Labour's Cllr Walker is having a laugh
Cllr Walker’s piece on the front page merely takes credit for projects started off by the 2006-2010 Conservative administration, or being paid for by another part of government. Labour’s capital programme has been dominated by schools spending, 2/3rds of which comes from central government. We had the same issue when we ran the council. The decision to expand schools with good quality buildings rather than Portakabins was taken by the Conservatives. We are pleased that Labour has carried on with this programme where we left off but it is pretty tacky to take credit for the whole thing. Cllr Walker is particularly cheeky to take credit for the Acton High School 6th Form which was kicked off on 2nd December 2008 by a Tory cabinet I was sitting on. Cllr Walker mentions “improving the traffic flow”. It was Boris Johnson who led on this in his 2008 election campaign and it was current Conservative leader David Millican who pushed through the first mini roundabout by Acton Town Tube station. The jury is still out on the scheme outside the Police station but the mini roundabouts springing up around Acton and the Borough have worked very well and they weren’t Cllr Walker’s idea. Again it was the 2006-2010 Conservative administration that kicked of the building of new council houses and got the whole estates regeneration programme back on track after it was left floundering. The current Acton Gardens phase of work was kicked off by the Conservatives. Cllr Walker doesn’t mention the oak tree mural on Beechworth House and the ACTON lights on The Vale railway bridge – I guess because that was another of Boris Johnson’s programmes. On the other hand it was the Labour councillors on the planning committee, including East Acton’s Cllr Kate Crawford, who voted en bloc to push through the Oaks scheme in spite of the well argued planning points raised by the Conservative councillors. Cllr Crawford also managed to vote for the Hanson cement plant. It is a Labour council that is skimping on Acton’s roads and pavements and leaving them looking broken and dirty. Labour’s scope for capital spending was limited but it chose not to spend on Acton’s roads and pavements and instead spent money on an under-used car park in Southall, tarting up the Ealing Town Hall and the roads and pavements around it to create an elegant municipal quarter and new council offices in Greenford and Southall. Cllr Walker is having a laugh.
Phil Taylor ● 4547d1 Comments