Catching Up on My Backlog of Local Photos

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Cllr Guy Lambert

January 20, 2023

Ah well, no local pics last time, just the Tram museum in Birkenhead, part of my mission to bring civilisation from Merseyside to the poor lambs of West London.

If I feel generous, I’ll add them to this one.

Gosh, you missed some delights and I’m a nice person really so here you go:

Starting with Vanessa, Lara, sundry tree-fanciers and the much improved pond in Boston Manor Park.

What’s happened to a lot of the blue bit (I assume a warehouse) at the back of Heidelberg (the office, not the town in Deutschland)? Gone off to be recycled I reckon.

A picture of the real Heidelberg which is nearly a competitor for Brilliant (I was captivated by the lights in the river when I went there at about age 9)

A lot of Mess in the Ballymore site which I reported to environment and it then disappeared (these facts may or may not have been connected).

Sundry Councillors, and other celebs like Jeremy Vine in the George for the Chiswick Calendar do

There you are. I bet you’re grateful – at least it save words.

Early on Friday I was busy – first down to St Margaret’s where my shiny new bike had been delivered. The man tried to give me one from the same maker but it was the wrong one and I had to have a little tantrum, but we got there. Lovely.

Its maiden voyage was to Chiswick Dukes Meadows to watch the opening ceremony for the bridge under Barnes Bridge, which was fab. Lots of children dancing, drumming, singing. Lots of councillors – none that I saw dancing, drumming or singing. Very smart bridge/path/whatever. Pity the main Cllr getting this done, John Todd, is hiding behind Katherine Dunne.

Straight off to Hammersmith to catch a tube up to the big city for a beer or three and lunch in Covent Garden, then back for a Teams meeting with Lara and the Leader, deputy and political assistant Denise. A good innovation by Shantanu which allows him to keep in touch with each ward and to let us as ward Cllrs to grumble about anything we’re unhappy with. Not much I think. Then in the evening we had a Teams with Labour party members, explaining what’s going on – mainly at present us wondering how we’re going to make the end meets in these super-difficult times. Useful I thought, and part of the more open approach Shan is taking.

Saturday morning I (perhaps unwisely) decided to cycle out to Heston to help the saintly Heston Action Group on a litter pick. Only Cranford I think even starts to rival HAG for dropping litter and what you can see is what 20 odd of us could collect in an hour or so before we decided the not very clement weather turned, um, inclement. At least I was on my shiny new bike and going back is downhill and downwind, so I could stop pedalling at times and slide down the A4 like a sailboard.

In the afternoon I was up in Blondin Park where Linda Massey and chums run the Brentford Festival (controversial with some). They have previously run the community cafe and many other things in Boston Manor as Friends but for various reasons they will now be mainly doing the Tennis courts. The friends of Watermans Park and St Pauls have made a big contribution to those parks success, and there’s no doubt that the Friends of Boston Manor have made a massive contribution to BM over the years. There have been some disagreements and misunderstandings in the course of the big changes there and it’s important to me that we don’t lose their support. It was gratifying to have both Linda and her chair there and we had what felt a very constructive discussion. I previously referred to Linda as the owner of the horse’s mouth and I have promised to not refer to her as a horse in future, nor to her and her chairman as the two horses.

On Sunday I had the 528th Zoom discussion about the charity I started (or as it turned out didn’t start) a couple of years ago. This ‘charity’ is intended to develop a system or an approach to support people to buy stuff from suppliers who follow principles they support: in my case this is I favour employers who pay their staff properly and pay all the tax they are due to pay – other people may be more interested in (say) health or green issues. It started in my mind as a box of printing paper, where I would happily pay a couple of pounds more to companies that do ‘the right thing’ but there was (and is) no way to find them. At least I have Richer Sounds if I want to buy a TV or a Hifi from a company in Chiswick that has not only signed up for Fair Tax and a Living Wage, but Mr Richer has gone a lot further and made himself presumably quite a bit less Richer by giving his company away to his employees. Mind you, when I went in to buy a new stylus, they told me to go to my least favoured retailer, Amazon (I found an alternative!).

I missed the talk called the Mercenary River, put on by Brentford & Chiswick Local History because I was distracted by trying to fix my IT affairs which is a disappointment – the Local History talks are always good to listen to. Nothing else on Monday, and nothing on Tuesday until Cabinet in the evening. The formal cabinet was quite short, but we had an informal meet afterwards which went on to quite late.

On Wednesday I had a doctor session and in the afternoon the Lampton Leisure board. The leisure business is very difficult, both because it has to use a lot of energy to keep big sheds and big ponds warm, whilst on the other hand some people are considering they might prefer to give up a gym than food. If you look on Google there is a litany of problems in the industry from both public sector and private companies – even David Lloyd is advertising every time I turn on a sport channel. Lampton are engaging the problem and holding their own in this difficult environment but nobody thinks it’s easy.

I had to leave early because I had found someone to actually fix my PC, so I rushed off to Hammersmith to pick it up. I now have a working PC, including a camera and a mousepad thingy, though the microphone remains a bit iffy.

Today, Thursday, started with a call with the chair of Lampton, followed by a meet with the Exec Finance director and his assistant plus the top table of the Lampton Group. This was about developing how the council works along with Lampton more effectively and economically.

Later, a meeting with ‘my’ exec director and his team. Performance is fairly predictable, and there’s significant progress with fly tipping, down quite a lot this year, though still far too high. The quiet efforts we’ve been making on a number of fronts are beginning to have the effect we were looking for. We’re not happy about leaf clearance and some other cleaning matters, but we’re seeing some better approaches coming.

OK you’ve had a lot of stories and a lot of pics, but I couldn’t resist this one from this morning.

Councillor Guy Lambert