onionbagblog

Hi, Jason

A few comments on your latest blog:

I protected my tweets because I no longer use the ClaphamCommoner account (never did, really; I think I only ever tweeted about three times) but since it tantalises you, I have unprotected my tweets. Though there’ll still be nothing to read, I’m afraid. I’m just not that into Twitter.

Fair point. Tantalisation now turned off, much like the Tulse Hill unfriendly ballot box name of ClaphamCommoner. Ruth is still tweeting however under the TulseHillNews twitter account - or at least she is happy to put her name to it.

The £500 invoice to Keith Hill is not “unexplained“. It is a matter of public record. It was for communications work that I did for Keith Hill (in my capacity as a professional journalist, not as a councillor), it was paid absolutely legitimately by the Fees Office of the House of Commons (and this fact was printed on the said piece of communications).

And when Keith Hill objected to a planning application which was decided by the planning committee of which I was a member, at the start of the meeting I declared “a pecuniary interest” in my relationship with Keith Hill inasmuch as I had done paid communications work for him.

This pecuniary interest was noted in the meeting’s minutes. I had taken advice from the Council’s planning lawyer, and he said that I should declare this interest but, as Keith Hill had not approached me individually about the planning application, there was no need for me to withdraw from that committee meeting or that application.

All fine. Thanks for the clarification. It’s good to see some solidarity amongst members in the local Labour party.

I was not “parachuted” into the Tulse Hill candidature. A selection meeting was held, with six potential candidates seeking selection. I won, I understand, by a narrow margin.

As I have posted before - I rather like Ruth as a local politician. She has served her local ward of Clap’ham Common remarkably well over the past sixteen years. Local people that I speak to have praised the contribution that she has made to the community.

My criticism about locality doesn’t just apply to Ruth, or even just to @LambethLabour. The whole point of local government and ward representation is that local people are positioned best to serve their community in a public capacity.

You stick with what you know best. If you put yourself up for election in one ward and stand under a platform of serving your local patch, it takes some front to then deliver the same message to a different community, less than two months after the electorate in your ward have decided not to elect you.

Ruth was very unfortunate in her local Clap’ham Common ward on May 6th. She lost her seat by 225 votes, a victim it would seem of the gentrification of Clap’ham. Which is all rather ironic, seeing as though this is an agenda (and a demographic) that Nu Labour courts in the Rotten Borough.

But anyway - about those rolling greens of Tulse Hill…

I noticed the other day on the Tulse Hill estate that Tulse Hill, in fact, appears to be much leafier than Clapham, since the leafiness of Clapham seems to be a major preoccupation for some people.

Not a preoccupation, just an observation that Ruth’s local ward is very different from the ward where she is now putting herself up for election.

There are other similarities. Although the ratio of social housing in Clapham Common is undeniably lower than that of Tulse Hill (about 35% rather than 60%), it includes real pockets of deprivation and some truly awful housing, notably on the Notre Dame and Oaklands estates.

It was here that I did the bulk of my work in the past 16 years (and, prior to its transfer out of the ward in 2002, the Clapham Park estate, which was in such a bad state that it is being demolished and rebuilt using New Deal for Communities money). A vast amount of my work over the past 16 years was spent on sorting out repairs, transfers, estate-wide issues and other casework for social housing residents, not just serving the blue-rinse brigade!

Like I said - Ruth’s record in her own local ward is outstanding. I really wish she was still in a position to be able to carry on this fine work in her own local ward, especially so with the failed Lambeth Living ALMO needing her attention now, more so than ever.

But it still comes back to the locality for me. The whole messy Tulse Hill Situation has created a by-election that no one really wants in Lambeth. With the previous Councillor resigning “at the request” of @LambethLabour, this debate needn’t be happening; not until after the due legal process has been able to run its course.

So instead we are left with the very decent (and not exactly local) @LambethLabour candidate, the Tory Boy “war hero” and the @LambethLibDems candidate who is making horrid, cheap political capital out of a very delicate situation.

Hope that helps.

All the best,

Ruth

Yep - thanks once again Ruth. I *really* do wish you were still a Councillor representing Clap’ham Common. Maybe then you could continue with your tweeting.

Use me, and I’ll return the favour.