Fulham fans heartbroken at seeing their team lose the Europa League Final suffered more misery when their flights home were delayed by hours.

After watching the west London side lose 2-1 to Atlético Madrid in extra time, the football supporters faced a race against the clock to get to work today after being stranded overnight in Hamburg where the match was held.

The influx of 25,000 passengers left the airport unable to cope, with complaints of insufficient staff. However the airport blamed the delays on drunk fans who had lost their boarding cards.

London Assembly member Murad Qureshi’s Alitalia flight took off at 5.30am as he raced to get back to City Hall for its annual meeting.

Mr Qureshi said: “Everything was fine until we got through security. It seemed there was no one in charge, even the flight crews couldn’t get on the planes.

“There were problems getting people to the planes, then no steps for passengers to board the aircraft, and none of the staff seemed to know what was happening.” Airlines including easyJet, Jet2 and bmi were meant to leave from midnight bound for Gatwick, Luton and other destinations.

But the final Fulham fans departed at 9am local time. Dawn Dunlop told the BBC: “They decided to bus us out to the plane — 300 people were taken out, but there were only 150 seats. The whole thing has been a complete disaster.” Madrid supporters also had to endure long waits for flights home.

Dozens of extra flights to and from the UK and Spain were laid on for last night’s showpiece final. But logistical problems in the host city were compounded by the volcanic ash cloud and an earlier closed runway. Spokeswoman for Hamburg airport Stefanie Harder said: “We are a normal-sized international airport with about 200 departures and arrivals per day — yesterday we had double that amount. We prepared for the situation but it’s not possible to get 25,000 people on planes at once.”

Earlier in the evening, Hugh Grant and Lily Allen had been among the Fulham followers to watch manager Roy Hodgson’s team just miss out on the trophy.

The lib-Con coalition is a public school boy political fix, so lets stop pretending its been done for the good of the country.

The Tory swing was only 2 per cent in London on average across all parliamentary seats and is some places much less then that. In Westminster North, it was only a 1/2 per cent swing. This after the Tory PPC, Joanne Cash campaign is reckoned to have spent some £ 400,000, with Karen Buck winning the seat with around about  2,000 majority. Spending £400,000 for a 1/2 per cent swing does not seem much value for money to me, and a similiar story can also be told in Hammersmith where Andy Slaughter won by almost 3, 500 votes.

The higher turn out through out London helped Labour gain control of 17 local authorites and squezzed the Greens in lewisham & Camden; Respect in Tower Hamlets; crush the BNP in Barking & Dagenham and the Liberal Democrats in places like Southwark and Islington.

The next schedule elections in London are the GLA ones, both Mayoral and London Assembly in May 2012, and unless we have a general election called earlier, I can safely say, the Liberal Democrats vote will be squezzed very hard. As my family lawyer said to me, l didn’t vote Liberal Democrat to let the Tories into power.

I am old enough to remember the grim feeling I had on the way to school when Paddington in the new seat of Westminster North fell to the Tories in 1979. Arthur Latham narrowly lost to John Wheeler, who joined a Thatcher government which, through its new-right ideology, would spend the next 18 years privatising industries, starving public services and presiding over record unemployment.

Wheeler’s winning margin was almost the same as the number votes cast for the Workers Revlolutionary Party (WRP) – showing how, in very tight elections, small parties can determine the outcome at constituency level and, in this case, unwittingly contribute to huge political change.

Today in Westminster North the contest is between our incumbent Labour MP – the hardworking and dedicated grassroots community champion, Karen Buck, and Tory Joanne Cash, wife of Cameron’s millionaire Eton chum Octavius Black.

But just as it was 1979, I have a deep sense of foreboding about what the Conservatives have planned for the country should they win on 6^th May. 

The “nasty” party’s presentation skills have definitely improved. But while the language is softer, the substance of what has all the echoes of the Thatcherite era.

George Osborne relishing the prospect of massive cuts to public services. Chris Grayling’s anti-gay bigotry showing just how far we could regress on equality issues. David Cameron’s gaffe on China when he expressed sentiments not dissimilar to those that Thatcher had against the Hong Kong Chinese. And the out of touch “born to rule” attitude of old Etonians like Boris and Cameron is there for all to see.

While they try to hide it by fielding figures such as Eric Pickles and William Hague to the media, the Tory front bench is packed full of privately-educated, amazingly privileged individuals.

Far from being the party of change, Cameron’s Conservatives actually represent a return to the worst Thatcherite excesses of the 1980s. Labour’s national campaign needs to emphasise this: we have been here before. 

From the presidential, X-factor-like national campaign to the local, smaller parties could again have a disproportionate effect on the outcome in Westminster North where it’s sure to be close. 

The Greens will take votes from Labour on the left. UKIP similarly from the Tory right. But judging by Labour’s success in a recent local by-election local issues could play in the party’s favour.

We achieved an 11 per cent swing thanks to a campaign emphasising what the party was doing locally. And with council elections on the same day as the general election, local issues could again be decisive.

So while the media and chattering classes talk of coalitions and hung parliaments, locally I’ll be out there reminding Labour supporters of the importance of getting out to vote.

I remember how it felt waking up to Thatcher in 1979 and I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure the cloud that was overhead on my walk to school that day doesn’t show up on my way to City Hall on May 7^th.

Published in Tribune on the 30th of April 2010.

I feel it can usefully be added to morris dancing around the May pole here in the UK, particularly in London. It can usefully add to our celebration of cultures around the world, particularly in highlighting the way different parts of the world celebrate St George’s day.

It is now almost two years since the British National Party scraped over the 5% hurdle and won a seat on the London Assembly, so this is an appropriate point to examine the BNP’s political record at City Hall.

Over that period the role of the party’s London Assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, has been exactly what you would expect from a representative of the BNP. One of his first contributions to Mayor’s Question Time was to demand a ban on the Notting Hill Carnival. On whatever subject he has intervened at MQT, Barnbrook has invariably reduced the issue to the BNP’s obsession with race and immigration.

 By way of variety, at last month’s MQT he treated us to an exposition of his party’s line that human activity is not the primary cause of global warming – despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. But then the BNP spent many years rejecting the equally incontrovertible evidence concerning the Nazi genocide against the Jews. From Holocaust denial they have now moved on to climate change denial.

Eighteen months ago I wrote that Barnbrook’s rambling and incoherent interventions at MQT had reduced him to an object of ridicule, which led to the first of three complaints by Barnbrook against myself to the GLA Standards Committee. They were all rejected, along with another complaint against my colleague John Biggs, who had referred to Barnbrook’s Nazi politics. The decision was reported by Searchlight under the heading “Rambling, incoherent and Nazi to boot”!

 A central feature of Nick Griffin’s rebranding of the BNP has been an attempt to publicly dissociate the BNP from its Nazi-sympathising past. This has been seriously undermined by the discovery that veteran far-right activist Tess Culnane is working in Barnbrook’s office. Culnane was forced out of the BNP for several years because of her insistence on speaking at meetings of the British People’s Party, which advertises busts of Hitler on its website at £15 a pop.

As for Barnbrook, it would appear that Griffin has finally lost patience with him, and he may well step down from the Assembly next month, to be replaced by Bob Bailey, currently BNP leader on Barking and Dagenham Council. Unlike Barnbrook, Bailey does possess the ability to string two meaningful sentences together. But he suffers from a severe anger management problem and an inclination to shoot his mouth off – for example in his recent disgusting outburst against Nigerian churches at a council planning committee meeting.

Some people argue that it is a mistake to give publicity to the BNP, but in my opinion the more widely the party’s role on the London Assembly and borough councils is publicised the better. Now we have to make sure that we throw the BNP out of their local government base in Barking and Dagenham on the 6th of May by showing voters what you really get when they attain public office.

Published in Tribune on the 2nd of April, 2010.

I welcome the proposed Arcelor Mittal Tower in the Olympic Park, which the Mayor announced to the world yesterday, and feel it will be a great draw during and after the Games themselves in 2012. However, while issues of the cost and planning were dealt with at the launch’s question and answer session yesterday, l went away not quite sure who will end up owning the Tower.

If the number of Chinese visitors to the Bird’s Nest in Beijing is anything to go by, then we can expect thousands of people daily visiting the Mittal Tower, drawn by the prospect of seeing the Olympic Park and beyond from its vantage point at the top. l am sure an attraction like this, priced in the right way, will generate a more than steady income to cover the management and maintenance costs. As it appears that most of the cost of erecting the tower will be underwritten by Mr Mittal’s generosity, we won’t have huge loans to service.

Mr Mittal will get his tower and name in the London skyline for perpetuity. So hopefully he will agree to hand ownership over to a body that will use the income from the tower to subsidise other activities and events on the Olympic site that aren’t necessarily going to attract quite so many visitors and ensure that they are kept going long after the Olympic Games bandwagon has left town.

The Mayor’s Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy is yet another half-hearted attempt, according to Labour’s Assembly spokesperson on the environment.

Murad Qureshi said: "This draft is a half-baked attempt by Boris to address another important environmental matter – probably the most important of them all – that of Climate Change – and yet here again the Mayor’s plans are lacking in detail, ambition or leadership and as usual his plans rely on Government to sort out the problem for him.

"The so-called strategy lacks some vital building blocks – he doesn’t even set annual targets, which are essential to measure and end ensure progress happens in future years. Nor do we see him putting any pressure on London’s local authorities to make any real effort on climate change, although some London boroughs have some of the highest CO2 emitters per household in the country ."

Murad added: "Worryingly, his whole strategy heavily reliant on Government activity nationally rather than focusing on what he can do more locally in London, and there is plenty he could be doing, if only he had the political will.

"As for energy, Boris doesn’t seem to have grasped the huge potential that combined heat and power systems offer, not in he making the most of the Government’s feed-in tariffs for local communities to supply themselves and the national grid."

Notes

Murad Qureshi is a Londonwide Labour Assembly Member and is the Assembly’s Labour Group Environment spokesperson.

Details of the Mayor’s Draft Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy can be found here:
http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/environment/climate-change/climate-change-mitigation-strategy

An investigation into expansion plans at City Airport has been launched by the London Assembly’s environment committee.

The study is expected to see staff from the Docklands airport and Newham Council asked to appear at City Hall.

The committee’s chairman Murad Qureshi said the focus of the investigation would be the consultation process over Newham’s decision to approve expansion, as well as the effects more flights would have on noise and air quality.

The Labour London Assembly member said: "We have no legislative powers but we have got the power to focus on issues important to Londoners.

"Redbridge, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets have passed motions in protest about the expansion. People are saying there wasn’t a proper consultation and this will be looked into."

Mr Qureshi said the consultation on expansion, which has also seen a campaign group launch a judicial review into Newham Council’s process, was the key issue.

He said: "In the long run everything about this is strategic. A building site can affect those around it, but aircraft usually affect the whole area.

"The report will look at what happened in a strategic way, which I don’t think was done right by Newham Council. If it was, the council would have sought more views from neighbouring boroughs." read more

In light of the House of Commons Environment Audit Committee’s report on air pollution in the UK and in particular London, Murad Qureshi AM believes London is now the bad boy of air quality in Europe.  He has regularly stated how little the Mayor has done to improve London’s air quality and now points out how the government’s national vehicle scrappage scheme has helped London.
 
Murad said:  "Our air quality is giving London a bad name in Europe and now the Environment Audit Committee’s report confirms that we have become the bad boy of air pollution in Europe.  Boris doesn’t like to acknowledge it but the Government’s national measures, such as the scrappage scheme, are making a difference to London’s air quality.  Given that the scheme has helped take 30,000 old bangers off the roads, including black cabs and small vans, an extension of the scheme would be useful."

Much of London’s pollution comes from older private vehicles, over which the Mayor says he has no control, but by helping van owners, cabbies and others who need to drive into central London for their work to renew their old vehicle for a new, cleaner vehicle he could make a real improvement to health and quality of life in the capital.   30,000 of London’s vehicles have been renewed under the national vehicle scrappage scheme, 225 of these are black cabs.

Murad added: "New vehicles are much cleaner than ones that are even a decade old and central London is where we have the worst air quality problems in the country, so it would make sense to target vehicles where we can have the biggest impact."

Notes

Murad Qureshi is a Londonwide Labour Assembly Member and is the Assembly’s Labour Group Environment spokesperson.

Details of the Environment Audit Committee’s report can be found here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmenvaud/229/229i.pdf

Details of the national vehicle scrappage scheme can be found here:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/Policies/business-sectors/automotive/vehicle-scrappage-scheme

Details of the EU announcement on London’s air quality can be found at:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1908&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en