Blog 534 25th June 2026

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, 56, 3. Am I turning into Keir Starmer with that popularity record but without the knighthood? At least not yet though like Nigel Farage I am open to offers, especially £5M birthday presents to spend on Ferraris.

Last week I finished on the electrifying story of council finances but the excitement went up a notch or soon after that,

On Thursday evening I was down in the Exchange building by Twickenham station. Never heard of this or been there but it seems to be for Twickenham something like what Watermans should be for Brentford. According to my bible Wikipedia, "the building is owned by Richmond Council and is managed by St Mary's University, Twickenham. Its programme includes theatre, music, classes, NT live Cinema Screenings, film screenings by the local Twickenham Cinema Club and folk music events organised in partnership with TwickFolk". It has rather a familiar feel to those of us who live here but it has an important difference: it exists.

I was with fellow Greens to see a short film and discussion about the climate emergency hosted by Chris Packham supported by a panel made up of some people who I didn't recognise and assumed must be 'normal' and some TV people at least 2 of them I recognised (I am not very good on celebs!)

The film was alarming: I'm someone who thinks I am aware of the implications, but it is obvious when you see this that there is much more threat than I had thought. and the threat is more immediate. The world is doing a lot more than we tend to imagine. For example China C02 emissions began falling a couple of years ago https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/ and in the UK our renewables have amounted to about 43% of our energy over the last year. I make that point because people often say our efforts are in vain. They are not, though this film wakes up that we need to do more, faster.

Some of my Green colleagues are working on getting this film shown in Brentford, and I have written to Ruth Cadbury, urging her to do whatever is in her power to have this film screened on national media.

There's a kind of irony that I saw this film the week before we had (and are having) the hottest days in June that we have ever recorded. I have never had air conditioning in my home but given that I recently celebrated my 21st (+) birthday and I talk more to doctors than I used to, and everybody telling me to take care I went to Currys and made a purchase. It is fashionable, because I'm sure I read that my young, fit, pumping iron ward partner Craig wrote that he purchased the last portable AC on the planet. I suppose I will use it for about 3 days a year and will have to store it alongside the useless dehumidifier I bought several years ago. Good news is, this very day, my 25 year old boiler is equally ironically being replaced with a new reliable, efficient and much smaller modern version so I will have a bit more storage room!

My friend who lives in a flat in Montparnasse and is finding life impossible in the heat there. This was the thermometer in her kitchen on Monday. She was not trying to cook!

All this takes me down a rat hole. The AC is made by De Longhi. Still an Italian company and the top people are from the De Longhi family. I find they also own good old Brit Kenwood, so loved by my mother, and the rights to make and sell Braun products - suitably German but owned by Proctor and Gamble. What happened to GEC, and Hotpoint and Servis and all those old British brands in many industries? They have either disappeared or have become a misleading brand name on stuff made overseas. It grieves me, because a lot of our angst as a nation stems from our abandonment of support for British companies by successive governments (and consumers in an age where shampoo gloop can be marketed as benefiting from German engineering)

Here I am, on my high horse again, when I suspect this puts people off!

So back to my councillor diary. Saturday I went with friends to Crawdaddy, This is an always Richmond place though its actual premises have moved about, and was where the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds were early stalwarts. These days it is in the Turk's Head in St Margarets (no Turks or heads on display) and the performers were the Tim Staffell Band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Staffell

Tim is an Isleworth boy and his band includes (on keyboards and vox) a guy who I worked closely with in the 1980s for Honeywell in Brentford and Hemel Hempstead. Paul Stewart is second from left and I never knew at the time he was the charismatic lead singer and mouth harp player of a band called The Others https://garagehangover.com/others-uk/ which also included Staffell (third from right) and Brentford's own Steve Kemp King (second from right). Apparently Paul gave it up when his parents told him to cut his hair, a problem that would not trouble him today. The show was a real ball and reminded me how much I love gigs where the Blues and Chicago RnB are played. Must get out more, and there is plenty of this in Brentford!

Saturday was of course the Canal Festival. I spent the morning mooning around the sites, and I was so pleased to see how busy it was everywhere. Less busy but still well attended at the floating market on the canal.

In the afternoon I was told to get down with the kids which meant hanging around in The Butts with part of my body concealed by a Hi-Vis jacket (L size still doesn't cut it for me).

I have a bit of history with African drums and must do more. The children were having a lot of fun here (it is very addictive). There was a lot going on there including some brilliant young singers, a man making homes for bees, a magician/juggler/acrobat and a lady making elaborate balloon animals. It was great fun but left me exhausted.

I was surprised to see this undocumented immigrant in The Butts.

I don't know whether it has been here for 28 years and I decided not to report it to the Heritage people.

Unlike this, which a resident mentioned. Heritage initially denied any knowledge and said it was a stink pipe. I thought that was unlikely as it would deliver the aroma at a very nose-adjacent height. Eventually Heritage confirmed it was on our 'local list' - not the same as the official listing but provides a bit of protection.

You learn something new every day. I had been puzzling about this for years and nobody seemed to know why it was there. I have suggested we should put a plaque or a notice on it, as part of quirky Brentford!

On Sunday my daughter treated me and her mother to a posh lunch at Sam's for Father's Day. Good to see it busy there (and all around Brentford!)

On Tuesday I attended an online webinar from TfL to support Climate Action Week. I know that ULEZ and other actions taken to improve the environment and air quality are controversial. But all this helps to save lives, especially for the less prosperous.

People get excited about restrictions on cars and blame me of being anti-car. I have driven on private roads provided by my father's driving school (originally) since I was 9 and have had a car since I was 17. Today I very rarely drive around London - not for ecological reasons but because driving in London is no fun. And I don't like our streets to be overcrowded by cars that are parked for 95-96% of the time according to the RAC.

So I support the ambition to use them less, and I think our city will be improved when we have less of them. Car sharing is actually a lot more rational, though I'm too set in my ways to make that change myself.

On Wednesday I had an update on Clitherows Island. It is now mostly cleared (the project manager talked of an impossible number of lorry loads of junk removed) after Herculean work by officers, Lampton GreenSpace and Hounslow Highways. There is a scaffolding structure remaining which needs help from specialists. I am told the conversations have been courteous but it is not yet concluded. I observed that I had had little or no objections conveyed to me and Salman Shaheen reminded me that 90+% of the reaction has been positive outside the complaint I have been making myself for several years - why did it take so long?

I was delighted to see and hear representatives of two ecological charities CPRE - the Council for Protection of Rural England https://www.cprelondon.org.uk and the Woodland Trust https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/ both closely involved in increasing our usable park space in the ward. All I could do was congratulate and thank all involved, including our resident Natural Parks Manager, Vanessa. Being a councillor leads to a lot of frustrations - I actually wrote about 5 on those to officers yesterday - but now and then one of these things that I have been working on for years come to fruition!

Other things from this week: going around the ward on my velocipede as I do I spotted the usual population of potholes (the recurring one by Tallow Road has been repaired again!) and other minor calumnities.

This area near where I live used to have a proper (inelegant) fence and grass. LAst week it had a lot of junk. Now most of the junk has been removed but the fence is down and the area is bare earth, with a light covering of litter for seasoning.

This street light behind Lidl was at a jaunty angle, because the bottom of it seemed to have died of rust perhaps assisted by a dozy driver (not guilty y'honour). I reported it as exposed electrics and I will look later expecting Hounslow Highways have at least made it safe.

You deserve something nice after trawling through all the crud above (if you have). My friend who lives in Jersey is a solstice fan (and she happens have her birthday on the solstice - perhaps not a coincidence). Anyway she spent the night in a tent waiting for dawn. You don't get it quite like that in Brentford.

Oh - this weekend excitement. It was great last year and so happy that we have the BCBH charity back and even stronger than it was before the recent crisis. Do support this. It is a really good facility in Brentford run by a charity and focused mainly on local schoolchildren, who by general agreement get far less help and support than they deserve. And it is happening right now with little if any support from the public purse.