New Group Inspires Us to Fight On

Last week saw one of the most spectacular events ever to take place in Isleworth, certainly within my living memory. An idea which had taken shape amongst a group of local people – initially, it would seem, young mothers focused around a popular local street-corner café – bloomed into a massive public display of initiative and community spirit under the banner of Inspiring Isleworth of a kind which I and my colleagues in the Independent Community Group always knew lay latent within the soul of our village. A Christmas Market, stalls, an ice rink, children's rides, a land train and much more besides turned a cold December day into a wonderful celebration of unity and togetherness. By all accounts police estimates placed the total number of people in attendance at a staggering 2,500.

The ICG as an organisation played no part in this superbly successful day, although many of our members were involved, either in a personal capacity or, in some cases, as representatives of other organisations which were involved. Had we been asked we would, of course, have been happy to have played our part, although I doubt there would have been much we could have added that the organisers did not already have firmly in hand. It was enough for us to marvel at the achievements of others, who did Isleworth so proud.

In saying all this I am not oblivious to the fact that, for a very small number of people, the object of the whole exercise appeared to be to use the event to try to raise the profile of and to promote one of the Isleworth Labour ward councillors, whose name was surreptitiously added to the event’s promotional posters against the will of many of its participants and bandied around Facebook and in letters to local newspapers. I am aware also that this councillor, to her credit, certainly did contribute a great deal to the event, if not to the extent that her small but apparently well-disciplined group of supporters would like us to believe.

But notwithstanding these strictly limited attempts to politicise and otherwise distract the occasion from its primary function, nothing must be allowed to detract from the magnitude of last week’s success. In the struggles that lie ahead for us as a community, anything which brings people out into the streets in such a spirit of harmony and mutual endeavour is something to be nurtured, and I dearly hope that this celebration will be repeated in future years.

Of course, once the party is over and the inevitable debris is cleared away, the questions which taxed us as a community before the event remain to be answered. The ongoing farce of the London Borough of Hounslow’s increasingly desperate – and, it would appear, unsuccessful – attempts to give away our Public Hall is still in full flow. The fear of library closures and “disposal” of our community buildings still returns with the approach of every new budget meeting. Traffic engineers still wreak havoc on our highways and our residents’ and tenants’ groups remain under sustained attack. The threat of aesthetically poor and unsustainable development still looms large over Brentford like a great dark cloud. Mogden still smells.

The challenge for us as community activists is to ensure that projects such as Inspiring Isleworth not only continue to be successful, but also that they serve as a compliment to our less pretty but frankly more essential campaigning work rather than being allowed, as some of our political leaders would prefer, to become a distraction from the everyday problems that affect us as a community, and a panem et circenses replacement for the struggles in which we are engaged.

After all a celebration, even a superbly crafted one of the kind we saw last week, becomes singularly redundant when there is nothing left to celebrate.

Isleworth residents brave the cold

There was a fairly good crowd at the annual Carols in The Square event, organised by The Isleworth Society (of which I am proud to be a Life Member), in Old Isleworth last night despite the treacherous cold. The Mayor of the London Borough of Hounslow, Councillor Colin Ellar, was there and stayed until the end in spite of the weather.

After the event my ICG colleagues Paul and Shirley Fisher and I had the opportunity of a long chat over a pleasant drink with two of Isleworth's three ward councillors (Councillor Mindu Bains has by all accounts suffered a dislocated shoulder after a fall, I wish her a speedy recovery).

It was really useful to get a perspective from the new administration, and in particular to see how these two "newbies" were settling in to their respective roles. It is clear that they are both very keen to succeed and to do a good job on behalf of their constituents, and my feeling is that they will succeed in spite of the difficult situation in which the new administration finds itself with the central government cutbacks.

All in all a good, constructive evening on every front.

Serving our community from "the other side"

One of the plus points of being an ex-councillor is that one is able once again to function as an "ordinary" community activist without placing the groups and organisations with which we associate into a compromising position.

Back in 1998, shortly after I had been elected to the London Borough of Hounslow, the old Three Estates Residents' Association (TERA), of which I had been Secretary, came under an enormous amount of political pressure to relieve me of my office. This pressure, in the tradition of its originators, went on to manifest itself in the form of threats that essential funding would be withdrawn. Whilst this was of course blatant political posturing of the most appalling kind, it did have in its favour a vaguely plausible point, to wit that as an elected councillor I could have been perceived to have had a conflict of interests.

Now that that conflict no longer exists, I and I'm sure many of my colleagues will avail ourselves of the opportunity to become actively involved in the work of our community from the "inside" once again.

Today my wife Caroline, who for those who didn't know was one of the three elected members for Syon ward prior to the recent local elections, took advantage of two separate opportunities to do just that. The first involved a visit to the allotments in Park Road, where she is now a member of the allotment committee. Several ICG members and other well-known members of the wider community hold plots on Park Road, and the site is becoming very well organised. Allotment holders did not receive a very good deal under the last Labour administration, and although things may well be different this time around it is wise to be prepared just in case.

Later in the evening she was an invited guest at a Social to celebrate the launch of a new Rivers and Byways Leaflet held on the Cathja Project barge in Old Isleworth. The outgoing councillors (that's us!) were specifically thanked in an address by a representative on The Isleworth Society (TIS) for all the help and assistance we had given to them and Cathja during our time as members of the local authority.

There is always a huge amount of work to be done outside of the jurisdiction of a councillor, and it is pleasing to be able to get involved with some of that work once again as lay participants rather than from a perceived political perspective.

How to download The Ruskins' new single

Here are the links to download the new single "Old Isleworth" from local band The Ruskins:

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iTunes - limited edition Acoustic and Remix - £1.29
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/old-isleworth-ep/id368016842
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Play.com
http://www.play.com/Music/MP3-Download-Album/4-/14843372/Old-Isleworth/Product.html
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7Digital
http://www.7digital.com/artists/the-ruskins/old-isleworth/
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Tesco
http://www.tescoentertainment.com/store/mp3/the-ruskins--old-isleworth/2%3a38794493/
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Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Old-Isleworth-Explicit/dp/B003EJCA20/ref=dm_ap_alb1?ie=UTF8&qid=1273469218&sr=1-2
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You can use your mobile to buy the single by texting
TRACK RUSKINS to 80818 (£1)


Massive thanks to everyone who pre-ordered or bought the single already! The band really appreciates the support. If you get your friends/family/pets to do the same, they would absolutely LOVE you all :)


Old Isleworth Music Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWtlt50BWE

"Old Isleworth" now available on iTunes

"Old Isleworth" by local stars The Ruskins is now available on iTunes (and most online stores such as Amazon, Play.com, Tesco).

The Ruskins are a superb local band who are on their way up and well worth supporting.

Please click here for more details.

A month of meetings

One of the thus far unblogged about features of the month just passed was the number of very fundamentally different meetings I was called upon to attend.

Meetings are both boon and bane when it comes to getting things done. Without meetings decisions don’t get taken, policies don’t implemented. But the more meetings that one is required to attend, the less one actually gets done in the field.

Probably the most significant meeting, if you call it that, that I was called upon to attend in January had nothing to do with council business. It was a weekend spent in Nottingham as part of my Congregational Federation foundation course. Caroline is also taking the same course, which meant the twins were forced to endure the 260-mile round trip with us, much to their obvious chagrin. One saving grace was that the accommodation at the Congregational Federation headquarters, in which we would normally have stayed, was occupied by students, so we and the others on the course were billeted at the Ibis Hotel, which of course is much more practical for a family group. A very productive and fulfilling weekend in which many new faces were seen and new friends met was rounded off splendidly by a group viewing of Match Of The Day in the small hotel bar.

Many of January’s meetings inevitably featured the Housing Revenue Account budget, with both the government-induced rent hike and the controversy surrounding my recommendation, passed by Borough Council, to use housing reserve funds to help facilitate tenant empowerment on our estates. Meetings with LBH Housing officers, finance bigwigs, Hounslow Homes and HFTRA, as well as with our coalition partners in the Conservative Group, presented me with the opportunity to explain the rationale for embarking upon such a radical venture.

Much was talked about at meetings in the local community too. A consultation exercise over plans to dramatically improve Isleworth Recreation Centre and Isleworth Library by bringing them together into a modern leisure hub were enthusiastically received, despite some initial, and in my view unnecessary teething problems in the consultation process. Meanwhile residents of Old Isleworth heard of the slow but continuing progress being made on the introduction of traffic reduction measures down by the river, and much liaising with residents continued to take place in connection with the proposed footpath along the bank of the Thames in the grounds currently occupied by Nazareth House.

At the Annual General Meeting of the ICG members showed great determination to step up our communication with those we serve, and to raise funds and expand membership still further in this most crucial year. And the point was agreed by everybody present that the most important meeting that any ICG activist will ever participate in takes place on the doorstep.