Finally Putting an End to Thirty Years of Virginity

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Cllr Guy Lambert

May 5, 2023

Friday morning and it’s an important day in my personal calendar. Since I was living in Chiswick with a baby daughter (perhaps before, memory fades..) I had a state of the art cable television installation from someone called Telewest.

Looking at the history it may have come after the wee sprog but whatever, it all became Virgin in 2006 and here I was 30 odd years on, still with Virgin. Having stayed with them with regular problems for tears – years I meant, but the keyboard had a different idea - ago and fibs about fibre throughout (like every other provider, I believe – only Prime Ministers and broadband providers are officially allowed to tell fibs) I finally fell out with them because they wouldn’t tell me what I was paying for what.

I had forgiven them for telling me that my flat didn’t exist when I was sitting in it looking at a Virgin wall box when I first arrived in Brentford. I knew I was paying lots of Moolah so when a helpful chap at the EE shop in Ealing fixed my Google phone in about 30 seconds after people had failed in about 2 hours on the Google chatbox, suggested I might like to move my home arrangements to their parent company BT (I knever knew EE had been adopted).

Well I don’t know it’s a great deal, but it’s certainly cheaper and a nice chap called Mariusz arrived on Saturday and installed the new stuff. Would have been even fab if I could cancel with Virgin without talking to 3 people who told me I had it all wrong, that they could do the deal much cheaper, that I was stupid for changing and that I apparently couldn’t read the bill. And I would never have changed if they’d told me what I was paying for what.

You may think all that has very little to do with councilloring, but you get free access to my consumer advice service so no complaining.

In the afternoon I talked with someone in Swyncombe Road. The traffic has reduced a lot but there are still some people going the wrong way through the one-way entrance (clowns) and others ignoring the 7.5 tonne weight limit.

But the fun started in the evening when we had the Mayor’s award for voluntary services. We get to nominate two per councillor and there’s an awful large number of volunteers in Brentford so it was very hard to pick. Glad to see many of my locals, many of them friends getting their $64,000 cheques and certificate, except for the cheques.

On the way I decided to drive (I do have a newer toy than the ridiculous one) and I wanted to see the miracle that had happened on the A4. Was it true? Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Hard to take a picture from a car where it’s slightly illegal if you’re moving, but stationary, I could see the pillars had lost their fences, their Calvin Klein plastic coats and all the signs saying ‘Closed’, ‘Diversion’ etc.

People were whizzing across the Windmill junction – well, they were crossing it – and all is well in the world. But as it turns out, it seems this is something we can thank our new King for. Allegedly, they actually haven’t finished the work but they couldn’t let him suffer the misery of looking at all this when he is driven down it whilst heading for Windsor. So without announcement they spent (allegedly) £400K of our money taking it away and bringing it back later so they could finish. When? Who knows. If National Highways do, they are not saying.

I made it to Hounslow House and began clapping the winners through. I wasn’t a great fan of the singers selected – The Rolling Stones turned down the gig – but somebody got us dancing. Us is a terminal inexactitude, because very sadly one of us had to stay down to take pictures, but ringleader Lara, Katherine and Mayor Raghwinder got it going.

I’m not going to show pictures of all of them because some are shy but having two from Boston Park (and other things) one from Clayponds, one from Air Quality Brentford plus quite a few I know from around the borough were honoured and it was a lovely evening.

I also spotted another local who is dear to my heart, who hadn’t been around much recently. But here he was, my old oppo and the one and only Melvinator.

Well, that was that fun over, and my second weekend away in two weeks was looking at old cars racing, this time in Donington Park, near Derby. Well, what to say to you car philistines. Well, first there’s 2 TVR Griffiths from the 1960’s.

Pretty cool, huh? My sister went out with a guy called Ted Worswick, who recently has ascended no doubt cradled by angels to the Targa Florio in the air. At Donington I met my old school mate Alan who became a semi professional motor racing photographer and his pals are similar and have a private box at Donington (for clarity, posh doesn’t come into it but it’s great when it rains). This led us to reminiscence about Ted, which a) Alan knew Ted in Lancashire racing circles and b) he also remembers meeting him at my house, which I had forgotten.

Picture of Alan in c1964 with the Ford Popular we were ‘restoring’ at the time. Picture of him now.

If it was me you’d struggle to see which was the old and which was the current picture. Alan looks a bit more mature than then.

Forgive me: I can’t resist mentioning the Turner Ardun. One of my Brentford pals is a retired Turner Ace (I suspect his was 1.1 litre Turner- Austin or similar as opposed to the fearsome Turner Ardun) but it helped me to get to this interesting story (well I think it is)

As I have said before, reading this blog and the nonsense I publish with it is not compulsory, so don’t blame me.

So, Monday was a bank holiday – just the craze at present – so the correspondence was fairly quiet though there was plenty from the weekend, mostly about parking, not my favourite subject but quite important to a lot of people, particularly if their ability to park conveniently is threatened. Tried to deal with it as well as I can but sometimes there is a litre of parking to fit into a pint bottle.

On Tuesday afternoon we had a cabinet meeting with the senior managers at Hounslow, and a specific one on my portfolio. I have a number of services that are struggling to meet financial targets, mainly because of inflation and it is hard to see how we can pull that back given the circumstances. Other things are going very well – recycling (above its target both in recycling income from selling material, and also because our commercial offer is progressing very well), homes (where our development is well ahead of time targets and below cost expectations) but these can be dwarfed by overruns in costs elsewhere, mainly energy-related.

Then we have a deep discussion about how we can improve the way housing repairs can be improved. This was a great meeting because it felt we were getting to the bottom of what doesn’t work well, and a good commitment between Coalo (and Lampton) and the housing team, which will give us a good chance to improve repairs and reduce waste on doing things more than once.

Then we had the Cabinet Briefing, reviewing the matters that come to formal cabinet on 16th May.

Wednesday was both doctor (nothing too interesting) and dentist (more boring!) In the afternoon we met on Teams to discuss some problems we have on Brook Lane North because we are busy building new flats where some garages were and we haven’t let the neighbours know what’s going on in good time.

In the evening we had a seminar on council housing, starting with this worrying slide. The worrying bit is not the sea monster that seems to be entering the picture – that’s just the top of someone’s hairstyle, but the numbers on the left (when compared to those on the right, in particular). If my memory is right there were 3500 families on the list a couple of years ago. Last year there was 5500 and this year (do the adding exercise) it’s more like 7500. We actually housed less than 600 of them. It’s not quite that bad because we find them private accommodation in many cases but they usually are very expensive and/or not very good. We work like crazy to build or buy new homes but we struggle even to tread water. If anyone mentions this, think of this slide.

Thursday morning I was at a seminar on line about Social Value in Housing. This was to remind us attendees that we should be thinking about more than the physical attributes of housing, but the way we can help people enjoy their neighbourhoods (and neighbours) better.

In the afternoon I met many of the residents in Layton Court/Brook Lane North. It’s another tricky parking issue (mainly). We are doing our best to alleviate problems and I hope they can now see it, but there’s more to be done.

I should of course haveh spent some time in Slough or Sunbury or Swindon over the last couple of weeks as the Labour party are trying to deliver better councils than the shambles they have had to live with over the recent years from a disorganised and uncaring Conservative Party. A mixture of busy weeks and weekends and a shortness of energy after my hospital spell and the lingering issues have limited me. I’ll be back on it soon!

Councillor Guy Lambert