• Sunday 11 July 2010

• London Pride, London Tories...and Brian Coleman?

  Rog T of Barnet Eye on Rog E of the London Assembly and the Conservative presence at Pride:

  Roger says all the right things and includes some nice pictures. I was pondering how much the Tory party changed, when I suddenly realised that nowhere amongst the pictures was anything about Londons highest profile openly Gay assembly member Brian Coleman. Was this an oversight on Rogers part? did he not want to be seen out with our Brian, or did Brian snub the event?

  We may never know. But read on anyhow. And read the other Roger too.

  Posted by Dave Hill 18.59 BST

• Friday 9 July 2010

• Oona King: knife crime, Jewish voters and debating Ken

  This morning Oona took her campaign rather boldly to the (metaphorical) steps of City Hall and spoke about knife crime in the capital. I wasn't able to be there, but her team tells me she met a group of mothers from East London whose children have been affected by knife crime and some young people from Croydon who come into contact with gangs. Danny O'Brien from Knife Crime UK spoke as well*.

  The context for this move is, of course, the fatal stabbing last weekend of Zac Olumegbon, the ninth teenager to die in that way in London this year (two youths have been charged with his murder). Drawing attention to the issue also develops a key theme of Oona's crime-and-prevention policy and may remind some Labour Party members that Ken had a rough time with this issue in 2008. Boris capitalised, but maybe now he's the one in danger of looking vulnerable over youth violence. Oona has clearly spotted this. Has Ken?

  Oona has also been campaigning hard outside the public eye. I could name at least one friend of a friend who she's tried touching for a few quid - those leaflets don't print themselves, you know. I've learned too that she's wisely been making overtures to London's Jewish community (Oona was born to a Jewish mother, remember).

  A meeting was held at someone's home two weekends ago. This was followed by Labour Party member Andrew Gilbert, also of the London Jewish Forum, emailing an appeal to friends and contacts to "back Oona King." To this email was attached a "message from Oona" in which she outlined the main themes of her mayoral pitch and set out her position on Israel - which is solidly mainstream Labour - and Jewish identity. Gilbert's letter contains an interesting passage about Ken: Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 15.02 BST

• London housing crisis: who receives housing benefit and why?

  Here's a comment left yesterday by domjc76:

  Only the very rich and very poor can afford Central London. I for one am happy with benefit caps as it makes those on low or no incomes have to make the same choice those on middling income have to make - a small place in the centre or a bigger place further out. No one has yet answered the question why do those without jobs get to live in St John's Wood or Soho when those who work hard have to live in Herne Hill or Finsbury Park...If someone wants to live in Central London, work hard and get a well-paid job, like the rest of us have to.

  It's a type of argument that's often made and deserves to be addressed. Some of Karen Buck's remarks at yesterday's launch of Ken Livingstone's housing policy are useful in this respect:

  In places like Westminster there are two groups of tenants [to look at]. One is people, often pensioner households, who have lived in their homes in places like Hampstead, Bayswater, South Kensington for decades in many cases. As their rents have exploded, these people who never expected to find themselves dependent on benefits now are.

  I'm getting constituents of Tory MPs such as Malcolm Rifkind and Mark Field coming to me now. I'll give you an example of a lady I met last week - a Bayswater resident who's lived there for 30 years who has suffered from a brain aneurysm and whose adult daughter who'd lived nearby has died of cancer. She will have a seven thousand pound loss in housing benefit from next April.

  And the other group of people are those who would be living in social rented housing in the days when we were building sufficient to manage need. We know that 84 percent of Westminster residents in the private rented sector who are on housing benefit will lose, in many cases substantially such as £85 a week in a three-bedroom property. Where will they go? What will happen to them?

  Buck also pointed out that no one wants a situation where tens of thousands of pounds a year are paid out to meet individual claims - she's far from alone in spotting that the situation has become absurd. But is imposing a housing benefit cap any sort of solution to the intensifying problems of high private rents and low housing supply? What's more, a painful exodus of the low paid from wealthy areas will hardly contribute to developing more of those virtuous, socially-mixed communities that all political parties say they desire.

  Concern about the Osborne cap has prompted the specialist magazine Inside Housing to start a campaign against it. I quote:

  It is launched as campaign groups warned that measures to cut the £21 billion housing benefit bill announced in the emergency Budget will put thousands of people across the UK at risk of homelessness, and that many areas will become unaffordable for those on low incomes.

  The campaign has three main aims: a parliamentary inquiry into the potential impact of the changes; for 300 people to sign a petition voicing concern about the government's plans; and for readers to devise an alternative solution that will be presented to government ahead of October's comprehensive spending review.

  Livingstone and Shelter are already on board. Read the campaign page and sign the petition. My latest for Comment Is Free looks at the London housing crisis too.

  Posted on 12.55 BST

• Thursday 8 July 2010

• Ken Livingstone and Oona King: housing, unity and opposition

  The two contenders to be Labour's challenger to Boris Johnson in 2012 - assuming the latter eventually gets round to confirming that he'll run - have both been revving up their campaigns. Oona last week put in the most convincing public performance I've seen from her so far, and one of those present at a hustings held in Harrow on Monday tells me it's hard to know which way he wind is blowing among fellow party members round his way. He might have been being careful - I'm a journalist, you know - but maybe Political Betting was right to ask if Oona's chances have been written off too soon. Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 16.06 BST

• Metropolitan Lines: sign up for my newsletter

  I usually plug my newsletter on Friday mornings, which isn't all that clever. The thing gets sent out before noon, leaving only a few hours for non-subscribers to read the plug and be inspired to sign up. That's why this week I'm plugging it on a Thursday. The only trouble is I haven't written the thing yet. What will tomorrow's edition contain? Well, er, some stuff about policing, some stuff about squatting...otherwise, I've no idea. There's candour for you. Why not reward me by signing up anyway?

  Posted by Dave Hill 15.14 BST

• Policing London: race and faith inquiry launch

  As expected, the Boris Johnson-commissioned race and faith inquiry report, published yesterday evening, majors on the Met's management mechanisms and leadership approach. It recognises progress since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, but urges plenty more. Here's a segment from its Introduction:

  Have we discovered a wholly dysfunctional, institutionally racist organisation, riddled with conscious and unconscious bias and prejudice? No, unquestionably we have not. But we have found a number of examples of poor processes and practice which give rise to perceived, and at times real, discrimination. If the recommendations we make are accepted and acted upon - and some already have been - we anticipate that all officers and staff in the MPS will benefit and that the MPS itself will become stronger and more effective. (pages 10 and 11)

  Boris, ever the Good News Mayor, quoted the first two sentences at yesterday evening's launch of the report in London's Living Room, after asking for a minute's silence to remember those who died on 7/7. Cindy Butts, the inquiry's chair, spoke at greater length, urging the Met to once again look hard at itself in the mirror in order to "gain and retain" the confidence and trust of all Londoners. Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 09.18 BST

• Wednesday 7 July 2010

• World Cup London: Spanish Shoreditch

  

  Flying outside the handsome and recently-saved Light Bar.

  Posted by Dave Hill 20.53 BST

• 2012 Olympics: debt dither, legacy fears

  Paul Norman of Estates Gazette has been closely tracking the troubling saga of the Olympic Park and its delayed transfer to the ownership of the Olympic Park Legacy Company (see here and here and here and elsewhere on his blog). The company, set up a year ago, has the enormous task of making the Games' regeneration dream comes true - in other words, ensuring that those handsome sports arenas are put to good, cost-effective use after the Olympians have gone and that a happy, healthy new East London community rises in the surrounding territory in homes built by an eager private sector. All that's a whole lot harder when the land in question doesn't yet belong to you. Continue reading...

  Posted on 15.09 BST

• Policing London: race and faith inquiry report to recommend major changes to career management and promotion processes

  This evening the final report of the panel that inquired on behalf of Boris Johnson into the management of race and faith issues in the Met and the MPA will be published. Here's a passage from the panel's "emerging findings", produced last September:

  The Metropolitan Police Service's vision is to "Make London the safest major city in the world" and its motto is "Working together for a safer London". It is clear that, in order to make these aspirational statements into a tangible reality, it is essential to develop a working relationship between the MPS and the communities of London which is based on mutual respect and trust; a relationship which has to be built on the principles of equality and justice both with regard to the internal as well as the external processes of the organisation.

  The most striking of those findings focused on management and leadership in the Met, especially in relation to career development. Officers from minority ethnic and faith groups - and, significantly, others - had told the panel they lacked confidence in promotion processes, with chances of advancement appearing to depend far too heavily on the whims and personal preferences of line managers and too many specialist units looking like closed shops. There seemed little intellectual grasp or practical implementation of the organisation's own equalities policy.

  My understanding is that the final report will build on the emerging findings, laying considerable stress on the matters mentioned above. I gather that it will find an over-preoccupation with moving up the career ladder in the culture of the Met, and at the same time a serious lack of vision and direction about how talent is best nurtured and rewarded. Where modern and effective management skills should be transparently applied there is instead a dog-eat-dog mentality, nourished by the existence or suspected existence of largely informal preferment mechanisms from which many officers feel excluded. Continue reading...

  Posted on 09.32 BST

• 7/7/2005

  The Hyde Park memorial to the victims of the London bombings. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

  The capital will mark the fifth anniversary of the 7 July bombings in a low key manner that not everyone thinks appropriate. The Guardian's leader reflects on the national response "in the face of fear."

  Posted by Dave Hill 05.44 BST

• Tuesday 6 July 2010

• Boris Johnson: the politics of cable cars

  Having used the cable car in Barcelona that floats you towards its - sadly, tumbleweed-gathering - Olympic Park, I'm with those enthused by the prospect of using the same transport mode to cross the Thames between the O2 and the Royal Docks. These include Friends of the Earth whose spokesperson Jenny Bates commented yesterday on the Guardian's news piece about the plan as follows:

  A cable car is exactly the sort of forward-thinking transport solution that London needs - it will improve cross-river access in the capital without generating more traffic and pollution.

  But will cable cars become long-term, green alternatives to additional London road bridges, as Friends of the Earth hope? Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 15.00 BST

• Policing in London: where do 999 calls go?

  I was on a number 48 last Thursday, riding home from the MPA civil liberties panel's open meeting about police use of DNA (of which more soon). As the bus trundled out of Shoreditch and down Hackney Road I saw from my top deck seat a group of male youths wandering slowly out of a small side street. There were four or five of them, but three in particular had caught my eye. Each was wearing an untucked, baggy polo shirt in a different, bright primary colour: one red, one yellow, one green. All three were Asian and had similar haircuts. In the glaring sunlight they were striking. I recall speculating over whether they'd compared grooming notes before going out.

  Then the youth in the yellow shirt threw a stone. He threw it directly at the bus I was travelling in. I watched its low, fast arc and flinched at the hard crack as it hit either a window or the bodywork just above it at a point about half-a-dozen seats in front of mine. I was outraged, depressed, amazed: the wantonness, the stupidity, the arrogance. I took out my phone and dialled 999. Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 11.34 BST

• Monday 5 July 2010

• Boris Johnson: Gay marriage? Why not?

  From Pink News:

  Mayor of London Boris Johnson has told PinkNews.co.uk that he supports gay marriage and wants to be mayor again for Worldpride, which London will be hosting in 2012. Kicking off the parade with members of the Gay Liberation Front, Mr Johnson said: "If the Conservatives and Liberals can get together in a national coalition and settle their differences, I don't see why you can't have gay marriage".

  Further on:

  Mr Johnson made his pro-gay marriage declaration in response to a placard being carried by gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. Mr Tatchell told PinkNews.co.uk: "I'm very pleased. He took one look at it and said 'why not?' I'm sure his support will add to the pressure to marriage equality."

  Boris's sometimes perplexing stance on lesbian and gay rights has a long and educational history. Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 11.21 BST

• World Cup London: multinational Ladbroke Grove

  

  A highly-rated pub in Ladbroke Grove.

  Posted by Dave Hill 10.47 BST

• The London week ahead: policing the capital

  Boris Johnson's ascent to City Hall was powered by promises to clamp down on crime by taking the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority. His first appearance in that role - which he has since relinquished - was on 6 October 2008, a few days after he had informed the then Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair that he had no confidence in him, effectively forcing him to stand down. There was a packed gallery at City Hall to see the spectacle of Sir Ian and his nemesis sitting almost side by side, but the occasion was also significant for Boris's commissioning an inquiry into the lack of career progress in the MPS by officers from ethnic and religious minorities. Continue reading...

  Posted by Dave Hill 07.06 BST

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