If I have read this article correctly it would appear that new Labour councillors Theo Dennison and Ed Mayne, who represent Syon and Isleworth wards respectively, have been appointed to serve on the London Borough of Hounslow's new Executive.
Whilst I criticised the last Labour administration for nominating first-time councillors with no experience to the local authority's most senior committee, responsible as it is for most of its decision making, the selection of two local members will at least hopefully ensure that our wards are not forgotten. I believe both of them have what it takes to stand up to their colleagues where necessary and to ensure that Syon and Isleworth receive their fair share of services and resources. I was particularly impressed by Ed's intelligence, humility and enthusiasm when I chatted with him at the election count last week. He is a decent young man and deserves the chance that he has been given.
It is also good to see that Councillor Jagdish Sharma has been given the opportunity to lead the Labour Group and the Council after having been in a position of responsibility for such a very long time. With the re-election of John Chatt and Colin Ellar many feared there would be an unseemly scramble for the top job, which doesn't appear to have materialised.
In the Tory camp Councillor Peter Thompson has "retired from frontline politics" and has stood down as Leader of the Conservative Group. I like to believe I enjoyed a good relationship with Peter based both on personal chemistry and mutual respect and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his support during the last administration and for the frank and honest discussions and also one or two laughs that we had along the way. He is replaced by Councillor Mark Bowen, who was sadly unsuccessful in his efforts to topple Alan Keen in Feltham & Heston at the general election and whom I consider a good friend.
If I haven't found myself a proper job by then I might look in from time to time when all the new and not so new players are exchanging banter across the floor of the Council Chamber.
Showing posts with label Alan Keen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Keen. Show all posts
Saturday, 15 May 2010
Friday, 12 March 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, 22 August 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 28 November 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Innocent mix-up, or a new low in New Labour's war on the Worton community?
On Monday a local Somali community leader received an unexpected telephone call from the alleged Member of Parliament for Feltham & Heston, Mr. Alan Keen, inviting him to a reception that evening with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. Evidently a spare ticket had become available at the last minute. A little perplexed, he nonetheless accepted and attended the event.
The reason that a ticket had become available at such short notice may well have been because the name of Councillor Paul Fisher, Hounslow Council's Lead Member for Service Improvement and Community Empowerment, had mysteriously been erased at about the same time from the list of invitees.
Councillor Fisher had been invited to accompany one of the young residents of Isleworth's Worton estate who had recently received the Metropolitan Police Commissioner's Community Safety Peace Award for their work under the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. Sadly the youngster concerned, Jamie Kempson, was understandably overwhelmed and did not wish to attend the reception without Councillor Fisher, who was refused admission at the door.
Lurking in the background when Councillor Fisher arrived was Mr. Keen, and his unsuspecting Somali accomplice.
Even by the standards of political pettiness and spite that have earned New Labour in Hounslow the notoriety they deservedly enjoy, particularly in Isleworth, it seems difficult to credit that they would stoop so low as to deprive a hard-working and community-spirited young member of the community the opportunity of a lifetime, to meet the Prime Minister and to have his good work receive the recognition and congratulation it deserved from the most senior political figure in the land. However there are a number of incidents which, whilst they may constitute nothing more than a series of coincidences, certainly give us food for thought.
One is that the Somali activist in question was one with whom Councillor Fisher and myself have been working very closely and constructively on a series of community cohesion projects. Part of New Labour's modus operandi in these parts is to try to overawe those in the community it seeks to use by impressing them with its importance and contacts. Residents of my own estate have been offered the impossible-to-refuse opportunity to "meet Ann Keen in person" (no less) in exchange for their acquiescence on specific community issues. If the gentleman in question was as shallow as New Labour assumes he and other members of the hoi polloi to be, he might well have been flattered enough to sell his soul to New Labour. In any event, inviting this particular guest has all the hallmarks of "getting one over" on the hated ICG and Worton community.
Another is that on the very morning following this incident, at 10:29 to be precise, this very blog was visited by somebody at the Houses of Parliament (thanks Statcounter). Don't they say felons always return to the scene of their crimes? There being nothing on here at that time about the incident, whoever it was only hung around for four seconds.
I sincerely hope that this incident was nothing more than an innocent mix-up, and that it was not the latest manifestation of New Labour's long-running hatred of the residents of the Worton estate (residents one of its representatives abused as "whingers" a few years back when they dared to oppose the Party's plans for their green). If this is the case, I promise to publish any statement from New Labour to that effect here on this blog . Should such a statement not be forthcoming people will draw their own conclusions, and those conclusions will no doubt differ from person to person.
In the meantime, all I can say is roll on the general election!
The reason that a ticket had become available at such short notice may well have been because the name of Councillor Paul Fisher, Hounslow Council's Lead Member for Service Improvement and Community Empowerment, had mysteriously been erased at about the same time from the list of invitees.
Councillor Fisher had been invited to accompany one of the young residents of Isleworth's Worton estate who had recently received the Metropolitan Police Commissioner's Community Safety Peace Award for their work under the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. Sadly the youngster concerned, Jamie Kempson, was understandably overwhelmed and did not wish to attend the reception without Councillor Fisher, who was refused admission at the door.
Lurking in the background when Councillor Fisher arrived was Mr. Keen, and his unsuspecting Somali accomplice.
Even by the standards of political pettiness and spite that have earned New Labour in Hounslow the notoriety they deservedly enjoy, particularly in Isleworth, it seems difficult to credit that they would stoop so low as to deprive a hard-working and community-spirited young member of the community the opportunity of a lifetime, to meet the Prime Minister and to have his good work receive the recognition and congratulation it deserved from the most senior political figure in the land. However there are a number of incidents which, whilst they may constitute nothing more than a series of coincidences, certainly give us food for thought.
One is that the Somali activist in question was one with whom Councillor Fisher and myself have been working very closely and constructively on a series of community cohesion projects. Part of New Labour's modus operandi in these parts is to try to overawe those in the community it seeks to use by impressing them with its importance and contacts. Residents of my own estate have been offered the impossible-to-refuse opportunity to "meet Ann Keen in person" (no less) in exchange for their acquiescence on specific community issues. If the gentleman in question was as shallow as New Labour assumes he and other members of the hoi polloi to be, he might well have been flattered enough to sell his soul to New Labour. In any event, inviting this particular guest has all the hallmarks of "getting one over" on the hated ICG and Worton community.
Another is that on the very morning following this incident, at 10:29 to be precise, this very blog was visited by somebody at the Houses of Parliament (thanks Statcounter). Don't they say felons always return to the scene of their crimes? There being nothing on here at that time about the incident, whoever it was only hung around for four seconds.
I sincerely hope that this incident was nothing more than an innocent mix-up, and that it was not the latest manifestation of New Labour's long-running hatred of the residents of the Worton estate (residents one of its representatives abused as "whingers" a few years back when they dared to oppose the Party's plans for their green). If this is the case, I promise to publish any statement from New Labour to that effect here on this blog . Should such a statement not be forthcoming people will draw their own conclusions, and those conclusions will no doubt differ from person to person.
In the meantime, all I can say is roll on the general election!
Saturday, 21 June 2008
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."
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."
Friday, 20 June 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Sorting out New Labour's mess
Like everyone involved with the current administration I entirely approve of its policy of enforcing against unlawful development.
However, as I argued here last month an unwritten policy recently revealed by the alleged MP for Feltham & Heston, Mr. Alan Keen, may have misled some residents within certain sections of the community into believing that they did not require the benefit of planning permission for their extensions and conversions as the then New Labour administration would turn a blind eye to their activities in exchange for their votes.
As a result of this, so I argued, there may sometimes be a case for taking a sympathetic view on an individual basis.
I have just successfully prevented an enforcement in one such case, where the individual concerned - himself formerly an influential Labour Party supporter in the Cranford area - had constructed an extension under the old régime without following the conventional procedures which involve applying for permission. After intensive representations from the applicant, myself and leading Cranford community activists, officers confirmed that "on the balance of probabilities the extention is likely to be immune from enforcement action".
No doubt there will be more instances of councillors and community leaders having to sort out the mess which is New Labour's legacy in the west of the borough.
However, as I argued here last month an unwritten policy recently revealed by the alleged MP for Feltham & Heston, Mr. Alan Keen, may have misled some residents within certain sections of the community into believing that they did not require the benefit of planning permission for their extensions and conversions as the then New Labour administration would turn a blind eye to their activities in exchange for their votes.
As a result of this, so I argued, there may sometimes be a case for taking a sympathetic view on an individual basis.
I have just successfully prevented an enforcement in one such case, where the individual concerned - himself formerly an influential Labour Party supporter in the Cranford area - had constructed an extension under the old régime without following the conventional procedures which involve applying for permission. After intensive representations from the applicant, myself and leading Cranford community activists, officers confirmed that "on the balance of probabilities the extention is likely to be immune from enforcement action".
No doubt there will be more instances of councillors and community leaders having to sort out the mess which is New Labour's legacy in the west of the borough.
Friday, 6 June 2008
Cut down to size?
Returning to the subject of the Hounslow & Brentford Times, today's issue published most of the letter I sent them concerning the obscene expense claims which continue to be made by our borough's two alleged Members of Parliament, the appallingly mercenary Alan and Ann Keen, who have purchased a luxury second home at the expense of the taxpayer which spares them the trauma of having to travel nine miles to work each day from their Brentford residence.
An Osterley correspondent has written to complain about the lack of service which she has allegedly received from Mrs. Keen, whilst somebody from Chiswick defends the pair, arguing that they have done nothing that is against the rules. I have to say the letters which local newspapers receive in the Keens' defence have a remarkably similar tone to them, implying some degree of central co-ordination - a tactic which New Labour frequently uses both with letters to the local newspapers and with postings on internet forums.
Unfortunately the Editor decided to chop my letter down to about 75% of its original size, either because it was too long or because she didn't like the comments which I made about certain members of the Keens' propaganda team (the worryingly obsessive Robin Taylor and P. Haling of Southall, who may or may not be one and the same person), which I feel upsets the flow of the letter somewhat. I reproduce the original in its entirety below:
" Dear Editor
"With reference to your open letter to our Members of Parliament Ann and Alan Keen ('Wish you were here' - Times, 30th May 2008).
"If Mr.and Mrs. Keen are away on holiday then they are entitled to that. I hope they have an enjoyable and a relaxing time away from the undoubtedly demanding pressures of their work.
"When they return, I hope they will furnish you, and us, with the full and frank explanation which we were promised at the election count in 2005 for their seemingly extravagent and cavalier approach to members' expense claims.
"Of course, this is not just about Mr. and Mrs. Keen. In order to serve as our Members of Parliament they need first to be selected by their party to represent them at the polls. At the last time of asking nine out of ten Labour ward parties selected Mrs. Keen to be the Labour candidate at the 2005 general election. Nine out of ten Labour ward parties believe her mercenary approach, and that of her husband, to using their constituents' money to maximum advantage in order to fund an unnecessarily extravagent lifestyle to be perfectly acceptable conduct.
"Beyond this, the Keens would seem to be able to call upon the services of a veritable army of acolytes, apologists and general hangers-on who invariably spring into action whenever a local newspaper has the temerity to call their heroes' deeds into question.
"The first line of defence is always that 'they are not breaking any rules' ('In defence of Ann Keen' - Sue Sampson, 30.5.08). Our MPs are so super that they deserve anything they can get their hands on and the hoi polloi should be grateful that they deign to represent us at all. If it isn't actually against the law to claim it, then they should claim it.
"The second old chestnut is that other Members of Parliament, from other political parties, are making similarly unjustifiable claims and that this in some way mitigates or even justifies their actions. Of course other MPs from across the political divide are indeed exploiting the rules in a similar way, but that is for their own constituents to deal with. The Keens are our constituency MPs.
"Thirdly comes the frankly obscene comparison between the £34k p.a. salary received by the Leader of Hounslow Council and the £16k p.a. paid to members of the Executive, some of whom work full-time for said amount, and the hitherto undisclosed concierge-and-swimming-pool life of luxury enjoyed by our MPs.
"But additional to all this the Keens are uniquely blessed with the unrelenting devotion of the scribe(s) of Southall ('Last of the big spenders' - K. Booth, 30.5.08), whose sole purpose in life would appear to be serve with undying and unquestioning loyalty another borough's two Members of Parliament. Where Hounslow's finest are either not prepared or not trusted to fight the cause of the royal household, the scribe(s) of Southall step nobly into the breach.
"Opinion varies amongst those few of us who bother to give it a second thought as to whether your newspaper's two perennial Southall correspondents are in fact the same person, or whether they somehow synthesise their ideas, weird obsessions and writing styles through some kind of telepathic process. Nevertheless for the purposes of this letter I assume them to be two different people.
"The mission of defending their liege requires the scribes of Southall to engage in all manner of intellectual contortions in order to sustain the unsustainable claim that the Keens are the victims of a policy of non co-operation by the London Borough of Hounslow when history, and - rather inconveniently - all the evidence, reveals the 'victims' to in fact be the instigators of the state of affairs of which they complain.
"Verbatim quotes from letters published in the Times twenty, sometimes thirty years ago are cited in support of their masters' plea of victimhood. One has disturbing visions of yellowing pieces of parchment being painstakingly recovered from within a large cardboard box under a Southall bed, retrieved from behind the Scalectrix set under the watchful gaze of their Donny Osmond poster.
"Armed with such damning information as to what this or that Hounslow Executive member wrote in his/her pre-adolescence, the Timewarp Twins move in to deliver the killer blow.
"All joking aside, the fact that there are those prepared to defend the actions of the Keens does not detract one iota from their essential indefensibility. To hide for three years, avoiding public situations in which questions might be put to them, only then to protest that they had sought disclosure all along adds sheer dishonesty to the charge of profligacy.
"The selection process for the Labour candidacies at the next general election will take place shortly. Those participating would do well to remember that it is not only the ethics of the Keens which is under the microscope here.
Yours sincerely
Councillor Phil Andrews -
Community, Isleworth ward"
An Osterley correspondent has written to complain about the lack of service which she has allegedly received from Mrs. Keen, whilst somebody from Chiswick defends the pair, arguing that they have done nothing that is against the rules. I have to say the letters which local newspapers receive in the Keens' defence have a remarkably similar tone to them, implying some degree of central co-ordination - a tactic which New Labour frequently uses both with letters to the local newspapers and with postings on internet forums.
Unfortunately the Editor decided to chop my letter down to about 75% of its original size, either because it was too long or because she didn't like the comments which I made about certain members of the Keens' propaganda team (the worryingly obsessive Robin Taylor and P. Haling of Southall, who may or may not be one and the same person), which I feel upsets the flow of the letter somewhat. I reproduce the original in its entirety below:
" Dear Editor
"With reference to your open letter to our Members of Parliament Ann and Alan Keen ('Wish you were here' - Times, 30th May 2008).
"If Mr.and Mrs. Keen are away on holiday then they are entitled to that. I hope they have an enjoyable and a relaxing time away from the undoubtedly demanding pressures of their work.
"When they return, I hope they will furnish you, and us, with the full and frank explanation which we were promised at the election count in 2005 for their seemingly extravagent and cavalier approach to members' expense claims.
"Of course, this is not just about Mr. and Mrs. Keen. In order to serve as our Members of Parliament they need first to be selected by their party to represent them at the polls. At the last time of asking nine out of ten Labour ward parties selected Mrs. Keen to be the Labour candidate at the 2005 general election. Nine out of ten Labour ward parties believe her mercenary approach, and that of her husband, to using their constituents' money to maximum advantage in order to fund an unnecessarily extravagent lifestyle to be perfectly acceptable conduct.
"Beyond this, the Keens would seem to be able to call upon the services of a veritable army of acolytes, apologists and general hangers-on who invariably spring into action whenever a local newspaper has the temerity to call their heroes' deeds into question.
"The first line of defence is always that 'they are not breaking any rules' ('In defence of Ann Keen' - Sue Sampson, 30.5.08). Our MPs are so super that they deserve anything they can get their hands on and the hoi polloi should be grateful that they deign to represent us at all. If it isn't actually against the law to claim it, then they should claim it.
"The second old chestnut is that other Members of Parliament, from other political parties, are making similarly unjustifiable claims and that this in some way mitigates or even justifies their actions. Of course other MPs from across the political divide are indeed exploiting the rules in a similar way, but that is for their own constituents to deal with. The Keens are our constituency MPs.
"Thirdly comes the frankly obscene comparison between the £34k p.a. salary received by the Leader of Hounslow Council and the £16k p.a. paid to members of the Executive, some of whom work full-time for said amount, and the hitherto undisclosed concierge-and-swimming-pool life of luxury enjoyed by our MPs.
"But additional to all this the Keens are uniquely blessed with the unrelenting devotion of the scribe(s) of Southall ('Last of the big spenders' - K. Booth, 30.5.08), whose sole purpose in life would appear to be serve with undying and unquestioning loyalty another borough's two Members of Parliament. Where Hounslow's finest are either not prepared or not trusted to fight the cause of the royal household, the scribe(s) of Southall step nobly into the breach.
"Opinion varies amongst those few of us who bother to give it a second thought as to whether your newspaper's two perennial Southall correspondents are in fact the same person, or whether they somehow synthesise their ideas, weird obsessions and writing styles through some kind of telepathic process. Nevertheless for the purposes of this letter I assume them to be two different people.
"The mission of defending their liege requires the scribes of Southall to engage in all manner of intellectual contortions in order to sustain the unsustainable claim that the Keens are the victims of a policy of non co-operation by the London Borough of Hounslow when history, and - rather inconveniently - all the evidence, reveals the 'victims' to in fact be the instigators of the state of affairs of which they complain.
"Verbatim quotes from letters published in the Times twenty, sometimes thirty years ago are cited in support of their masters' plea of victimhood. One has disturbing visions of yellowing pieces of parchment being painstakingly recovered from within a large cardboard box under a Southall bed, retrieved from behind the Scalectrix set under the watchful gaze of their Donny Osmond poster.
"Armed with such damning information as to what this or that Hounslow Executive member wrote in his/her pre-adolescence, the Timewarp Twins move in to deliver the killer blow.
"All joking aside, the fact that there are those prepared to defend the actions of the Keens does not detract one iota from their essential indefensibility. To hide for three years, avoiding public situations in which questions might be put to them, only then to protest that they had sought disclosure all along adds sheer dishonesty to the charge of profligacy.
"The selection process for the Labour candidacies at the next general election will take place shortly. Those participating would do well to remember that it is not only the ethics of the Keens which is under the microscope here.
Yours sincerely
Councillor Phil Andrews -
Community, Isleworth ward"
Thursday, 5 June 2008
On rosebuds and other thorny issues
The letters' page in the local Times, once notoriously suggestive of the view that nothing worth writing about ever happened north of the Thames, has enjoyed something of a renaissance since the newspaper finally succumbed to the logic of the tabloid format.
In opposition I was an avid correspondent, never slow to put digit to keyboard in the cause of exposing some wrongdoing on the part of our local elected representatives. So perhaps it was only to be expected that one of those former elected members, dumped so unceremoniously by the electors of Isleworth in 2002 in favour of three candidates from the community, would find the urge to offer some mealy-mouthed invective in response to Councillor Dr. Genevieve Hibbs' elevation to the role of Mayor too powerful to resist.
The prompt for this thankfully concise outpouring of bile and bitterness ("Gather ye rosebuds!" - Times, 30th May 2008) was the fact that, shortly following her election in 2002, Councillor Hibbs - an Isleworth resident for 22 years - moved a few miles down the road to Hayes in order to be closer to her Church community. Naturally absent was any reference to the fact that in spite of her new residential status Councillor Hibbs has consistently managed, year after year, to attend more council meetings than any of New Labour's Hounslow-based councillors. Also missing, perhaps unsurprisingly, was any suggestion that we might wish to minimise Councillor Hibbs' inconvenience by buying her, at the taxpayer's expense, a second home within easier reach of her place of work - a facility which our hard-working New Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen (a.k.a. Mr. & Mrs. Expenses) have had no hesitation availing themselves of.
Genevieve thoroughly deserves to be the Mayor of the London Borough of Hounslow. Since the day she was first elected to the council her workrate has been simply astounding. Councillor Andrew Morgan-Watts will, of course, be a very hard act to follow. But Genevieve will not let the people of Hounslow down.
However the meat of the letter consisted not of an attack on Genevieve, but of an insinuation that the decision of the Community Group to enter into coalition with the Conservative Group was motivated by nothing more than a desire to share the trimmings and trappings of office.
Leaving aside for one moment the inconvenient fact that the present coalition was the only option available to us (New Labour having found our sole objective of wanting to empower the community so difficult to bear that the prospect of opposition was considered a more attractive one), is it really the view of our opponents that members of the Community Group are this shallow?
This organisation, which New Labour has gone to such extraordinary lengths to demonise, portraying us in leaflets (of which they have denied, then later admitted authorship) and on the doorsteps (which they now deny and possibly, in at least one case, can't remember) as a band of marauding thugs prepared to beat and burn our way to transforming Isleworth into something resembling the Fourth Reich?
Don't get me wrong, it is insulting indeed to be depicted as somebody who has tricked his way into public office with a view to unveiling a political agenda directly at odds with that which inspired the electorate to place their trust in me. But the suggestion that I would give up fourteen years of my life, and almost certainly a six-figure sum in terms of sacrificed income, just so that a good friend could don a red gown and open jumble sales for a year is bizarre (or should I say bazaar?) beyond comprehension, and gives a much better insight into the kind of things which impress the author of the letter than into what drives me.
But it was the parting shot that was the most interesting of all. A former New Labour councillor salivating joyously - almost deleriously - at the prospect of the Conservatives sweeping the board at the next local elections in 2010 and by implication the Community Group finding itself either back in opposition, or in electoral terms wiped out completely.
Of course neither the author of the letter nor I can predict what will happen two years from now, but if the best that the leadership of the local New Labour Party past and present can hope for is an outright Conservative victory in 2010, in a borough which prior to 2006 they had controlled uninterrupted for 35 years, then that is a party in big trouble.
And let me reassure the good lady scribe that by the time we come to face the electorate again in 2010 - if indeed we do - then a large part of our work will already have been done. The self-serving structures which we pledged to dismantle will be all but gone, not only within the infrastructure of the local authority but also within our community organisations and residents' groups. If we are involved in that election, winning another four years in office will be mere icing on the cake.
Your resentment is entirely justified, my dear, because for you the battle is already lost.
In opposition I was an avid correspondent, never slow to put digit to keyboard in the cause of exposing some wrongdoing on the part of our local elected representatives. So perhaps it was only to be expected that one of those former elected members, dumped so unceremoniously by the electors of Isleworth in 2002 in favour of three candidates from the community, would find the urge to offer some mealy-mouthed invective in response to Councillor Dr. Genevieve Hibbs' elevation to the role of Mayor too powerful to resist.
The prompt for this thankfully concise outpouring of bile and bitterness ("Gather ye rosebuds!" - Times, 30th May 2008) was the fact that, shortly following her election in 2002, Councillor Hibbs - an Isleworth resident for 22 years - moved a few miles down the road to Hayes in order to be closer to her Church community. Naturally absent was any reference to the fact that in spite of her new residential status Councillor Hibbs has consistently managed, year after year, to attend more council meetings than any of New Labour's Hounslow-based councillors. Also missing, perhaps unsurprisingly, was any suggestion that we might wish to minimise Councillor Hibbs' inconvenience by buying her, at the taxpayer's expense, a second home within easier reach of her place of work - a facility which our hard-working New Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen (a.k.a. Mr. & Mrs. Expenses) have had no hesitation availing themselves of.
Genevieve thoroughly deserves to be the Mayor of the London Borough of Hounslow. Since the day she was first elected to the council her workrate has been simply astounding. Councillor Andrew Morgan-Watts will, of course, be a very hard act to follow. But Genevieve will not let the people of Hounslow down.
However the meat of the letter consisted not of an attack on Genevieve, but of an insinuation that the decision of the Community Group to enter into coalition with the Conservative Group was motivated by nothing more than a desire to share the trimmings and trappings of office.
Leaving aside for one moment the inconvenient fact that the present coalition was the only option available to us (New Labour having found our sole objective of wanting to empower the community so difficult to bear that the prospect of opposition was considered a more attractive one), is it really the view of our opponents that members of the Community Group are this shallow?
This organisation, which New Labour has gone to such extraordinary lengths to demonise, portraying us in leaflets (of which they have denied, then later admitted authorship) and on the doorsteps (which they now deny and possibly, in at least one case, can't remember) as a band of marauding thugs prepared to beat and burn our way to transforming Isleworth into something resembling the Fourth Reich?
Don't get me wrong, it is insulting indeed to be depicted as somebody who has tricked his way into public office with a view to unveiling a political agenda directly at odds with that which inspired the electorate to place their trust in me. But the suggestion that I would give up fourteen years of my life, and almost certainly a six-figure sum in terms of sacrificed income, just so that a good friend could don a red gown and open jumble sales for a year is bizarre (or should I say bazaar?) beyond comprehension, and gives a much better insight into the kind of things which impress the author of the letter than into what drives me.
But it was the parting shot that was the most interesting of all. A former New Labour councillor salivating joyously - almost deleriously - at the prospect of the Conservatives sweeping the board at the next local elections in 2010 and by implication the Community Group finding itself either back in opposition, or in electoral terms wiped out completely.
Of course neither the author of the letter nor I can predict what will happen two years from now, but if the best that the leadership of the local New Labour Party past and present can hope for is an outright Conservative victory in 2010, in a borough which prior to 2006 they had controlled uninterrupted for 35 years, then that is a party in big trouble.
And let me reassure the good lady scribe that by the time we come to face the electorate again in 2010 - if indeed we do - then a large part of our work will already have been done. The self-serving structures which we pledged to dismantle will be all but gone, not only within the infrastructure of the local authority but also within our community organisations and residents' groups. If we are involved in that election, winning another four years in office will be mere icing on the cake.
Your resentment is entirely justified, my dear, because for you the battle is already lost.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Enforcement - a case for an amnesty?
I keep mentioning Bowen's Blog, but there are some interesting pieces on there about a meeting which took place at the Osterley Hotel last Saturday on the theme "Save Our Homes". A further discussion is taking place on the Brentford TW8 forum.
The thrust of the meeting, it would appear, was some kind of protest against the policy of the new administration at the London Borough of Hounslow of enforcing planning laws and acting decisively against planning abuse by a small minority of property owners in the borough. More than one person who was present at the meeting has told me of a remark made there by Alan Keen, Labour Member of Parliament for Feltham & Heston, to the effect that under the old (Labour) administration Hounslow had operated a dual policy, effectively turning a blind eye to planning breaches at one end of the borough and for one section of our community.
Not surprisingly this has infuriated planning officers, whose collaboration in this self-evidently unethical and probably illegal practice is clearly implied. One former officer of the Council has publicly threatened legal action for defamation against Mr. Keen unless his remarks are withdrawn, or qualified.
I wish him every success. However, in the meantime Mr. Keen's candid comments do raise the additional question of whether trangressors who are now being enforced against were actually misled into thinking that they were immune from action by the Council. If this is indeed the case, one wonders whether there is not a case for an amnesty?
In the interests of debate, allow me to suggest a few conditions which could form the basis of an amnesty:
The thrust of the meeting, it would appear, was some kind of protest against the policy of the new administration at the London Borough of Hounslow of enforcing planning laws and acting decisively against planning abuse by a small minority of property owners in the borough. More than one person who was present at the meeting has told me of a remark made there by Alan Keen, Labour Member of Parliament for Feltham & Heston, to the effect that under the old (Labour) administration Hounslow had operated a dual policy, effectively turning a blind eye to planning breaches at one end of the borough and for one section of our community.
Not surprisingly this has infuriated planning officers, whose collaboration in this self-evidently unethical and probably illegal practice is clearly implied. One former officer of the Council has publicly threatened legal action for defamation against Mr. Keen unless his remarks are withdrawn, or qualified.
I wish him every success. However, in the meantime Mr. Keen's candid comments do raise the additional question of whether trangressors who are now being enforced against were actually misled into thinking that they were immune from action by the Council. If this is indeed the case, one wonders whether there is not a case for an amnesty?
In the interests of debate, allow me to suggest a few conditions which could form the basis of an amnesty:
- construction took place prior to May 2006, that is during the tenure of the previous administration at the Council
- immediate neighbours happy with development
- existence of illegal construction freely volunteered by applicant
- full reasons provided for belief by applicant at the time of construction that development would not be enforced against.
At the moment I have introduced the case for an amnesty purely as a stimulus for debate. But, who knows, we could be having this debate sometime soon at the Council Chamber?
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