Vote Stuart King!

Yes, I know the General Election's still a while off but there's a way you can get into the habit of casting your vote for me right now!

Last year my website was voted one of the top 300 political blogs in the country - and one of the top 100 Labour blogs - in Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging.

This year, the Guide is being republished by the new Total Politics magazine and I hope the site will achieve an even higher rating, given how many more visitors I have received over the past twelve months.

Rankings are based on your votes - all it involves is clicking here to send an email listing your Top 10 blogs. For your vote to be valid you do need to list ten sites - I very much hope that you'll put this site at no. 1, as votes are weighted by how high on your list I come!

There's also an incentive: everyone who votes is entered in a prize draw to win £100 of political books.

The deadline for submitting your Top 10 is Friday 15 August. Please only vote once. Anonymous votes will not count. And you must give a name.

My personal top 10 is below - please feel free to copy the list and mix it up a little if you don't frequent ten political blogs; or instead you can browse the comprehensive list of political websites from across the political spectrum by clicking here.

1. stuartking.net
2. lukeakehurst.blogspot.com
3. politicshome.com
4. tomcharris.wordpress.com
5. chrispaul-labouroflove.blogspot.com
6. labourhome.com
7. iaindale.blogspot.com
8. blogs.mirror.co.uk/maguire
9. tom-watson.co.uk
10.fairdealphil.blogspot.com

Out and about in Carlton Drive

On Saturday my campaign team and I were out talking to residents in the Carlton Drive area between Putney Hill and East Putney station.

This area is one of the most at threat from the monstrous plans to build two 25 and 19 storey tower blocks on the Putney Place site opposite East Putney tube, and the "Carlton Towers" plan for the Capsticks building on the corner of Carlton Drive and Upper Richmond Road.

I've written a lot about my opposition to these plans both in this news section and the current edition of The Putney Paper, but too often planners get overly absorbed with the - important - minutaie of such proposals and forget the real people who will have to live in the shadow of such monstrosities for decades to come. That's why I chose to spend my time on Saturday talking to residents in this part of Putney.

We have to turn back these high-rise applications or else Putney will become a free-for-all for developers competing to build the biggest tower block since the last one.

Putney Pensioner

This week I launched a new newsletter for senior citizens in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields: The Putney Pensioner. Included in this edition are stories on help with the cost of living, Veterans' Day (and the Veterans' Badge), free swimming, Laurie Green and much more.

You can read the current edition, which I will produce at regular intervals, here.

At present, the Putney Pensioner only goes to residents of sheltered housing accommodation in the constituency but I appreciate that there are many other senior citizens throughout the area who don't live in these schemes and so are missing out.

If you're a Putney Pensioner and would like to be added to the mailing list for this newsletter please email me: stuart.king@putneylabour.org.uk.

Save Danebury Green

I thought I'd publish some photos of the green space at the top of Danebury Avenue that the Conservatives want to concrete over in their misguided plans to redevelop Roehampton.

Under their plans, all the green space you see here will be destroyed to be replaced with new buildings and a "town square". Sure, it will have patches of grass between the concrete and maybe even the occasional flowerbed, but compared to what is there now it is pitifully inadequate.

Could this particular green space be improved? Yes. Could the heart of Roehampton be improved? Yes. Is the way to do that to concrete over this precious and strategically important piece of greenery? Absolutely not.

The Conservatives' bizarre argument - that they seem to think trumps overwhelming local opposition to concreting over the green space - is that they don't think this space is used enough. Well I don't agree, but even if that were true, why does an open space have to be heavily used? Why can't it just be enjoyed for what it is: a tranquil buffer between Roehampton Lane and the Alton estate?

And just as importantly, who do the Tories imagine their town square will suddenly be used by? A completely different set of people to those who already cause plenty of nuisance in Danebury Avenue and drive away many who might otherwise use it? Come off it!

This green continues further up Roehampton Lane past Allbrook House up to Kingsclere Close. The Conservatives also want to tear out this verge and build what can only imaginably be poor quality homes right on top of Roehampton Lane blighted by noise, pollution and congestion. This is redevelopment for the sake of it; redevelopment at any price - and the price is too high.

NHS at 60 survey goes live

I have today added a survey seeking your views on the local NHS as it turns 60.

You can take the survey here.

I want to know what your top healthcare priorities are, your experience of the local health service and your views on some of the debates currently raging in this critical policy area.

Sixty years ago this month, Labour Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan launched the National Health Service. I am not alone in believing it to be Labour's single greatest achievement ever.

And since 1997, Putney has seen the fruits of Labour investment in our NHS:

* Rebuilding Queen Mary's Hospital after the last Conservative Government axed its A&E Department in 1997

* Providing the funds to get Putney Hospital back into use as a healthcare provider - and with legal problems now on their way to being resolved work will hopefully start soon

* A new NHS clinic serving Southfields and West Hill

* Many, many more NHS doctors, nurses, consultants, midwives and dentists

* Waiting times for operations slashed

* More convenient GP surgery opening times

...to list just a few. The NHS will always be a huge challenge for government as it struggles to respond to changing health issues and patient needs; new, better treatments; the breadth of service it should provide and the types of facilities best suited to provide those treatments. But the NHS motto: healthcare for all regardless of income, free at the point of use is a beacon for the world and we should all remain very, very proud of our National Health Service

Roehampton Village

This photo of Roehampton Village and Putney Heath was taken from Allbrook House at the top of Danebury Avenue - a block the Conservatives want to demolish under their redevelopment plans.

The main road to the right of the picture is Roehampton Lane whilst the red brick road off it is Roehampton High Street.

Roehampton has strong religious institutions: off Roehampton Lane on the centre right of the picture is the Roman Catholic St Joseph's Church while the church with the spire on Putney Heath is Holy Trinity Church of England Church. And the red brick building up Roehampton High Street is St Mary's Convent.

Have your say on Putney Place

The long-awaited, much-dreaded plan to build two high-rise blocks across the road from East Putney tube station has finally been submitted to the council.

I am 100% opposed to this application which you can read up on here.

It is this planning development that I made the front page story of the latest edition of The Putney Paper - because while the existing Putney Place carbuncle is an absolute eyesore, my solution is to replace it with a better building of similar or smaller scale that complements the area and which our infrastructure can cope with. Instead the site's owners, Oracle, want to cram two ugly 25 and 19 towers onto this tiny triangle of land.

The planning application that has been submitted is incomplete and incredibly vague:

* It doesn't assess the impact on the environment or on local services

* It doesn't address the grotesque overdevelopment this plan amounts to, or the precedent it will set for the middle of Putney.

* It doesn't explain why surrounding residents should have to be overlooked and overshadowed, or why they think they have the right to transform Putney's skyline for decades to come.

* It doesn't talk about what proportion of the housing will be affordable

The Council must extract satisfactory, detailed and practical answers to each of these questions from the developer and tell us what it believes is a satisfactory development on this site. If it cannot or will not, this application must be refused.

Please register your views - and hopefully your objections - to this scheme. A groundswell of local protest will make it far harder for the Conservatives to cave in to the developers and blight our environment further.

You can comment online here, or email planningapplications@wandsworth.gov.uk, referencing planning application No. 2008/3321.

Unleashing my Dogs campaign on Westminster

Last week I met with the Minister responsible for reining-in Dangerous Dogs, Jonathan Shaw MP, to highlight the problem there is in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields and talk him through some of the responses you've been sending in to me.

We talked about some of the possible solutions; the Minister agreed with me that the Conservatives' plan for a £500-per-pet Dog Tax is ridiculous and unfair; but lots of respondents to my survey have supported the far cheaper idea of microchipping.

Since I brought up the idea of microchipping in this campaign, Wandsworth's Tory council has announced it plans to compel all its tenants to microchip their dogs. The problem with this is that while council tenants with well-behaved, properly controlled dogs will be forced to pay up or face eviction, home-owners and private tenants with dangerous dogs will escape scott-free.

It is unfair, pernicious and stereotypical to pick on one pretty small part of the community while ignoring the vast majority. But that's the Tories for you: preferring to be seen to do something instead of doing something EFFECTIVE. I think this problem needs a comprehensive answer - and that means tackling dangerous dogs whoever owns them.

The Minister and I will be meeting again once all the responses have been collated, so if you want to have your say direect to Government either write to me at 35 Felsham Road, London SW15 1AY or fill in my online Danger Dogs survey here.

Putney Vale

Last week, I attended a public meeting that took place in Newlands Hall on the Putney Vale estate. The meeting was attended by about 40 fairly cheesed-off residents who took the council - and local Conservative councillors - to task for a series of problems bedevilling the estate

Putney Vale estate is a charming estate consisting of about 300 properties right on the border of Wimbledon Common, just off the A3 (behind the big Asda store). The estate - as one resident put it - is surrounded by one of the largest areas of green space that any council estate in London can offer

Like many similar estates much of the housing stock has been sold off by the council and consequently there is a large proportion of residents who are tenants of private landlords. Herein lies the source of many of the estate's problems. Absentee landlords neglect their responsibilities to ensure their tenants behave appropriately. Many residents at the meeting complained of late night parties, flytipping and other anti social behaviour. However, their real beef was with the council for its failure to tackle this problem.

Having listened to the concerns raised at the meeting and then taking some time to speak to residents outside afterwards, I think there are a number of actions that the council can take

1. A proactive policy of immediately targetting the landlord of misbehaving tenants - very often the tenants themselves move on before the council gets round to speaking to them. The council also needs to issue without delay fines against those found guilty of flytipping;

2. An immediate commitment to improve the estate's community centre - which the council plans to close - so that local residents have a local centre to come together. Indeed, earlier on the day the meeting was held the residents held a birthday party for two elderly residents celebrating their 90th birthdays - why would the council want to close such a facility;

3. Zero tolerance of anti social behaviour in council properties - that means enforcing tenancy conditions without delay and prevarication

4. A real drive to establish an active and flourishing residents association on the estate - local people coming together to find local solutions to their day to day problems (to be fair the purpose of the public meeting was to try and find residents willing to help set one up;

5. An immediate commitment to reopen the estate's youth club which was closed earlier this year because of Tory cuts to it grant. As a result the kids from the estate have nowhere to go and no planned activities to keep them occupied.

I don't claim to have all the answers to the estate's problems - indeed, the answers tend to lie locally with the residents themselves. That's why I'm asking residents what they think needs to be done.

More Post Office nonsense

The Post Office has announced that it is willing to negotiate with the Council to provide replacement services for the community served by the former Lower Richmond Road branch.

But at the same time it has refused to consider negotiating a similar return of service for the area served by the Putney Bridge Road branch - on the ridiculous basis that doing so would put at risk the viability of surrounding branches that have survived to date.

The absurdity of this position beggars belief. First, which branches do they believe will lose so much custom if the branch in Putney Bridge Road is re-opened? There aren't any post offices in the locality. Only in the surreal world of the Post Office would the provision of services in Putney Bridge Road affect branches in Barnes, Parson's Green or Garratt Lane.

Second, they cannot possibly argue that basing services in St Mary's Church in Putney High Street - if indeed they are considering such an idea - would be ok for Lower Richmond Road but not Putney High Street: St Mary's is equidistant between both branches.

And third, our predictions about the failure of the Upper Richmond Road post office to cope with the additional custom - when it was already failing to provide a decent service before the two branches were closed - are becoming reality. People - especially the elderly - are finding it very difficult to get to the Upper Richmond Road branch; and if they manage that difficult feat despite the lack of direct public transport options they're met with abysmal service.

The Post Office really needs to overhaul its whole business model, because the current one that has seen these ridiculous closures in Putney is clearly flawed. They refuse to publish in any detail their financial forecasts to justify closure, their definitions of local are preposterous, and their investment in the remaining branches is non-existent.

Not good enough.

Putney Bridge disintegrates

Today's wet weather has washed away large chunks of the long-eroding surface on Putney Bridge - again the responsibility of Wandsworth's neglectful Conservative council.









The road surface here has been worn down for months and the bus lane had become warped; almost like waves of tarmac. Signs of erosion were already in evidence right across the bridge, and as usual the council had either ignored them entirely, or splodged a few dollops of tarmac into them in the mad hope that this would somehow substitute for competent road maintenance. It's simply not good enough for the Council to lay down metal sheets because they're too miserly to keep the bridge in good shape.

The Bridge is an icon of Putney: it presents our area to the rest of the world, so the state it's kept in by the council has even more of an impact than the (in itself unacceptable) neglect of residential backstreets. Just as with our grubby, run-down High Street, the Conservatives are evidently quite happy for people to get the impression that Putney is a shabby, neglected area in which no pride is invested.

That may be true of the council - but I know it isn't true of the residents.

UPDATE: Even this council seems to believe that the state of the Bridge is unacceptable as tonight the bus lane has been cordoned off. Whether that is for essential roadworks or for the Police traffic census they've been conducting all day today we'll have to wait and see.

Help me stop this concrete canyon

The Conservatives have just announced they're tearing up carefully consulted-upon plans to regenerate Roehampton.

After more than a year and a half of surveys and public meetings, the Council brought in new consultants who, without any evidence, have said the old plans for the top end of Danebury Avenue are unworkable. What they propose in their place is:

• Three times as many flats as there are at the moment in what is already the most densely populated part of the borough.


• Not a single one of the *additional* flats will be affordable; and overwhelmingly they're likely to be one-bedroom properties rather than the family homes the area desperately needs. Many of them will also be low quality, over noisy, congested, polluted Roehampton Lane


• Doubling the height of the Danebury Avenue buildings - we are supposed to be impressed that no building will rise "more than six storeys"


• Closing the Alton Youth Club in Dilton Gardens - the "best option" according to the Conservatives


• Concreting over the precious green at the entrance to Danebury Avenue, which the vast majority of residents wanted retained; green open space in this new plan is reduced by three quarters


• Demolishing Allbrook House, despite Allbrook House residents not wanting their homes flattened


• Worsening congestion in Roehampton Lane even further - it's already on the verge of getting dramatically more congested when the huge 400+ home Queen Mary's Place opens soon

The plans as they stand do not have my support and, nor do I believe, will they have the support of Roehampton residents.

As I wrote in my recent post about getting the derelict King's Head pub back into use, I want Roehampton regenerated as much as anyone else, but not at any price. Any ideas for Roehampton must put the existing community first and foremost. The Conservative plans just want to drive Roehampton residents out and bring even more temporary, transient newcomers to the area.

Just imagine how doubling the height of the Danebury Avenue shops, where it can already feel gloomy with just a three-storey block, will feel. It will turn the centre of the area into a dark windswept, canyon. The superstore they propose will massively increase traffic down Danebury Avenue, which can already get pretty congested.

The new community hall and Boys Club will both be crammed into what is now the Right Plaice chip shop: a tiny space and one the chippie doesn't want to leave anyway.

What I think Roehampton needs is a more diverse number of homes to allow generations-old local families to stay local. More affordable homes to replace the hundreds that the Conservatives have sold off. Fewer one-bedroom flats. And much better public transport.

How could the Conservatives have got this so wrong?! These plans are damaging. They'll make Roehampton worse. And they're unworkable. Help me defeat them.

Putney Heath stabbing

Reports are coming in of a stabbing on Putney Heath by the bus terminus opposite the Green Man Pub. Fortunately, it's understood that the victim, in his 20s, is in a stable condition in hospital.

There is very little detail beyond this available at the moment.

UPDATE 1 (9pm Sunday): The Wandsworth Guardian is reporting that two men have been arrested over this stabbing, which is a good result within 12 hours of the incident. This again goes to show that it is not policing and criminal justice that is the problem here because those who commit these crimes are being caught, prosecuted and convicted; but rather stopping youths carrying knives in the first place.

It can't be said often enough: carry a knife and you'll either end up in jail, or dead.

UPDATE 2 (2pm Monday): The Sun has come up with some of the absurd, hysterical sensationalist nonsense reporting that gives tabloids a bad name. In today's paper they quote an anonymous "local" person as saying: "After 10pm its like a war-zone round here."

This is, supposedly, someone's opinion and they have a right to it, but it's a ridiculous, baseless assertion that is completely at odds with the area this crime occurred in. The fact is that Putney is substantially safer than both London AND Wandsworth borough as a whole - and West Putney, where this incident happened, is one of the safest parts of our safe community.

I reported on the latest crime figures for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields here only a couple of days ago. Knife crime is serious enough to grab the headlines in its own right without The Sun attempting to draw parallels between generally peaceful, tranquil and sedate Putney Heath and Chechnya or Columbia.

UPDATE 3 (3pm Tuesday): Two youths, neither of them seemingly from the Putney area, have now been charged with the incident. One has been charged with GBH, the other with assisting an offender.

Wasting less food

Gordon Brown was right yesterday to talk about the amount of food wasted in Britain, especially at a summit where the western world is again being shamed by its lack of progress in honouring promises to the developing world. The amount of perfectly good food we waste is shameful given the starvation and drought that still plagues so much of Africa in particular.

We throw away over 400 million tonnes of food every year - apparently the equivalent of £420 on every household's annual shopping bill (though how they know this without knowing exactly which food we throw out, and where we got it from escapes me!).

But it's politicians, not the public who must take a lead in reducing food waste, because while most of us could probably buy more sensibly there are two big wasters that need national or international action to rectify.

The first is to scrap the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): the biggest waster of food there is in Europe. Not only does the CAP encourage - actually demand - inefficient farming practices and scandalous food mountains but it is one of the biggest barriers against free and fair trade in the world. It actively prevents African farmers from competing with their EU counterparts by subsidising inefficient farming methods in the EU at the expense of far cheaper goods from developing nations.

The CAP is unjustifiable, and rather than French President Nicholas Sarkozy spending his time trying to bully Ireland into reversing its referendum vote against the Lisbon Treaty of a few weeks ago, he really should be telling his countrymen straight that there can be no such thing as a free lunch anymore.

The second initiative we need is to persuade the huge supermarket chains to end their "buy one get one free" deals and instead cut the item cost of goods, especially food staples. It's good that some supermarkets are already focussing more on discounting these key items but they can do far more.

Buy one get one free deals (or BOGOFs!) are one of the main reasons why food waste is increasing; they also don't help with Britain's obesity problem as we try to consume the extra freebies we get in our shopping trolley to avoid throwing this unneeded food away.

The more significant figure that emerged from the government's food waste report today was not the tonnage thrown away, or some notional estimate of how much that adds to our weekly shop - it's this: that the wealthiest families spend 7% of their (far larger) household income on food, whereas it consumes more than twice that - 15% - of the poorest.

It isn't, predominantly, the poorest households that waste food: they don't have that luxury and they also shop more carefully. But it is they who will benefit most from a switch to cheaper overall prices away from two-for-one deals, and the cheaper produce we would be able to buy were Europe to scrap the CAP.

Brewhouse Lane bays in by end of August

I've now received confirmation from the council that the changes to parking in Brewhouse Lane, which I wrote about here, will be implemented by 25th August. Good news for local residents and their visitors, who will get more parking opportunities close to their home.

It takes a little time to amend a traffic order like those that govern all Putney's controlled parking zones, and once that's been sorted out the Council needs to order new signs and provide a ticket machine for the new shared-use bays I persuaded them to bring in.

Better buses for Roehampton?

A few days ago there was an exhibition about public transport accessibility in Roehampton, held by Transport for London consultants SDG.

Because Roehampton is relatively remote - separated from other places by Richmond Park, Putney Heath, Wimbledon Common and Barnes Common - it is especially reliant on buses.

One of the key strands of the consultation was improving connections between Roehampton and Barnes station. Two bus routes, one from Kingston that currently stops at ASDA in Putney Vale, and the 170 that runs to Victoria from Danebury Avenue, are both being considered for extension to Barnes.

In the case of the 170, it's proposed that it runs down Priory Lane. Priory Lane desperately needs a bus service but the problem with this plan is that the plans as they stand would continue the bus down Danebury Avenue and through the road closure by the Alton School. Removing the barrier would return Danebury Avenue to being a rat-run.

And we also need assurances that extending further a route like the 170 - which has already been lengthened from Clapham Junction to Victoria in recent months - will have no knock-on consequences for frequency or reliability.

What do you think? Please get in touch to let me know your thoughts.

Coming soon...

This website is getting a makeover for the Summer. All will be revealed in the next few weeks. We'll be adding several new features and improving the look and layout of ths site. You'll also be able to find everything very much more easily, so do stick with us as we make sure everything works properly.

The web visitor figures for June are in, and we've again grown our readership - as you can see from the chart above. Unique visitors in June surpassed 3,500 and total visits surpassed 7,000. Over 21,000 pages were viewed - the highest number ever. And hello to the four readers who visited the site from Kuwait IP addresses last month! Thank you all for visting.

Putney - safer than other parts of London?

Every month when I publish the ward-by-ward crime statistics I usually focus on the change over the previous month.

This month it's worth looking at how crime in Putney compares with London as a whole.

Every single ward in Putney has a lower record of drug offending, fraud or forgery, robbery and other notifiable offences than the Met Police average.

Every single ward in Putney bar one has a better record on burglary and theft & handling (Thamesfield being the exception); criminal damage and violence against the person (Roehampton); and robbery (Southfields) than the London-wide figures. Roehampton has a stastically insignificant higher rate of sexual offences, which are a very small percentage of the total anyway I'm pleased to say.

Putney also compares favourably to our borough as a whole - though the pattern is very slightly different. The overall Wandsworth figure for crimes per 1,000 of the population is 99.6; the overall Putney figure is 89.9.

So what these crime figures show, month-in, month-out is that Wandsworth is safer than other parts of London, and that Putney is safer than other parts of Wandsworth. Don't let the Tories tell you different.

Here are the year to May 2008 figures:



And the April 2008 figures for comparison:

Just the ticket? Not if SWT have their way!

South West Trains (SWT) are set to announce reduced ticket office opening times later this month. Although the plans won't affect Putney Station, they are going to hit Barnes Station and Wandsworth Town, which many constituents around the edges of our area use.

Under the SWT proposals, Barnes Station will have its ticket office closed for six and-a-half hours more on Saturdays, closed entirely on Sundays, and during the week cut back by half an hour.

Wandsworth Town is even harder hit: during the week the ticket office here will be open three and-a-half hours less and will be closed entirely on both Saturday and Sunday.

These plans are bad news. Unstaffed stations increase the potential for vandalism, graffiti and other crime making them unwelcoming for the public. That's especially true for Barnes Station which is very isolated, set in the midst of Barnes Common.

Wandsworth Town is already an unpleasant and virtually unstaffed station, with its dingy, foreboding subway - and given the huge riverside developments either side of Wandsworth Bridge, the new housing at the top of East Hill and the plans for the Ram Brewery site we should be talking about expanding capacity here, not cutting it back.

If you'd like to protest these closure plans, you can sign my online petition here. Every response I get strengthens the case against closure, so please sign up.

Pothole of the week: 30 June 2008

The Conservative Council doesn't discriminate in its neglect of our roads: whether you live in Putney, Roehampton or Southfields all their roads are thoroughly run down.

This example is from the Alton Estate: Tangley Grove, which is off Danebury Avenue. What's even more remarkable about the Tories' neglect of the roads around here is that the foundation of the roads on the Alton are actually giant slabs so it should take even more neglect to allow them to fall into this condition than with more traditional road surfaces.

The so-called public representatives responsible for this neglect are Putney Conservative MP Justine Greening and Roehampton's three (or is that two?) Conservative Councillors.