Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Has a daytrip to the seaside to learn about waste recovery

The meeting with The Beak turned out not to require phone directories down the trousers. It was an invite to a regular finance meeting but considered matters pertaining to Lampton 360. I always find finance stuff interesting and I am always relieved that I gave up being an accountant several decades ago.
Afterwards we had a meeting of the ‘Task and Finish group’ about libraries and parks. This started in the previous administration and is about reintegrating the services previously ‘provided’ by Carillion. It is one of our heartening meetings because we can see tangible and rapid progress and I have great confidence in the team of officers involved.

In the evening we have a pre-planning presentation. One item is for a self-storage and office facility on the SW corner of Gillette corner where there was once a petrol station. As my regular reader will remember, I am not a fan of the whispering death to a town that is self-storage but it is classified as light industrial and therefore very hard to resist – to be fair, this will create jobs – no less than 3 of them. Having said that, the design looks OK to me, it’s good that they are providing office space as well, and if they were to specify a green wall or two I might even like it. The other item was replacement of a council housing block in Hounslow which is overcrowded and experiences anti-social behaviour with a larger block. This will have better standards, will replace all the existing council flats with new and bigger ones and add some private, housing association and shared ownership flats as well, which will pay for it all. Of course, it will be bigger and local residents’ impact has to be considered. They also have to provide proper interim accommodation for current residents whilst building goes on. I was shocked but not surprised to hear that one of the existing 2 bedroom flats is the home to 6 adults.

Friday it’s up to Harrow Civic Centre for a meeting of West London Waste Authority, the body that works with the 6 west London boroughs to assist us with waste disposal etc. A good meeting – they are very active and have lots of activities in train and planned to improve recycling and save money.

On Monday I’m back on the waste trail with a day trip to the seaside in a charabanc. This is our visit – with West London Waste again – to their Severnside Energy Recovery Centre, near Bristol. The Americans have hijacked the word ‘awesome’ to mean ‘nice’ but being extremely old I remember when, like Brexit, awesome meant awesome. Well, this place is awesome (though you wouldn’t call it nice). Anyway, remember: all of Hounslow (and Ealing and Richmond and Brent etc) waste that isn’t recycled – bar things like asbestos - comes here to be incinerated for electricity. It typically makes 35 MegaWatts (38 when I passed the ometer) which is enough to power something between 22000 and 35000 homes, according to whom you believe. About 20% of what is incinerated falls through the grate (just like at your granny’s) as cinders and that is all turned into aggregate for construction. What’s left goes up a huge chimney and impurities are scrubbed out on the way up. The chemicals that scrub the impurities out are scraped out of the chimney and are made into breeze blocks. Nothing is wasted and they say what comes out of the chimney is equivalent to 5 Range Rovers, like a small cul-de-sac in Chiswick. I took loads of extremely professional pics there but in my extremely professional manner I have managed to reset my phone and, whilst it has restored lots of other old rubbish (no pun intended) photos, my masterpieces from Monday are lost to posterity, apparently, so here’s one from t’internet:

  
Tuesday morning bright and early (too early as it happens, I thought Lionel School opened at 8.30 rather than 8.55) the weather app says it’s 5 degrees – ouch – up to Lionel Road with Ruth Cadbury MP and Cllr Richard Eason from Osterley – poor lamb has no schools he says – to annoy parents and encourage them to turn their engines off if they must deliver little Tarquin and Lavinia by car. I tell them they are poisoning children which gets a few old fashioned looks.

Then it’s straight down to York Parade on the A4 for a fly tipping/ enforcement/ waste management session. This stretch is notorious for fly tips. Then the Verdict café for a meeting with the organisers of Junction 2 festival about their licence application and their plans for next year and subsequent years. We have not only The Melvinator but one of the two shiny new Labour councillors from Ealing Northfields and we have a good discussion about how to do it right, after some alarms were raised by the licence application.

Then it’s up to Gillette corner to meet with TfL about their plans for the A4 cycle lane and sundry other matters (like A4 crossings, speed limits etc). We walk down from Gillette corner to Ealing Road, getting a better understanding of how they will improve this section (promised for before next March) and plans for the Ealing Road and Gillette corner junctions, both of which are a pain for cyclists.

Then it’s One Over the Ait for a meeting between the council leader, head of corporate property, and a bunch of boat owners who live in The Hollows. We have a dispute over ownership of the river bank (this gets very technical) but I’m hoping we are going to resolve it amicably before m’learned friend fills her/his pockets any further, and the meeting seems constructive. After all those meetings I would dearly love One Over The Ait but I have to rush off to a trustee meeting of Hounslow Community Foodbox whilst still Seven Under The Ait.

This is something I can’t quickly rectify because 9am on Wed it’s the dentist. She tells me not to drink anything before 12 but anything I drink before about 3 would have dribbled out of the sides of my mouth, most attractively. This gets me out of another lurk outside the school – this time it’s Ruth and The Melvinator outside St Paul’s. I was hoping we’d get some selfies from these school visits but it’s bad photo week.

In the afternoon I am interviewed by one of our comms people because next month I have a mini-biography in Hounslow Matters. But anyone who reads this knows more of my dark secrets than anything I’ll share in HM.

In the evening it’s Cabinet Question Time in Chiswick Town Hall. Katherine Dunne arrives a little late, hotfoot from the Labour Conference in Liverpool which seems to have been a really good one. Given the utter uselessness of the government at Brexit negotiations (and anything else they turn their hand to, but that’s an aside) we might actually get a general election and get rid of them soon – here’s hoping.

Sam Hearn is at QT, complaining about lack of publicity but apparently we told the dead tree press, local websites, tweeted and Facebooked. As a result of all this we had 4 from the green party (mainly Brentford), 3 Chiswick councillors, 2 Chiswick Labour party members and a partridge in a pear tree. Except that the partridge was represented by an unidentified member of the public: he didn’t speak but definitely looked human. I’m not sure what else we should do to publicise – the cabinet parading naked down Chiswick High Road might attract some attention I suppose but I would insist Chiswick councillors do it first.

September 27, 2018