Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Pursuing my fanatical anti-car agenda by watching motor sport

A morning off on Friday and the ridiculous car got an outing as I went to visit a friend of mine in Wokingham. Back to reality for an update on the StreetSpace schemes – expecting some new announcements today – with the traffic team and Hanif Khan.

Then it was the bike’s turn: up to Chiswick to meet the manager of the George IV. They have been having difficulty getting their glass collected for recycling because the Suez lorries can’t make the corner into Prince Of Wales Terrace. I’m puzzled because Recycle360 service PoW Terrace in similar vehicles without problems but it seems the George has an agreement with neighbours only to collect after lunch and some of the cafes/restaurants in Devonshire put out tables at lunchtime which apparently restricts access. I hear after that the offending tables are now not being placed out so the problem is resolved. Any excuse to sit in a pleasant pub and down a pint of IPA whilst waiting for the manager to appear.

Saturday morning it’s off to glorious Goodwood and Saturday is a glorious day. My absolute favourite races are the 1950s/60s saloon cars where you get the ludicrous sight of a 7 litre Ford Thunderbird dicing with a (distinctly unracy) Austin Westminster and a 1.5 litre Alfa Romeo. Other exotica like Austin A35s and Standard Vanguards are not far behind and all in all it’s a hoot.

I also like the big banger sports racers – deafening (and I’m deaf enough already) and an evident handful to drive but fast and furious. Unfortunately a combination of my phone camera and skills mean this is dead blurry.

On Sunday morning it rained, though it was easing off by the time I got to the circuit. The old’uns seemed to cope OK

There was a tribute to BRM, a team that I loved back in the 1960s but which was mainly a heroic failure, bar Graham Hill’s world championship in 1962. In those days a nipper like me could roam the paddock at Oulton Park and goggle at Jim Clark talking to Graham Hill and John Surtees and if you were brave get three autographs and a pat on the head in one go.

Even I am too young to have seen the most heroic failure of all – the 1.5 litre supercharged V16 BRM – in action (in truth it usually broke a driveshaft on the starting line or expired in a puff of smoke after 3 laps) but it is a wonderful thing to behold and it’s astonishing to think the cylinders would have barely held a double gin each! As the legend says, this is a brand new ‘continuation’ one. I imagine you could buy one if you have a few million quid lying idle.

Enough of that, they cry. What’s all that got to do with Brentford? Well, not a lot but I do like to inform people of what they are missing.

Back to Monday and a rather gruelling day interviewing prospective chairs for the Lampton Group. We had shortlisted 5, which was about 2 too many, but the candidates were so outstanding we couldn’t choose. Contrary to a silly rumour someone has started on Facebook the previous chair Gill Steward was not ‘paid off’. She resigned of her own accord because a big job in Cumbria demands all of her attention. If anything we would have been happy to do a ‘pay on’ to keep her because she was excellent, but she was leaving for a challenge, not for money, so that would have been a non-starter. Really hard to choose, but we came to a conclusion after lengthy debate.

Between all this I made a report to the cops on behalf of ‘A Friend’ (not me, honest). Somebody has been sending him mucky texts inviting him to partake of some ‘personal services’ somewhere in Hounslow. He is not tempted and in any case this all seems somewhat illegal but his phone cannot forward the texts. I take pictures of his screen and send them off to Inspector Montalbano/Morse/Clouseau or whichever one covers Hounslow.

Then a meeting of the Lampton Leisure board. Nearly everything is now open in all our leisure centres and we’re getting a healthy amount of new joiners, but membership still has a way to go until we get back to pre-pandemic levels and that means finances are difficult. Do give them a try – I have joined Brentford Fountain and it is so much better than it was before Lampton took over. In fact it looks better than it did 30 odd years ago when I used to take my daughter swimming as a toddler.

I had to leave the board early as we had our regular Labour Group meeting which always takes place the day before Borough Council. That one was reasonably short, with nothing very controversial to discuss.

On Tuesday my only daytime appointment is with TfL, our Highways team and the community led project in Chiswick formerly known as The Great West Hedge but now more accurately called Greening the A4. TfL are keen to engage with this but it’s complex due to all the services etc which run along the A4 footways and they are pretty short of resource. Nevertheless we seem to have serious progress and we’re told that a strong presence from Hounslow officers and members – Hanif Khan also came – impressed our TfL chums that this was really important. At the end I point out that I’m a little conflicted because, whilst I’m all in favour of greening the A4 in Chiswick, we have even more acute problems in Brentford, where not only do we have a 6-lane highway at ground level, but also a 4 lane one in the sky, and all the horrible problems that causes for our residents. The way the roads are configured makes this more difficult to improve but I discussed with our officers afterwards and we’ll have a serious crack at this shortly.

In the evening Borough Council – ah, Borough Council. In the relatively good old days we could have a proper debate at Borough Council. The Opposition opposed things they didn’t agree with and accepted – even congratulated us – on things they did agree with. They also comported themselves with dignity and respected the Mayor.

All that has gone now, and they feel duty bound to oppose virtually everything. This reached its zenith with the Treasury Management report: in a year of great stress we reduced net borrowing from £139M to £88M (which by the way includes borrowing to fund Lampton360 property purchases and builds, though Cllr McGregor implied it didn’t) and this apparently was an outrageous thing to do at a time interest rates are low. So perhaps under an alternative administration we’d be borrowing loads more – for what – to make an investment down at William Hill’s?

Then for a twin peak, they floated an amendment to a motion we raised which (broadly speaking) called upon the government to get developers to pay up for solving the cladding scandal, a cost that currently is wrecking the lives of leaseholders (including many in Brentford) who are crippled by charges and unable to sell their homes. Councillor McGregor agreed it was a problem but said we should get developers to pay rather than the taxpayer (which is what the motion said) whereas Councillor Mushiso said there is not actually a problem because of the munificence of the government. Complete hogwash. At least they had the presence of mind to drop the amendment once they realised how ludicrous it was.

But it didn’t stop them speaking over the Mayor, raising points of order that weren’t points of order and points of information that weren’t that either.

After all that ‘fun’ I arrived at my bike at about 11.15pm to find someone had nicked my lights, value £5 the pair when new. I cycled home unlit. Please don’t tell the cops.

Wednesday was more fun – doing my impersonation of an Uber driver taking The Melvinator to Gunnersbury Park for the launch of the new Sports Hub.

We were shown round their brand new facilities, which were all very spiffing, along with councillors from various parts of Ealing and Councillor Biddolph from Turnham Green. When we observed that GP is in Brentford ward Cllr Biddolph remarked that it would be in her ward after the election. I pointed out that that was very presumptuous of her, that there would be an election before that. If the Conservatives do as dismally as they did in the GLA/Mayor election this year they could easily be wiped out in 2022, with Chiswick Gunnersbury particularly marginal.

The twin mayors of Hounslow and Ealing cut the ribbon, after which our very own Bishnu Gurung took a turn on the gym equipment. He is a former Gurkha, so I don’t advise getting in a wrestling match with him, despite his winning smile (and lovely personality).

In the afternoon, an update from the consultants on the proposed changes to Cycleway 9 in Chiswick, then a general update on the Streetspace scheme.

After that, a short meeting about the Watermans marina and progress on that and Watermans Park. It has been greatly delayed by the pandemic and I wanted to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make it happen quickly now so we had the council leader, Exec Directors of Finance and Environment together with our head of property to make sure everything is focused.

I reckoned I’d earned an evening off so went off via a bike shop for new lights then did Dukes Meadows in the twilight. It was really glorious there, and down where I live. Today we had a West London Waste update bright and early. Actually it was cancelled, but it wasn’t cancelled until many of us had attended it, which was a bit odd . It had seemed a bit pointless as we are trekking up to Harrow for a formal face-to-mask meeting tomorrow.

This afternoon I have my monthly update with Exec director and chums and in the evening I’m off to Bicester Heritage to have an evening with various reprobates from the saloon car racing community as a guest of Motorsport UK, of which I am a member. This is in further pursuance of my fanatical anti-car agenda.

Cllr Guy Lambert

September 24, 2021