Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Bicycle repair failure leads to scary but instructive bus journey

Commercial waste firms seem to be failing

On Thursday there’s a morning of light blogging followed by a lunchtime of cycling round the neighbourhood. Naturally I reach alarming speeds, sometimes even exceeding 10mph and this causes the need for heavy braking (after all, there’s a fair amount of mass involved here). I have noticed I have to pull harder and harder on the lever thingies and suddenly, one of them goes all flaccid in my hand and looking at the back brake I find there’s a frayed cable end waving in the breeze. I get out my newly-acquired Bike Repair Manual and wonder if this is something I can fix myself, then start fannying around with cables.

After 1.6 minutes I decide this is too hard and take poor Pegasus to Fudge’s hospital where an overnight stay is prescribed. Since Lime bikes are out of action there is nothing for it but to get the bus back to Brentford, having reported the charming scene above outside West Kebab (these commercial waste firms seem to be failing).

I wait for a 237/267 and when one arrives I pick a seat as far away from others as possible, whereupon a couple follow me on and sit right next to me, across the aisle. Hmm. Next stop there is a very large fat man (yes, I know) wheezing and coughing. He gets on and sits right in front of me. This is just too much, so I make my excuses (not really) and saunter off upstairs where it’s about 1/3 full and distanceable (my prediction for a new word for the OED). Redoubles my ambition to get a lot of people off public transport and onto bikes – it was actually quite a scary experience.

Anyway I survived (so far – no chickens being counted outside of www.hencorner.com) , and joined the Lampton360 board meeting, where I am an observer. All the services are holding up well with excellent attendance rates and it was good to see a little collection of the thank you notes the bin and parks people have received.

The performance report from the recycling and waste service shows record high performance during the quarter ended March, with only 1357 missed collections reported (lowest ever) successful first time collections 99.98% (absolutely astonishing and not surprisingly, best ever) and recycling tonnage 5407 (highest ever and up nearly 20% compared with the previous quarter). Of course there was only a week or so of lockdown before the end of March and we don’t really know how that will affect things, but the signs are promising. However recycling markets are in turmoil with card and textiles particularly so (we now have to pay for textiles to be taken away rather than being paid for them) but folks recycling is really important ecologically and still costs a lot less than incineration so keep upping your game, especially on food. We still have food making up 40%+ of wheelie bin waste from houses with weekly food caddy collections and that really is not good enough!

My next Thursday virtual gig was with the traffic team and a couple of fellow cabinet members, talking about emergency measures to support walking and cycling and generally make the place more pleasant. All of a sudden the government has woken up to this and we have both encouragement, new powers and perhaps even money to make it happen. As a result, you can see the story on the home page of BrentfordTW8.com . Give us your ideas here.

In the evening, a meeting of the FoodBox trustees. Delighted to welcome a new trustee, who has earned her spurs by being the first person to think of having a collection point in her Chiswick garden. Her collections are very substantial and we now have numerous people doing the same in their roads across mainly Brentford and Chiswick, but ranging as far as Whitton, which really helps keep the show on the road.

On Friday (or was it the weekend – the days and weeks flow into each other) I was accosted by a lady as I firkled along Enfield Road. “I was just talking about you” she said – “why isn’t this road 20mph?” [Actually, I think it is, but maybe insufficient signage]. She pointed to a splendid piece of artwork across the road (see pic) which suggested support for this idea and we got on to a discussion about rat running, which led my tiny and warped mind to think of liveable neighbourhoods and wouldn’t it be nice if we could get rid of through traffic throughout this area (I’m thinking Challis, Eastbourne, Enfield, Avenue, Whitestile, Grove) and make it a bit like some of Waltham Forest which I was lucky to visit last year. Lady said she thought that would be great so I’ve asked my fellow councillors plus the two councillors from other wards who live in Avenue Road what they think. And now I’m asking my reader, who can feed back through the link above.

Moving on homewards I was so pleased to see this little passage between Eastbourne Road and the GWR – so often covered with graffiti, flytipping and dog poo – improved by planting from Air Quality Brentford and some horizontal chalk graffiti (presumably from local nippers) and actually a pleasure to cycle down. Not necessarily helped by the architect-designed fence around the substation but you can’t have everything in this world. Perhaps we could get some climbing plants there?

Coming to Monday and I reflect that for 49 years and nearly 11 months of the time between 11th May 1970 and 11th May 2020 I have been legally entitled to buy a pint in a pub. With luck I’ll be able to resume before my next birthday but to those who kindly asked me how I celebrated, I Stayed Alert, Controlled The Virus, and Saved Lives. Which was obviously a huge bundle of fun but to be fair I generally like to deny the existence of birthdays. I did, however, wake up to this song playing in my bonce. Well, I’m not 70 yet but it seems terribly strange to be approaching it.

Tuesday, back to bins, with the (virtual) West London Waste meeting. I am a little bit peevish with my colleague from Richmond: we (and Ealing and Brent and Harrow) have delayed the reopening of our council tips (or HWRCs if you prefer jargon) such as ours at Space Waye from yesterday (11th) as an act of solidarity with Richmond who weren’t ready until next Monday (18th) but Richmond announced reopening way before the rest of us which makes us look like the laggards. Anyway, Space Waye (and Richmond and Ealing) are opening Monday: but please don’t come unless you really need to as capacity will be severely limited due to distancing and you’ll have a long wait, at best.

In the evening, our weekly council briefing. Locally things are going as OK as we can reasonably expect with the Coronavirus. Discharges from West Middlesex exceed admissions and care homes remain under good control, given the circumstances. No deaths are good, but Hounslow’s in care homes are the lowest in London. Meanwhile, the government have updated the shielded list: it previously contained about 10,000 names but that has jumped to 22,000 – about 9% of the adult population. The hub is working through the new entries to the charts. Meanwhile I’m getting reports of unstoppable government food parcels (I’d thought they came from the council hub only, but apparently central government are sending some as well). www.HounslowFoodbox.org.uk will happily pick up and ‘recycle’ anything people don’t need!

On Wednesday we have a (virtual) rehearsal for the first virtual planning committee, which takes place this evening at 5pm. We wrestle a bit with the technology and have decided to limit the attendance to 6 councillors (4 is a quorum) but get there in the end. A meeting held by a certain district council which I would be rude to name allowed a ‘resident’ who identified himself as Ben Dover to comment on the meeting. We are taking security seriously as we would not want Councillors of a delicate disposition such as myself to be subjected to anything dubious. Instructions for members of the public to join are here.

Today, an update with the chair of Lampton (who is also busy trying to sort out COVID test sites for the government) this morning, then planning in the evening, hopefully without extraneous sound effects other than a bit of harrumphing from Genghis Todd… Mike and Ben are not welcome, but would be happy to see anyone else at Hounslow’s first ever virtual public meeting.

Cllr Guy Lambert

May 14, 2020