Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Hounslow Wonder and Feltham Beauty to appear in Gunnersbury

Having spent Thursday lunchtime and most of the afternoon chugging through plenty of the Beaujolais I have to miss the Police panel. Don’t want to be done for drunk in charge of a bicycle and my ramblings are incoherent enough when I’m entirely sober. Also, I have my house guest, eager for stimulating conversation (no idea why he thinks he’ll get it from me).

Friday is meeting free until the evening and said house guest has been slavering all week (not a pretty sight) over the prospect of a plate of fegato at Caspari, so we duly repair there for a lateish lunch. Office party season seems to be starting as the peaceful restaurant suddenly becomes host to a party of 20, exclusively of the female persuasion. So that brightens up the afternoon, and the pasta I had was delish, as expected.

In the evening, a meeting of the Brentford Towers Residents Association. The major refurbishment programme is coming towards its close, but that doesn’t mean construction work is over because work will start shortly on creating 11 much needed new flats (known as ‘hidden homes’ but I know where to find them) within the towers. Some spare space has been identified on mezzanine floors and planning permission has been granted, including for some 3 and 4 bedroom units of which there is a particularly dire shortage (any that we used to have have largely gone via right to buy into the hands of professional landlords who now rent them out room by room to singles and couples). The residents association say please, pretty please, give us a bit of a break over Christmas before work recommences, and this is agreed.  We cover a lot of residual matters as what comes next is an improvement plan to deal with waste and recycling, cycle and mobility scooter storage, landscaping and greening, signage, footpaths etc.

On Sunday afternoon I meet chums by the library and proceed in a Northerly direction along Windmill Road, York Road etc interrupting many a post-prandial nap with thoughts about an election. Reception is pretty positive. Most people have worked out that the priority is to get rid of the odious and incompetent Johnson, or at least stop him getting an overall majority to create the havoc he craves. We meet several Lib-Dem inclined voters who will be giving Ruth their vote. One of Labour’s great challenges is persuading our supporters to actually vote and doing this in dark, damp, dreary December is particularly tricky.

Monday is a day with a lot of Hounslow House. First I meet with senior officers to review progress on ‘Cleaner, Greener’. Lots going on and we think people will begin to see improvements across the borough very soon. Hounslow High Street is already so much better than it was though in other places we’re currently having to deal with the annual – but early this year – leaf fall. I’m pleased to hear that our first 20 experimental wildflower meadows are being prepared and planted right now.

Later I meet with the new MD of the Lampton 360 group. I had, of course, already seen him at the interview but this is his first day at work here. He has a wealth of experience with multiple councils and I think he is just the right man to take Lampton360 forward.

Early evening we have the inaugural meeting of the Apprenticeship Pledge Board. This is a new body combining some separate initiatives aimed at making sure we keep our manifesto commitment of 4000 new apprentices across the Borough. It seems we are more or less on track both with the 400 we plan to recruit within the council itself (and Lampton companies) and the 3600 from other borough employers but it’s good to share thoughts in this way – we have people from HR, education, Lampton on the board, though I point out it would be good to get some true private sector people involved. Also, we really want apprentices in the Borough to be predominantly Hounslow residents and that needs further attention.

Back from that and I realise the Brentford hustings are on. I ask house guest if he’s interested, and he is, so we go along. Being as he’s lived in Austria for many years he is not allowed to vote any more, despite being a British citizen. So he restrains himself, even as our Tory ‘candidate’ drivels out a lot of non-answers to questions to enthusiastic applause from the pensioner rent-a-mob the Tory party has imported from Chiswick.

Tuesday turns out to be a crazy day. I take my house guest to the airport then head back to the Labour party HQ to pick up some leaflets and deliver to the leaflet guru in Brentford ward. But they are not all ready and I have to head off post haste to Hounslow House for our formal meeting with Hounslow Highways top management. We try to keep the agenda here strategic, though grumbles about leaves and bin emptying surface. We are pressing them on a large variety of issues, both to rebalance their resource to provide a better service and to invest in new tools to improve their efficiency. The pothole pledge programme for this year is complete (bar apparently one place that needs a funny kind of concrete) and we urge a decent process for 2020 so we can demonstrate we’re dealing with residents’ priorities rather than just asserting it. They have more or less completed replacing the street lighting on our council estates and one year into a three year programme to improve roads and footpaths. We have agreed the financial settlement for next year so they have breathing space to invest and innovate, and that’s what I expect!

Then I zoom back to Chiswick for the rest of the leaflets. Uh-oh. Car feels funny so I look at the tyres. One is looking a bit low. The air thing at the petrol station will not play ball because there is no pressure in the tyre at all (it was all so much easier before electronics) so I take it to the tyre shop. Man shows me a large bolt that has destroyed it. Ridiculous cars have ridiculous tyres at ridiculous prices. Kerching. Why do I go to a tyre shop that supports Chelski?

By this time I just have time to pick up brochures, drop them off, buy a packet of crisps for dinner, change into whistle and flute and head off to Borough Council for the budget setting meeting. The usual attack from Genghis Todd on anything that starts with Lamp and ends with Ton, but I robustly defend our garden waste service and its charge of about £1 per week for a service that successfully collects garden waste over 99.5% of the time, and recycles all of it.

Us councillors are presented with a little bag of wildflower seeds to celebrate Hounslow’s emerging ‘rivers of colour’ and to encourage us all to plant in our gardens for biodiversity (and beauty). I’m doubly privileged as I had been given another bag earlier, but as my ‘garden’ consists of a few well-filled plant pots on a balcony they’re not much use to me. Anybody well-endowed (with garden, obviously) let me know and I’ll pass them on.

It’s a sort of green-tinged week because on Wednesday morning I’m off on trusty Pegasus to Gunnersbury. There is a kitchen garden there run by volunteers – many of them disabled and one of their specialities is varieties of apple tree. Well, someone has unearthed varieties called Hounslow Wonder and Feltham Beauty so natch we want them in the orchard. His Excellency Mayor Louki is on hand, together with our lovely Deputy Lord Lieutenant Paul Kennerley. Posh and Posher.

Early evening it’s annoy the voters time again and our small but perfectly-formed team, including an enthusiastic Melvinator, go up the elevator (I’m a poet and I don’t know it) to the 22nd floor of Wicksteed House and down the stairs again.

Thursday, and Thursday, and Thursday, creeps in this petty pace from week to week, to the last syllable of a council term; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dustbin dearth. I shan’t go on. Wouldn’t want to upstage Shakespeare. Anyway I have a Lampton Board meeting to go to, then tenants forum in the evening, followed by Hounslow Cycling party party party.

Cllr Guy Lambert

November 28, 2019