Up to nine officers could be lost from Richmond’s police force as budgets tighten.

The Metropolitan Police Authority is set to recruit 900 fewer officers by next year than previously planned, it was revealed in their quarterly report.

The cuts in recruitment means nine police officers could be lost from the borough’s police force over the next three years.

The neighbouring borough of Kingston could also face losing nine officers, while Hounslow police could be forced to carry out its work with 14 fewer police officers.

London Assembly Member Murad Qureshi said the cuts were unfair and warned the police could have to choose which crimes they tackle with the reduced resources.

He said: “The country’s finances obviously mean tough choices have to be made but when it comes down to having to choose between tackling violence or burglary, it’s there for all to see what the government’s cuts really mean.

“People round here didn’t cause the financial crisis yet they are being expected to take the hit for it.”

Richmond’s borough commander Chief Superintendent Clive Chalk declined to comment.  View full article

The idea of London based football clubs moving around is a familiar one. Millwall moved from the Isle of Dogs to south of the river and Arsenal from Greenwich to Highbury so why not Spurs from North London to East London?  This story, comes as no surprise to me, in that the option of a move to Stratford is fast becoming the first choice for Tottenham Hotspur given the uncertainty of staying at their existing site with a new stadium.

As I’ve said in a previous blog, l can see no reason why the Olympic Stadium can’t be shared by two clubs as l witnessed at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.   Both local teams, Roma & Lazio manage to play with their vast and fanatical fan base on alternate weekends on a pitch around a running track.  (Alas both clubs have not seen the virtue of this!)  My concern is, that as an away fan, getting to White Hart Lane is murder, (as I suggested in a  report  to the Transport Committee which investigated the issue of sports travel)  so I’d much rather travel somewhere like Stratford, which will no doubt be much better connected than Tottenham after the games.

While the Labour has been busy electing its new leader and the party’s candidate for London mayor, Boris Johnson has been seeking to get more powers from central government.  He proposes to do away with the Metropolitan Police Authority, which scrutinises and holds the police to account. He wants more powers over housing and rail transport. He also seeks the abolition of the London Development Agency and more direct control of the Thames and royal parks.

There has been little debate about these new arrangements during the campaign to decide who will take on Boris in 2012, but Ken Livingstone is sure to give them serious thought when developing his manifesto.

Despite the new proposals, the powers of London’s Mayor are still limited compared with those enjoyed by the mayors of other major world cities. Whatever David Cameron and his ministers may say about localism, they are still reluctant to let go of too much power. It’s a common enough trait in central government. Tony Blair’s Government was far too cautious when it returned devolved power to London 15 years after Margaret Thatcher abolished the GLC.

The situation in Britain now is that the administrations of Wales and Scotland have more powers devolved to them than London, even though London is far larger than either in terms of both its population and the size of its economy.

The litmus test for many is whether the Mayor can get more powers over London’s finances. At present, just 7 per cent of the Mayor’s income comes from his share of London council tax, compared with 50 per cent in New York and more than 80 per cent in Tokyo. If the capital could get more revenue-raising power, the role of the Mayor (already dubbed the third most powerful position in British politics) could really be developed.

Boris may well be negotiating for these new powers just as his transport and policing budgets face up to 40 per cent cuts. Doubtless the Tory incumbent would be reluctant to preside over this. It would at least offer the prospect of Londoners being able to cover the cost of Government spending cuts through their Mayor.

The various local authorities and the London Assembly have already signed off most of the changes currently going through in London. The challenge now is to make sure the beneficiary of these new powers – and any others in the future – is Ken Livingstone as Labour Mayor in May 2012.  While his job won’t be as powerful as those of his New York and Parisian equivalents, the new settlement is a step towards making the Mayor of London more independent of central government. That can only be a good thing for London and everyone who genuinely supports localism.

Murad Qureshi is a Labour member of the London Assembly.

Click here to view the full Tribune article

Runners leaving Wembley at the start of the 1948 Olympic marathon

Following a host of objections from MPs and east end local authorities, the controversy over the Olympic marathon route simply refuses to go away. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23884085-angry-eastenders-accuse-coe-of-betrayal-over-2012-marathon-route.do, Lord Coe and LOCOG need to ask themselves, exactly “when have the Olympics had a marathon which doesn’t end at the Olympic stadium”? (with the exception of Athens 2004 for very good historical reasons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2004_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men’s_marathon.) And even more importantly, why should it be any different in London for 2012? Our road networks and infrastructures are supposed to be at their best in the 21st century and one of the greatest traditions of the games should not be abandoned simply due to logistical challenges. It reflects very badly on LOCOG, that other host cities have managed this sort of logistical difficulty in the past, including London way back in 1908 and 1948! If it can be done in London in previous ocassions why not in 2012 ?

Finish line at 1908 Olympic marathon games London

Myself with Dot & Barry Palmer

It’s not often you get to go to a community victory celebration, but there was one recently in Sipson Gardens    http://www.demotix.com/hub/heathrow  where the villages around Heathrow were celebrating a victory against all the odds in stopping the Heathrow expansion.  The following weekend (4th of Sept), l joined a demo http://tinyurl.com/2cxzmzm at London City Airport where a similar plight is being faced by local residents.

I have, in the past made the point that the Mayor supports the expansion on paper http://tinyurl.com/2u7hwdp. He also considered a report to that effect http://tinyurl.com/2aec9js. This is despite a public meeting on the 18th of January this year at a pseudo-PQT in Ilford when, following my insistence requesting his intervention, he stated that he was not the planning authority and did not think he could reverse the decision. When further pressed by the public audience, he eventually agreed to push for a public consultation using the phase “consider me lobbied”. Since then, l’ve raised a motion at the London Assembly (passed unanimously on the 24th of Feb 2010) asking the Mayor to review the increased flights at City Airport. http://tinyurl.com/34tpzlq. This was a timely demo given that BA have since, revealed their intention to introduce long-haul flights at city airport http://tinyurl.com/397hxz8 and also in view of the near miss over London’s sky when a private jet from city airport nearly collided with a Heathrow plane http://tinyurl.com/39dr6lv

Watch this space for the latest developments on London city airport!

So the Mayor has decided to press ahead with his plan to delay the next stage of the Low Emission Zone – meaning that the most polluting vans and LGVs can belch out their fumes across London for another two years.

This is another indication of how low down his list of priorities tackling London’s poor air quality is.

New City Hall figures show that the number of Londoners dying early because of the air they are forced to breathe is now over twenty times higher than the number killed in road accidents in the city. Yet this latest, unnecessary move points to a Mayor who is intent on doing as little as possible, and who is culpable in a huge public health disaster.

When the Low Emission Zone was first introduced it was estimated that the rate of premature deaths and hospitalisations caused by poor air quality was about 1,000 – or four times higher than the number of road fatalities in London.

However, three separate reports issued in the past year (including the Mayor’s own research) have found that in Greater London poor air quality contributes to more than 4,000 premature deaths every year.

As deaths from road traffic accidents in London have fallen, so deaths from the city’s poor air have risen. There were 184 killed on our roads in 2009 – twenty times less than the number estimated to have died thanks to the silent, invisible killer we all have to breathe in.

So what should the Mayor do? He has resisted calls to implement the next stage of the Low Emission Zone this month as planned. And when 4,000 people are dying every year, a two-year delay is certainly not insignificant.

But he still has the opportunity to overturn some of the other regressive steps he has taken since taking office.

He should abandon his plans to cut the size of the congestion charge zone in half.

If he doesn’t, he will increase traffic and pollution in the area by almost 10 ten per cent and will throw away between £55-£70 million of annual revenue which could otherwise be spent keeping fares down and improving public transport.

He should re-instate instate six-monthly inspections of black cabs, which many failed because of their emissions rates.

He could improve information for Londoners on local air quality levels to enable them to make more informed choices about how they get around.

He could introduce a retrofit subsidy scheme for black cabs and begin work on improving public transport to Heathrow airport – up to three quarters of toxic nitrogen oxide pollution in the local area is caused not by planes but road vehicles.

London was singled out this summer for breaching legal limits for dangerous airborne particles. The UK government faces a £300m fine from the European Commission if London’s air is not improved and, by the Mayor’s own admission, his proposals won’t bring London’s air within European legal limits. In the meantime, pollution levels are cutting Londoners’ lives short by an average of two years.

This is real and urgent but, more than halfway through his four-year term, the Mayor has only just consulted on his paltry plans to tackle London’s air quality problem.

We know now that far more people die because of our poor air than are killed by speeding cars yet there is nothing to suggest he appreciates the scale of this problem or has even the slightest inclination to tackle it.

Thousands are dying early unnecessarily every year; in some parts of our city one in five children already suffers with asthma; and the state of our air is so bad it is stunting the growth of our young people’s lungs.

There cannot be many greater, more urgent causes for a Mayor to take on, so why is Boris Johnson seemingly intent on sleep-walking through it? There are practical, realistic solutions to these problems that a Mayor who had the desire to do so could implement. Delay and inaction is the opposite of what is needed.

The results of two by-elections in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Cremorne and Earls Court Ward last week, have led to the knifes coming out  http://kensington.londoninformer.co.uk/2010/09/by-election-results-in.html  for the leader of the Council, Cllr Cockell. In Cremorne, with an overall turnout of 24.9%, the Tories held onto the ward by the skin of their teeth as there were just 19 votes in it. This slither of a margin is against a backdrop of a 16 per cent swing to Labour which polled 40 per cent of the vote. The Tory vote fell by 9 per cent down to 41 per cent. It is undeniable that Mabel McKeown, the Labour candidate, did exceptionally well to run Gerard Hargreaves so close in a seat where the Tories won comfortably with a 800 plus majority, just a few months ago in the May elections.

In the Earls Court ward, Linda Wade of the Lib Dems took the ward from the Tories on the back of a 23 per cent swing to them, a total of 703 votes against the Tories 594. The turnout here was more or less the same at 24%. What had clearly been a spanner in the works for the Tories, here, was that Malcolm Spalding had stood at the May election as an independent, having allegedly been hand picked by the leader of the Council, who is accused of acting as though the borough has become his private fiefdom. All the fingers are now firmly pointed in the direction of Cllr Cockell and his leadership. It’ll be an interesting watch to see all the Tory daggers out in force in this part of town. This all comes on top of the scandals surrounding the resignation of the two Tory councillors which precipitated the by-elections in the first place. Certainly makes this an entertaining part of town to keep an eye on local politics!

The West End Extra is right to say l am back Ed Miliband but not because l was snubbed by his elder brother David.

Ed is making a clean break from New Labour, in a way and manner that will bring all the elements of the labour movement together again. This is something clearly David is not going to be able to do and the latest example is his position that Heathrow airport should be expanded as he expressed last week. This is out of kilter with the consensus in London across the political spectrum and lacks any appreciation that essentially the airport is placed in suburban west London and thus inflicts a huge environmental cost to those living there. Its also suggest that Labour is in with big business and in this instance BAA which does not go down well certainly in that part of London.

If anything when the shadow cabinet is formed after the new leader is installed during party conference a fundamental review of Labours aviation policy needs to be undertaken as soon as possible.

Last sunday at Havestock school, Ed gave us a sense of where he intends to take us like recapturing individual liberty tradition in our party; defending the Unions; having a graduate tax proportion to earnings not tuition fees;  dismissing the coalitions deficit politics while espousing Keynesian economis as the best way out. These were just some of the points l can remember him making on the night.  

He’s political analysis of the five million votes  lost by Labour since 1997 is that four million went to other parties and not to the Tories.  And that many in middle England also believe strongly in a society where the rich do their bit and pay their fair share. I of course tend to agree with this.