Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Regular round of engagements before swanning off to sunny Italy

I’m doing this one early, pop-pickers, as I’m off to Italy for a couple of weeks on Wednesday and don’t plan to be council-blogging (or anything-blogging for that matter) whilst I’m away.

On Thursday morning it was the Steam Museum with my two fellow councillors to chat with the newish director. She’s very keen to engage more with the local community and it was great to hear what she’s up to and to pass on a load of local contacts. Must go and have a proper visit soon.

I cycled up to Bishopsgate for the London Car Free Day summit. The cycling was fine, but there were two problems when I arrived. First, there is practically nowhere to park a bike (eventually I found a traffic sign with only one bike already moored there and room for another). Secondly, 22 Bishopsgate is being rebuilt and will end up as a new 3000 storey building with 2 million people working there (or something like that): but in the meantime it doesn’t really have an entrance I joined some other lost souls and eventually some guys in hard hats pointed us down a crack to the temporary entrance.

The summit was fascinating, with people from all over the place. Central Oslo is now ‘car free’. The woman from Oslo offered advice on how to start a car free city “don’t call it car free”. Bits of Edinburgh are experimenting with car free days, which seem to be successful, even if they are not really exactly car free, just nearly. This made me think:

I met someone when I was out door knocking who said he was going to give up his car when the MoT comes due in February. This is a young chap with a young family and a professional job, who lives in a controlled parking zone, so you might think just the type who really needs a car. He says he can use a Zip (other providers are available) car for occasional trips and can hire a car for a week or two if needed in, say school holidays. A developer also tells me that he has no problem with one parking space per 2 flats in a place like Brentford. There’s insufficient demand from buyers/tenants to go for more. All this makes me seriously wonder whether I’m ready to be car free myself  - not yet.

I had three activities I could have partaken of on Thursday evening – Brentford Voice, Mayor’s Quiz or Planning presentation. By the time I got home it was about 8pm and I was a bit worn out after 2.5 hours cycling so I decided to give all 3 a miss and chill for the evening (and catch up with emails of course).

I knew Friday would be pretty busy because I had to go up to Harrow in the morning for the West London Waste Authority meeting. This was followed by every politician’s (except me) dream, a photo-op. In this case I was required to stand with a rictus grin, holding a Hounslow food waste bin, next to a lorry which said it was entirely powered by food waste. Sadly, they haven’t sent me the resulting masterpieces as yet so I can’t post them here.

Then I had to rush off to the South West Middlesex Crematorium for Cllr John Chatt’s funeral. Probably not surprisingly this was standing room only and being late I found myself blocking the main doorway. I’m very sad we’ve lost John. He was leader of the council, I believe twice, and had spent his life dedicated to advancing the lot of the common man and woman. Like Raj Bath, who passed a couple of months ago, he was one of the council ‘elders’ who helped the likes of me get a hang of how to be a councillor. He was always kind to me, and always engaging company and he was an asset to the council because he’d seen it all before but had the good grace to be a critical friend to what we’re trying to do now.

On Saturday morning I had surgery at the library with two families looking for help. Both these were complicated housing issues – one large family under threat of eviction and one middle aged single man in danger of ending up homeless through no fault of his own. I’m not sure if I can help either, but I’ll do my level best.

Sunday is litter pick. The threatened rain has put nearly everybody off but two lonely old gents find each other on Brentford bridge and proceed to do a bit of picking down the canal towpath and The Ham. A family of boaters greet us and remark that they do a bit of litter picking themselves but don’t possess litter-picker thingies to get below bushes. On my way back I hand over the litter pickers we’ve been using so they can’t use that excuse any more.

On Monday I have a long afternoon interviewing 4 candidates for the post of Assistant Director of Environment Services, which is currently held by an interim manager. This role is crucial to our progress in improving the street (and park, and leisure centre) scene and we have 4 good candidates, one of whom will have had an offer by now.

Afterwards it’s the Watermans centre. The trustees are having a workshop about the proposed relocation, which has become more complicated because of the Secretary of State calling in the planning application for the scheme.

Tuesday morning I’ll be off to Pimlico to see in action the scheme I heard about last week where young/unemployed people are given a practical training about how to start a business. This is not about the traditional approach (write a business plan, get a loan) – more about ‘just get on with it’, which sounds like a plan to me. Many years ago I mentored a young man who was a market trader in Watford. He came from a family of market traders and knew exactly how to do it and here I was (on instruction) telling him he needed a business plan and how he should be recording revenue, costs etc. After a couple of meetings he voted with his feet – all this was just an annoyance to him because he knew what he was doing and was getting along fine. Whether his tax records for HMRC were pristine….

I would normally cycle to Pimlico but for the first time I remember BBC Weather says the probability of rain is 100% and this continues throughout the morning (at least). TfL will be getting some business.

This evening we have Cabinet Question Time in Hounslow House so I need to put my tin hat on for that but after that, with one bound (actually a trip in the middle of the night to Gatwick airport) I shall be FREE. Off to Italy for a couple of weeks. Good old BBC Weather. It has a picture of a sun and 25 degrees every day for the next fortnight. Better pack my shades.

Cllr Guy Lambert

September 26, 2019