Nightmare on King Street (Part 13)

Regular readers of this blog will know that H&F Tories are hypocrites. They protested at the government’s proposed closure of the borough’s accident and emergency departments. Then, last night, they voted to close them. This follows from Cllr Peter “Tory Boy” Graham’s attack on the council’s Labour group earlier this month. It didn’t take him long to do a complete volte face…well, it’s in the Tory DNA.

Here’s what Graham said on the local Tory blog,

Tonight, we have seen exactly what happens when you try to work with the Opposition: they throw it back in your face.

The one time we have a cross-party campaign, they try to yoke it to other issues and make it political.

It’s not as though we’ve failed to do our bit.

For the sake of my hospital, I climbed onto a platform bedecked in GMB flags; in front of a hundred Socialist Worker placards; in the company of Labour MPs, Christine Blower and the Middle Eastern Workers’ Solidarity Network. There they all were, arrayed with Andrew Slaughter to the left of the stage, while, as solitary representatives on the right, it was just me… and Cllr Cowan.

Here, Graham, attempts to take the moral high ground by getting in a thinly-veiled swipe at some of his favourite hate-figures. He desperately wants to become an MP. No question about it. He’s Greg Hands’s Commons researcher and H&F is where they prepare the most right-wing of politicians for the Best Club in Town. It’s his destiny and no doubt he thinks it’s his birthright too.

Only the Opposition could confuse a hospital, where doctors and nurses deal with emergencies, and a police station, where officers don’t.

There’s a clear difference: our hospitals are busy and their doors need to stay open if patients are to be treated; but with one visitor an hour, a bored desk officer could arrest himself for wasting police time.

He’s actually accusing the opposition of being stupid, but emergency services are being slashed and all this twerp can do is try and claim it’s all the opposition’s fault. But where does he get this feeble idea that the Labour group confused a police station for a hospital?

You will recall that former [Dear] Leader of the Council – now Deputy Mayor for Policing – Stephen Greenhalgh, wants to close police stations across London and replace them with a counter at the back of your local supermarket. Only recently Cllr Greg Smith unveiled a CCTV unit for the borough, which he claimed wouldn’t replace the numbers of officers on the beat. Policing is bad enough in the borough: 2 years ago I was burgled and not a single officer came out to see me. They told me to look on Ebay for my stolen property – seriously. Presumably this lot and their chums at Westminster would sign over our hospitals to Tesco if they could. Not content with shutting police stations, the Tory group is now in favour – after telling us they were opposed – of shutting down the A&E departments at the borough’s two hospitals.

But I have a second reason to be disappointed with the Opposition motion, particularly as I thought they’d understood the scale of the threat to Charing Cross.

What are you trying to say, Councillor?

Their motion just talks about the closure of the A&E, when the NHS wants to close the entire hospital.

This Graham fella’s nothing but a cheap pedant to be honest. Now we risk having no A&E services in the borough. If you need emergency care, you’ll have to schlepp over to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital or the West Middlesex Hospital… or is that closing too?

Here’s where he starts trying to extract political capital.

To listen to them, you would never know that the NHS budget is going up each year. You’d never know that it’s going up locally. And you’d certainly never know that official Labour Party policy, confirmed again and again by Andy Burnham, is to cut it.

Cut it – not increase it, or match the Government’s increases – but cut it.

Nor would you know that the Shaping a Healthier Future programme isn’t some nasty imposition of Andrew Lansley, genial as he is, but is part of the Nicholson Challenge, which was announced in 2009 under their government and featured in the Labour Party manifesto.

Then he snaps back into the default position of “it was the last Labour government”. But whatever those Blairite filth did while in power, is now being made 10 times worse by an incompetent and generally stupid government.

Madam Mayor, they can emote all they like, but their stance is the worst, shameless, knee-jerk, intellectually bankrupt, immature, hypocritical, self-indulgent examples of posturing I can recall.

That’s rich coming from a ruling party that first, campaigned against closures, then more or less voted in favour of them. As they used to say at the end of the 70s sitcom Soap, “Confused? You will be”! As for being “intellectually bankrupt”, I think I’ve proven that most, if not all, Tories suffer from this affliction. Immaturity seems to come naturally to them too.

We are not interested in posturing.

Au contraire, Tory Boy, your party colleagues are very much interested in posturing…and slashing… and cutting… and attacking the poor.

You mark my words, Graham will be selected for a nice safe seat in the Shires. It’s on the cards. Then, he’ll have to compete with Jacob Rees-Mogg for the title of the silliest toff in the Commons.

Nightmare on King Street (Part 12)

Yesterday, as I was looking at my Twitter timeline, I saw this tweet from H&F Council’s propaganda department,

So I followed the link to this article on the Council’s website. I will quote the first two paragraphs,

A judge has thrown out a legal challenge that threatened £1billion worth of community benefits to North Fulham and Earls Court, describing it as ‘absurd’.

West Kensington Estate resident Harold Greatwood, applied to court to launch a judicial review of Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council’s decision to enter into a Conditional Land Sale Agreement with EC Properties to include the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates in the wider regeneration of Earls Court.

Gloating? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

Finding that the challenge to the Council’s consultation was “not reasonably arguable”, Mr Justice Mitting said: “The analysis of the consultation responses put to cabinet on 23 April 2012 and 3 September 2012 was balanced and fair. The suggestion that the results of the consultation were hidden is unwarranted”. He went on to say that “The time for the consultation - nine weeks – was adequate” and that “The suggestion that because the defendant did not address the consultation documents to tenants by name or to the ‘tenant’, the process was flawed, is absurd.”

Justice? Justice only exists for those who can afford to pay for it. As for justice being “blind”, that’s another myth. Judges are ideological too. I suspect the Council has a dedicated legal team whose job is to deal with this and other property and land deals.

I saw another tweet on H&F Council’s Twitter timeline.

This isn’t riding roughshod over the majority of the tenant’s wishes, it’s getting into a steamroller, putting a brick onto the accelerator pedal and running over the tenants again and again. I clicked on the link.

There’s a quote from Council Leader, Nicholas Botterill.

Cllr Nicholas Botterill, Leader of H&F Council, said: “We believe that the residents living on the estates have negotiated the best deal of any regeneration scheme in the country. They will only have to move when their new home is ready to be occupied. That new home will be the same area as they are already living in. People will be compensated and we will keep support groups and neighbours together.

Whoa! Hang on! Botterill says, “The residents living on the estates have negotiated the best deal of any regeneration scheme in the country”. Which “residents” are these? Not the residents who oppose this development and he can only mean the astroturf group of residents that was set up by the Council to give the impression of a consensus for the redevelopment project. It’s an old PR con trick that Edward Bernays would have admired.

Here’s some more,

“Residents, their current and future children will be living in an even better, safer neighbourhood environment with access to new leisure and community facilities. Most of all local people will benefit from the thousands of new job opportunities that will be created”.

“Local people”, says Botterill. Most of those “local people” will be forced out of their homes to make way for the affluent and those who will take, at face value, the words of the developer and the vendors who will sell shoebox properties that have a luxury price tag on them.

At the end of the article, which was quite possibly written by the Council’s propaganda minister, Harry Phibbs, it asks,

What happens next?

• Hammersmith & Fulham Council will make an application to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government  for consent for the transfer of the estates to EC Properties. This is likely to be considered in March.
• When the Section 106 agreement with the developer is firmed up, the Planning Authority will refer the planning application to the Mayor of London, while the Secretary of State also has the discretion to call it in.

The Secretary of State, the immensely rotund Eric Pickles, is already on board and so is Emperor Bozza. It looks like a done deal… or is it? The Council, in its arrogance, believes that it can do no wrong. We’ll see.

The former Council Leader, Stephen Greenhalgh, is facing a criminal investigation over the alleged “VIP list” where tenants who signed up to support the redevelopment were promised preferential treatment. If this investigation goes ahead, I expect other councillors and council officials to face charges. For all the Council’s gloating, the VIP list could come back to bite them. The Council and Greenhalgh deny any wrongdoing.

Funnily enough, when I click on any link on the pages I’ve linked to, I get the following message,

http://www.lbhf.gov.uk is unavailable or may not exist.

Amusing. No?

Nightmare on King Street (Part 11)

Bozza doesn’t have much luck with his Deputy Mayors. Almost as soon as they are installed, they face controversy and are dismissed. Ray Lewis, much to everyone’s dismay, has been brought back into service like a clapped out old train that’s been given a quick lick of paint. An error of judgement on the mayor’s part? Most certainly.

Since he became Deputy Mayor for Policing, Stephen Greenhalgh, the former Dear Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham, has been involved in scandal after scandal. First, he arrogantly refused to deal with Assembly Member’s questions, then he was accused of “inappropriate behaviour” in a City Hall lift. Yesterday, The Guardian’s Dave Hill reported that he could face criminal charges over his involvement in the Earls Court/West Kensington redevelopment – and I don’t think I’m being too dramatic when I use this word – scandal.

Hill writes,

A complaint that Boris Johnson‘s deputy mayor for policing and crime, Stephen Greenhalgh, may have engaged in criminal conduct while he was leader of the Conservative flagship council of Hammersmith and Fulham has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The Greater London Authority’s monitoring officer, who is responsible for ensuring that the GLA, its members and officers comply with the law, informed the complainant on Monday that under regulations applying to elected local policing bodies his complaint:

“falls with the statutory definition of a “serious complaint”: a qualifying complaint made about conduct which constitutes or involves, or appears to constitute or involve, the commission of a criminal offence. As a consequence…I am obliged, today, to refer your complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission”

The complaint relates to Greenhalgh’s close involvement when Hammersmith and Fulham leader with the proposed redevelopment of a vast, 77-acre site in the Earls Court area of inner west London by the property giant Capco.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Last March, the Kwok brothers, who were involved in the massive CapCo project were arrested on corruption charges.

Crime down in LBH&F?

I’m not sure I believe the Council when it says that there are “fewer” crimes in the borough. I suspect the means by which the local police measure their crime statistics is flawed.

Yesterday, Hammersmith’s tube stations had a heavy police presence. There was even a dog handler roaming about, his dog’s nose trying to make the distinction between drug smells and exhaust fumes. It’s the run-up to Christmas, so the cops are at tube stations to nick casual drug users and get some drugs in for their festive celebrations.  Drug users are an easy collar. While they’re hanging around the tube station, someone somewhere in the borough is being robbed.

My storage shed has been burgled twice in the space of two years. On the last occasion, no one from the local police station came out to see me. Instead, they told me to “look on Ebay” for my stolen bikes.  This is what I pay my Council Tax for: so that the police can tell me to do their job for them.

UPDATE: 7/12/12 @ 1338

I’ve just seen YBF member Cllr Greg Smith on BBC London News unveiling a new CCTV control centre.  He told Alice Bhandhukravi that the centre was there to prevent/stop anti-social behaviour. It’s as if this Tory council’s only concern is with drunken louts and not serious crimes, like those that I’ve been a victim of.  Piss poor.

Nightmare on King Street (Part 10): a round up

Things just go from bad to worse for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Their cherished dream of ‘redeveloping’ the West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estates as part of the Earl’s Court regeneration scheme has hit a massive pothole in the road. To add to their misery (Mmm, Schadenfreude, I love it!), the Council’s tax affairs, which have been reported in some detail by both Shepherds Bush blog and The Guardian’s Dave Hill, look set to kick another great big hole in their claim to fiscal responsibility.

Let’s look at Earl’s Court first. It would seem that LBHF has broken the law and tried to sign up tenants to some kind of “VIP list” if they co-operate with the Council’s scheme. We already know that the ruling Tory group, anxious about the huge opposition to its plan, had set up its own astroturf group as a means of claiming that it had complete support for the project. Of course this is a lie and to make matters worse, in January, the director of the pro-demolition group resigned.

Now what about that “VIP List”? Hill tells us,

Last month a document was handed to the Metropolitan Police containing information, which, it said, “substantiates allegations,” that officers of the Conservative flagship West London council of Hammersmith and Fulham promised preferential treatment in the allocation of new council homes to certain residents of two housing estates in the borough in return for their supporting the estates’ demolition as part of controversial proposed redevelopment scheme in the Earls Court area.

The document – entitled The Early Movers List: Homes for Votes? – claims to supply “evidence that may contribute to a police investigation into Misconduct in Public Office, which could lead to criminal charges,” and might additionally lead to civil litigation for a breach of the Housing Act 1996. I understand that Scotland Yard detectives have been making an assessment of the material.

Oops! On 11 October, Shepherds Bush blog tells us that the High Court has ruled against the Council.

And the Judge gives short shrift to our Council’s expensive lawyers who tried to get the application by the residents thrown out on the grounds it was submitted late. He had this to say:

“The defendants and interested parties [Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Developers] argue that the claim was not filed properly and that permission should be refused. I am not persuaded that the claimants [the residents] should be denied permission on this basis.

Last week, the Evening Standard carried this story.

A flagship Tory council faces fines and back taxes of almost £1 million after failing to pay its correct tax bill.

Hammersmith and Fulham admitted a “careless” approach to its finances after telling HM Revenue and Customs 59 cases where it had not taken tax off employees at source, out of a total workforce of 4,800.

The council said it had failed to carry out proper checks on whether people were consultants, who are responsible for their own tax, or staff.

So much for economic literacy, eh? The Tories like to tell us that they’re “good with money” but it seems that they’re anything but. By the way, this expensive blunder happened while the Dear Departed Leader was in charge. He’s now Deputy Mayor for Policing. Yeah, breathtaking, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, the iconic Shepherds Bush Market is under threat. A High Court judged had earlier ruled that what the council’s plans were unlawful. Cllr Stephen Cowan writes,

On Monday night, Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s Conservative Administration met to vote through compulsory purchase orders (CPO) for the shops on the Goldhawk Road. They did this against the wishes of the small retailers who have long run those businesses  - many fearing that this will finish them off.

Incidentally, this is the same Monday night that LBHF Tories voted to end council tenancies for life and deny those with incomes of £40,000 a place on the waiting list. Cowan continues,

I asked the Conservative cabinet members why they had placed hundreds of thousand of pounds of tax payers’ money, their officials’ time and other resources at the disposal of their chosen property speculator. They explained they believed it was necessary to push this deal through.

“Necessary”? What’s the rush? Cowan explains what happened next,

Cllr. Mark Loveday (Con) made a somewhat emotional interjection involving shouting personal insults at my colleagues. In part this was his usual technique to try and stop a line of questioning. But, Cllr. Mark Loveday had been responsible for many of the unhappy deals the Conservative administration has made with big property speculators across the Borough. Regular readers will recall how he enjoyed a £12,000.00 tax payer funded jaunt to the French Riviera where he met many property speculators while hawking the Borough’s “contentious development sites.” He was also exposed as having misled the public about dealings with the same property speculator on another site. So Loveday’s ill-considered personal defensiveness is perhaps understandable.

Personal insults are what today’s crop of Tories use whenever they’re asked to provide explanations. They don’t much care for evidence or questions either. For to question them is to question G*d Himself – or so they like to think. Like many of his cohorts, Loveday is involved in the Young Britons Foundation. Speaking of which, Frank Manning,  YBF’s Campaign Co-ordinator recently wrote a defence of the Council’s decision to scrap tenancies for life on HF Tories blog site. Here’s the last paragraph of his article,

The current system is unsustainable. Houses worth more than £1 million are used as social housing, distorting the market and pushing up rents. In August, Policy Exchange released a very interesting report advocating the sell-off of high value council homes, allowing the government to use the funding to build new affordable homes. As usual, the left used emotive language such as ‘social cleansing’, but the real issue is quite simple. In these difficult economic times, there is only a certain amount of investment available for social housing, and it should be aimed primarily at those most in need and most deserving.

Dissembling. Damned dissembling. It’s a congenital disorder with these Tories.

Back to the Earls Court mess, yesterday the Council’s Chief Executive ordered Deloitte to investigate allegations of a “VIP list”. Shepherds Bush blog again,

More tax payers cash is lining the pockets of accountants as our Council has just responded to the legality of its actions over the West Ken Estate being ruled open to question by a High Court Judge not by simply co-operating with the police or answering the allegations in court, but by instructing Deloitte to investigate things independently.

Stupid question: but do you get the feeling that the Council has something to hide?

Finally, the Lib Dems have become involved. Caroline Pidgeon, the leader of the Lib Dems at City Hall has written to the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, expressing her concern over the way in which the Council has circumvented procedure and corrupted the processes. As I have learned from my own personal experience, the Council is arrogant, makes frequent errors that it refuses to acknowledge and rides roughshod over the wishes of residents.

Nightmare on King Street (Part 9)

Today’s Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle (not available online) reports that LBH&F is about to change the housing rules to end tenancies for life. The paper tells us that this is a “pioneering new policy” that will “increase low-cost home ownership”. How so? Property prices in the borough are some of the highest in London and, according to F&HC, the fourth highest in the country. I have seen mid-terrace properties being advertised for as much as £1m!  In January, I reported that H&F were to build around 25 homes to buy in a disused health centre. How will that make any difference? It won’t. There is a chronic housing shortage in London and indeed the rest of the country. H&F is not immune from this. The Tory ruling group thinks that it is.

The cabinet member for housing, Cllr Andrew Johnson defending the policy said,

“We are saying that the current system, whereby anyone can apply for a council home irrespective of housing need has failed”.

“Irrespective of housing need”? What’s he talking about? People who apply for housing from the council are in need. I’d like to meet these people he’s talking about but I suspect that I never will. He continues,

“We want to give honest, hard-working local residents on low to middle incomes, who make a positive contribution to their local communities, the opportunity to access social housing”

Oh, yeah, the old “honest, hard-working” line again. Now where have I heard that before? In other words, anyone who has to claim benefits to live on a meagre wage isn’t “hard-working” or “honest”? There’s more,

“The old, antiquated system has created disadvantaged communities by producing concentrations of people on benefits with disproportionately high levels of unemployment and sometimes social breakdown”.

“Old” and “antiquated” in the same sentence. That’s a tautology, surely? Johnson’s a sophist but I find his use of those words interesting. It is as if to assume that what this council is doing is progressive or modern. Of course, it is neither. Towards the end of the article, he repeats the old familiar line about those who are “more deserving”. What is also interesting is this idea of giving priority to the Armed Forces. But, hang on, don’t they already have housing?

F&HC also says that this policy is expected be approved at next Monday’s cabinet meeting and has been approved by recently appointed housing minister, Mark Prisk, who…now get this, was once the vice chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students.

The Dear Departed Leader’s dream of a borough for the rich has just come a step closer to reality.

Cyclists: check your road position at junctions!

A Briton may have won the Tour de France for the first time but here in the UK, cyclists continue to risk life and limb on the roads. And for all the support that sport cycling has attracted, the more prosaic matter of ensuring cyclists are safe while riding on the busy streets of our cities continues to be sidelined. It simply isn’t glamorous and while many councils offer free or subsidized cycle training, many don’t promote it very well and some (like Tory-controlled Hammersmith and Fulham) have even cut funding.

So when I read about the serious injury of yet another cyclist on the streets of this borough, I was disgusted but not surprised. The incident took place in Eel Brook Common at the junction of Wandsworth Bridge Road and New Kings Road in Fulham. It seems that the woman’s injury is “life-changing” according to Adam Courtney’s tweet.  I suspect that the phrase “life-changing” is a police euphemism for “she’s had an amputation”.

The accident occurred when a skip lorry turned left and ran over the cyclist. Unfortunately this kind of accident is all too common on London’s streets and is caused largely by bad positioning on the part of the cyclist. Indeed this is how most cyclists die on the road. Even before I became a cycling instructor, I could see that it was dangerous to position myself to the left of a larger vehicle at a junction. In fact, while I’m out riding I often see people trying to squeeze in the narrow gap (often as small as 8 inches) between a lorry and the kerb – usually because there happens to be a cycle lane in the gutter (I may have to write a blog about how bad cycle lanes are). I sometimes shout to them, “Don’t do it! It’s dangerous”! What I usually get, by way of reply, is an inane grin before they scoot off. Yes, these people don’t know how to set their pedals.

If you look carefully, you can see a woman cycling on the left. She doesn’t know it but she’s putting herself in danger.

This latest accident has brought into sharp relief the lack of provision for cyclists in this country. I’m okay; I know how to conduct myself on the road. I behave exactly like a driver would and this is another problem: too many cyclists think of themselves as being separate from the traffic and many don’t think that the Highway Code applies to them. If you cycle on the road, then YOU ARE PART OF THE TRAFFIC! Behaving as though you don’t belong on the road will get you no respect from other road users. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me that “they try not to get in people’s way” while out cycling. This kind of timidity leads to danger. Hiding from other road users is the quickest route to hospital or the grave.

Much of what we teach people is counter-intuitive. For instance, if you want to make a right turn from a major to a minor road, you will have to position yourself in the middle of the road and not to the left hand side. For some people that suggestion seems foolhardy, even dangerous. But the fact of the matter is that motorists don’t set out with the intention of killing cyclists. Motorists and motorcyclists position themselves in the middle of the road for a left turn and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you!

Remember if you get to the stop line before the rest of the traffic, you have every right to take the lane. That is to say, position yourself in the middle of the lane and not to the left. If someone beeps their horn at you, it means they’ve seen you. Don’t panic!

Here is a useful site that tells you where to ride on the road.

Here is another. Safe cycling!

UPDATE: 25/7/12 @ 1458

The full story is here in the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle.

Tobes’ free school gets free publicity courtesy of the BBC

Yesterday evening I was watching BBC London News and couldn’t quite believe what I was watching. The West London Free School, Toby Young’s vanity project in Hammersmith, was given plenty of airtime in what amounted to nothing more than free publicity at the expense of the license payer.

Not only was the segment a bit of free publicity, it also contained some factual inaccuracies.  When the report was first aired at 1325, the reporter said that the school had support from various people but neglected to mention the council. This was put right after I tweeted the BBC to remind them that Hammersmith and Fulham Council supported the project. The reporter also claimed that Young had set up the school to “respond to the shortage of places in the borough [of Hammersmith & Fulham]“. Hon Tobes actually wanted to site his school in Acton in the neighbouring borough of Ealing. When he couldn’t find a suitable location, Tory-controlled Hammersmith and Fulham council duly obliged and gave notice to the 21 or so tenants of Palingswick House.

The West London Free School is being touted as the template for future free schools.  While schools like this will receive funding from central government,  I fear that those schools that are part of the state comprehensive system will see their funding dry up unless they adopt the government’s model.

Here’s what Foghorn Phibbs said about Palingswick House last year.

It is a splendid building what is much better suited as a school rather than as office accommodation to voluntary organisation which is its use at present. Many of the groups do excellent work. For instance I was impressed  by a course the Afghan Council held Portcullis House last month teaching young Afghans about the workings of our Parliament – several of  them bravely plan to work in Afghanistan to use that knowledge to help develop their own Parliament. I am pictured helping the Afghan Ambassador hand out  their certificates.

Really? So why boot them out? He won’t say, instead he tells us that,

[...] alternative office accommodation for these organisations would be more cost effective. Selling the building helps us reduce our debt mountain and thus our interest bill – that leaves us with more money for the voluntary sector than we could otherwise afford.

Excuses, excuses. What the dissembling Phibbs failed to mention was the unsuitability of the new accommodation. He also neglected to mention that his wife/life partner was a councillor and used her influence to smooth the way for Hon Tobe’s school.

Here’s the link to BBC London News. The report is at 09.57. it’s only available for the next 7 hours.

It would appear that Hon Tobes’ ambitions don’t end with the West London Free School, he wants to start a chain of such schools.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council: a personal story (Part2 )

Hammersmith and Fulham Council is right up there with some of the worst local authorities in the country. Its very name is a byword for maladministration, arrogance and incompetence. Even though it claims that it is “transparent”, I have found it to be anything but.

Yesterday, I received a Council Tax Final Notice. It had been sent on 7 June. It demanded that I pay in full by 14 June; the same day that I received the notice. The notice gave a number to call: 020 8753 6681. Yet, as on so many occasions, when I phoned this number, I was greeted by the standard outgoing messages about being in a “queue” and “somebody would answer me shortly”. Well, after hanging on the phone for 15 minutes, I could wait no longer. I had things to do. So I used their “callback service”. I was told that they “would endeavour to return the call within 24 hours”.  As per usual, they returned my call but I was sitting on a deep level tube train. The caller didn’t leave a number and mumbled her message. Mobile phone displays will always say “Unknown Number” if the call came from a large institution. So I assumed it was the council. I phoned the same number and got the same message as before. Again I used the callback facility. That was at 1400 yesterday afternoon and no one has bothered to call me back. In desperation I sent them an email. I am still waiting for a reply.

The Council’s officials are, on the whole, an inept bunch. I had a meeting with one official on Tuesday. I must have asked him 3 times to provide me with a breakdown for an alleged overpayment. He failed to provide me with the requested information. His manner was odd: he seemed nervous and shifty. He avoided eye contact and said very little. I thought he was hiding something. He did, however, admit that “restructuring” of the department had caused problems. But this was the most I could extract from him. There were no apologies. Nothing. It was as if I was dirt beneath his feet.

The attitude of H&F Council towards those who have to use its services is high-handed and arrogant. It behaves in a bullying fashion towards all who come into contact with it. Its administrative systems are chaotic and no one accepts responsibility for mistakes.  Instead, Council officers shift the blame onto those who are trying to get answers. Its telephone “hotlines” are nothing of the sort and it is nigh on impossible to speak to anyone by phone. And even when you manage to speak to someone, they aren’t listening to you.

Living in Hammersmith & Fulham is like living in a real life version of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare to be sure.

Nightmare on King Street (Part 8)

Breathtaking stuff from Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s Chief Executive, Derek Myers, who has thrown his toys out of the pram over the ongoing Earls Court ‘redevelopment’ saga. Myers is also Chief Exec of Tory-controlled Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea (okay, yah?).

Anyway, this is from Shepherds Bush Blog,

An extraordinary letter. I have never seen a Chief Executive of a local authority feel the need to write or send anything like the letter which you can view here, passed to me by the residents campaigning to save their homes from the property developers demolition ball.

Derek Myers, now joint Chief Executive of H&F and overseeing services across the new three borough giant of H&F, K&C and Westminster, took the allegations made by the residents of willful obstruction and bad faith on the part of our Council so seriously that he responded to each and every one in detail, rejecting each.

You may remember the Council sought to restrict access to response forms that had been submitted, even though the personal information had been redacted, on the grounds of “data protection.” Apparently 45 minutes access was enough to “protect data” but any more was not. Perhaps realising this is a bit silly Mr Myers now accepts that the residents can have as long as they like but in the main he absolutely refutes their allegations of bad faith.

The question that Nowhere Towers would like to ask is “does he get a salary from each of the three authorities or does he get an inflation-busting super salary with a sizeable ‘performance-related’ bonus on top”?

There’s also an amusing Twitter exchange between Chris Underwood and Peter ‘Tory Boy’ Graham.

You can read the rest here.