Paul Johnston

Have been handed a Lib Dem publication calling itself the 'Voice'. I am not amazed at the abuse of 'statistics' which calls to mind the saying about 'lies and damned lies'. Since they came to power in 2002 with the biggest majority anyone has had since 1982 at least (LD 30 C 15 Lab 3), the Council staff have increased from 3750 to 4518 - 500 of that increase in the past year alone. They are NOT all extra teachers and care assistants by any means. The Band D Council Tax has, in the same time, soared from £1060 to a projected £1464 - yet the 'Voice' says the Lib Dems have kept it down.

They draw grotesquely distorted comparisons between the 'brave new world' they would like us to believe we live in now and the previous period of Tory 'control'. This is the time from 1998-2002, when the Conservatives formed a minority administration in a Council of 21 Conservatives (from 2001 18 Cons and 3 Independents) 19 Liberal Democrats and 10 Labour. The latter 2 refused to form a coalition and even when the Lib Dems became the largest party in the summer of 2001 they refused to take office. They and Labour imposed their own choice of Mayor in 2000 and 2001, controlled the Overview Panels and the budgets of 2000 and 2002 were most emphatically theirs not the Tories'. The Tories have not actually controlled Kingston since 1994, and then only by the Mayor's casting vote.

The voters of Kingston gave the Lib Dems an unparallelled opportunity in 2002 and they have done remarkably little with it.........hence the 'Voice's' rather strangled, desperate distortion of the past and the present. Sad, really.

On Thursday I celebrated the 40th anniversary of my 21st birthday by driving from Alcester through a blizzard in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire to attend a Group meeting on the Budget. 40 years ago I was chairman of Lancaster Young Conservatives, Harold Wilson was about to call a General Election in which Lancaster would go Labour for the first time and neither I nor other people born 9 months after their fathers got pre-D Day leave would be allowed to vote, even though we were 21. I was a student reading Politics and History at Lancaster University and was about to meet Daphne.

Just returned from a couple of days at Alcester, near Stratford on Avon. Took the tourist bus sight-seeing tour of Stratford and environs. It has many of the features of the 'Old Town Trolley' tours of places like Boston, Washington, Charleston and Savannah in the US. A really informative commentary on the chosen sights with a hop on, hop off facility lasting 24 hours. I suggested something like this for Kingston and its neighbourhood once. We have some good heritage sights nearby including Hampton Court. The Lib Dem Executive member responsible poured scorn on the idea so it crashed. But, if Stratford can do it, why can't we??

A really useful evening! We had the AGM of Surbiton Hill Conservative branch last evening. These are often rather desultory affairs to which only the Committee members turn up and not all of them. Last night was refreshingly different, not least because of the attendance of a number of people NOT on the committee, alongside those that are, but also because of the number of attendees at this year's AGM who were NOT at last year's event. In fact people who became active during the General Election campaign and have remained so since. It was also the longest AGM I can remember because of the discussion of campaigning issues for the local elections in which all present participated. The committee meeting which followed also had a full and frank debate about campaign matters.

We now have a new Chairman, Nick Kilby, who is one of the newer members himself and full of ideas and energy. He succeeds me in the office I have held since 2001. I feel very upbeat about the prospect for Surbiton Hill.

It doesn't seem long since we greeted the creation of a Primary Care Trust for Kingston. Now we learn that the Trust is facing a deficit this year of £8.3million. Given that Blair is right when he says that this government has put more money than ever before into the NHS, one cannot but wonder why this situation has arisen. And Kingston PCT is by no means alone. The situation faced here is replicated nationwide. The management of the PCT has produced a 3 year recovery plan, a substantial element of which is a considerable reduction in staff, featuring, for instance, 28 members of the Finance dept. (not all full time) and 8 members from Human Resources (ditto). I feel heartily sorry for the people affected. But I wonder if they aren't the victims of an inflation of the public sector under New Labour which has just started to prove unsustainable - unaffordable, anyway.

A colleague has emailed me an article from the Evening Standard 15th February detailing crime in Kingston over the last two years. While it suggests an overall fall in crime of 5% there are some disturbing trends. Rape and sexual assault are up 28% from 155 in 2004 to 198 in 2005. Robbery and burglary are up by 20% and 12% respectively. Domestic crime has risen from 935 to 1012 - I had a fair idea of that from the evidence given to my scrutiny panel meetings on domestic violence which lasted throughout 2005. The biggest listed improvement areas are racist crime, down from 297 to 244, and homophobic crime which is down from 46 incidents to 15.

We are considered a low crime area - so I am assured by officers in the Met Police. But all the growth areas listed above do particular damage to the personal peace of citizens; they are assaults against the persons, dignity and homes of decent people. There is no room for complacency on anyone's part.

Mr. Edser of Transport for London (TfL) has replied to the various objections to the reopening of the gate as follows:- Edsersynopsis.doc. He suggests that Ed Davey and councillors (which?) had asked for the gate to be reopened. Davey says that may have been so once but things have changed. Local residents have objected. David Berry of Alexandra ward (Lib Dem) rightly points out that the councillors on Surbiton Neighbourhood were against the reopening when objecting residents complained about it. However I doubt if the Surbiton councillors were consulted. The finger of suspicion points at Executive members and at officers with a known weakness for anything to do with buses (e.g. bus lanes in Ewell Road) and an attitude to consultation which believes in 'silent majorities' who agree with whatever the Administration wants to do but don't take part in consultations.

I gave up smoking (16 to 20 king-size a day) on October 5th 1993 at 10. 35 a.m. in the foyer of the Asda store at Roehampton Vale. I took a pack of B&H with 16 cigarettes unsmoked in it and threw it after some deliberation into a litter bin (whence it was promptly retrieved by an old lady who had observed my deliberations.) I then went to the adjacent pharmacy and bought my first supply of patches. I say this because, although I haven't smoked a single cigarette since that day, I still don't regard myself as a non-smoker and in some ways there has been a price to pay for not smoking in that my metabolism seems to have undergone a profound change. My weight has soared well past the heaviest point it ever reached when I smoked - and it's not because I eat more to make up for not smoking.

Yesterday the House of Commons voted on a free vote to make other people in public or 'semi-public' places and even private members' clubs do what I did voluntarily over 12 years ago. This is obviously in many people's minds a worthy cause;  it will help people give up even in spite of themselves and thus they and everyone around them will become healthier. They will also become wealthier because the price of fags in Britain is now frighteningly higher in real terms than in the days when I smoked.

Isn't this a good thing? Perhaps, but it isn't a cost-free benefit.

The bans on workplace smoking years ago led to smokers leaving the workplace to smoke. I remember running the gauntlet of white coated medical staff on the pavement outside the University Hospital in Richmond VA in the early 90s - the first place I observed the effects of the ban. Staff simply went outside to do it. They do now in Kingston at the Guildhall. When we banned staffroom smoking at school the Head was incredulous when I said that staff who smoked would just leave the premises and smoke outside the gate. They did and the area outside the gate, like the one in Richmond, soon became littered with stubbed out dog ends, hardly adding to the beauty of the area. 

My big concern about bans of this kind imposed by law derives mainly from knowledge of what happened in USA when well-intentioned people secured a similar ban on the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages - 'Prohibition'. The incidence of  alcohol-related disease went UP, not down, as more people were attracted to drink by its very illegality. The distinction between right and wrong, reflected in societies based on Judaeo-Christian ethics for centuries in what the civil law allowed and forbade, was blurred and has never really recovered. Who is going to enforce this ban? The police? If so is there not a risk that even more 'law-abiding' citizens will become alienated from the police than are already so? Prohibition gave American crime a boost from which it still profits and blurred the distinction between criminality and non-criminality. It also achieved the precise opposite of the intention of its framers. Could we not be headed down the same path?

My sister Brenda (left) who still lives in our native Lancashire and wife Daphne pictured at Coniston Water in August 2005. Couldn't have this blog showing our cat and leaving the most important women in my life out, could I?

Rain on Sunday. Much needed after the driest January I can remember since 1976. There's talk of water shortage in the South East this year, which makes you one wonder at the determination of J. Prescott and K. Livingstone to cover the entire place with more and more houses which will all consume more and more water.

Mass at St. Catherine of Siena. Roped in to read OT, psalm and epistle. Readings (6th Sunday of the Year, Sunday cycle B) This would have been Septuagesima Sunday in the good old days.

Large article in Sunday Telegraph by Sion Jenkins, acquitted last week of murdering his foster daughter. He's been tried 3 times and convicted once, a conviction which, years later, was held to be unsafe. Even a second retrial jury couldn't come to an agreed verdict either way. The same happened at the first retrial. I have no insight that the poor jurors had not but aspects of the affair as presented do remind me strongly of 'The Aircraftman and the Carpenter' by Ludovic Kennedy. This is a study of the 1930s American case of the kidnapping and murder of the baby son of air-ace Charles Lindbergh. There the police were so sure they had got the right man, a German immigrant, that they seem to have refused to consider the possibility that he was innocent and, literally, 'fitted him up' for the crime. The jurors believed the police and the German carpenter was found guilty and executed. The same paper contains a long account by a woman who, with her partner, was wrongly accused of murdering a policeman in Florida in 1976. She spent 5 years on death row before her sentence was commuted to life. The conviction of both was later quashed altogether, but not before her partner had been executed 14 years after the crime and after the actual perpetrator had apparently confessed his own guilt and asserted their innocence. Given the degree of doubt about the fallibility of the 'system' and the people that operate it I conclude that we are probably better off without the death penalty here in Britain..

Last night the Community Leadership and Resources Overview Panel spent 3 hours discussing next year's draft Budget with Overview Panel chairs and Executive portfolio holders, only 3 out of  7 of whom turned up! Panels will not this year have a chance to study their aspects at their own meetings as is the usual custom, so colleagues and I had to try to raise points our Panels would have raised in our opinion. The upshot of it seems to be that the price of domiciliary care for the elderly and those with disabilities is likely to be a 'risk factor' again, though the Lib Dem Administration seems to want to minimise the risk by raising the qualification threshold for the service in the first place. And at 4.7% Kingston looks likely to have the highest Council Tax rise in London and probably the highest tax absolutely. Within my memory it was the lowest - or second lowest - rated Borough in Greater London. The Liberal Democrats are wedded to their 'Livin Kingston'  (sic) publication which apparently costs up to £94k (estimates vary according to taste) and are also wedded to hammering the Heritage Centre to save a paltry few thousand, which scrapping LK would easily cover. Squalls ahead!

Visited School Lane again this morning for estate inspection. CCTV cameras seem to be pointing every which way but at what needs surveillance. Saw the tar paper which has been put down over the tiles in some of the communal lobbies. It's just like the stuff you might put on a shed roof. As a surface to walk on it might have a life of 6 months. The grit is coming off it and the stuff itself is lifting where it hasn't adhered to the 'non-slip' tiles that were a hazard owing to extreme slippiness when wet. It's going to be taken up officially but it's anybodiy's guess when.

Email arrived this morning about the TfL proposal to reopen the London-bound bus gate about a mile north of Tolworth roundabout on a 50mph stretch of road. Local residents don't want it, having campaigned to get it closed in the first place. There must also be a grave risk of collisions when a bus slows down in order to negotiate this gate, which it is not going to be able to do at any speed approaching that of the 50 mph of surrounding traffic.(I can recall the days in the 1980s  when there was a bus stop on the dual carriageway and the speed limit was 70 mph! Imagine the fun that caused.) Our Neighbourhood Committee supported the residents' stand when we were 'consulted' on the issue by TfL last year. Our Tory GLA member Tony Arbour has also been active on the issue, as has our Lib Dem MP Ed Davey. TfL seems however to be deaf and determined. Ken Livingstone chairs TfL's Board and his Vice-Chair is his old chum from 1980s GLC days David 'Dave' Wetzel, who presided over traffic chaos then. Is this significant, I wonder?

A pair of these Indian ring-necked parakeets have taken to visiting our garden on a regular basis. They seem to like the high-energy food we get from the RSPB people. My mother always used to say that such brightly coloured birds would never survive in Britain because our native, duller species would soon mob them. It seems not to be the case with these. The climate seems to be OK for them too. Daphne says its not more evidence of global warming as their native habitat is the foothills of the Himalayas. Any way I quite like them. They add colour to the regular fare of finches (green, gold and chaffinch mainly), sparrows, tits (blue, great and coal), pied wagtails and, of course, starlings, collared doves and pigeons. Anyone know a way of deterring pigeons in a suburban garden?

  To Executive last night. Rather little by way of debate, which, considering the Administration is about to reorganise the whole Housing Department again - only 3 months before an election - is rather surprising. I know there's quite a bit that needs amenment there and had it very much in mind for the new term after May. But there's been no real consultation with residents or councillors - not in public at any rate. I think we'll have to do something to remedy that..........

My wife Daphne's favourite picture of our cat, Ivy, follows. She's about 10 now. We got her from the Cats' Protection League in March 1997.  

Went to School Lane Residents Association Committee meeting last night. Two officers from the Safer Neighbourhood team were there. There's concern about anti-social behaviour, especially by youngsters who often don't live on the estate. The CCTV cameras haven't worked properly for years, but there is news that some are about to be replaced. New cameras will be fixed because 'panning wears out the bearings'. I asked whether they would be able to zoom as the whole point is to provide eye-witness evidence from which perpetrators can be identified. The Housing Dept are looking into it but no assurance was forthcoming.

Some bright spark in the Department has authorised the replacement slippery tiles in communal areas with a thin and presumably cheap floor covering that is uncleanable, scuffing already and will have to be replaced. There's an estate inspection on Friday.

Surbiton Hill is to have a Safer Neighbourhood (SN) team from 1st April. Good news!! It will, however, contain only one sergeant, one PC and one community support officer...rather less than other SN teams......Not so good news!! Had an email this morning from an ex-pupil Police inspector. It seems the budget for this welcome initiative is under some 'pressure'. Could the source of this pressure be the need of the Mayor to make provision for the much-heralded London 2012 Olympics?

This morning had a discussion with one of the members of the PCT, a local doctor, about the future of Surbiton Hospital. I have been trying to ascertain what the PCT's plans are for the future of the site, given that there is a considerable cash deficit in their budget and that the site of Surbiton Eye Hospital is already an estate (and a very pleasant one!!) of townhouses and flats. Was delighted to learn that we seem to be all agreed locally that the site will be used for local health care - all of it will - though plans being worked on will entail a lot of work to provide the sort of facility all local councillors want to see in Surbiton. I hope these plans will be starting to crystallize by the end of April.