Blog 494 28th August 2025

Well, this week has mainly been in Jersey so I imagine this will be a short one.

I will not bore you with my holiday snaps (mostly) - I have plenty of other ways to bore you - but indulge me with a couple.

I decided to take my car to Jersey where I had 3 friends to connect with and I could chauffeur them around the island. So I was off to Portsmouth where I spied the pride of the King's Navy.

It was a novel and a bit disconcerting to see the pride had scaffolding on its neck, but perhaps that's a top secret new weapon. Don't tell anyone.

A 9 hour passage on a bit of an old tub - OK but nothing to write home about.

We went to a rather catching chapel in Jersey

The Channel Islands' answer to the Sistine Chapel, without the interminable queues. I'm not much of a Godder - I had that beaten out of me in school - but I found this message very apt for today's troubled world.

Lots of lovely beaches in Jersey and a generally charming place, a bit like Surrey in 1957 but with a lot of Porsches, Range Rovers and Fiat 500s to take advantage of the 40mph overall speed limit.

We started having a barbeque on the beach but had to retreat to the sea wall. Tide moves fast there!

I was back here on Tuesday having endured a largely sleepless night on the said tub. Home with a couple of bottles of Jersey expensive wine - well, a feller needs a souvenir.

Tuesday was a washout but on Wednesday I was back on the job. Actually I went to see a friend of mine who lives in Hampstead but a diligent councillor rarely sleeps and I noticed this sensible (and probably economical) approach to enforcing no parking on the council estate where my friend lives.

There are a few boulders scattered around. Seems a sensible alternative to (apparently expensive) bell bollards. I feel a suggestion coming on, which will no doubt be ignored but a chap has to try.

Later it was the police ward panel. I have missed some of these because they often clash with council meetings. There were a lot of people there (which is good but maybe getting a bit unwieldy) and having an independent chair has improved matters greatly since the days I served as chair for want of an alternative. The usual set of concerns - speeding, nicked blue badges, high performance electric bikes which are a special difficulty for the cops as they can't catch them on a push bike even if they see them. Must write to Ruth Cadbury about it as she's chair of the Transport select committee and this is a lot more than a Brentford problem. It was good to have 3 PCs and a new PCSO at the meeting. Apparently the Sergeant I have got to know is likely to move to another role. I observed I have always had a constructive relationship with the ward neighbourhood teams who really understand the area. They told me that they had no role in the fiasco called Paradise in the City but the cops there had been shipped in from Lambeth. I also picked up a consultation sent out by the Met about improving. Good, but a 75 page plan document with no summaries makes it difficult to respond. I did though, basically saying please support neighbourhood teams - they work!

2 things today, Thursday. A meeting in WHitestile Road where people have disaffection with weed management and the state of some of the pavements and the edges of the roadway. I agree with them, and it was good to see Shivraj Grewal the Cabinet member on site with 3 officers from Hounslow Highways. Not sure that much can be done in the short term because of budget constraints (weeding is imminent, apparently). People reasonably ask when the pavement was last renewed. The honest answer is that it hasn't been for many years and is unlikely to be dealt with anytime soon, though emerging defects will be repaired as a matter of course. Full replacement is a rare event because the cost of renewing pavements in a longish road like Whitestile would ost a huge amount of money we don't have, and what is there complies with standards agreed with the dEpartment of Transport in Whitehall. I do point out to people that independent assessors repeatedly have assessed our roads and pavements as the best of any Londin Borough but nobody believes me!

I spotted a couple of flytips in the ward and a couple of front 'gardens' which I will report as needing clearing.

This private mess blights everybody's life.

This evening we had a session with the organisers for Junction 2 and Paradise in the City festivals in Boston Manor Park which I think I ranted about last week. Well, we had a dozen locals who ranted as well as I can manage. In general, people tolerate Junction 2 but Paradise is a different matter, with younger, ruder, druggier clients. The consensus is that the standard of control from Security and the Police was way below the acceptable level. Actually I have found the organisers quite responsive to concerns (which is why Junction2 is now mainly OK) but the council and public bodies are failing the public.

More to do on this. Locals would like Paradise to become a thing of the past but I don't think that will get support from the Cabinet. I have a couple of cunning plans to mitigate the problems, though it needs much better engagement from a variety of council teams.

Well, that's it. Remember that Creative Mile is starting tomorrow evening and continuing across the weekend. so don't miss it. I have been involved peripherally with that ever since it started I think 4 years ago. It has gone from strength to strength and has new things again this year. Not to be missed, and there is loads of stuff to see. I really want support for it because this is something Brentford is very good at and which I want to see it celebrated and our lovely local arty people getting the support they deserve and need.

As to me, I am getting near to the end of my current term as a councillor, which will end next May. As you know I am no longer a Labour councillor though my instincts are aligned to traditional Labour values and ambitions. For myself, I need to decide whether to run again, this time as an Independent. That is a bigger task than being a Labourite where there is financial and logistic support from the party. I would like to run again but I'd be interested in people's view of that. I think I am a decent councillor and am valued by those I speak to (not all of them!) but winning without the benefit of a red rosette will be very challenging and I'm not sure I have the campaigning skills and energy to succeed as an independent.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated!