At the last full authority meeting of the London Fire Brigade, l asked the chairman Cllr Brian Coleman AM whether he is planning to privatise the fire service, given he is on record as saying all public services could be undertaken by the private sector.  In my verbal supplementary we had an exchange which strongly suggested the chairman is not for turning from his ideological position, to use his own chosen words.

So it was with much interest that l watched the exchange between the mayor and a fellow Assembly member Darren Johnson at the very end of the questioning of the mayor on this same subject at the last Mayors Question Time ( MQT ). The mayor gave a considered response to the question on privatisation of fire service and clearing stated l do not want to privatise the fire service.

So it appears that the political boss of the fire chief of  london has completely different views from the mayor on the privatising of the fire service. So the mayor has clearly hand bagged the Fire chief from his ideological stance as an end of year reminder of whos the boss.  

Are Thames Water reducing leaks & sewage flooding enough?

With a drought order issued for the South-East today, it made me think about the exchange of views at the last MQT  (pages 42-44) when the Mayor himself was asked by Mike Tuffrey AM about what he was doing to reduce water demand in London.

Interestingly, the Mayor emphasised the problem of leakages and appeared to be complaining bitterly about Thames Water’s road works not actually dealing with the root of the problem.  He suggested that they were merely repairing instead of replacing them, which is contrary to what Thames Water’s seemed to be advertising along the roads where the works are taking place.

The Mayor also suggested the need to “have a discussion” with The Officer of Water Services (OFWAT), their regulator, as well as the possibilty of appointing a Water Commissioner to deal with the problem.  Intriguely enough, the Mayor began his political term with approving their desalination plant in Beckton which was a source of grief for Ken. Both of them have been strong supporters of the Thames Tideway Tunnel.  However, the sentiments expressed at the last MQT indicate that he had now most definitely fallen out of love with Thames Water and now possibly even at war with them over the issue of road works at least.

The prototype, revealed amid great fanfare by London mayor Boris Johnson on Friday, was left on the hard shoulder of the M1 on its way to tests.

Officials admitted the vehicle, the product of a controversial £7.8million scheme to replace the classic Routemasters in London, ran out of diesel.

Commuters saw the double-decker near Dunstable, Bedfordshire, after the driver pulled over to charge the battery.

The hybrid bus’s engine would not restart because the tank was empty.

Labour Greater London Assembly member Murad Qureshi joked on Twitter: ‘Pity Mayor hasn’t installed more electric charging points as his new routemaster conks out.’

Mike Weston, London Buses Operations Director, said the prototype was designed for stop-start driving which recharges its battery automatically.

‘When the bus undertakes long, non-stopping motorway journeys, it can lose charge. The driver is briefed to pull to the side of the road to allow the battery to recharge,’ he added.

‘It was later established that the bus had run out of diesel. Once the bus was refuelled, it carried on its journey.’

Mr Weston added: ‘We will be speaking with the operator to ensure that this does not happen again.’

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The 40th anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh this weekend, with the name quite literally meaning the land of Bengalis. It  is more formally known as the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh and was founded on four principles – secularism, democracy, nationalism & socialism. Its very often the first principle which is debated the most when looking back at where the country was and is today.  

But lets not forget its liberation came after a 9 month struggle against the genocidal war launched by the Pakistani army. This after the 1970 General Election in Pakistan where the Awami league had won a majority of seats. In early December 1971 we had the military intervention of India and the surrender of the Pakistan army on the 16th of December, curtailing a war which the Pakistani army could not have maintained indefinitely if only because of the distance between East & West Pakistan.

Its formation is really a story of two partitions, the first in 1947 with the creation of Pakistani and subsequently in the struggle and liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. If it illusrates anything its that religion in itself is not the sole basis of creating a state that needs to be considered when creating new states. Equally important is language, culture and geography. As soon as Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1948 declared Urdu the state language of Pakistan in Dhaka he set off a trail of events through the language Movement in East Pakistan which eventually feed the linguistic nationalism and economic injustices felt by Bengali Muslims. Many of whom had enthusisatically said Pakistan zindabad at independence from colonial rule in 1947 but by 1971 were happy to see the way forward as the formation of Bangladesh by saying Joi Bangla instead.

Like the Punjab, the British Raj had divided Bengal into two along religious grounds. First during its adminstration in 1905 and also on its departure from the Indian sub-continent based on the Redcliffe line. The irony of these religious divisions is that in West Bengal, India today up to 25 per cent of their population is Muslim. So much for this imaged religious divide.

So clearly there are some important lessons to learn for secularists about Islam and democracy at the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh, particularly in the Indian sub-continent context. But its clear that the struggle and liberation of Bangladesh can be cited as one of the first instances of linguistic nationalism in the world.

“This is not value for money for Londoners considering we’ve had to wait so long for these strategies to be released. I am most concerned that the Mayor is doing little to affect Londoners’ quality of life now. For example, his Energy strategy no longer calls upon the government to recognize the true scale of fuel poverty,” said Qureshi, adding:

“This is astonishing in today’s economic climate, with rising energy costs and more and more families slipping into fuel poverty.”

Specific targets dropped, Qureshi observes, include:

• Water — Target for dealing with leakages no longer aspires to “Uk industry standard by 2035” but instead to “simply continue to tackle leakage”

• Climate Change Adaptation — The Mayor’s RE:NEW target to improve the energy efficiency of 1.2 million homes by 2015 has been dropped. His new target is to treat just 55,000 homes by 2012.

• Energy — The Mayor no longer aims to replace 100,000 conventional vehicles with electric vehicles, instead, he’s now just looking to put 100,000 electric vehicles on the road. His target for 25,000 electric vehicle charging points by 2015 has been slashed to just 1,300 publicly accessible charge points by 2013.

• Municipal Waste — Boris has ditched plans to ask the government to consider a national deposit system for cans and bottles and his waste reduction reuse/repair target has slipped from 40,000 tonnes in 2015 and 120,000 tonnes in 2031 to 20,000 and 30,000 respectively — a drop of up to 75% from his original target.

• Business waste – As part of its total investment fund of £58 million, the London Waste and Recycling Board allocated fund of £36 million has been slashed to £21 million to help develop waste infrastructure. Consequently, the target to “secure 1.2million tonnes of waste diversion from landfill per year” has been downgraded to just 500,00 tonnes, and plans to save 300,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year have been reduced to a saving of 3 million tonnes of CO2 over the lifetime of the projects.

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The law has failed to address the concerns of the City Airport campaigners

 At the last Environment Committee meeting we looked at the planning conditions imposed by Newham Council on City Airport as a pre requisite for its expansion from the current 80,000 to 120,000 flights annually.  This includes safeguards to mitigate noise and air pollution.  Nonetheless, despite the conditions which City Airport are obliged to meet, l still felt the Mayor should have been able to call this one in.

Since the permission was granted, there has of course been a judicial review challenge in the High Court which was lost.  This is not surprising considering our legal system can be a rigid tool with little regard for common sense, in other words, the failed legal challenge in this instance illustrates well the old adage that the law can be an ass!  The issue of airport expansion is often a 3 dimensional concern rather then just 2 dimensional.  Flight paths leading into and out of an airport have an environmental impact on adjoining boroughs as well as in the borough in which the airport is physically based.

Therefore, it is surprising that when airports make a request to increase capacity, the Mayor of London does not even get a look into the matter.  Naturally, the local authority in which the airport is based has a vested interest to secure what is often a major employer in its borough, however, airport expansion has far reaching affects beyond its borough’s boundaries and for this reason, it commands the strategic powers of a Mayor to make a strategic decision in the interests of the whole of London. The Mayor’s powers to call in a decision is unfortunately limited by various conditions which are required in order to trigger his intervention, for example, when there is a construction of a facility at an airport or when there is an application to increase passenger numbers by 500,000, however, if the Mayoralty is going to stand up for anything then it be should at least be for Londoner’s increasing concerns about airport expansion within Greater London.

Powers to call in a planning application with a strategic impact on London should be devolved to the Mayor by central government, regardless of number thresholds.  This way the Mayor would not be able to pass the buck to the local planning authority when asked about these issues, as he did at People’s Question Time in Ilford on the 18th of January 2010.  It is not good enough for him to use disingenuous arguments as he did then, that relevant noise issues can be assessed and resolved at a borough level by the relevant local planning authorities, rather than at a strategic or London wide level.

Airport expansion in the South East and the Mayor’s ideas for this has been a much widely debated topic recently, however, the Mayor’s scope for intervention should begin a lot closer to home looking at real plans which propose expansion for real airports which actually exist and impact upon people across London now.   

In his business and municipal waste strategies published in November, Boris Johnson ditched plans set out in a 2010 draft document to ask government for a national deposit system for bottles and cans.

The municipal waste strategy reduced the target for waste reduction through reuse and repair from 40,000 tonnes in 2015 and 120,000 tonnes in 2031, to 20,000 and 30,000 tonnes respectively as indicated in the draft plan [pdf].

The mayor also cut his ambitions for business waste reduction following a cut in funding allocated by the London Waste and Recycling Board Infrastructure Fund. The draft strategy [pdf] aimed to divert 1.2m tonnes from landfill making 300,000 tonnes of carbon savings a year. In the final document [pdf] the target was reduced to 500,000 tonnes of landfill diversion a year and savings of 3m tonnes of carbon over the lifetime of the projects.

Labour’s environment spokesperson Murad Qureshi AM said: “This is not value for money for Londoners considering we’ve had to wait so long for these strategies to be released. I am most concerned that the Mayor is doing little to affect Londoners’ quality of life now.” 

In November, Qureshi attacked the mayor’s waste strategy for failing to help the capital’s small businesses access recycling services and facilities.  

The Mayor of London’s office has not responded to MRW’s requests for a comment.

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Labour’s environment spokesperson Murad Qureshi AM said:  “This is not value for money for Londoners considering we’ve had to wait so long for these strategies to be released.  I am most concerned that the Mayor is doing little to affect Londoners’ quality of life now.  For example, his Energy strategy no longer calls upon the government to recognize the true scale of fuel poverty[1].   This is astonishing in today’s economic climate, with rising energy costs and more and more families slipping into fuel poverty.” 

Here are just some of the targets dropped by the Mayor at the last minute:

• Water – Target for dealing with leakages no longer aspires to “Uk industry standard by 2035” but instead to “simply continue to tackle leakage”

• Climate Change Adaptation – The Mayor’s RE:NEW target to improve the energy efficiency of 1.2 million homes by 2015 has been dropped.  His new target is to treat just 55,000 homes by 2012. 

• Energy – The Mayor no longer aims to replace 100,000 conventional vehicles with electric vehicles, instead, he’s now just looking to put 100,000 electric vehicles on the road.  His target for 25,000 electric vehicle charging points by 2015 has been slashed to just 1,300 publicly accessible charge points by 2013.

• Municipal Waste – Boris has ditched plans to ask the government to consider a national deposit system for cans and bottles and his waste reduction reuse/repair target has slipped from 40,000 tonnes in 2015 and 120,000 tonnes in 2031 to 20,000 and 30,000 respectively – a drop of up to 75% from his original target.

• Business waste – As part of its total investment fund of £58 million, the London Waste and Recycling Board allocated fund of £36 million has been slashed to £21 million to help develop waste infrastructure.  Consequently, the target to “secure 1.2million tonnes of waste diversion from landfill per year” has been downgraded to just 500,00 tonnes, and plans to save 300,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year have been reduced to a saving of 3 million tonnes of CO2 over the lifetime of the projects.

Ends

Notes

On 26 October 2011 the Mayor released three final environment strategies:

Water Strategy

Climate Change Adaptation

Climate Change Mitigation and Energy

On the 18 November the Mayor released the final two environment strategies:

Municipal Waste

Business Waste

Murad Qureshi is a Londonwide Assembly Member.  He is Labour’s environment spokesperson on the Assembly and Chair of the Assembly’s Environment Committee

For further information please contact Nikki Salih on 0207 983 4400