It seems our Isleworth ward councillor Ed Mayne continues to be the cause of much angst over in Chiswick, London W4.
Proposals to introduce a Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) in two streets close to the grounds of Chiswick House are being resisted by a clear majority of residents living in the Grove Park area. Although the Zone is to be limited in its scope those living in surrounding streets fear, with good reason, that the parking thereby displaced into their own neighbourhood will lead in the course of time to calls for it to be extended. This is, after all, what almost invariably happens with Controlled Parking Zones, and it is how schemes which may be cost-neutral to begin with morph into substantial money-spinners for the local authority.
Economically and politically, Chiswick is the ideal milch cow for the London Borough of Hounslow. As well as generally being the borough's most affluent area, it dutifully returns Conservative councillors at every local election, an outcome routinely expected by the Tories and accepted by Labour. For the powers that be there is no point in trying to alter the electoral status quo, and Labour tends to work around Chiswick rather than spending any time trying to make serious inroads into its politics.
On the issue of the CPZ, as one would expect the Tories would appear to be moderately supportive of the larger number whilst remaining mindful that many of those residents of the two streets who are in favour of the proposals are Conservative voters too. Any suggestion that the protest should be escalated has been met with nervous disinterest. Where they have been relatively vocal is in criticising the undemocratic and authoritarian methods by which the Labour Council would seem to be steamrollering the proposals through.
This whole continuing episode is probably the best example we have seen so far of how the disasterous electoral strategy pursued by the Tories at the local elections of 2010, which led to Labour regaining control of the borough, has impacted upon their own constituents. The people of Chiswick are now completely powerless and their councillors can only squeal impotently from the sidelines as the Labour machine tramples all over them and laughs in its wake.
Of course the Tories remain in denial about the role they played in bringing about this sorry state of affairs. Sometimes they even have the nerve to offer tactical advice, delivered one presumes with a straight face, to the campaigning residents. They are helped, one must record, by a profoundly unrevolutionary spirit which self-evidently prevails amongst the citizenry of Chiswick, which is a real shame as potentially they are in many respects better organised and better equipped for really effective community action than residents anywhere else in the borough, with a hugely vibrant local internet community and many active residents' groups.
It remains to be seen whether Chiswick residents will develop their own innovative strategies for resisting the relentless encroachments of the local authority or whether they will continue to place their faith in the self-neutered politicians whose vociferous fence-sitting can surely not remain unchallenged and unquestioned indefinitely by this vigilant but sometimes irritatingly genteel community?
More on this anon.
Showing posts with label Chiswick W4 Forum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chiswick W4 Forum. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Chiswick Woman (86) Gets Court Summons for £80 Council Tax
A Chiswick resident who tried to pay an outstanding £80 on his 86-year old mother’s Council tax to cancel a threatened court summons has spoken of his frustration with council bureaucracy.
Andy Pease fell foul of data protection rules when Hounslow Council staff refused to give details as he was not the holder of the account, despite the fact that his mother could not answer for herself. She is blind, and suffers from dementia and arthritis.
The Council has said unless they have permission for others to act on their behalf, legally they can only deal with the account holder. They were willing to discuss the situation with Mr. Pease if he got back in contact, they said and were awaiting further information on the case.
Andy Pease said his mother lives alone in a bungalow provided by Hounslow Council, and he pays all her bills by direct debit from his own account, including her rent.
Last week she received a letter from Hounslow Council informing her Hounslow had applied to Feltham magistrates court for a summons for non payment of council tax.
"This is the first I knew of any outstanding council tax, as far as I was aware Hounslow took any money owing out of my bank account," said Mr. Pease, who then phoned the Council.
"The woman that answered the phone refused to give me any details as I was not the account holder, even though the money came out of my bank account. She insisted on speaking to my mother, who because of her dementia could not answer the security question.
"I explained the situation again and was finally told that my mother’s benefits cover almost all of her council tax apart from £80 per year which my mother should pay. She could not tell me why they had not taken the money out of my account along with the rent. She informed me that the outstanding council tax was £80, but because they had now taken out a summons, the cost would be £283.
"I was told that if I paid the outstanding amount, the summons would be cancelled. I said that I would pay this amount over the phone by credit card. I was then told the lady I was speaking to could not take payment so she said she would put me through to the cashiers, which she did.
"The number she put me through to was an automated line which would not let me proceed until I entered the account number which we did not have.
"I could not go back so I had to hang up. As I had spent 40 minutes on the phone already, I did not have time to call back again.
"I called Hounslow again this morning, and had to go through the whole story all over again. Again I was told I could not pay, because of data protection I asked to speak to a manager. This of course was not possible, but I was told a manager would call me back (they didn't ) so I am now waiting for the court date to be sent."
He said he felt he had "bent over backwards" to pay the money and was prepared to turn up in court and tell his story to highlight the behaviour of the Council.
Hounslow Council have issued the following statement on the matter; “It can be difficult for families trying to help their loved ones in these matters, as legally we are only allowed to deal with the account holder unless, we receive certain information permitting others to act on their behalf. This is an understandable measure to make sure vulnerable residents aren’t open to abuse.
"If Mr Pease provides this information, we would be able to discuss the account with him, as we already do in many other similar cases. We are still awaiting the details we need, but we will contact Mr Pease as soon as possible to arrange for them to be provided.
"In this particular case, no direct debit has ever been set up for the council tax bill, so we had no choice but to deal with the situation as we would with any unpaid bill, including a reminder letter being sent warning that a summons may be issued."
Reproduced with acknowledgements to ChiswickW4.com.
Andy Pease fell foul of data protection rules when Hounslow Council staff refused to give details as he was not the holder of the account, despite the fact that his mother could not answer for herself. She is blind, and suffers from dementia and arthritis.
The Council has said unless they have permission for others to act on their behalf, legally they can only deal with the account holder. They were willing to discuss the situation with Mr. Pease if he got back in contact, they said and were awaiting further information on the case.
Andy Pease said his mother lives alone in a bungalow provided by Hounslow Council, and he pays all her bills by direct debit from his own account, including her rent.
Last week she received a letter from Hounslow Council informing her Hounslow had applied to Feltham magistrates court for a summons for non payment of council tax.
"This is the first I knew of any outstanding council tax, as far as I was aware Hounslow took any money owing out of my bank account," said Mr. Pease, who then phoned the Council.
"The woman that answered the phone refused to give me any details as I was not the account holder, even though the money came out of my bank account. She insisted on speaking to my mother, who because of her dementia could not answer the security question.
"I explained the situation again and was finally told that my mother’s benefits cover almost all of her council tax apart from £80 per year which my mother should pay. She could not tell me why they had not taken the money out of my account along with the rent. She informed me that the outstanding council tax was £80, but because they had now taken out a summons, the cost would be £283.
"I was told that if I paid the outstanding amount, the summons would be cancelled. I said that I would pay this amount over the phone by credit card. I was then told the lady I was speaking to could not take payment so she said she would put me through to the cashiers, which she did.
"The number she put me through to was an automated line which would not let me proceed until I entered the account number which we did not have.
"I could not go back so I had to hang up. As I had spent 40 minutes on the phone already, I did not have time to call back again.
"I called Hounslow again this morning, and had to go through the whole story all over again. Again I was told I could not pay, because of data protection I asked to speak to a manager. This of course was not possible, but I was told a manager would call me back (they didn't ) so I am now waiting for the court date to be sent."
He said he felt he had "bent over backwards" to pay the money and was prepared to turn up in court and tell his story to highlight the behaviour of the Council.
Hounslow Council have issued the following statement on the matter; “It can be difficult for families trying to help their loved ones in these matters, as legally we are only allowed to deal with the account holder unless, we receive certain information permitting others to act on their behalf. This is an understandable measure to make sure vulnerable residents aren’t open to abuse.
"If Mr Pease provides this information, we would be able to discuss the account with him, as we already do in many other similar cases. We are still awaiting the details we need, but we will contact Mr Pease as soon as possible to arrange for them to be provided.
"In this particular case, no direct debit has ever been set up for the council tax bill, so we had no choice but to deal with the situation as we would with any unpaid bill, including a reminder letter being sent warning that a summons may be issued."
Reproduced with acknowledgements to ChiswickW4.com.
Friday, 15 April 2011
Direct Action to Save Chiswick Day Centre - Saturday, 16th April
Hounslow Council is threatening to close the Chiswick Day Centre due to funding cuts. The Centre is a vital local resource providing much needed support and respite care for vulnerable pensioners and the disabled in Chiswick, and the only place in Chiswick to do so.
Come join us for tea, cake and bingo at a peaceful protest pop-up Day Centre, dress code is plucky pensioner granny-chic; sparkly cardies, hair rollers, zimmer frames and bi-focals.
Meet at the War Memorial on the corner of Heathfield Terrace and Chiswick High Road at 10.45am, for a location that will be revealed on the day.
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/518
Reproduced with acknowledgements to Carrie Richards at the Chiswick W4.com forum.
Come join us for tea, cake and bingo at a peaceful protest pop-up Day Centre, dress code is plucky pensioner granny-chic; sparkly cardies, hair rollers, zimmer frames and bi-focals.
Meet at the War Memorial on the corner of Heathfield Terrace and Chiswick High Road at 10.45am, for a location that will be revealed on the day.
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/518
Reproduced with acknowledgements to Carrie Richards at the Chiswick W4.com forum.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
An unholy alliance begins to take shape
When I have a spare moment on my hands I like to trawl through the various comments on the local internet forums. Two of the most popular are ChiswickW4.com and BrentfordTW8.com, both of which are provided by NeighbourNet.
Often one gets drawn into participating. Sometimes a point has to be made, other times it's just for the craic - but speaking personally I find it difficult not to throw in my two penn'orth on occasions.
The exception is in the run-up to an election in which the Independent Community Group (ICG) is participating. This period tends to bring out the worst in our opponents who shift instinctively from crude and clumsy mode into cunning mode, alternately ganging up or engaging in various strategems and ruses to entrap and to compromise. Mindful of the potential the forums have to become the playthings of the unscrupulous I always withdraw from them a few weeks before a major campaign begins.
Invariably this provides a signal for critics to take a pop, in the sure knowledge that I will have rendered myself unable to respond. It would appear that opponents from across the spectrum are becoming enraged by our efforts to disassociate ourselves from conventional party politics, and all the accompanying sleaze and shame. And so now both I and my ICG colleagues find ourselves standing defiantly and unfazed in the firing line of what would appear to be becoming a cross-party offensive against the growing effectiveness of people politics in our little corner of the world.
Today on the TW8.com forum I would seem particularly to have become something of a cause célebre. Threads berating the ICG occupy most of the top ten listings on TW8.com as I write, and the onslaught has been joined by a Conservative councillor, the usual half-comprehending Labour claque and a quite obsessively embittered ex-ICG councillor who turned on his colleagues when it became clear to him that he was no longer up to the job (for what it's worth I happen to believe he had been quite a good councillor, if a tad off the wall, before he lost his self-confidence after his first couple of years in office, but as his belief in himself crumbled he characteristically looked around for somebody else to blame for his predicament). This particular recruit to the claque's destructive cause posts under his wife's name whilst accusing me of being a phoney!
Tonight a new poster, quite possibly a nom-de-plume for a more regular contributor, has taken the debate to its logical conclusion by proposing a formal local alliance between the Conservative and Labour parties in an attempt to arrest the relentless progress of the ICG.
We repeat our view that we stand separate and unashamedly aloof from the sorry, untrustworthy mess that party politics has become locally. We do not consider ourselves to be politicians, pursuing some inflexible dogma irrespective of the will of the people. We are asking "Who Needs Politicians?" and in the light of our achievements over the past four years think it is a reasonable enough question to ask.
Often one gets drawn into participating. Sometimes a point has to be made, other times it's just for the craic - but speaking personally I find it difficult not to throw in my two penn'orth on occasions.
The exception is in the run-up to an election in which the Independent Community Group (ICG) is participating. This period tends to bring out the worst in our opponents who shift instinctively from crude and clumsy mode into cunning mode, alternately ganging up or engaging in various strategems and ruses to entrap and to compromise. Mindful of the potential the forums have to become the playthings of the unscrupulous I always withdraw from them a few weeks before a major campaign begins.
Invariably this provides a signal for critics to take a pop, in the sure knowledge that I will have rendered myself unable to respond. It would appear that opponents from across the spectrum are becoming enraged by our efforts to disassociate ourselves from conventional party politics, and all the accompanying sleaze and shame. And so now both I and my ICG colleagues find ourselves standing defiantly and unfazed in the firing line of what would appear to be becoming a cross-party offensive against the growing effectiveness of people politics in our little corner of the world.
Today on the TW8.com forum I would seem particularly to have become something of a cause célebre. Threads berating the ICG occupy most of the top ten listings on TW8.com as I write, and the onslaught has been joined by a Conservative councillor, the usual half-comprehending Labour claque and a quite obsessively embittered ex-ICG councillor who turned on his colleagues when it became clear to him that he was no longer up to the job (for what it's worth I happen to believe he had been quite a good councillor, if a tad off the wall, before he lost his self-confidence after his first couple of years in office, but as his belief in himself crumbled he characteristically looked around for somebody else to blame for his predicament). This particular recruit to the claque's destructive cause posts under his wife's name whilst accusing me of being a phoney!
Tonight a new poster, quite possibly a nom-de-plume for a more regular contributor, has taken the debate to its logical conclusion by proposing a formal local alliance between the Conservative and Labour parties in an attempt to arrest the relentless progress of the ICG.
We repeat our view that we stand separate and unashamedly aloof from the sorry, untrustworthy mess that party politics has become locally. We do not consider ourselves to be politicians, pursuing some inflexible dogma irrespective of the will of the people. We are asking "Who Needs Politicians?" and in the light of our achievements over the past four years think it is a reasonable enough question to ask.
Sunday, 9 August 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)