A Delft Solution to Stacking Supermarket Scanners

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert

January 31, 2025

Very quiet week for me, one way and another. Brentford West is a fairly quiet ward compared to the old huge Brentford ward so I get less casework than I'm used to. Plus I am not cruising the streets so much at present because it has been cold, wet and (worst of all) windy.

Nice and sunny as I write this. I have actually spent a lot of time this week writing a kind of obituary of me as a Labour councillor. I am not going to publish it because it is rather painful but it was good therapy to go through all the events over the last 2 1/2 years to remind myself why I have taken the decisions I have.

My image for the obituary is I will put the thing on a large stone in the sea somewhere (not in Hounslow, of course!) and let it be conveyed into history by the waves.

Back to purpose. On Saturday I had been invited to go to Hampton Court Palace and for lunch at the nearby Mitre Hotel on the river. I had never been inside the Palace though I have cycled past it many times - great riverside cycle path between it and Kingston - and I was keen to give it a go. It was - well - grand. To be honest, that doesn't do much for me.

I was intrigued by this thing

I had to look up what it was for and apparently it is a tulip vase. Don't think I have ever possessed and never will enough tulips to do it justice, but it made me think how much nicer it would be if supermarkets created a variation of this to hold those hand held scanning gizmos they offer you to make spending money easier.

It's not senility, honest. It's an increasingly creative mind. Yes, nurse, that's my contention.

The gardens were pretty wonderful though naturally I forgot to take pictures. The Mitre is perfectly placed and my friends were raving about how good they expected it to be. I had a Chicken Schnitzel which was big but extremely bland, cost a fortune, and was not a patch as the one I had a couple of weeks ago at the Griffin: much nicer, and half the price. The Tripadvisor stuff confirms my view and I do wonder how these places get their reputation.

I will not make it as a restaurant critic. I'm too much of a fuddy duddy - give me egg and chips any day.

Sunday (!) I had an appointment at Specsavers (!) to test my hearing (!). The NHS have given it up like fags so I was referred here. A very friendly audiologist ran me through the system, just as the ENT crew did a few months ago and found the same thing as they did, which was the same as Boots found about 2 years ago. Doesn't sound that this is doing anything good for productivity but this was to give me NHS hearing aids. Great, but as it turns out they are still not much use to me and I will probably end up giving them back and trying elsewhere, privately. I much prefer to use the NHS but with the hearing loss I have it is not much use. It feels to me that the NHS has been gradually hollowed out. We now have a proper government but I don't think we will realistically get it back within 4 years of this parliament. 2 or 3 terms of Labour might get us back on track.

On Monday morning I was up at the Potting Shed to see my old officer oppo Wayne Stephenson. A lovely man and a very good officer. Wayne has had a horrible cancer and been away from work for about a year. This was just we had lost his boss - another outstanding officer - who went to be the CEO of Islington. Turns out Wayne has lived in Islington all his life and not surprisingly he has been headhunted to be Executive Director, I think of Environment. A formidable team grown in Hounslow now lost to us - disappointing, and I am worried we have lost them, the financial director, the housing director (twice) and we have the CEO on long term sick leave. Good people remain or have joined but it does worry me. Wayne is in good spirits and has mainly recovered from his ordeal and it was a delight to chew the fat with him.

On Tuesday I went to see a resident who lives on the first floor of a house in Brentford. She is cared for by her family but she has been unable to leave the house for more than 2 years. She is disabled and can barely, if at all, walk. The stairs there are extremely steep. I will be trying to get her priority for ground floor housing increased, but she is reluctant to take support from outside her family. I'll be on that for a while, though I'm not clear how to approach it.

On the way home I saw this garden and house which - umm - are need of improvement. There were a bunch of guys there - you can see part of one of them in the picture - and because this is in Enfield Walk (where you can only walk!) there have been a number of barrowloads of stuff moved away to a skip on Enfield Road. I'm amazed I never noticed this mess before they started clearing it, though quite a lot of it used to be a large chunk of the roof.

There was a disturbing notice on the door of Hewson's bookshop. I think they are affected by the lack of other shops in the Ballymore complex and of course by the complete lack of anything happening in the council block.

I'm hoping they will be back soon. It is a lovely shop and a real coup for Brentford when they arrived. I hope in a month or 3 Brentford will begin to look like a thriving town centre and I will continue to do whatever I can to bring that about.

On Tuesday I was supposed to be going to a scrutiny meeting for Housing and Environment to which I had been appointed. I asked the officer who administers it for details of the meeting but he told me I had been sacked from this panel because I am now an Independent. I have written to the lead members' officer for an explanation of this rule twice, but very unusually I have had no response as yet, though I suppose they are busy with the elections. So an unexpected evening off.

On Wednesday I had a look at my neighbour development, the artist formerly known as Heidelberg. It is mercifully quiet at present and there is even no noticeable vibration.

The cranes have gone and the river wall looks to me like it is now complete. There are two other metal stanchions out in the river and somebody told me that Fairview have been pulling hard and can't get these two teeth out! Fairview have updated their website with this news though they don't mention the stuck teeth. Anyway it's good the hammering is (I hope) now history and one day I'll get my riverside path back.

Wednesday evening I was down at the 6 Bells for the regular Brentford Voice get together. ONly maybe 20-25 people there this time - there used to be more people but it was a happy crowd and i could actually hear quite a lot that was said. Last time I was in the 6 Bells there was a raucous party (maybe had to do with the evil drink) and I couldn't hear a thing.

Today (Thursday) I attended a Teams meeting about Housing Affordability and its impact (if any) on productivity. This was some high powered academics and senior housing people.

It was pretty topical, because the fact that L&Q can't afford to redevelop that site is the reason they have let it to Lidl. And also of course why we have no development as yet (fingers crossed) on the police station, Watermans, Griffin Park, Duffy site and countless others. I introduced my short paper I made last year which showed the enormous difference between (particularly) the rents paid for council homes and those that the government will give to people to rent privately. Of course the latter is still 40% below market rental! Personally I think this is the root of a lot of the evil in the housing market, though the others have other things they think are the culprit. To be honest, I was a bit off beam because this was really led by economists and their theory (well supported) is that inequality in housing provision leads to poor productivity, and they have evidence to prove it.

If you don't completely understand that you are not alone!

Well that's it, except a hardy annual. Another invisible (because it had hazard lights) was parked outside Morrisons this afternoon for at least half an hour on double yellow lines. The driver appeared just as I was about to leave and then disappeared into Morrisons carrying a cardboard box from Amazon. I assumed that would be that, but no, out he came again and picked up one of those large square bags that Amazon use to haul stuff around. He disappeared into Morrisons again and it was time for me to disappear as well. For all I know he is still there.

Councillor Guy Lambert