Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea January 2021, Newsletter (# 139)

1. This year (or more accurately “last year”), we can all use the same clichés and understand exactly what we all mean, such as “I have never known a Christmas like this one”, “the world will never be the same again”, “working life/the high street/the entertainment world will never be the same” and my own current, personal favourite “it is what it is”. But the fact that we all know the clichés doesn’t stop them from being true. Covid-19 is a disaster and nothing ever will be quite the same again, though chances are they will not be quite as different as some think.
   

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2. No doubt as more and more of us are vaccinated, there will be a return to some semblance of normality, whatever that may be. But that might not be as simple as it may appear thanks to the growth of the “anti-vaxxers” lunacy. It beggars belief that otherwise apparently rational people can campaign against vaccination. That this triumph of immunology, originally of Chinese medicine, brought to Europe through Turkey and developed by the eighteenth-century Englishman, Edward Jenner, and successfully used to conquer smallpox, polio, diptheria and many other diseases, should be challenged by such “know-nothings” is a tragedy of modern life. We all have a duty to deride and defeat such irrationality, even if it is not quite the threat here that it appears to be in the USA.

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   If the anti-vaccination movement becomes a genuine threat to public health, then politicians will have to face questions about compulsion or “liberty”; individual rights and duties; communal values. As we don’t allow people to choose which side of the road they want to drive on, right or left, I don’t really see why we should allow people to choose whether to be vaccinated or not; after all compulsory vaccination against smallpox has been standard since 1853. If compulsion seems harsh to some, then perhaps we should use extreme “nudge theory” like charging an NHS premium on all, who refuse vaccination.

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4. On 8^th December, we had our second monthly Battersea Labour Party meeting. The mechanics of it worked quite well – clearly, a high proportion of members are well used to operating Zoom or Teams in their working lives and virtual meetings are becoming an inevitable, even desirable feature of daily life. Amazing, that an almost unknown technology should become a mundane, everyday event in no more than 10 months: in that sense, 2020 has certainly been different.
   

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5. On Wednesday 16^th December, we had the Wandsworth Council Meeting – very strange! Council meetings are, in my view, meant to be about policy-making and review, about debating current issues and opinions, and holding the administration, whether political or practical, to account. But Covid has put a stop to all that. What we are left with, rather like in Parliament, is a Tory-controlled administration informing us of what is happening and how well they are handling everything – could they have done anything else? And a Labour opposition replying that the Tories are not doing well – but could Labour have done anything else? It leaves us with a form of politics, a confrontational politics, that gives parties a bad name.
   

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6. Personally, I would have liked the Council to have demanded of Government that local authorities should take over the national Covid test-and-trace programme. The Government itself has made “a Horlicks” of the programme, in a display of incredible incompetence, whilst simultaneously playing fast and loose with recognised procurement procedures. The fact that local authorities and the NHS have well-tried, successful test-and-trace programmes for other contagious illnesses seems to have escaped the Government’s notice. This Government’s contempt for local authorities has cost some innocent lives. I trust that the post mortem on this crisis considers all the evidence and really holds those responsible to account!
   

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7. The following day 17^th December, I was back to the very practical discussions  of the Planning Applications Committee (PAC). Unusually, this PAC meeting  was dominated by relatively small applications, mainly in Tooting. The one  exception was an application for 480 residential units in 8-17 storey blocks  between Wandsworth Town Station and Swandon Way. The buck had already  been effectively sold on this, because it had “prior approval” from Sadiq  Khan,  Mayor of London. Nonetheless, I and one other councillor voted  against  the scheme, because of its mass and density, which we thought  inappropriate for the location.  The proposed development also made no concession to the possible or probable post-Covid environment of decreased demand for office space and more particularly for office commuters. Apologies for the poor reproduction but here are graphics of the Swandon Way development from Swandon Way and from Old York Road.
   

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8. The run-up to Christmas was, you will recall, exceptionally wet. That did,  however, have its occasional compensations. On December 23^rd, for example,  this spectacular rainbow could be seen over Battersea. Meanwhile, on a  personal basis it was a challenging month. My partner and I have had Garry  installing a new kitchen, at the same time as we have struggled with an ailing  boiler and an extremely temperamental shower. But on Christmas Eve the  kitchen was superbly finished and a new boiler installed, and everything is  now wonderful. We spent Christmas Day cooking and having hot showers!
   

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9. Meanwhile, I have been reading a book by my friend, Liam Kennedy, called Who was Responsible for the Troubles? Liam is a historian based in Queen’s Belfast and happens to be from a rural, Catholic, Irish background (Tipperary). He has one thing in common with me. He was for a period a Belfast city councillor – but there the similarity ends. I recall that we were once having dinner with him and his wife when the phone rang. Liam excused himself to return a couple of hours later. He had been called out on that Saturday evening to attend to one of his constituents, who had been the victim of a “knee-capping”. Thankfully being a Latchmere councillor has not, so far, produced such drama.
   

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10. The book documents the detail of much of the Troubles; Liam’s personal knowledge of many of the players in Northern Ireland’s troubles gives his book depth and granularity. His conclusions about the events are not conventional but deserve consideration. It has taken courage to write and to have it published. It will be an essential and sombre reference work about the Troubles.
    

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11. On December 30^th, Parliament voted to accept the deal the Prime Minister made with the European Union on Christmas Eve. In my view, the deal joins the short-list of the greatest self-imposed disasters that any country has ever made – it will be a year or two before that is proved right or wrong but nonetheless on the 30^th December Labour had to decide whether to vote for or against the deal, or to abstain. Clearly, this decision was a difficult one for Labour MPs and, I know well, it has pre-occupied Battersea’s MP, Marsha de Cordova.
    

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12. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with the real world of politics will know that voting for a poor “Tory” deal, negotiated by a despised Prime Minister, is, as they say, a “big ask”. However, voting against it was never going to be more than a gesture, which would have left Labour open to the accusation that, in effect, it had supported leaving the EU with no deal. I am pleased that Keir Starmer supported the deal, even a bad Tory engineered deal is a better choice than no deal at all.

My Programme for January

1. On 4^th January I have a Wandsworth Conservation Advisory Committee.
2. On Twelfth Night, the Battersea Society is running a Zoom Poetry Reading event – what an inspiration for the depths of this, particularly grim winter.
3. The Planning Applications Committee is on 27^th January and NOT on 19^th as advertised in the Council diary – unsurprisingly, it looks like a quiet month.

Did you Know:
Last month I asked two easy questions but did not get one response!

They were Q1:     Can you date the two occasions since WWII, when one party won the UK’s popular vote but lost the election and name the two lucky men who subsequently walked into 10 Downing Street?

Answer 1:            The first occasion was 1951 when Labour won the popular vote but not the majority of constituencies and Tory Winston Churchill became Prime Minister for the second time. The other occasion was February 1974, when the Tories won the popular vote but ended up with fewer MPs than Labour. Labour’s Harold Wilson subsequently became PM.

Q2      What is the hidden physical connection between Streatham Hill and Battersea Reach?

Answer 2:            The Falconbrook River, which has its source on Streatham Hill and eventually flows under Northcote Road and Falcon Road, and ends in the Thames at Battersea Reach. It is nowadays culverted all, or nearly all, the way.

And for this month:

In December, I went for a walk on Tooting Common, which I don’t know very well. And there I came across what I suggest is the oldest object in Wandsworth – and I mean seriously old, millions of years old. Do you know what it is?