Abstaining Pound sits on the Heathrow fence

Steve Pound sent his apologies for not attending last night’s North Greenford ward forum meeting because there was an important vote in the House of Commons on Heathrow expansion.  It was with some interest that I checked this morning how he voted.  Would he support expansion because it would bring jobs for some of his [...]

North Greenford Ward Forum

I attended the North Greenford Ward Forum tonight at Horsenden Primary School. The ward forum was allocating its £40,000 spend – or at least it was supposed to.  However, in the end the Labour councillors only recommended £15,000 of spending and rolled over the other £25,000 to next year so that they could consider some [...]

Compensation for terrorist families

What is the value of a life?  Well according to the Belfast “reconciliation commission” it’s £12,000 and that it should be paid to all “victims” of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland.  I’ve no problem with genuine victims getting compensation but to give equal weighting to the innocent victims of terrorist bombs and to the planters [...]

UK economy officially enters recession

It goes from bad to worse for the Government.  The latest tranche of job losses show that the interventions made to date by the Government just aren’t having an effect.  Debt is being piled up for future generations to deal with.  The VAT reduction has wasted billions of pounds with no benefit.  People are realising [...]

Health Service waiting times

I’ve recently had need to use the dermatology service of the NHS.  I’ve had a rash on my hand that various treatments prescribed by my doctor have failed to shift.  Eventually I was referred to a specialist and was called quickly by the PCT centralised booking service. Alas they informed me that there was a [...]

Free fall in the economy

The basket case that used to be the UK economy is summed up by the latest inflation figures.  Both the RPI (retail price index) and the CPI (Consumer Price Index) have both fallen this month as shown by the graph taken from the National Statistics website.  Normally a fall in inflation is a good thing [...]

Copley Close regeneration update

We held another successful steering group at Copley Close on Saturday.  Our design consultants, Urban Initiatives, had started to work up the ideas generated in the game we played at the previous session, into possible schemes that could eventually form the foundation of a design brief to go out to the market to find a [...]

Big beast is back

So Ken Clarke is back on the Conservative front bench as Shadow Business Secretary to face up against Peter Mandelson.  It shows that David Cameron is willing to take a risk, and this is quite a big risk.  Clarke, the arch Europhile is apparently accepting that the Conservative position on Europe, the EPP and the [...]

Heathrow to get third runway

So Brown has stopped his dithering over Heathrow and decided that he wants a third runway.  In Transport Secretary, Geoff Hoon’s announcement at the House of Commons, he came up with sops to the environmental lobby, but as Theresa Villiers, the Conservatives Shadow Transport Secretary said,
It’s  a bleak day for our environment and for those [...]

Are golden handcuffs a good proposal?

A couple of recent announcements in the education field are worthy of comment. Firstly today’s announcement for teachers to get “golden handcuff” payments of £10,000 to join disadvantaged schools. I’m quite comfortable with this concept that teachers at more demanding schools should get more pay. I’m a little concerned that only half the cost of [...]