Search this site
-
Recent posts
About
I'm a councillor in the London Borough of Wandsworth; this blog mainly covers that, sometimes general politics and policy and occasionally anything else that takes my fancy.
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Battersea
The whole Asda argument made the Evening Standard today. I’m reluctant to call it an argument or a row because, actually, it’s nothing like that. It’s only people like Asda getting it wrong, being told they’re wrong, then given evidence that they are wrong, then shown that just a few years before they were getting
read more…
Reinventing Government
In a bid to check whether there really are no new ideas I’ve started re-reading David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s Reinventing Government. It’s probably not that well-known a book today, but it was the first ‘fad’ book I remember – and having seen other titles like Nudge come to prominence (only to hear it dismissed
read more…
Posted in Politics
Tagged 80s, 90s, big society, Bill Clinton, innovation, Reinventing Government
Leave a comment
Shaftesbury in 1945
Google Earth have released imagery of London from 1945 (and other years) which give a fascinating view of how the Luftwaffe left the area. Following on from my post about the V1 that demolished a large part of the area around Brassey Square you can see in the map above the hole left in the
read more…
It was better when…
Last time there was a coalition between the Liberals and the Conservatives was 1922. It didn’t end well, at least it didn’t end well for Lloyd-George. But some things were better. Imagine you were at Victoria and needed to get to Clapham as quickly as possible. You’ve heard trains go from here to Clapham Junction,
read more…
Posted in Shaftesbury
Tagged Asda, Battersea, Clapham, Clapham Junction, idiots, SW11, SW11tch
Leave a comment
Brassey Square bombing
There is an immediacy to reading the reports compiled while various authorities were responding to Second World War bombing. As I noted when writing about the houses a few doors down from me, records of incidents are mainly as it happened notes of orders and instructions given rather than post-incident reports written with the benefit
read more…
Posted in Shaftesbury
Tagged bombing, Brassey Square, Morrison Street, Sabine Road, V1, World War II
1 Comment
How openness helps everyone
One of my concerns about the rush towards spending transparency for councils (Wandsworth publishes spending by vendor by month) are the unintended consequences. The We Love Local Government blog raises the question of whether it is actually more likely to lead to bad, rather than good, spending decisions. The rationale is fairly simple; because there
read more…
National Identity Fraud Week
Next week (from 18-24 October) is National Identity Fraud week. Wandsworth traditionally is one of the worst places in the country for identity theft, despite the problem gaining more and more exposure. It only takes a few carelessly discarded items for your identity to be stolen, and it’s worth taking a few moments to make
read more…
Asda and borderline obsession
I apologise. I know that I’m banging on about this, but I’ve just had a response to my latest attempt at communicating with them. What’s getting to me now is not so much their insistence that they are in Clapham, but the fact that they don’t really know where they are and are having huge
read more…
Does the council stop good behaviour?
I’ve followed, from a distance, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) conference today. Far from having sessions on fat cat salaries this morning seems to have been devoted to dismissing Nudge to move onto a new fad involving social connections. Nudge was on one of those fads taken up a few years ago
read more…
Big Society: giving it permission
In an email the other day I commented that the two big pillars of the Big Society were re-branding and permission. I don’t think this is anything particularly profound (if it is, I’m probably unknowingly plagiarising something I’ve read somewhere) and have even remarked on the re-branding aspect myself. The fact is that Big Society
read more…
