How safe will our NHS be under the Conservatives?

Last year Conservative MEP Dan Hannan became flavour of the month amongst right wing commentators and Conservatives when he poured scorn on the NHS and dismissed it as a sixty year mistake. His party, which earlier that year had worked so hard to get him re-elected to the European Parliament, distanced themselves from him and assured us that he didn't speak for party policy.

More recently it emerged that a Conservative pressure group called Nurses for Reform had secured an hour-long meeting with Conservative leader David Cameron in the House of Commons. Nurses for Reform have branded the NHS a "Soviet-style calamity" and wish to see much greater commercialisation of our health service. Commercialisation is code on the right for "privatisation".

Now it emerges that there are other groups with strong links to the Conservative Party who also despise the NHS. This week the press has widely reported that leaders of the Young Britons Foundation (YBF) have been espousing similarly unsavoury and extreme views about the NHS (and a lot more).

The YBF chief executive, Donal Blaney, has penned an article entitled "Scrap the NHS, not just targets" in which he askes "Would it not now be better to say that the NHS - in its current incarnation - is finished?"

So what has this got to do with Cameron's "Compassionate Conservatives" you might be asking? Well, all these groups have strong links to the senior echelons of the Conservative Party. Indeed, the YBF's ties to the Conservative frontbench are so close that both Conservative Party chairman, Eric Pickles MP, and the shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox MP, spoke at the annual YBF parliamentary rally at the House of Commons, which was chaired by Blaney.

Blaney, incidentally was sacked from being chair of Conservative Future for being too right-wing: quite a feat as anyone who knows the background of the Young Conservative movement will be able to attest.

But with people like Blaney pulling the strings behind the scenes, if the Conservatives win the next election, how safe do you think our NHS will be?

The price of Putney

Yesterday's Sunday Mirror highlighted how Tory peer Lord Ashcroft used his billions to buy Conservative wins in 19 constituencies - including Putney - at the last general election. You can click on the spread above for a larger version of the article, with Tory Justine Greening and the £14,000 "Cashcroft" channelled to her campaign featured prominently.

It's possible to argue that it wasn't Lord Cashcroft's Belize billions that made Putney Conservative in 2005 - but that's not what the Conservatives think. They clearly believe that cash equals votes, or else flooding the marginal constituencies with overseas contributions wouldn't be the central - almost sole - plank of their election strategy.

Unlike Justine Greening's Putney Conservatives, the only donations I accept are from local residents or people who know me and who want nothing other than a hard-working Labour candidate in return. Because I can't compete with the overseas billionaires and political lobbyists who channel funds to Putney Conservatives - and wouldn't even want to try - if you feel strongly about the Tories buying seats as if they're up for auction to the highest bidder please contribute to my campaign.

You can make a contribution of whatever you can afford via my secure website. I'm the only Putney candidate who can defeat the Tories and their view that elections can be bought, so please show them that while this may be how things get done in Belize, it's not how we do them in Great Britain.

We must now know whether Ashcroft's donations were legal

Yesterday's disclosure that Lord Ashcroft: the Conservative Party's biggest donor - possibly the biggest donor to a political party of all time - isn't a domiciled British taxpayer and doesn't pay the same taxes as you and me, isn't exactly revelatory. After all, the Conservatives wouldn't have gone through four different leaders all refusing to reveal his tax status if it had been above board, would they?

But what this confession does do is pile pressure on the Electoral Commission to complete its investigation into Ashcroft's company: Bearwood Corporate Services, and publish its findings before the general election is called.

I explained the background in a post in January here - simply put, if Bearwood is nothing more than a front for Ashcroft and not a genuine company trading in the UK the donations it has channelled direct from his home in the Caribbean to Tory Party coffers will be illegal contributions. That's over £3 million nationally and over £19,000 that have gone to Putney Conservatives.

As I said at the start, no one who believed Lord Ashcroft's status was beyond reproach would go to the lengths the Conservatives have to avoid acknowledging it. The Electoral Commission must now rule on this, and if they find Justine Greening's Putney party took £19,000 from Ashcroft illegally, that money must be paid back to taxpayers pronto.

Pseudocyesis

...That's the technical name for the medical condition known as false pregnancy.

I thought it an appropriate term to use given the Conservatives claims earlier this week that "In the most deprived areas, 54% are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18, compared to just 19% in the least deprived areas."

In case you haven't heard, the actual figure is 5.4%, not 54%. And when confronted with their amateur mistake, did the Conservatives admit it and apologise? No - they said that a decimal point does not change the basic message they were trying to make, whatever that was.

Well, actually, a decimal place that overstates the teenage pregnancy rate tenfold DOES change the message. And it prompted me to find out what the figures are in our area.

Here they are - in the decade since Labour was first elected, pregnanices among 15 to 17 year olds in Wandsworth fell 14% - in real numbers that's 64 fewer girls becoming pregnant. Nationally, the fall is 10%.

In fact, in every single Inner London borough bar one there are fewer teenage pregnancies now than there were when the Tories left office.

But the fact is that there were still 166 pregnancies in Wandsworth among 15-17s in 2007 and that number is still too high. It's another reason why we need to keep SureStart centres operating, not close 1 in 5 of them as the Conservatives plan to do.

But in their determination to talk Britain down, the Tories won't let the facts get in the way of a headline. We've seen it in the way they manipulated violent crime statistics last week. We've seen it in the way Putney Conservatives have repeatedly lied about burglaries and Police numbers in our area. Now they?re doing the same thing on teenage pregnancies.

I simply don't believe this is the way politics should be done. If the Tories want to debate these issues sensibly, I'm up for that discussion - but to just lie and then, when found out, deny there's anything wrong with what they've done is just contemptible.

Dogs bark, cats meow and Tories lie about crime

I've been extremely critical of Putney's Conservative MP for making blatantly untrue claims about burglaries being up when they're down, and police numbers locally being down when they're up.

It's political game-playing of the most contemptible kind and it can't be excused by her misunderstanding the figures: it's a quite deliberate attempt by the Conservatives to scare you about the safety of our local area.

Well, we've now seen that lying about crime and policing is not just limited to Putney Conservatives: Tory Home Office spokesman Chris Grayling has been exposed for his misleading use of national statistics on crime - after the national statistician, the Association of Chief Police Officers and even former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith criticised the way he was spinning the figures.

Every time the Conservatives behave like this it becomes ever more obvious that it's not Britain that's broken - it's the Conservative Party, becoming so desperate to regain power that they'll tell absolutely any lie they think will get them there.

A question the Electoral Commission must answer before the election

As I've written about previously, the Electoral Commission - the independent body tasked with overseeing that elections in our country are fair - has been investigating whether millions of pounds of donations to the Conservative Party from Belize billionaire Lord Ashcroft are legal.

Lord Ashcroft has been donating money to the Conservatives through a company he owns called Bearwood Corporate Services. In 2008 alone, this company gave £1.6million to the national Conservatives and in the run-up to the 2005 general election Justine Greening's campaign received almost £20,000 to help her win Putney. However, Ashcroft has repeatedly failed to prove that he is domeciled in the UK for tax purposes. If he is not - or if his company Bearwood is not a genuine trading company in the UK, then all this money he's given to the Conservatives is an illegal donation. This is what the Electoral Commission is investigating.

Do you believe that money equals free speech? That it makes a difference to the outcome of an election? Lord Ashcroft clearly believes it does, because even the most philanthropic Conservative supporter would not hand over millions for no purpose other than to unburden themselves - he does it because he believes flooding cash into a seat improves his party's chance of winning it.

And of course he's right. Money buys leaflets. It buys targeted letters to voters. It buys telephone banks to phone voters asking them how they'll vote. It buys a massive campaign to get Conservative voters to sign up for postal votes - and postal voters are four times more likely to vote than those without them. It also buys billboard space for giant posters of airbrushed politicians.

Now, that being the case, how much does £20,000 in a constituency like Putney buy? Does it buy, for example, 1,766 votes? That, after all, amounts to £11 a vote. 1,766 is of course the amount by which the Conservatives won Putney from Labour at the last general election.

And it's perfectly legal for them to have done so, provided that this £20,000 outside donation was permissable and legal. If it was not, it was money that should not have been spent. And it is reasonable to expect that an election result influenced by an illegal donation would have been different - maybe even to the degree that Tony Colman would not have lost to Justine Greening at the last election.

We can't know that. But the doubt it raises is substantive and reasonable. We need the Electoral Commission to rule on this case before the next general election to ensure that this doubt is not cast over other results in what will be one of the most important elections in a generation.

Breaking news: Osiers Tower approved

Conservative councillors voted unanimously last night to approve the 21 storey tower on the Osiers Gate site in the Riverside Quarter.

The two Labour councillors on the committee both spoke out against the plans - which breach all sorts of planning rules and are a gross overdevelopment of the area - but also voted against, too. But the Tories have a big majority on the committee and couldn't even be bothered to respond seriously to the criticisms I, in my formal objection, and my Labour colleagues on the night (and even one of the Conservative ward councillors in a letter) expressed.

This isn't just bad planning and a terrible insight into what the Conservatives want for Putney - it's abject contempt of democracy. The councillor for the area who sits on the committee wasn't present (I'm not suggesting she was absent to avoid this issue, but her voice might have carried some weight). Nor was the Leader of the Council, who also represents this area. Imagine the impact he could have made had he shown up and said no to it.

This is the second controversial issue the Tories have bludgeoned through in the very first week of January when they hope no-one is looking (the other being the sell-off of Dover House playing fields for 57p). It's what happens when one party - any party - gets hold of every single seat in an area, as the Conservatives have in Putney.

And it only changes if you change it. Because let's be clear: if you vote Conservative again, in four years' time Putney will be overwhelmed by a tide of towers like these and there will be nothing I or any other opponent of this vision of our area's future can do about it.

"The biggest fare increase in Transport for London history"

It's deja vu. A year ago almost to this day I flagged up the inflation-busting fare increases Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson imposed on commuters.

Well, this year, the Tories are doing the same thing, except on an even bigger scale:

• A single bus journey by Oyster: 18 months ago 90p; now £1.20
• A weekly oyster bus pass UP 20% to £16.60
• Six-zone peak single Tube fare by Oyster UP 10.5% to £4.20
• A five-zone off-peak single Tube fare (outside zone 1) UP 18.2% to £1.30
• Most Oyster pay-as-you-go Tube fares UP by 20p per trip
• Overall tube fares will rise 3.9% and overall bus fares up by 12.7%

The Financial Times calls it "The biggest fare increase in Transport for London history". In just 18 months since they took over from Labour in City Hall the Conservatives have increased fares by one third. And they've done so by making sure those on the lowest incomes pay most.

Why is this happening? It's nothing to do with the recession: passenger numbers continue to rise. It's because the Tories have completely lost control of Transport for London budgets - which is why they're slashing services and massively increasing fares. Anyone want to claim the Tories are the party of good financial management?

And the difference with Labour is stark.

• With Labour, fares were frozen in real terms for four years.
• We simplified fares - introducing the 70p and £1 flat-rate fares.
• We reintroduced free bus journeys for children, and extended it to teenagers.
• We were able to scrap planned fare increases because revenue from the extra people using London Transport meant there was more in the budget than we anticipated.
• And whereas Labour increased fares only to invest in renewing transport infrastructure, the Tories have cut investment while raising fares.

We've got absolutely nothing from the Conservatives except a bigger hole in our wallets and worse services.

The Tories are also planning on ending the 28 bus service, serving the Southside shopping centre, Mantle Court OAP sheltered housing, the huge Arndale estate and the new housing at Argento Tower and Palladio Court. And we know London's Conservative councils want to wriggle free from their responsibility to fund the Freedom Pass that gives pensioners free London transport.

This is callamitous Conservative mismanagement of Transport for London, and it forewarns us what life will be like under a George Osborne-run Treasury if the Tories were to win this year's general election.

The Conservatives have - literally - shown they're unfit to run a bus service; they're certainly unfit for government.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

That's the title of a book written by US Senator Al Franken on the way some politicians tend to behave when campaigning.

I mention it because at the weekend I came across a Conservative leaflet that has been put about in West Hill ward. Just consider the key claims it contains:

The Tory MP is campaigning to cut the "rising number of burglaries across, Putney, Roehampton & Southfields"

I thought we'd comprehensively debunked this blatant lie only a few days ago - burglaries are down on every single measure in every single Putney council ward - but no, the Conservatives press ahead with the lie presumably in the hope that they can scaremonger their way to victory.

The Tories then claim that Putney now has "fewer arresting officers in Wandsworth than 1997". Again, official figures show the opposite. Today we have 617 Police officers (that's excluding Community Safety Officers) in Wandsworth according to the Conservative-run Metropolitan Police Authority. In 1997 we had 596. 617 is more than 596. So again, the Conservatives are lying.

And the lies don't stop there. Despite getting their fingers burnt when they falsely claimed that business rates in Roehampton were on the rise - when the fact is that the vast majority of Roehampton businesses are about to get their rates cut, they've done exactly the same thing in West Hill.

I count 33 West Hill businesses that are having their rates cut - and that includes EVERY business in the four main West Hill ward shopping parades: Beaumont Road, Montfort Place, Wimbledon Park Road and Inner Park Road. Only 9 face increases. The source of my figures? Conservative-run Wandsworth Council. 33 down, 9 up. So another Conservative lie.

Here's the thing: a confident, outgoing and self-assured party that believes it has the facts on its side wouldn't have any need to misdirect, mislead, scaremonger or - yes - lie. Political parties only employ these tactics when they're behind, losing, on the wrong side of the facts or simply not smart enough to tell the truth.

The biggest compliment the Conservatives can pay to my campaign - and the loudest message they send to you, the voters, is when they lie. Because it shows they've nothing positive - nothing honest to say to Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

Britain's not broken. The Conservative Party is.

Envy is not attractive; aspiration is not a dirty word

I've got nothing against toffs. I don't believe in class war; enemies of the people exist only in the fantasies of extremists; envy is not attractive and aspiration is not a dirty word.

It's remarkable that these truths are no longer regarded as self-evident. When David Cameron says that it's not where we've come from that matters - it's where we're going, he's not wrong.

But it is reasonable to be troubled by the fact that the Conservative shadow cabinet is dominated by multi-millionaires, the landed gentry and old Etonians. Such disquiet has nothing whatsoever to do with envy or resentment, and is everything to do with the representative nature of our politics.

Afterall, how can they get what life's like for the vast majority of us? And if they can't - and I really don't see how they can - how on earth can they represent us and take decisions in our best interests?

How can George Osborne get what it?s like to face unemployment and surviving on benefits when from day one he was destined to inherit his family's centuries-old, multi-million pound wallpaper business?

Has David Cameron, a direct descendent of Queen Victoria's uncle, ever had to worry about choosing between heating the house and putting food on the table?

As far as I know, the Conservative Housing spokesman Grant Shapps, the proprietor of a multi-million pound printing firm, has never had to experience the threat of repossession or life on a never-ending council house waiting list, in which sharing a bedroom with two siblings while his parent sleeps on the sitting room floor in an overcrowded flat is daily life.

And how astonishing is it that that someone like Zac Goldsmith, who aspires to set the taxes you and I pay, sees no problem in himself being "non dom" for tax purposes?

So the Conservatives have questions to answer, but they don't concern Eton. The real question to pose should be: is aspiration really encouraged and rewarded by tax cuts for the richest 3%? If you believe it is you?re a Conservative. If you believe tax cuts start from the bottom up you?re a progressive and Labour remains your natural home.

Labour has endured a bruising two years - and too much of the damage done has been self-inflicted. So I understand why the class war, Tory toffs, bash the bankers rhetoric puts a smile on the face of the more partisan Labour activist. But it makes me want to hide under a table. Here's why: According to the polls Labour is holding on to barely 60% of those who voted for us in 2005. This toff rhetoric sends these lost voters running for the hills because it is the exact opposite of why they returned to Labour in the first place. They supported us because we were a healthy, outgoing, positive and optimistic Labour Party that wants to help those who want to do better. Labour is rightly the party for those struggling to get by; but we must also remain the party for those who want to get on.

I grew up on a housing estate and was raised close to the area I'm seeking to represent. I come from a working class family - my Mum stacked shelves in Boots for 25 years and my dad was a dustman. They wanted more for me than they had for themselves, encouraged me to do well at school and - 25 years later, I've got a great job and a standard of living they never had a chance of themselves. That's what's great about Britain. To see those chances shared out more widely and equitably is why I'm in politics. It's why the Labour Party exists and it stands in opposition to the instincts and outlook of the Conservatives. So as a progressive, yes, I want the richest 1% of British people shouldering 23% of tax revenue. But let's not call them names while they're doing it.

Breathtaking arrogance

I wrote a few days ago about the plight of Putney constituent Christine Walker's mum, who more than qualifies for a disabled blue badge but who is being denied one by the Conservative council.

Yesterday we got this latest reply from them:

"senior council management staff have previously written in response to many contacts received from your constituent's MP, various borough councillors, the Local Government Ombudsman, General Practitioners and Mrs Self's own family members...I have also more recently replied separately to the Director of the 'Transport for All' organisation...

"...I am afraid that we will not acknowledge or respond to further communications in this matter and any such documentation received from [Mrs Walker's mum] or her representatives will be filed for information only"

It takes a special kind of arrogance to claim that MPs, councillors, the Ombudsman, GPs and transport and disability action groups are wrong and that the Conservatives - alone - are right. And it stems from having absolute power without break for over 30 years. Power may corrupt but it also makes those who have it contemptuous of all other opinion.

A democracy thrives because of checks and balances - one party vigorously held to account by its opponents. In Wandsworth those checks and balances are failing. There are currently 51 Tory councillors in Wandsworth and just 9 Labour; no other party has any seats or a chance of winning any.

And before you say it doesn't affect or concern you, then until they needed help from the Conservatives it didn't directly affect Mrs Walker's family either. My point is this: ignore our democratic deficit only if you are 100% certain that you'll never, ever need to turn to these out-of-touch, power-gone-to-their-head Conservatives for help.

The Conservatives have forgotten that they are the servants, not the masters. I can provide the evidence but only you, by voting Labour - the only alternative to the Conservatives locally - can change it.

Orchard railings to be fixed

The railings off the path leading through to Royal Orchard Close in West Hill are finally to be fixed by the Conservative Council.

The Conservatives had been failing to repair the banister - which is the edge of a fairly steep slope down to Linstead Way - because they thought it was the responsibility of the housing association that manages Royal Orchard Close.

They were wrong in this case - it's always been the responsibility of the council - but what's more disturbing is that they were more than happy to sit back and allow dangerous and unsightly vandalism to persist, simply because they (wrongly) believed it was "nothing to do with us, guv".

I've been writing a lot about the state of Putney Bridge - and it's exactly the same attitude: washing their hands unless something can be proved beyond any doubt that they are responsible for it - that has led to the decay and erosion of one of our landmarks.

The Conservatives call this "the Wandsworth Way" - and I don't doubt it plays a part in keeping council tax low. What it doesn't do is get problems elected representatives exist to sort out sorted out. And that's one reason why the Conservatives' Wandsworth Way is the wrong way.

Path to nowhere

You may have heard of the Bridge To Nowhere - a highway project in one of the most remote parts of Alaska that connected a road no-one travelled on to an island no-one visited, at vast expense to US taxpayers.

On a somewhat smaller scale, Wandsworth Conservatives have created a path to nowhere on the Lower Ashburton estate.

The picture above shows a pathway pounded out of the estate by weight of numbers who use it - it's the one right at the top of Gwendolen Avenue, across Chartfield Avenue. The path's come about because it is the direct route into and out of the estate, and a bit like water always finding it's level, paths will always appear on routes people find most convenient to travel.

I contacted the council because I thought it was slippery and dangerous with a kerb at the top that could trip people right into the path of oncoming cars. Unfortunately for pedestrians on the estate, the Conservative council has only recently spent thousands of pounds of your money laying a tarmac pathway a few yards further down Chartfield Avenue, away from Gwendolen Avenue - a direction people don't so much want to go.

The result? A posh path to nowhere, and a muddy cut-through which is more of a risk to users. I'd have thought the commonsense solution would be for the council to have looked at the natural routes through the estate and built pathways where they were needed. Instead, they now intend to fence off the path, relandscape it and force pedestrians to travel the long way.

I suspect this is just throwing good money after bad: the fencing will be torn out sooner or later and the cut-through returned to use. But as usual, the Conservatives think they know best and regard the rest of us as impertinent to even voice an alternative, commonsense alternative.

What price security?

Kimpton House in Fontley Way on the Alton estate is, unfortunately, a greater focus for anti-social behaviour and crime than some of the others. One of the reasons for this is that, alone among the six Fontley Way blocks, it doesn't have a controlled entry system.

And the reason that's the case is that, again alone among the Fontley Way blocks, Kimpton House contains a (big) majority of leaseholders who effectively hold a veto over plans to make such changes because they are liable for the costs of the work. 31 of the 45 flats here have been sold off by the council - not only high for the Alton but strange given that the average for the other Fontley blocks is 8. Such quirks, incidentally, don't happen by accident - it was Conservative policy to target blocks for sell-offs right across Wandsworth, and this is one of the consequences.

I've just had an email from the council telling me that they're going to try and persuade Kimpton House to vote for controlled entry in the New Year. But they go on to tell me that the cost of such work will saddle leaseholders with £1,500 bills.

Just think about that for a minute. £1,500 per flat. 45 flats. £67,500 in total. To fit some secure doors and provide entryphones in each flat. Is it any wonder that the leaseholders vote "no" when presented with such absurdly inflated costs by the Conservatives?

Council contractors are notorious for thinking that council funded contracts are cash cows where over the top quotes can be submitted with impunity: in one case a quote to provide a few flowerbaskets came back at more than £1,000 per basket - but was eventually whittled down to less than £200 - including maintenance costs!

For £67,500, I'd expect gold-plated doors and entryphone systems. Well, not quite, but you get the point. Kimpton House deserves greater security of the sort the other Fontley Way blocks have benefited from for years. They could get it; but not while the Conservatives keep trying to impose extortionate charges on leaseholders.

The Blue Badge shame of Wandsworth Tories

On Saturday I brought a Southfields constituent, Christine Walker, to meet with Sadiq Khan MP, Minister for Transport and MP for next-door Tooting.

Mrs Walker's mum suffers from some serious disabilities, including Meniere's Disease which affects balance meaning that sufferers often cannot walk without falling over. More than a year ago, after being assessed for Attendance Allowance, the Department of Work & Pensions assessor set the ball rolling to get her a disabled person's blue badge so that she can be driven around more easily by her husband.

As is usual and right, Wandsworth Council invited Mrs Walker's mum in for an assessment, to make sure she wasn't attempting to fraudulently obtain a badge. Having failed to adequately test her - at no time, for example, was she asked to walk unaided (which she can't) to demonstrate the severity of her Meniere's problems - and then subjected her to a rigorous interview, the council denied her claim for a badge on the grounds that she wasn't sufficiently disabled. So badly treated was she that she had an angina attack in the foyer of the town hall.

That's when Mrs Walker asked for my help - and as a result of repeated interventions the council eventually consented to review the decision, but only if her mother was willing to undergo another medical test and interview. Understandably, the family was unwilling to put their mum through this ordeal again - and have made the fair point that either the council believes it was right, and should therefore stick to its guns, or that it thinks it's wrong and is trying to save face by agreeing to a retest when instead they should just accept their mistake and issue the badge.

This nonsense has been grinding on for over a year now. The council still has not backed down, and that's despite representations from her GP and consultants, from the Department of Work & Pensions which recognises the severity of her disability; from the Local Government Ombudsman and from local legal advice organisations.

When people like me talk about the carelessness and callousness of the Tory regime in Wandsworth we do so because we've seen at first hand the sharp end of Wandsworth Conservatism - a far cry from the soft-centred Conservatism David Cameron would like you to believe characterises his party. And it's examples like this that go to the heart of our criticism of how the Tories treat anyone who actually needs help from the council.

I'm in politics because I believe we have a duty to those who need help - we should never walk on by when we see people whose lives could be immeasurably transformed with just a little support and intervention. This outlook isn't shared by Putney Conservatives. They clearly couldn't care less about Mrs Walker's mother.

Why the Tories want to cut Inheritance Tax

This story from today's Mirror, says it all, doesn't it? For all the Tory talk about learning from their dreadful mistakes in the 1980s and 1990s, about being a party that's now interested in ordinary people, and about restoring trust in politics among a cynical public - can you get a more cynical, elitist, selfish and greedy policy than the Tories' Inheritance Tax plan?

The only reason the Conservatives back this cut has nothing to do with making tax fairer - it's because the 4% of estates that would benefit from this tax cut just so happen to include those of David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, William Hague and EIGHTEEN members of Cameron's shadow cabinet.

The remaining 96% of us will be paying for the Tories' tax holidays - in fact any average family with children, earning more than just over £16,000 a year, will end up paying more than £1,000 a year extra in tax under the Tories because of their plans to withdraw tax credits.

So if you think taxes should be levied on the poor to benefit the richest 4% vote Conservative.

If you don't, vote Labour.

Is this how long Putney has to wait for a reply from its MP?

On 7th October I wrote to Putney's Conservative MP asking her to confirm that she agrees with her party leader about no longer claiming the £10,000 communications allowance MPs voted for themselves.

Well, I say MPs voted for themselves - of course, Justine Greening voted against it in order to look principled, but then claimed it anyway, which completely undermines a rather feeble attempt at conviction politics, doesn't it?

"I was against it but claimed it anyway" may be a reasonable argument inside the Westminster bubble where Miss Greening spends her time, but here in Putney, where it matters, it's viewed as a typically cynical argument that has brought politicians such well-deserved disdain.

The timer above shows how long it's been since I wrote - and still no reply. No wonder so many people I've come across in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields complain about how issues they've raised with their MP go ignored.

So here's another clear difference between Putney's complacent Conservatives and the leadership I will give our area. As your MP, I will not claim the communication allowance. Every newsletter from me - to you - will be paid for by Putney Labour Party and funded through local donations, as is the case now. Unlike Miss Greening I am happy to make the public commitment not to spend tax payers money on promoting myself.

And everytime you contact me, you can expect to receive an acknowledgement that sets out how long you can expect to wait before receiving a full reply. No constituent will be ignored simply because I can't be bothered, disagree with you or the issue you've written to me about is embarassing to my party.

If that's a change that matters to you, please vote for it.

Credit-worthiness?

In some recent posts, I've remarked upon the trait of local Conservatives to claim credit for things they're not responsible for delivering, like:

• The redevelopment of Putney School of Art (paid for largely by the Labour Government)
• The plans for a playground on the Dover House estate (paid for by the Labour Government)
• The opening of SureStart Centres around the constituency (paid for by the Labour Government)
• The rebuilding of local schools (paid for by the Labour Government)

The list goes on and on. And on.

This trait has also been noticed further afield - by the non-political Clapham Junction Action Group (CJAG): the group set up to stop the 42-storey Tory towers there which they defeated four months ago. They've received a copy of the Conservatives' newsletter for that area - Shaftesbury ward, which covers the Lavender Hill are - claiming credit for all sorts of things they had absolutely nothing to do with.

You can read their line-by-line debunking of Conservative claims here.

I understand the desire of politicians to be identified with major issues in their patch. There's nothing like being associated with a good news story if you're trying to win votes. But there's a big distance between trying to get associated with something going on, and claiming that you're responsible for that issue being resolved - as the Conservatives time and time again do. Isn't that a little shoddy - disreputable?

I think it is. So let me make this promise which you can hold me to.

I will not claim credit for something I have not been involved with. I will not claim sole credit for something I have worked on with others - be they the Putney Society, local residents, residents associations or anyone else. When the Conservative Council is solely responsible for an improvement I welcome, I will acknowledge their responsibility for it.

Now - will the Conservatives make an equivalent pledge?

More Putney businesses pay less from rate revaluation

My team and I have been sifting through all the Business Rates data following our discovery that Putney's Conservative MP misled people about the changes in her Roehampton newsletter.

The reality is even more disturbing - suggesting that she's presenting the wrong figures across the entire constituency.

Excluding phone masts, advertising hoardings and car parking spaces* which are liable for business rates but not businesses themselves 1,021 Putney, Roehampton and Southfields businesses are going to have their business rates cut; 899 are going to see them increased as a result of the revaluation.

The majority of Putney businesses will pay less after revaluation.

Doesn't sit easily with the Conservative scare-stories does it?

It's also the case that the vast majority of both falls and rises are small. 208 of the increases, and 287 of the decreases are of 5% or less.

There are some big winners and losers here in Putney - as anywhere else - and I'm not going to repeat Miss Greening's mistake of over-claiming or mispresenting the facts. Some businesses are facing large increases in business rates through revaluation, and no doubt for them, this will make life much more difficult. But more are facing business rate reductions - of up to 67% here in Putney, and for them, that's clearly welcome. The issue is simply whether it's fairer to use old, out of date information as the basis for business rates or new, up-to-date records that take account of where things have got better and worse.

Business rates need to be reviewed because that is the fairest way of levying taxes. It's never going to be popular - not because it's unfair but simply because none of us enjoying paying tax, especially if we end up paying more as a result of a revaluation.

Piling taxes on the most struggling parts of Putney, Roehampton and Southfields isn't fair and it isn't right. That's what Miss Greening is campaigning for - that's what the Conservatives stand for.

*For those of you who want to know the complete data set including phone masts, parking spaces and hoardings, it's 1,035 increases, 1,152 decreases - still more winners than losers.

Hands up who doesn't know where Roehampton is?

Imagine for an instant that you're a Conservative councillor for Roehampton, representing one of the most deprived parts of London.

There are huge problems to tackle: housing, employment, crime, poverty, keeping the estates in something passing for a vaguely acceptable state, traffic and of course the collapse of your plans to demolish Danebury Avenue. Which of these do you start with?

None of the above.

The thing that's keeping Roehampton Conservatives awake at night is a desire to change the name of their ward from "Roehampton" to "Roehampton and Putney Heath". They say that without the name change the residents of Putney Heath - that's less than 300 households - just won't know where they belong.

The Conservatives locally really need to sort out their priorities. This is what happens when one party ends up holding all the seats in an area: they lose touch with reality and lose track of what really matters: good housing, well-maintained streets, decent services and a desire to improve lives. Instead, they think tinkering with the name of one of the most easily identifiable parts of the borough is what passes for leadership locally.

What absurd dilitantes.

Greening campaign would push up Roehampton business rates

Businesses in Roehampton are struggling, but as anyone who knows Roehampton can testify, Roehampton was struggling long before the recession: and it's struggling precisely because it has been abandoned by its Conservative Council, Conservative Councillors and Conservative MP.

I've been campaigning on the decline of Roehampton Village for years - in the good times as well as the bad. I wrote more than two years ago about these problems when the banking disaster was unforeseen and the Tories were pushing for even greater deregulation of the banks. Where was the Conservative concern then?

At that time Threshers, two flower shops and three pubs had closed in the space of a year. The Conservatives' so-called regeneration plans for Danebury Avenue ignore Roehampton Village. In fact, the massive superstore they want to build - larger than Sainsbury's in Putney - will drive even more small local businesses out of business.

The Conservatives could have made Roehampton an enterprise zone whenever they wanted. They haven't.

They could have included Roehampton village in their regeneration plans. They didn't.

They could have made Roehampton a centre for start-up businesses. They won't.

They could have supported local businesses so that those that start-up don't close within a few months. They haven't.

Too often there has been an imaginary barrier created dividing Roehampton Village from the Alton estate. The Conservatives bear a large share of the responsibility for that divide by treating Danebury Avenue's shops differently to the village's. The reality is that they're in it together, for both national reasons and the disinterest of the Conservatives who represent Roehampton and run the council.

The only way to revive Roehampton is by supporting businesses throughout the whole of the area. The very worst thing that could happen to Roehampton right now is for the Conservatives to wallop more business rates on its shops and stores. Which is exactly what Justine Greening is campaigning for in trying to reverse the revaluation of business rates. Yet again, Putney loses out because its current MP would rather play politics and attack the Government, instead of do the right thing by local businesses.

The strange death of volunteer Wandsworth

The chart above shows the catastrophic collapse in the number of voluntary sector organisations registered with the council recent years. In 2002 there were 446 such organisations - last year just 23. That's a 95% decline in six years.

Wandsworth has a record of heaping services most councils elsewhere in the country provide themselves onto voluntary sector providers - but despite bearing far more responsibility for services volunteers have still seen grant-funding from the Conservatives locally slashed: and that is the principal reason for this massive decline.

I actually support the principle of encouraging local volunteers to provide services for their community: they are more in touch with those whose needs they serve, can often provide more efficient services better tailored to the individual needs of their clients. But the Conservatives see the voluntary sector as a means of providing services on the cheap. It's just not right.

There is a consequence here: a strong voluntary sector helps build strong communities which are concerned not just about themselves but about how their neighbours are doing too. The Conservatives don't understand why that matters - they don't believe there's such a thing as society, after all.

What a pitiful way to mark 50 years of the Alton

Up until a few days ago, Conservatives in Roehampton were delivering a newsletter containing the story above promoting their dreadful demolition plans for Danebury Avenue. Earlier this week the plans were dropped. Talk about the right hand not knowing what the far right hand is doing!

Particularly notable is the quote from one of the Tory candidates for Roehampton: "We need to make sure that any investment in Roehampton really delivers for our local community."

I agree. What investment HAVE the Conservatives made in Roehampton and what HAS it delivered - REALLY - for our local community? Absolutely nothing.

At the end of four years of broken promises the only people who've benefited have been the printers of the endless, banal, glossy leaflets the council churned out (many of which never seemed to reach residents) and the (two sets of) expensive consultants paid huge amounts of money to tell the Tories that their plans won't work.

They could have saved taxpayers that money and simply taken the word of Roehampton residents, members of the Putney Society, Labour councillors, Roehampton Labour Party, English Heritage, the Conservative Mayor of London, the Wandsworth Cycling Campaign, local businesses and, err, me - all of whom told them this over and over again these past weeks.

A shambles would be too kind a description for the debacle the Conservatives have made here. This has been a folly characterised by ego, arrogance, ignorance and woeful incompetence. Roehampton has had a Tory council for 30 years, Tory councillors for 11 and a Tory MP for four.

We have to hold these hopeless bunglers to account but let's just remember that Roehampton - the most deprived part of our area - is still without any investment, any leadership and any cohesive plan to transform lives on the estate. That's the real cost of the Conservatives' failure.

What a pitiful way for the Tories to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Alton estate.

George Osborne: wrong on recession; wrong on recovery

This is what a £16,000-a-term Eton education buys...

Mr Cameron's *roots* are in the most expensive, privileged education money can buy. Clearly his *route* through college didn't take him to his spelling and grammar classes.

This is from the back page of the Conservative newsletter that has been delivered to a handful of homes in the constituency, incidentally.

Do you really want to reward the bankers?

Several of the newspapers have begun to analyse who might make it into parliament after the next election - the parliamentary candidates in the most promising seats for their respective parties.

What they've found is that the more Conservative MPs who are elected at the general election the more bankers, city financiers and hedge fund managers - in other words the people responsible for the irresponsibility, greed and catastrophic misjudgement that tipped the world into recession a year ago. - will end up there.

Hardly the result anyone concerned about putting in place proper, tough regulation of our financial institutions would want, is it?

Boris Johnson thought he was being oh-so-funny when he, tongue-in-cheek referred to the City of London as a lepper colony at Conservative Conference. I wouldn't go quite that far because the City is going to have to bear as much responsibility in getting us out of recession as it had in getting us into it. But it's one think to make reparations for the damage they've inflicted on our country - and another altogether to be handed the keys to the Treasury.

Parliament will survive without yet more bankers. My question is whether the country will recover adequately with yet more of them in there? That's something only you can prevent.

What the experts say about the Tories' policies (part 2)

Will Hutton is Director of the Work Foundation, the leading research body on employment issues in the UK. A former editor of the Observer, he is also a successful author on economics and visiting professor at Bristol University.

On Sunday he wrote in The Observer about the Conservatives' economic plans.


David Cameron declared in his closing speech at the Conservative party conference: "Here is the big argument in British politics today. Labour say that to solve the country's problems we need more government. Don't they see? It is more government that got us into this mess." Not only his audience, but much of the media applauded this apparently killer point.

Except it is wrong. It wasn't the government that got us into this mess ? if what you mean by mess is an ugly recession, an unbalanced economy, profound uncertainty over recovery, grossly indebted consumers, disadvantaged communities hit hard again and a budget deficit of £175bn. What got us into this mess above all was the 30-year rise of Big Finance before which governments unfurled the white flag. Bankers used their power to bend the rules at home and abroad, to lend ever more riskily and supported by less capital, until, finally, a vastly overextended banking system backed by very little capital collapsed. The result is today's economic calamity.

There were many culprits in this story, but the damage stemmed from an obsession to keep government small and markets big. Thus, mergers that created banks that were too big to fail went ahead and their daffy mathematical models went unchallenged. We need to reform our financial system from top to bottom, but neither shadow chancellor George Osborne nor shadow business secretary Ken Clarke began to address this question. Their twin attack was on the state - Osborne's because it was borrowing too much, Clarke's because it was regulating too much.

But as a shadow minister quietly observed to me outside the conference centre, the Tories have a problem. The public now knows that markets fail. Without the injections of capital, liquidity and guarantees for both sides of the banks' balance sheets worth some £1.3 trillion, Britain would now be in the middle of a depression more shocking than the 1930s. To argue that government is the problem just a year after an event like that is intellectually bewildering. The charge against Brown is not that he did too much, but that he did too little. What was he doing allowing bankers to write the Financial Services Authority's constitution so that it did not "discourage the launch of new financial products" and avoided "erecting regulatory barriers" and "damaging the UK's competitiveness"?

The truth is that, as finance has proved, markets need governments. Entrepreneur James Dyson gave a passionate speech at the conference deploring the fact that Britain made so little and Tory shadow economic and business ministers echoed his complaint, talking enthusiastically about the need for Britain to make more, an argument he made eloquently in the Observer in February. Except the only new idea advanced to help, apart from vague talk about science, was the establishment of city technical colleges, a good concept but one alone that is unlikely to spearhead a "making things" revival. The problem for both the Tory and Labour parties is how, given debt-strapped public and private sectors, Britain is going to grow in the 2010s.

Some of what needs to be done is very congenial to Tory ears - low taxes to stimulate entrepreneurship, more competition and encouragement of small firms. But some of what is necessary they would describe as "statist" - creating a financial system capable of serving every firm from infancy to maturity, funding research, creating a network of institutions to disseminate technological opportunities into firms, proactively using public buying power to drive up standards, deploying regulation to open up markets, not to mention building the hard infrastructure. But what can't happen, as some businessmen despairingly confided to me after hearing more shadow ministerial hymns to small business and free markets, is to have a bonfire of controls and imagine the job is done.

The reason the budget deficit is so large is not because the government deliberately drove it up, as Cameron and Osborne argue. The main reason is that there has been a collapse of tax revenues because of the permanent loss of output caused by Big Finance and because, during 2009, the government deliberately decided on a time-limited boost to the economy. It is true that there is a structural deficit of around 6% of GDP which must be brought down eventually through some judicious mix of tax increases, a freeze on public sector pay and public expenditure restraint. But after credit crunches, governments have to be the spender of last resort because with the private sector on its knees, overall demand will otherwise shrink.

I suspect the shadow chancellor privately recognises this, refusing to reveal more detail until he actually has to make a budget next year - if he wins. He may be preparing to stay his hand as a deficit cutter if the economy looks grim. Yet the hysterical anti-government rhetoric does not allow him to admit that fiscal policy works as an economic stimulus and may be necessary if recovery falters.

But his appeal was to the Tory backwoodsmen and women who still love the good, old-time religion, along with the conservative media. It is a political and economic mistake, as both the politically marginalised American and Australian conservatives can testify. Cameron was at his most persuasive when he embraced the "Red Tory" agenda - reshaping the state to attack poverty and re-empower the working class. He even succeeded in winning a standing ovation when he declared that he wanted to lower the 96p marginal tax rate on a single working mother with two kids on £150 a week as her benefits are withdrawn so rapidly.

Here again, it is too simple just to say that government is the problem. The reason why there is so much desperate poverty in towns round the country as disparate as Bognor Regis or Bradford - and why generation after generation depends on benefit - is that there is so little local opportunity. One council leader I met dared openly to say the unsayable - there was no initiative on benefit nor incentive to work that could break the cycle of welfare dependency because there was no local worthwhile work. He had begun to think the best solution would be to move people to towns where there was opportunity. Irreversible de-industrialisation meant his community was sunk.

Yet this kind of solution requires government - government to build homes where there is work, government to help people move and government to do its level best to ensure that economic opportunity is spread fairly around the country. The Tory civic voluntarism of Cameron's speech cannot deal with structural problems on this scale. Red Tories are coming up with some interesting ideas for how to restructure government - I like Red Tory Phillip Blond's proposal to create employee partnerships within the public sector on the John Lewis model. The state may work better and more responsively to citizen concerns. But it won't be smaller.

I went to Manchester convinced that a Tory government was a shoo-in. I left thinking that while Cameron's party is plainly changing there is still a long way to go. Democracies aren't dumb. Too many of David Cameron's party - and some of his own ideas - are still locked in the 1980s. The state is not the enemy. Deployed correctly it is our friend. A few Red Tories have got this message. Cameron's regression will set him back, perhaps even costing him an overall majority in 2010. Labour still has a winning argument to make.


You can read more from Will Hutton here.

The choice on Tax Credits

What the experts say about the Tories' policies (part 1)

Professor David Blanchflower was the one member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee (MPC) that foresaw the crisis in the financial industry. He is now Professor of Economics at the prestigious Dartmouth College in the US.

On Saturday he wrote this article for The Guardian on the impact Conservative plans would have on bringing Britain out of recession. You don't have to take Labour's word for it - just listen to the experts.


We are in the midst of the worst recession most people alive have ever experienced, or will probably ever experience. It is already worse than the 1980s and it isn't over yet. The only comparison is to the 1930s (my parents, now in their 80s, can remember how bad it was). The monetary and fiscal authorities have so far managed to prevent a recession turning into a depression - but it still could, especially if David Cameron and George Osborne have their way.

Some people seem to think it is all over and have called an end to the recession. Far from it, normality is a long way off. It will take a very long time for output, employment and unemployment to return to pre-recession levels. As Mervyn King said at a press conference recently: "It's about levels, stupid."

The evidence is that financial crises are especially harmful and have especially long-lasting effects. Hence any recovery is likely to be slow and anaemic at best.

The simple lesson when you are deep in recession is that a serious policy error is to reverse stimulus too early, which then sends the economy crashing into a depression. This is what happened in the United States in the 30s. Monetary and fiscal policy were tightened before recovery was firmly established, which drove the country back into a deep recession at the end of 1937.

And this week into the current economic crisis stepped the Tories with their ill thought-out plans for (a lack of) recovery. Cut public spending here, freeze public sector wages there, reduce the benefits of the poor, raise the pension age, and so on. It was hard to see any group that stood to benefit from their proposals.

Lesson one in a deep recession is you don't cut public spending until you are into the boom phase. Keynes taught us that. The consequence of cutting too soon is to drive the economy into a depression. That means rapidly rising unemployment, social disorder, rising poverty, falling living standards and even soup kitchens. The Tory economic proposals have the potential to push the British economy into a death spiral of decline that would be almost impossible to reverse for a generation.

The debate at such times is not about big government versus small government. It isn't about moving this service from public to private sector because the private sector can do it better. The debate here is about maintaining levels of aggregate demand. In a deep recession the choice is: the government does it or nobody does it; it is public spending v no spending. You don't worry about paying off debt when you are at war: you have other priorities. Win the war first.

To cap it all, the leader of the opposition, in his speech to the Tory conference, amazingly discussed what he called option one - the possibility that the UK should default on its debt. Mr Cameron, you shouldn't even be raising such possibilities. It's exactly what markets want to hear from a potential leader - you have actually even considered defaulting on our debt? Unbelievable. Better to have said nothing honestly.

There was one bit of his speech I thought sounded like quite a good plan, which he dismissed. That was what he called his option two: "We could encourage inflation, which would wipe out the value of the debt, making it easier to pay off." Sounds like a good idea to me, and probably to you.

Moderate inflation would help all the people in negative equity; rising asset prices would certainly help, and are one of the stated purposes of quantitative easing. A few years of inflation, around 5% or so, would be a really good idea. Keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future, keep the stimulus going.

One possibility is to keep the Bank of England's inflation CPI (consumer price) target at 2% until there is any possibility of hitting it and then simply raise the target. Or perhaps replace the CPI with an index that includes house prices, which would have the same effect of allowing monetary policy to remain loose. We don't need the central bank to reverse policy too soon either. We need to create some inflation for a while.

Cameron concluded his speech arguing for his third option ? "for me the only option". He went on: "We must pay down this deficit. The longer we leave it, the worse it will be for all of us." Actually, wrong: the longer we leave it, in a recession, the better it will be for all of us. I personally would vote for option two and certainly would never even consider discussing option one.

You can read this article, and others by Professor Blanchflower here.

Still want to stake our country's future on him?

Boris Towers

This is the 63 storey - let me repeat that: SIXTY THREE STOREY - skyscraper that Boris Johnson has just insisted be built in Docklands.

In case you need reminding, Boris Johnson is the man who won thousands of votes in the London elections barely a year ago by promising to reverse fomer mayor Ken Livingstone's plans for skyscrapers.

Yet the moment he was elected the Tory changed his tune. He gave the green light to a skyscraper in Ealing Broadway. It was the Labour Government that had to halt them by calling a public inquiry.

Wandsworth Conservatives then approved their twin 42-storey towers on the Ram Brewery site. Boris Johnson failed to block those plans. It was the Labour Government that had to halt them by calling a public inquiry.

Boris Johnson has caved-in over skyscraper after skyscraper: he had no objections in principle to the 40+ storeys at Clapham Junction.

And now he's given the go-ahead - which the local Labour council refused - for this 63 storey tower in Docklands.

Now I should be clear. The centre of London, and an area like Docklands, is precisely the area where high-rise buildings should be built. I am not against all skyscrapers anywhere.

I do have concerns about the desirability of buildings of such heights.

But this isn't about my views on architecture: it's about one of the most spectacularly cynical U-turns by any politician ever seen - it is just 15 months since Boris Johnson promised us that he'd oppose such plans, and in just 15 months he has broken that promise over and over again.

More on the Conservative cuts to the police

MPs' communications allowance

Click on the letter for a larger version.

Ready for government?

This is the front-page image from today's Independent on Sunday - posing (at long last) a perfectly reasonable - and rather important question: what do the Conservatives stand for?

There's no question that David Cameron has changed the image of the Conservatives from the days when he was a back-room boy during the disastrous John Major, Michael Howard, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith years. But he hasn't changed the substance.

I suspect that there are plenty of Conservative delegates arriving for Conservative Conference today who believe that the left of his two faces above are the things he's got wrong - while for the rest of us in modern, moderate, England it's the right two-face that concerns most of us.

The Conservative spin doctors are doing everything they can not to tell you what they plan to do if they're elected. That's understandable from a cynical and dishonest media manipulation standpoint, but it's simply not good enough for a party that puports to be ready to govern.

If it is ready for government, where are the policies, other than the cut in Inheritance Tax for £2million estates? Only a party not yet ready for government can remain silent on that basic question. I want to know - don't you?

Conservatives claim they've fixed the potholes!

When my campaign team were out on the Alton estate yesterday they came across a Conservative newsletter which makes the amazingly impressive claim that "a large area was repaired on the Putney Vale estate at the junction of Stroud Crescent and Frensham Drive".

The reason this is so amazing is that also yesterday, I got a reply from the Housing Department about the pothole above, reported a few days ago by me, which just so happens to be at the junction of - yes, you've guessed it - Stroud Crescent and Frensham Drive (you know, the area the Conservatives claim they got repaired already!)

The thing is, the Conservative newsletter would have gone to print before I got this incredibly dangerous pothole on Frensham Drive fixed. And while we're on the subject, does the road in the background of the photo - that's Stroud Crescent - look like it's been "repaired"?

So what to make of the Tory claims?

Well, they claim they're also responsible for getting "some 200 potholes resurfaced." Again, I leave it to you to decide whether that's a believable claim - but at least they're finally recognising the scale of their neglect of our roads.

But why is it, then, that Danebury Avenue is still in an atrocious state and why only on Monday was the massive pothole in Tangley Grove at the junction with Danebury Avenue repaired after I asked for it to be fixed? Or Holybourne Avenue? Or Harbridge Avenue? Or Bessborough Road?

There's something just a little sad about claiming credit for something when you're actually responsible for causing the problem in the first place; and when what you're claiming is evidently untrue, and actually the result of hard work by someone else. I'm relaxed about this because I know local residents are aware of my long track-record on this issue, and it demonstrates perfectly that the Tories have no local achievements of their own to boast of!

The global verdict on investing to end the recession

The Pittsburgh G20 Summit of the twenty largest global economies ended yesterday. One of the big issues on the table was whether the world should continue what has become known as a "global stimulus" - government spending public money when the private sector is struggling -to bring the recession to a quicker end; or to follow the path the Conservatives say they want to take: immediate, savage cuts.

Well, the table below shows how the world's biggest economies split on this issue. On the left are the countries that think Labour's leadership is the right way to go, and on the right those who decided that the Conservatives know best on this issue. Really close split, wasn't it?

"So what?" you may ask. Well, I suppose it's possible that the Conservatives - alone - are right and everyone else, from left of centre governments like the US, Brazil, India, Japan, China and Australia; to right of centre governments like France, Germany, Italy and Canada; is wrong.

But it's not very likely, is it? If the Conservatives have got this - monumentally the biggest issue of the 21st century so far - completely, utterly, devastatingly wrong, how can they be trusted to get right the other big issues our government will need to address in the next five years?

Wandsworth Museum Tory fiasco continues

According to the latest edition of the Friends of Wandsworth Museum newsletter there has been another twist in the debacle that has been the Conservative council's abject management of this issue.

To recap, the Conservatives decided over two years ago to close Wandsworth Museum, along with Alvering Library by Wandsworth Common and West Hill Library in Putney. They planned to sell off the West Hill Library site, convert the Wandsworth Museum site at the top of Garratt Lane into a town centre library and build a new museum on the Ram Brewery site, beneath the 42-storey towerblocks they have been supporting.

In unprecedented numbers borough residents gave this Tory plan a big thumbs down: a petition of over 13,000 names was submitted, with many of the signatories from Putney. The Conservatives however decided they knew best and pressed ahead with their plans - which, for the record, were supposed to save council taxpayers money.

Today, the situation is somewhat different. With a lengthy planning inquiry into the Ram Brewery overdevelopment looming, the Conservatives have now decided to house the museum at West Hill Library, and open a library in the Wandsworth Museum site.

In other words, after three years and at great expense to the taxpayer, the Conservative Council has managed to move a library to where a museum was, and a museum to where a library was.

Utterly pointless and utterly wasteful. Who says the Conservatives spend money wisely?

Deja vu

When people like me make the case that the Conservatives have learnt absolutely nothing and have changed absolutely nothing about themselves, it's news like this that informs that case.

It has taken a decade - and then some - of Labour government to bring our police numbers locally back to the levels they were before the last Conservative government slashed them. Yes, those cuts took place over ten years ago - but that doesn't mean they didn't happen, that it wasn't intentional and that it didn't do damage.

And we've repaired that damage in the face of Tory claims that crime is rising when it is falling, and that Britain is somehow comparable to the most crime-scarred cities in the US. We've even achieved it despite the Conservatives claiming for years in opposition that somehow Labour has cut police - a blatant falsehood evident to all in the graphic below.

Putney's Conservative MP is party to this deception. She has claimed to be outraged at supposed Labour cuts in police numbers in Putney. If that outrage was sincere, albeit misguided, where is her condemnation of this actual, real cut in Wandsworth police numbers by the Conservative Mayor of London?

So just as Labour has finally repaired the damage done by Michael Howard the Tories have started reducing police numbers all over again. Deja vu.

And the Tories say it's just the start. They talk about wanting to "cut to the bone" - not my words, but those of the Conservative Deputy Mayor for Policing, Kit Malthouse.

In Wandsworth it means losing 15 police officers.

I know some are turned off when those of us in politics criticise our opponents rather than simply talking about the things we're for. But politics is about making choices: and that means giving you the context of those choices so you are best able to make them.

Here is a clear demonstration that politicians aren't all the same. Labour has returned police to Putney's streets - and Putney is one of the safest parts of London as a result. Fact.

The Conservatives reduced police numbers in our borough, and are now embarking on doing so again. Labour has brought police numbers back up again. Fact

Labour introduced Safer Neighbourhood Police teams - the Conservatives voted against paying for them. Fact

The Conservatives control the purse strings in London now. They run the London mayoralty and control the majority of London councils. It their choice to cut the police or cut elsewhere, or cut the Mayoral tax precept rather than keeping a strong police presence on our streets. The Evening Standard story shows the choice they've made.

Soon it will be your choice: to back these Conservative cuts or to vote for those of us who've invested in the police. It's not a simple, easy choice, but it is a straightforward one.

Why won't the Tories promise to freeze parking permit costs?

Wandsworth Conservatives like to talk a lot about the toll the global recession is taking in Wandsworth and I don't seek for one minute to diminish the seriousness of the economic problems the Labour government is tackling.

But there's a rhetoric-reality gap between how concerned the Conservatives say they are about Wandsworth residents struggling to make ends meet, and what they actually do to help.

Last November, for example, just as the world was sinking into recession the Conservatives increased parking permit charges not by inflation; not by a few points above inflation but by an eye-watering 27%.

Local residents were, understandably, pretty cross about this inflation-busting Tory stealth tax and some of them petitioned the Conservatives to freeze parking permit costs for the next two years to go some way to making up for this massive increase. That's hardly unreasonable given that even across a three year period, inflation isn't going to come close to the 30% increase the Tories imposed last year. In other words the council will still be massively in profit from such a modest agreement.

But if you're a Conservative elected representative in Wandsworth you evidently feel differently, because on Thursday the Tories are going to say "no way" to this perfectly reasonable suggestion.

The only thing they're willing to promise is that there won't be any further rises later on this year! I should think not, given that the charges only came into effect at the very end of 2008. But what about come the end of 2009? I leave that to the Conservative Council's Director of Finance. In his report on the petition he says:

"It is not possible to give assurances about permit charges beyond then."

In other words: expect more stealth tax increases from the Tories to add to our financial challenges during this difficult time come December.

You can read the paper for yourself here.

Who speaks for you on the role of MPs?

Tileman terminated

Councillors tonight voted unanimously to reject the Tileman House overdevelopment on Upper Richmond Road. Along with everyone else in the public gallery I was delighted that not a single member of the committee spoke in favour of the application.



Councillors Jeremy Larsson for the Conservatives and Tony Belton for Labour spoke firmly against the plan, while Conservative Council Leader Edward Lister supported the height and design of the building - but opposed the application because it was in "the wrong place".

This is another really significant victory for people power. Just consider that in a few short weeks we have gone from the East Putney Conservative councillors circulating a letter clearly advocating for this dreadful application, to a 9-0 unanimous vote against it. And it's because of the weight of representations, the strength of feeling among local people and the united, co-ordinated efforts we have all made to turn back yet another overdevelopment nightmare.

Another good night for Putney.

Unemployment: the 30% difference

Last month, Putney's Conservative MP made some claims about unemployment in Putney.

Unlike her burglary claims she did get the figures on unemployment right: since last summer the number claiming Jobseekers Allowance in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields has increased by 764, which in sensationalist terms represents a rise of 74.5%.

The June figures in Putney were, indeed, very bad, and as I've written before, every person unemployed is a major problem for the individual, their family and/or dependents and our economy.

But the claims she made were based on a House of Commons Research Paper, which I've reproduced above (and which you can download here). As you can see, Miss Greening chose only to disclose half the information available to her. Follow the highlighted yellow line across the page until you get to the green section.

That shows the change in unemployment compared to June 1997 - the first month after Labour was elected. In 1997 there were 2,344 claimants. And today there are 1,651 - yes, markedly up from last summer (and I talk elsewhere about how the Government is tackling this serious issue), but 693 down on the number we inherited from the Conservatives. Compared to what the claimant count was during the Conservative recession of 1991 or 1981, the figures are even more stark.

We never have the benefit, when taking tough decisions, of seeing how things would play out had we taken a different policy choice. We just get to stand by or oppose the decision the government of the day makes.

What we do have, however, is objective data of what things were like when we followed the path Miss Greening argues for: doing nothing other than pay benefit to those who have lost their job. Maybe repeating the same mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s will have a different outcome in this decade? I doubt it.

When we talk about the difference between what Labour is doing and what the Conservatives say they want to do, this is one consequence of those different approaches. But that's just rhetoric. What does it mean in reality? It means 30% higher unemployment under the Tories - and you've got the figures Miss Greening quotes from to prove it.

Campaigning against themselves

This letter appeared in yesterday's Wandsworth Guardian.

Let me just add that Mr Hawkes is not a Labour Party member, I have never met him and we have corresponded once about an entirely separate issue.

Conservative: "I wouldn't wish the NHS on anybody"

The story making today's headlines is the one about Tory MP (and multi-millionaire) Alan Duncan complaining that Members of Parliament don't get paid enough.

Alan Duncan's remarks are stupid and offensive, even if they do, according to Conservative blogger Iain Dale represent fairly accurately how Tory MPs feel about having to serve their country.

But far, far more serious in my view are the outrageous comments by Daniel Hannan, a publicity-seeking far-right Conservative Euro-MP who spent yesterday touring America's TV studios trashing our National Health Service.

He said he "wouldn't wish it on anybody". That's a subjective opinion I completely disagree with: our NHS is, in my view, the envy of the world and getting better - but what was unacceptable was the basis on which he justified his opinion. He claimed:

"...you get huge waiting lists; you have bad survival rates; you would much rather fall ill in the US than in the UK. You know if you get cancer, if you get heart disease, you get stroke, five years on the chances are here you are gonna be healthy ; in the UK you are not."

Let's start with waiting lists. 18 months when Mr Hannan's Conservatives were last in power, 18 weeks today - and in Wandsworth more than half seen within 8 weeks. Still too long - but self evidently not a "huge waiting list".

How about mortality rates - especially for cancer? One of the most significant achievements of the NHS in the past ten years has been huge improvements in cancer survival rates. And since April cancer treatments have been free from prescription charges. Here's a list of some of the other successes of Wandsworth NHS this past year alone.

Those might be some of the reasons why satisfaction with the NHS has never been higher. But if not, how about GP surgeries opening when working patients need them to be? Or an end to mixed-sex wards by 2010? Or more doctors, nurses, midwives and dentists than ever before?

Mr Hannan was trashing his own country in the US because he's trying to prevent President Obama from giving everyone in America free healthcare at the point of delivery - exactly what we in Labour did fifty years ago when Aneurin Bevan founded the National Health Service.

Around 54 million Americans are currently without any health insurance; they either have to go without treatment, hand over a credit card and pay a premium before they get treated, or travel miles for what are little better than back-street clinics providing poor-quality care. Meanwhile the big private healthcare companies are driving up insurance prices by inflation-busting amounts, excluding more and more every year. And this in the richest country on earth.

I wouldn't wish THAT on anybody.

And if you think he's being taken out of context, you can read his full comments - and even watch one of his many US interviews, right here.

Tory VAT bombshell

Tories' secret VAT plan

None of us enjoy paying tax. But in this country there has been a long-settled consensus that if taxes need to be levied they should at least be set fairly, so that those with more wealth pay a larger share.

Tax is one of the big issues that divide the two main parties. Conservatives - not just here but around the globe - they have a big preference for flat taxes that take the same percentage from all regardless of their wealth or ability to pay.

They're also for Value Added (or sales) taxes that again apply to all at the same rate irrespective of their income. And they tend to oppose taxes that result in people paying a greater share the wealthier you are.

A look back through history bears this out. It was a Conservative Government in 1973 that introduced VAT to the UK, it was a Conservative Government in 1979 that increased VAT from 8% to 15%; and it was a Conservative Government in 1991 that raised it to 17.5% and levied it on fuel for the first time, driving tens of thousands into fuel poverty.

And we now learn from the Sunday Telegraph that the Conservatives are considering raising VAT to 20% if they win the next election. We have on record already their opposition to the 50p Income Tax rate for the top 1%; their opposition to Labour's 2.5% VAT rate cut this year that has boosted our retail sector, and their one gilt-edged tax pledge: to abolish Inheritance Tax for estates worth £2million.

Conservative want to cut tax at the top end and raise it at the lowest end- but which will put the biggest hole in the smallest wallets. That's the Conservative tax policy.

This is a parody of fairness. It's immoral and saddles the least wealthy with an unfair tax burden. When those of us on the progressive side of the fence point out that the Conservatives haven't changed this is exactly the sort of thing we mean.

David Cameron believes in the same things the Conservatives have always stood for: cutting tax on the richest and so-called "trickle-down" Thatcherism - he just does it with a "call me Dave" grin on his face.

And he'll have the backing of Justine Greening if you vote for either of them.

As we emerge from the global recession, Britain will need to pay down our public debt. The Conservatives pretend this will be so much more difficult than it is precisely so they can lay the ground for the "inevitability" of a 20% tax rate.

It isn't inevitable. It's plain wrong. And it's typically Conservative.

Mr Ten Per Cent

Yesterday the Conservatives finally admitted just how much they want to cut from our public services. Senior Conservative MP Andrew Lansley - the only member of the Conservative shadow cabinet who has been guaranteed a job in a Tory Government - has let the cat out of the bag, and revealed that they plan to make spending cuts of 10 per cent across the majority of government departments.

He is now on record as saying:

"We are going to increase the resources for the NHS, we are going to increase resources for international development aid. We are going to increase resources for schools. But that does mean over three years after 2011 a 10 per cent reduction in the departmental expenditure limits for other departments."

Andrew Lansley, BBC Today Programme, 10 June 2009

Locally, this could mean:

• Even less affordable housing being built for those wishing to rent;
• Cuts to the transport budget which threaten plans for a lift at Putney station;
• Cuts to the police budget, which will reduce the number of police patrolling our streets;
• An end to funding for the expansion of popular local schools
• Less Government grant to the council resulting in more cuts to services and increases in local charges

Justine Greening, Putney's "Miss 10 Per Cent", now needs to come clean with the people of Putney and explain where her party?s cuts of 10 per cent will fall.

Tebbit says: "Don't vote Tory"

Lord Tebbit was one of the lynchpins of the Thatcher Conservative Governments during the 1980s. He was Party Chairman, held several middle-ranking cabinet jobs and was injured during the IRA Brighton bombing. He was also the author of controversial but catchy soundbites such as demanding a "cricket test" to determine whether immigrants genuinely wanted to be British citizens; and telling the unemployed to get on their bikes to find work further afield.

Well, he's at it again, although I doubt David Cameron will be cheering. In the clip above, he's urging voters NOT to vote for the Conservative Party he's been a senior member of for years.

I have to say that I did struggle at times to follow Lord Tebbit's explanation of his stance - and the clip's just worth watching for the verbal gymnastics he employs to try to square his continued membership of the Conservatives - and how he'd have reacted had someone been telling people not to vote Tory when he was Conservative Chairman - with his incitement to vote against his own party.

I'm considering inviting Lord Tebbit to Putney to help spread his "Don't vote Tory" message around. I wonder if Putney Conservatives would like to countersign that invitation?

putneysw15 Monthly Report live

In case you haven't seen, my monthly Putney Report is on the putneysw15 website here.

This month it covers improvements to Barnes Station and its surrounds, the crisis at Elliott School and why it is that Putney has a Tory MP, 18 Tory councillors, a Tory council, a Tory London Mayor and a Tory London Assembly Member, and yet it takes me to get local potholes sorted out.

Answers on a postcard please.

Cutting Council rents

I've received dozens of complaints from Council tenants these past few weeks upset about the huge rent increase the Conservatives have brought in.

Despite it's low tax image, Wandsworth in fact has the second highest council rents in London and year after year increases them by inflation-busting amounts. In fact it's increasing charges for communal heating systems by a shocking 15.6% this year.

I find it perverse that the Conservatives are cranking up rents for council tenants - many of whom are on fixed and low incomes - while at the same time demanding more help from Government.

That's why I hoped Wandsworth would leap at the news that our Labour government is providing funds to halve the rent increases being proposed nationwide. The average rent increase in England this year is 6.2% - with Labour the increase will be reduced to 3.1%.

But Wandsworth Conservatives don't seem to want to pass this money onto tenants. When I wrote to the council in February to check that they would be taking the money and cutting rents for local residents the best I could get was a "we're waiting for more information."

What an incredibly underwhelming response, that will be of very little comfort to hard-pressed council tenants. The facts are these:

Each autumn, after consultation, the Government publishes formal guideline rents so that Local Authorities know where they stand on Government subsidy on the housing funding system. Authorities are then free to make their own decisions on the actual rent level to set in their particular circumstances. Many authorities choose to set actual rents below the guideline figure. Wandsworth is never among them.

Last year, the Government was pressed to give authorities greater financial certainty and responded by giving guidance for two years rather than one ? which authorities appeared to welcome. However, since recent major changes in the economic situation, the Government has agreed to reconsider the 2 year deal. And this is the result.

I want Wandsworth Conservatives to stop squeezing Council tenants until the pips squeek. It's time to pass on Labour's rent cut.