Here is Ross Kemp’s party piece.

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?

“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.

P1000502

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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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.