Personal Blog

As planned I went out to Feltham to meet Afghan Radio. As I probably said before I had not engaged at all until recently but I find them very welcoming and friendly people and I am happy to do what I can to support them in integrating and contributing to our country, as they did when we made our (in my opinion) well-meaning but unwise intervention in their home country. As it happened Katherine Dunne was at the same event and by the time I arrived (I had warned them I could o

Being a councillor is often frustrating. There are big things like the redevelopment of the police station and the two connected buildings on the riverside by Watermans, the marina at Watermans Park, and the eyesore - once Brentford Nylons, once Alfa Laval and now a monstrous advertisement hoarding owned by Hyundai. In all of these there have been false dawns but at bottom, nothing at all has changed. Smaller things like the empty and barely-marketed shops, the unused former

As those who read this stuff will know, I am very young indeed and eager to discover more about the world around me. I subscribe to a 'newspaper' called the London Minute which gives really short updates on stuff that is going around the Big City, and I sometimes find things that I want to take a look at. So I cycled to Kew Gardens (where I was picking up a book from Hewson's Bookshop, much lamented in Brentford but still going in Kew) and took the District line through to Bl

I found Allied Breweries rather fun, but I find Associated Dairies, aka ASDA crashingly dull, probably because their history is much shorter and carried out mainly in the days of corporate finance and private equity deals. All a bit dispiriting to an old socialistic business person like me! I have a healthy respect for those who make widgets and sell them to people who want widgets. I have little respect for financiers, though of course they are the ones who make money (and r

Preface This is the first of maybe 1 or maybe eventually 100 blogs about the fate of the 100 companies which comprised the first iteration of the FTSE in 1970. Not many are left, and the geek in me wants to look at what happened to them. I have recently read my friend Tom Levitt's scholarly book The Business of History which updates an analysis made of 32 prominent businesses made by one Henry Beable in 1925. This was published (obviously!) last year to mark the centenary. Th

This weekly blog has a tendency to grow like Topsy (who is Topsy?) so I will try to truncate it this week. Whether I succeed I will tell you in about 10 hours when I finish writing the ruddy thing. It has not been my purpose to bore Brentford into submission but it seems to develop that way. Perhaps I should announce that Brentford is going to invade Richmond because we need it for security. Tariffs on anything coming in over the river. That'll do it, but I might settle for

Thursday was a good day with a bit of good news. Well, it wasn't exactly news, but the arrival of Middlesex Cricket Club at the former Beecham sports ground in Swyncombe Avenue has moved on a stage. I remember when I was canvassing in 2022 I talked to a couple on The Ride (the other side of the sports ground). They asked me what was happening to the old sports ground. Now I have to make a confession. I had never noticed it was there. I knew there was a sports field, but I th

Still feels slightly fraudulent to write 2026. What happened in 1926? That was sightly before I was born. Well, quite a bit actually and my late mum was only 9 and my late father 17 in 1926 so they would have been struggling. What happened was the General Strike. I doubt the centenary will not be remembered by a repeat performance but these are difficult times. For some reason Googling 1926 raises the matter of the Tolpuddle Martyrs who seem to have been in the news nearly

2 weeks blogless - how does Brentford survive? Probably like me watching ancient films like Jaws and The Godfather on the gogglebox and on one occasion in my case visiting the friendly local Everyman for a new film called Eternity. Sort of fun if a bit empty and no patch on A Matter of Life and Death. I also got interested in numbers but you can read my erudite thoughts on the universe elsewhere https://www.guylambert.blog/post/numbers-and-a-bit-of-the-universe That aside I h

I like litening to a BBC programme and Podcast known as More or Less which checks on numbers to seee if they are correct. Or interesting. Well the interesting number in the one I listened to today is rather a boring number, 3. 3 because the Scottish Astronomer Royal has seen the third interstellar object in out Solar system. This is a comet. It is interesting as it tells us something about what's going on in our galaxy outside our solar system. It got me thinking about Galax

Merry Christmas to all, especially those who are my long-suffering residents in Brentford West ward! Lots to look forward to in 2026, and I will be hoping to meet a lot of locals on the street (forgive me if I don't recognise you - it's not personal!) and in versions of the coffee mornings I tried a month or two ago. I do want to meet locals so don't be shy to write to guy.lambert@hounslow.gov.uk or say hello when our paths cross. I will start being busy preparing for the el

One of my erstwhile colleagues in Labour has had to resign from the Cabinet after the Solicitors Regulatory Authority closed his firm. Now they say " This person is allowed to practise as a solicitor, but 'conditions apply' means we restrict what they can do". Never fear: his wife (also I think chair of the council Labour group and of the constituency Labour party in Feltham and Heston) has been appointed as chair of planning, which should make up for the loss of Cabinet Spec

On Friday I caught the district line to St James's Park and made my way down to SMith Square. The meeting was in Transport House. Women of a certain age, and men of similar age like yours truly, remember Transport House as one of those places where meetings in smoke-filled rooms allegedly decided the future of our country. This was the headquarters of the Transport and General Workers Union, led by the legendary Jack Jones. His other half amongst the 'Terrible Twins' was Hugh

Well, as predicted, I went to the Holy Trinity Church in Hounslow to recognise Disabilities Day. The attraction for me (am I becoming anging groupie?) was not the speech from the always warm Ajmer Grewal or from the equally pleasant council officer who looks after these matters, nor even the speech from Louise Murphy from the highly respected independent thinktank Resolution Foundation. No, the attraction was the people from Speak Out in Hounslow. I find it impossible to see

Gosh it is astonishing that it has got round to December. Drizzly on my balcony this morning but not too cold, and a cormorant saw mw coming out and decided to fly by and wish me good morning. Incidentally, is it me? I have seen an unprecedented number of swans on the Brent this autumn and when I cycled through Dukes Meadows this week I had never seen so many of the blighters infesting the Thames. My social media has been infested recently with right wing correspondents assur

Back to my current obsession - extortionate fines. I heard of another one this week. An unusually discounted fine (to a paltry £500) had been sent to one of the boats moored in The Hollows, near Kew Bridge. We've already had 2 there, and another to a flat served by the same overflowing cardboard bin, but as well as the lower fine (no idea why) this is addressed to someone who doesn't live there and nobody seems to know who she is and why she has been sent a PCN at that addres

As predicted, I made a trip to Armenia on Thursday. Well, really the enclave of Armenia in Brentford at the Armenian church centre which used to be the Princess Royal. The lengths that people will go to to avoid being renamed Ann Mountbatten-Windsor. There were few people there when I attended but the ubiquitous John Dale and his sidekick Robin. Oh sorry, I'm confusing him with Batman - his sidekick is called Barney. He was digging the turf with my Green comrade Tony Firkins.

I might be getting obsessed with two things - old cars and council extortion about alleged flytipping. I will try to get these out of the way first so perhaps we can get on to something of more interest (or not, according to taste). If that's your preference you can skip what Private Eye describe as Page 94 , but on this occasion is on page 1. On Friday I drove up to Brummagem to the NEC for the Classic Car Show. I decided to go on Friday on the basis that was likely to be th

This has been a rather momentous week for me because I have become a Green. I am still a youthful looking pinkish (in two respects) handsome man (in my opinion) , but now green inside. I have been saying that I will stay as an Independent councillor and stand as an independent next May. But things have moved on in the Green party world and I have been reading and hearing Zack Polanski's vision for the party, and have talked to some friends who have left Labour for the Green p

As promised (or threatened) last time I went to a motor museum on Thursday. This was in deepest Somerset. I had vaguely heard of the Haynes Museum but I had no idea of what a splendid collection it is, based in a quite remote area of the country. I knew of Haynes Manuals (who has ever had a car and not known Haynes) but I didn't know the story. John Haynes had a remarkable life which seems to have blended ntural entrepreneurship, passion and serendipity, but he built a fantas