Forum Topic

end of free delivery of Ealing/ Acton gazette.

I know that distribution of this free paper has been spasmodic in some areas of Acton. but sad to say that three of my children who have delivered the paper rain or shine for two years have now received letters saying that they are redundant and no more free papers are to be distributed in the area.( They did Pierrepoint, Creswick, Rosemont, Shalimar, Julian, Essex) Although much of the paper was not appreciated by some people, it at least kept us in touch with some issues. No more door to door delivery of the Acton gazette but I think you can still buy it in the shops for 90p. They were paid the absolute minimum wage but you've got to start somewhere so we really regret this decision by Trinity Mirror group.

Kyria- Josephine Sewell ● 4491d34 Comments

So where will the councils planning notices go which they have a Statuary duty to display?

Bob Crossley ● 4491d

I can't imagine many residents spending 90p for the Ealing/Acton Gazette, so I guess another one bites the dust!

Jean F Fernandez ● 4491d

Ealing Council are continuing to fulfill their statutory duty on public notices by putting them in the Gazette even though it is not delivered free anymore. You can go and buy a copy in several local newsagents. Mine are clearly not expecting to sell many copies as they appear only to ever stock one. The Council are adhering to the letter of the law if not the spirit.

Susan Evans ● 4490d

I'll miss the free delivery but can't see myself buying it..

Sara Nathan ● 4490d

After we put a no junk mail sign on the door the Gazette was the only thing we didn't get. They clearly thought they were junk( I didn't and always read it). I wish the ******* estate agents would stop delivering their junk mail leaflets, I have on occasions chased them and given them back pointing out the no junk mail sign which they clearly can't read.

Kim Rugg ● 4490d

I did a couple of leaflet drops recently - for local community stuff .... and the "No Junk" letterboxes posed a problem.While what I was delivering was no junk as far as I was concerned, I didn't want to tarnish the organisations I was leaflet dropping on behalf of.So I ended up skipping some of them (but not all) on other somewhat random opinions.So - for those with such signs ... do think about making them more explicit.

Paul Webster ● 4489d

Surely junk is anything not solicited by you and not addressed to you.The worst culprits are the post office and estate agents.

Bob Crossley ● 4489d

Hence some people did not get to read about the project to turn Acton Library into an Arts Centre.

Paul Webster ● 4489d

You can actually pick it up for free in most estate agents, any of them who advertises there receives bundles of it free. I got one yesterday at no cost from Robertson Smith Kempson

Rupa Huq ● 4489d

PaulThe only leaflet I have ever had that was worth the time and effort is the library /Arts Centre project AND I have no junk mail sticker. Most of the junk mail is a waste of energy and paper. Leaflets in shops, the library and dare I say it 'estate agents' would surely target community matter leaflets better.

Bob Crossley ● 4489d

I did decide that the "no junk" sticker did not apply to what I was delivering for some.

Paul Webster ● 4489d

The Gazette has now become nothing but a mouthpiece of the Labour party. They have kept it going financially both by paying for expensive advertising and diverting funds to promote recycling in the borough to the paper. In return they get positive coverage and embarrassing issues are ignored. It is therefore no surprise to see Labour's candidate for the next election being a saleswoman for the paper.The Council refuses to advertise in the independent Asian media which has a far bigger audience. The result has been that it has been difficult for them to make a profit and some have closed meaning that real news doesn't get published in the borough.

Syed Abbas ● 4488d

SyedLots of newspapers have closed because there is so much different media available nowadays that many of us rely on getting our information elsewhere.  So you don't recycle?  You should do.  We should ALL be doing some recycling and learning to reduce our waste and see and use what we have as a resource.  Which party isn't doing anything about it?  Incidentally the recycling percentage has decreased partly BECAUSE so many people do not read paper newspapers any more, they read online ones. More ways have to be found to increase the rate.  Keeping people ignorant isn't going to work.I think it is a bit rich calling Rupa Huq a saleswoman for the Gazette when she has just pointed out how you can find a free version!I don't remember getting a free version - I have always bought it when I wanted to read it.I can't comment on the Asian media because I don't read or listen to it - although of course I'd like to see advertising promoting recycling - or even better - reducing reusing and recycling in every sort of media!Everything nowadays seems to be run on a grab-a-grant system. Grants can be great when they are there but they can also be cut or withdrawn altogether.  Losing them can also lead to the loss of good community initiatives.

Philippa Bond ● 4488d

Where did I say I don't recycle?

Syed Abbas ● 4487d

You didn't but you resent the Gazette being used to promote it!

Philippa Bond ● 4486d

No I do not. I said that funds meant to promote recycling were diverted to the Gazette to advertise a useless 'loyalty' scheme. This was the biggest ad campaign that the borough ever saw and not a penny was spent in Asian media. The way spending was allocated was determined on a political basis not on how effect it was going to be.

Syed Abbas ● 4486d

I think they probably missed a trick and a very big one if they did not spend money on advertising the Greenredeem scheme in the Asian media. It should be advertised across all media if possible.  It is pointless having a scheme if it is not advertised/promoted!However the Greenredeem scheme is surely part of the current national government's plan of encouraging people to recycle rather than penalising them for not recycling.  The money was therefore available by applying for a grant or winning a grant for this purpose from government.You only have to walk down the street to see who doesn't recycle at all - those are the houses with masses of black bags outside that we all have to tiptoe around and through on bin day. They tend to be in the minority because recycling is so easy now that Ealing has a comprehensive kerbside collection and this makes householders' waste management easier.  The message to them should be "We've noticed!"In other London boroughs they have mandatory recycling (of some recyclates).  There are some who won't find out how easy it is until they are helped (with the necessary info and equipment) and sadly others who seem to need the threat of fines to motivate them.

Philippa Bond ● 4485d

You are determined to give me a lecture on recycling so much so that you are missing the point.

Syed Abbas ● 4485d

Hopefully there will always be arguments over media and political bias.  Some stories are exaggerated out of all proportion and some get buried.  At least we have different media and different newspapers.

Philippa Bond ● 4484d

According to today's Gazette, the paper will be available free from shops, petrol stations and supermarkets from next week (page 5).

Kim Bobsin ● 4484d

The relationship between the Council and the Gazette is clearly a close one but I don't think this is only about being able to control the message. Trinity Mirror closed their titles in a number of other West London boroughs and at one point it looked like those Councils would have to use the Evening Standard for their public notices. In the event they did a deal with Trinity which meant a supplement of the Ealing Gazette was published for Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.Ealing will know if the Gazette closes it would cause them a huge number of legal problems so they probably have no alternative to divert as much of the available publicity budget to them.

Susan Evans ● 4483d

Gazette FREE in shops from next week. As the Evening Standard is, but I cannot find a local shop that bothers to have it - shame as it would bring them more business.

Bob Crossley ● 4482d

Londis in Churchfield Road always has it

Clare Gittins ● 4482d

The Ealing Gazette isn't going to close - it is hugely profitable. Ealing Council spends millions of pounds each year on publicity and a large proportion of that goes to the Gazette which employs hardly anybody. They have cut back on resources locally because the Labour supporting Trinity Mirror group needs a war chest to fund their forthcoming legal fight against hacking charges which will begin as soon as the current case against the News of the World finishes. Bottom line is that politicians are taking Ealing tax payers money to help fund the defence of a newspaper group they know will never expose any of their misdeeds.

Syed Abbas ● 4478d

I doubt the spending by Ealing Council on advertising actually runs into millions.Whilst you make an interesting point about the potential liabilities for the Mirror arising from the issue of hacking the contribution of Ealing taxpayers to Piers Morgan's defence is likely to be small. Trinity Mirror's operations in London are tiny compared to other English cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They have made significant cutback over recent years but that is probably due to the fall in circulation at the national title rather than to the need to build up a fund to pay lawyers.

Susan Evans ● 4478d

For information I got mine free on Friday from Morrisons Acton, there were two dispenser type bins of them by front door. The editorial line of the paper has recently reported the council election result where Labour won but has also highlighted what the Conservative opposition have been doing (eg story on p2 this week) and repeatedly featured controversial planning committee decisions so I would disagree that it is pro-Labour. The council planning notices from now various local authorities at the back (and Labour "wrapper" in May) are all paid for so not editorial content.

Rupa Huq ● 4475d

Got mine at Horn Lane petrol station. Must be saving them loads of money because we got three copies every week two of which were never even picked up by fellow tenants.

Bob Crossley ● 4475d

According to the Taxpayers Alliance London Borough of Ealing spent just under £3million on advertising in the financial year 2007/8. This number will probably have risen significantly since then but since exposure of how much is being wasted in this way Councils have become better at hiding it so no up to date figures are available.The Green Redeem publicity alone resulted in spending of around £350,000 and most of this goes to the Gazette. The paper may post the occasional article which is a bit critical of the Council to give the illusion of balance but they would never properly investigate misdeeds by the Labour Council because of their total economic dependence on them.

Syed Abbas ● 4474d

Syed, the amount spent by the Council on advertising will probably have fallen since then both due to austerity measures and an increasing use of online media. The cost of job advertising in particular has fallen significantly.Whether the Ealing Gazette should be getting anything of the remaining budget other than what the Council is legally obliged to use them for is another matter. My local newsagent doesn't have them any more and I'd walked past the pile in Morrison's twice without noticing them and wouldn't have been aware it was there until Rupa alerted us. The actually readership must have fallen significantly.

Susan Evans ● 4473d

I am sure the readership has fallen significantly. The cover price was 90p before they made it free to everyone and for that you got about 7 pages of actual borough wide news, 2 sport pages and a few jobs. The rest is advertising and notices from various Councils plus the housing section.How one mourns the days of the Acton Gazette - when it was ACTON news, not news from the rest of the borough. There is very little news about Acton now, not even on-line! The only place you might find out what is going on is here, on actonw3.com!

Amanda Knights ● 4473d

Well, I didn't realize that posting the original message would lead to such an interesting discussion! Thank you to the lovely gentleman on Rosemont road whoever he was, who gave my child a redundancy tip on the last round of free delivery.

Kyria- Josephine Sewell ● 4473d

We are relatively lucky as in neighbouring boroughs the news coverage is even more sparse. Hammersmith and Fulham now only get a paper which is a supplement of the Ealing Gazette and edited by the same person. The income it gets from the Council will be enough to keep it going but you do wonder what the point is if nobody reads it apart from politicians.

Susan Evans ● 4471d

How can you claim we are lucky when large amounts of taxpayer cash is being spent supporting a newspaper that nobody reads and has little news? In boroughs in East London Councils advertise in a wide range of media including those catering to specific ethnic minorities. This is not subsidy but a genuine attempt to spend the money effectively by using papers that people actually read. In Ealing despite having a similarly large proportion of ethnic minorities who are more prosperous there is not one newspaper catering to them mainly because of the hostile attitude of Ealing Council to media they don't control.

Syed Abbas ● 4467d

Syed, what I mean when I say 'lucky' is that in other boroughs in London the local newspaper has effectively closed. The Council do need to keep it going because without it they would have to put their public notices in a London wide paper like the Standard which would cost a fortune. It is likely that there is an arrangement between the Gazette and the Council guaranteeing a minimum amount of revenue from advertising on top of that which comes from public notices so it would be hard or even impossible for them to place ads with local Asian media even if it did actually exist.

Susan Evans ● 4465d