March 2010
March has been a busy month as the elections begin to hot up and there are increasing demands on my time. At the beginning of March I had a school Governor's meeting and attended the Hanwell Community Forum. Later in the month, Sarah Teather MP came to Ealing for a public meeting with myself and the other two Ealing Lib Dem parliamentary candidates, I went to a West Ealing Neighbour's meeting about the Green Man Lane redevelopment and I attended Drayton Manor High School to answer questions on the local elections as part of Year 13 citizenship classes.
I have served six years as the Vice Chair of the Governors and the Chair of the Pay & Personnel Committee at Greenfields Children Centre in Southall. The school has undergone a major transition in that time from a small, cramped air raid shelter of a building into portacabins while the school was being rebuilt and now into a new modern building with all the latest facilities. Unfortunately, I missed the last meeting in November while I was on holiday in India and in my absence the Chair of the Governors passed from Rita to Ben. I will be sorry to see Rita leave but Ben used to work for Ealing Council as editor of Around Ealing and is a former parent governor. I like to think Ben and I have a good working relationship and I am sure Ben will be a safe pair of hands in charge of the Governing body at a time when all schools will be under pressure to manage their budgets effectively.
The school governor's meeting was on the same evening as the Hanwell Community Forum which meant I arrived half way through the local Safer Neighbourhood Police teams discussing the latest issues with crime in Elthorne and Hobbayne wards. The main item on the agenda, though, was the planning application to redevelop Crossways which is a Grade II listed building and believed to be one of the oldest surviving properties in Hanwell. This application dates back to when I was Chair of the Hanwell Steering Group and the proposal is to demolish and rebuild the existing Crossways as well as building a new property along side Crossways as an enabling development. The original application was refused by Ealing Council, and while the developers could have used the time since then to come back with new modified plans to take into account previous objections, they have appealed against the council's decision in the High Court and now re-submitted the plans with relatively minor changes. As a former History graduate, I strongly believe we need to preserve the best bits of Hanwell's heritage and it worries me when I see one of Hanwell's historic buildings in its current, sadly neglected state.
Sarah Teather, Lib Dem MP for Brent East, came to Ealing for a public meeting with myself, Jon Ball (Lib Dem candidate for Ealing Central & Acton) and Chris Lucas (Lib Dem candidate for Ealing North). While most of the audience were Lib Dem members, flyers had been handed out in Ealing before hand and there was a good turnout including some floating voters and interested observers. I thought the evening went very well and not only was it a good practice for me before any election hustings with Tory and Labour opponents in the run up to May 6th but I hope that Sarah and all three of the Ealing parliamentary candidates made a great case for voting Lib Dem locally.
On 24th March I went to a West Ealing Neighbours meeting on the redevelopment proposals for the Green Man Lane estate with fellow Elthorne Lib Dem Dave Randles. While one Labour candidate for Walpole turned up, neither Conservative or Labour candidates for Elthorne attended the meeting, and no-one came from the Tory-run Ealing Council despite being invited. I can understand why none of my opponents came to the meeting as only one of the Labour candidates and none of the Tories live in the ward but I think it is a particularly poor show that nobody from the Council was there to answer questions or concerns from residents on the scheme.
The following day I went to Drayton Manor High School to answer questions from Year 13 pupils on the local elections. Also present were the Tory candidate for Ealing Southall Gurcharan Singh and Hobbayne Labour Councillor Phil Greenhead. The three of us answered questions on why we were standing for election, the role of a councillor and the balance between national and local governments. Even though I am not a councillor I thought I equipped myself well and hope that I helped to inspire the pupils to take a greater interest in the elections and vote if they are old enough.