Latest dirt on Brent Central PPCs

Keen as I am to ensure I vote for the best candidate at the forthcoming election, I'm going to be keeping tabs on my local candidates.

Dawn Butler - Labour
LibDem Voice presents has a quote from the Evening Standard and a neat round-up of her misdeeds

Ms Butler has claimed £66,304 since being elected in 2005 for her constituency home in Wembley – despite having another property in Stratford. When the Standard challenged Ms Butler (left) on this by knocking on the door of her (publicly-funded) constituency home, she told our reporter: “I totally resent you coming to my private home. Have some respect. How dare you.”

Of course Dawn Butler is no stranger to The Voice, what with the unfortunate incident of forgetting who your local MP is, the disappearing statement, questions over Dawn Butler’s attendance record in Parliament, not to mention Dawn Butler’s highly unusual approach to local newspapers, as demonstrated more than once.

Sachin Rajput - Conservative
Local blog Not The Barnet Times goes through Barnet Councillor's expenses and find Sachin to be troughing somewhat:

Additionally, Sachin Rajput claimed £686.25 for office furniture & equipment, making him the second most expensive councillor (excluding allowances) in the London Borough of Barnet with a total expense claim of £1,671.55 - just a fraction behind Mike Freer’s £1,687.74.

This doesn't bode well.

Sarah Teather - LibDems
Councillor James Powney of Kensal Green reckons she represents the LibDem's hypocrisy

...the hypocrisy of Sarah Teather and the Liberal Democrats. They play to the Left when they want votes in Brent because most of the southern part of the Borough is naturally Labour leaning. But when they get into power they put a Conservative like Bob Blackman in charge of finances, and he then uses the position to do things like bankrupt people for very small amounts of Council Tax arrears, which the Liberal Democrats publicly claim to oppose.

His opinion's a bit to party political for my tastes.

Shahrar Ali - Green
No dirt as such to dish on this chap, but he does seem to enjoy being part of baying mobs, is that a crime?

It would be neat to see where these people stand on the Political Compass, don't you think?

Brent Central PPCs

Right, so the election's in six or seven weeks, I think I live in Brent Central, my candidates will be:-

Dawn Butler - Labour - current MP for Brent Souths - she has one house in Stratford and one in Wembley, they're about equidistant from Westminister, so of course, we pay for the expensive one.

Sarah Teather - LibDems - Current MP for Brent East - Ended upon The Telegraph's Saints list in the expenses scandal

Sachin Rajput - Conservative - Brent Council's Cabinet Member for Adults since December 2009

Shahrar Ali - Green - Wrote the "Why Vote Green" book for Biteback

No sign of a UKIP PPC yet or other parties.

I think I'll wait for other candidates to come forward before I make any kind of decision.

Londoners want more CCTV?

My wikio ranking has slipped below the 2000 mark, my blog is dreary and irrelevant, irregularly updated and broadly depressing. Maybe it accurately echos my life. Anyhoo, I strive...

The Willesden and Brent Times has an article about how councillors want a shurbbery, and are spending thousands of pounds on such things:-

COUNCILLORS are splashing out thousands of pounds on flowers and plants while snubbing calls for an outdoor play area for the borough's children, it has been claimed.

Furious people living in the Preston ward have slammed Cllr Bob Blackman, Cllr Alan Mendoza and Cllr Harshadbhai Patel, alleging the trio have allocated their neighbourhood working funds on greenery instead of listening to their views.

...

Mr Soon is enraged that while children living in flats on Hirst Crescent Estate, in North Wembley, are banned from playing on the grass outside their home, the councillors are spending £7,000 on shrubbery.

Have I mislead you in the title of this blogpost?

No

Cllr Mendoza went back to residents to explain what we are doing and why.

"We want to create the village-type atmosphere that is in other parts of the ward, which includes tidying up our roundabouts that have been neglected for many years.

"In addition to that, we are putting together a football league for youths and installing CCTV as suggested by residents.

London already has too many CCTV cameras, more per head than any other city in the world, and how's the city's crime rate, about the same as everywhere else. What on earth gives any resident the idea that more CCTV is a good thing? And how come these councillors show such poor judgement in paying any attention to such a suggestion.

Do I even get to vote for these people?

Brent Council FOI - FAIL

Here's an interesting thing, I was ploughing through WhatDoTheyKnow.com, looking for something interesting to write about, and found it.

Brent Council are refusing to send replies to FOI requests to the whatdotheyknow.com website. A chap called Michael Bimmlermmer sent them a Freedom of Information request about it.

I have read about your new policy of not sending replies to FOI requests to the whatdotheyknow.com website.

I would like to request access to all internal records concerning this policy change, including but not limited to internal emails, memoranda, letters and notes as well as records of meetings. Moreover I should like a copy of the formal decision of the policy change or if such does not exist, the announcement distributed about it to staff.

I am also grateful for answers to the following questions (which you may or may not decide to treat as business-as-usual instead of FOI requests)

1. Who made the final decision on this policy change? (Name and/or Job title)
2. Who was consulted beforehand?
3. Was legal advice requested?
4. Was the ICO contacted and if yes, what was their reply?

Whilst they don't answer any of the questions put, they do explain why, they're claiming republishing FOIs online may infringe copyright:-

However, whilst we may send the formal notification of the decision to the email address you have provided we will not send the information requested to that address. This is because we are aware that doing so will automatically result in the information being published on the whatdotheyknow website. Publication of information in this way may constitute an unauthorised re-use (under the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005) and may infringe copyright. I would therefore be grateful if you will provide me with an alternative disclosure address.

This can be a postal address, fax number or an email address, as long as it does not result in automatic publication and re-use.

It seems a bit rum, and Brent Council are refusing dozens of other FOI requests, here, here, here etc

Shoes

I'm standing in a shoe shop in Brent Cross, rather than judging whether shoes look nice, the first, second and third criteria has have before picking up a pair of shoes to look at are:-

• Price
• Requirement
• Comfort

Prices start at around £60 up to £80, even the ones on sale were £40. So far, all out of my price range.

I am unemployed, I survive off of £60 JSA a week, and Housing Benefit which doesn't quite cover rent, so every week my credit card stacks up a wee bit and I keep telling myself that I'll be able to pay it off one day in the future when I have a job.

So to buy any of these shoes, my lifestyle would have to change for a week.

I'd survive on eating just pasta or rice with a sprinkling of herbs. Instead of spending my mornings in Borders avoiding a parking ticket, I'd sit in my car knitting. No gigs, no journeys on the underground, no cinema, no going out for dinner. And all for a pair shoes surplus to requirements.

Christ, I wish I had a job, then a pair of shoes would be something I could save up for rather then something to hold my breath for.

I wish I had a job.

This lifestyle sucks.

When will it all end?

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Again

Went jogging last night, after work, round Regent's Park. The flatmate's on a fitness trip, and its funny to outpace her, so if she asks I say yeah sure, and get my shorts on.

It was the third or fourth time in the last week that I've done the jogging thing so I guess I'm back in the tracksuit. Think, think, think...

1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006... countless times I've done the fitness thing, going to the gym almost daily, charting my weight change and stamina change, usually during times of acute loneliness and it doesn't help, it doesn't help in the slightest. I run and I run, I push the edge of the curve, then I stagger home on my own, and wonder what the fuck is the point.

I was in the Oh Bar in Camden at the weekend, early afternoon, on my own, about three people in the place, slowly nodding off on a couch. The barmaid was chatting to the other bar guy and said something like "You don't look for love, you find it". It sounds good, but doesn't parse logically.

Anyhoo, I'm not going to find love running round fucking Regent's Park.

Fire

Good morning Glasgow.

Here in Brent its all go go go. Weather's overcast, misjudging how warm it is in the office and so, its a bit chilly now.

Looking forward to The Jingle Jangle Country night in town tonight, but not sure if I'm going with anyone or who'll be there, actually, on reflection I might go for ten minutes, sup a pint, get scared and go home. Such is life.

Saturday brings some relaxing cake making during the day, possibly a hangover earlier on, and then in the evening its HDIF at The Phoenix, which is always alark, Adam Smith should be in attendance and crazy Holly too.

Just need to survive today, and stop feeling so awkward talking to people outside of work.

Failed attempt at being.

Its mostly guilt that brings me to Barden's Boudoir tonight. Sure I could claim to be a big fan of Arthur and Martha, but that would be doing a great disservice to Sharon from The Gresham Flyers who spent the best part of an hour working on me last weekend.

Since I've known half the people in the room for half a decade, but save the merest glimmer of recognition from the girl on the door, it counts for nothing. What I get, I have to get myself, like my damned fool plan to have one of the most popular political blogs in the UK, on a whim, because I can.

My car's parked just down the way, this is my first time in Stoke Newington, well, the first conscious time. A mob of locals came yahooing down the street as I locked my car, I swear one was packing heat. I'm only quite sure I'm not some kind of split personality serial killer, avenging some half-imagined crimes of the past, but sometimes I wake up in strange placed covered in blood that isn't my own.

Arthur and Martha on stage, halfway through AutoVia, my favourite song of their's, alas it the final song of the set. 'Arthur' seemed to be rocking out a little more than usual.

Summer festival appearances should be good.

I don't know if I was actively trying, maybe it was just going through the motions, I stood at the front, as near to the speakers as possible without people thinking 'he's standing as close to the speakers as possible', but I didn't hear any of the second band, save the blistering shards of an epic guitar solo and people clapping. Instead, I was in another place.

It was like in geography class or some MRPII meeting, slipping out of consciousness. Faces of girls I'd loved and any tenuous connection they had with the band before me. Memories of seeing them there or photos of the scene, glimpses like from a passing car, from too far away or the wrong side of the room. The stabbing shards of seperation, of missing something very important, of helplessness, of fate and damned bad luck.

Even in my slipping out of lucidity, I knew something was wrong and sought to guide my stream elsewhere to Manchester and Bolton and married life, anything away from the hell I occupied.

But it didn't quite work, the stabbing shafts of reality and it all comes back to east London cutting through. The here and now, crushing on what once was, or what I remember of it.

Even the reaffirming terrible truth that what I remember isn't the same as what actually happened.

The memories are wrong, incorrect, I know that for certain. But they are still the memories in my head, crystal clear, as though it was yesterday, last week, last year or a decade ago. The memories, soured by the truth.

Where the hell are the toilets in here?

I think I saw Das Wanderlust at Indietracks, but I can't for the life of me remember what they sounded like, and it would be unfair to judge them on tonight's performance considering it was mostly "imagine that last song sounded great" on the grounds that the singing girl had lost her voice, and the one song where DJ Waz played the 7" and the mimed along.

There were people behind me who wouldn't stop talking.

If asked what did I think of the evening, in an imaginary conversation with some vague acquaintance who happened to ask, I think in order to improve my quality of life I should have gone to the My Sad Captains single launch instead. I can barely control what goes on in my head, providing rope to hang myself was never going to be good and a better tunes would have been nicer.

Maybe that's unfair.

I think I've made many bad life decisions. I can't quite pin-point any of them, where or when.

Except climbing out of an eleventh floor window in 1997 and deciding to climb back in.


The oddest thing, after the bands I slouched out of the venue to scribble notes in my car, and as I drove away, I wanted to kill myself even more.

David Brent

My car was being serviced so I wander for a few hours round Brent. The bushes are heavy with raspberries. Some predatorial bird stood in my path hacking away at a mouse caught for lunch.

There's a big expanse of water here, the edges are covered with a thick green scum, I shall name it Scum Loch.

Shags dive, pigeons saw, fish rise, leaping briefly out of the water. It smells rotten, Someone has left coconuts.

I hunger.

Time passes and I arrive at the other side of Scum Loch, armed with a carton of cranberry juice and a packet of sour gobstoppers.

Wildlife is all around me, I think I'm being stalked by water rats or otters, duck type birds squawk unseen, scum bubbles methane, in the distance my car is serviced.

A small clearing off the man path, conker trees stand tall overhead, ancient matresses lie rotting in the undergrowth and I'm thinking about doing rude things to girls.

How many generations of kids have played here on their bikes?

Some trees appear broken, not just branches, but whole trunks torn assunder. Do giants walk in these regions?

Parkland populated by seagulls, dog walkers and litter picker uppers. I feel like I'm in Doctor Who's England.

Wembley's arch looming on the horizon, a burnt out motorbike in the trees, a small pair of knickers too close to the water's edge.

Why does my car take so long? Isn't it just an oil check and a brake check?

McDonalds for dinner, the Wembley arch still looming sinisterly behind some trees. The Big BBQ burger is nothing special, I wish I hadn't bothered.