From the Mayor’s New Year Message
Labour Party members will have been lucky enough to receive a New Year’s message from the Mayor.
According to the mayor, the Tories are clearly the purveyors of the politics hate, and it’s their fault that Newham is having the problems that it currently has. Just think what we could do with the missing £203m.
Does this sound a little like the Newham Needs Campaign and the politics of grievance.
“With the London Mayor and London Assembly elections in 2024, and a likely general election, it’s going to be a biggie of a year. We must win against the divisive politics of hate and for the future of our country to get the Tories out. It’s this Tory government that has cut funding to Newham by £203m since 2010 and wreaked havoc in people’s lives with their economic failures and a cost of living crisis”
We expect political parties to blame each other for problems, it’s the currency of political debate. But it would be nice to get some idea of how the mayor intends to fix the hole in her budget.
The recipients of the mayor’s message were directed to the manifesto, so we have taken a look at one area.
We know that the council has recently agreed to go to weekly recycling collections. That sounds like they are doing something.
But how much additional recycling material do they expect to collect?
And, more importantly, how much of the currently recycled material is actually recycled, and how much goes to land-fill or incineration?
And regarding the recycled material, how much is sent abroad for recycling? And of this how much of this is actually recycled?
With the exception of the figures for land-fill and incineration, (which should be available), we suspect that no-one has any idea. Perhaps the Green councillors might like to enquire.
In short, the mayor’s boasts are little more than virtue signalling at the tax-payer’s expense. The costs of collecting recycled rubbish have doubled, but we are entirely unclear as to any benefit that this will provide. Indeed, given what we are learning about the international recycling industry, (two-thirds of UK plastic waste is exported), it is entirely possible that some of Newham’s rubbish will end up unused and despoiling someone else’s country.
But we will be able to feel better about ourselves. At least we put it in the right bin.
Oh, and about the added enforcement. Newham’s idea of increased enforcement was to bring in a private sector organisation which would pay its way from the fines (PCNs) it issued. This was the model which fined an elderly lady for feeding the birds, in the park. It is an operational model which will penalise the public for small infringements but leave the major matters, dumped fridges, piles of building waste etc, untouched. This is what Newham calls “enhanced enforcement”.
Still, as the mayor reminds us, we are not going to the polls to elect a new council, it’s the London elections and the General Election in 2024.
The psephologists will be scrutinising the votes from the different wards in May, to work out which sitting councillors are vulnerable. Spoiler alert. Lots of them, we suspect.