Community at the ready

Well, we now know for certain what everybody had already assumed - that the general election will be held on the same day as this year's local elections, on Thursday, 6th May.

Naturally this will complicate things a little, not only because it is likely to induce a higher turnout in the locals as those attending the polling station are likely, once they are there, to use their other vote, but also because voters will by May 6th have been inundated by the national media with big party politics and the challenge for us therefore is to keep them thinking local.

The ICG will not be taking part in the general election. Our leadership has made it clear that we would like to see the back of the incumbent MP Ann Keen as we feel it is important that borough residents have Members of Parliament who are prepared to work with the local authority regardless of which party or parties happen to be in office at the Civic Centre. However now it is upon us my view is that we will not be devoting too much attention to the shortcomings of our MP, but rather will be concentrating our efforts on getting our own people elected onto the council.

The ICG is fielding a total of nine candidates - Councillor Phil Andrews, Councillor Paul Fisher and Andy Sibley in Isleworth; Councillor Caroline Andrews, Councillor Shirley Fisher and Councillor Jon Hardy in Syon; and Tricia Doran, Cheryl-Ann Khan and Martin Murphy in Hounslow South.

Our policy platform is fairly simple - we wish to empower our community. Whilst recognising that the local authority has an obligation to provide for those who cannot speak out for themselves and who need help and assistance we will not use this as an excuse, as the previous Labour administration did, for exercising political control over the rest of the community. We want to see active, vibrant and independent civic societies, associations and amenity groups operating throughout the community, even if sometimes it means them challenging us as elected members. The Community Group does not consider it has anything to fear from an engaged community.

Whilst our Conservative coalition partners supported our Empowerment aspirations throughout the last four years, we feel their primary interest is low tax and that in the event of an all-out Conservative administration the community agenda is likely to be sidelined. Whilst we support the drive for low tax, we in the ICG see it as a means to an end rather than the end itself. Thus it is our view that the best result for our community at the local elections on May 6th would be once again for the ICG to hold the balance of power on an authority that is under No Overall Control.

ICG councillors will continue to put their own constituents and wards first and will fight for any resources that become available. We will not relent in identifying Section 106 and other funding for local projects, cohesion initiatives and general improvements for those we represent.

We are not satisfied that the new administration which assumed office in 2006 and of which we have been part has completely succeeded in changing the culture within the council bureaucracy. We believe the PIP process, whilst very welcome, was primarily cost driven and that the co-operation of chief officers with this project and with general budget setting has led our partners to look away while our own Empowerment agenda has been frustrated and obstructed by elements within the senior management. Some substantial rectification of this situation is likely for us to be an essential precondition of any future coalition agreement.

Lastly (for the time being) we will continue to provide a voice for the community on such vitally important local issues as Mogden. The campaign against the nefarious activities of Thames Water has demonstrated the value of elected members throwing their weight behind a successful organic initiative by residents.

At the time of writing we have less than thirty days to underscore all the valuable work that we have currently done to open up the process of our local government still further. ICG activists will be unrelenting in our efforts to secure four more years in which to implement our objectives.

Ann puts on a show but it's not unusual

Back in 2005, shortly before the result of the general election of that year in the Brentford and Isleworth constituency was announced, a peculiar and rather amusing thing happened.

Ann Keen, who had presumably been notified by an associate that she had survived the challenges of the various opposing candidates, at last entered the election count at Hounslow Civic Centre. But that wasn't the amusing bit.

What gave cause for much hilarity was the entourage by which she was accompanied, and the manner of its arrival. Surrounded by young boys attired in near-identical suits, she was escorted all the way from her carriage, up the spiral staircase and through the antechamber to the podium from which the result was to be announced. I could have sworn the spotty oiks were marching in step too, although I concede that just possibly my imagination was playing tricks with me and getting carried away.

This group exercise in delusional self-importance was not in any way untypical, indeed the whole Ann Keen experience has revolved for most of its time around a cult of imagined celebrity. I recall a residents' meeting on my own estate being gatecrashed by the then local Labour Party organiser and a handful of his members who scrutinised the gathering closely, furtively identifying individual residents whom they obviously felt might be vulnerable to an approach before sidling up to them like market spivs and whispering "would you like to meet Ann Keen?", the name itself spoken in a more assertive tone as if to emphasise the sheer generosity of the offer that was being made to the lucky resident.

Until recently, when at long last it would seem to have dawned upon them that she has become a liability, Labour's wannabe local councillors would queue to be photographed with their idol, and would proudly publish their photographs all across their own election leaflets in the apparent belief that their own importance and celebrity would somehow be enhanced by mere association.

Last week, inevitably, the circus came to Isleworth. As Mrs. Keen's gold minibus arrived at the Bridge Link Centre on Ivybridge on Thursday an aide excitedly raced to the passenger side door to open it so that her very important personage could step down and greet the excited throng that been awaiting her arrival.

In actual fact it wasn't really much of a throng. Five or six frankly pathetic ladies who probably hadn't been so excited since the time they threw their knickers at Tom Jones, and a very small handful of bitter and resentful men who still mourn the passing of the good old days when only Labour Party members were allowed to get involved with organising residents' activities, inasfar as any actually took place, on the estate.

And the royal visit itself was a tad disappointing, for there were others who had turned up to actually speak to their MP and ask her questions only to be brusquely advised by one of her hangers-on that she would only be sparing them fifteen minutes of her valuable (and very expensive) time which was just sufficient for her to have some photos taken. The knickerless screamers will probably be sent copies that they will truly treasure for what little remains of their middle age.

For those though who actually had questions to ask or problems to resolve - rehousing issues, repairs, anti-social behaviour, domestic violence and the like - the fleeting visitation did not really provide a great deal of relief. As a result of this the local authority's Lead Member for Housing and Service Improvement, ICG councillor Jon Hardy, has decided at short notice to hold a surgery of his own (see above) to make good the deficit.

The sheer brass neck of these objectionable people who assume themselves to be our lords and masters and who, given half the chance, would reverse the movement towards involvement and participation that my colleagues and I have triggered since becoming part of the administration at the local authority is absolutely staggering. One can only imagine how, in private session, they must mock and pour scorn upon those they represent, or in many cases aspire to.

How gratifying it is indeed to know that it will all be over in six weeks.

Ann's just a gal who can't say no

Despite them having been let off relatively lightly by the Standards and Privileges Committee (five out of seven members of which were fellow New Labour MPs) the interview conducted by Parliamentary Commissioner John Lyon with Alan and Ann Keen, the shamelessly mercenary Members of Parliament for Feltham & Heston and Brentford & Isleworth respectively, makes interesting reading:


JL: Can I now apply the rules to your situation? The rules require you to have more than one home before you can claim for a second home. Why do you think you had two homes when you could not live in Brentford for the best part of 11 months, from December 2008 to October 2009?

Alan Keen: I was aware that I needed to have two homes in order to claim the ACA. I have known this throughout my time as a London MP.

JL: Why did you consider that given the difficulties of access, which continued for most of 2009, your Brentford property was still your home for the purposes of your allowances?

Ann Keen: In our mind it was still our main home.

+++++++++++++++++++

JL: Is not the implication of the Green Book that a home must be somewhere where you can and do stay overnight?

Ann Keen: We used the house for other purposes before it was boarded up. But after that we could not stay there.

JL: Can I ask you why you still considered that Brentford was your main home? The principal rule up to April 2009 was that your main home was where you normally spend more nights than anywhere else. From July 2008 that normal expectation was not met, and it was not met until October this year.

Ann Keen: We did not think of that.

JL: Wouldn't some people think that the property had been a main home, would again become a main home, but could not be called a main home while it was a building site?

Ann Keen: It was my home. I paid council tax, had post delivered there, paid the TV licence, I was in and out until I couldn't do that any longer. Everyone knows that is my home and I did everything in my power to be back in it. It wasn't a building site: it was described in the paper as derelict, but derelict houses don't have post delivered, people going in and out, attending to what they could in the garden.

JL: I note that you did not intend to benefit, but did it happen in fact? Without that support you might have had to stay in a hotel on two or perhaps three nights a week.

Ann Keen: Well, yes, when you put it that way, it did happen. But it was never put to me and so I never considered it. But I can't say no.


I can just picture the wilier and more devious member for Brentford & Isleworth holding her head in disbelief as the witless Alan delivered his (presumably) unintentionally candid response to Lyon's question to him. When I first read it I was reminded with some amusement of John Hurt's powerful portrayal of the unfortunate Timothy Evans in the classic film 10 Rillington Place:


QC: Can you think of any reason why Mr. Christie might have wanted to murder your wife?

Evans: Well, he was home all day.


I'm going to miss the Keens when they're gone.

Too far from (second) home?

I spent a very fulfulling afternoon today in Hounslow attending a birthday celebration of the twin sons of a good friend.

There were many people there with whom I was acquainted, including...the Indian Minister for Health!

And in his company, and doing the rounds, was no less than a copy of my blog article from yesterday morning!

No sign of Ann Keen though. Possibly a bit too far from home?

It's a funny old world - Part three

To be honest there's not much funny about a funeral, but something that happened over lunch at the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha following yesterday's service certainly gave me cause for reflection.

My guide introduced me to the Indian Minister for Health, who was eating beside me. "This is Councillor Phil Andrews, from Isleworth" he said.

To my surprise the Minister replied, smiling: "I know, we have already met".

We had been introduced at a function in a popular Hounslow restaurant nearly two years ago, organised by the Indian Overseas Welfare Association. To my absolute astonishment, he had remembered me from that event.

Anyway yesterday he, I and a couple of others had a brief chat before we shook hands and he went off to speak to some other attendees. And I was left marvelling over the fact that I would appear to have a more cordial and regular relationship with the Indian Minister for Health than with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the same portfolio area in the UK who is allegedly my own constituency MP.

You couldn't make it up, could you?

Now Ann cuts Mogden community adrift

Sorry to keep banging on about the Keens, but an extraordinary development yesterday left me wondering just what kind of advice our Member of Parliament is receiving.

Users of the BrentfordTW8.com and ChiswickW4.com community forums will be aware that a spokesperson for Ann Keen recently threatened that his party would "work around" the resident-led Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG), which for many years has served as the voice of the organised community living in the vicinity of the plant and whose authority to do so derives from public meetings attended by hundreds, a petition signed by several thousand and a group action involving some 1,400 litigants.

To understand the thinking behind this one has to look back into the history of the conflict in and around Isleworth between the residents' movement and New Labour. This conflict is essentially one between two broad schools of thought. One (theirs) has it that only a small, select group of people who are essentially "in the know" and have the requisite intelligence, guile and expertise (them) are truly capable of representing the people's interests and that the role of the wider community is to elect them to positions of office - not just strictly political office but also within residents' associations, amenity groups and suchlike - and then stand back and leave it to them to do what needs to be done on our behalf.

The other (ours) has it that the community itself should aspire to take the lead on local issues and that the role of their elected political leadership is simply to provide guidance, advice and assistance where asked for.

It would have been as a direct follow-up to her spokesperson's threat that, on August 22nd (a Saturday?), Mrs. Keen allegedly met privately with an unnamed Director of Thames Water without any prior consultation with the residents. The Director, we are told, regaled her with the usual empty spiel about how concerned the company is for the plight of long-suffering residents, advised her of a meeting of the Mogden Residents' Liaison Committee to take place in September of which the rest of us have already long been aware, and informed her (and from the wording of her Press Statement it came as news) that nearly six months ago the local authority had granted permission for a 40% expansion of the plant's capacity.

According to Mrs. Keen she was "delighted" by news of the plant's expansion, and following publication of the Press Statement her spokesperson raced onto the local internet forums to announce "Ann Keen Speaks Up For Local Residents"!

And yet, of course, what she has done is added her own name to the already long list of politicians who have consigned residents already suffering the excesses of Mogden to even more misery as Thames sets about making a case for reneging on its promise not to increase intake, which anybody who is familiar with its track record knows it inevitably will.

By her actions Mrs. Keen has without question kissed goodbye to almost any remaining support she might have had within a two-mile radius of Mogden. That they consider her betrayal something to gloat about would suggest that Camp Keen is either woefully ignorant of local issues and has given her the worst possible advice or, more likely, that they have already given up and that the remainder of her campaign is to be a mere "spoiling" exercise in which she intends to wreak as much "revenge" as possible upon her ungrateful constituents.

Whichever is the case she's bought it, but on a parliamentary level at least the question remains - who will speak up for the residents living around Mogden?

Keens' continued boycott of Hounslow Council gives the lie to victim plea

I hit the headlines again this week, courtesy of the Hounslow & Brentford Times which carried an article about my relationship with the parasitic Keen duo and their lack of co-operation with the London Borough of Hounslow.

For the benefit of anyone who is unfamiliar with this particular story I will elucidate. In May 2006 I joined the local authority's Executive as Lead Member for Housing & Community Safety. Some time afterwards the his-and-hers MPs decided to make an issue of the fact, and they wrote a letter to Councillor Peter Thompson, Leader of Hounslow Council, "reserving the right to withhold our co-operation from your administration" for as long as I remained a member of the Executive. The reason given was my former membership of the National Front, an organisation whose views I had publicly renounced a decade and a half previously.

The letter itself was simply a "hook" for a much wider campaign against me and by association the Community Group, which involved briefing a number of sympathetic journalists from Tribune, the Daily Mirror, and of course the London Evening Standard where the Keens seem to enjoy a naturally cosy relationship with the odious and deceitful Andrew Gilligan. It also included a question in the House of Commons by Mrs. Keen to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, which to his credit he brushed aside with barely concealed contempt.

The devil in the Keen's "non co-operation campaign" transpired over the coming months to be in the detail. Their principled stand did not, it seem, extend to boycotting publicity opportunities and photo calls organised by the local authority. The non co-operation was to be limited to issues which involved an element of hard work.

Unimpressed by the Keens' selective application of what was supposed after all to be a point of high principle, I put a Motion to Borough Council which had the effect of formalising the lack of a working relationship between the local authority and the MPs in a way which removed the potential for embarrassment to our officers, by declaring that henceforth the Keens would only be admitted to any activity organised by the local authority with the express permission of the administration. The Motion was passed with the full support of the Conservative, Liberal Democrat, ICG and other independent councillors, with only Labour voting against. No more unearned photo ops for the Keens.

Having been hoist by their own petard the Keens and their little band of followers and organised letter-writers squealed concertedly like stuck pigs, just as I had predicted they would. It wasn't fair. The local authority was cutting off relations with the Keens, who had done nothing wrong. They hadn't said they wouldn't co-operate with the council, only that they would reserve the right to do so. And so on. Henceforth the lie was promulgated that the severing of the relationship between the borough and its MPs was all at the behest of the administration, with the MPs being the innocent victims for simply having done the honourable, ethical thing by expressing real and valid concerns about the involvement of the neo-fascist ICG in the administration of a multi-cultural borough.

In order to be sustained the lie had to divest itself of some inconvenient truths. The first was that, in the many months which had passed between the sending of the letter to Councillor Thompson and the Motion to Borough Council the Keens had already withdrawn their co-operation from the local authority. Nobody can name one solitary instance of them having helped or co-operated with the new administration during that period in any way, shape or form.

The second was that, far from being motivated by ethical considerations, the Labour position was actually incredibly confused. My initial appointment to the Executive was made by Borough Council in May 2006 and was supported unanimously, that is by every member of the Council including all 24 members of the Labour Group. Then, in 2007, following the announcement of the Keens' "principled" stance against my appointment, the same Labour Group abstained on (not opposed) my appointment to the Executive on the grounds of my former NF membership (they also refused to support Caroline's appointment as Deputy Mayor, presumably in the belief that previously-held political associations are contagious and can be passed on to other members of the family). And in 2008, which was to be the last year I would stand for Executive, they approved my nomination unanimously once again!

The gist of the newspaper article was to point out that, now I am no longer a member of the Executive, there is not really any justification for the Keens' non co-operation continuing. Yet continue it does, with Mrs. Keen refusing to comment as to why (it also gave a very gratefully received plug to my new anti-fascist blog Walk Away, which is already beginning to attract a small trickle of new visitors).

This petulance and deceit characterises completely the sheer unpleasantness of what New Labour has become today. I am looking forward to the electorate giving these two shameless self-seekers the boot at the next general election and replacing them with people who are prepared to put the welfare of their constituents before political point-scoring and work with the local authority, whatever its political complexion, for the greater good of the community we were all elected to serve.

Doth the Keen Machine protest too much?

My article on Friday in which the possibility of an ethical revolt wihin the ranks of the Labour Party in Hounslow following the party's announcement that it was sticking by Ann Keen seems to have ruffled some feathers.

Over at the BrentfordTW8.com community forum long-time Keen bag carrier Robin Taylor responded to the article in the conventional fashion, "revealing" to bored forum users for the umpteenth time that I had been a National Front member back in the 1980s.

Meanwhile on its sister site at ChiswickW4.com one David McLaughlin, who would seem to be a party hack and possibly a rising star in an increasingly empty galaxy, makes much of the fact that I have not been unreservedly critical of the plucky young men and women who briefly occupied the Keens' Brentford home to highlight the fact that the his-and-hers MPs had been conning us all by claiming it to have been their primary abode while accepting handouts from the taxpayer for the purchase of their alleged "second" home, a luxury pad in Waterloo.

Mr. McLaughlin, I am guessing, is gathering quotation material for a pre-election smear leaflet in the mistaken view that the general public actually give a toss about the Keens or their long-abandoned hovel in Brook Road South. Most of people living in the immediate vicinity seem to be missing the squatters, who proved to be helpful, generous and courteous neighbours during their short tenure.

But let's get back to the substantive issue here - good people who had once given their loyalty and support to the Labour Party for the most noble of reasons. People who believe passionately in Social Justice and Equality but who do not subscribe to the smug, arrogant, unjustified assumption of social and intellectual superiority, and indifference to the inevitable reaction against the same even by so many of their own, which seems to predominate what remains of this once proud party today.

The ICG believes there must be a home, even if it is to be a temporary one, for the many sincere people who can no longer abide the company of the types who reign amid the ruins of the house of New Labour. Such people deserve better than to be consigned, fuming but powerless, to the sidelines of local politics.

We are now talking to several of such people. I repeat my appeal to those who still haven't to get in touch and to work in an organised way, if separately, with others who similarly aspire to restore some decency and honour to our local political debate.

New Labour - has the grass-roots finally had enough?

I had an interesting conversation over a pint yesterday with somebody who has been active in the local Labour Party for some time.

Nothing particularly spectacular or out of the ordinary about that, but what was out of the ordinary was that he asked me a question. The reason that was out of the ordinary was that it was the third time that particular question - unthinkable from anybody involved with the Labour Party until very recently - had been asked of me by a party member in recent weeks. And all three were from different wards, making the prospect of collusion a bit less likely.

I won't divulge what the question was, far less the answer that I gave, but what it suggested to me was that some sections of the party are beginning to think outside the box in a quite radical way. I have always believed that there are some good people involved with the Labour Party in this borough whose creativity, independence of thought and genuine concern for the welfare of the community has been stifled for so many years. It was inevitable that, one day, a straw would break the proverbial camel's back and all that goodwill would come rushing to the surface.

It may well be that the straw in this instance was the local party's reassertion of its support for the candidacy of the awful Ann Keen at the forthcoming general election in the face of all the revelations about her expense claims, her taxpayer-funded second home, the mysteries surrounding the fact that neither she nor her husband would seem to have been anywhere near their "first" home for over a year, and the controversy around her claim for private medical treatment.

It is obvious to me that decent members were hanging on to the slender hope that the party would replace her with an electable candidate. Their hopes were cruelly dashed by the news, which for some peculiar reason the local party deemed worthy of a big publicity splash when, in strategic terms, it was about as deserving of announcement as an outbreak of flatulence in a crowded lift. The question is, now the deed has been done, do they stand and watch as what is left of the local party kisses its ass goodbye, or do they search for a radical solution to the party's predicament?

We are always willing to speak, with strictest confidence assured, with any well-meaning member of the local Labour Party who is concerned for its future. We believe that the existence of a Labour Party, in some form or another, is not only desirable but essential to our local politics. With those party members who desire to see a stronger, more vibrant and engaged community - and there are certainly some - we have a commonality of interest.

As Bob Hoskins will tell you, it's good to talk.

Two weeks in the life of an ex-Executive member

Incredibly it's over two weeks since I last posted on this blog. I recall a time as a kid when Crossroads was off the air for several months, and when it returned the cast had to narrate the events which had passed before bringing the story up to date. I guess I'll need to do something similar here.

May 21st - I had the pleasure of accompanying the new Mayor Councillor Paul Lynch, along with the Leader of the Council Peter Thompson and colleagues Councillors John Todd, Gerald McGregor and Paul Fisher on a tour of Fuller's Brewery in Chiswick (below). Some of the complexities and specialist knowledge involved in brewing defies belief. Apparently London water has a consistency which makes it ideal for brewing dark beers such as porter and stout, and is the reason for Guinness locating itself into this part of the world when it opened up its operation in the UK. The best water for bitter production on the other hand hails from Burton-on-Trent, and Fuller's physically alter the consistency of our London water (a process known as "Burtonisation") before using it in its bitter production.


Then it was back to West Mid for a private meeting with the consultant who had looked after Caroline's stepfather Jim before he sadly passed away on December 29th. Nobody seems certain at this stage as to what was the cause of his death.

May 22nd - Councillor Paul Fisher and I joined representatives of The Isleworth Society (TIS), The Four Roads Residents' Association, Hounslow Homes and Isleworth Youth Action Partnership (IYAP) for a photo-shoot to celebrate the launch of the excellent Windows on Isleworth project, which has seen students from local schools producing some phenomenally good artwork to help brighten up Ivybridge, as well as the King's Arms site in South Street (see below).


Then it was across to the ROWE Centre on the Worton estate to discuss the residents' association's application for a grant from the Rainbow Project to develop the Community Centre into a more multi-purpose resource.

May 25th - The Bank Holiday marked the beginning of half-term week, during which I struggled determinedly to catch up with some work while the children (and others!) screamed relentlessly in the background like ones deranged.

June 2nd - The Worton surgery, some housing problems and ongoing issues relating to estate matters. The residents' association at the ROWE Centre always make us feel at home, sustaining us with tea and all the latest info from around the neighbourhood.

June 3rd - The day before the elections to the European Parliament, and five of us ventured out to the Syon estate to distribute an ad hoc ICG leaflet urging residents not to vote for the BNP at the following day's polls. As always we were received with enthusiasm by the locals. On our travels we managed to liberate a leaflet that had been sent out by Ann K££n, our alleged Member of Parliament, informing potential voters that the BNP could only be kept out by voting for her party. A blatant lie as the d'Hondt system places more or less equal value on a vote for any other candidate, but this is the kind that of thing that we have become accustomed to.

June 6th - Ivybridge surgery, more housing issues and more hospitality from the girls at the Bridgelink Centre café. This time I had to be away early for an important meeting at my son's school, and in the absence of Paul (away in Kazakhstan) his wife Councillor Shirley Fisher kindly deputised for the last 45 minutes of the session.

June 8th - A meeting of the Members' Constitutional Working Party and then on to next door for my first ever meeting as a member of the Sustainable Development Committee. I must have broken a record for brevity - having entered the meeting mid-way through a debate on a proposed Chiswick development I was unable to vote, and when the second and last item - Mogden - came up I was required to leave the room as an interested party. More on this shortly.

STOP PRESS - Ann K££n discovers where Mogden is!

Amazing what a short report on this humble blog can do, isn't it?

Can you believe THIS?????

It just HAD to happen, didn't it? Ann K££n, alleged Member of Parliament for Brentford & Isleworth and her Hounslow Labour Party are now the champions of the residents who are suffering the effects of the Mogden Pong!

On her website, Ann calls upon Thames Water "to look again at the possibility of covering the controversial Mogden storm tanks as the Brentford sewer treatment works looks set to expand."

It would seem almost churlish under the circumstances to point out to her and her colleagues that the Mogden plant is actually in Isleworth!

She continues: "A lot of people are very unhappy about the plans to expand Mogden but, by increasing capacity, this might be one way to help reduce the smells." Which she HAS to say really, considering it was her New Labour colleagues who drove the expansion proposal through the meeting of the Sustainable Development Committee at which it was passed!

Also interesting is her inference that she persuaded OFWAT to release "£60m" for works already undertaken. Which begs me to ask, as only £40m was ever spent, what happened to the rest?

People in my part of the world are used to this shameless, breathtaking opportunism as it has manifested itself so many times before in the run-up to elections, but how must those other, non-Labour members on SDC who allowed themselves to be talked around by Councillors Cadbury and Cooper in concert with officers from the Environment Department be feeling after reading this?

Yet another lesson in New Labour political chicanery ("We apply our own ethics") learned the hard way!

Who'd be a fly on the wall when New Labour is a-plotting?

A fascinating debate has broken out on the thread below, instigated by a poster calling himself/herself "Fly On The Wall", who seems to have spilled the beans over New Labour's 2010 council election strategy.

According to FOTW, the party's plan is to "throw" the next local election and allow the election of a majority Conservative council as a means of prising the ICG out of office, an interesting scenario which I must confess had not completely occurred to me before the discussion began.

FOTW further alleges that the Conservatives are "in on" this cosy arrangement but provides no evidence, and the accusation is unambiguously refuted by local Conservative Chair John Davies, a man for whom I have a great deal of affection and respect.

As was pointed out by another poster in response, if New Labour wished to throw an election they would not need the co-operation of the Conservatives to do it. The Conservatives, one imagines, will be doing whatever they can to maximise their vote and their representation on the local authority quite irrespective of whether their New Labour opponents choose to put up a fight.

So what of FOTW's bona fides? Well, he/she is certainly privy to the knowledge that Hounslow is not on Labour's list of target boroughs for 2010. This I know to be a fact - and an extraordinary one at that, considering the borough's demographic make-up and the fact that prior to 2006 it had "enjoyed" 35 years of unbroken Labour rule.

It may also be that the declining and demoralised party has decided to prioritise the re-election of the awful Keens ahead of trying to win back the council, which would help to explain their embarrassing volte face over Council Tax.

I tend to believe there is some substance in FOTW's comments, whilst rejecting his/her implication of the Conservatives as a conscious partner in such a strategy as being unlikely (although for us it would be irrelevant in any event). My only reservation would be in wondering quite how Labour Party bosses would manage to sell such a negative strategy to existing and wannabe councillors. Possibly this might just explain FOTW's obvious chagrin?

I'll bring readers more on this if and when the plot unfolds further.

Le Tiss and La Keen - an ungodly alliance

Back in the 1990s I was a big fan of the Southampton footballing legend Matt Le Tissier. Like many people I could never understand how a man with his sublime talent could have been repeatedly overlooked by a succession of England managers, particularly when the Brazil manager at the time let it be known that Le Tiss ("Le God" to many Saints fans) would have been the first name on his team sheet had he been Brazilian.

So I nearly choked on my paella this morning when I read in the News Of The World (Iberian edition) that the supremely gifted Channel Islander would be teaming up with the idle timeserver Ann Keen, alleged Member of Parliament for Brentford & Isleworth, in a national campaign to remind hospital patients and visitors to wash their hands.

The campaign was devised by businessman Ashley Brooks after he nearly died from the "superbug" MRSA.

Let me not be churlish about this – it is a splendid initiative and I wish Le Tiss and La Keen every success with it.

But that does not disqualify me from privately hoping that the voters of our constituency will be washing their hands of their own nasty bug sometime very soon.

The art of hedging

As one who has been known to take the occasional flutter I am probably more familiar than most with the concept of hedging one's bets. Many a time I have backed a soccer team or a horse with one book and then laid it off with another at a favourable price, locking in a guaranteed profit.

Sadly Hounslow New Labour's latest act of hedging, taking an anti "cuts" stance whilst simultaneously demanding even bigger reductions to our borough's spending than we have currently managed is not likely to reap dividends. Those whose loyalty is not to New Labour are unlikely to be taken in, whilst traditional Labour supporters whose instinct it is, like mine, to protect services first and foremost will in all likelihood be confused and demoralised by this latest volte face.

Thus the debate at this week's Borough Council meeting at which the first tranche of proposed savings was introduced saw New Labour in mid fluster. As soon as Labour Deputy Leader Councillor Ruth Cadbury began to issue forth in a schoolteacher-like tone, voice filled with an absurdly exaggerated indignation that was so clearly contrived, it was obvious to me that the party had not been briefed as to whether it was required to support the proposals and demand that they should be taken further, or oppose them with a flourish of socialistic ardour.

My suspicions were confirmed when the Labour Group proposed that the report be deferred, ostensibly on the grounds that they had not had enough time to consider it.

One cannot but admire the lengths that the depleted ranks of Hounslow New Labour are prepared to go to in their efforts to try to keep their alleged Members of Parliament in office and in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Their willingness to sacrifice their credibility and if needs be to allow themselves to become a borough-wide laughing stock in the name of that quest is certainly to be respected.

The whole glorious farce was beautifully epitomised by Councillor Mohinder Gill, a likeable chap, when he raised his hand to oppose the recommendations, then quickly dropped it again after looking around and seeing that his colleagues had been instructed to abstain.

One is almost tempted to hope that the sacrifice turns out to be worth it. Almost.

Further revelations on those rosebuds

Back in June, under the heading "On rosebuds and other thorny issues", I drew readers' attention to the bizarre spectacle of former New Labour councillor Vanessa Smith writing excitedly, and not a little paradoxically, to the letters' page of a local newspaper about the prospect of a fully-fledged Conservative administration at the London Borough of Hounslow following the next local elections in 2010.

The paradox arises from the fact that despite her New Labour sympathies, which clearly remain intact in spite of her quarrel with the local party leadership which led her to contest two council elections as an independent, her deep-rooted hatred of the ICG and of the community empowerment agenda in general means she can barely contain her excitement at the thought of an administration - any administration - in which the ICG no longer plays a part.

So much for Ms. Smith. However, this morning I had the benefit of a long and quite in-depth conversation with a prominent local individual well connected with the Labour Party itself, who informed me without any prompting on my part that New Labour in Hounslow, having accepted the futility at this stage of trying to win back control of the borough, is "pinning all its hopes" (the exact words used) on an all-out Conservative majority in 2010.

When one bears in mind the traditional Labour stereotype of the cost-cutting, service-slashing, privatising agenda of the Conservative Party, this serves to give us some indication of the importance our opponents place within the overall scheme of things on combating the work of the ICG in trying to build a resurgent, powerful and independent community.

Assuming this information is correct - and the evidence of my own eyes and ears (as well as Ms. Smith's letter) tend me towards the view that it is - then it would certainly explain the timidity, to the point of almost deliberate ineffectiveness, of New Labour in opposition. It would also explain the feeling of demoralisation which clearly exists amongst some members of the local party who still place greater import on socialist principles than on organisational control-freakery.

Of course, just to complicate matters further it looks increasingly likely that the next general election will be fought on the same day as the local elections, and that is a contest in which New Labour will certainly not be hoping for a Conservative victory as its heroine and role model Mrs. K££n vies to secure for herself another four or five years of the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed, and which she and her followers presume to be hers by right.

Thursday, 6th May 2010 has the potential to be a very interesting day indeed. Unlike, sadly, the many Borough Council meetings which are still to take place before it.

New Labour - an idea whose time has passed

I apologise in advance for another post on that subject, but an A3 leaflet which was doing the rounds on Isleworth's Worton estate earlier in the week finally convinced me that it is game over for the abomination that is New Labour.

On those rare occasions when New Labour in Hounslow gives any impression of being interested in knowing why it has been so thoroughly wiped out in its former stronghold in Isleworth, the usual practice is to suggest that the ICG is some form of local, right-wing political party - either of a meekly Conservative bent or representing something altogether more sinister, depending upon the audience to whom the suggestion is being addressed.

I have long been of the view that there are essentially two reasons for this wilful misapprehension of what has been happening in and around Isleworth, perhaps only one of which is after all pernicious.

The first, of course, is simply about blatant smearmongering. At the 2006 local elections Hounslow Labour's strategy seemed to revolve around committing almost its entire political machine to the cause of returning Isleworth to where it "belonged", with a campaign based wholly on the failed tactics of 2002 involving the terrorisation of minorities and other vulnerable people. Its tragic miscalculation of ICG strength and its ignorance of political realities in Isleworth led to the Party bogging itself down in the Russian winter of a hopeless cause while we merrily cleaned up in Syon, and even helped engineer the downfall of a leading Party apparatchik in Brentford.

The second reason for New Labour's determination to attribute a political motive to the ICG's operation, I believe, is more to do with simple reassurance. If New Labour bigwigs are able to convince themselves that their rejection by the community of Isleworth has some kind of ideological foundation, it helps absolve them of any blame for their own predicament. And, of course, of the need for any serious introspection of a kind which might reveal nasties of a kind which they would prefer to remain unrevealed.

Whichever of the two motivations drives New Labour in its dealings with the ICG today what is clearly apparent is a lack of scruple, combined with an equal lack of any real kind of programme beyond the pursuit , or retention, of political office. Nowhere is this more evident than in the aforementioned leaflet (above right), which leads with the interesting announcement: "Ann Keen says Cut the Council Tax".

The article goes on to tell us: "...the level of Council Tax is controlled by Hounslow Council and so could, and should, be cut to help at this difficult time...unfortunately the Conservatives who run Hounslow Council could only freeze the Council Tax this year...

"Ann's suggestion has been backed by Labour councillors in Hounslow who argue if it's possible to freeze it then surely it must be possible to cut the council tax locally...

"Hard pressed local families have enough to deal with without more taxes on top - unlike the Tories and Lib Dems we think the local council tax should be cut."

There is little point in dwelling for too long upon the sheer gall of the message conveyed by New Labour in these few short words. It is very widely known indeed that New Labour in Hounslow has for two years outspokenly opposed the policy of the current administration of keeping Council Tax low, and that it dares to believe that it could get away with now trying to suggest the exact opposite serves only to reveal the utter contempt in which Mrs. Keen and her followers hold their own voters.

Believe it or not, what overcame me when I read the headline was actually a genuine sense of sympathy and embarrassment for all those New Labour apologists and acolytes, including one or two who have technically left the Party itself, who had invested so much time and effort in writing letters to the local press, posting comments on internet forums and using every other available means to argue the case for a higher Council Tax in order to protect what they would have us believe were services for the vulnerable (but often in reality, of course, jobs for cronies). Greater love hath no woman than this; that a woman lay down her friends for her life - as John the Apostle might have said had he encountered the appalling Mrs. Keen.

Locally, as nationally, it is evident that New Labour has lost its way. As it has done so it has become progressively (if that is the right word!) more dishonest, more opportunistic, and less motivated by any kind of principle. Rather than being a means towards achieving an end, the acquisition of political office by any means possible has become the end in itself.

And yet, ironically, I believe not only that there is a need for a Labour Party in our local politics, but also that a Labour Party rooted in honesty, integrity and sound principles would in the fullness of time actually turn the tide around once again. Alas current Party wisdom seems to have it that the way forward for an organisation which finds itself increasingly rejected for its cynicism, its dishonesty and its nastiness is to become more cynical, less honest and nastier.

For the forseeable future, it would seem, political life for the ICG must go on.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

As a service to our absentee MP and to the New Labour Party in Hounslow, I reproduce below without amendment a posting which appeared on the party's local webpage a couple of days ago. To those who will accuse me of tactical naivete by needlessly giving a plug to our opponents, my response would be that the importance of empowering people in an age of dictatorship by spin cannot be stressed enough:

"Local people will be able to petition the council to take action on issues such as traffic calming, moving dumped cars, or cleaning up fly-tipping under new rights proposed by the Labour Government.

"Local Labour MP Ann Keen has challenged local people to take up the new powers and force action from the council.

"Ann said: ‘Most people Brentford and Isleworth have signed a petition. But soon, petitions will have real bite, and the council will have to sit up and take notice of local people’s concerns. I want people to tell me what they want fixing, and if the council won’t act, we will work together to launch a petition. Petitions will give our communities real clout.’

"Labour’s Communities in Control white paper also suggests that local people should be able to decide how the council spends money, how criminals should be punished as part of their ‘community payback’, how more young people should be involved, and how local groups should own and run assets such as parks and community centres.

"Ann Keen MP will be giving out a new pocket-sized card called What Can I Do? to local groups in coming weeks. The card sets out how people can have their say, get involved, and make changes locally."

I promise I am not making this up, this really is on the Brentford and Isleworth Labour Party's website.

If there is any sincerity at all in this new approach beyond its obvious Hounslow Council-bashing then this new initiative has to be applauded. But taking into account the track record of its authors, I hope I will be forgiven for not getting myself all worked up just now.

Unused contribution to the big expenses debate

The Hounslow and Brentford Times couldn't find space for my latest letter to the Editor this week, which is a tad irritating considering the title of the newspaper implies that its areas of operation are Hounslow and Brentford, and the letters' pages were filled with contributions from Twickenham, Barnes and Kingston and for the most part on subjects which are of no relevance whatsoever to people in our borough.

Having only managed to have half a letter published from my last two attempts I am inclined to give it up as a bad job, for a while at least, rather than spending valuable time composing 300-word missives in the faint hope that news of a hedgehog being run over in Sheen doesn't knock it out of the headlines.

Anyway, for the benefit of those who are following the progress of Mr. & Mrs. Expenses I reproduce my rejected letter below:


"Dear Editor

"Whilst I am naturally pleased that the Phil Andrews Predict-athon seems to be working to its full potential, it might reasonably be argued that I enjoyed an unfair advantage over Robin Taylor and Vanessa Smith ('Allowances can be made for Keens but not rivals' - Times, 13th June 2008) in that they had not seen the full text of the letter to which they were replying, due to it having been edited.

"The letter in full can be viewed on my blog, which is at http://philandrews.blogspot.com.

"In that letter I predicted that there would be a flurry of responses protesting that the Keens had not actually broken any rules by claiming their current level of allowances, with the implied suggestion that if a perk is there to be had then they are entitled to grab it with both hands.

"I also predicted that some effort would be made to muddy the waters by drawing a silly comparison between the Keens' claims and councillors' allowances (which as a reader of the ICG website Mr. Taylor will be aware that I didn't vote for, even though he pretends that I did).

"Whilst I would like to believe that the accuracy of my prophesies demonstrates extraordinary powers on my part, in truth all they really demonstrate is the dull repetitiveness of the Ann and Alan spin machine.

"However I have to report that the machine developed a fault last week when another local newspaper published a letter, ostensibly from a named 'ordinary resident' of Brentford, making just the same arguments in defence of Mrs. Keen's conduct.

"What readers of that paper may not have known is that the exact same letter, absolutely word for word, had been published two weeks previously in your own newspaper - under the name of a completely different person, in this case the former Isleworth New Labour candidate Sue Sampson!

"I am advised that the use of activists and apologists to provide false grassroots feedback is known as 'astroturfing'.

"How appropriate is it that a discredited synthetic football pitch should lend its name to the underhand practices of such a thoroughly discredited and synthetic MP as the one who purports to represent the people of Brentford & Isleworth?

"Councillor Phil Andrews -
Community, Isleworth ward."

We meet at last?

I'm back from Harrogate and eager to take up where I left off but my first offering is more on the antics of my friends in the New Labour Party, I'm afraid.

When it was first announced, in May 2006, that the Conservative and Community Groups would be going into coalition to form an administration at the London Borough of Hounslow, the response from the surviving remnants of the previous administration was both predictable and entirely in character.

Having themselves walked voluntarily into opposition in preference to having to work with councillors from any Group other than their own, New Labour embarked immediately upon a clumsy but flatteringly high-profile campaign to bring the new administration down. Their instrument of choice was myself, or rather my much-publicised, well-known and unambiguously renounced former membership of the far-Right National Front back in the 1970s and 1980s.

The campaign began in the usual way, with letters to the local newspapers and postings on internet forums announcing their "new discovery" about my political history. However it soon became clear that the local Conservative Group were made of sterner stuff than Labour had previously realised and would not take fright and buckle under the strain of the resultant local publicity - which in itself was underwhelming due to the fact that it had already been done to death and was no longer considered newsworthy - and the dirty tricks machine was forced to raise its game in an effort to persuade Conservative Central Office to intervene.

And so the big guns were called in. Embarrassed and angered by the incompetent blundering of the Labour Group in Hounslow, which had voted unanimously to approve a new Executive which included two members of the Community Group (as it did again this year, having abstained in 2007), Hounslow's two alleged Members of Parliament Ann and Alan Keen wrote to the Council Leader announcing effectively that they would not co-operate with the new administration for as long as I remained a member of the Executive. When this absurd and frankly irrelevant threat was laughed off with the contempt it deserved (we had never expected the Keens to work with us anyway - let's face it, they didn't do a great deal to help their own administration!), Ann Keen made a rare parliamentary intervention to ask the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to condemn the Conservative Group on Hounslow Council for going into coalition with us, a request which he quite deftly side-stepped.

Armed with the news of her question to the Prime Minister Mrs. Keen continued to pursue her campaign with a zeal which her long-suffering constituents, many of whom have to go to extraordinary lengths just to get her or a member of her staff to even acknowledge a letter or an e-mail, can only have looked upon with envy. Next stop was the regional and national press.

Understandably the Labour's Party's own Tribune newspaper was first into the fray, the bolshie reporter interrupting my holiday with a message on my voicemail demanding that I furnish him with an explanation for my membership of the new Executive. I didn't return his call - it's not as though I didn't know where he was likely to be coming from, and he didn't disappoint.

The piece in the Tribune then in turn provided the hook for stories in other, wider-circulation rags. It was perhaps inevitable that the first to report for duty would be the completely unscrupulous guttersnipe Andrew Gilligan at the London Evening Standard.

Despite the fact that the Standard is essentially pro-Conservative Gilligan had already, in the run-up to the local elections, acquired a reputation with the ICG as a man with a suspiciously close (and one-sided) relationship with the Keens and who was pretty much indifferent to the truth or otherwise of what he wrote in his political columns, at least where we were concerned.

As well as covering the ludicrous "Reichstag Fire"* (as the alleged "firebomb attack" on a rubbish sack belonging to an Isleworth Labour Party candidate just before the publishing deadline of the election-day issue of the local newspaper has affectionately come to be known) as though it were without question the work of the ICG, during that campaign Gilligan had also wilfully repeated the New Labour lie that I had a criminal conviction for a racially-motivated assualt on a black police officer. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I wrote at the time to both Gilligan and his editor to point out that this allegation was untrue.

This didn't prevent him from repeating the accusation, which he now knew to be false, as part of Mrs. Keen's campaign against the new Executive (when, having done so, this low-grade piece of human manure had the effrontery to call me last June to request a quote for a third hatchet-job on the ICG which he was planning to write at Mrs. Keen's behest, he was offered a short piece of advice pertaining to sex and travel along with an assurance that any factual inaccuracies contained in his article would meet with a legal response. The article never appeared).

If the reason for Gilligan's apparent subservience to the Keens remains a mystery, there was nothing mysterious about the willingness of the Daily Mirror to lend their campaign a helping hand. The Mirror is an openly pro-New Labour paper which seems to have readily forgiven its political masters for their fraudulent war in Iraq, a war which has resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and which to its great credit the newspaper opposed at the time). Giving pride of place in his full-page column to Labour's problems in Hounslow, Assistant Political Editor Kevin Maguire announced to the tabloid's readership that I was "a former member of the National Front and a Holocaust denier".

The word which stood out for me was the second "a", which seemed to suggest that whilst Maguire acknowledged that my membership of the National Front was something which belonged to the past, my denial of the Holocaust (which comes as part of the deal with senior membership of a fascist party such as the NF) belonged to the present, which it most certainly doesn't.

Why mention all this more than two years on? Well, while in Conference mode I decided yesterday morning to peruse the agenda for the forthcoming LGA Annual Conference in Bournemouth and discovered that on the afternoon of the second day there will be a plenary session on the topic of "Homes fit for local people". What caught my eye first of all was that the session will be chaired by Sir Bob Kerslake (to whom I was introduced in Harrogate), who is currently the Chief Executive for the Homes and Communities Agency but who also, slightly before my time in office, was once the Chief Executive of the London Borough of Hounslow.

Reading on through the list of participants involved in this session I was even more interested to see the name of one Kevin Maguire, yes he of the Daily Mirror. These kind of sessions seem to attract a modest attendance, and there is every chance that somebody in the audience with his hand raised will get the opportunity to ask a question once the speeches are done.

As we have seen above, that Gilligan is a conscious liar is a matter of demonstrable fact. But did Maguire really mean to misrepresent me in the way he did or was his just a completely innocent act of typographical clumsiness?

Seems I may get the opportunity to ask him!


* In February 1933 the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was subject to a serious arson attack. Adolf Hitler, who had only shortly before been elected Chancellor of Germany, blamed his Communist opponents and used the fire as the justification for a policy of repression against the Communists. Most historians today believe the Nazis themselves to have been responsible for the fire.