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…

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.

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.

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

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’