We had a good meeting of Ealing Council last night, with some stunning announcements that quietened the Labour benches. By the end of the meeting it wasn’t just the weather that was freezing.

The leader of the Council, Jason Stacey, announced that we would invest £1 million in regenerating Greenford Hall next year. It wasn’t that long ago that the previous Labour administration in Ealing was planning to demolish it and replace it with blocks of flats. Now the vision is to restore it to its former glory.

Next Cllr Phil Taylor announced that we would be investing £5 million into Gunnersbury Park. Anybody that visits this park regularly knows that it is in dire need of investment. This announcement financially backs up our previous pledge not to sell off part of the park for housing to raise the capital needed.

Thirdly, Cllr David Millican announced that we would invest £12 million into Acton to ensure that the Town Centre regeneration can become a reality.

What about the Council Tax I hear worried residents saying – fear not! Cllr Stacey also announced that we would freeze the Council Tax again next year; the second 0% in a row and the fourth below inflation increase delivered by the Conservatives. When you add in the £50 cash back, it means that any council tax payer in band A, B or C will not have paid a single penny extra in Council Tax under the Conservatives, over the levels inherited from Labour in 2006.

Meanwhile Labour’s key motion called for the introduction of pay on exit car parks to be considered, which we were happy to support.

It is clear one party is driving forward with regenerating our Borough while delivering excellent value for money, while the other, quite frankly, is lost.

I went along to Greenford on Saturday to get in the Christmas spirit.  It was the Christmas fair with a stilt-waking fairy, balloon modelling elves and as you can see from the picture, a couple of Christmas Crackers (who were super).

I missed the St John Fisher children singing but caught the Greenford Baptist Church choir belting out hymns and there was free mulled wine and roasted chestnuts  All this with the back drop of the nearly completed Good for Greenford project, which has really transformed the Town Centre.

Great fun!

On Saturday night we had a dinner to thank all our foster carers for the excellent work that they do for us.  Between them, they look after over 400 children in care.  Ealing has a superb reputation for work with children and our foster carers are vital part of the team.  I was able to show off the award we received a couple of nights before for Corporate Parent of the Year – the foster carers make a vital contribution to the work.

I presented the awards, including the Martin Award (an award in honour of Fred and Freda Martin who fostered for Ealing for 40 years.  This is a cross-party event, which had Conservative councillors Pagan and Harris, along with the Mayor, Cllr Barbara Yerolemou.  Labour councillors Julian Bell and Patricia Walker were present, along with Ealing North’s current MP, Stephen Pound.

This is an excellent event – sometimes as a councillor you go to events out of duty – this is one that is a pleasure to attend and what’s more, it’s with with a  smashing bunch of people.

Earlier in the week, Ealing had an excellent night at the Children Now awards ceremony at the Hurlingham Club in Fulham.  These prestigious national awards recognise achievements in children’s services.  Ealing was shortlisted for four awards and we took three of them.

• Youth work award for excellent work at W13 Youth Centre
• Corporate Parent of the Year
• Council of the Year for Children’s Services

The Labour Party always tries to smear the Conservatives as a party that doesn’t care.  It’s an easy allegation to make but surely this shows that under the Conservatives, Ealing has the best service to children in the country.  These awards recognise that we go the extra mile in Ealing –the newly appointed youth mayor, the £1 million youth fund to improve facilities for youngsters or the highly successful annual youth conference  (all initiatives introduced by the Conservatives) illustrate the support we give to young people.

It was also a little ironic that these awards were all presented to us by the TV personality Angelica – otherwise known as the daughter of local Labour Group leader, Cllr Julian Bell.

Apologies for my tardiness in updating my blog recently.  I’m in the rather perverse position of having had my busiest month ever at work and then being rewarded with the news that I’m likely to be made redundant at the end of the year. 

I work in the construction industry and redundancy is an occupational hazard.  When times are good everyone wants to build something – from speculative developments to home extensions. But when times are tough, building schemes can be turned off overnight.

My role is with an industry organisation and while we’re exceptionally busy, our funders have seen their income collapse thanks in part to Gordon Brown’s mismanagement of the economy.  As a consequence, they are looking at all their outgoings and I, and a large number of my colleagues, will become additional statistics in Labour’s book of economic horror.

The good news is that I will have more time to spend on the campaign to win Ealing North for the Conservatives at the next general election – and more time to post on the blog!  Every cloud as they say!

I attended the Greenford remembrance service this year with my family.  The Greenford service is organised by the Greenford Branch of the British Legion and is more intimate than the Ealing service, which I’ve attended in the past.  This is partly because the crowd are literally much closer to the service but also there is a bigger attendance. 

Afterwards, we went to the Legion for a welcome cuppa (or something stronger if required).  I met up with Cyril Brown who is featured on the central pages of this month’s Around Ealing.  Cyril was on the submarines during World War II and following the publication of this article he was approached by a journalist to expand on his story.  He was happy to talk about and promote the Greenford British Legion but not about himself. As he said, the “Submarines were the quiet service  – we learnt how to keep quiet and I’m staying quiet ”.

With the steady toll of brave young soldiers dying in Afghanistan, Remembrance Sunday clearly still has relevance.

Rather than being a day of celebration for Europe, EU politicians should be hanging their heads in shame.  The submission by the Czech President following the ruling by his constitutional court means the Treaty has been ratified by all countries and can now become operational.  So what was a trade agreement, became the EEC and eventually the EU, will now have a president and a foreign secretary.  And all this without many of the residents of the “sovereign” states having a vote.  The Irish actually got two votes but we poor old Brits (despite categorical promises from the three main parties at the last election) have not had a referendum.  This is not democracy and is not a strong foundation to build their Euroopean dream on.

David Cameron who has consistently called for a referendum has dropped his pledge to have one now - disappointing but it seems sensible to me.  There is no Treaty to have a referendum on anymore so to go through the exercise would be pointless.  However, he has made some interesting commitments.  The following is an extract from an e-mail he sent out today:

First, if we win the next election, we will prohibit, by law, the transfer of further power to the EU without a referendum. Never again should it be possible for a British government to transfer power to the EU without the British people’s consent.

Second, we will introduce a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament.

And third, we want to negotiate three specific guarantees with our European partners over powers that we believe should reside with Britain, not the EU. We will negotiate the return of Britain’s opt-out from social and employment legislation in those areas which have proved most damaging to our economy and public services. We also want a complete opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. And we would negotiate for a return of powers in criminal justice to prevent EU judges gaining steadily greater control over our criminal justice system.

Already there are siren voices out there that say this will not be possible to deliver but I disagree.  We need a Government with a healthy dose of Euroscepticsm and I think that’s what David Cameron offers.  He’s set up a new political grouping in the European Parliament as promised – many said he wouldn’t or couldn’t. 

No doubt there will be Conservative voters who will flirt with UKIP over this.  But that really plays in to Labour’s hands – a vote for UKIP is a vote for 4 more years of Gordon Brown, more betrayals and more powers lost to the EU.  If that’s what you want then go ahead but if not you need to vote Conservative.

We’re in the run up to Remembrance Sunday and no doubt the BNP will try and associate themselves further with the sacrifices of our troops – millions of whom died deafeating nazis like Griffin. 

I know that some people have been put off contributing to the Royal British Legion’s poppy campaign because a BNP supporter made a contribution which was promoted on a BNP website.  The Royal British Legion have made it clear that they don’t want Griffin to politicise the poppy appeal and have even run newspaper adverts to this effect.

With the sacrifices being made in Afghanistan at the moment I think it’s important to have a successful poppy appeal this year.  So  I urge you instead of finding a bit of loose change to pop in the tin to get your poppy – why not make it a silent collection and pop in some folding currency

We did some door knocking in the Draytons area of West Ealing tonight to get a better idea of the strength of feeling on implementing a controlled parking zone (CPZ) in the area.  We’ve been lobbied quite hard by e-mail and at our ward forum meetings for a CPZ but what is the view of the residents overall?

At our last ward forum we agreed to carry out a consultation in the next financial year.  Hopefully the Council will put it in their consultation programme, but if not, we will fund it from our delegated ward forum budget.  There are a number of pressures on parking including commuter parking from West Ealing station, residents of the flats at the Sinclair House site, Waitrose staff and sorting off staff.  But another major pressure is the fact that the residents have too many cars – the terrace houses have  effectively one parking space in front of them, yet many households own two or even three cars. A CPZ cannot resolve that problem unless you introduce a punitive charge on a household applying for more than one permit.

So what was the overall view of residents?  Frankly it was mixed with quite strong opinions both ways.  However, even in roads like Drayton Avenue, which is one of the hardest roads to park in, there is still a significant minority against a CPZ.  If this was replicated in a vote my gut feeling is that residents would reject the CPZ at the moment.

The consultation to take place next year will be interesting.

I attended a meeting of the Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG ) yesterday at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing.  Some of you will be aware of the outrageous way that Equitable Life policy holders have been treated over the last ten years.  I won’t go into the ins and outs of all the stages (you can find all this on the EMAG website) but suffice to say that the Parliamentary Ombudsman, in her report  “A decade of Regulatory Failure”, found that for the 10 years before Equiatble officially went bust, the company was already effectively bust. The financial authorities knew all this and allowed the company to keep trading – indeed during this period Equitable Life’s customer base increased five fold and its assets six fold.

The Government have tried to avoid paying out any compensation and tried to reject the Ombudsman’s report but EMAG managed successfully to get the High Court to quash the  rejection. There was a debate in the House of Commons last week (Hansard transcript here) but Labour trooped out its MPs and defeated the attempt to get the Government to accept the Ombudsman’s recommendations.  It was mentioned at the EMAG meeting that Steve Pound the Ealing North MP had not been supportive of EMAG members. He has failed to sign an Early Day Motion on Equitable (EDM 1423) despite 342 MPs adding their names. He uses the fact he is the PPS (bag carrier) to Stephen Timms  as an excuse as to why he can’t get involved.  However, it didn’t stop him voting against the motion last week.

It would be excellent news if a new Conservative Government can find a way to sort thios mess out properly and quickly.  As the motion said last week – over  30,000 people have died waiting for a just resolution to this saga.