Brent East Campaigning.

Sarah Teather appointed Minister of State for Children and Families

robd — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:04:00 +0000

Brent’s LibDem MP Sarah Teather has been appointed Minister of State for Children and Families at the Department of Education by David Cameron. Sarah will work under the new education secretary Michael Gove who had immediately renamed this department from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Top. Priority. A surprise appointment? Others had suggested housing…. A quick search shows that Sarah has taken an interest in this area in the past – she has asked around 50 questions of (what was) the DCSF and taken an interest in education issues within other Departments. Sarah was also the Lib Dems Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills in 2006.

Sarah joins the small group of women in David Cameron’s LibCon cabinet from the equally small group of women in the Lib Dems. Now this season of Britain’s Got Men In Suits has finished (watch out for the special Autumn edition folks!) we can see that Men In Suits is pretty much all we’ve got. The gender imbalance round Cameron’s cabinet table is lamentable.

Sarah in joined by Lynne Featherstone, appointed Under Secretary of State for Equalities. Congratulations to them both.

UPDATE – newly appointed Liberal Democrat minister has attacked the lack of women in the government saying she is “very disappointed” by the level of female representation in the coalition and said she has told David Cameron “we must do better”.

Sarah Teather – Housing Minister?

robd — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:19:19 +0000

Public sector newswires with insufficient to talk about have been waiting for news on who the new Housing minister would be, with Grant Shapps and Sarah Teather the most likely candidates. Housing is an issue Sarah has spoken about often in the Commons.

Brent Council – Labour Gain from NOC

robd — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:48:52 +0000

Over on the Brent Greens Blog, Shahrar Ali has posted a write up the results for the candidates at the Local Elections. The Greens stood the maximum number of candiates in each of the 20 wards in Brent and many of the candidates clocked up, several hundred votes, even reaching 840 votes in Kilburn.

The Local Election results 08/05/2010 from Brent Council.

Would Brent Central Lib Dems punish Sarah Teather for Lib/Con pact?

robd — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:22:43 +0000

Brent Central is close. Just 1,345 votes separated Labour and the Lib Dems, around 3% or about 1.5 voters in every 50.

Would Brent Central Lib Dem voters punish Sarah Teather for a Lib/Con pact? In a briefing paper published today by the Fabian society, Brent Central is listed as a constituency likely to swing back to Labour at a second general election in 2010.

“As this table shows, there are 15 Lib Dem seats that would fall to Labour if just one-in-five of their voters switched to Labour. These would include all five gains that the Lib Dems made from Labour on Thursday night – Norwich South, Bradford East, Brent Central, Burnley and Redcar. Several Lib Dem MPs, including frontbenchers Sarah Teather and Jo Swinson, are even more vulnerable, falling if just one-in-ten Lib Dem voters defects to Labour in protest.”

I think the assessment is right. On the doorstep and in the cafe, liberal voters I’ve spoken to are both left/centre-left and tactical. A deal with Tories would most likely unseat Sarah Teather and return Brent to Labour. Perhaps Dawn Butler will rise after all.

More news from up Brent North

robd — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:56:53 +0000

I met this chap while out on the Unlock Democracy / Hang-em rally this afternoon.

Barry Gardiner’s £198,500 dwarfs Dawn Butler’s £66,000 expenses claims.

Brent’s General Election results.

robd — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:38:13 +0000

The voters of Brent have returned Lib Dem Sarah Teather with a majority of 1,345, a swing of 11% from Labour, and Labour’s Barry Gardiner with a majority of 8,028, loosing 2.5% of the vote to the Conservatives (+2.2%) and other parties. I was at the count on Thursday night tally marking for the Lib Dems and in-between boxes of ballot papers talking with candidates and journalists about the political economy of Brent as a borough. And still there at 11:30 on Friday morning when the results were announced! I didn’t have the stamina for the Local Election counts though!

Election summary for Constituencies
Constituencies	Elected Candidates	Elected Party or Parties
Brent Central	Sarah Teather	Liberal Democrats
Brent North	Barry Gardiner	Labour

It was a long and tense night with some low drama at the first validation following the ballot paper mixup in Willesden Green and the re-routing of the Hampstead and Kilburn ballot boxes via Camden. The ballot counters of Brent Council worked really hard, first collating and validating the ballot papers, then counting the ballots cast. Tally Teams from Labour and the Lib Dems jostled politely for space to count the Brent Central ballots as they were sorted, while at the Brent North tables it was Labour and Conservative Teams that rubbed shoulders. By 530am, both Labour and the Lib Dems were looking tense, each thinking their candidate had just clinched victory. As the Harrow Observer report, ‘Labour [believed] Dawn Butler, the former MP for Brent South, [was] two per cent ahead in terms of number of votes, or just one ballot paper in every 50.‘

Brent North was announced first, with Barry Gardiner warning against Labour “starting a new love affair” with the Lib Dems so soon after being rejected by the electorate, saying he was “deeply distrustful” of the party.

In Sarah Teather’s victory speech she thanked the people of Brent for renewing their trust and faith in her, promising to continue her work as a constituency MP.

Dawn Butler quoted Maya Angelo in her valediction to the assembled: “You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

Does she not recall who was caught out spreading ‘bitter twisted lies’ to the electorate?

Shahrar Ali thanked the Green voters, saying that with the direction of travel for politics there will come more Brighton Pavilion victories in the future.

Click here for all my photos from the night.

broke my blog

robd — Sat, 08 May 2010 10:31:57 +0000

images will return shortly.

UPDATE: Fixed!

Sarah Teather Is Our MP

robd — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:24:45 +0000

Sarah Teather was returned to parliament by the voters of Brent Central.

Brent Central results
Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Sarah Teather	Liberal Democrats	20026	44%	Elected
Dawn Butler	Labour	18681	41%	Not elected
Sachin Rajput	Conservative	5067	11%	Not elected
Shahrar Ali	Green Party	668	1%	Not elected
Errol Williams	Christian Party	488	1%	Not elected
Abdi Duale	Respect	230	1%	Not elected
Dean McCastree	Independent	163	0%	Not elected

Mapesbury returned Cllrs Leaman, Matthews and Hasmi. Full results posted by Ward over at the Brent Council website.

While I was out….

robd — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:26:25 +0000

Gone in 60 seconds.

robd — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:41:46 +0000

Here is Ross Kemp’s party piece.

Team Teather in Mapesbury

robd — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:01:06 +0000

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Brent Central – Willesden Green

robd — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:41:53 +0000

Mark Pack reports that in Willesden Green polling didn’t start until after 9am becuase ballot papers for the wrong Parliamentary constituency had been supplied to all three polling stations Willesden Green ward.

Bonkers.

The peoples election

robd — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:37:50 +0000

Mr Brown was asked for his reaction to the news that celebrity TV supremo Simon Cowell was backing the Conservatives and thought the prime ministers was tired. ”This election isn’t about celebrities, it’s about people“, he said. Yet we have had a lot of celebrity involvement in the national and local campaigns:

Labour celebrities: Ross Kemp, Jo Brand, Eddie Izzard, David Tennant.

Conservative celebrities: Michael Caine, erm….. (help me out here, I don’t watch the telly!)

Lib Dems: Floella Benjamin, erm…..

Kilburn Station, 6:45pm

robd — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:53:59 +0000

Busy outside Kilburn Station this evening. Picked up a whole host of goodies and the Evening Standard.

Team Glenda gave me a DVD with ROSS KEMP on it! ‘Gone in 60 seconds’ explains “what’s at stake on Thursday“. Hopefully. He. Makes. It. Easy. For. Me. To. Understand.

Some more celebrity messages for Team Labour attacking the Tories from Jo Brand and Eddie Izzard. And David Tennant shares with us that he thinks David Cameron is “a terrifying prospect” in a viewspaper ‘Britian’s recovery at risk from Tories‘.

I also read David Cameron’s Contract With [me]. Headline: If we don’t deliver, kick us out. Detail: In five years time.

Labour voter goodie bags

robd — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:29:14 +0000

As seen in Mapesbury, junction of Olive and Snyed Roads.

Photos from Stonebridge – Hillside & Fawood Children’s Centre

robd — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:00:13 +0000

From wikipedia: Stonebridge is the largest electoral ward in Brent and includes Stonebridge Estate, and parts of Park Royal and Brent Park, St. Raphael’s Estate, Mitchellbrook and the Hillside district. The area has strong links with the Afro-Caribbean community which forms the ward’s ethnic majority.

Here are a few photos of the last remaining block on the Stonebridge Estate off Hillside, Brent. You can see the cleared land from recent demolition work in the foreground.

Here you can see the newly built Fawood Childrens Centre in the foreground.

And yes, Brent Labour can use these photos in campaign materials as they are public domain.

Dawn Butler’s hoarding at Unisys, Brentfield

robd — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:44:39 +0000

Is back on its legs.

Whatever you do, don’t visit the web address stencilled on the windows of the building, unless you want to book an escort….

Does Dawn know (or care) where Stonebridge is?

robd — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:00:23 +0000

On this mornings electoral communication from the Labour Party, Dawn Butler highlights housing, in particular the investment in Stonebridge and St. Raphael’s Estate where monstrous concrete high rises are being destroyed, replaced with low-density and low-rise housing.

Are Brent Labour sure?

Only that is not Stonebridge. It’s Trellick Tower, 3miles down the road in Ladbroke Grove…..

The stock photo comes from PhotoEverywhere.

This isn’t the first time Labour have had stock photography issues locally. Remember the 50 extra police on Brent’s streets in Yasmin Qureshi’s materials in 2005 that were photographed in Shepherds Bush?

Local Torys ready for an election.

robd — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:29:13 +0000

Torys care for mapesbury! Is the exclamation mark is necessary? Well, I’m as surprised as they are, so I guess so!

On the back, Brent Conservatives ask Mapesbury residents how they would vote IF there was a general election in the next few months…… Someone ought to let Sachin Rajput know that he’s on the list for Thursday.

Picked up on Mora Road on Monday. Uploaded to TheStraightChoice.

Dawn Butler hording advertising at Unisys, Brentfield.

robd — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:20:52 +0000

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.” Wilson and Kelling, 1982.

A building like this?

The ex-Unisys building on Brentfield has been empty for well over a decade. In 1997 the owners were granted planning consent to convert the office blocks to a 330-bedroom hotel, add a new penthouse storey on front block facing North Circular Road, a new single-deck car park and new boundary wall. The planning application was renewed in 2002, but nothing has happened on this site while all around what the wrecking ball of progress has flattened on the Stonebridge estatem the Hillside Housing Trust have rebuilt with low-rise low-density modernity.

I was attracted to the Labour posters along the boundary fence and the massive Vote Dawn Butler advertising hoarding, sadly fallen from grace and lying in the mud.

According to the planning conditions attached the the permission granted in 1997, “Prior consent may be required under the Town & Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 for the erection of any advertising signs and/or hoardings on the subject site.” So I spoke with Brent Planning, who advised me that An Advertisement means:

announcing any local event of a religious, educational, cultural, political, social or recreational character, or
relating to any temporary matter in connection with an event or local activity of such a character, not being an event or activity promoted or carried on for commercial purposes.

And that No advertisement may exceed 0.6 square metre in area. From my measurements it looks like Brent Labour are in breech of the planning regulations.

Here are a few more snaps of the building and the Labour posters.

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MapRA AGM

robd — Tue, 04 May 2010 09:28:55 +0000

Here are some of the photos I took of the Meet the Candiates session at the Mapesbury AGM last month.

Brent FoE

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Bridge Park

robd — Tue, 04 May 2010 09:01:30 +0000

I popped down to Bridge Park yesterday morning, for reasons which will become clear…. Bumped into Errol Williams, preparing for a busy day out in Brent Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship. His first pledge is to bring all legislation is brought into conformity with the word of God. I uploaded his materials to TheStraightChoice for reference and they are included in the slideshow.

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Bridge Park is just of Brentfield as you come down from Harlesden.

View Larger Map

Local elections in the shadow?

robd — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:58:14 +0000

”The local elections are in the shadow of the general election,” said Andrew Stunell, chair of the Liberal Democrats’ local election campaign team, reports the Beeb. Locally, the Labour team are focused the parliamentary campaign. What little local material they have published and distributed has been discredited and retracted. The Lib Dems are emphasizing the local campaign, highlighting the work of Lib Dem councillors in the wards.

Mapesbury - Brent Lib Dems

The local election promises to be more exciting than the race for Brent Central. Will Labour regain the Council from the Lib Dem / Conservative coalition? Will the Lib Dems gain more councillors, sufficient to gain a majority (32 seats) and control the whole council? Perhaps the Greens, fielding candidates in every ward in Brent, will gain a seat on the council.

These graphics show the political makeup of Brent Council after the 2006 Local elections and subsequent local by-elections.

Source – Brent Council website.

A message from Ken Livingstone

robd — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:18:29 +0000

Shoring up the core vote, Ken Livingstone writes to Labour party voters/members in Brent Central. “We can’t afford to have the country run like Brent Council.” Letter received in Mapesbury, 2nd May.

Uploaded to TheStraightChoice.

Hampstead and Kilburn

robd — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:36:16 +0000

Liberal Democrat candidate Ed Fordham needs just 474 votes to win the seat from Glenda Jackson. Driving through QP this afternoon I saw lots of Labour posters and flags with only a few Lib Dem orange diamonds. Looks like there is mroe work for the Lib Dem team to do there. The Torys had just a single board – just like the solitary piece of literature I found from them today. Poor Chris Philp.

I’ve just scanned and uploaded all the materials I could gather in Queen’s Park ward of Hampstead and Kilburn to TheStraightChoice.

Floella Benjamin campaigns with Sarah Teather

robd — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:53:41 +0000

WBTimes report that “Floella Benjamin ditched the teddy bear props” when she joined Lib Dem candidate for Brent Central, Sarah Teather this week. Floella joined Sarah on Harlesden High Street to collect signatures in Harlesden, to sign up residents to a petition urging the government to reform air passenger duty.

Sarah Teather and Floella Benjamin

Air Passenger Duty (APD) is an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a United Kingdom airport. The levy takes distance into account, making long distance flying significantly more expensive. The charges rose on November 1, 2009 and will rise again on November 1, 2010.

The APD hits Brent residents with family overseas, especially those with family outside of the Eurozone. Sarah Teather is campaigning for a reform of the APD and will no doubt continue this work to reform the structure in an incoming Lib Dem government.

Sarah Teather and Floella Benjamin

According to the WBTimes, “Mrs Benjamin also revealed she considered running as the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor in 2007 – but decided not to after her mother warned her about the pitfalls of a career in politics.”

NW2 Residents Association Thanks Lib Dem Councillors

robd — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:37:42 +0000

The North West Two Residents Association held its AGM on the 22nd April at the Windmill Pub on Cricklewood Broadway.

The NW2 Committee

NW2 began in September 2007 as a group local residents who wanted to improve the sense of community in the Cricklewood area. As Carol Granger, Committee Chair, writes “The Association was founded first to try to improve the sense of community in the area and provide opportunities for people in the neighbourhood to get together, and to get to know each other and maybe help each other out; but also to improve the appearance of the area (litter, graffiti, etc); to try to improve relationships with Brent and the officers who look after services for the area; try to make sure Cricklewood didn’t stay the Cinderella of Brent / Barnet / Camden. I think we only have to look around to see evidence that it is all working.”

NW2 thanked local Lib Dem Councillors Hayley Matthews, Chris Leaman and Sami Hashmi for their support and commitment to the group. The councillors have attended neighbourhood walkabouts and acted on local issues raised by residents and helped secure WardWorking funded for NW2 projects.

The full reports from the AGM are online.

Labour pay legal costs to Brent Lib Dems

robd — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:46:00 +0000

Brent councillor James Powney laments the threat and use of legal writ to silence debate, tending towards an environment where ‘legitimate freedom of speech could be restricted by self censorship.’

Legal writ has its strength though. When Brent Labour distributed a leaflet with false claims about Sarah Teather, the Brent Leb Dems took appropriate legal measures. In the face of the legal action, Labour have now admitted their story was false and agreed to pay the Lib Dems legal costs.

Dawn Butler, Ann John and other Brent Labour members have all signed a written apology to Sarah Teather.

Sarah Teather does not need to make up claims about Dawn Butler and her expenses. Dawn Butler’s £66,000 expenses claims are a matter of public record.

Atiq Malik standards board inquiry

robd — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:27:15 +0000

More on Atiq Malik, independent candidate in Brent Central, on this weeks WBTimes front page. They don’t disclose the nature of the allegations against him for ‘legal reasons’ and the internet isn’t throwing up rumours for me to link to, not even on Labour Cllr James Powney’s blog – although there is a great archive of items on Atiq Malik’s views on women and optioning aspects of Sharia Law for UK Muslims.

WBTimes carry a statement from the Standards Board that they had received a referral from Brent Council’s Standards Committee on the 24th March. However there are “No documents are available for [the] meeting” of the Committee on the 24th March online a month after the meeting.

Inquiry into candidate

from the local press

robd — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:04:08 +0000

The Willesden and Brent Times spoke to local candidates standing as independents or for the smaller parties, including Shahrar Ali for the Green Party and Atiq Malik.

Atiq Malik is Brents’ own ‘controversial’ candidate. An ex-conservative councillor in Queensbury ward, jumped/pushed from the party in 2008, he has previously been referred to the Standards Board for England, the standards watchdog for Councillors and other officials. He was subsequently cleared of misconduct. Atiq Malik’s pledges have a clean up politics air about them, the usual puff against employing family members, claiming second home allowances (like Brent’s Dawn Butler and her £66,000 of expenses), having jobs outside parliament… He could do with starting the political clean up in his own office by all accounts. Illegally copying private correspondence and distributing it for political aims is not the sort of politiking I want see represented in parliament.

I’ve scanned the pages or you can also get the WBTimes article online.

What they’ll do for you

What they'll do for you

What they'll do for you

Sarah Teather commended by British Muslim Initiative and salaam.co.uk

robd — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 23:11:10 +0000

YouElect is a non-profit and independent British Muslim grassroots initiative aimed at promoting voter registration and political engagement. I’ve just looked up Brent Central where Sarah Teather is the Community Choice Candidate, commended by both the British Muslim Initiative and salaam.co.uk.

Dawn Butler and Sachin Rajput are also profiled on the YouElect site.

News from up Brent North

robd — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 23:02:17 +0000

Is Barry Gardiner standing as an independent? You’d think he doesn’t want to be associated with Labour from the look of his campaign materials. See the full leaflet at The Straight Choice.

WB Times ‘Butler told to apologise’

robd — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:41:22 +0000

Brent’s Labour Group formal apology for issuing leaflets with defamatory claims about Sarah Teather is on page 4 of the WB Times this week.

Dawn Butler apologises to Sarah Teather

Local election leaflets online

robd — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:27:05 +0000

The Straight Choice election leaflet project is an archive of election leaflets distributed throughout the campaign. This is a helpful thing to be doing as …..

1) Promises that candidates make in their leaflets can be compared to what they promise to do elsewhere. In the future we can also compare the voting record of MPs with what they promised on the campaign trail.

2) It helps catch parties or candidates who are breaking electoral law – 2 parties have been reported to the authorities based on leaflets uploaded to TheStraightChoice.org in the past couple of weeks.

and

3) We get to see how the corporate identity of the main parties messages are tightly managed nationally.

Check out Brent Central, Brent North and Hampstead and Kilburn at the StraightChoice website and join in.

Brent Central – track the candidates

robd — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:25:56 +0000

Democracy Club website helps us to hold candidates to account, and stimulate public engagement in the campaigns for local and national elections. Big job… lots of small tasks. The website helps residents to track and contact candidates, create local issue lists and track the responses from candidates.

Check out Brent Central, Brent North and Hampstead and Kilburn at the DemocracyClub website and join in.

Butler issues full apology for Teather expenses smear

robd — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:15:14 +0000

LibDem Voice has some news on Brent Centrals dirty politics.

Labour Minister Dawn Butler has issued a legal apology to Sarah Teather for calling her a hypocrite over MPs’ expenses. Butler made the accusation while the running of Sarah Teather’s office was under investigation. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner later dropped the investigation because there were no grounds to suspect any wrongdoing by Ms Teather.

This issue came up at the MapRA Hustings on Monday night. There was a question from the floor on expenses which had Dawn attempting to justify £66,000 ACL since 2005 for her Wembley second home, when she has another property in Stratford. As we know, Sarah Teather has not claimed the second home / additional costs allowances. Dawn did well and may have carried it, but a follow up question on Brent Labours’ smear campaign and the ficititous complaints to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about Sarah Teather by someone from Dawn Butlers team made a stench. Sarah announced that she had received a written apology from Dawn – you can download it – and won the ‘clean up dirty expenses’ applause.

Cllr Ann John attempted a last minute clawback… however her proclaiming of a ‘citizens right to know’ sounded hollow, now that we know of the ‘false… improper…wholly untrue….’ nature of what they wanted us to know.

photos from the MapRA hustings last night.

robd — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:35:27 +0000

Bums on seats….

And more…..

MapRA AGM and hustings tonight.

robd — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:40:53 +0000

Election hustings and MapRA AGM at St. Gabriel’s Church, Walm Lane, tonight.

Click on for a map.

View Larger Map

Last day to submit your nomination.

robd — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:37:44 +0000

Completed nomination papers accompanied by the deposit of £500 must be delivered to the Acting Returning Officer at the offices of the London Borough of Brent not later than 4pm on Tuesday, 20th April 2010.

You can view / download the election notices at Brent Council’s website.

Mapesbury Residents Associations AGM – 19th APR

robd — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:33:47 +0000

The Mapesbury Residents Association are holding the groups’ Annual General Meeting on the 19th April. After the formal meeting there will be an Election Hustings. All the political parties have been invited and it will give you the opportunity to meet the candidates for election – councillors as well as MPs.

The MapRA AGM is a lively and informative event. With the usual high-quality nibbles, there are also stalls and information stands from the police, Brent Council and other local groups and organisations.

Part 1, MapRA stalls, 7pm
Part 2, MapRA formal meeting, 8pm
Part 3, Election Hustings, 8:30pm

I look forward to seeing you there.

List of candidates for Brent Council wards.

robd — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:30:08 +0000

The deadline for nominations closed at midday on 8 April 2010 and details of the candidates for the local elections are available in this PDF, published on 9 April. A PDF? Have Brent Council learned nothing about publishing information online? I’ll rework the list and make it nice and human-readable without having to download a PDF!

No Brent East, Just Campaigning

robd — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:47:15 +0000

There is to be a General Election on May 6th, along with the local elections. You would think it had been called back in December given the fluster and bumph in the media. The snow wasn’t enough to distract us from the political machinations at Westmonster. That snow will probably become an election issue this year, if anyone remembers it – perhaps there will be some more before the election.

Brent East no longer exists; the boundaries were redrawn and now I’m in Brent Central. And no, I’m not renaming the site. This is Barmy Brent afterall, so why not?

Brent Labour – Mapesbury News

robd — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:34:00 +0000

From your local Labour Action Team.

The theme of this newsletter is rubbish. Brent Labour argue that the charge made by the council for bulky refuse collection has lead to an increase in fly-tipping in Brent and pledge to ‘dump’ the £25 charge if elected. If that isn’t inducement enough for you, they claim that cuts, CUTS!, will reduce the frequency of rubbish collection.

The main flytipping problem in Brent is caused by unscrupulous builder, dumping domestic building waste. This wasn’t collected by Brent for free and was always the householders/contractors responsibility. Dumping the charge for collection won’t have any impact on this. Locally, co-ordinated swoops by MET police and Brent Council officers has been effective in stopping and seizing vehicles carrying waste without licenses. The local hot spots in Mapesbury that I know of haven’t been hit in months.

Vote to drop the charge. But know that the cost to the council of providing household item collection will still be passed on to us rate payers.

MP Sarah Cleared

robd — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:29:37 +0000

From WB Times today. Sarah Teather smeared by member of Dawn Butlers team in fictitious expenses complaint.

AN INVESTIGATION into the expenses of one of the borough’s MPs has been abandoned after it was found that a letter of complaint was fictitious.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards said an objection claiming that Brent East MP Lib Dem Sarah Teather sublet her constituency office in Willesden to her party while the taxpayer picked up the bill was not genuine.

A follow up letter from the complainant included a returning address that was almost identical to that of an employee of Labour MP for Brent South, Dawn Butler, who is also Minister for Young Citizens and Youth Engagement.

The commissioner also said he discontinued the inquiry because he had no grounds for believing that claims Ms Teather made from parliamentary funds for her office provided support to the cost of the Lib Dem party.

A letter to Ms Teather from the commissioner said: “I have been in contact with the person who purportedly made the complaint. I have satisfied myself as to his identity. He has stated that he did not make a complaint against you.”

As the complaint was made, Ms Teather, who was famed for not claiming a penny during the expenses scandal, strenuously denied the allegations.

Brent Liberal Democrats said the party contributed over and above its usage of the office, as approved by the Commons, calculated by a surveyor and agreed with a solicitor.

Chris Leaman, Brent councillor and the Lib Dem London campaign manager, said: “Its seems a strange coincidence that the first letter was written by someone who now says they have never made a complaint about Sarah Teather and did not write the original letter. Many people will be wondering why the second letter is written from an address that does not exist, while a similar address with an identical post code has one person registered at it and that person works for Dawn Butler.

“Dawn Butler must take immediate action and reveal the full facts if any person employed by her has been involved in this smear campaign against Sarah.

MP Sarah Cleared

robd — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:52:43 +0000

“A letter of complaint against Sarah Teather was sent to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, supposedly from a man at an address in Brent. Then a second letter of complaint was sent, again from this man, but giving a new address. However, this new address does not exist. There is a real address with the same house number and postcode (but different rest of address), at which there is one person on the electoral register – a woman who has the name of someone listed on Labour MP Dawn Butler’s register of interests as being a member of her staff.” Yes, very odd.
These claims were also being hawked in letters sent to Mapesbury residents by Labour candidate Angela Griggs.

Mapesbury Labour Team smear tactics….?

robd — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:38:39 +0000

In a recent letter to residents of the Mapesbury ward of Brent Central, Labours’ candidate Angela Griggs slings a little mud on expenses. Apparently complains have been made to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about Sarah Teathers’ expenses in relation to her constituency office.

Now we know Sarah’s expenses are squeaky clean – check TWFY.com and compare the ACL to Dawn Butler and her £66,000….

Final post – read the About page.

robd — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:59:17 +0000

Last post to this blog before being mothballed. Check the About page for a potted history of this site and information on where you can continue reading….

stand back folks, there is nothing to see

robd — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:22:13 +0000

I’ve been occupied with my Study of the Political for most hours of the last quarter of 2006 and have had precious little time for anything other. This website (BEC) and also STMP have not been updated in months… a sad state of affairs really. Furthermore proposed boundary changes and my moving plans mean changes! Brent East will no longer exist so BEC will need to be revised. Sarah Teather may no longer be my MP with the obvious implications for the STMP blog….

But all posts are not lost. Brent Politics will not go un-poked. All the fun, and more, continues with robdyke.com/noc

Freedom of Information

robd — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:59:45 +0000

After reading (and posting) Shahrar’s email I got thinking about what other information about parking and PCNs issued I could request from Brent Council under FoI.

How many of us have been issued a ticket because of a simple honest mistake, like, say, scratching off the wrong day on a parking voucher in error, or perhaps forgetting to note your registration on a temporary residents permit? Well that’s me on both counts.

How many of us have been issued a parking ticket due to an error on the part of the parking warden, like, say for example, parking a commercial vehicle in a resdential street contrary to local restrictions when no contravention could have occured as you were not driving a commercial vehicle and there were no such local parking restrictions? A bit of specific example I realise… Yes, me again.

When I make an honest mistake Brent Council will not hear your pleading and will not yeild their power to strike out the ticket, leaving you to either pay the PCN or meet Brent in court. Yet when a Brent Council Parking Warden makes a similar simple honest error, power is yielded and PCNs are cancelled.

I wonder if I Brent have data on the number of tickets that that they cancel each year due to warden error… What is of greater interest is whether Brent collect data on number of appealed tickets due to an error on the part of the driver. And can I get it?

Parking tickets in Brent and the FoI Act

robd — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:47:36 +0000

Shahrar Ali, a Green Party candidate at both this years local and last years national elections, sent me an email yesterday on a topic important to car-owners – Penalty Charge Notices, or, rather, f’ing-tickets, as I’m sure most of us refer to them. Shahrar told me about meeting Brent residents while campaigning during the local elections and a common gripe that came up – being issued with a ticket on a public holiday.

He writes:

“Trouble is, “Restrictions apply on Bank Holidays” signage is to be found only on some of the posts as one enters the zone. But most people, reasonably in my view, take their cue from the signage in the bays – which without any explicit indication to the contrary they will assume does not apply on public holidays.

Brent can’t have it both ways. Had the assumption not been justified there would hardly be a need for the additional signage. The trouble is these signs are not fit for purpose, ie. noticeable.

What’s at issue? Nobody likes to get a fine at the best of times, but the suspicion is that signage has been erected to maximise the chances of catching people out and making a quick buck. That’s dishonest and only fuels resentment towards local government – increasing cynicsm and eroding trust in public or democratic institutions, moreover.”

Shahrar made a reuqest under the Freedom of Information Act for data from Brent Council on the volume of parking tickets issued in a single Controled Parking Zone in Brent on both Bank Holiday Mondays and the normal Mondays preceeding and following them.
Shahrar writes: “The results of my request surely confirm that the majority of drivers have been caught out on public holidays not because they were “trying to get away with it” (in the words of one council official) but because they were duped.”

“The figures below are well into DOUBLE FIGURES for all the recent public holidays in April and May, but remain in single figures (and many times less) for the same days of the week only one week before or after that (the data control set).”

Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Penalty Charge Notices in KR-CPZ – Dates followed by Number of Penalty Charge Notices:

Friday 7 April 2006: 4
Friday 14 April 2006 [Good Friday]: 27
Monday 17 April 2006 [Easter Monday]: 30
Monday 24 April 2006: 6
Monday 1 May 2006 [Bank Holiday]: 47
Monday 22 May 2006: 9
Monday 29 May 2006 [Bank Holiday]: 58

[source: Brent Council, 2 Aug 2006]

“It hardly looks as if word is getting round! That’s only for one zone covering a handful of streets. It must be quite a money spinner borough-wide. Indeed, not all our zones get the same treatment, only adding to the confusion.”

“NB. For avoidance of doubt, I do not think that dishonest parking fines is a legitimate means to turn people away from using their cars, even if I’d like to reduce such
dependency!”

quick hello

robd — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:22:09 +0000

I just wanted to say a quick hello to the frequent visitors out there (you know who you are). Thanks for popping by, reading this site and (hopefully) providing reciprocal links back here. leave a comment, say hello back.

FUD review for July

robd — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:35:56 +0000

FUD? Check wikipedia…

Received the first campaign materials from Team ~~Yellow~~ Gold and Team Red since the elections for local government in May. Sorry for the blue tint on the scans, I think my scanner is broken.

The BELD are thanking people for voting for them in Mapesbury and give people the contact numbers of their new local councillors. I won’t reprint them here though – surely you can get them from Brent Council (after 6 or 7 clicks) or from the BELD website (well actually you can’t find any info about your local councillors or FOCUS TEAM on the BELD website).

The QP Labour people have been distributing their July newsletter which highlighted the power sharing between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives in the new Council Executive. Vote Lib Dems and Get Tories says the headline with the story claiming that the first thing the LDs did when getting voted in was to join forces with the Tories. That’s not wholey true… the first thing the LDs did was to attempt to forge a power sharing agreement with the three parties, leading to coalition. This being rejected by the second largest vote winners (Team Red), the result is a coalition between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.
If it wasn’t so heavily couched in political sniping I might have draw greater attention to the news on the rear of the QP Labour flyer that the LD/Tory exec plan to cut the publicity budget of the council. Oh, well, go on then… ‘The Knives Are Out!’ leads the back page. QP Labour are concerned the budget cuts will affect campaigns around areas such as knife carrying. Cut the funding as far as I am concerned….stop publications such as the Brent Magazine with the budget cuts but still continue to fund issue specific campaigns. That’s my 2p worth any way…

helping more community interest groups

robd — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 14:19:08 +0000

I’m hoping that this coming week will see two local residents associations get online with powerful internet based self-publishing tools provided by comwifinet. These two groups, one in Stonebridge and one in Mapesbury, will also become part of the Bonnet network of community interest groups, extending the Bonnet network and improving their own effectivness as a result. I’ll be posting links to their websites and to their Bonnet information pages as soon as they are active.

brent projects

robd — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:31:09 +0000

I posted recently on what could be done next with this journal. “wither b.e.c?” i asked. well, new projects are on the horizon. I’ve been working on a community information network project with Colin George, Chair of QPARA and Director of MarketSpark (publisher of the excellent Local Directories for Brent residents associations). We see a need to weave links between associations and organisations active in Brent and an opportunity to develop such a network in the light of the demise of Brent Community Empowerment Network.

MarketSpark and Comwifinet are working together to augment and extend community network links through a varitety of mediums. The Bonnet Project is the working title of our efforts.

Because the Brent Community Empowerment Network is no longer with us, BrAVA have a large stack of cash to put towards a community consultantion project or give back to Brent Council. Perhaps BrAVA will see it to support the Bonnet Project? Who knows…

Visit the website, register yourself and your organisation, participate.

legal challenges to the results

robd — Wed, 31 May 2006 11:31:46 +0000

Last weeks’ (24th May) KTimes carried two stories about potential legal challenges to the results of the Brent Council elections. I don’t know what is happening with the query about the election of Cllr Pawan Gupta in Dudden Hill but I do have some news on the challenge to the count in Queen’s Park.

I understand that Brent Council have written to all the candidates in the Queen’s Park ward acknowledging the concern and the reasoning behind the querry raised by Shahrar Ali. Perhaps as a result of being part of a pilot of new electoral processes, Brent Council have indicated that they will not challenge any petition delivered to them. But there will not be a petition from Shahrar and others, primarily becuase Brent will accept the petition. How so? The costs of petitioning Brent Council in the High Court are prohibitive, even if Brent Council accept the challenge and agree at every step. Costs in the hundreds of pounds could be managed – and would be worth while in investing for the sake of knowing whether or not we were right. Costs in the thousands? in the tens of thousands? These are prohibitive.

I had thought that the Labour Party might have funded the challenge as the gap between Motley (Lib Dem, 1102 votes) and Nerva (Labour, 1059 votes) is but 55 – Could a recount have returned Neil Nerva over William Motley? Perhaps… Is it worth the £000’s to find out?

You can download Shahrar Ali’s final calculations and speculations on the results from the Brent and Harrow Green Party website.

new link added

robd — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:51:33 +0000

A link to rockyf.com has been added – Rocky Fernandez:advocate and campaigner. Rocky has stood as an independent candidate in both local and national elections in Brent over the last few years. Most recently famous for the double-switchback manoeuver: joining the Lib Dems getting kicked out and then bitching about them online and in print (I’ll scan the letter from last weeks local paper later)…hummm, search for ‘fernandez‘ yeilded no documents…..

Next steps in Queen’s Park ward

robd — Sun, 21 May 2006 20:12:27 +0000

What news have I on the ‘missing votes’ in Queen’s Park? Well, I know that all the candidates have been written to by Shahrar Ali who has appraised them of his calculations and his investigations with Brent Council. I imagine that the next steps will be to petition the Returning Officer through the High Court as the Officer does not have the power to choose to recount the ballot. More info as and when I’ve digested the papers from the Law Courts…

In the mean time I’m holding a bucket for £2 coins to be dropped in: a legal challenge isn’t cheap! I’m encouraging donations for the fund. Click on the Donate! button. (pst…it’s on the left, over there…)

The Popular Girl

robd — Sun, 21 May 2006 07:02:04 +0000

I’ve been reading more F Scott Fitzgerald recently as I’ve just discovered a collection of his short stories published by Hesperus. “The Popular Girl” collects together 5 short stories, each a gem, each of which, with dazzling brilliance and sparkling wit, disects Fitzgerald’s favourite topic: the American society-life. This came to mind this morning while I was digging in my visitor statistics for stats that stood out. The number one incomming search term (the query entered at a search engine that led someone to read this website) is Hayley Matthews. Popular Girl indeed.

Very little information about any of our Councillors on the internet, unless they happened to have been the Mayor or an MP. The Brent Council website lists limited contact information for each elected Council member, and the Brent Brain ‘blogging Councillors’ project had a limited pilot that does not appear to be running at this time. I recently worked with Neil Nerva to support him and the other Labour Councillors in Queen’s Park in the adoption and use on some internet tools: then he wasn’t re-elected so that internet based communications project has ground to a halt.

Hayley is a Brent Lib Dem, so why no information on her, or any of the other Brent Lib Dem councillors on the BELD website? The BELD site emphasises Sarah Teather over other elected members in Brent. With the Lib Dems now with the greatest number of seats in the Council, will we see an overhaul of the BELD website to communicate more from our Local Councillors and less from Sarah Teather? They’ve got www.sarahteather.org.uk for all the news from our MP after all!

Correction…

robd — Sat, 20 May 2006 11:56:12 +0000

It’s not William Motley, it is Antony Dunn elected in Kilburn.

Witnessing the count

robd — Fri, 19 May 2006 10:30:05 +0000

The suggestion that a number of votes went uncounted at the local election is based on what was witnessed by Shahrar Ali on the night. There is no way that Shahrar could have seen all the ballot papers in for the Queen’s Park ward, but he did witness the first sort and count of the block votes and also the count of the ’splits’ and the paper with unallocated votes.

Here is a picture of Shahrar Ali (Green Party), Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative) and William Motley (a Liberal Democrat candidate elected Councillor) at the count.

Why is the witeness testimony important? Well, in explaining the annominaly, Shahrar uses the difference between the likely statistically frequency of ballot papers coming up with unallocated votes and what was witnessed during the count. I’ll let him explain….

“In a nutshell, the problem is this: If you came across ten ballot papers in a row (in the largest, mixed pile) in which voters were consistently using only two votes that might be passed off as a freak occurrence. Yet for the count to be true, you would have had to have come across ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHT ballot papers in a row in which, on average, no body was using their third vote (or, on average, every other voter was using only one vote). Such a scenario would be dismissed as absurd and contrary to fact. Indeed, beyond any reasonable doubt SUCH AN ABSURDITY WAS NOT OBSERVED at the count in question.”

How are votes counted?

robd — Fri, 19 May 2006 10:06:52 +0000

While researching the possibility of votes going uncounted in Queen’s Park ward I’ve discovered many interesting pieces of information. Well, I fiund them interesting anyway. Want to know how your votes are processed after you have mailing them of pushed them into those little black boxes at the polling station? Read more….

Here’s the process vote counting the votes as outlined by Matthew Mannion from Brent Council Democratic Services department.

Wednesday: All the postal vote that had already come in were sorted into wards, checked for validity (i.e. did they contain a ballot paper & declaration). We then totted up the number for each ward (they aren’t ‘counted’ at this stage simply organised into wards).

Thursday: The postal votes that come in on Thursday go through the above process; that starts at 9pm, and, as more came in from the polling stations they were added.

For the first round of wards: First each box was counted to ensure that the number of ballot papers inside it was what was expected (i.e what the presiding officer at that polling station told us it was). Once confirmed, the papers are counted into unsorted bundles and placed in the ‘mixing’ bowl.

Here is a picture of the ballot boxes ‘backstage’ at the count.

The total number of postal votes received from the postal vote checks are also counted to ensure they are as expected too. Once all the boxes have been checked and the papers are in the mixing bowl, the papers are mixed up so that no one can tell which polling station they came from and then dished out to the counters to separate into piles for the different parties and a mixed pile.

Whilst they are doing this they take out any papers that they aren’t sure about (i.e. that are likely to be spoilt) for the returning officer to check later. Straight party votes are counted into bundles of 50 and put on the centre table. The mixed votes are counted onto a mix sheet (as you no doubt saw). The totals from this are then added to the totals from the straight votes.

The totals created and checked then the agents are called in to see if they are happy or want a recount. At this point the returning officer goes through the spoilt votes to say why they are being rejected.
The results are then declared.

Missing votes in Queen’s Park ward?

robd — Fri, 12 May 2006 22:05:02 +0000

Did those of you who stood up to be counted on May 4th get counted?

I’ve spent today researching the process for the counting of ballots and gathering information on the election result in Brent as I believe that there is cause for concern over the result returned in Queen’s Park ward. My concern centres on the counting of ballot papers with unallocated votes. let me explain…

You each had three votes on your ballot paper. Some of you voted for three candidates from the same party (a block vote), some of you for candidates from two or more parties (a split vote). Some people voted for two candidates: in Queen’s Park there were two Green Party candidates, voting only for them would have been a block Green vote but would have left one vote unallocated. If you voted for Rocky Fernandez only, you would have not allocated two of your votes.

In Queen’s Park, 3642 voters turned out giving a total of 10,929 potential votes. The results show 9,320 votes were cast, leaving 1,606 unallocated votes. Interesting…if these votes had been cast would Queen’s Park still be Yellow? The gap between Neil Nerva (1,059) and Michael Motley (1,102) is only 43 votes…I want to know more about these 1,606 unallocated votes. Does that number seem high to you? Shahrar Ali, Green Party candidate in Queen’s Park has been analysing the results as 1,606 unallocated votes appears “inexplicably large” to him.

The discrepancy is inexplicable on three grounds: (1) in comparison to adjacent wards, Kensal Green (387) and Kilburn (827); (2) in comparison to Queens Park in 2002 (513 on 25% turnout); and (3), more fatally, an approximation of the ratio of unspent votes to used votes that must have shown on ballot papers in the “mixed” pile (where cross-party voting took place) for the overall count TO BE TRUE. Unfortunately, that ratio is CONTRARY TO WHAT WAS OBSERVED. Therefore, the VALIDITY of the count is put into SERIOUS QUESTION.

Here’s his analysis of the numbers: Queen’s Park unallocated votes. Is it possible that a bundle of split / mixed ballots were not counted?

wither bec?

robd — Mon, 08 May 2006 20:40:43 +0000

I think we are all voted out. When I say ‘we’ I mean the 37.26% that voted. And for the rest of you? election fatigue or political fatigue disconnected, not apathetic? we’ll see. so, wither bec?

much more to be done.

I write this weblog and others as I am practicing what I preach: web technologies really reach people. And for new web technologies that goes double. Static, maintenance heavy websites are no good, for the providers and the users. Many technologies are out of reach for individuals and organisations, by price or by size. Self-publishing tools such as wordpress (that powers this blog) and joomla (used by QPARA and BEST, two Brent resident associations) can empower people. Publish newsletters and write websites with a single effort. Mange mailing lists and distribute meeting minutes with information provided and updated by the user, not the valuable resource of a membership secretary or an administrator.
get internet tools.

comwifinet, the organisation I work for, has been working with residents associations and community groups around london, providing community groups and campaigners with internet based tools for communication. we provide training in a collaborative workshop environment to help with the adoption and growth of these tools.

need internet tools? get in touch rob@comwifinet.com

Photos from the count.

robd — Sun, 07 May 2006 19:04:50 +0000

I’ve uploaded all the snaps I took at the count to my gallery.

Updates at brent.gov

robd — Fri, 05 May 2006 09:47:31 +0000

I wanted to post this when I got home from the count early this morning but the brent.gov webserver had broken and was not serving the Election Pages. 404errr. That and they were still counting when I got home. And recounting no doubt. You can get the full results for all the candidates in each ward direct from brent.gov.uk as they are uploaded.

And our winners are….

robd — Fri, 05 May 2006 09:05:29 +0000

Queen’s Park, Mapesbury and Brondesbury have all turned Yellow – congratulations to the Cllrs in these wards. You’ve been trusted with them – look after them. Make sure that you continue with the effort that it took to win the ward as you work the ward.

still counting…

robd — Fri, 05 May 2006 02:24:09 +0000

a few wards have been called and a few are being recounted. in several wards the gap between candidates are in the tens of votes. Brondesbury went to Team Yellow and Mapesbury and Queen’s Park wards look like there will be changes there. and the bar did close on time!

You can get the details on the wards here on the Brent Council website – but right now the website isn’t updating….

Live! from Brent Town Hall it’s……………?

robd — Thu, 04 May 2006 22:59:00 +0000

Well what a difference a year makes. Last year there was smoking in the Town Hall and a late (unlicensed?) bar. This year after two major pieces of legislation (smoking ban and 24h licensing) the Town Hall is not the den it was. Shame about the bar… Now, where would I find out if the Council was licensed for the late bar last year…….

Going to the count…

robd — Thu, 04 May 2006 19:59:45 +0000

Last year I was the guest of Team Green. This year Team Yellow have invited me to join the best lockin in Brent. Once again I’ll bring you the result and a pretty graphic from the floor of the town hall as the result is announced….assuming I don’t fall asleep! I’m tired now. Not from any intensive campaigning like the Teams… I’m a 6-week-new-dad! We’ll see if I make it through to the small hours again!

Brent, are you voting?

robd — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:27:29 +0000

I can see people reading this blog. There have been 216 of you this last week and 48 readers so far today! Are you voting, Brent people? Who are you voting for? Why? Why vote at all? Got any comments? After all, it’s Your Council for Your Street and Your Services – Are you having your say?

Me? Of course I’ve voted! I’ve supported Team Yellow in my ward, Mapesbury (Look for the Bird!). When I got to my polling station I spoke to the Team Red vote recorder who was sitting outside – I was the first ‘young person’ through the doors that day… and it’s not like I’m an early riser! Where are the Brent Youth – have the biggest unsigned group in the UK not got their act together? Voting too difficult – i know, i know, making an x in a box…too taxing…..? Anyway – 18-24? Do you care?

Hit the comment button…….

Big Brother Brent

robd — Thu, 04 May 2006 07:39:42 +0000

my thoughts on the results

robd — Wed, 03 May 2006 21:50:23 +0000

what do I think? I think the Green’s have won it really. I expect them to gain two seats, well, at least one in Queen’s Park. Also, I think that Cameron may have spoken to a lot of people at a local level and Team Blue will make a few gains. Team Yellow (Look for the Bird!) will also make gains, probably bringing them level with the Blues… These gains will be to someones loss: Team Read.

The result is, I hope, consensus driven local politics. And it looks a little like this….

Brent Conservatives leave the office – SHOCK!

robd — Wed, 03 May 2006 20:40:41 +0000

I was emailed a copy of the Queen’s Park Conservative Action Team campaign materials yesterday. Arwh, they are so smiley! not meanleanbusinessy-looking like some of the candidates in their campaign materials. So friendly looking I almost misstook them for the Greens!

Anyway… The photos, I noticed, were all taken in the Brent Conservatives office on Walm Lane. No ward walking for this lot! Where others have posed mid-reporting-a-local-grot-spot (sorry Sarah), the QPCAT (!) have opted for ‘about the office’ poses.

But….over the weekend my extra-day was interrupted by the Brent East Conservatives BATTLE BUS! ROCK ON! I wish I’d had my camera at the ready to capture the sight: A bright red double decker bus, still with the advertising posters for a film or something, with a brent Tory screaming down a megaphone: VOTE JACK SAYERS! VOTE CONSERVATIVE ON MAY 4TH!. It reminded me of Fridays Greeen Wing – the political ambitions of Dr Alan Statham broadcast from a small car: Come back here! Listen to me! Vote for me! etc etc….. You probably had to have been there…..

been busy – is this the last post?

robd — Wed, 03 May 2006 20:34:11 +0000

well tomorrow is the day when Brent will select its councillors. I’ve heard many a rumour (and started a few) and seen many a bun thrown. Could I call Mapesbury, Queen’s Park or Brondesbury now? And the others in Brent East? Could I tell you have the council will look by Friday?

If you are into political betting then you’ll have seen the odds offered by one bookmaker. Here’s the Lib Dems story, bouyed as odds on them winning the council are slashed.

I do have a few thoughts – but its probably just subliminal psychic channelling; my prayers.

Want to see what I can do with a spreadsheet program? Coming right up…..

Solar Panels in a conservation area

robd — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 06:32:51 +0000

You may have read a letter in the Kilburn Times from a residents in Queen’s Park questioning the sanity of planning regulations that prevent people from moving towards renewable energy. I bumped into Rupet Degas from the Brent and Harrow Green Party in Queen’s Park yesterday and he nearly split our sides laughing at the lack of joined up thinking. This morning he forwarded me a reply he wrote that has, as yet, not been published by the paper.

“It saddens me to hear yet another story of Brent Council’s ludicrous policy regarding solar panels (‘Council policy has gone mad’, letter, Times, 12th April). For the Labour led council to declaim support for renewable energy and then deny planning permission to those who want solar panels on their houses is at best hypocritical, at worst utterly irresponsible and environmentally destructive. Solar panels don’t look much different from your average dormer window, so my guess as to why the council doesn’t want them up probably has something to do with bottom-line profit or some such nonsense. The fact remains that the sooner more people go to the initial expense of installing solar panels, the sooner prices will come down and everyone will have them. I’d buy shares now if I were you before the Labour boys finally wake up and want a piece of the action. Joking apart, self sufficiency should be strongly encouraged and advocated by the council, but without any Greens at the table to get things moving, what hope is there? Look on the bright side though – at least you can watch Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda channels without the fear of Brent Council asking you to remove your satellite dish! Funny that.”

Rupert Degas
Green Candidate for Queens Park
Brent and Harrow Green Party
PO Box 42434
London NW10 3XT
rupert@qsound.uk.com

Past Election Results

robd — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:46:49 +0000

One sure-fire way of demonstrating that you have some skill with a computer is to generate a barchart from some data in a spreadsheet program like Calc (in openoffice) or a program from Microsoft. Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives have got someone on their team that would pass a European Computer Driving License test no problem.

Both parties have proved that you can prove anything with stats.

Brent last elected its Councillors in 2002: long before the Iraq war, two (three?) Tory leaders ago, pre-Brown/Blue=Green, before Sarah Teather was elected to Brent East in 2003, before she was returned again in 2005 with an increased majority, before a Conservative and a Labour Councillor defected to the Liberal Democrats….
Brent Conservatives point out that in 2002 the Lib Dems came third. They do this as they believe that Team Orange are essentially a vote splitting party and that a Lib Dem vote lets in Labour by the back door. While Labour ~~havn’t got any spreadsheet skills~~ are not publishing pretty graphs (yet), their position is the same: Vote Orange, Get Blue.

yet 2003 and 2005 have shown the people of Brent East that they can Vote Orange and Get Orange. Will Mapesbury, Queen’s Park, Brondesbury and the other wards of Brent do the same on May the 4th?

find the Torys online (update)

robd — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 07:55:12 +0000

After bumping into one of the Dudden Hill Tory candidates last friday I now have the correct website for the Brent Conservatives. The link has been added to the sidebar. I’ll keep the old link up as it is the link that the official Conservative Party website links to – when they update, so will I.

An update to this post.

meeting Jack Sayers

robd — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 07:49:37 +0000

I was sitting out my step, enjoying a smoke in the evening air, when Jack Sayers walks up the drive out on the campaign trail delivering leafets. Jack has been a Councillor since 1990 so he is looking to be returned for the fourth time by this ward. The leaflet introduces us to the other two Conservative candidates, Khalid dar and Jennifer Brown.

Speaking of police… The Conservatives leafet compares the size of the Safer Neighbourhood teams in Conservative run Barnet Council to Labour run Brent. Brent’s Safer Neighbourhood teams are “about half” that of Barnets. Now, I’m not sure of this, but I had understood that the deployment of police resources were not a matter for the council but for that of the Borough Commander for the Met.

The Compassionate Cameron Conservatives have plans for saving £1.2m in Brent Council – savings they think they can make in the machine without impact on service delivery.

is the veil intact?

robd — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:48:04 +0000

Electoral law prevents a council from promoting candidates standing in local elections. Has the spirit of the ‘purdah’ period been broken by Brent Council? The Brent Lib Dems seem to think so. Now, I’ve not yet seen the article in question, my copy of the Brent Magazine has been sitting unread since it arrived and usually only gets a slight glance before being recycled. I’ll get a scan and post it. But until then you’ll just have to talk Lib Dem Council Leader Paul Lorbers’ word for it – the Labour council have spent public money on a publication that features a candidate standing in the local election. So the BELD are asking for the Labour party to reimburse the costs of the publication.

Mapesbury is All Action!

robd — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:00:37 +0000

Noticed more people in yellow safety jackets walking around the streets recently? On Friday last week I saw a member of the Brent Council Street Care team out ward walking in Mapesbury. He was monitoring the recycling collection from both the kerb side boxes and the green wheelie bins – check we residents were using the service and using it correctly? checking up on the contractors? don’t know – either way his purpose was to be highly visible in the ward. Suit, yellow jacket, Brent Council Street Care printed on the back in big letters? A visibility exercise in the ward prior to the ward hustings tomorrow and the Mapesbury Residents Associations (MAPRA) Annual General Meeting?That’s probably just the skeptic in me… …but then this afternoon….

This afternoon I met PC Phillip Pask from the Mapesbury ward Safer Neighbourhoods Team. He was cycling around the ward when we met on Walm Lane. High visibility policing – these are the beat bobbies that people have been clammering for. And policing with the time of day. Great to have 10 minutes of talk with our community police officer because we both had the time – rather than because I had my house burgled.
Anyway. PC Pask and Sargent O’Hara, who leads the team, are both based at Queen’s Park police station. you can call them: 02087212962 or send the team an email mapesbury.snt@police.met.uk and they will add you to their distribution list for local police information.

Brent Green Party in Queen’s Park

robd — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:50:36 +0000

The local Greens have been distributing their literature in the wards. They have also made the literature available online so I don’t have to scan it I can link to it from here.

here you go.

Note that Shahrar Ali, candidate in Queen’s Park, will appear in the the Green Party Election Broadcast on BBC 1 tomorrow (APR24) at 1845.

Focus on…Queen’s Park

robd — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:25:59 +0000

A recent Focus On…Queen’s Park from the Liberal Democrats with the candidates for Councillors showing their opposition to the Queen’s Park tower development.

Also highlighted are the traffic problems that are percieved will blight an already congested Salusbury Road. Well, the development is supposed to address this issue by changing the flow of traffic in the area – but with no tower to route traffic around…..?

Queen’s Park Tower Plan

robd — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:01:59 +0000

The proposal for the tower block in Queen’s Park is a lead topic for each of the parties contesting the electoral ward of Queen’s Park. For Labour it is getting like the Monty Python topic not to be mentioned in front of our hosts for the World Cup. The Lib Dems have made great gains from this thread – well, a sitting (yet not restanding) Councillor defected to Team Yellow with the tower plan as a key issue. The defection as on the front page of this weeks Willesden and Brent Times and the ‘bun fight’ at the Queen’s Park Corral was analysed over a double page spread.

The Green’s in Queen’s Park have made opposing the development symbolic of their opposition to decision making without consultation – a characteristic of Brent Council in their view.

While I have not seen any campaign literature from the Conservatives in Queen’s Park (please forward some if you have it!) the Party is opposing developments in the Dudden Hill area – maybe they have the same tac in QP?

More to come:

Lib Dem scans….
Labour negative campaigning against the Lib Dems in Mapesbury
Scans from the press
Links to other places….

Thank you for reading.

QP Green’s letters on tower block development

robd — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:20:43 +0000

I noticed these letters written by Dr Shahrar Ali, Green Party candidate for Queen’s Park along with Rupert Degas, to Brent area newspapers recently.

On Brent Labour Council tower block imperatives:

“Whilst this may not come as a revelation to seasoned campaigners, the public admission is a sign of desperation: a local government that denies responsibility for actions that it is going to take on our behalf but against our will.”

On the timing of the planning process:

“Will we have to wait till after the local elections to find out?”

Will Brent Vote Blue and Go Green?

robd — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:12:02 +0000

Are you serious?

Each day I walk from Mapesbury to Queen’s Park via Brondesbury/Kilburn wards – sounds like a round about route but I’m just walking cross the boundry corners. In contrast to the General Election last year there are not many posters out on display in gardens and in the shop windows in support of ANY political party up for election in May. However I have noticed that of the posters that are on display the Green’s and the Liberal Democrats have strong support.

Queen’s Park is going green. That is green as in Green not as in blue>green. Here’s hoping that the Green’s can sit in some of Brent’s 63 Council seats. I want to see how Brent Council with Green thinking delivers services in our borough.

Tower Politics

robd — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 07:51:17 +0000

Over at stopthetower a recent email news update has been posted by Barney Cokeliss. Go read it for the stopthetower campaign group’s update on the proposed tower block development in Queen’s Park.

Barney, Will and the gang have not yet got the hang of the idea that as the web is always on, 24hrs a day they can update their website with information as it happens, without having to wait for lots of things to report and then produce a newsletter. I am not against the printed word, in fact I help various groups deliver print newsletter – what I am against is a newsletter that could have been distributed by posting the information on the website weeks ago.

Here’s some words from Barney on the politics of stopthetower and the forthcoming elections.

“We’re a non-politically-aligned organization. And some of us are life-long Labour voters. But we have to tell you that the towerblock is very much a Labour project. Council Leader Anne John (LAB) is the driving force behind it.”

He highlights that Cllr Jonathan Davies decision to defect from Labour to the Liberal Democrats (as previously reported) was in part due to the failure of Labour to engage with residents over the tower block plan.

“The most important thing you can do to stop the tower is to vote against Labour in the May 4th Local Elections.

“It doesn’t matter what the Labour candidates say themselves about the tower as individual councillors they will be powerless to stop it. The key thing is to change the balance of power in the council, so that Anne John’s pro-tower Labour group no longer has a majority.
If Queen’s Park elects Labour councillors even ones who say they’re anti-tower the Labour majority will remain and the tower will be built. Once again, a vote for Labour on May the 4th is a vote for the tower.”

Brent Conservatives Unavailable?

robd — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 11:34:34 +0000

I’ve been trying to contact the websites of the Brent East Conservatives and Kwasi Kwarteng. I know they were available during the General Election last year but now they are uncontactable…

and

Green Party Candidates in Queen’s Park ward.

robd — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:43:07 +0000

Everyone, meet Shahrar Ali and Rupert Degas.

JONATHAN DAVIES BRENT COUNCILLOR QUEENS PARK WARD

robd — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:38:56 +0000

JONATHAN DAVIES BRENT COUNCILLOR QUEENS PARK WARD
6 April 2006

QUEEN’S PARK TOWERBLOCK

Many people have been asking me about the Council’s plan to put a 26-storey towerblock on the car park next to Queen’s Park Station. The Council is not prepared to have an open public consultation about the proposal. My view is that the people who elected me as their councillor deserve to be informed about the proposal.

The Council was in extensive pre-application talks with the proposed developer, Genesis, from at least the middle of 2004. In April 2005, the Council amended the planning guidance relating to the site to allow for a building of up to 20 storeys paving the way for Genesis’s planning application for a set of twin 26-storey towerblocks. The Council persuaded them to withdraw it in September 2005 due to the unexpected level of public opposition to the proposal.

Unfortunately, the proposal is not dead. Genesis will be making a new application after the May 2006 iocal elections when the Labour leadership, if re-elected, will not have to worry about the electoral consequences of building a concrete and glass skyscraper on the edge of

The Labour leadership refuse to change the planning policy for the site, which calls for a 20storey building. They opposed a Libdem motion criticising the Council’s policy of encouraging towerblocks. Planning permission for a tall building will increase the value of the land. The Council owns the land and has agreed sell it off to the developer, so it has a vested interest in making the tower as tall as possible to maximise profits from the sale.

Brent Council has set up a “Stakeholder Forum” to discuss the new planning application that will be submitted after the May 2006 elections. You might think that is a good idea. It is a total sham. You can’t take part because it is not even open to the public. Participation is by invite only. Just eight local residents have been allowed to attend – completely outnumbered by other people at the meeting who have other vested interests. A genuine public consultation would be open to all.

At the first stakeholder forum, the Council revealed the ground floor plans of three new proposals, but refused to say how tall each proposal would be! The Council will reveal the height of each proposal at the next meeting due to take place after the May election!!! The Council and Genesis came to the meeting unwilling to discuss the height of the proposed building! The conclusion I draw from their secrecy is that the proposed height will be as unacceptable as it was under the previous planning application.

The policy of the currently labour controlled Council is to support the proposal. Although I am a labour Councillor, I am totally opposed to the plan and I am appalled at the Council’s secrecy about their intentions and their refusal to respond to public opposition to the proposal. As a result, I am not standing as a candidate myself in May 2006. I have enjoyed representing the people of Queen’s Park of the last four years and I wish you all a happy, tower free future!

Printed and Published by Cllr Jonathan Davies. Distributed in Queen’s Park 6/7/8 Apr 2006

where did the logo go? Part 1 of a series

robd — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:09:03 +0000

The Labour Action Team have some hot Election Information for the citizens of Brent – they are ernestly distributing glossy colour A4 ‘Election Information’,erm, leaflets? newsletters? I don’t know what you’d call it. The glossy reminded us it was important for us to vote and we were not to be talked out of it by anyone. What was intersting was the lack of a logo. These materials where not branded Labour – the logos and the slogunogos were missing too.

The glossy is part of a series of an infoglossation campaign that Labour hope will get picked up and read by the voters in Brent. The leafet shows in ernest several of the acheivements of the Labour Council in Brent over the last electoral terms. It devotes a full page to making a contrast with Liberal Democrat and Conservative councils accross London.

Some times it is better not to make a contrast however. In attempting to show that the Liberal Democrats are soft on crime a comparison is made between the shamefully low 26 AntiSocialBehaviourOrders issued in Lib Dem controlled Islington and the not much tougher 33 issued by our Labour Council here in Brent over the same time period.
Team Red highlight the following acheivement areas in this leaflet: recycling, but not green issues in any wider sense; quality of environment as street care along with education results and access to learning resources.

The Labour public information machine knows no bounds and more leaflets are promised over the coming weeks. I’m already looking forward to the next one – it looks like it will be called ‘Your voting guide to the next four years’

Brent Labour Councillor Jonathan Davies has joined the Liberal Democrats

robd — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 11:48:48 +0000

Brent Labour Councillor Jonathan Davies has joined the Liberal Democrats reports the BELD website.

“I have realised that the beliefs I stand for such as the safeguarding of our civil liberties, international justice and a free and fair society are best represented within the Liberal Democrats.”

Also connected to Jonathan’s feelings over the proposed development of a tower block in Queen’s Park ? : “The issue of Queen’s Park Tower is a classic example of Brent Labour in action. Consultation with local communities is kept to a bare minimum with decisions being made by a small cabal of Labour politicians and unelected Brent Council officers.”

Brent News from the Lib Dems

robd — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 21:25:35 +0000

This local red top was delivered in late February. It leads with the news of the Liberal Democrats delivering a “hammer blow” to Labour” in Dunfermline by-election.

The national political story was the continued opposition to the ID card legislation by Sarah Teather and the Liberal Democrats. The newsletter also covered the story of the comments made by Labour Cllr Jonathan Davies on the ‘consultation’ over the Queen’s Park Tower plans.

The two other key stories are the rehousing of Willesden Market following a successful campaign by the W&BT that Sarah Teather has supported and another highlughting Sarah’s long standing commitment to local healthcare provission with a story about her support for the closure threatened Wembley Minor Accident Treatment Service.

an evening with Rt Hon Charles Clarke

robd — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 21:02:45 +0000

receiving this letter was one of the prompts to get me back blogging again – an evening with Charles Clarke. The Home Secretary was to visit Brent East to meet and greet and have a Big Conversation with people about the Respect Agenda, law and order (as someone with some political education I shouldn’t right law and order as I know that the concepts are fused when they should be kept seperate) and crime and policing.

The invitation comes from the Labour Action Team for Mapesbury: Rizwana Ali, Ian Bellia and Mohammed Zakriya

I’m pleased Charles had the time to make it over to Brent East. That I was invited I wanted to share with others.

“the lib dems stand up for us”

robd — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:51:33 +0000

“the lib dems stand up for us” ? well it is a Brent Lib Dem flyer… this flyer arrived in either late Feb or early March – the trail started early for the BELD team.

The update lacks focus – there are a lot of different things crammed ontoa doublesided sheet of A4. Quality of life/local environment make the agenda again – also mentioned is that the lib dems want to focus council tax receipts on public services, sports facilities and public toliets – with disabled access? a wooful lack of disabled access public toilets in Brent and London as a whole! – rather than the wasting of money on “glossy publications” such as the Brent Magazine and the Ward Working leaflets. I’ve got a Ward Working for Mapesbury to post as well… as waste of money? well, it gives Onyx the recycling contractor something to collect. i wonder what percentage of Brents waste – as a whole – the council is responsible for the creation of? anyway……

campaign materials – liberal democrats

robd — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:35:25 +0000

also in early march I received the Liberal Democrat Focus On…Mapesbury newsletter. This newsletter was the first opportunity to meet the Lib Dem candidates for the Mapesbury wards. The candidates are Chris Leaman, Sami Hashmi and Hayley Matthews.

The BELDs expect that a Labour council would again increase council taxes significantly after the local elections. The LDs (as we know) propose a ‘fairer system’ of local income taxation.

Local education and student finance also make an appearence in the newsletter. Sarah Teather has been consistantly raising the issue of numbers of school places in the House of Commons. And the Lib Dems have been against tuition fees, as highlighted by Hayley Matthews.

The newsletter also draws our attention to a number of quality of environment / quality of life issues that the BELD have been responding to in the Mapesbury area.

calling it as you see it

robd — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:08:29 +0000

Brent Lib Dems have been redistributing the comments made by Labour Cllr for Queen’s Park Jonathan Davies on the governance and effectiveness of Brents’ Labour Council.

I’m glad to see that Cllr Davies has the ability to speak his own mind and to make judgements based on his observations. His views on the consultation around the proposed development consisting of a tower block in Queen’s Park will chime with many in the local area.

The BELD let themselves down by reprinting the Tony & George snap again – I thought we’d stopped all that after winning a by-election and a general election seat with it. This is a LOCAL ellection after all!

5 reasons to vote – one is a tower!

robd — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 12:24:25 +0000

did anyone else see this? the electoral commission have been running advertising campaigns to encourage us out to a polling station next month. here’s one that i think makes the link between local service delivery and decision making nice and simply.

Reason number one (to vote) is the large tower block looming in the back ground over the lush green open space.

Remind you of anything?

queen’s park labour

bec — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:11:29 +0000

ever wanted to know who your queen’s park labour action team are? me too. I picked up this flyer in queen’s park ward in early march. The snap shows Cllrs Neil Nerva, Helga Gladbaum and Reg Freeson campaigning for safer stations and more police in
queen’s park.

I wonder if their campaigning will be rewarded in on May 4th? Do people feel their stations are unsafe? Does queen’s park need more police? Are these the issues people put at the top of their agenda of local action points?

new home for this blog

bec — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 20:58:55 +0000

i’ve moved e-house from the excellent blogger.com to dedicated web presense. This has allowed me to consolidate a number of info-points, blogs, mailing lists and other web activities into one place. all things from the fingers of robdyke are now posted on or around robdyke.com

did you know there was an election on?

bec — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:55:51 +0000

Elections are due to be held on 4th May 2006 to elect Councillors for all the seats on Brent Council.

Local Democracy: Election for Councillors in Preston and Fryent wards.

robd — Tue, 24 May 2005 19:52:00 +0000

While technically in Brent North the elections for local councillors for the Preston and Fryent wards of Brent still need reporting – and where better then here?

Brent Councils Local Democracy pages have lots of information on the elections which will take place on the 16th June 2005.

Shahrar Ali will be standing in the Preston Ward as the Green Party Candidate. The Greens didn’t have a candidate in Brent North at the last election so it will be interesting to see how Shahrar and the Greens do in Preston – a gague of Green support in Brent North if you will. The ward has had Conservative councillors in the past… Let’s see if we can get some Green on this map.

Catch your MP…

robd — Fri, 13 May 2005 14:20:00 +0000

The film of the Brent East STW hustings is one of a number of films documenting the views of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates on the aggressive action taken against Iraq. The Catch Your MP project aims to hold to account the 412 Members of the 2001-2005 Parliament that voted in support of military action.

Candidates for Brent East: Shahrar, Sarah, Yasmin, Kwasi and George along with Rocky (Wasn’t that a Rainbow cast?) who was standing in Brent South all spoke and responded to questions from the floor.

After stressing the pacifist credentials of the Green Party, Shahrar gives an articulate response to the question ‘Do you support an end to the Anglo-US occupation of Iraq and a speedy withdrawal of troops?’ His view is that troops would be ‘better of not there’ but adds the important qualification that there is a need, following the aggressive military intervention and the destruction caused, for support and that troops should remain ’subject to the will of the Iraqi people’.

Yasmin used the platform to distance herself once again from the party that took Britain into an pre-emptive war and to stress that she’s more ‘anti-war’ than anyone else. Kwasi picks up on this distance and points out that Yasmin is not standing for the Yasmin Qureshi party but is standing as the PPC for the Labour Party. With supporting calls of ’shame’ from the audience, Kwasi reminds us all that being the Labour PPC means that she is representing the Labour Government.

Yasmin rolled up her sleeves and revealed her ‘Old Labour Till I Die’ tattoo while explaining her interpretation of the ‘choices’ (A new Labour word) available to the electorate in Brent East. ‘The Labour Party is the party of the organised working class by the trade union movement’ she said. ‘It contains many thousands of people who are part of the anti-war movement who are socialist and internationalist as well’ and had the ‘largest parliamentary group who opposed the war’. ‘The working class traditions of these MPs meant that they did not flinch in their opposition to the war, once it had began’. She then goes on to name check Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn the anti-war and anti-imperialist Labour party stalwarts who have given her support.

Sarah reminds everyone of the Lib Dem opposition to military action and highlights the damage that has been done to public confidence in politics and the loss of trust in government due to the secrecy and constant redefinition of reasons and evidence given by in support of this conflict.

The highlight of the film was Shahrar Ali, dressed in a orange boiler suit, logically destroying the argument for detention without trail – another Labour policy innovation from the last parliament.

Download. Link propagate.

Catch Your Own MP.

I wish I’d seen this earlier…

robd — Thu, 12 May 2005 11:52:00 +0000

Trawling through the list of refering links to this site I came across a search engine, A9.com, that I hadn’t heard of. I followed the link to discover where this blog was ranked on the list that refered the reader to the blog. Just below the link to this blog was a link to Film Makers Against War.

I wish I’d seen the film made of the Brent East Stop The War Hustings earlier.

Here’s a link to the movie. I’ve mirrored it here to save their bandwidth.

More on this to come after I’ve had my European Politics Exam.
Prizes to whoever watches the film and then posts here with the best guess to the comment I’ve going to make.

Election Expenses

robd — Tue, 10 May 2005 17:01:00 +0000

I’ve been digging around into the rules around election expenses. I’m trying to calculate the maximum permitted expenses a candidate or agent may incur in Brent East. Thankfully the Electoral Commission website is a wealth of information on electoral law and regulations.

Election expenses are those ‘expenses incurred whether before, during or after the election, on account of or in respect of the conduct or management of the election’. They may only be incurred by the candidate, his election agent or persons authorised in writing by that agent.

The calculation for permitted expenses for a Borough/Burgh/District Constituency is £5483 plus 4.6p per elector. So how many electors are there in Brent East? According to Brent Council Electoral Services there are 56227 persons on the Electoral Roll for Brent East.

Here’s my ‘back of a fag packet’ calculation. 56227 electors * 4.6 pence = £2586.44 + £5483 = £8069.44 Additionally a candidate may incur £600 of personal expenses without providing individual recipts to their election agent.

I calculate the maximum permitted expenditure at £8669.44

As candidates have to submit their expenses to the Returning Officer within 35 days of the result being announced we’ll see who spent what soon enough.

Brent East Campaigning – A review

robd — Mon, 09 May 2005 14:54:00 +0000

Over 6 weeks & 53 postings the Brent East Campaign has been blogged. My keyboard is wornout and revision for my exams in backlog. This has been a prolonged high – which explains my recent apearance. I thought I’d review my efforts and share my experiences of the last six of weeks.

Brent East Campaigning: The campaign
In the tense 10 minutes that the candidates stood with the returning officer and inspected the doubtful ballot papers I was sharing my impressions of the campaign with Paul Keilthy from Archant Media Group. I was impressed with the technical quality of the campaign run by Lib Dems and Labour; each party had created and distributed localised materials, and each had been able to rapidly turn around ‘news’ of events (e.g. names visiting) into publicity materials. Paul thanked me for publicising the campaign materials (the original stated goal of Brent East Campaigning blog) as the parties don’t distribute their campaign materials directly to the press. That’s twice I’ve been taked for doing somebodys job for them this last week.

The Lib Dems appear to have had greater resources at their disposal that Labour. Team:Yasmin may have been able to pull in the ‘names’ of old Labour but Team:Sarah was superior in people power. The Lib Dems were able to distribute a far greater quantity of campaign materials due to the number of voulenteers at their disposal. I’ve yet to discover if the LDYS were mobilised to support the Brent East Campaign in the same way that the Young Fabians were.

From a technology perspective, Team:Sarah already had an established web presense which provided a source of information on her candidacy. Team:Yasmin were severly lacking in this area. Not having a website must have been detrimental to her campaign. Anyone using a search engine to uncover information about Yasmin would have been presented with a series of news articles – some more favorable than others – as well as a link to this site, whereas the search results for the Blue Team and the Orange Team yeilded links to official information sites.

I have been monitoring the ‘refering links’ statistics (see Note 1) for my website. The blog has been viewed by people refered to it after using the names of candidates in search engines (see Note 2). Another popular search term is Brent East. Searching for Brent East in Google gives the results of my blog, the websites of the Lib Dems and the Conservatives but not Labour. Even Rainbow George manages to make the first page of links (see Note 3).

Brent East Campaigning: Misrepresentation
My Brent East Campaigning blog did not cover the whole constituency. A more accurate title would have been ‘Mapesbury, Queen’s Park and Kilburn Campaigning’ as these are the areas I have gathered most of my information from. Perhaps I should have done a little ward walking. In hindsight that would have been valuable as my favorite ‘finds’ of materials have been picked off the street. Additionally, the two main contenders in the recent campaign, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, produced campaign materials that targeting specific communities in the constituency. I would have liked to have been able to post materials from other areas in Brent East. The opportunity to compare and contrast materials from other areas of the constituency would have been interesting: were the candidates/parties emphasing different aspects of their manifesto in different area?

Brent East Campaigning: Participation
My active contribution to this blog over the last 6 weeks totalled 53 postings. I don’t even know how many hours total was spent meeting candidates, scanning campaign materials and researching details. This blog has been viewed by 816 unique visitors (measured by IP address) and I’ve recevied 5 emails from readers contributing information and one comment on a posting. I would have liked to have seen greater contributions from Brent East residents, but I feel that given that the blog was only running for 8 weeks total without link propagation (other than Richard Kimbers Election resources page) the level of readership and contribution was high.

Brent East Campaigning: Pretty Pictures
Here are some images grabbed from StatCounter.com
This graphic shows the daily ‘hits’ to the blog since my first post up to the day of the election.

This graphic shows period from 9th April to 9th May.

This graphic shows the period 3rd May to 9th of May in detail…

Note 1: A refering link is the link that directed a viewer to a website. This information was collected by StatCounter.com as part of their basic counter service.
Note 2: Google has been the search engine responsible for around 95% of my refering links.
Note 3: I would link to it but that ‘breaks’ my listing in Google, so just visit google.com and search for Brent East…

Any Answers?

robd — Sun, 08 May 2005 14:23:00 +0000

Germaine Greer has some advice for newly elected politicians – don’t wear little red suits. You’ll have to listen to the Radio 4 Any Answers stream of the show to hear it…

A news round-up

robd — Fri, 06 May 2005 23:15:00 +0000

Not awake at 415am? Shame as you missed Sarah’s victory speech! If you want to watch it you can thanks to the BBC.

Paul Palmer of the Evening Standard, who was having terrible trouble with his laptop when trying to submit his story, writes about the Brent East result. He focuses on Yasmin loosing rather than Sarah winning.

More later, when google news advises me of it!

Sarah Teather Is STILL My MP

robd — Fri, 06 May 2005 17:17:00 +0000

I’ve woken up and eaten – needed to do that before posting anything. NK and I left the count after Sarah Teather had been returned as the MP for Brent East, but not before posting to sarah teather is my MP. I’ve still got the ‘wild eyes’ I had yesterday, although that’s now from lack of sleep. This politics junkie had quite an Election Day.

As I posted yesterday, I’d been out and about in Mapesbury and Willesden with June Thomas from Slate Magazine. You can hear a dispatch from June made before the election on NPR. After giving June a whistle-stop tour of Willesden, I had an afternoon of revision to do before going to the count in the evening.

And what a night. I want to thank Shahrar Ali and Rowan Langley from the Green Party for inviting me to join their party at count. That was probably one of the best ‘lock ins’ I’ve ever been too. It was a night of tension and drama with the Brent East result called last after stacking and restacking of bundles of ballots. And at the end of it all Sarah Teather is STILL my MP.

Tally marks… .. .

robd — Fri, 06 May 2005 04:04:00 +0000

I’m reminded of the Banksy piece in Barcelona Zoo. Tally mark after tally mark after tally mark. From what I’m seeing as I tally out the ballots as they come out of the box for the collate before the count, it really is neck and neck.

For every one vote the Greens receive, the Conservatives are getting seven, the Liberal Democrats 45 and Labour 47 = 100 votes.

Thats my personal tally count taken from a few different wards and averaged.

Close. Real Close. But the Greens could still take it!

From the count….

robd — Fri, 06 May 2005 02:34:00 +0000

Well, I didn’t expect that I’d be at the count for the Brent constituencies General Election ballot. But strange things happen in blogsphere…

I’m joined by NK a friend from Goldsmiths. We’re surounded by more rosets than a horse show. It is a three legged…sorry…horse race (sorry Kwasi) after all!

Some of the ballot boxes have arrived already but the count isn’t fully underway.

Results as and when I get them!

/rob

Brent East 05/05/05

robd — Thu, 05 May 2005 14:29:00 +0000

Out and about in Brent East this morning and all is quiet at Brent East Conservative HQ.

My first stop was Sarah Teather HQ at 1 High Road to give my support before going off to meet Sarah at her polling station.

Team:Yasmin are at Willesden Green tube, handing out leaflets that look like an inducement to shop at a furniture store (to be scanned later) before going off to vote.

I met with June Thomas – Hi June! – Foreign Editor for Slate magazine at Willesden Green. We walked and talked Brent East and the local campaign.

Spotted a vandalised Labour Party poster…

And the biggest Liberal Democrat ‘Winning Here!’ garden poster I’ve ever seen!

Campaign Materials: Michele Weininger

robd — Thu, 05 May 2005 12:19:00 +0000

The independent candidate for Brent East fighting for Justice for Motorists from the ‘totalitarian power machine’.

Here as a JPG

Campaign Materials: Conservative

robd — Thu, 05 May 2005 12:16:00 +0000

The Blue team managed to get a photocopied A5 flyer delivered yesterday…they must have had a few quid spare after buying all those billboards.

It’s a three legged race – Front / Back as JPGs

Campaign Materials: Labour

robd — Thu, 05 May 2005 12:13:00 +0000

Recevied a letter from Ken Livingstone yesterday.

“If you thought I was right as the local MP to take an independent-minded approach then you will find that Yasmin stands firmly in that tradition”

Front page JPG – Back page JPG

Voting intentions

robd — Thu, 05 May 2005 02:35:00 +0000

I thought that the time had come to talk about my personal voting intentions for tomorrow, in case you havn’t guessed them already.

I was talking to E over supper this evening about voting for what you believe in. This reminded me of C of the Olive Tree on Willesden Lane and his view that the only vote that matters is vote of principle. And I agree with him, although if I lived in Lewisham Deptford, the constituency where my university is located, I’d be voting Green – tatical voting combining with principles. Lewisham Deptford looks like it might even return the UKs first Green MP; my vote having helped carry them to Westminster.

On the Conservative flyer that arrived this afternoon Kwasi had borrowed Sarahs idea of a ‘three horse race’ – ‘Kwasi Kwarteng is CHARGING through the middle’. That sums up this election for me: a race for second place.

I’m resigned to a Labour win nationally. But like the talking heads from the Today program this morning, I also think that the ‘landslides’ of 150+ seat majorites of the past are gone. A 70+ majority? 1997 gave everybody the change they wanted – the Tories out. Getting them out of government was, in hindsight, easy. Getting them out of opposition is the hard part. They are still here, one general election later. The Lib Dems are the only hope that the Conservatives will be relegated to third place. And as what I want to see is a change in the opposition as well as a change in Government I’ll be voting Liberal Democrat.

I won’t be the 1-in-10 that let the Conservatives back in Tony. It’s not happening and you know it. But I will be the 1-in-10 who votes to get the Liberal Democrats elected with a majority sufficient to form Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Campaign Materials: Many!

robd — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:32:00 +0000

More from Kwasi Kwarteng!
More from Sarah Teather!
More from Team:Yasmin!
First piece of campaign materials from Michele Weininger!

And Archant Media Group, publishers of the Times series of local papers, lead with the headline ‘Appeal to Vote’. Although WTF Archant are doing partnering with Beacon Bingo and Paddy Power Bookmakers I do not know…

All coming tomorrow…

Indecision in Queen’s Park

robd — Wed, 04 May 2005 14:21:00 +0000

Campaign Materials: Liberal Democrats

robd — Wed, 04 May 2005 02:36:00 +0000

Received a letter from Charles Kennedy this morning urging me to vote because ‘in certain places, the election is effectively a straight choice between having a Liberal Democrat or a Labour MP’.

The real alternative has been distilled to four key points:

end student tuition and top-up fees
prevent older people having to selltheir homes to pay for long term personal care
provide 10,000 more police and cut their paperwork
scrap the unfair council tax

A little something for everyone.

Download PDF or view JPG

Campaign Materials: Labour

robd — Wed, 04 May 2005 02:06:00 +0000

Yasmin used her what will probably be the final electoral communication delivered by Royal Mail before the election to remind us that ‘it’s the economy, stupid!’ Short of saying “if you value it, vote for it”, Yasmin talked about the low mortgage rates under Gorden Brown and the fall in unemployment from New Labour’s New Deal. The National Minimum Wage and other ‘redistributive’ policies are mentioned. A few figures… A dig at the Lib Dems…

As I should be revising for my economics exam next week and not posting to this blog, I’m going to combine both interests… I will be using this letter as a starting point for the mock questions I’ll be setting myself. ‘Labour has brought economic stability, Discuss’

Download PDF or Download JPG

Campaign Materials: Greens

robd — Tue, 03 May 2005 16:04:00 +0000

I was speaking to Shahrar Ali last night about the Green campaign in Brent East and Brent South.

Something about a solar powered public address system playing a campaign song being cycled by tandem around the constituency. Anyone got any snaps?

I hope to be able to post an MP3 of the song here soon.

After speaking with Costas who owns the Olive Tree organic food store on Willesden Lane I’m becoming more convinced of the Green proposition. For Costas, if you put aside party politik and vote from your heart, the only vote is a Green vote. A Green landslide in Brent East? You only have to look around and you’ll see thousands of trees waving in support.

Counting down… .. .

robd — Tue, 03 May 2005 16:00:00 +0000

Today is May 3rd. It is 12:00. There are 47 hours of campaigning remaining until the polls open at 7am.

If you see any more campaign materials or meet any of the candidates out and about please let me know – blogger@robdyke.com.

Campaign Materials: Liberal Democrats

robd — Tue, 03 May 2005 15:37:00 +0000

A departure from the tabloid red top of Brent News, the latest campaign freesheet from the Lib Dems, Brent News, leads with the headline of ‘Sarah Set To Win’ – naturally…

It features a photo of the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy with Sarah Teather on Kilburn High Road. Good to see that when top ‘names’ (to borrow the description Yasmin gave to the ‘top labour’ people who have given her support) from the Lib Dems come to support their candidate it is their Leader and prospective Prime Minister that visits.

Any sign of Tony Blair or Michael Howard in Brent East other than on advertising hoardings or standing next to George Bush on Sarah Teathers campaign materials?

Here’s the front page – PDF file.

Campaign Materials: Labour

robd — Tue, 03 May 2005 15:35:00 +0000

Here’s a scan of the Brent East Labour News ‘”I’m Backing Yasmin”‘ I picked up at Kilburn Station last week.

Front page – PDF file
Back page – PDF file

Campaign Materials: Rainbow George

robd — Tue, 03 May 2005 14:23:00 +0000

So, did you get your Preferendum from George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss last week? You can’t have missed it: it was an A3 sheet of paper folded to A4 and covered with text. What was curious about the materials was the lack of photographs – no pic of Rainbow George, no pic of Tony Bush and George Blair.

A preferendum is an experiment in participatory democracy. The Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket party is encouraging the electorate to vote not only for their candidate but also for the policies of the party should it be elected to form a government. The preferendum distills the policies of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and UKIP onto a single sheet of paper (a feat in itself!) and invites the electorate to indicate by a YES ONLY option the issues important to them.

We are all invited to join the ‘futuristic, mystically directed Rainbow Connection Movement and the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket for a five minute wonder online on 5th May – visit www.050505.tv

For further information on the V4YRDT visit www.deadsexy.tv/555

For further information on Hydatum The Publishers, visit www.hydatum.com

And if I can work out how to get the Preferendum sheet scaned to present it online I will do so.

Campaign Materials: Labour – Quoting Andrew Gilligan!

robd — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 22:16:00 +0000

The man who claimed that New Labour had ’sexed up’ the dossier on the threat possed to the United Kingdom by Sadam Hussain’s Iraq is being quoted by Yasmin Qureshi on her most recent campaign material.

Andrew Gilligan was writing in Friday 29th Evening Standard. I picked up the most recent flyer – literally, there were some floating around the platform at Kilburn, Jubilee Line – in the early evening on Friday. I must congratulate Team:Yasmin on the quick turnaround of producing materials using this story.

The story in the Lack Of Standards describes the campaign in Brent East as an “ideological purity contest about who can reject Labour party policy most effectively.”

He continues… “Ms Qureshi has enlisted the help of a Labour politician called Tony. Tony Benn, that is, not Tony Blair. The first Tony was the star of a campaign event in Queen’s Park. The second Tony appears only on Lib-Dem leaflets, standing next to George Bush and looking shifty.”

When I spoke with someone who was at the Team:Yasmin ‘meet ‘n’ greet’ in Queen’s Park on Wednesday the soundbite they relayed to me was the same quoted by Andrew: Yasmin promises to be a “thorn in the side” of the government. On the campaign flyer ‘Brent East Labour News’ Yasmin states that she will ensure that the Labour Party carries on its investment in public services in Brent East. She goes as far as so say that only a Labour MP for Brent East is best placed, assuming a Labour Government, to do this. I’m not sure that these two positions can be taken simultanously: being a ‘thorn in the side’ as well as securing ‘even more money from a Labour government’. Will being a gadfly help Yasmin secure the investment she reports to be able of securing?

Will her ‘Queen’s Park Pledge’ come back to haunt her if elected? We can all monitor the official record of correspondance, comment and critism thanks to the people at TheyWorkForYou Dot Com. If she is elected we will all have access to the public record of the business of the Houses of Parliament. In the same way that Yasmin promises to hold the government to account, we shall be able to hold her to account.

Campaign Materials: Labour

robd — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 14:33:00 +0000

I commented that there would be more on the Labour Party Brent East News ‘Delivering For You’.

One thing I noticed was that Tony (Blair not Benn) doesn’t feature on the campaign material. There are three photos of Ken ‘Red’ Livingstone – Labours prodigal son – and a photo of Tony Benn (Old ‘Old Labour’ – sorry Tony) in that upright but slightly reclined pose that he does so well. Another Old Labour party member, Diane Abbot, is quoted in support of Yasmin.

When you couple this with Yasmins anti-war, anti-terror legislation, pro-human rights stances, you get the picture of a Labour candidate in complete and full disagreement with the leadership of the party she is standing for. Is this a sign of Labour 2.0 (its like saying ‘New’) running out of steam when candidates are distancing themselves from the leadership of their party?

I mentioned a rumour that Team:Yasmin were to be in Queen’s Park cafe on Wednesday afternoon. Anyone have their lunchtime interputed by the campaign train pulling into the park? I hear Tony Benn was there supporting Labours candidate for Brent East. From the reports that I received it was a great ‘Audience with…’ with Tony and his anecdotes being well received by a cross-demographic audience.

Campaign materials: Many!

robd — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:46:00 +0000

More campaign materials from Sarah Teather.

And George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss’s Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Preferendum.

More photo analysis of Brent East News.

And a rumor of Team:Yasmin in Queen’s Park Café this lunch time…

later…

Campaign Materials: Labour

robd — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:16:00 +0000

What else is there to notice about Brent East News ‘Delivering for YOU’…

I read the whole of the Ken Livingstone interview on the London Labour Party website. Campaigning in Brent East with Yasmin Qureshi Ken said:”I am delighted that my first election visit is in my old seat of Brent East, where human rights campaigner Yasmin Qureshi is in pole position to become Britain’s first ever Asian woman.”

The ’round robin’ makes four mentions of Yasmin’s ethnicity and gender. Today the Independent reports on analysis by the Fawcett Society of the proportion of women selected as candidates by the political parties. Looks like there is going to be an appeal to traditionally political inactive minorities in the final days of the campaign. Is this a competition between the Lib Dems and Labour? But pointing out gender and ethnicity and campaigning on it is a bit crass, no? I mean, I’ve got eyes…

Not scanned yet…. post later

Fifty extra police officers in Brent

robd — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:37:00 +0000

I picked up a copy of Brent East News published by Yasmin and the BE Labour Party when in Queen’s Park on Monday. Under the headline ‘Delivering for You’ there is a photo of three police officers with a caption ‘Brent now has more than fifty extra police officers’.

Yasmin Qureshi's police, beating round the bush.

Fifty extra police officers! Shame that three of the fifty extra police officers in Brent East are on walkabout in Shepherds Bush. The photo of the three police officers clearly shows the Walkabout pub in Shepherds Bush in the background.

[4/5/2010 updated to remove dead link to image]

Hustings TONIGHT

robd — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Brent Stop The War are holding a General Election Candidate Hustings…

‘…to answer your questions about where they stand on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the withdrawal of troops and associated issues of Palestine, the “war on terror” and the attack on civil liberties.’

Here is the flyer.

It’ll be held at Dudden Hill Community Centre, TONIGHT 7.00 pm

Postal Voting Application Deadline Today

robd — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:11:00 +0000

From Brent Council’s email alert service:

Postal Vote Application Deadline:

The deadline to apply for a new postal vote is Tuesday 26th April at 5pm.
Please make sure all applications have arrived at the Town Hall by that time.
You can deliver them in person should you wish.

Telephone 020 8937 1372 or e-mail using the link below if you need any assitance.
E-mail Electoral Services mailto:electoral.services@brent.gov.uk
Brent’s General Election Pages http://www.brent.gov.uk/generalelection

Brondesbury Residents & Tennants Association Meeting

robd — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:05:00 +0000

Chris, a reader of this blog, writes:

Hi Rob,
Maybe you were there tonight. If so, I’m wasting your time. If not, highlights included: Kwasi (who, incidentally, and I appreciate this is always the luck of the draw, is the only candidate I have seen campaigning in the streets) being compared to Boris Johnson; a nice Irish chap pointing out that some Candidate for Kilburn’s Beleaguered Motorists (really? I have not been canvassed, but I am willing to believe) might cull the vital few hundred votes in a very tight campaign; Yasmin saying she’s one of those people who constantly gets parking tickets and forgets to pay and has to pay the extra (she must be made of money); and Yasmin saying she was all for the replanting of Brondesbury’s lost trees because the environment is vital, and oxygen is important (I do not think the questioner was envisaging a rainforest).

There was the the usual knickers in twists over tactical voting (Conservatives had 10% last time; Lib Dems had 10% the time before; we want PR anyway; you’re not voting for a local MP, so vote New Labour to keep the Tories out, because the margin’s really small, actually, promise it is). Got the usual feeling that many constituents are labour voters faced with extremely articulate and personable LibDem and Conservative candidates.

The Candidate for Kilburn’s Beleaguered Motorists… is that Michele Weininger? I’ve still not hearded anything about this candidate – any info readers?

Crime

robd — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 23:04:00 +0000

The candidates from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are all highlighting crime in their campaigns.

But do we need ‘more police on patrol to make our area safer for all’? (Sarah Teather – Standing Up For You)
Has the fear of crime ‘increased’ in Brent? (Kwasi Kwarteng – In Touch)
Is ‘crime and the fear of crime and issue for every neighbourhood in London’? (Yasmin Qureshi – Mapesbury Labour News)

If you’d like to see the crime statistics for Brent, the Met have great interactive map, but data looks better as text only.

But do the stats tell the whole story? You’d kind of expect ‘incident count’ crime statistics to increase; I’m not saying that crime is impossible to reduce, just that there could be externalities to the data: a population increase in a borough for example. I’m looking for a crime rate per capita index and other data sets, and if I find any I’ll share them. We can find stastics for just about anything but I’m having trouble finding a dataset on ‘fear of crime’…

Campaign Materials: Where do they all come from?

robd — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 22:41:00 +0000

I’ve been reading up on the entitlement of a prospective parliamentary candidate to the use of Royal Mail delivery services.

In Brent East, a candidate is entitled to use Royal Mail to deliver 40907 items of campaign literature. What I’m not sure about is if that is in total (i.e. to all the households) or per ‘drop’.

There is further information on the Roayl Mail service to candidiate here. Or you could check out the Department of Consitiutional Affairs ‘guidance for electoral administrators and information on electoral legislation‘.

If you have the knowledge perhaps you will share it here?

Campaign Materials: Liberal Democrats

robd — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 22:07:00 +0000

After yesterdays mammouth posting session I went out for a while. I hadn’t had chance to even leave the building before my mind was drawn back to this blog. More campaign materials from Sarah Teather, local Liberal Democrat. This one an official ‘Election Communication’ delivered by Royal Mail.

‘Standing Up For You’ highlights Sarah’s work during her term as MP for Brent East on local ‘quality of life’ issues and links the Lib Dem policies to local ‘real people’ through a varity of in-action photos.

I’ve not had chance to scan all of it. Here is the front and the back for now.

Campaign Materials: Liberal Democrats

robd — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:43:00 +0000

Many postings to this blog today. It’s all I’ve done this morning!

I’ve received a letter from Sarah Teather for her campaign to be re-elected by the people of Brent East to serve a second term.

Her message: ‘I believe that people in Brent East deserve a local MP who will stand up to Tony Blair. I am proud to fight this election on my record of local action from fighting for fairer funding for our local schools to welcoming more police for Dudden Hill, Kilburn and Willesden Green.’

Here’s the full letter as a JPG.

Campaign Materials: Conservatives

robd — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:11:00 +0000

When I met Kwasi on Thursday at the MapRA AGM I mentioned to him that I hadn’t seen any campaign materials from him over the last couple of weeks. Yesterday an Election Communiation from Brent East Conservatives was delivered by Royal Mail.

His message: ‘The Conservatives are the alternative. I promise to give you, the electorate, my boss, more for your money. This isn’t some form of magic. Our policies are based on common sense. We will allow all people to get on with their lives and contribute to the constituency in their own distinctive way. We will not allow our diverse and vibrant communities to be shackled by bureaucracy or political correctness.’

The full text of the letter as an image. The back page.

Lack of campaign materials – Labour

robd — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:27:00 +0000

On the back of the Mapesbury Labour News distributed by Yasmin at the MapRA Annual General Meeting there is a list of ways to contact Yasmin: By phone: 020 8969 4550, By email: info@yasminqureshi.co.uk, By writting to: 102 Liddell Gardens, Kensal Rise, NW10 3QE.

I checked out the domain www.yasminqureshi.co.uk to see if there was a website. I had hoped that there would be a vibrant source of information about Yasmin and the Labour Party but alas there was nothing but a holding page – ” This website is currently under construction and will be available soon”

There are only 13 days to go till the election!

For £200 Yasmin could have used the Labour Party ‘Web in a box v2.0′, the ‘easy to maintain website building tool for the Labour Party family (the 2.0 bit is instead of saying ‘New Web in a box’).

Campaign Materials: Labour

robd — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 15:08:00 +0000

At the Mapesbury Residents Association Annnual General Meeting on Thursday night I was hoping to speak to the assembled residents about the Community Wireless Network I am involved in running in Queen’s Park. Having been very impressed by the collective action that MapRA have motived in their community around the Mapesbury Dell project and the purchase of old-fashioned, sorry, ‘heritage’ street lights for some of the streets, I thought that a Community Wireless Broadband Network would have been something that the residents of Mapesbury may have been interested in working to acheive. However, due to time constraints I was unable to speak but I did distribute some leaflets to each seat in the room in the hope that people would pick it up and read it.

I was not the only person who had that idea.

Yasmin had also distributed her some campaign materials at the AGM, placing an A4 piece of paper, ‘Mapesbury Labour News’, on each seat on top of the MapRA AGM materials. I was distributing my materials and Yasmin asked me to not put my leaflet on top of hers. Well, I, like Yasmin, was only adding the existing pile…. And when further information leafets were distributed about the financial standing of MapRA to the top of the now quite high pile, Yasmin had a quick nip round the seats to restack the papers to ensure her ‘newsletter’ (or rather a seasonal round-robin), was outer most.

At the end of the AGM while people where visiting the stalls from various departments of the Council and other local agencies, an announcement was made by the Chair of MapRA…

Ladies and Gentleman. We have realised that we have been leafleted by the Labour Party this evening this evening without our permission. We apologies for that – we try to keep this event apolitical.

The leaflet drew attention to a ‘gaff’ made by Sarah Teather during an interview and gave Yasmin a ‘gaff’ of her own. Oh well.

You can download a copy of Mapesbury Labour News (front page / back page) from here.

Campaign Materials: Greens

robd — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 14:35:00 +0000

I received the Green Party Election Communication for Brent East earlier this week. I’ve scanned the 100% RECYCLED PAPER leaflet for you to download from here (front cover, inside, back cover).

If you have not received the Green Party Election Communication, please let me know and I will pass it on to Shahrar. I spoke to him yesterday and apparently there has been a problem with the delivery of the leaflets by Royal Mail.

Mapesbury Residents Association AGM

robd — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 14:13:00 +0000

Those active in local civil society and engaged in their neighbourhood were out at St. Gabriel’s Church on Walm Lane on Thursday night for the Mapesbury Residents Association Annual General Meeting. MapRA is a large and active group of neighbours all commited to woking for the benefit of the Mapesbury community. Attendance from the membership of MapRA is good and the nave of church was full.

I had expected to see Sarah Teather there: She was there last year, speaking on some of the activities that she, as the local MP, had beeen working on with MapRA and other people from the neighbouorhood. And while I expected to see other candidates, I had not expected a full house!

I was seated was on the second row of seats and I could see Yasmin on the opposite side of the asile on the front row. Sarah Teather was on the row behind her. Shahrar Ali was further along the front row, few seats away from Yasmin. I had a quick look around me.

Reds? Check.
Orange? Check.
Greens? Check.
Blue? Blue?

“Where is Kwasi?” I said to E “I can’t see Kwasi Kwarteng”.

The gentleman in front of me turned round, extended his hand and said “I’m Kwasi Kwarteng, Hello”. Shaking his hand I said “Hello, I’m Rob Dyke”. He spluttered out “Oh, your Rob Dy… I’ve read your…..Oh…..Ho ho……” and then turned to E and introduced himself to her before turning back in his seat.

So we’ve answered the little question I posed earlier this week.

C4.com on Brent East

robd — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:58:00 +0000

From Channel 4.com Election 2005 site.

‘Labour has placed its hopes on lawyer Yasmin Qureishi, who is openly anti-war in her selection process. But like many Labour candidates in what was Labour’s urban core support she is going even further to regain disgruntled voters by opposing the policies of the prime minister.

She told Channel 4 news: “I’m one of those people who has their own mind, their own independent mind, and I make my own decisions.” In fact, Qureishi has written to Brent East’s Muslim voters distancing herself from the war, from the government’s approach to Guantanamo Bay and opposing the recent moves on house arrest of terror suspects.

It puts her well at odds with the person she wants to put back in Downing Street.’ From C4.com

The C4 story raises an interesting question. Is Yasmin, with her beliefs so at odds with the leadership of the party that she supports, going to be able to win votes at this election? Can one be pro-Labour AND anti-War/bring the troops home/pro-human rights/anti-detention without trail as Yasmin appears? Riding two horses at the same time is impossible.

Linkup for George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss

robd — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:17:00 +0000

Thanks to a reader, here are some links for the Vote For Yourself Dream Ticket Party and George ‘Rainbox’ Weiss.

This website details the background to the V4YDTP.

While this page has DTP info.

Links from a reader collecting campaign leaflets from this election. Send them some of the paper the Brent East Candidates send you.

The Guardian website also lists George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss, but not as a candidate in this election (they need to get that page of their site updated). They list some additional info for George, including a link to www.xat.org – The Peaceful Revolution Network.

Candidate List Announced

robd — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:53:00 +0000

The candidates in the Brent East constituency have been announced. They are:

ALI, Shahrar – Green Party
KWARTENG, Kwasi Alfred Addo – The Conservative Party Candidate
QURESHI, Yasmin – The Labour Party Candidate
TEATHER, Sarah Louise – Liberal Democrats
WEININGER, Michele Anna – Independent
WEISS, ‘Rainbow’ George – Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket

I’m going to try and get hold of web links for George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss and Michele Anna Weininger today. If you’ve got weblinks already post them to me.

Hustings this evening.

robd — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 19:26:00 +0000

Sarah Teather – and others? who knows? – will be at a hustings event this evening at Willesden Library organised by BRAVA – Brent Association for Voluntary Action.

If anyone who reads this blog goes to the hustings this evening, please write-up about it here.

Where are the Conservatives?

robd — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 15:29:00 +0000

Since starting this blog I have met the candidiates from Labour, Greens and Liberal Democrats ‘out and about’ in Brent East. I’m still waiting to see Kwasi out and about… Strange not to have seen the Conservatives. During the by-election of ‘03 they were very visible in this constituency – I remember vividly meeting three party workers on Exeter Road who, after I had asked them for some of their campaign materials, cornered me to drill in their message. I made a lucky escape by distracting them – ‘look! someone has dropped a penny!’.

Yasmin, Sarah and Shahrar are all out on the beat – where is Kwasi? Or has Conservative central office decided that, with such a low-level of support in this area, this seat is not worth investing resources in fighting.

(Perhaps the reader of this blog from Conservative Central Office would care to email me or press the comments button?)

Fellow Brent East residents! If you see Kwasi Kwarteng around in the constituency please let me know! If you have received any election campaign materials from the Conservatives in your letterbox, please get in touch and let me have a copy.

While on the subject of voting records….

robd — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:00:00 +0000

You can view the voting record of Sarah Teather as complied by The Guardian and Public Whip.

Postal voting in Brent East

robd — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 18:52:00 +0000

Applications for postal voting in Brent East are up 511% on the 2001 General Election. Around 2500 votes in Brent East will be made by post this year.

You can read more on postal voting in London in this story from thisislondon.co.uk

Don’t mention the war?

robd — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 18:36:00 +0000

The Guardian comment on the ’sssshhhh’ today. You know, that little exercise in Middle East. They say that ‘Many in Tony Blair’s party who opposed the US-led invasion are keeping quiet about the issue now’.

‘However, candidates are mentioning their anti-war positions in constituencies where there has been strong opposition to the conflict, for example, in constituencies with large Muslim communities or student populations.

Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour candidate for Brent East, has not hidden her opposition. In her attempt to beat the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, she has written in a campaign leaflet: “The Lib Dems told voters who were unhappy with the Iraq war to vote for them. Less than a week after they won, they backed sending more troops.” ‘ – from the Guardian

Yasmin has got a drum and she’ll beat it. When I met her in Queen’s Park her key message to me was that the Liberal Democrats voted to support the Labour government in additional troop deployments in Iraq. But as I commented then, the Liberal Democrats DID NOT vote FOR conflict in the first place – they were against war. Or perhaps Yasmin Qureshi and the then Labour government didn’t want cross-party support for continuing to work at resolving the mess Tony Blair et al made Iraq. There is a difference between invading a country on false pretenses – something that the Labour government did – and being commited to sorting out the mess when made.

I also hear that Yasmin has been, perhaps only in her enthusiasim, miss-representing the voting record of Charles Kennedy. I hear that when meeting people from faith groups at their places of worship in the constituency, Yasmin has stated that Charles Kennedy voted FOR the Iraq war. To ensure clarity of information, here is a link here you can check for yourself the voting record of Charles Kennedy.

What are the policies of the three main parties?

robd — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:52:00 +0000

Found quite a useful page on the Politics website this morning. They have grouped the policies of each of the three main parties on specific areas together for your comparison. Nifty.

It beats downloading and reading each of the manifesto documents. But if you really wanted to, here you go

Liberal Democrats, PDF file, 20 pages, 1.1mb
Labour, PDF file, 56 pages, 916kb
Conservatives, PDF file, 32 pages, 712kb
Greens, PDF file, 32 pages, 376.6kb

Calling all candidates

robd — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:30:00 +0000

An open letter, to be emailed to each of the candidates standing in Brent East at the forthcoming general election.

Dear Candidate,

I am writing to all the candidates standing in Brent East at the general election with a question. Each party has unveiled their manifesto. National commitments have been made for the program of the next government, which ever colour it ends up being.

Assume you and your party are elected at the next election and you are able to carry out your commitments to the nation.

What do you see as the three main areas of life in Brent East which your parties policies are going to have the most immediate and lasting effect on and how will we see the results in our daily lives?

I will be sharing your responses on a weblog monitoring and reporting on the Brent East election campaign – http://becampaign.blogspot.com – and I will be also using your responses as a guide in making my own decisions come polling day.

I look forward to reading your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Dyke

Meeting Shahrar Ali

robd — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:35:00 +0000

… coming soon…

Strategic Voter – Info for London

robd — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:31:00 +0000

Strategic Voter has a PDF detailing their recommendations for voting accross London. For Brent East their recommendation is Vote Lib Dem.

Campaign Materials: Greens

robd — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 02:17:00 +0000

Brent East Green News – A4 newsletter – Front Page – JPG

Brent East Green News – A4 newsletter – Back Page – JPG

Campaign materials: Labour

robd — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:33:00 +0000

Here are some campaign materials from the Labour Party for their candidate Yasmin Qureshi. I won’t display them all here, but you can click on the links to see full size scans of the unsolicited mail that has popped through my letter box in support of their candidate.

Elect Yasmin Qureshi – A5 flyer – front – JPG

Elect Yasmin Qureshi – A5 flyer – back – JPG

Brent East News – Labour Party – front page – JPG

Meeting Yasmin Qureshi

robd — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 21:19:00 +0000

On Thursday I bumped into Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour candidate for Brent East, on Salusbury Road just outside the friendly and well stocked Queen’s Park Books (yes, I do work there, how did you guess?). She was out on the campaign trail, meeting and greeting, probably kissing babies, seeking places to display her posters. Yasmin was accompanied by the Queen’s Park ward local Councillor Neil Nerva.

I’ve met Neil Nerva before. He contacted me about Comwifinet and the Queen’s Park Wireless Club. We talked about the community project and about encouraging participation in the democratic process. I told him about the Sarah Teather Blog, and we talked about ‘Why Politicians Need Weblogs.’ I’ve emailed him a couple of times via his @brent.gov.uk email address. I’ve even called him and left messages on his answer machine. But since that first telephone conversation, all efforts as contacting him have resulted in no response. When I pushed him on this, he said something about ‘having a job and working hard’ and then he was interrupted by Yasmin how wanted to point out that they are working harder than Sarah Teather. It is no longer a mystery why Sarah is not getting prompt responses from the Labour government – the whole party, from the cabinet and ministers down to local councillors are poor communicators who fail to return calls or emails.

But I digress.

Meeting Yasmin Qureshi was squally, pressured and damp. It was windy and we were just about to be showered by hail. Neil was blustered about by the weather. Yasmin, ever smiling, was pleased to talk to me – a young voter, unlikely to vote at all but most likely to vote LibDem. I talked about the ‘political web log movement‘ and about the blog I run about Sarah Teather. Yasmin was keen to know if I was ‘engaged’ by Sarah to write the blog and wanted to know if I was critical of her. I told her she could read it and leave comments on the blog – for that is the purpose of the comments button!

Brent East was taken from Labour by Sarah and the Lib Dems in ‘03. For Yasmin, this means that the electorate deserted Labour due to the illegal and immoral war waged by the UK and US in Iraq. Well, I paraphrase. Yasmin sees Sarah as a hypocrite. She, Yasmin that is, hammers on about how the LibDems were ‘anti-war’ yet “Sarah voted for further troop deployments in Iraq”. For Yasmin, the Lib Dems should not have support the government in their efforts rebuild and repair what had been broken into a million tiny pieces by war. From what I can make out, Yasmin thinks it is more important to stand firm to ones principles (being anti-war) rather than be pragmatic and flexible and prepared to support secondary measures (i.e. troop deployments).

I pointed out the EDM signed by Sarah and other MPs that would remove the royal perogative of military engagement from the cabinet and place the decision in the hands of parliament. I couldn’t get chance to ask Yasmin if she would support this EDM if she was elected – Neil was herding her away.

As a parting shot, Yasmin asked me if I had googled her name. I hadn’t, but I have now. Well well well. From the first link it seems that the illegal activities in Birmingham were not the only dubious votes to have affected the Labour party in recent times…

…From Black Information Link ‘Labour faithful brawl as vote-rigging stitch-up denies Qureshi‘

Furious Labour members accused their party of a vote-rigging stitch-up after Robert Evans beat his nearest challenger, Yasmin Qureshi, by two votes after party officials disallowed two postal votes cast in favor of Qureshi

Fear and Loathing on the Brent East Campaign Trail

robd — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 14:11:00 +0000

05.05.05 said the Indy.
General erection said The Sun.

and they are off.

I’ve already met the candidates for the Greens and for Labour out on the streets of Queen’s Park. I’ll share these two encounters with you over this weekend.

Campaign materials from the Lib Dems and Labour to come – just as soon as i’ve got my image hosting problem sorted.

Brent East by-election, 2003

robd — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:57:00 +0000

The by-election of 2003 was caused by the death of the member of Parliament for Brent East, Paul Daisley of the Labour Party. The by-election to fill his seat was held on September 13, and was won by the Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Teather.

The turnout by electors at this election was 36.42%

More information on the 2003 Brent East by-election from wikipedia.

Showing the paper trail…

robd — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:18:00 +0000

Election 2005. You know its coming. I know its coming. It has been trailed more heavily than a Lord of the Rings movie. You probably think its all happened already given the amount of comment and analysis in the media. Slow news year?

Because of my own interest in seeing increased participation from citizens in the upcoming election, I’m running another blog between now and ‘the day’ focusing on the Brent East campaign. I see information as crucial in the making of informed choice by the electorate so I’m going to be propagating what comes from the candidates standing in this constituency.

During the by-election in 2003 I couldn’t get through my door some evenings late in the campaign due to the leaflets delivered. I had to swerve to hit, erm, miss several of the candidates while cycling around the area that September. For this general election I’ll be scanning and posting all the materials that come through the door. I’ll also try and post news articles and other materials as they arise to this blog. And if I hit any candidates while cycling I’ll post here about that too.

I’m welcoming contributors from my fellow Brent East constituents. Write, email or fax the candidates. Ask them the questions you want answers to on the issues that you feel strongly about. Share those conversations here in this blog.