April highlights

 1.     I have to be honest – there weren’t many highlights as they affect anyone else, as I flew off to Cuba on 31^st March. Of course I could tell you tons about that but as we all know no one is interested in other people’s holiday stories so I won’t other than to say Havana is great if you love music; the city is spectacular in a bizarre bomb site kind of way; the scenery in general is over-rated though parts are spectacular – see photograph where the insects were venomous!

          What happens when Castro dies? Well that is the $64 million dollar question. Difficult to say, but I think that there is a fair bit of respect for Fidel and his Revolution. My own guess is that IF there were an election tomorrow, which of course there won’t be, he would get a respectable vote. May be sufficient even to retain control against an assortment of right and left-wing alternatives and, of course the Social and Christian Democrat alternatives! But that is not the same as saying that the regime will continue without him because I rather think it will not. The young are beginning to show signs of impatience – but what do I know? I was just a semi-casual observer!

2.     The Finance and Corporate Resources Committee met on the 19^th. There was stacks on the agenda but I’d have to say it was mainly of a house-keeping nature. There was a paper about how the Council is trying to shift everything online, which of course is fine for those of us happy to pay and claim for everything on-line but not so good for the non-IT literate – but you can see why. According to the experts every time we make a face-to-face enquiry it costs the Town Hall £7.40, every time we do it by phone then the cost is £2.90 but email business is done at £0.10P a time – as the Americans would say – “It’s a no-brainer”. There were other papers on office strategy, corporate objectives, emergency planning (What happens here in the event of a 9/11 catastrophe) and housing benefit.

One item that will interest some of you, however, was the sale of the Eltringham School site. Council rules don’t allow me to say exactly the price that the Council got for the site but it was way upwards of any of the speculation that I had heard. That one sale alone resolves most of the Council’s problems with the capital programme for the whole of this year!

3.     The 18^th April Planning Applications Committee had a couple of interesting applications, one for the partial redevelopment of Craven Cottage, the Fulham FC ground, and another for yet another giant, 500 feet (1870 metre) high development at Vauxhall. Neither of them are in Wandsworth but all Boroughs are asked to comment on important applications close to the Borough boundaries. I wonder what you all think about the mini-Manhattan, which is inexorably taking shape at Vauxhall? I must confess I am not the keenest advocate of tower blocks and hence I have my doubts though I know one or two of you disagree with me. Here is an artist’s impression of what the “Tower” on its own will look like when completed – and there are quite a few more in the pipeline at the same height.

4.     Went to see the Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic on Friday, 27^th April. It was written by John Webster, a couple of years after Shakespeare died, and it is a bloody tragedy – and do I mean bloody. I think 12 people got zeroed in the last act. Strange to say, it really is quite difficult to avoid laughing when bodies are collapsing all over the stage in front of you! Indeed there were so many that I am not even sure that I counted the number accurately. It is, however, about a very modern and horrible crime – so-called honour killings. Then, in the early 17^th century it was about sexual desire and the class system – nowadays as we know it is frequently about religious intolerance. A stimulating evening!

5.     Last month I commented that the Government is cutting back on many forms of housing benefit. I know that policy is not yet as unpopular as I think it will become but canvassing this month for the Mayoral election I came across examples of families, who believe that they will have to move out of Inner London because of their housing benefit cuts. When and if they do, they will be losing social connections, school placements and jobs – comment is hardly necessary.

6.     OK, so I mentioned the Mayoral Election but I have always said that I would not use this newsletter as a crude party political campaigning tool – apart from anything else I know most of you reasonably well and all of you are quite capable of making up your own minds who to vote for. But one thing I do hope you do is to make the effort to go to vote – without that minimal effort you lose the right in my book even to complain with credibility.

My Programme for May

1.      The Election on 3^rd May will clearly keep me out of mischief most of this week – or perhaps that is mischief!

2.      May is the big Month of the Year in Council terms. Hence there are Annual Meetings aplenty when we decide who the Mayor is going to be and who is going to run which Committee – except of course it isn’t quite like that at all. We already know that the Mayor is going to be Roehampton’s Adrian Knowles – what happens in May is that he is officially inaugurated as such.

3.      The Wayford Street Residents Association AGM is on the 17^th but unfortunately that is the evening of the Mayor’s inauguration and none of us councillors will be able to attend.

4.      The Planning Applications Committee is on 23^rd May.

5.        On the 27th May at 11 am I am leading “an Historical Walk” from the Latchmere pub to the Battersea Arts Centre. It is part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival – I charge £10 for it but I can guarantee that you will learn more about the history of Battersea than you had ever imagined – see below. If you would like to come then do drop me an email and I will give you more details.

What do you know?

The last duel in British history was fought in Battersea Fields, where Battersea Park now is.  It was between the serving Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington (Yes, he of Waterloo and shown in the inset rather more reputably defeating Bonaparte) and the Earl of Winchelsea – and it wasn’t about gambling debts or a woman! It was all about the Duke’s plan to remove discrimination from British Catholics. Both were real old Tories and nothing had been further from Wellington’s mind when he took over as PM but the pressure to remove the legal constraints on Catholics taking public position were becoming impossible to maintain.

The year was 1829, and in the end Winchelsea chickened out – or rather did not make any serious attempt to “win” and the Duke fired his pistol into the ground. The public and press were furious and the papers the next day were full of condemnation – politics is perhaps just as lively today but no one has yet challenged me to a duel!

I have consistently opposed the Heseltine/Blair concept of Mayors, though I have to accept that they look like becoming a permanent part of the British political landscape. But last week-end I was trying to describe the London Mayoral set-up to an American friend, who lives in New York. He asked me about the control exercised upon the Mayor by the Assembly and I must admit that I found it rather difficult.

I explained to him that if 66% of the Assembly members objected they could defeat his budget, but apart from that I was not too sure that the members could do much except overview and scrutinise. Conversations over the years with Livingstone, Sir Robin Wales (Newham) and Edward Lister (Deputy London Mayor) confirm my general impression. They all began by opposing the Mayoral concept (though I am not absolutely sure of that with Wales) but having become Mayor or Deputy they are now so enchanted with their unlimited powers, not just of advocacy but also of executive action, that they are advocates for not only more Mayors but also more powers to be given to them.

My New Yorker friend was scandalised. “You mean once elected these guys are in total control, and unencumbered by any elected assembly? That could never happen in the States – New York’s Mayor is answerable to his admittedly rather small (my italicised words) Council” he exclaimed. Lord Hailsham’s elective dictatorship has become a reality.

I have always thought that the risks we are taking, throwing away the checks and balances implicit, and indeed explicit, in our Council and Leader structure were pretty huge. We are set on the gamble now! I await the coming cronyism, scandals and bad governance with some sorrow for what, all in all, was a pretty good form of local government, once the envy of the world.

Followers will know the position I took about evicting the family of small-scale rioter, Daniel Sartain-Clark. But that one was easy; he wasn’t found guilty of much.

But last week a gang of Latchmere residents was caught for fairly big time drug dealing. Against capital punishment as I am, my reflex action about drug dealing almost demands that the perpetrators are strung up. OK, that goes a bit far but what do you think about the Council’s threat to evict their families? (Though to be fair to the Council, it would be stretching definitions a bit far to call these political evictions).

Here are people actively destroying the lives of their neighbours, almost certainly with the knowledge of some members of their family, and the Council wants to evict them. What do you reckon? Evict immediately!

Well, I am not so sure. To start with, as luck would have it, living on the Kambala and Winstanley estates, some are freeholders, some leaseholders and some tenants and hence the power that the Council has to evict varies. Secondly young siblings and harrassed mothers are still innocent.

Let the judicial system take its course with the unpleasant dealers – on balance I still think that the Council should not evict the families any more than I think any criminal’s family deserves to be made homeless. Have I got this right?

January highlights

1  The worst moment of the month was when Daniel was sentenced on 10^th January for his part in the riots. Don’t get me wrong. I have no sympathy for those who were involved in the riots, but I do believe that we need a sense of proportion and quite clearly what Judge Darling had to say implied very strongly that the relatively minor misdemeanours Daniel was involved in would not have led to a custodial sentence at any other time. But for more detail see the 11^th January entry below.

2.  The best moment of the month, however, was when the Council back-tracked on their decision to evict his totally innocent mother and sister – see 19^th January entry below.

3.  On 12^th January I was fascinated to hear Louise Casey, Head of the Government’s new Troubled Families Unit. Her Unit, a Tory Government initiative, is based on the old 80:20 rule, though in this case the figures are probably more like 99:1 rule, which says that you spend 80% of your effort on 20% of your caseload. This rule, if you haven’t heard about it, applies to all areas of work so a doctor, say, spends 80% of his time on 20% of his patients, a teacher spends 80% of her time on 20% of her pupils, etc. It is certainly true of me, with at least 90% of my constituents (more than 10,000 of you) taking absolutely no more than 10% of my efforts and the other 10% more than occupying 90% of my attention.

So the aim of this Unit is to focus government’s attention (government in this context is meant to mean everything, such as schools, the NHS, the judicial system, the police, social services, probation services, etc.) on the very small number of troubled families – Casey estimates that 120,000 families in the UK are the source of an extremely high percentage of the criminal, educational, health, etc., costs and problems that we face. The argument being that if we put a lot of money into solving their problems then we can save £millions more in the long term on all those mainstream services.

Interesting, but frankly I am sceptical. It seems to me that until we address some pretty basic inequalities in the UK (caused by low pay, youth unemployment, unemployment, poor housing) then resolving the problems of today’s 120,000 families will only mean that they will be replaced by 120,000 others in a few years’ time.

Marco Polo House

4.  The Planning Applications Committee on 19^th January had two dramatic plans to consider. One was for the demolition of the post-modernist Marco Polo Building in Queenstown Road and its replacement with 15 and 13 storey blocks of 456 flats with associated bars, restaurants and shops. If it goes ahead, this will be one of the quickest re-developments we have seen. The Marco Polo building (pictured) is itself only 25 years old. The other was for a 5-10 storey building containing 116 residential units on the site opposite York Gardens Library and Halfords on the corner of Lombard Road. That one was refused but the Marco Polo replacement building accepted.

5.  The 25^th January, Finance & Corporate Services Committee had stacks of very important but rather technical, internal matters relating to the running of the Council, which would not I suspect be of much interest to the public at large. One very small matter, however, might be of interest to some Latchmere residents as it concerns the sale of the St. Christopher Clinic in Wheeler Court, Plough Road. The clinic has been relocated and it will be converted into flats.

6.  The 23rd January, Housing Committee decided to increase rents Council rents by an average £8.33p per week or 7%. They will continue to be the highest Council rents in the country.

My Programme for February

1.  The Council meets on 8^th February and the Clapham Junction Town Centre Partnership the day after.

2. The Labour Party is holding its “Ken Livingstone Manifesto” discussion on 11^th but as I am doing a surgery at Battersea Library that same morning I will miss most, if not all, of that.

3. The Wayford Residents Association meeting is on the 23rd.

4. The Planning Applications Committee is on the 19^th.

Eltringham School

5. For the more nostalgic amongst you I would draw your attention to two demolitions, yes DEMOLITIONS, taking place this month or about to take place. The most important to mention is that of Eltringham School in Eltringham Street, which for those who don’t know it is the Victorian School building on the left just as one drives onto the Wandsworth Bridge roundabout from York Road. One lady, who still lives in Eltringham Street, tells me that she went to school there (if you are reading this did you say in the 60’s?) and that her mother had lived in the same street for years before then.

St. Peter's Church Hall, Plough Road

And the second was featured in last week’s local Guardian and is the hall of the old St. Peter’s Church in Plough Road. The inside of the hall is rather splendid, if somewhat run-down, but the most notable element of it, at least as far as recent local history is concerned is the mural on the south side of the hall. The painting is very faded and it will hardly be a great loss to Battersea. But for some of it brings back memories of Rev Michael Wimhurst, who in the 70’s was a radical vicar at the church, which was burnt down at some point in the 80’s.

Royal Artillery Monument

Did you know?

Next time that you are in Albert Bridge Road, between Petworth Street and Albany Mansions, keep your eyes open for a blue plaque to Charles Sergeant Jagger, (no relation to Mick) who lived there in the 1930’s. It’s on about 60 Albert Bridge Road and very, very near to Jagger House on the nearby Ethelburga Estate.

Jagger born in 1885 near Rotherham, fought and was wounded three times in the 1914-18 War. For 10 years after the war he sculpted many of the First World War memorials that were constructed all over the country. His most famous memorial is the Royal Artillery Monument at Hyde Park Corner and, although it does not come out very well, that is a Howitzer on the monument.