Having come out of a regeneration meeting recently in Church St, l came to the conclusion that West End Gate development with over 500 units of accommodation will be up well before phase A in Church Street is completed. As we were being told it won’t be finished by 2030 now and with the old Paddington Green Police Station all but demolished now, we will soon see the building works beginning there. 

This was difficult to hear after all the promises made on Site A in Church Street ward particular when the council wanted to get the GLA approval to get more monies and thus additional units of residential accommodation. 

Site B works look further down the road than ever, which should give ample opportunity to sort out Broadly St Gardens and the works to Green Spine. Both these need regular maintenance but do not seem in place since the new facilities were opened up!  The Lisson St road closure has worked well and l would like to see it extended beyond Bell St to the subway which get us to the Edgware Rd tube station. As its another major way into Church St and appears to have been forgotten. 

But if the public toilets on Church St are anything to go by we  are in for a long wait. As over the last few years we have seen them closed and lying empty for a long time, then the works seem to go for longer and now it’s been revamped it’s again been lying empty since the beginning of the year. What is going on with the loos? The projects on the Triangle have really not been going to plan at all and thats before l even mention the management of the street market itself. 

Not surprisingly many of us came out thinking, it is not so much regeneration that is being offered but redevelopment of the locality.  And l have not mentioned the state of the market! As locals need to take charge of it all. 

Whilst reading Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera (one of my summer reads), l am struck by the futility of the Commonwealth in todays world when we have the BRICS forming and leading on economic reforms in the global economy.

Take for example, the cost of borrowing money for an ex-British colonial country from Africa. It has been established the borrowing costs during 2020-2024 would be almost 10 times more of an African country than a developed country like Germany, going by bond yields comparisons. For a Latin or Carribean country, its almost seven times more and for an Asian it would be almost five times more! This from the very global financially system largely built around British and American banking system, an example of how British imperialism shaped the globe.  

So if you were a nation state who has experienced the British colonial rule, who would you want to join – the Commonwealth or the BRICs?  Not surprising the answer is the later. Whilst the Commonwealth is a great gentlemen’s club headed by the King Charles, l am not sure what practical help it is at all to its member states any more. As Sanghera concludes in his book the Commonwealth has outgrown its evolutionary usefulness.  This while the BRICs can’t stop the applications coming into their new club as they bring together the world’s most important developing countries, to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe. 

So in 2022 we have Togo & Gabon join the Commonwealth which were never part of the British empire, l am sure they will be wondering why they bothered when everyone else seems to be trying to join the BRICs. 

Many of us in the Bangladeshi diaspora have had a number of sleepless nights during the awful crackdown of student protests in Dhaka and other major cities of Bangladesh over the past week. For some of us, it brings back memories of what the people had to face in 1971 with the liberation of the country from the Pakistan army.

Firstly, it should be noted the student protests were not limited to just the public universities but also the private ones which is very rarely the case. Ironically the latter were set up to offer degree courses without the interference of student politics! They now also find themselves embroiled in student politics over the quota system which reserves a significant percentage of government posts for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971 and other categories.

Before the imposition of a news, social media and telecommunications blackout on the outside world and the instruction of ‘shoot on sight’ orders to the police, l managed to phone relatives in Dhaka and got a very clear message from my nephews and nieces studying at universities in Dhaka: “We don’t want the quotas of civil servant jobs.” They said this even though they could have benefited, being the descendants of freedom fighters themselves.

These student protests are not just about these quotas for jobs in the civil service, which has been an issue for a number of years and was actually withdrawn in 2018 by the present government, only to be brought up again by freedom fighters’ families. It was taken to the Supreme Court and reimposed only for the Court on Sunday to reduce the percentage of down to 5 per cent. So that should have been the end of the matter.

But it’s not just about the quotas for jobs but a lot else, including the incredible violence launched against the students, both from the authorities like the police and their Rapid Action Battalion, an anti-crime and anti-terrorism unit of the Bangladesh Police, as well as the student arm of the Prime Minister’s political party, the Chhatra League. This has led to over 100 deaths officially and many fear a lot more than this.

The students are demanding the resignation of both the Home Minister and Chief of the Police and for the Chhatra League, an arm of the ruling Awami League, to be closed down. Other issues the students are campaigning on include rigged election allegations, the cost of living and corruption. Other political parties are attempting to gain from the dire situation making it increasingly a movement against the Prime Minister herself, Sheikh Hasina. Along with the fatalities have come some serious infrastructural destruction to the new metro train stations, something the PM and her ruling party are very proud of as part of developing the economy of the country.

Students have been at the vanguard of political protest in Bengali politics. They have a particular place and touch a nerve in the Bangladeshi psyche. They led the protests against the Bangla language being banned in the official business of Pakistan in East Bengal from 1947 onwards and were numerous among the February 21st 1952 language martyrs. They also played an active role during the 1971 Liberation from the Pakistan army.

The attack on Bangladesh TV offices last week was very similar to the takeover of Chittagong Radio Station on March 26th 1971 for the famous historic declaration of independence. That night of March 26th also saw many killings in Dhaka as the Pakistan Army launched their Operation Searchlight to extinguish Bengali nationalists. That seems to have been exceeded last week by some who were there on both occasions.

Allegedly from some local papers in Dhaka, we hear that between July 15th and 21st last week over 800 people have been killed. This would be more than the sum total of all the people killed in popular agitations from 1972 to 2022. During the 1980s and 1990s, with the various anti-Ershad movements, and the caretaker governments in the 1990s, fewer than fifty people were killed.

The verdict is still out on whether this could be a rerun of the 1971 liberation struggle as some of my older cousins suggest, or just another rerun of political turmoil in Bangladesh that we had to endure during the 1980s and 1990s. But we will know soon enough which way things are heading for the country that desperately wants to move on developmentally and is on the front line of the global climate crisis – all this while 30,000 Bangladeshis left the country in five days last week.

Whilst all the focus is on sewage leakages into the Thames, let us not forget according to Thames Water’s own records, water leakages run almost at a quarter of all their pipes and the attempt to replace them has seen no end of road works. Ask any black cabbie in London, who causes the most work roads in Central London? Thats after having this responsibility since 1989 and over 3 decades, we still see no real progress has been made, as it continues to literally be money down the drain for its customers.

On top of this we have their poor performance of capital works. One only needs to point to their desalination plant in Beckton which has largely been lying empty since being built in 2010 for £250 million from our bills. It was approved by the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson after the previous Mayor, Ken Livingstone had refused planning permission for it.

It has been built at great expense of Thames Water customers, using a process called reverse osmosis to turn saltwater into drinking water. It was meant to have had the capacity to pipe drink water into 400,000 homes in London by drawing on 100m litres a day of water from the Thames during a drought. In the meantime Thames Water has admitted the high-tech plant is off-line and been hardly used, if at all.

The Glazers are notoriously known for taking major dividends annually out of Man Utd and investing very little back into the football club. The same can be said about Thames Water and their relationship with their 16 million customers. You only have to look at their performance on water leakages and capital expenditure to see this very clearly.

I am glad to see that TfL have not forgotten the unpaid congestion charge bills of  diplomats in London. As it almost 20 years ago l brought up the issue at the London Assembly as a new AM representing all Londoners, as l saw it as an abuse of Londoners hospitality particularly in Central London. 

I also brought it up under Boris Johnson administration when he was Mayor of London between 2008 & 2016. The diplomats should be shamed into having to pay up these fees due to TfL. Can you imagine what could be done for Londoners public transport options if we had £144 million to spend on their priorities, as reported by TfL this week in the Evening Standard. 

The charge is not a tax under British law and the charge is not dissimilar to the charge you pay to get into Manhattan UN HQ via its bridges and tunnels. If its good enough for British diplomats to pay in New York then why not here with US and other countries diplomats. It is of direct benefit to diplomats, as it helps give them more space on the roads of Central London. And could be interpreted as an abuse of our hospitality . So do pay up asap and lets avoid a diplomat incident over it all annually. 

Who would have thought that when the Tories pushed through first-pass-the-post voting for the Mayoral contests, it would mean Sadiq would romp home with an increase majority for a third term as Mayor of London? Clearly not those who proposed and passed this change but thats actually what has happened, as it forced Lib Dem and Green voters to vote tactically rather then for their candidates when they had the choice of either Sadiq Khan or Susan Hall on the Mayoral ballot. The latter of whom made no overtunes to them at all on their policy priorities with her anti-ULEZ position and indeed probably frighten many of them with her historical social media activities.

All the misguided excitement the day after the polls was solely based on the turn out figures of 40.5 per cent being 1.5 per cent lower then 2021 but also the GLA constituency figures suggested that Outer Londoner had turned out more than Inner London. Posing the question, of whether we going to see a shock result given the low turn out and first-past-the-post would make it closer even though the polls suggested Sadiq and Labour were some 20 per cent ahead.

In the end Sadiq romped home winning by 275,828 votes with a 10 per cent plus lead with much tactical voting clearly by Lib Dems and Greens and maybe even by some Tories! The latter something l detected after the declarations in my local pubs. Pollsters do also need again to look at their methods being some 10 percentage points out and personally like the French, l would not have any polls two weeks before the actual vote itself. They can have some undue influences particularly amongst commentators.

Let’s not forget the London Assembly

The results were remarkable stable at London’s City Hall with Mayor being re-elected and the make-up of the Assembly almost identical to previous election. In spite of some little dramas around individual constituency results, the final outcome is just one less Tory Assembly Member (AM) – replaced with one Reform AM.

With the London Assembly the reality is that things have not change that much at all, with 11 Labour AMs, 3 Green AMs, 2 Lib Dem AMs except the Tories lost one of their seats to Reform UK and are now down to 8 AMs. So critically Sadiq, will be able to still pass his annual budgets of fare freezes, meals for school kids and action on air pollution. Whilst the non-labour AMs totally 14 members, can still hold control of all the Scrutiny Committees which do much of their work during the year.

The one change in the Labour make up was of course the gain of West Central constituency covering City of Westminster, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham, bringing in Cllr James Small-Edwards for the first time. A seating councillor for Bayswater in the City of Westminster already. Whilst we had a lower turnout then 2021 in West Central by 4 per cent, the Reform vote helped lose the seat for the Tories. Which by implications meant Labour lost one on the Labour Top up List via the d’Hondt system, a sad fate l have also suffered.

So it will back to much the same for the next four years in London regional government and hopefully a Labour government at the next General Election this year that can work with the Sadiq administration to improve matters for Londoners after 14 bleak years even for Londoners after austerity and brexit.

A copy of this blog has been published in SEBRA News W2 – Summer 2024 Edition 

Turn out data for the Mayor of London contest for 2024 is overall just over 40 at 40.5 per cent. The fourth lowest figure for Mayoral contests since 2000. 

With GLA constituencies like City & East London historical vote banks for Labour Mayors down to 31.17 per cent whilst Bexley & Bromley the Tory vote bank is up to 48.38 per cent for Tory Mayors. This while the level of voters turning out in all the other GLA constituencies is lower than previously recorded. 

So as the boxes for the votes open today, how many Lib Dems and Greens have voted for Sadiq to remain as Mayor of London will be critical. Surely he can depend on them to remain as Mayor over Susan Hall the Tory Mayoral candidate for London? 

https://londonelects.org.uk/im-voter/election-progress/verification-and-turnout-data

@londonelects #LondonElections2024

The Glazers are notoriously known for taking major dividends annually out of Man Utd and investing very little back into the football club. The same can said about Thames Water and their relationship with their 15 million customers. You only have to look at their performance on water leakages and capital expenditure to see this very clearly.

For the poor performance of their capital works, one need only point to their desalination plant in Beckton which has largely been lying empty since being built in 2010 for £250 million from our bills. It was approved by the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson after the previous Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone had refused planning permission for it. 

It has been built at great expense of Thames Water customers, using a process called reverse osmosis to turn saltwater into drinking water.  It was meant to have had the capacity to pipe drink water into 400,000 homes in London by drawing on 100m litres a day of water from the Thames during a drought but has to be utilized properly. In the meantime Thames Water has admitted the high-tech plant is off-line and been hardly used, if at all.  

According to Thames Water own records water leakages almost run at a quarter of all their pipes and the attempt to replace them has seen no end of road works. Ask any black cabbie in London, who causes the most work roads in Central London? Thats after having this responsibility since 1989 and over 3 decades, we still see no real progress has been made, as it continues to literally be money down the drain for its customers. 

Walking around the neighbourhood over Easter, l was aghast to see the above grand tree had been felled along the Marylebone Rd in front of the Landmark Hotel and just before a bus stop. Looking at the rings of the tree, it looked perfectly in good order yet it was chopped down. 

As l ask around what the reasoning behind this haste action to take down just a magnificent tree, others suggested it could have been because of the bus stop right next to it. Well if that is the case, surely the bus stop could have been moved either to the block further towards Baker St in front of the old NCR head quarters or maybe a block further down in front of the old Woolworths HQ?  Something l am sure the hotel would have welcomed! Or maybe the tree just needed pollarding down by cutting down some of the branches that get in the way of the buses coming into the bus stop to pick up passengers. 

What all this speculation tells me, is that in future public authorities like Transport for London responsible for the Marylebone Rd and its pavements, should at least notify us of their intended action by simply putting a notice up on the tree and maybe also hear other suggestions to their course of action.  Not dissimilar to a planning application but not quite. At least this way locals who notices these things, will be relieved of the shock of losing a grand old tree and it may well involve critical apprisial of the line of action intended. 

So in this case the tree won out against the bus stop, but can we at least have some sort of public consultation with notices put up of the attention of the public authority to take down a tree?;