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…

Civic reporter has received an initial ‘thanks but no thanks’ from Brent Council. I’m going to post their analysis of the application and my reponse here. this morning I was at home with the baby. I love being at home in the day, it gives me the chance to stand and watch my neighbourhood go by. I counted five Brent Council branded vehicles go past my house, collecting my green box, then my green bin and later my household wheelie bin. A fourth pickup collected some dumped household furniture and the fifth was street sweeping. I know Brent Council take our street care and waste management seriously: let’s see how seriously they take transparency and participation in service delivery.

“- IT upgraded in Brent – so council staff can discuss the world cup online” - maybe the Council and BRAVA will find the resources to support The Bonnet Project so residents associations and community groups can communicate with each other online.

hush! here’s a sneek on something I’ve been working on at comwifinet recently…

Spot it? Text it! - report things to Brent Council via SMS and MMS. What things? a faulty parking meter, fly-tipping, broken things in the environment that you see out and about. Here is the opportunity to report them as you see them… using your mobile phone.

Speaking on the ‘carnage’ following the local elections in Brent, Labour Cllr Mary Arnold acknowledges that Team Yellow worked hard for the victories they knotched up:

“There is also the Teather factor - there’s a machinery that the Lib Dems have got for producing leaflets and campaigning, for bringing people in to canvass.”

The Lib Dems did manage to distribute a lot of paper in Mapesbury and Queen’s Park - significantly more than teams Red and Blue.

What will the Teather Factor mean in the light of the new Brent Council? When Ken Livingstone was the MP for Brent East in the 1990’s he was never shy of putting the boot in to the council, Blue or Red. Will Sarah continue with her tactics to date? When she was a lone Lib Dem MP for a constituency with a Labour Council, each opportunity for highlighting problems with the administration and delivery of services was taken. Now Brent Council has no overall control, the Lib Dems do have the most seats on the Council and look likely form the Executive at the Full Council meeting on the 22nd May. I’ll be monitoring for any noticable shift in tone over the coming months.