Well, Last Week was Busy, But it Went Downhill at the End

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Standing by a Christmas tree on the Golden Mile

December 16, 2022

On Friday I had been asked to meet a meeting organised by Lara at Charlton House, including the leader member on housing, Sue Sampson. It was good for me to catch up with what’s going on at Charlton because Lara had been dead busy when I was via – well, not busy – and I was way behind. The meeting was held in some meeting place in Charlton which was distinguished by being freezing. Putting a positive spin on it, it reminded me when the temperature is of – 15 (I may be exaggerating, slightly) the people with woolly hats, quilted coats, gloves etc seem to do better than those who wear only a cotton shirt and a thin cotton jacket.

Only one person was worried about that. The others I think I could say boil down to 3 issues: many of their flats were in a terrible state and we were making a poor attempt to fix them (perhaps because they are pretty well impossible to fix without starting again, which is what we’re about to flatten and replace them, but doesn’t help those who have to live there for now); lack of clarity about when they will be rehoused, where, in what kind of property, under what conditions; what will happen about parking, because they all have parking (if they have a car) and may end up in a place with no parking.

I think the residents were happy that at least 2 who turned up (plus various council officers) who knew what they were talking about, plus s shivering one who said nothing much but sat looking sympathetic, punctuated by a sage grunt (or perhaps a suppressed sneeze). I think the council is doing the right thing by the residents, perhaps a bit slow and not telling people what’s going on and in language that is not always in comprehensible language.

Anyway, so I went home, caught up with some calls and emails and had 3 hours until I had to set off to the Mayor’s Reception including our official annual group photo. A good plan to go to Kingston on the 65. Too far for me to cycle yet, car out of action awaiting a new tyre, one being damaged, 65 would be a nice change.

Anyway, in the back streets of Ham it seemed to be going rather slow. Quite a lot of people got off but when the bus driver got off himself I figured there might be a problem. I followed people down the road, failing to get my Sat Nav working. I saw some blue lights ahead, a lot of them and that funny Sellotape police use to keep you out. Camera not working very well due to a useless photographer and the fact he was cold and lost.


Then there was this blue flashing light

I walked for 20 minutes inn the wrong direction (a bloke gave me instructions) then tracing my steps and 20 minutes more found civilisation, ie the main road between Kingston and Richmond. Progress towards Kingston looked improbable (completely jammed) so I found a 65 stop going back towards Richmond. Coming in 18 minutes (it did, stopped, let one person off and carried on. The next one let a few of us on and by 7pm I was walking along the High Street. Decided the Mayor would have to try and survive without me.

Saturday arrived and a text from Halfords, who said they’d be with me between 8am and 8pm (which I already knew) but they would call me when on the way. I was in the optician getting my eyes tested about lunchtime, when the inevitable call came, saying they had arrived. So I shot back. Pleasant and competent man did the deal, and it meant I could go to Brentford Voice carols in the Market Place late afternoon. Nice.

When on one short trip during the day I came across this rather splendid sight. I was pleased to confirm it was Left Hand Drive because the individual on the right was not paying the appropriate attention to the road.

Sunday morning was our massive surgery extravaganza in the Digital Dock. I Think 4 people came to meet (up to) 7 superior, well qualified, good looking, pleasant councillors. Sometimes I think I need to upgrade my after shave, especially nobody came to my solo surgery at the Library a couple of weeks ago.

In the afternoon I went to the Women Empowerment event at the Globe pub. Providence was clearly on my side, because I was selected by the raffler who obviously knew about my personal freshness concerns. Smellies from Sanctuary Spa is just what’s needed by the discerning man about town.

In the morning, a rare sight of snow outside my flat. Lovely.

Monday afternoon, I was up to where Firestone used to lurk. This was year 2 of the revived tradition to have gorgeous Christmas Trees along the Golden Mile and again, we managed one tree, but it was rather splendid. The buildings (not Currys) are now empty and the owners, Legal and General, are about to replace the sad old 1980s warehouses with something which looks a great deal worthy. They say demand for what they are building there which includes what the UKHQ of Renault was moving from Acton (where I briefly worked) to Golden Mile. I seem to have misunderstood that because Renault UK seem to be in Rickmansworth these days and the Acton site seems to be history. Sadly 3 of our proposed crew didn’t make it there. One had COVID (fortunately the mild version), one we couldn’t find, and the Mighty Melvinator was too busy chasing women, or having them chasing him in this case, waking for someone he calls ‘The District Nurse.’

In the evening I was over at Hounslow House for the Overview and Scrutiny panel on housing – very interesting for me because they were going deeply into the house repairs company Coalo. It has had some difficulties but they are improving sharply so was seeing an activity working hard on improvement and working so much better with the council officers these days.

On Tuesday, my pal Tony Louki gave me a lift to our Recycling centre in Southall Lane. I wanted to meet a couple of new people working there and to introduce my cabinet assistant, Aqsa Ahmed to the people and the site. The old place hasn’t changed much but the people have, and it was great to see the bins all ready as we further build our commercial refuse business to support businesses locally.

We’re all looking cheerful because we have just seen a recycle Romaquip truck purging itself of its plastic stuff (and other stuff), which always causes a bit of fun (and alarm – its noisy and a bit brutal!)

On Wednesday morning I had a Teams session with my Exec Director and her team. We are looking at ways we might be able to reduce costs in our various activities we are very likely to contribute to help the council begin to deal with the initial seeming impossible requirement to make our own council to help out the central government out of the appalling mess they have got themselves into. Don’t let them kid you that it’s all down to matters it doesn’t control. The problem started with the quite unnecessary and badly-conceived (nearly everything coming from working people, especially the poor-paid ones), continued with a poorly-conceived Brexit referendum with no consensus of how it would be implemented then the Brexit being chosen being the most damaging design that could have been conceived. Then put the Brexit ‘deals’ in the hands of Liz Truss who managed all the ones I’ve seen turning to be actually worse for trade if we’d just taken the existing EU deal and merely crossed out ‘EU’ and substitute ‘Britain’. To put cream on this cake, top it with Liz PM and fill the cake with billions of PPE-style jam where the only jam involved was that doled out to mainly mates of ministers and/or people who have spent a lot of money supporting the Conservative party funds. I’m not usually this political but the undeniable impact of a wholly incompetent series of governments has severely weakened Britain for a decade and probably more, and very likely diminished my country permanently.

For us, like other councils, we have to make the best we can of a shocking set of cards. I’m already seeing leisure centres closing around the country and cuts in everything local government do. In the next few weeks we’ll see whether we can cope, and what we will do to minimise the impacts, as we already do. So grateful that we successfully resisted our Conservative chums repeated requests to blow our reserves on cutting taxes, their normal approach to public funds,

On Wednesday, I finally got to Kingston and I’m now back to being hearing on both sides. After all this stress I decided to let others attend the Ballymore update and to spread any news to the rest of us (if any).

This morning we had a Teams with the Parks team. We have nearly finished (or probably fully finished – it’s a couple of weeks since I went there) the new café and training rooms in Boston Manor Park. There is one fundamental element, humans to make the vegan banana sandwiches and cups of tea, as the Friends group have decided they can’t find people to provide the service. If it’s not them we’re looking for other local community groups or failing that local cafes etc looking for another location. Of course, we will be very careful who we appoint, because it must be affordable and loved by the public, which was true of the Friends version. So the tender we’re issuing in the new year is being carefully crafted, especially given that there will be a ‘posh’ friend of the café in the Manor House.

I finished off my blogging week with a call with my neighbour to Watermans, where as members we partook of some mulled shenanigans. We then went to a showing of ‘She Said’, a film not completely different to ‘All The President’s Men’ and to my view of comparable quality, which is high praise. Despite it being over 2 hours it kept my jaded attention throughout – really excellent – get there!

Councillor Guy Lambert