.

This rather silly attack is the same nonsense peddled last September. 

http://www.thecowanreport.com/2011/09/phibbs-spotlights-h-councils-corrupted.html Any resident who has been to the Cabinet Meetings will know that the Opposition has been forbidden to speak or ask questions. The Conservatives have made the Cabinet Meetings a sham and they often finish after just 3 or 4 minutes.

Cllr. Andrew Johnson’s attack (Con) has brought his own record into view. This has included cutting short a Select Committee meeting he was chairing so he and his fellow Conservatives could go to the pub;

http://www.thecowanreport.com/2011/02/tories-preferred-boozing-instead-of.html

admitting he hadn’t read the briefing papers when Shelter came to talk about how his housing policies could make thousands of local people homeless and admitting at a planning meeting that he didn’t know why his Administration agreed to let a property speculator remove all affordable housing (he’s the Cabinet member for Housing) from a giant building scheme in his own ward – which he then voted through against the wishes and vocal opposition of hundreds of his own constituents.

If you consider that this week’s crunch Audit Committee has had to be cancelled for the official reason that “apologies” from all four Conservative “Committee members mean that the meeting would not meet the quorum”. Then it’s questionable whether Cllr. Johnson has any idea what he talking about or whether this is some sort of back-handed attack on Cllr. Nicholas Botterill, who is an Audit Committee member, and whom Cllr. Johnson is currently competing with to be the next Conservative Council Leader.
So that's all clear then - and watch out for swinging handbags.

Air Ambulance: Police and man injured in scuffle

The Air Ambulance which landed dramatically on Shepherd’s Bush Green on Friday was called due to an arrest that went wrong, landing a police officer and a suspect in hospital. In the end the air ambulance wasn’t needed.

I’m told by police that they were called to a domestic dispute at 1100 at an address just off Goldhawk Road on Titmuss Road. A 41 year old man was involved in a dispute with a woman in her 60s and was suspected of assaulting her.

An officer attempted to arrest the man and in a scuffle both of them fell down some stairs, receiving injuries in the process. Having been taken to hospital the officer was later discharged while the suspect remains in hospital in a stable condition with a hip injury.

The community safety unit at Fulham Police Station is investigating while the Met’s Professional Standards Body will also oversee the investigation.

The Tube: BBC series starts tonight

Aldwych disused tube station - I visited in 2010

The Tube is a six part series which kicks off tonight on BBC2 at 9pm and may be worth a watch. According to excellent fellow blogger Annie Mole the first programme features the ways staff have to deal with some of their more fully refreshed passengers of an evening.

I'll be watching - some of the characters on my usual journey to work, which involves a change from the Central to the Victoria at Oxford Circus are quite interesting. There is a mohecan sporting platform assistant, and one of the most weary, tired-of-life platform announcer you've ever met. "Pleeease don't block the doors, Ladies & Gents, it's not very intelligent"!

I moved to London in 1997 and since then I've had some truly bizarre experiences underground. Helping a pregnant woman who'd fainted and fallen backwards, smacking her head on the platform was one, witnessing a mugging another and then a full scale domestic argument in which all the sordid details of what each other had done with other people was regaled to the packed carriage.

And then my tour of Aldwych, the disused tube station, complete with actors in period costume to re-create the life people lived down there during the Blitz - there's nowhere quite like the tube.

H&F's school boxing fad: Chisora'd?

Bailey poses as tough guy - voters delivered knock out blow

Our Council loves nothing more than children learning to box - it gives otherwise pretty unfit politicians the chance to pose as rufty-toughties as this pic from unsuccessful Conservative Shepherd's Bush general election candidate Shaun Bailey demonstrates.

Sadly our police also seem to like the idea, believing that getting young lads to try and punch each other repeatedly in the head will lead them to be less, er, likely to, you know, punch other people in the head.

I've often wondered at the wisdom of this - from a health point of view since the vast majority of doctors believe that boxing is a profoundly dangerous activity - but also the logic, which seems to be completely daft.

The British Medical Association states that injuries caused by boxing include:

• Brain damage - the blows received during boxing cause the brain to move within the skull, damaging blood vessels, nerves and brain tissue.
• Acute brain haemorrhage - this is the lead cause of boxing deaths.
• Eye, ear and nose damage - in some cases boxing causes permanent sight and hearing loss.

Which is why they want it banned outright for those under 16 - the very group our Council and the local Police seem to want to promote it to.

Last time I raised it publicly on Twitter, following a Chronicle report eulogising a Shepherd's Bush school Burlington Danes, for encouraging the activity I was told by a councillor that the young lads needed a route to channel their aggression. The Fulham Chronicle, as with so many things, was in full support of the Council, lavishly praising the "art and discipline" of boxing at the school.

I don't accept that logic, what about teaching young lads self control instead? I'd say that's a harder skill than punching someone. And I've seen some pretty tough lads in pretty tough places. But even if it was true what's wrong with other martial arts that doctors say are less dangerous and involve just as much physical discipline, if not more? Karate, anyone?

The answer I suggest, is that some of our politicians think that boxing is just, well, a bit sexy. And they might be hoping a bit of the tough guy stuff might rub off on their image too. Which is nearly as sad as what we saw last night in Munich. Here's the sport of boxing showing us all how their 'art and discipline' teaches young men not to punch each other in the head:



1330 UPDATE - Well, that sparked some interesting reactions! Cllr Greg Smith, who I have a lot of time for, clearly thinks I am a bit of a wet liberal who wants people to live in a "bubble wrapped world". We don't, he informs me, before suggesting that my logic implies that I shouldn't want crossing the road to be a legal activity.

No, I couldn't either.

Others have also disagreed, but more coherently, with the argument that sport is sport and it teaches discipline while one commentator on twitter said that boxing meant young men didn't have to prove themselves on the street so may fight less.

Completely respect these points of view but I still can't see what is so special about boxing. In fact, thinking about it more, what might be the other consequences of teaching young boys to "prove themselves" by fighting each other in the ring? I wonder, for example, how that links to their relationships with women and others who can't fight back.

In the meantime Derek Chisora has been arrested by the German police, presumably after threatening to "shoot and burn" David Haye. Mr Haye is likely to have his collar felt too, not least for proving his self restraint by throwing a camera tripod at someone's head. And it'll all be reenacted in the playgrounds tomorrow.