In their own words: Conservative neglect of the Alton

Apparently, one of Wandsworth's Conservative Councillors ventured onto Roehampton's Alton estate last Saturday (before anyone asks, it WASN'T one of the councillors elected to, supposedly, serve Roehampton!). This is how she describes her experience on her own blog (in a post titled "Different worlds"!):

"The lift wasn't working, the smells, sights, sounds can be intimidating. On 23rd floor I took fright and ran all the way down and went and did a different block. But I knew I had to go back and finish the one I hadn't done. I came back via the basement walking through foul smelling leaking sewage."

Aside from the fact that no block on the Alton has more than twelve floors - so climbing to the 23rd was a remarkable feat even for a Conservative councillor - let's just take a reality check:

• The Conservatives have run Wandsworth Council (and its housing department) for 30 years
• They've (at least notionally) represented Roehampton ward for the past ten years
• They're the ones who sacked the local caretakers in favour of a cheapskate, out-of-town cleaning contractor
• They're responsible for the lifts working...or not; and the drains being cleared...or not

As the Councillor says candidly: Putney Conservatives live in a different world - on a different planet - entirely.

I wonder if she's bothered to report her findings to the housing department, let alone demand they be fixed? Maybe she doesn't realise that the point of being an elected representative is to improve the quality of life of our constituents, not just to write these shocked, skewed and, frankly, derogatory blogs about the novelty of visiting a council estate, of all places!

UPDATE 26.03.2008 - curiously, the councillor's post has, all of a sudden, disappeared from her website. Fortunately, I captured it before it vanished, and you can still read it here as a PDF.