Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

How many pubs can he visit in a week?

Friday morning I go out to Hounslow West to meet one of the Hounslow Highways lay assessors. I’m on my best behaviour because I was supposed to meet him before and failed to arrive. Anyway I made it this time and we spent an hour or two seeking out all the messiest bits of Hounslow West and Hounslow High Street. The High Street is looking better these days but still plenty of room for improvement whereas Hounslow West is blighted, amongst other things, by fly-tipping and general mess on land which is privately-owned but on very public view. Not obvious how to fix this but we’re working on it.

Then I’m off to the NEC for the Classic car show. Hadn’t been to this before and it’s a massive event. I’m wondering whether it’s time to replace my car with something less ridiculous and a couple catch my eye, but I can’t decide between them so I’ll just have to soldier on.

Sunday morning it’s Armistice Day and I go to Brentford Library with several hundred others to pay my respects to those who served us in war. I’m mindful this year that we should consider all who were/are involved: that you survive a war, whether or not injured in body or mind, makes you no less brave than those who die. The Melvinator lays a wreath in his inimitable way for the Mayor and I lay one for the Labour Party: Mel sings Jerusalem superbly with the microphone in his hand and I mime it with great aplomb.

Monday morning 8am I’m lurking in Hounslow Heath, meeting some people with bin collection problems. We walk around their estate for a while- there are small bin sheds which serve blocks of flats, some of which are not getting collected properly. The conversation drifts into potholes, as conversations do. Then a quick visit to my doctor, who tells me it’s just a warty mole but I should tell her if it starts bleeding or changes shape. Then a visit to The Black Dog to meet one of the Gunnersbury Park trustees to advocate more engagement with the public about how the park is used. An informative meeting, and I learn that Go Ape is far from a done deal with the CIC doing what it’s supposed to do and balancing potential income with the wider needs of the Park and its local users. Then it’s that gorgeous Civic Centre again to meet with the housing man from Lampton360. He’s really motoring now on some fronts but progress with others is a mite painful and we discuss ways of easing the pain.

On Tuesday morning I cycle down to Chiswick station and catch this lovely vista by Strand-on-the-Green.

I’m off to the Big Smoke for a session with Transport for London’s Vision Zero initiative. This is about their objective to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries on the roads. It starts with a really gripping/moving film showing a young woman who has been knocked off her bike and run over by a lorry, breaking her pelvis and legs. She is near bleeding to death and the doctor on site inserts a balloon into her aorta before she goes via helicopter to the London Hospital. The film ends with the doctors not sure whether she will survive. Then a young woman appears on the stage. She walks with a stick because, following the accident we have just seen, she did survive but lost one of her legs. She speaks of her work now, which has already involved supporting two other women who have gone through much the same experience as she did and she also refers to one in a similar accident who didn’t make it. This sets the scene, and other speakers observe that, if we were talking about terrorist activities and we said the objective was to reduce last year’s 175 deaths in London to 160 we’d say it was madness: road deaths are no more inevitable than terrorist deaths. We heard from someone from Sweden (where Vision Zero was invented and their national scheme has been going for some years) and New York – one of many US cities on the map who have embarked on the same journey.

Then it’s back to Civic Heaven for our recycling and waste task group. Lots of activity on a variety of fronts to up our recycling rate, because it’s important for environmental reasons and because it will save money. One of the big pushes is on food waste, where our performance as a borough is not great: every tonne of food waste diverted from black bags saves the council about £100, saves some climate gases being emitted and provides some rich organic fertiliser.

In the evening I attend the Labour campaign committee. Such a relief to have stepped down from chairing this and a reminder that it’s high time I started doing some door knocking again. It’s not really campaigning, but taking the local pulse. I have been neglecting the Express Tavern of late so I rectify that sorry state of affairs on the way home.

Wednesday morning starts bright and early up at Boston Manor station with the engineer who designed the cycle lane. Very heartening, as I counted over 40 people using the lane southbound with only two on the road, one of whom was turning off at Swyncombe Avenue. Not a single person cycling uphill on the road in the 45 minutes I watched, though a number of schoolboys cycled up the eastern pavement. I then cycle down to Chiswick to check on some leaf clearing, which disappointingly is not happening. Lunch at the Hare and Hounds on Credit Union business followed by a meeting with the MD of Lampton 360 to exchange notes on a variety of matters to do with his three businesses – Recycle, Greenspace and housing. In the evening I can choose between the Brentford Recycling Action Group AGM, Boston Manor Residents Association or Labour Party branch meeting. I choose Boston Manor, hoping to catch the BRAGgadocios later in the Magpie, but by the time I get there it seems they are all tucked up having nightmares about plastic, so I clutch a lonely pint of IPA.

Today I have a meeting about recycling and waste with the leader and the head of finance (more savings?) then I’m off to Covent Garden to meet old colleagues from Honeywell to welcome in the new Beaujolais – a real throwback to the 1980s. If you see a drunk staggering in the region of the Civic centre or Brentford this evening, buy him another. After all, the editor complained last week about me leaving the pubs of Brentford unpatronised. This week I’ve mentioned one in Brentford, two in Syon ward and one in Osterley. Will that do, Ed?

Cllr Guy Lambert

November 15, 2018