Thoughts Of Christmas Turkey And The 'Third Runway'

A week in the life of a local councillor as told by Sam Hearn

Cllr Sam Hearn who represents the Riverside ward in Chiswick, is chairman of the Chiswick Area Forum. He has written this account of his week as a busy local councillor

Friday 20th November : To Isleworth to celebrate Diwali in style with a large group of Conservatives from across the Constituency/Borough. It was a truly amazing evening. Nice to look back on a successful event with lots of laughs, lots of music and dancing and great food.

Saturday 21st November: My turn to run the Councillors’ Surgery at Chiswick Library. Think that I was able to help a lady who appears not be receiving the service that she is entitled to from Hounslow Housing’s maintenance team. No one should have to wait from August until November for an external glass door damaged in an attempted burglary to be repaired (or rather NOT repaired). The council I-Pad really comes into its own in situations like this – information at your finger-tips.

Sunday 22nd November: Lunch with a retired Labour Councillor from whom I hope to buy my Christmas Turkey and my Christmas Champagne.

Monday 23rd November: A long Group meeting focusing for once on matters other than the upcoming Council meeting. I see from my emails that a communications company called Cascade has booked the hall at Chiswick Pier from 3pm to 8pm on Tuesday 8th December for a public consultation meeting about the development of the Pissarro’s site. I hope that this gets lots of publicity.

Tuesday 24th November: Borough Council Meeting. Did we really need to be there from 7.30 pm until 11.00 pm? The first hour was full of “announcements” with photo opportunities for the Mayor and various Lead Members. The last hour or more were taken up discussing motions attacking the proposed cuts to tax credits and the upcoming Trade Union Bill. As a Council we can have “zero” impact on either of these matters. The tax credit debate turned out to be an utter waste of time given the Chancellor’s announcement the following day. Since the last Labour Government failed to reverse a single piece of the so called “iniquitous” trades’ union legislation enacted in the Thatcher years I fail to see the point of us debating the latest trades’ union Bill at length.

Wednesday 25th November: Managed to find a seat in St Michael and All Angels Bedford Park for the big CHATR meeting to discuss how to stop the third runway at Heathrow. It seems mad even to be considering such a project when we now know the massive scale of the public expenditure on huge transport infrastructure projects that will be required. More importantly the environmental damage is going to be catastrophic. Howard Davies was using vehicle emissions that we all now know were just modern “fairy-tales”. Time is very, very short before the decision is made but there is still time to write to the Prime Minister and let him know what you think. After this meeting in Chiswick it was off to the Hounslow Conservative Club to catch the end of the Associations’ Executive meeting.

Thursday 26th November : Collected the first of the campaign literature for next year’s Mayoral Elections from our office on Chiswick High Road. Time once again to blow the dust of the Riverside delivery network. Catching up on council emails – an 80 year old lady is being denied a Blue Badge because she can walk 80 yards. Rules is rules?

November 27, 2015