The Stop Kev, unsettle Kate Hoey and prop up the Poster Boy campaign failed at the Vauxhall Constituency Labour Party AGM last night. The right wing of @LambethLabour, and in particular, the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor, fell short by just a single vote to put in place the right wing puppet Paul Gadsby as a replacement Secretary for Hoey’s rightleft hand man, @kevindcraig.
The move was designed to weaken the MP for Vauxhall and allow @LambethLabour to makes moves on putting the Poster Boy up for Parliament. It now looks as though @LambethLabour will have to be content with controlling the herd within Lambeth Town Hall, and not the CLP.
Hoey was held to account at the meeting with some early questions from Stockwell’sCouncillor Bigham. He asked Hoey about her plans for future local campaigns, only to be silenced with a call to focus upon community events, rather than the issues.
This was just the warm up event ahead of the knockout blow that @LambethLabour has been in training for ever since May 6th. Even with most local branches voting to support @kevindcraig, the final voting was all down to the branch delegates.
It’s a strange system of democracy that allows a branch meeting to endorse one candidate, yet the absolute power is in the hands of the delegate that then attends the AGM, and is able to ignore the wishes of the members.
Which more or less is what happened on the night at the Wheatsheaf Community Centre along South Lambeth Road. One by one, the local Vauxhall branches have been turning their backs on the campaign to kick out Hoey over recent weeks. But with the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor, um, whipping, the delegates ganged up to do the dirty on @kevindcraig.
This was acknowledged by @kevindcraig in his speech. He recognised the “hate” within the party, but instead called to focus the CLP on attacking the Tories. Given the similarities between the Big Society and #lambethcoop, you can see the implications of the message from the left of centre candidate.
Questions followed from the floor, with a call to engage more women and young people. With the Vauxhall CLP having a low head count of only 750 members, you would think that it is keen to hold on to all within the party, rather than try and kick out the likes of Councillor Abrams after the botched @LambethLabour email hack.
Crunch time soon came for the Stop Kev campaign, and true to form, the delegates ignored the wishes of the branch members and voted for the @LambethLabour puppet. It was left to the trade union representation to show some sense of political conviction within the left of Lambeth politics.
@kevindcraig was returned as Secretary of the Vauxhall CLP with a 21-20 vote in his favour. Hoey will remain doing whatever it is that Hoey does, and the Poster Boy will be left scratching his head, and looking around for another constituency to try and conquer.
As for the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor? A half-decent first effort in trying to destabilise further what is already a split party in Lambeth. It makes you wonder why the right wing @LambethLabour doesn’t just do the sensible thing and join up with their Big Society, big business loving Tory chums and put an end to the Nu Labour project.
You may remember how a squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor was given the task to unsettle the left of the party, remove @kevindcraig, replace him with a Nu Labour puppet and then allow the Poster Boy to take on the power of the fragrant Mss Hoey.
Blimey.
But even with the local branches seemingly turning their backs on the Nu Labour project and endorsing @kevindcraig, the Coup d’Vauxhall is still in the balance. No surprises that the Oval branch backed the Poster Boy 11-3, but a bit of an eyebrow raising moment when Bishop’s ward went the way of the left.
The AGM, being held at the Wheatsheaf Community Centre this evening, will see the branch delegates voting on the decision. This should be a formality, but a last ditch attempt by the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor has now come into play.
Shame on the Stockwell branch, who having voted to back @kevindcraig, is now sending the right wing of the party to try and tip the vote. @RichardAngell and Councillor Bigham will be doing the best for their Poster Boy later this evening at the Wheatsheaf.
The outcome is still far too tight to call. The only certainty is that if the right wing puppet Paul Gadsby is put in place as Secretary, Hoey will start to look wobbly, leaving the path open for the Poster Boy come 2015.
When is a free swim not a free swim? When the coalition government is used as an excuse by @LambethLabour not to continue with the local election pledge it made less than two months ago.
Ah yes - it’s a return to an old family favourite around these parts - that @LambethLabour election pledge of “free swimming for every resident.”
*sigh*
Almost two months after @LambethLabour was returned to power, has anyone actually managed a free swim at any of the borough swimming poolsBrixton Rec yet?
Nope, me neither.
I appreciate that for pledges to become policy takes some time. What is not acceptable however is to make political capital out of a pledge, just because you don’t like what the ConDem coalition is doing up the road in Westminster.
We’ve seen this already in the Rotten Borough, with the mixed message being sent out regarding the school Academies debate (bad locally, but we’re still going to build one…) It now seems that swimming has become caught up in the political point scoring as well.
But the national ConDem swinging of the leisure axe has absolutely nothing to do with the local election pledge made by @LambethLabour less than two months ago.
Free swimming for every resident is free swimming for every resident. Simple. No ConDem opt-outs were made in the manifesto. The choice was clear for Lambeth residents - vote for @LambethLabour and free swimming will be rolled out.
Not so now it seems.
Already @LambethLabour councillors are starting to show signs of using the ConDem budget as the get out clause, rather than be held to account.
If manifesto pledges are dependent upon a higher power, then what’s the point in making them in the first place? You may as well live in fantasy Lambeth La La Land, promise the most ridiculous piece of local legislation, and then retract it whenever the electorate decides not to vote in your Westminster pals on a national level.
Keeping it local, and I’m still paying twice for my daily swim - once with Fusion for @BrockwellLido, and once again with Greenwich Leisure Limited for my Brixton Rec membership. Both pools are owned by @lambeth_council, but the pimping out model of public services means that residents get fleeced twice.
And so yeah, Councillor Bigham - free swimming for every resident? This blame game is starting to sound a little lame.
A most useful morning spent in the fine company of @SophiaLooney, the Divisional Director of Equalities, Policy and Performance for @lambeth_council. A series of my usual sneeringsteering tweets, questioning the validity of the #lambethcoop Citizen’s Commission, led to the very kind invite from the council officer to come in for a chat.
Our chat was enjoyable, useful and even *shhh* co-operative. It was a shame however that it took an apolitical council officer to be the first person involved in the whole PR project to be able to actually try and explain and justify what the hell is happening with the much lauded Citizen’s Commission.
The premise was Everything You Always Wanted to Know About #lambethcoop But Was Afraid to Ask. The sub-plot was please come in and tell us why you think the Citizen’s Commission, with zero citizens, has got off to such a poor start.
@SophiaLooney very kindly agreed to my request to record our chat. I asked her to ignore the @audioboo app, enjoy a friendly chat and with the right of reply / deletion of audio come the end of our conversation. Come the conclusion, and I was pleased to have the confirmation to keep the recording on the public record.
It was a fascinating dialogue, understanding how a council officer implements political policy. @SophiaLooney’s enthusiasm for the #lambethcoop project cannot be denied.
Please do listen to the @audioboo below - I guarantee it will take less time than actually reading through the fifty plus page of the #lambethcoop White Paper policy document.
The team of officers that report into @SophiaLooney have been responsible for writing the White Paper, managing the online and offline process of feedback.
It was confirmed that the citizen engagement (talking with the Little People) would take place through until November. The main form of feedback is to be the preferred Nu Labour methodology of a focus group.
The folly of such a neurotic approach to pleasing all of the people, but only during election time, is well documented as being one of the downfalls of the Nu Labour project on a national level. It seems that the lessons still haven’t been learnt here on a local level in Lambeth, where the Nu Labour project is still carrying on regardless.
@SophiaLooney confirmed that “about 300 residents” have been invited to take part in the focus group. I know little of the methodology, but I hope that this 0.01% of the population in Lambeth returns the right answers that will be beneficial to the remaining residents.
Road shows are also going to be rolled out around the borough. The Lambeth Show will be a strong point for engagement. Just make sure you talk to the #lambethcoop people before you hit the Chucklehead Cider tent.
Or maybe not…
The “bicycle billboard” idea is also intriguing, if not slightly bonkers. A bloke on a bicycle will be whizzing around the borough with a billboard all about the #lambethcoop attached. As residents, we are then invited to follow the procession.
It all sounds like the Pied Piper dancing a merry jig around the mean streets of Lambeth. I’d be weary if the bonkers bicycle billboard bloke takes a wrong turn towards the river Effra.
But what of the Citizen’s Commission itself?
@SophiaLooney agreed that the title is misleading. Co-op Commission would be more appropriate, given the current membership of the Commission, consisting of three @LambethLabour cabinet members.
This was a key point, and one that I wanted to press with @SophiaLooney. She announced that “three other members” have been invited, two of whom “are in jobs related to what we are trying to achieve.”
Five hundred and eighty expressions of interest have also been sent out. I was hopeful here that the 0.01% representation with the declaration of interests was about to leap by a further whopping 0.01%.
I’m afraid not - “academics, civil servants and think tanks, all from around the country,” have been asked to join in the co-op conversation, all ahead of the participation of local Lambeth residents.
I explained to @SophiaLooney that I expressed an interest via email to take part in the consultation. The “volume of email that we have received” is the reason why I haven’t heard back apparently.
But hey hoe - here I was, sitting in the office of a high ranking Lambeth civil servant, and being provided with inside information about #lambethcoop that no politician has yet been brave enough to declare. Co-operation between residents and council officers does exist if you cut out the middleman. Which more or less sums up what #lambethcoop is about.
Elsewhere and I was alarmed to hear: “a Citizen’s Commission meeting *may* be held in public.”
Note the singular description; note the non-committal approach to actually carrying this out.
As for the absolute power of the Citizen’s Commission, @SophiaLooney confirmed that it has no real power, but only the brief to write a report for the @lambeth_council cabinet to consider.
Seeing as though the Citizen’s Commission *is* the @lambeth_council cabinet, then once again, why bother?
Meanwhile @LambethLibdems and the Lambeth Tories have yet to be brought into the process. So not quite as co-operative as the Nu Labour politicians would like us to believe.
Ignoring the fact that #lambethcoop appears to have been put together on the back of a fag packeta whiteboard (naughty Jase, *very* naughty,) I still can’t see past the whole exercise as nothing but a PR exercise in giving the impression of more citizen involvement.
@SophiaLooney and her team have done a fine job in setting up the mechanisms for consultation. The actual implementation remains with the politicians - which more or less has been my point all along.
We elect local politicians to take care of the messy business of balancing the books with council services. They are rewarded well for this, and get to engage in a micro local level whilst acting out their political fantasies.
I have no issue with politicians making decisions on my behalf. That is what I voted for on May 6th. The problem is when politicians attempt to use a PR #lambethcoop smokescreen to implements cuts, and pass on the blame of a withdrawal of public services on to the Little People.
This seems to be the exact situation being put forward by @cllrstevereed [unblocked - hurrah!] at the launch event for #coop14 at the weekend, the fortnight of debate regarding all things co-operative within the country.
With a big heads up to @southlondonpost, a video of the speech given by the leader of @lambeth_council has now appeared online.
One minute in and Michael Stephenson, the General Secretary of the Co-operative party states:
“Business growth is helping us develop new grounds for co-operation.”
Its certainly a buzz word this co-op lark. It has deep rooted and well-intentioned historical objectives. Sadly it now seems that if you add the co-op prefix to any capitalist model, then you are excused for allowing big business to control the agenda, rather than the citizens.
@cllrstevereed talks in his address about giving local people skips and spades, a bunch of community offenders and getting local people to transform a derelict plot of land.
Fine, but there’s a huge leap of trust, accountability and responsibility from the council washing its hands of local urban regeneration, to getting citizen’s to run front line services.
Stephenson concludes by shaking his fist and stating:
“For me, the big fear is people who don’t share our values politically, using what we believe in as a cheap way to justify cutting back public services.”
Ouch.
I hope the politician sitting to his, um, left was listening to this carefully.
Many, many thanks to @SophiaLooney for kindly inviting me in. As a public servant it appears that she is doing her job rather well. It’s such a shame that the policy that she is being asked to implement is all about delegation of duty, rather than fairness, accountability and responsibility.“
To not be able to offer swimming for the second consecutive morning during the height of the midsummer months is unfortunate; to repeat this act is not even careless - it’s a cock up of major proportions on behalf of Fusion.
The problem here is chlorine: too much chlorine. Fusion has been pumping the pool full of chemicals, to try and keep away the midges after the algae situation of last summer.
It’s a delicate balancing act - not enough chlorine and the algae ferments; too many chemicals and you run the risk of having to close the pool because swimmers’ skin starts to burn away.
Blimey.
And so having been told by Fusion management *not* to leave the chlorine pump on overnight, the last man standing lifeguard, um, left the chlorine pump on overnight on Monday.
Whoops.
The scenes at 7am outside Lake Brockwell were not pleasant. Swimmers are usually a serene bunch, happy to see in a midsummer morning with the tranquil activity of a dip in the great outdoors. Turn them away for the second morning running and the Speedo boys and girls tend to get a little agitated.
The lido community is more than the sum of a simple swim. We meet early morning to share friendships and conversation in what has to be the most delightful location in all of South London. It’s a way of life for the summer months, and one that doesn’t take too kindly to a corporate cock up one again from Fusion.
This is the third time this month that Fusion has forgotten how to run an outdoor pool. From memory, there wasn’t a single chlorine or algae related incident in the twelve years of the lido golden years under the fine management of Paddy and Casey.
Back in the day and the algae was attacked at source with the good old-fashioned method of a wetsuit, some breathing apparatus and a chisel. The result was the beautiful clear blue waters of Brockwell, something that has come to characterise all that is lovely about the lido.
It hasn’t helped that the Fusion site manager departed this summer, swiftly followed by the lido manager. A new team is in place, but with little knowledge in how to upkeep an outdoor pool.
And so for the second morning running, it was a return to my love / hate relationship with Brixton Rec. Sterile, suffocated, and yep, heavy on chlorine.
Yuk. No thanks.
A third morning of such inconvenience may not get the polite “pah” response from the lovely lido community of SE24.
The first @lambeth_council cabinet meeting for the oldnew administration, and it was a case of blink and you’ll miss it. Either the business agenda for the borough doesn’t require too much debate, or the all new @LambethLabour cabinet are big football fans and wanted to catch the second half of Spain Vs Honduras.
The Waterloo Public Realm and Jubilee Gardens Progress Report was a reminder that there is life within the borough north of Brixton. It’s a world away from the suburbs of St Leonard’s in the south, but the sexy SE1 postcode of Jubilee Gardens (the green bit by the wheel) gives the borough some commercial clout.
Ah, but how to manage the continued regeneration and upkeep of this prestigious patch, especially so with 2012 approaching and Lambeth’s little patch along the South Bank likely to reap in on all the Olympic commercial activity?
Planning permission for improvements was granted in 2006, but the scheme has hit the proverbial marathon runner’s brick wall. Even in these 2012 corporate friendly of times, the cash flow has ceased, and adjacent landowners have pitched in legal concerns.
A money saving second planning application has now been put forward by cabinet, and £5.5m has been made available, thanks to some corporate friendly cash by both Shell and the London Eye. I only hope it’s not a classic @LambethLabour case of you scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.
“Over my dead body will a tower block be built at Jubilee Gardens.”
Which is more than can be said for the current planned high rise expansion of Vauxhall.
@LambethLibDems leader Councillor Lumsden chipped in with a call for a speedy resolution to the Jubilee Gardens project, before congratulating cabinet new boy @cllr_robbins on the sharpness of his suit.
Blimey.
Attention turned towards the Streatham Lodge Conservation Area, and I couldn’t but help think that I had been locked in meeting room 8 at Lambeth Town Hall for the past twelve months. This item has been sitting in the in tray for cabinet longer than Streatham Pool has been shut. And that’s saying something.
Councillor Prentice promised to:
“Bring this item to its absolute conclusion by the September cabinet meeting.”
Sounds about right. But blimey - I wasn’t expecting the sting in the @LambethLabour tail from the former cabinet member, @jkazantzis. Speaking about his own ward constituency, the good Councillor stated:
“This issue could have been resolved tonight. The minutes of the last meeting [of which @jkazantzis sat around the cabinet table] reflected that.”
It seems that the final cabinet meeting of the last administration was blocked up with the other Streatham issue - what the hell do we do with the Hub. It’s a delicate balancing act between pleasing local residents with a conservation area, and letting big business come into the borough to bail you out of a bit of a sticky situation.
The Sexual Entertainment Venue Licensing agenda item was straightforward and made perfect political, and practical sense. In essence it allows @lambeth_council to close a local loophole in the national 2003 Sex Licence Act, meaning that the council is able to issue (or block) a sex entertainment licence to any venue wanting to put on such a seedy act.
This would work well with the council’s current Prostitution Strategy in enabling the local authority to work with the community to help drive the degradation of women out of the borough.
No political arguments to be had - no point. Councillor Lumsden supported the initiative on behalf of @LambethLibDems, remembering how residents in his Streatham Hill ward relied upon council support to stop lap dancing taking place at Caesars.
“This is not about morality, but about public protection.”
Heads nods all round, both from the cabinet table and in the public seats.
@cllr_robbins made his cabinet debut, leading on the Governance Arrangements for the Building Schools for the Future Local Education Partnership. I appreciate that these are key local issues, but you would hope that some pen pusher within Lambeth Town Hall could come up with some more appealing agenda titles.
How to Make Sure New Schools Don’t Balls Up would fit the description. @cllr_robbins talked us through the chain of command and accountability [aha!] for the news schools being built in the borough. No mention of the is it or isn’t it an Academy debate - this was all straight forward (and well thought out) administration details.
Cabinet essentially retains overall control (and accountability) of the school build programme. Concern was raised from around the cabinet table of cuts from central government (but not in cheap party political scoring manner. Oh, no, not here…)
With the first half of the Spain match slipping away, @cllrstevereed delayed any time wasting and continued down the agenda with more pace than a tricky North Korean Comrade left winger.
The Safer Lambeth Partnership Plan was introduced by Councillor Heywood. The plan prioritises where funding will spent to help keep the borough safe. No major disagreements, no additional financial implications for council services. Safe as houses. Here’s hoping.
Speaking of which, hidden away towards the foot of the agenda and we came to the Housing Performance Cabinet Advisory Panel: Establishment. The executive summary states:
“To establish a new Cabinet Advisory Panel on Housing Performance, to replace the existing Housing Cabinet Advisory Panel.”
Not so much shifting deckchairs on the Titanic, but more like the justification for cabinet panels (and jobs.) Councillor Peck revealed that:
“Lambeth Living has turned around a £12m deficit from this time last year, to have a current surplus of £200,000.”
Cripes.
Keep out of the black and in the red (or is it the other way round?) Being in profit has to be good for the council coffers, but I hope that tenants in the failed ALMO are also seeing some real value in terms of the upkeep of their homes.
As @shanecarmichael pointed out to me, how was the surplus achieved, and what has been learnt from this? What has been put in place to ensure that this momentum continues?
@cllrstevereed added:
“We have the money, now we need the service. We will give Lambeth Living twelve months to shape up or ship out.”
Blimey.
Councillor Lumsden reminded @cllrstevereed that residents of the ALMO are still waiting for a tenant to be installed as the Chair, as was the promise when Lambeth Living was established.
But by now the half time whistle had been blown in Spain Vs Honduras, and cabinet wasn’t going to extra time. I had a delightful catch up with my favourite cabinet member, who always makes my knees go wobbly.
Oh, and the good @cllrstevereed was decent enough to unblock me, as well as offer me a cheeky grin. So all is well in the world. A decent first cabinet, and optimism for more to come.
<-whoops. Apologies.
