Murad said:  “We’ve learned that as part of the new government shake-up the management of the Royal Parks will transfer from the Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to Boris Johnson.  What hasn’t been made clear is whether the necessary funding to maintain the parks will also be passed to the Mayor.”

Currently the DCMS provides over £19m a year to maintain the eight Royal Parks.  Only this week the Chancellor told DCMS they would have to cut their budget by £61 million, so if they can pander to the Mayor’s thirst for power by giving him the Royal Parks, without handing him the budget, they can find a third of their cuts in one fell swoop.  Nice one DCMS, but potentially an own goal to Boris.

Murad said: “The Royal Parks in London are a wonderful national asset and have always been maintained to a very high standard – as any one of their 37 million visitors each year would testify – but the reason they look so good is that they have until now been allocated sufficient budget to maintain them well.  If the Mayor takes on the job without the funds to do it properly then something will have to give – either the parks will suffer, or Londoners will have to pay out a lot more to keep them properly, or we could easily get a bit of both – Londoners will get higher bills and the parks will be maintained to a lower standard.”

Murad added: “As the Royal Parks department also looks after the gardens of numbers 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street, this move also makes Boris Johnson gardener in chief to David Cameron, a role he will no doubt relish.”

Ends.

Notes

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

Last week l went to one of my local tube stations, Edgware Rd on the Circle /District/ City & Hammersmith lines  to see the arm-pit of the sub-surface lines that go through the station, with its pre-war signal box dating back to 1928 ( see above photo ) !

Now that it’s all going to be brought in-house, it made me wonder what has been done on the oldest part of the tube system in London between Paddington and Farringdon under the PPP contracts.  It is quite extraordinary that the oldest part of the tube system – to the best of my recollection – has yet to see any works like station refurbishment, track renewal or signal replacements under the PPP or otherwise, and if the sight of the pre-war signal box at Edgware Road station is anything to go by, it could do with some urgent works.  No wonder we have such delays at this important junction in the tube system, with knock on effects on the rest of the system.

This week I was able to bring up the Circle line and the signal box at Edgware Road at the London Assembly’s Transport Committee meeting on Wednesday with Mike Brown, the new Managing Director of London Underground.  He was happy for it to be raised, though he didn’t acknowledge the problems the service has had since being extended to Hammersmith.  He has already said that once the PPP comes completely in-house at the end of June he wants to look at the possibility of doing works during weekdays, dropping the boundaries between work done under the different PPP contracts and re-ordering the work sequences between the different lines.  Let’s hope he looks at the oldest section of the tube system again, in light of the state of technology along it.

Last night we held a reception for the Bangladesh cricket team in the City of Westminster at Council House on Marylebone Road, the Monday before the 5 day test match against England at Lords starting on this coming Thursday the 27th of May. This reception was well attended by youngest in the local Bangladeshi community, who were meeting their star cricketers for the first time. The reception occurred on the same day that the new Prime Minister, David Cameron gave the England team a reception at Downing Street.

Below you will see a photo of Karen Buck MP, the local member of parliament for Lords cricket ground welcoming the Bangladesh cricket team to Westminster.  The High Commissioner of Bangladesh, Dr Sayeedur Rahman Khan is on my right side and he also greeted the team.

The event was organised by the Bangladesh High Commission, in conjunction with councillors at the City of Westminster Council, in particular Cllr Barrie Taylor.

Greetings from Karen Buck MP to Bangladesh cricket team

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.