Tony Arbour gets more than 9% swing.

It was a great pleasure to see that Tony Arbour was returned to the GLA on Thursday with a swing of more than 9% to Conservative. London South West had been the Lib Dems’ great hope of a first past the post gain and they threw everything they knew into getting it. This included lying doggo in Kingston while hitting Richmond like a plague of locusts.

One of my council colleagues put it like this, and I can’t better his account:

Quote from the final Lib Dem election leaflet -

“Just a few votes will separate Stephen Knight from the unpopular Tory candidate”

That’s 26,928 - but then again Lib-Dems are always hopeless at arithmetic. Like £11m is only a small amount for Kingston taxpayers to fork out for their new theatre.

And as for unpopular? Well obviously not with 76,913 local electors!

Well done Tony (and Boris), and everyone who worked so hard to secure this victory, and rub the smug grins off so many Lib-Dem faces. Doesn’t it make all those deliveries and canvassing in the rain so worthwhile!

Indeed it does!

 

‘Stock Transfer’ rides again

Remember this? From the large scale stock transfer attempt of 2004. The Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative leaders all of the same mind. And they were right too, but the ballot failed to support them.

Four years and about £20m of negative housing subsidy later, the Lib Dem administration is having to look again at the long term future of our Housing stock. Because about 30p in every pound our tenants pay in rent is creamed off to subsidize social housing elsewhere (another Gordon Brown classic stealth tax - hitting the poorest!) Kingston just can’t afford to keep its housing stock in decent repair.

I chaired the Housing Consultative Committee on Tuesday. Once again the same questions from residents about unrepaired gates and fences, windows and frames etc.

The administration has launched, in some haste, a questionnaire to test the water to see whether there might be support for some change in ownership and management. Sensible move - except they didn’t use the resident participation mechanisms open to them beforehand. This at a time when HCC has just spent umpteen hours over the last 10 months drawing up a new RP compact - with administration encouragement. Result - bad start for process and ‘mea culpa’ from Executive member with ‘absolution’ pronounced by Chair of HCC on condition of genuine contrition and a firm purpose of amendment. This was done more in hope than expectation but we must always hope!

Meanwhile the Government might get its sticky fingers out of our tenants’ pockets - and pigs might fly!

 

Tube strikes threaten.

Londoners have 48 hours of travel misery to look forward to next week with the news that yet another Tube strike will be staged in a row over staff transfers and pensions. According to RMT General Secretary Bob Crow, “The RMT executive was left with no choice but to set strike dates”, but this will be little comfort to Londoners, who last time had to endure fights on the street for a place on the bus home, and horrendously congested roads.

This will be the 17th strike in the 8 years Ken Livingstone has been Mayor of London, and Boris Johnson has decided it’s time something decisive was done about the situation.

Boris has a plan to deal once and for all with endless Tube strikes. If elected as London’s Mayor, he will negotiate a no-strike deal with the unions, in return for which he will ensure there is independent binding arbitration to guarantee a fair deal for Tube workers.

To download a special campaign leaflet that is being handed out at stations this afternoon on the Tube strike, please click here.

 

A message from Tony Arbour

Save weekly rubbish collections!

Your rubbish will only be collected once every fortnight.

More then 30 years ago the Conservatives introduced recycling in this borough with “bottle banks” at several different locations around the borough. Kingston’s Conservatives encourage all residents to increase the amount of “waste” that is recycled. They oppose any reduction in the basic weekly service of rubbish collection. We believe that the Liberal-Democrats’ scheme to cut the long established weekly rubbish collection tthat our residents have relied on for so long is totally wrong. Experince in other boroughs shows it is quite possible to retain the traditional weekly rubbish collection without adversely affecting the aim of increased recycling.

Tony ARBOUR - For South West London

 

Boris Johnson launches Environment Manifesto

Boris Johnson has launched a detailed manifesto for Environmental policy for London. See the link on the ‘Back Boris’ page.

 

David Cameron speaks out on PO closures

Follow this link to WEBCAMERON to see a short video on Post Office closures in London.

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=webcameron.index.page 

 

Boris launches radical Housing manifesto

Boris Johnson’s manifesto for Housing can be read using the link on the ‘Back Boris’ page.

 

No sympathy at all - but….

I have no sympathy at all for the Conservative Councillor in Slough who has been found guilty of electoral malpractice. I have none either for his agent. Regardless of party affiliation, anyone who does this kind of thing deserves all the opprobrium and penalties that are coming to them.

But, and at the risk of being boringly repetitive, the encouragement of unfettered postal voting, coupled with the monthly (rather than annual) updating of the electoral register, is making electoral fraud easier than at any time since the introduction of the Ballot Act in 1872.

In Kingston we have a very professional team in charge of electoral registration. I am sure the same is true of most local authorities. But there are far too few people to be able to check meaningfully the vastly increased claims for postal votes that now flood in (over 15000 in this Borough in 2006) - or even to check that the persons named on the applications actually exist. The Government must either tackle this meaningfully as a matter of urgency or be regarded as too complacent about the situation to be bothered.

 

New ‘Back Boris’ page

  For the latest info. from the Boris Johnson Mayoral campaign, click on ‘Back Boris’ above and follow the links on the page.

 

Boris launches Transport manifesto

 Conservative Mayoral Candidate Boris Johnson has launched his Transport manifesto today.

This link takes you direct to the Adobe .pdf version of it; http://www.backboris.com/assets/completed_transport_manifesto.pdf 

Prominent features include scrapping Livingstone’s plan to charge a £25 congestion charge on people carriers and reconsulting on the western extension of the  Congestion Charge zone.