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

It was disappointing that Doug Oakervee wasn’t able to attend the London Assembly’s Environment Committee meeting on the 11th of March to defend Boris Johnson’s proposal to build a new airport in the Thames Estuary. Having undertaken to do this many months earlier, Doug Oakervee informed us of his withdrawal at the last moment by the rather odd means of a letter from his employers, informing me that “Mr Oakervee is unlikely to be available to your committee for some months to come”.

Doug Oakervee’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for defending the estuary airport proposal in front of the Environment Committee is perhaps unsurprising. It is clear that there is no business case for it; there isn’t enough room for it anyway in the Thames estuary; and according to the Feasibility Review prepared by Oakervee, if it’s to happen it needs to start this summer.

Now judging by Medway Council’s survey, many of the airlines won’t go there and more importantly the regular users of airports in London won’t be going there either according to the GLA Economics Report, Come Fly with Me. So the Mayor is pushing an airport that will attract neither airlines nor passengers. And the members of the Estuary Airport Steering Group set up by the Mayor are expecting Boris to put up possibly a further £5 million to fund a full review via the LDA (see the minutes of their meeting in December).

As for where the airport would be located in the estuary, that’s the £40 billion question. The coastlines along Essex and Kent are designated conservation sites under EU law and a sanctuary for bird life. We also have very busy shipping lanes in which traffic can only increase with new ports being built. And finally we have wind farms being built there like the London Array. The map above well illustrates that reality (click on it to see a larger image). So it’s not surprising the Feasibility Review doesn’t even attempt to answer that one.

The one thing the Feasibility Review appears to be very clear about is that work on the Thames Estuary Development Study needs to start no later than the summer of 2010. Now given the long term unavailability of Doug Oakvervee because of his pursuit of other commercial interests in the Far East, we can safely say he won’t be around to bury the plan once and for all for Boris.

Commuters on the redesigned Circle line are suffering much longer waits between services and fewer trains, official figures reveal today.

Transport for London’s own figures prove what many passengers have suspected for weeks – that the line is now worse after being extended to Hammersmith. This is despite promises that the changes would improve the Tube’s least reliable line.

Murad Qureshi, a Labour member of the London Assembly, said: "As someone who welcomed the operational change, I’m very disappointed. There doesn’t seem to have been a better service as a result.

"I think the problem is still Edgware Road station. The Circle is the one service that seems to go down immediately when anything happens on the District, Metropolitan or Hammersmith and City [lines]." read more

An investigation into the impact of last year’s expansion of London City Airport has begun this week. The London Assembly wants ‘feedback’ from the public on how the extra flights are affecting families across East London.

This latest City Hall investigation follows Newham Council giving permission last July to increase flights from 91,000 a year to 120,000. Critics accuse Newham of failing to consult neighbouring local authorities over the increase. The Assembly’s environment committee wants to know what impact it is having on air quality and noise levels.

"The decision by Newham to allow more flights could affect many Londoners," said the Assembly’s environment chair Murad Qureshi. "It has generated concerns about the likely environmental impacts, particularly the rise in noise and air pollution. We want to find out how effective the environmental controls are and hope Londoners will help us with this investigation." read more

An investigation is under way into how London intends to stage ‘the greenest Olympics ever’ in 2012.

The London Assembly is looking into the environmental sustainability of staging the Games to match the successful bidding made five years ago to play host and how the organisers plan to make it a reality.

Sustaining the environment is one of the key themes of preparations for the event. The Assembly’s environment committee investigation is examining what progress the Olympic Organising committee and the GLA are making in their preparations.

"London’s Olympic bid promised these would be the greenest Games ever," said the Assembly’s environment chair Murad Qureshi. "We need to ensure that work is underway now so we can achieve that pledge.

"London has big plans to reduce carbon emissions and recycle more of its waste. The 2012 Games are a chance to show how this can be done." read more

The future of the main 2012 stadium could be decided within months, the Olympics legacy czar said today.

Baroness Ford urged sports clubs, including West Ham, to begin tabling their bids because marketing of the venue begins in two weeks.

But she insisted she had no intention of ditching the commitment to an athletics track remaining at the stadium after the Games and hoped there would be interest in a mixed legacy.

Lady Ford said: "I think athletics will sit quite happily side by side with something else but the proof of the pudding is in the next two to three months. I can’t prejudge what bidders are going to come forward. If nothing else changes, it will be a 28,000-seat stadium and used for a range of things. It will be a living stadium."

Lady Ford, a Chelsea season ticket holder, said that the views from seats at the Olympic stadium would be far superior to those at Stamford Bridge when she sometimes strained so hard for a view that she was "falling over".

At the end of the marketing process the Olympic Park Legacy Committee board will decide on the future of the stadium but City Hall and the Government, as the main funders, will have the power of veto.

London Assembly member Murad Qureshi said: "This [track] has become an albatross around your neck, this is Seb Coe’s folly." read more