Holding the Council to Account and Celebrating WB Yeats

Chiswick Homefields councillor Gerald McGregor reports back

Cllrs Jack Emsley and Ron Mushiso

December 17, 2023

Reporting Back on The Council

Everything this Autumn has continued at snail pace or just simply standing still (including Chiswick Traffic and the ULEZ inspired zone) whilst our local authority avoids policy and meeting scrutiny by holding fewer meetings or questions from members of the public and their councillors. We still have yet to hear about the budgeted council tax for next year and the recent Council meeting on Tuesday 28th November gave us little clue. The risk of Covid is reduced yet we are nowhere near the monthly meetings held in recent history.

Tuesday 28 November at 7:30pm – Meeting of Borough Council

The council officers failed to provide the opposition members with information about a huge new investment going into Lampton 360 in time for the meeting. The subsequent response created further misgivings about the way the Labour Group, who administer Hounslow and these new entities, are organising and governing the investment.

There was some confusion about forecasts being mistaken for actual results (as if 2024 had been completed already).

With regard to other systems failing, the external contractor for parking management has ended the contract. Bringing parking permits and blue badges back into Hounslow revealed a thorough lack of capacity with huge delays and consequent upset for people worried about receiving parking fines, and/or being charged for motoring offences on out-of-date disability permits

Youth Employment Officers and local vital organisations such as Hogarth Youth Centre with Chiswick Community School representing A-level students created a lively debate about means and resources at the Tuesday 5th December Chiswick area Forum. We are resolved to maintain pressure on the council to re balance its spending to achieve better results in 2024 through better governance and management.

Monday, 11th December Mayoral Christmas Reception

This was a chance for our Mayor Cllr Kiani and Deputy Mayor Cllr Hear to thank councillors for the work and effort put in to supporting charities in the annual mayoral appeal. The members of the Council are generally happy with a chair who is genial, and keeps a strong eye on timing and on behaviour. Unfortunately debates seem to be short and procedural not aiming at supporting the residents of the Borough…short words and fewer deeds!

Tuesday, 12th December 2023 Cabinet

This did not discuss a raft of proposed increases in fees and charges to be put in the budget for next year (2024/2025) based on outdated forecasts for inflation in 2023. We can’t debate this until well after Christmas as the administration prefers not to be scrutinised apparently. Meanwhile the council overdraft (borrowings) increases with no overall control on expenditure. None of the Cabinet appear to have any qualifications in financial management!

Thursday 14th December Chiswick Cultural Values

Life as a councillor should not all be about the politics. Celebrating the centenary of a Chiswick resident being awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. WB Yeats Bedford Park Lecture by leading Yeatsian authority, Roy Foster, took place in St Michael and All Angels church where Yeats worshipped when he lived in Bedford Park.

Many people around London booked for this special gathering to celebrate, and hear Professor Foster's outstanding talk on our local Bedford-Park/London-Irish literary genius's 1923 Nobel Award in Sweden 100 years ago this week. The central nave was full and the event was attended by the Mayor of Ealing, Cllr Hitesh Tailor (Mayor of Ealing 2023/24) and by two councillors from Hounslow, Cllr Gerald McGregor (Conservative, Chiswick Homefields) representing the Trustees of the WB Yeats Project and his friendly rival, the Leader of Hounslow Council, Cllr Shantanu Rajawat.

It was a fitting conclusion to a dazzling "centenary" year (which so many people made possible by donating and/or supporting the events ), a year that included talks, walks , Jeremy Vine's launch of the Ciarán-Hinds-narrated smartphone trail, the Discover ... video, programme segments on BBC Radio 4's flagship arts magazine programme, Front Row, and its Irish counterpart, RTÉ's Arena , national and local media coverage, a Yeats-Birthday Poetry Evening with Marina Warner, a lecture on Yeats and William Morris , a Chiswick Book Festival talk on Dorothy Wellesley by her grand-daughter, author Jane Wellesley and, of course, kicking it all off, the prestigious 2022 unveiling celebrations for Conrad Shawcross's dazzlingly Yeatsian #EnwroughtLight artwork!

2023 has been surprisingly kind to the programme, no doubt due to the inauguration of the artwork by a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

To celebrate Yeats’s acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm one hundred years ago on 10th December 1923, we were delighted to welcome his biographer, Professor Roy Foster, to the poet & dramatist’s boyhood London neighbourhood (to the Yeats family’s parish church, in fact) to deliver the first WB Yeats Bedford Park Lecture.

R.F. Foster FBA FRHistS FRSL is former Carroll Professor at Hertford College, Oxford and author, as Yeats’s official biographer, of the two-volume WB Yeats, A Life-The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914 and The Arch Poet 1915-1939

L to R Cahal Dallat, Cllr.Hitesh Tailor, Mayor of Ealing, Prof. Roy Foster, Cllr. Shantanu Rajawat, Leader of Hounslow, Kevin Morris, Vicar of St Michael and All Angels Church, Cllr. Gerald McGregor

Celebrating a great event together

With another great religious and historic event coming towards us all, may I on behalf of the Conservative Group of Councillors wish you all a Joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year

Councillor Gerald McGregor

gerald.mcgregor@hounslow.gov.uk

07866 784821

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY 2024

Tuesday, 16 January 2024 at 7:00pm Cabinet 6th Floor, Hounslow House, 7 Bath Road, Hounslow TW3 3EB

Tuesday 27 February 2024 at 7:30pm – Meeting of Borough Council (Budget Setting!) 6th Floor, Hounslow House, 7 Bath Road, Hounslow TW3 3EB Open to Public

CONSERVATIVE COUNCILLOR SURGERIES

Chiswick: Every Saturday from 9.30am to 10.30am at Chiswick Library (the eight Conservative councillors take this surgery in turn).

Gunnersbury: First Saturday of the month from 10am to 11am at The Gunnersbury Triangle Club, Triangle Way, off The Ridgeway, W3 8LU (at least one of the Chiswick Gunnersbury ward councillors takes this surgery). 

CONSERVATIVE COUNCILLORS and CONTACTS

Chiswick Gunnersbury (was Turnham Green) ward

Cllr Joanna Biddolph joanna.biddolph@hounslow.gov.uk 07976 703446

Cllr Ranjit Gill ranjit.gill@hounslow.gov.uk 07976 702956

Cllr Ron Mushiso ron.mushiso@hounslow.gov.uk 07976 702887

Chiswick Homefields ward

Cllr Jack Emsley jack.emsley@hounslow.gov.uk 07977 396017

Cllr Gerald McGregor gerald.mcgregor@hounslow.gov.uk 07866 784821

Cllr John Todd john.todd@hounslow.gov.uk 07866 784651

Chiswick Riverside ward

Cllr Gabriella Giles gabriella.giles@hounslow.gov.uk 07966 270823

Cllr Peter Thompson peter.thompson@hounslow.gov.uk 07977 395810

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