Personal Blog

Youngsters (under about 70) may be puzzled by this subject. Also true of most of those over 70 but this was a genuine headline in my local paper (remember them) in the 1960s. This was around the time I and my pals began under-age drinking c1969 and this appeared in my local rag, avidly consumed by my parents and family every week, the Heswall and Neston News and Advertiser (now RIP). A friend of ours who was a couple of years older had a job there as an ace local reporter and

This will be the last of these for a while, because next Wednesday I will be embarking at Dover (if white blokes in black uniforms allow) for a holiday which involves me driving to the heel of Italy, spending a week there, and returning on Thursday 8th October. Those who have been round for a bit will remember 4 years ago I planned a visit to the same place but ended up passing 3 weeks in hospitals. I hope this trip avoids such pitfalls! I will likely be blogging my travelogu

Turns out it has been quite a busy week. Starting with the repeated delights of planning. I sometimes worry why I fought to get myself on the Planning Committee (thank you to Liberal Democrat Roger Crouch who agreed a swap) because the meetings are often acrimonious and lengthy, and I am usually in a minority. sometimes the lonely one opposer! This time I was in good company on the matter of Gunnersbury Park. For the record, I don't think commercial events are the golden solu

This is a separate Brentford publication which I plan to develop in a way to keep track of matters that take months or years to progress. I also would like this to become interactive. I'm not sure how to do that in this web tool soin the meantime I welcome any feedback, ideas, potential additions etc. You can email guy.lambert@ hounslow.gov.uk Or you can leave a comment on the blog itself. Watermans replacement BW A priority for our town but nobody quite believes it is going

These days I am making a new habit of actually walking (!) around Brentford from time to time rather than usually cycling. This is good and bad, because on old geyser like me makes slow progress. I still cannot enter the paradise known as Brentford Dock, because the public footway is still locked out, hopefully for not much longer thanks to the determination of my Green colleagues and the Brentford Walks initiative. The good bit is that I keep meeting people: one of the benef

I have seen this film led by Chris Packham (and including quite a few people you will recognise) twice already. If you haven't it really is a must see and the first time it has been published online as far as I know. I learnt a lot about climate change and what is in store of us (for certain) and what will be in store if we don't change our ways in an uncomfortable way. WATCH IT You can join me at the Watermans Arms at 7.30 for a convivial drink and excellent food and mull ov

I've decided daft notices need a daft man to start a daft blog on this subject. I saw two in one day this week. This one is in Brentford a few yards from my home. There is a dedicated Right turn lane on the main carriageway just after the cut through through the park ends. Do they really think cyclists will get off the cycle lane, proceed on the quite narrow pavement which all of a sudden is dual use, and turn right from the ledt hand pavement? Perhaps one confused newcomer o

Well now, the bus shelter debate has broken out!. I did a bit of informal research and came to the conclusion that if you are heading to Ealing nearly every bus stop has a handsome shelter (with seat) but if you're heading for Brentford you need to bring your umbrella and a folding seat. All I can say is Well, following a bit of kerfuffle in social media I'm delighted to see Salman Shaheen has picked up the baton and demanded action. I have of course offered my two balcony ch

This has been a quiet week - perhaps everybody is on holiday!. OK I started with an evening meeting on the thorny problem of Holly House. I attended a session at our friendly local University in a room I am becoming very familiar with - perhaps I can claim some qualification? There were two representatives from the builder Niblock, 3 (I think) from the council housing team, 4 tenants and one councillor. Usually there are more residents but the usual very active leaseholders a

It is a nightmare to find planning documents but out of the 200 documents for Charlton House redevelopment I have found documents that show the general layout, and the commercial - probably shop - spaces on the ground floor. They add up to 1059 metres square which is quite a lot! Site Block A Block B Block C Block D So good provision for shops. Whether the council will ever let them is another matter!

A week ago I said "Planning meeting which is likely to be long, bitterly contested, and no fun. And I was eager to get back on planning. Am I a masochist? Answers on a postcard." No postcards received (Royal Mail ain't wot it used to be) but perhaps I should apply for the post of Oracle (not the software oligopoly, but I've just been hearing something about the real oracle at Delphi - not the global aftermarket car parts leader, either. I need to stop this before I disappear

Quite bizarrely I got myself very confused with my diary last Thursday. Cabinet member Sue Sampson had organised a Teams meeting about a matter that has been infuriating me for more than 4 years - the parking situation related to Orchard, York and other roads in the area which came impossibly tight when the small car park was closed in favour of new council houses on Windmill Road. We were promised action to improve this involving some existing little-used garages 3 1/2 years

On Friday I spent some time at Holly House, that small council block that has been so severely blighted ever since it appeared in my ward. It came after the boundary changes and I don't blame its blight on me becoming the relevant ward councillor, but as so often in the councilloring trade my inability to fix things in less than a century is frustrating. I'd love to share my wonderful photos but Google photos seems to have indigestion and gets stuck on downloading photos. I i

My comments about Hackney last week were rather misinterpreted. I don't think we have anything like the same problems with rough sleeping that are apparent in Hackney. We do obviously have some rough sleepers but they are tucked away out of the public eye. I hate that they find they have to live that way and will always do what I can to alleviate that, but the motivation for living rough is often complex and some cannot be encouraged towards a 'normal' life whatever the counc

I am going to try to make this shorter, partly because I am pressed for time, and because this is always too long! On Friday we had a convivial meeting of the three Musketeers of the Green Party in my localest pub the Watermans Arms. I had been away and for an entirely different reason Rick Rowe had been out of his home. I am not going to dig through all the entrails of what happened a couple of weeks ago, but the fact that a retired MP has been murdered puts these things int

I did promise to continue my non-Brentford travelogue, but in fact, it will turn into another endeavour. A year or so ago, I had the idea of following (via a very scenic route) my friend Tom Levitt's lead in his book The Business of History, published last year. This was a kind of update of another book, written in 1925 by one William Beable called The Romance of Great Businesses. Beable selected 32 businesses on slightly eccentric criteria, and only 4 of them survived intact

This will be a different one, because it will cover a bit of councilloring with a week of leisure in between. So I go back to Thursday 26th of flaming June. There were times during June when we called it flaming in a way some less prim people use another f word. I went to Lambert Lodge to talk to a resident with certain woes which I will keep private. Productive I hope, though the matter still needs work. I had an excellent cup of tea though. Saturday 27th because it started

I'm taking a week away this week. I wanted to do that straight after the election but it was too complicated then so I have followed my pattern last year: if you were watching, in January I planned to drive to John O'Groats but gave up at Inverness due to floods, snow and cowardice 😊. In the summer I visited a lot of new countries for me Sweden, Finland, the 3 Baltic republics and Poland. all alone in my car. I enjoy my own company (good job one person does) and I like drivi

A friend of mine who has the loyalty or insanity of saying she always reads my blog, (or is a liar) told me that last week's completely lost her. It didn't seem all that different to the others I do each week and I only know that some people read it because they tell me. But I notice on my website, I get the numbers who read it there. I suspect more people read it on TW8 or from the newsletter TW8 send out. Still, my numbers over the last 3 weeks for online readers are 118,

So where I left you I was off to my first Planning Committee for more than 4 years. We covered 3 applications. One was the former leader of the Conservative group who has now lost his seat to Green Councillor Rick Rowe. He wanted an uncontroversial extension to his home, but the convention is that Councillors' applications are formally reviewed. It was quite unnecessary since he is no longer a councillor, but of course we passed this with no discussion. The next one was a rat