Please excuse the lack of blogging.......

At the moment, those of you who follow this blog will know that there is a by-election campaign going on in the ward of Staple Tye in Harlow. The election is on Thursday (30th).... so thats about 42 hours til polls open. Which kind of explains why I have not been blogging much in the past week. Apologies.

My days have been mostly:

Go to work (for those who don't know I work in the Health Service as a Business and Performance Manager for a large London hospital trust, mainly looking after contracts with a lot of PCT's and trying to get as much money for the trust to work on as possible)

Get home and spend a precious half hour or so with my daughter

Go out and knock on doors / deliver leaflets

Get home and eat

Then help write more leaflets / phone people to get extra deliverers/canvassers/organise other events.

In the odd gaps that can be found in that I have been doing my role as leader of the council and answering emails/calls through the day on my blackberry.

Most nights with all the council emails etc I have been getting to bed vvvvvery late.....

The thing is, I do actually enjoy it. I will however be looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend as a relaxation post by-election and before the County Council/Euro election month hits us!

If you are in or near Harlow on Thursday and want to help the conservative party win a by election please do get in touch.

Freedom of Harlow

Today I was privilaged to attend the first time that Harlow granted the freedom of entry to the town to anyone. We presented it to the Essex Yeomanry. It was wonderful to see the result of the motion I moved at full council.

It was not only a wonderful parade, but it brought out the best in harlow. From people cheering and clapping our boys and girls to praising them afterwards, it was wonderful to see so many people supporting our heroes.

During the presentation of the freedom proclomation I have to admit that I got a lump in my throat....

Sadly not everyone feels as proud and supportive of them. There was apparently one minor incident where a group of people (who normally are seen with an armful of "socialist worker" publications ) shouted some abuse. But they were in the extreme minority.

I was really pleased to see so many people from Harlow celebrating the civic life of the town, and showing appreciation to Harlow's troops.

Green Fingers

As I have got older I have found a growing (pardon the pun) affinity to my garden.

I like to grow things. I particularly like to grow things that I can eat!

There is something rather magical about popping into the garden to get ingredients, for my other growing passion, when I am cooking. Knowing where your food has come from and how it is grown is a wonderful thing.

This always used to be small scale, the odd herb in a pot. Fresh rosemary on my lamb, fresh bay leaves in my stews.

But in more recent years it has (ahem) mushroomed, to the odd mushroom, and a couple of chilli plants and a wider herb garden.

I really took the plunge this year though!

I have built a raised vegetable bed for onions, beetroot and and miniature sweetcorn , I have beans and peas growing up my trellis and have buckets with potatoes in.

My daughter (almost 3 years old) is loving playing in the garden with daddy and has some sunflowers growing as well. There is something quite magical about children understanding how the natural world works and where food comes from.

Of course I don't have that much time and so my efforts are limited to what I can do in my small back garden.

Many others though are taking the plunge and through a desire to go greener, a wish to save money, the chance to do something as a family in the open air, or maybe a combination of the three are driving a rejuvenation of "grow your own".

If you want to grow your own on a bigger scale or a group of friends and family want to work together, why don't you consider getting an allotment?

In Harlow, the council has 35 allotment sites, so there is probably one quite near you. It doesn't cost much, the typical plot is only about £18 for a year, and there are concessions for pensioners and those on benefits.

If you want to know more about allotments in Harlow, take a look here.

A wedding with a difference....

Yesterday I had a wonderful experience!

I have been to many weddings over the years but never to a Sikh one.

That changed yesterday.

A guy that has worked with me for the last six months, invited Mrs J and I along with some other work colleagues to celebrate his wedding.

It was like no wedding I had ever been to.

There were some obvious differences, like the ceremony being in a language that I did not understand, and sitting on the other side of the temple to Mrs J.

The subtle differences were very interesting though, the fact that it was more than just a joining of two people but far more the joining of two families.

And the sheer size of the wedding was amazing. 600 people at both the temple and the reception. 600! Most weddings I have been to 200 has been considered very large, but 600 was just huge.

The reception was more like a giant awards ceremony than most wedding receptions, and the sheer vibrancy of the colours of the outfits that the ladies wore was incredible. Everyone had obviously put so much time into their outfits, and the tables and the food and everything else.

It was a real honour and a pleasure to have been invited to the wedding, to share the day with the happy couple and it was a wonderful experience culturally for me.

Alcohol Success - Underage drink sales reduced

A year ago when there were some test purchases made in Harlow, over 30% of the tests were failed - that means that about 1 in 3 shops tested sold alcohol to under 18's.

Now any councillor will tell you that lots of their mailbag/email inbox of complaints is based around rowdy young people on street corners and associated anti social behaviour. Often it appears as though alcohol is involved. So this is an issue that concerns us all very much.

In that last year Harlow’s Community Alcohol Partnership has been established, bringing together the experts from Harlow Council’s Safety and Licensing Team and the Council's Community Safety Team working with both the Police and Essex County Council's Trading Standards supported by the Councillors on Harlow Councils Licensing Committee under the leadership of Cllr Nick Churchill (pictured) and Cllr Sarah Dangerfield the Chairman and Vice Chairman.

The results?

Alcohol sales to underage drinkers are falling in Harlow according to the latest test purchasing figures. The rate of test purchase failure has plummeted like a stone from over 30% to 11% in the last year, which is now better than the county wide target of 15%.

This is a real success for collaborative working between the County and District Council's and the Police, and my thanks for all the hard work goes to all those involved.

But the hard work does not stop there.....

For the coming year the team will be trying to ensure that the 11% does not slip, continuing to educate and warn retailers and now to target those who illegally buy alcohol for those underage.

Lib Dems "act shamelessly"

Local politics sometimes provides a few amusements, but none so much as the activities of the Lib Dems in Harlow.

I and my fellow councillors had an email this evening from a Lib Dem councillor calling for all councillors to avoid gutter politics, respect others and promoting decency in public life.

And that would be great if the Lib Dems actually believed that. We know that what their Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors schemes is something completely different.

As was recently reported in the Guardian, and raised in the House of Commons the Lib Dems advise their councillors to "Be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly."

The Libs also advise "Don't be afraid to exaggerate." but worse than that it advises Lib Dem Councillors to deceive the public by saying different things to different people "you can secure support from voters who normally vote Tory by being effectively anti-Labour and similarly in a Tory area secure Labour votes by being anti-Tory."

I suppose a message to all of us in Harlow, as they fight a council By-election in Staple Tye and then the County Council Elections, is that we should be prepared for lots of nasty negative campaigning since they believe that "Positive campaigning will NOT be enough to win control of the council."

The ultimate insult to voters in Harlow though, is that the Liberals advise their councillors that "You are NOT running the council. It's NOT your problem."

Surely all councillors are elected to work for the best of their abilities for their public, not to "be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly"!

Harlow gets tough on benefits cheats

Harlow Council has got tough on Harlow benefit cheats with two recent prosecutions.

One case in particular caught my eye - Mrs Marian Wright of Old Harlow, claimed Council Tax benefit despite having whopping undeclared savings of over £48,000! She plead guilty recently at Harlow Magistrates Court.

I think not only is it good that the council is catching people who are cheating the system, but that they are now highlighting the cases like these to the press. Lets hope the local newspapers help us spread the word that Harlow and the Tax Payers of Harlow wont put up with people cheating the system.

For those who might be worried, a change in circumstances can effect your Council tax or Housing benefit, so its best to just talk to the Council and tell them about the change, or else you could be committing benefit fraud.

If you want to report a case of benefit fraud to Harlow Council, you can do so anonymously by calling 01279 446474/446655 or you can email them - fraud@harlow.gov.uk

Well done to the officers involved in detecting and prosecuting this fraud!

The Voice

Saturday saw Mrs J (the other Cllr Johnson) and I heading into London to celebrate her birthday (she is old now!)

For her birthday Mrs J had chosen to go to the Royal Albert Hall to hear Russell Watson perform.

I can't say that I have ever been "The Voice's" biggest fan, however the evening was very moving. Not only does Mr Watson have a great voice, with an eclectic repertoire that stretched from a beautiful rendition of Ave Maria to Twist and Shout, but he certainly showed a real human side when interacting with the crowd; He posed for photos on stage after jokingly reminding people that flash photography was not allowed, and spent a long time wandering through the audience hugging and kissing many of his female fans.


We had a very enjoyable evening and certainly left the concert with a bounce in our step, ignoring the drizzle to stop off in Leicester Square and get dessert at the Haagen Dazs shop (also very good)

The journey home was ok; central line to epping, but it did make me wonder once again about the plan I keep pitching to anyone who will listen about bringing the Central Line out from Epping to Harlow.

Harlow leads the way for housing veterans

I got a press release from the government today.

Now my normal reaction at this point would be an urge to bin it!

I actually tend to read with disgust.

Today I saw it was about "housing for heroes" and gladly read on.

It appears the Government has just recognised that there might be a number of members of the armed forces returning from active service or being discharged from the forces following injury, who might actually need support.

So instead of:

Paying adequate compensation to wounded service personnel;

Having a better way of readjusting personnel in their return to civvie street;

Generally improving the housing on military bases in the first place.... I could go on but you get the idea,

Instead of this, they tell local councils to take care of these Heroes.

Well you know what Mr Brown?

We and many council like ours are well in front of you, and we want to care for our Heroes!

I have already blogged about what Harlow Council is doing around this issue here. And we are very happy to be doing it. Just like we are happy to support the local reserve forces.

What makes me mad is that the Government had to be prompted by Councillors in authorities like Harlow, asking the questions of Government departments before they did anything.

But I wont stay mad for too long, because these Heroes need as much help as we can all give.

Hot Cross Buns

A step back from politics for a moment for the most important debate of our times that is raging at the moment - Hot Cross Buns!

You see my friend Peter has been having a bit of a debate on his blog about Hot Cross Buns here.

Now having been brought up as a Catholic boy, I know that you should only eat them from Good Friday onwards, but like so many traditions that really has gone by the wayside these days, indeed growing up I remember with fondness the taste of freshly toasted buns with lashings of marg.

Still, I was going to try and keep to the Easter only idea this year.

That was until I got home from canvassing this evening to find my wife whipping some cream, with a pot of raspberry jam on the side and buns ready for toasting. Needless to say I was easily tempted and I can report to you all that Hot Cross Buns, served like cream tea scones are really most excellent!

No More Noise!

Noise nuisance is often very upsetting to people and it occasionally makes an appearance in councillors mail bags as an issue raised by constituents, although it tends to be a seasonal thing, come summer and people throw open their windows and crank up the stereo.

I think we might all have played music loudly at one point or another in our lives and in the most part if you are having a party or a couple of songs on a summer afternoon then most neighbours wont be too bothered, and if they ask you to turn the music down then most people tend to realise that it might have bee a "bit too loud" and gladly lower the volume.

However it's a bit different if your neighbour keeps playing on and on, even ignoring Council Environmental Health Officers and prosecutions.... As was the case of Mr William Jordan recently.

Mr Jordan, a Harlow Council tenant whose music "caused misery" for neighbours, had his audio equipment confiscated and was also fined £565 when his case came before Harlow Magistrates' Court a couple of weeks ago.

Mr Jordan had a noise abatement notice served on him which he broke and was prosecuted for, then has a second noise abatement notice served after he continued to cause complaints.

When officers attended just before midnight one night last year they witnessed him in breach of the second noise abatement notice, playing music so loudly that it was stopping neighbours sleeping.

So in November a warrant was granted by magistrates to seize Mr Jordan's stereo and other audio equipment. The following day Harlow Council officers were accompanied by Police to the property and confiscated the audio equipment including a stereo, sub woofer and loud speakers, and the Council commenced legal proceedings for the offence.

I am determined that Harlow Council takes issues that matter to residents, like noise and litter nuisance seriously and will prosecute where people are making their neighbour's lives a misery. We all have to have a responsibility to make Harlow a better place to live.

Well done to the Environmental Health and Legal Officers for their work on this!

If you are plagued with noise nuisance in Harlow you can report it by contacting 446111 or email contact@harlow.gov.uk.

Easter Rubbish & Recycling

The normal bin days and recycling days will be changing over the Easter holiday because there are not going to be any collections on both Good Friday and Easter Monday.

Harlow Council has published information about this here and details of which collection day you are already here.

I have summarised the revised collections dates below:

Normal date Revised date
Fri 10/04/09 Sat 11/04/09
Mon 13/04/09 Tue 14/04/09
Tue 14/04/09 Wed 15/04/09
Wed 15/04/09 Thur 16/04/09
Thur 16/04/09 Fri 17/04/09
Fri 17/04/09 Sat 18/04/09

Please remember not to put your rubbish out the night before if you don't have wheeled bins, as the foxes and cats as we know will have an Easter Party.

For those who generate an excess of Rubbish or Recycling over the Easter period and don't want to wait for the regular rubbish or recycling collection there is always the Civic Amenity Point (or Dump as it's known in my house!) run by Essex County Council, which is open all holiday including Easter Sunday, details here.

No Blogging Today

Andrew is not feeling very well, so I agreed to post this, to let you all know that he wont be blogging today (No Andrew not even if you feel "a bit better" later! :-) ) Normal service will resume soon. Oh and I wont be putting this on twitter, mainly because I can't quite figure out how......

Mrs J (the other Cllr Johnson)

Essex gives £100 towards Council Tax

Up to 30,000 people across Essex are going to be given £100 to help them with their Council Tax in these economically difficult times.


The Conservative administration at County Hall, have decided that those in most need, families with young children and those over 80 years of age should receive financial assistance.



Essex residents are of course already benefiting from the lowest council tax rise in the county in history.

A number of people reciveing this £100 will be from Harlow, and I was really happy when Lord Hanningfield the leader of Essex County Council told me about the scheme.



Harlow District Council are helping to distribute the money to those people who meet the criteria.



Of course the ability to pass this money back to hard pressed tax payers has only been achieved by the sound financial management of Essex County Council by Lord Hanningfield and his Conservative team;

A big difference to the previous Lib/Lab adminsitration who drained the reserves, a situation those of you who know Harlow will not be surprised by!

Further details of the £100 pound give back can be found here.

Well done Lord Hanningfield - this is the kind of thing that makes Conservative councils different.

Lib Dem Councillor Squirms

Lib Dem Councillor Emmanuel (Manny) Doku was apparently so incensed by my previous blogs on his scheme to claim taxi journeys instead of paying £1 a day to park, just like council staff, that he has emailed me.

I wont go into the whole email but will just focus on one sentence:

"I do hope that your decision to attack me personally is not racially motivated."

I was very annoyed when I read this.

Firstly I totally resent the inference that Cllr Doku would consider me even capable of a racially motivated attack.

Second as you will be able to see here and here there is absolutely no mention of race in my previous posts on the issue. My issue with Cllr Doku is solely his scheme to cost the taxpayer more! I now have to wonder what has caused Cllr Doku to say such a thing? Was he attempting to gag my criticism of his expenses claim by playing a "race card"?

Thirdly I have made no "personal" attack on Cllr Doku. I have simply reported the details of his scheme and expressed my disgust at such a scheme to cost the tax payer money.

In 11 years in politics I have never been so upset.

Chamber of Commerce

Yesterday I had the chance to meet, along with the Chairman of Harlow Council Tony Hall, the Harlow Chamber of Commerce, in the form of Sean Quinney and Ian Hudson their Chairman and Vice Chairman.

The Harlow Chamber of Commerce went through a bit of a bad patch a few years ago, with a few people leaving at the same time, but under the leadership of these chaps they seem to be doing very well.

We talked about the networking events that they host, the new members that they were targeting and the networking work they were doing.

It was good to tell them about the Council's changing view of business. Since taking over the Council the Conservative Administration have started promoting business in the District a lot more, including business for the first time in the Council's corporate plan.

I have invited the Chamber to my next business breakfast and look forward to finding other ways to help and work with them in future.

Stansted Airport (narrowly avoiding Obama)

Today was a very busy day.

I took another days "annual leave" from work to spend doing leader of council things; something which I have blogged about before.

The day was a good mixture of catch up meetings, with senior officers from the council and paperwork/emails. I also had a very good visit to Stansted airport (and no not to see Obama take off as he had left a couple of hours before!)

The visit to Stansted was at the invitation of Ashley Rily, who is Head of Communications for BAA Stansted. Ashley has been getting very involved in Harlow recently representing the airport at all sorts of events. He came to my business breakfast last year, and has just agreed to represent the Airport on the Harlow 2020 partnership (the local strategic partnership).

At the Airport my Head of Regeneration and I met with Ashley and Stuart Wingate the MD of the Airport. We talked about the current issues at the airport, including the way they had successfully managed the arrival and departure of most of the high profile G20 participants. We also talked about regeneration opportunities for Harlow and how things like the rail line which serves both the Airport and Harlow could be improved for both of us. Importantly we also talked about how more people from Harlow could find employment at the airport, and not just in low paid low skilled jobs.

I will be hosting a return visit to Harlow at some time in the near future for both Ashley and Stuart, where I will be able to show off all the good things that the town has to offer. I am really looking forward to working with them in future.

Berecroft Improvements

Cllr Lee Dangerfield has just breifed me on some of the happenings at a meeting with South Anglia Housing, on the Berecroft estate.

Apparently SAH have now given a commitment to:

Install CCTV on the estate to combat anti social behaviour, as requested by the residents.
Improve the hardstanding areas of the estate
Continue the process of removing and replacing guttering

They haven't yet given a commitment to work on the garage improvements.

Overall some really good news for the people who live in Berecroft.

Well done to Cllr Dangerfield for helping get this stuff done!

Further disgust at Lib Dem Councillor!

I had only just published my previous post when another Harlow Conservative Councillor drew my attention to a previous email that Manny Doku wrote just a few days ago on the same subject.

I currently have a permit to park at the civic centre car park because I needed one. Without that 'perk', I may have to walk (and may be late for meetings as I do have other calls on my time), or take a taxi on every occasion and claim same from the council (which will add up to more than the cost of permit, perhaps).
Again we are not staff and, like some company directors ( and I am one), do have to have some form of 'special treatment' because of sacrifices they tend to make in some cases.
Thanks.
Manny.

It seems Cllr Doku likes his "perks" and considers being a Councillor makes him worthy of "special treatment"!

Perhaps Cllr Doku should be reminded, that it is a privilage to serve his community and that he already recieves an allowance for doing so. And afterall as he points out he is a "company director" as well, which I am sure remunerates him well too.....

Edited 00:12
For those that worry, like Cllr Doku, that he might be late if he walked to meetings, you may want to check a map. Cllr Doku's published address is CM18 6DN and the Civic Centre is CM20 1WG

Expenses & Lib Dems make me disgusted!

I was shocked and disgusted today by the scheming of a Harlow Lib Dem Councillor to rack up a mass of expenses.

In Harlow, during the budgeting process, which I have documented in this blog for you before, we decided that we should introduce a charge to park in the Council section of the Watergardens Carpark, which was previously free to Council Staff. We were not excessive; £1 a day. More than anything, since it was a tough budget year, this was about sharing the pain of the budget with the tax payers. We also decided that Councillors will have to pay too. After all thats only fair.

Now the opposition voted against our budget, and as I have detailed the Lib Dems never even put a budget on the table themselves. However today when the car parking charges started there were a flurry of emails complaining about the scheme.

What has really taken the biscuit though is that one Lib Dem Councillor - Emmanuel (Manny) Doku today sent the below email to all the Councillors and a lot of council staff:


Dear Colleagues,

Again, I must appeal to your common financial sense to rethink the proposal to charge councillors to park at the Water Gardens. The logic of my suggestion is plainly this (and I repeat what said earlier): I took a taxi to the Civic centre this morning which cost me £4.00 - one way. I shall be claiming this expenditure soon and from the Council. Had I taken another taxi home, the total would have been £8.00, which will be claimed from the Council. Since I am not happy about the charging of £1.00, and as a form of protest, I shall continue to take taxi to meetings at the Civic Centre and claim same. What this means is that instead of paying £1.00 to park, the Council will be paying out many times more that the £1.00. It does not take a rocket scientist to realise that it makes good financial sense to continue with free parking for Councillors.
I rest my case.
Manny.


So lets just get that right, because Cllr Doku objects to paying £1 to park in the car park, he is going to try and land the council with an £8 a day expenses Bill!!! What makes it worse is that Council Expenses rules say that Taxi fares are reimbursable in cases of urgency or where no public transport is reasonably available, which is clearly not the case for Cllr Doku and his little scheme.

I can't believe that to protest aginast paying a £1 a day fee that our staff now pay, Cllr Doku would rather use £8 a day more of taxpayers money via his expenses!

And lets remember that the Lib Dem Group on Harlow Council also voted against Freezing Councillors allowances on budget night!