Never mind the politics

I have read on some blog comments (eg, this one) that Malcolm McLaren was from Burnt Oak, at least, that he attended Orange Hill grammar school. Stone me! Can anyone confirm?

I'm off to Blackpool in a couple of hours for the trades councils conference. As to what is happening in the wider world of politics right now, my only comment is "what he said".

The choices we make - why Dismore has lost Hendon

Andrew Dismore very narrowly losing Hendon is depressing news. Three Tory MPs in Barnet - argh! They'll be cock-a-hoop.

I don't think if I'd stayed in the constituency and knocked up for Dismore yesterday I could have won him the seat! But if I'd known it would be so close, I might well have stayed and tried... We choose what to do based on assessments we make and we sure as hell don't have perfect knowledge.

I said I would go to Hayes and Harlington to knock up for John McDonnell MP. The local Labour Party was nervous that he might lose; the Tories were suggesting they might win.

In addition to the general disillusionment among previous Labour voters (not, as it turns out, as deep as we all predicted), McDonnell had particular pressures on him.

With the Labour government proposing the third runway at Heathrow, a significant chunk of the constituency was in danger of being literally obliterated. The Tories were oppposing the runway. And there are two immigration detention centres close to the airport, so the anti-im/migration rhetoric in the election has had particular resonance there.

John McDonnell opposed the third runway - from conviction, not just professional self-interest! - and is not anti-im/migrant. In the event, he has won with a stonking majority, his share of the vote only slightly down.

So, I wasn't needed there at all!

However, as miserable as I am about Matthew Offord's wafer-thin win, I don't feel too guilty personally about Dismore. I did things in his favour which in their very small way might have helped to make the vote close.

The local Labour Party should reflect hard on whether it is doing enough to engage local members and residents. Do Labour voters feel any ownership over the party? I certainly don't. Not so long ago, trade unionists would almost automatically have turned out to canvass for Labour. Trade union branches would have sent delegates to the Constituency Labour Party meetings. Those days are passed - can we get them back?

Dismore is reported by the Times series as saying:

“I don't think there was anything me or my team could have done. If we had had more support in door knocking I think we could have won.

“The Conservatives had the Ashcroft funded billboards all over the borough and we just couldn't compete with that sort of money.”

Dismore and Labour politicians like him need not just to seek scapegoats and apportion blame, but to think about what they can do to revive active support for Labour at the grassroots.

The inevitable Barnet-in-the-snow-pictures

Everybody's doing it, and why not? It only happens once every 30 years, apparently, that we get this much snow. I couldn't resist building a snow cat in the garden today (too lazy to make a snow man), and I feel like sharing some snowy snaps taken yesterday and today around Burnt Oak and Edgware.

I could have included any number of shitty-looking, half- or ungritted pavements and roads, because I saw many today, with people sliding about all over them, but today I am on a Barnet-can-look-quite-nice-in-the-snow tip.

Anarchy in Barnet

A friend recently suggested that Barnet trades unionists put together a newsletter like the Hackney Heckler, which is produced to reflect left-of-centre campaigns in Hackney.

I wondered whether we have the activist base. For starters, are there any anarchists in Barnet? Hackney Heckler has a good input from anarchists, I believe, who are a mainstay of the Hackney Solidarity Network which produces it.

For curiosity's sake, I will give a prize if anyone can put me in touch with a Barnet anarchist.

I was lost in Barnet

While my other half visited his mother in hospital this afternoon, I went for a walk (I'm all heart). He dropped me off on Hendon Wood Lane and I followed part of the Dollis Valley Green Walk.

This is one of the footpaths that won a Mayor of London makeover grant in the 'Help a London Park' popular vote earlier in the year. I don't know whether it was more deserving than candidates that did not win, but I'm all for upgrading ALL of London's green spaces so I'm glad that it will have some money spent on it.

I don't know which parts are going to be upgraded; I suspect the bit I was on needs some better signposting. I know that at a certain point I was following one path and then there were dozens to choose from and at that point I got lost. I walked along some unfamiliar streets with unlikely names like Quinta and Nupton, past a posh new primary school called Whitings Hill, and up a hill that belongs to Barnet Council that was freshly mown, from the top of which I could see no familiar landmarks whatsoever.

Then I found my way back to Totteridge Lane which is far more familiar to me, being the route of the 251 bus, and had a cappuccino in the Orange Tree pub that I usually sail past. It's good getting lost, frankly. We all feel under so much pressure to have everything under control always, that it was nice being completely clueless. Now that I'm home, however, can I resist the urge to look up my route on Googlemap?

Barnet's Conservative Cabinet swings the axe on sheltered housing

A quick report from the Cabinet meeting tonight. In short, as we feared they would, Barnet’s Conservative Cabinet voted to cut the sheltered housing wardens, saving the council a fairly paltry £400,000 but at a high social cost.

Council Leader Mike Freer dealt in his characteristically graceless manner with a lot of angry voters: his mantra on these occasions is becoming, well, if you don’t like it, you can vote us out next year. Mike “cross-in-a-box-once-every-four-years” Freer’s vision of democracy.

We held a lively protest that got a lot of press coverage – the assault on sheltered housing is, belatedly, becoming a national issue. You can see the BBC London news report here.

Mike Freer is interviewed and says: “The council’s finances are actually quite robust, so that’s not the driver. The driver is predominantly about making a service fit for purpose. ...we have about 15 hundred settings, a thousand of them already have a floating, visiting warden, only one third have a resident warden.”

If financial considerations are not the driver, why is one of the main points in the consultation document:

Barnet Council is proposing three major changes:
To reduce the amount of funding paid at present for services in sheltered housing and similar locations. This would contribute toward reductions in expenditure that are necessary for Barnet Council to set a balanced budget for next year....

Proposal 1 – reduction in funding for support services in sheltered housing
The council has to make savings of £12 million next year, and it proposes that services for older people in Sheltered Housing should contribute £950,000 to this total....

The rest of the savings of £950,000 each year would be used by the council to enable services for older people in Barnet to be maintained. Next year, the council will have to make savings of £12m in order to make sure expenditure is in line with income.

In the document, there is a lot more, an awful lot more, along those lines. In short, in the news clip Freer is not telling the truth about why they want to make this cut.

They say it is so that they can spend more money on other elderly residents in Barnet – show us the figures. Vague promises about extending the residual sheltered housing support service to other Barnet elderly are just that: vague promises. We have consistently called for levelling up of services, not levelling down: sharing a far smaller budget among many more people is no way to increase 'fairness'.

The sheltered housing warden cut is about saving Barnet council money; the rest is justification. I could find a reason to make cuts, if I wanted to make cuts. The point is I don't. Freer goes on and on about how central government’s settlement for Barnet is too low: then lead the community in a fight for more money. And stop justifying and making cuts!