Apology over new WLA bus service for special needs children

Monday's meeting of Brent Council will be debating the West London Alliance.  Ian Nichol, Chief Executive of the West London Alliance will speak on the progress being made on the work of the Alliance after which members will debate the issues arising. The WLA shares services across several boroughs (Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow) LINK  in order to save money through rationalisation, sharing of resources and reductions in backroom expenses. Last year the then Brent Council leader Cllr Ann John expressed mixed feelings about the WLA remarking that it moved services one step further away from direct local accountability.

Coincidentally Brent Council has had to issue an apology today to special needs children after problems with the new WLA Transport Service:

Many children with Special Education Needs (SEN) will have experienced difficulties in their school transport arrangements this week. 

We apologise for the inconvenience and upset that we know these problems will have caused to children and their families.

The new transport system operated by the WLA Transport Bureau has experienced some significant problems in these early days. 

We are reworking transport arrangements to ensure that they work more reliably from Monday 10 September and will ensure that parents and carers have written confirmation of the arrangements for their child over the weekend.

This confirmation may be hand delivered.

In the meantime, if you experience problems, please call the WLA Transport Bureau on 020 8583 5530 / 5531 / 5536 / 5537 and we will work with you to resolve them.

Duckworth: Greens can be attractive to working class voters

I am proud to have voted for Will Duckworth who was elected deputy leader of the Green Party on Monday.  Here is what he has to say for himself:

I am thrilled to have been elected as the new Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. I am very much looking forward to working with new Leader, Natalie Bennett, who has a clear, strong and exciting vision for our Party.

I will do my very best to run with the baton passed on to me by Adrian Ramsey, who has done an excellent job as our Deputy for the last four years. I am sure I speak for everyone in the Party when I say that Caroline Lucas cannot be thanked enough for the incredible hard work she put in as our first ever Leader.
The next two years will be crucial for us. With important local elections due in 2013 and a great opportunity to increase our number of MEPs the year after I am looking forward to lending my support and enthusing members and voters alike, wherever possible.

As this Government's disastrous economic policies continue to hit the least well-off the hardest we will show that we have not only viable, but attractive social and economic alternatives to the ConDem's cuts and Labour's slightly watered-down version. I intent to make the most of being in the position of being able to communicate this to an ever widening audience.

2012 has seen the wettest summer in England for 100 years, the USA's worst drought for half a century, as well as the Arctic sea ice shrinking to an historic low. I will enjoy spreading the word about how the Green Party is the only one that understands the urgent measures needed to tackle climate change, while making the world fairer at the same time.

It is sometimes said that our policies are only attractive to the middle classes in leafy suburbs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Earlier this year I became the Black Country's first Green Party Councillor in a working class Labour stronghold. To me, this clearly showed that people in all walks of life agree with our way of thinking and that can achieve greater electoral success.

Here in the West Midlands we have gone from having three councillors to thirteen in just two years. I will take particular pleasure in working with local and regional groups to replicate that success, build the membership and strengthen the Party at all levels.

These are exceptional times. There are unique challenges for people and for our Party. We will only meet them by working together. I am confident that we can succeed.

The Brent leadership boil close to bursting

 Back in December 2011 in a posting on this blog about the relationship between Gareth Daniel and the then council leader, Ann John, I asked 'Brent Council: Who's in charge?' and questioned the apparent political role that Daniel had adopted. More recently in 'U-turn if you want to-this gent is not for turning'  (July 2nd 2012) I wrote:

The June 21st (Chief Executive's) Newsletter exalts in the close relationship between officers and councillors and gives this insight into Gareth Daniel's view of decision making. It sounds as if he has formed his own version of the 'No Turning Back' group which was formed to prevent any change of mind on Margaret Thatcher's 'reforms'.:

Once any necessary consultation has taken place, we should always move confidently into action mode and when we make a decision we need to stick to it.  Nobody respects an organisation that bends to the demands of every pressure group or the inevitable special pleading of sectional interest groups.

Presumably this is what he is saying to Muhammed Butt, the recently elected  'official' leader of Brent Council.

Now Muhammed Butt, according to the Brent and Kilburn Times (Council at War, front page today), has had enough and has stood up to Daniel.  I understand that that Butt's admirable decision to pay the London Living Wage to directly employed Brent council workers was opposed by Gareth Daniel and was the catalyst for the ensuing row.  The BKT reports that this has resulted in a split 'after a senior Labour councillor tried to put forward a motion backing Mr Daniel and other senior managers in the council rather than his leader' failed.

The 'senior Labour councillor' is not named but I have asked a senior councillor who has been on the frontline of cuts and closures and subject to much public flak, to confirm or deny rumours that he is challenging Muhammed Butt's leadership.

I have had no response as yet.

Meanwhile there will be much activity over the weekend culminating in possible fun and games at Monday's meeting of the full Council.

I am off on holiday tomorrow away from the internet so will miss it all!

Gove must go

From Guardian letters:

It's a shame David Cameron did not sack Michael Gove as education secretary. Cameron has complained about "dithering" in his government. Gove's response to the alarming shortage of primary school places is a case in point. We need 500,000 new school places by 2015. Gove's free-school programme will perhaps deliver 20,000. It is also costly and, in some cases, wasteful. Gove is so hidebound by ideology – the privatisation of education – that he cannot rise to the challenge. If we are to restore faith in our education system, Gove must go.

Alasdair Smith
Anti Academies Alliance

Teather: My priority is to represent my constituents

Sarah Teather has issued the following statement after losing her job in the reshuffle to fellow Lib Dem and preciously disgraced colleague, David Laws:

It has been a huge privilege to serve as an education minister in the coalition government over the last two and a half years. I'm hugely proud of the part I have been able to play in ending child detention, and rolling out the pupil premium, giving free nursery places to disadvantaged two year olds, amongst many other achievements.

Particularly close to my heart has been the work to reform the system of support for children and families with special educational needs and disability. It is a cause I have championed partly as a result of my own experience of illness and disability as a teenager. I would have dearly liked to be able to carry that work through to completion. I now hand that task over to others in Government to finish.

I am certain David will be an outstanding education Minister. We have been friends for many years and I am delighted for him that he has been given one of the best and most rewarding roles in Government. I shall support him and the Government now from the backbenches.

My number one priority will continue to be representing my constituents, which has always been my first love, and I'm also looking forward to having a little more time for myself.

Perhaps she will represent her constituents by joining the protest march against the closure of Central Middlesex A&E on September 15th.

Sarah Teather chopped in reshuffle

Brent Lib Dem MP, Sarah Teather, has lost her job as a junior education minister in David Cameron's reshuffle. Labour MP Steven Pound had teased her in the House of Commons yesterday, singing out, "You're going to get sacked in the morning".

Sarah Teather will be under pressure from her constituents to take a stand on Coalition policies now she is not restrained by ministerial guidelines. The most immediate issue will be the closure of  Central Middlesex Hospital. With the loss of Lib Dem membership in Brent and poor by-election performances by the party her prospects for the next General Election look poor.

James Lyons, deputy political editor of the Daily Mirror, tweeted this afternoon that Teather was standing down in order to fight for her Brent Central. Another explanation is that she was sacked as punishment for absenting herself from the House of Commons when there was a three line whip on the Coalition's welfare reforms. At the time a Tory back bencher asked David Cameron why she was still a minister and Cameron defended her LINK

Teather has been prepared to step out of line in the past, not least in previous battles over the Lib Dem leadership, so there is a possibility that she might become a critic of the Coalition from the left.

Watch this space.

Reshuffle blues after Gove stays in post

The news that Michael Gove has retained his job  is very disappointing for educationalists after summer rumours that he may may have been moved in the reshuffle. Despite the debacle with free schools, GCSEs, and ill-thought out back of the envelope initiatives, he is admired by the Conservative Right and deemed, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  a success. He is now free to carry on wreaking havoc on the education system and damaging the life chances of young people.

The removal of Lansley points to the success of campaign on the NHS and we urgently need a similar campaign on education uniting trades unions, teachers, parents and school students in defence of a fair, fully funded and democratically accountable school system.

The new leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett, commented on the reshuffle today:

There's much excitement in the media now about the reshuffle, but the fact is that nothing significant is changing. George Osborne, the man who is clinging to the utterly discredited 'Plan A' of ideologically driven spending cuts, which are damaging the British economy and causing suffering and disruption in communities across the UK, is still in place. (That's despite the fact that even the IMF is saying this is the wrong direction.)

There's no sign of a government U-turn towards the investment that we urgently need to create jobs and provide the homes, public transport and sustainable energy infrastructure necessary to meet community needs and build a Britain fit for the low-carbon future.

And with Iain Duncan Smith remaining as Work and Pensions Secretary, there's no sign of any response to the strong, angry protests against the inhumanity of the benefit cuts, which threaten to make huge numbers homeless, drive families far from the support of friends, relatives and familiar schools, and which are causing great fear and ditressed among people with disabilities.

There are also individual moves that are cause for concern. The shifting of Justine Greening out of transport, after only 326 days in the job, makes Andrew McLoughlin Cameron's fifth transport minister, which can be taken as a sign of the government's inability to make sensible policy in this area.

It is a bad sign that a third runway at Heathrow is indeed back on the government's agenda, as reports have been suggesting. The aviation industry depends on huge public subsidies. The government seems happy to keep spending public money on increasing CO2 emissions in an industry that's slanted towards serving the wealthy(1), while making the lives of millions a misery through noise and air pollution.

The movement of Jeremy Hunt into Health is also cause for concern - both in its indication of the contiuing influence of the Murdoch empire on the Coalition, and also for the fact that he's a man who has a record of being anti-abortion.

Crackdown on defiant dog walkers

The Barnhill Safer Neighbourhood team are making a crackdown on 'professional' dog walkers who defy Dog Control Orders, a priority for this quarter. The orders stipulate a limit of 6 dogs per person but individuals have been seen with up to 15 dogs. At a going rate of £10 per hour for each dog this is clearly a lucrative business.

Complaints have come from ordinary members of the public, who walk their own one or two companion animals.and  who fear that the 'professionals' defiance will lead to a general clampdown on dog walking in Fryent Country Park.

The issue has been raised on this blog LINK   a week ago and complaints have been made by Barn Hill Residents Association. Barnhill ward councillors Michael Pavey and Shafique Choudhary have backed calls for action.


Some dog walkers have tried to get around the restrictions by bringing friends along to walk with them and thereby doubling the number of dogs to 12.  I hope that in the review of the orders due to take place in November that they could be revised so that the number of dogs being walked together as one 'pack' should never exceed 6 - 4 would be even better,