Category Archives: Blog

Happy New Year!

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And back to work – absolutely hate going back after Christmas break.

Time off has given me the illusion of normal life … However, the first day is the worst, and with the logging on of my computer and the flood of emails, those funny, familiar shackles begin to fall into place.

The main task of the day was to get to them the quote requested by Transport for London for inclusion with Ken’s quote on the start of the Muswell Hill to Swiss Cottage bus route which will have its inaugural journey on Monday next. Hurrah!

I give TfL a very nice quote saying a ‘big thank you to Mayor Livingstone and to TfL’ and blow me, what happens? The press release appears the next day minus my quote. Sweet mystery of life!

Never mind – concentrate on getting letters out to all the school children via the Fitzjohns’ Avenue schools, local emails and letters to inform everyone it is starting and its starting times.

Father Christmas comes early

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Early morning meeting with Sir John Stevens, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, at New Scotland Yard.

This was to be about a range of issues – and included my work on telephone response in the Met. I had exposed publicly last year what everyone knows locally – that it is very difficult to get through to you local police station by phone.

I had got my team to phone every police station in London that was open to the public. 40% never answered. Following my report, this has shot up the police agenda and I am tracking it through to make sure change is delivered. I am also championing (with some success) customer satisfaction surveys as the means of judging police performance.

The Met have tended to have performance indicators and targets as their measure of success, rather than looking at the impact they are having in terms of public satisfaction. So I am quite pleased that after a long struggle this appears to be moving my way.

And then there was the issue of the Muswell Hill police station front counter. Not one to lose an opportunity – since Sir John had publicly lent his support to my campaign on this – I updated him by saying it still wasn’t open and explained that the local police commander had done all the detailed planning and costings, but was held up trying to find funding.

Basically Sir John said funding shouldn’t be a problem, this could all happen quite quickly now – and moreover he would come and open the counter with me! Father Christmas lives!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Mayor's Question Time

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The last meeting of the Assembly to question Mayor Livingstone before the Christmas break.

Of course, the key banter was about the new love in between the Mayor and Labour – and how Labour have changed their tune – overnight!

It was quite sick making. John Biggs (Labour’s Transport lead) fed the Mayor a planted question about Simon Hughes’s plans to make Oxford Street a pedestrian-friendly environment. And the Mayor savagely attacked Simon and the Lib Dems. It is quite clear from the vituperative nature of attacks that Ken Livingstone feels Simon Hughes is a real threat to his re-election.

Congestion charging review

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There was a meeting today with the transport leads from each party at the GLA to see if we can get agreement on the Review of Congestion charging report.

Pigs might fly! The Tories think it is a good report – but don’t want to sign up in principle because they don’t approve of congestion charging. The fact we are there to scrutinise the Mayor’s policy on behalf of London seems to have eluded them.

Labour either hadn’t yet read the report or were simply being obstructive. They probably won’t sign up to because, although the report finds the congestion charging scheme in terms of reducing congestion a success, it does level criticism over customer service and potential business impacts as yet unknown. And Labour, now in love with Mayor Livingstone, won’t tolerate any criticism of the Mayor.

So – how to get this very excellent review published is a mystery to me at this point – but we will see if the New Year brings any more sense to the equation.

Road humps

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I had the hump today – literally. At last, today was the day my committee held the first of two sessions on road humps which I first mooted about 18 months ago.

There certainly seems to be a real mess going on. Barnet taking them out – but virtually every other residential road it seems at times wanting them. There are good humps, bad humps, unnecessary humps and cushions and tables.

But it is undisputed that since their introduction there has been a reduction of around 60% in road deaths and serious accidents.

Weighing in in the other corner are the emergency services in the form of the police and the ambulances who both claimed that humps were slowing them down to the point where lives were equally being lost. There are also issues about noise, pollution and vibrations.

Judgment of Solomon required for this one!

What was clear from this first session is that while ‘strategic’ roads are meant to be hump free, there is a bit of a muddle about what constitutes a ‘strategic’ road. It was clear that roads which are not officially designated ‘strategic’ are actually strategic but are having humps on them. I am pretty sure we need to recommend an audit of roads, agree a hierarchy with the boroughs and a mechanism for consultation with

emergency services that is actually listened to and acted on.

The other think that is clear to me is that the ambulance service needs to look at putting its paramedics on motor bikes – they can be much quicker to arrive.

Anyway – the second session is after the Christmas break when the boroughs come to give evidence – so I don’t want to delve too deeply yet into solid recommendations. They will have to wait for the report from my enquiry.

Fireworks with the police

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Fireworks today at a full session of the London Assembly. We had before us Sir John Stevens, Met Police Commissioner and Lord Toby Harris, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, to answer the Assembly’s questions on policing in London.

Well – it wasn’t so much the content of the meeting that produced the fireworks, but the political row that erupted and engulfed Sir John. Interestingly enough, Sir John does reasonably often lose his rag. I am always surprised when I meet people who have reached the top of the tree and, despite all their experience, training and political nouse, can’t keep a lid on their feelings. It’s so human – I love it!

Today’s explosion resulted from a discussion during the Assembly about Mayoral policing policies of the Tories. There was clearly prior animosity between Sir John and the Tories over statements about Norris’s plans for policing in London. Clearly Sir John was not enamored of them.

Anyway – the row rumbled on a bit – when suddenly, during the meeting itself, Eric Ollerenshaw (Tory leader on the GLA) ran to us waving a bit of paper in his hand. It was a ‘press briefing’ from the Labour Group headed something like ‘Top Cop slams Tory and Lib Dem mayoral policing plans’ and went on to elaborate and totally misrepresent what Sir John had actually said during the meeting. A journalist had slipped it to him for information!

It was a really disgraceful bit of politicking by Labour. Then, there was a call to suspend standing orders to allow an emergency motion condemning the Labour Group for this tawdry and untrue piece of spin.

So we all (except Labour of course) condemned this roundly and poured shame on them. Toby Harris, Labour leader, stood up to defend himself as best he could, claiming no knowledge of the release – which to be fair had gone out when he was still in the witness chair. But he started shouting during his speech, which is always a sure sign he is on the run!

Anyway – Sir John Stevens also had a chance to put his views on record about this mischief. He said he was apolitical, he would always use the right to comment on anything which might affect operational policing AND then totally denounced the ‘press release’ from the Labour Group who had misrepresented what he had said.

It was stirring stuff! The media went into a frenzy and as he exited, I could see Sir John with camera, lights, action all around him.

There is a little twist to the end of this tale. As I came down the ramp under the chamber I saw Toby Harris locked in intense conversation in a little ante-room with two of Mayor Livingstone’s key henchmen. Methinks I see the Mayor’s hand in all of this. I am only speculating – but I probably wouldn’t lose money on a bet that the origin of the release was in the Mayor’s office, but given to Labour to be issued by the Labour Group. The wording of the release was so Ken – using extreme positions and phrasing and also attacking both the Tories and LibDems.

The LibDems had not been involved in the row in the chamber between Sir John and the Tories – but Mayor Livingstone feels very threatened by Simon Hughes (Norris being kind of out of it since taking the Jarvis shilling) and always attacks the LibDems.

With the election in June – things can only get worse!

Pension books

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At 10 Downing Street by 9.30am to present a petition trying to stop the Government taking away pension books from older people. Modernisation is all very well, and change is always difficult – but there really is no need to remove pension books that older people are used to. This is an option which should remain open to pensioners.

But, of course, the other side of the Labour equation (for equation read plot) is to close all the small sub-post offices that pepper our local shopping parades.

For some elderly people, their walk to the local sub-post office with their pension book once a week is a welcome outing and opportunity to meet and talk to others. So much for social inclusion!

Roundabouts and post offices

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Off to Muswell Hill roundabout for photo op with Friends of the Earth and Living Streets who were presenting a petition to me about the dangerous crossing at the top of Muswell Hill itself.

In fact, I had met council officers about this a few weeks earlier – and things are looking good for the introduction of a crossing. Just waiting for funding confirmation – then we can start arguing about the positioning of the crossing itself.

The officers want it a few metres down the hill so that it is narrower. Everyone else wants it right on the roundabout, because that would suit pedestrians better and is where they would cross anyway. But the officers say this would be more dangerous. So still much to sort out …

Then directly onto a little sub-post office in Crescent Road, Wood Green for a photo op to start our campaign to save this one from closure. It’s just the latest victim in the Labour Government’s plans to ‘rationalise’ our post offices. But it will kill our local parades of shops as well as removing a really vital local service – particularly for older people who like their weekly walk to the post office and who may have tremendous difficulty getting to one further away.

Paperwork

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Worked at home all day clearing my emails and paperwork. Made a dent – but much more to do. Sometimes I feel like treading water with emails – modern blessing and curse. But for someone like me who wants to be pro-active, I need to find away of doing more but taking less time … if only!

Bus driver behaviour

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I led deputation of representatives from older peoples’ organisations to Peter Hendy to present views on bus driver behaviour.

I have been leading a big campaign for the last couple of years to try and get the bus companies and Transport for London to up the standard not only of bus driving, but also of behaviour. Of course, there are loads of really good,

sweet drivers – but according to my post bag there also a load of not so good ones.

I had been conducting a survey gradually across London’s boroughs and had compiled the results to date for the meeting as well as a list of individual cases of injury and, sadly, one death due to bad driving.

The overall results indicated that about 85% of people had experienced bad driving. The main complaints were: driving too fast, stopping to abruptly, not drawing into the curb, using a mobile phone, not putting down the ramp and driving without concern for the bus user or other traffic.

It was a very good meeting and Peter Hendy (TfL’s MD for surface transport) went through everything with us. Some good things are being done on driver training – but it was clear that training and retraining will take years. Better I thought, was his rather robust approach to engineering progress, whereby he was looking at perhaps changing the breaking mechanisms and looking at speed limiters. Perhaps engineering changes and better and more training will result in a real change in the future.