Putney need cross party consensus to beat tube closures

Yesterday I wrote about the planned closure of ticket offices at the three tube stations used by Putney commuters - Putney Bridge, Southfields and East Putney.

While it is inevitable that this will become the subject of much political discussion and debate in the run up to both the local and general elections, I hope that all the parties in Putney can agree that these proposed closures by Boris Johnson should be opposed as they are not in the interests of Putney's commuters and tube users.

When the national rail companies - including South West Trains - called for similar dramatic cuts in ticket office opening times at Putney, Barnes and Wandsworth Town, I stood up and lobbied the government to reject their plans. And the closures were dramatically reined-in.

At the time, Putney's Conservative MP said: "These plans will seriously inconvenience thousands of Londoners who use these stations every day. Worse still, the serious cuts in weekend and evening services raise real concerns over passenger safety."

We agreed then - and I want her to take a similar stand now it is her own party that is making the cuts - cuts that they promised London they would not make in the 2008 Mayoral elections.

So today I have written to her, and to the Liberal Democrat and Green candidates to invite them to join me in a cross-party effort to defend Putney's ticket offices.

If Putney's Conservative MP still agrees that ticket office closures will seriously inconvenience thousands of Londoners, then - while she won't find it easy - she should put Putney before party and stand with me against these cuts.

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.

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.

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.

Burglaries in Putney: the FACTS

Putney's Conservative MP has been at it again: scaremongering about burglaries in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields in her latest Putney SW15 report - exactly the way she did a few months ago in the same column.

I've taken a while to respond to her distortions because I wanted to wait for the Metropolitan Police to publish their October crime figures before debunking - again - Miss Greening's claims.

But the table above shows that in October, compared to the month before, in only two out of six Putney wards was the burglary rate up at all - by less than half of one percent in both cases. In contrast, burglary fell by significantly more in Roehampton and Thamesfield. Burglaries neither increased nor reduced in Southfields or West Hill.

Overall, yet again, burglary fell - it didn't rise as Miss Greening claimed.

And without blinding you with statistics, the following table shows just how significantly better we are doing in Putney on burglary - the change over 12 months as opposed to just the one month snapshot above. In every single Putney ward, burglaries are down: in the cases of Roehampton, Thamesfield and West Hill down massively:



Why is Miss Greening claiming one thing when the facts show the opposite? I think I understand how she's got it so wrong: burglaries in the rest of the borough, especially Battersea, are up, and the police may have briefed her about borough trends rather than Putney's. But she's paid to know her facts about Putney - and self-evidently she does not.

Don't take my word for it. Here is the Metropolitan Police's local crime database, open to anyone to check for themselves. Roll your mouse over any of the Putney wards - the six areas on the left of the map of the borough, and the crime figures for each appears on the right. Remember that these are figures provided by the Met Police themselves. And the Met reports to Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, not the Labour government.

We should all remain vigilant about crime and we can never have too many cautionary messages on preventing burglaries. But we can certainly do without mistruths and scaremongering from a politician on the prowl for votes. Here are the overall crime stats for October:

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.

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.

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.

MPs' communications allowance

Click on the letter for a larger version.

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.

The Future Jobs Fund

The Future Jobs Fund (FJF) is a Labour government scheme backed by around £1 billion that's supporting the creation of of jobs for the long-term unemployed, lasting until June 2011. In this time it's hoped to create 150,000 new jobs, principally aimed at 18-24 year olds.

Labour has guaranteed every single 18-24 year old who has been out of work for a year or more a job, work experience or training for at least 6 months.

Because we want the FJF to succeed and not be buffeted by market forces we have set it up so that, generally speaking, larger organisations like councils or major charities lead the bids, bringing with them smaller employers, youth groups and the like.

The first list of successful FJF bidders was announced at the start of August. Here's the list for London:



Despite bids from pretty much every corner of London, Wandsworth's Conservative council is nowhere to be seen.

This leads me back to the carping by Putney's Conservative MP about unemployment last month. It's easy to write about "supporting our community through the recession" but here's one way she and her Conservative council could be working with local business to create real jobs and she's nowhere to be seen. This is why the Conservatives are called the"do-nothing" party.

If you're interested in participating in the Future Jobs Fund, you can find out more here.

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.

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.

Heat is no substitute for light

One issue arising from the Richmond Park consultation I wrote about yesterday is the incredibly loud, but remarkably irrelevant campaigns the Council and MP waged against the plans.

The response cards the council sent out, at considerable cost, to every single household in the borough elicited a reply of less than 1% - and were excluded from the consultation findings because they didn't provide a usable response to the consultation questions. They were simply noted towards the end of the consultation analysis - not in the actual consultation figures.

Should the council really be spending money - your tax money - on campaigning on issues that are nothing to do with council services and outside its remit?

Especially when they so mishandle their campaign that the responses aren't even counted? Instead, shouldn't they be spending more on keeping council housing clean or building more affordable homes, repairing our potholed roads or making sure our secondary schools aren't failing? These are, after all, the things councils actually exist to do and which this council isn't doing well at all.

Almost 2,000 people took the time and effort to set out their objections in a way that was counted - and was overwhelming in its clarity of opposition. All the political parties were united on this issue - Susan Kramer, the Lib Dem MP for Richmond Park, Putney's Conservative MP and me were all clear in opposing these plans. It's right that public representatives make their views known and campaign on them.

But there's a big difference between politicians and parties campaigning to win support and be seen to back a position we believe to be popular, and the use of taxpayers money by one public body to campaign against another, driven solely by the party political motives of the Conservatives who run the council.

Heat is no substitute for light if you want to be taken seriously over an issue like this. And a reputation for financial prudence cannot be squared with the scandalous and party-political abuse of taxpayers money like this by the Conservatives.

Why claim crime's up when it's down?

In her most recent contribution to the Putney SW15 website, the Conservative MP remarked that "We?ve recently seen a large increase in burglaries."

As you know, I've been charting crime in our area since the Summer of 2007 - and Miss Greening's got this just about as wrong as she could manage.



This table shows the average burglary rate in Putney since 2007: the figures for each of the six Putney wards aggregated together. Does that look like a large increase in burglaries - or a big fall in burglaries?

And just so we're clear, in June - the month the most recent stats are available for - burglaries in East Putney, Roehampton, Southfields, West Hill and West Putney were all below both the borough-wide and London-wide average; and in Thamesfield - the one ward out of six where the rate's higher, burglaries were still down markedly on May.

This is a stark example of a politician pushing a sensationalist line that bears no relation to fact. Whether Miss Greening decided to scaremonger because she thinks talking about everything that's wrong with Putney is how an opposition politician should campaign I can't speculate. But it's wrong and it brings politics into even further disrepute.

Falling into line

Justine Greening has, apparently objected to the revised Tileman House application.

I very much welcome Miss Greening's decision to stand with residents rather than her Conservative Councillors - this is the first time she has taken a different view to her council colleagues on any issue, ever - so it clearly must have been a difficult decision for her to break with her party for the first time in her political career.

I am also delighted that Miss Greening has also decided to support the arguments I have been advancing for over 12 months now, that we need a comprehensive plan for Putney. It's something that is so important to protecting Putney that I'm pleased, albeit belatedly, that she has now joined those of us who've been campaigning on this issue for years - in my case since Autumn 2005.

But for her opposition to Tileman House to mean something, then she must back up her words with some hard lobbying of Putney's councillors, every single one of whom - 18 out of 18 - is Conservative.

The planning applications committee meets to consider this application towards the end of August. How Conservative councillors vote at that meeting will be one measure of how deeply felt her objection to Tileman House is.

Spot the difference

One of the Tory leaflets above was paid for by Putney Conservative Party. One of them was paid for by you, through Conservative MP Justine Greening's Parliamentary allowances. Can you tell which one is which? But more to the point, can you think why you've paid for either?

I support the Conservatives' right to raise funds to publish their own party political newsletters - it's what we do in Putney Labour Party whenever we distribute copies of The Putney Paper. Not a penny of public money goes to my campaign, to Putney Labour Party or to me. My campaign is run solely by volunteers - and all donations to Putney Labour are declared on the Electoral Commission website.

But on top of this, and on top of the over £19,000 Justine Greening's Putney Tories received from under-investigation Belize Billionaire Lord Ashcroft, she also claims a £10,000 allowance a year to distribute extra leaflets - Tory in all but name - which you pay for. And worse: she voted against the allowance being introduced but then claimed it anyway. Cynical and hypocritical.

(By the way, the Tory leaflet paid for by taxpayers is the one on the right with all the blue on it, in case you were wondering).

Greening's £10k communication allowance

David Cameron at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday demanded that the £10,000 a year communication allowance MPs can claim should be scrapped.

Putney's MP Justine Greening claims this optional allowance, despite voting against it when it was first agreed by the House of Commons a few years ago. She uses it to pay for frequent newsletters that are remarkably similar in colour (Tory blue), design and format as the Conservative Party paid for newsletters she produces.

Voting against an allowance and then claiming it anyway is hypocritical and cynical. Using the allowance to publish Conservative Party style newsletters is what used to be called "campaigning on the rates".

Given his views on the allowance, David Cameron should instruct all his MPs to stop claiming it. Even if he doesn't, Justine Greening should do the right thing and voluntarily give up this allowance.

Given we now live in a world where politicans feel compelled to pay back certain allowances, perhaps she might choose to reimburse the public purse to the tune of £7,910 - the amount of her latest claim from an allowance she says she never wanted in the first place.

For the record, The Putney Paper and all communications I distribute are paid for from private donations from local residents. Not a penny of public money funds me or my campaign - and that's the way it should be.

UPDATE: Conservative blogger Iain Dale agrees, at least in part.

School nurses need homes

Since she has become her party's spokesman for Communities, Putney's Conservative MP has noticed that there is a shortage of school nurses in London.

I'm delighted that like me she is calling for more school nurses. However calling for them alone won't make them happen. Nor, as she seems to believe, will simply throwing money at the problem - Labour has doubled spending on the NHS since 1997. And I must ask where Miss Greening believes her party will find this extra money she's calling for given their very clear position that government should be cutting spending, not increasing it.

The problem, as the NHS locally admits, is the lack of affordable homes for school nurses and other key medical staff in our borough. It's why I'm opposing the NHS sell-off of Arton Wilson House in Roehampton Lane: purpose-built homes for nurses which the Conservative Council is waiting to rubber-stamp for yet more luxury penthouses.

If Justine Greening is serious in her claims to be concerned about the lack of school nurses - and I hope she is - I invite her to join me in trying to persuade Wandsworth NHS to reverse their sell-off plans for Arton Wilson House. But more substantively, she needs to start standing up to her Conservative councillors on Wandsworth Council and insist on far more keyworker homes in any new plans for Putney, such as Tileman House and Putney Place.

The difficulty for Miss Greening is this a problem caused by Conservative politicians implementing Conservative policies. More of the same simply won't do.

Here's what about Rotherham...and Putney, Matthew

Since the successful G20 summit last week, Conservatives - both MPs and commentators - have been struggling to come up with a vaguely credible response. One that David Cameron, and former Tory MP and now Times columnist Matthew Parris have been floating is to, through gritted teeth, concede that the Prime Minister succeeded in achieving results for the world, but somehow not for our own country.

Mr Parris, in an article on Saturday called The world is saved. But what about Rotherham - and presumably he didn't pick Rotherham because it's the hometown of Putney's Conservative MP - attempted to make this case.

This is either a really dumb, or a really obtuse line of argument. There is no-one credible who does not recognise:

1) that this is a global recession and
2) that its origin was the US not the UK

That being so, anyone who tries to then claim that sorting out the problem the world is in will somehow not benefit our own economy is ridiculous. The Conservatives want you to believe that Gordon Brown's international leadership is responsible for making our own economic difficulties worse.

To me, that's a strange argument to attempt when at the same time the Conservative response to the recession is to stand aloof, do nothing to shore-up our economy, keep people in jobs and their homes while at the same time cutting taxes, as Labour has done in a big way only this week.

I send out hundreds and hundreds of surveys to local people every month and recently I've added a question about whether Putney, Roehampton and Southfields prefer Labour's intervention or the Conservatives' argument that we should avoid spending in order to keep future public debt lower.

I have to say that - overwhelmingly - people are telling me that they prefer the government not to walk by on the other side when British people are in trouble. And these surveys are from a representative sample of Putney voters: it's not just Labour voters who are telling me this. The Conservatives have got it catastrophically wrong on this issue - and this issue is THE issue people will be voting on at the next General Election.

If you want to learn more about why the G20 Summit was a success there's a 1-sided A4 briefing here.

More evidence of the do-nothing Tories

On Sunday the Wandsworth Guardian website was headlined by the stinging criticism on local Conservative policies by a business leader, criticising the damage their do-nothing stance towards business was having.

Peter Pledger, Chief Executive of South London Business, which represents thousands of businesses across our area, compared the lack of interest in helping businesses claim grants and other related help in Wandsworth with the more engaged leadership of nearby councils.

Councils like Wandsworth should be stepping-in to help by making sure businesses claim every penny of Small Business Relief (SBR) and that they are aware of the Government's new access to credit schemes. These enable small and medium sized businesses struggling with cashflow because banks have been cutting back on credit to get help to keep themselves solvent udint the downturn.

The Guardian report also exposes one of the issues Labour councillors in Wandsworth have been concerned about - the Tory Council's reluctance to pay its debts promptly. Wandsworth is notorious for waiting until the last possible moment to pay its bills: a policy that earns the Council huge interest savings but which can be the last straw for businesses with cashflow difficulties.

The Conservative response to the latest stinging criticism from business of their do-nothing approach can only be characterised as pathetic. The best the councillor responsible for business could do was to come up with the statistic that over £1million of business rate relief (something businesses are entitled to anyway) had been claimed by over 1,900 Wandsworth businesses; a sum that amounts to less than £600 on average!

The Conservative do-nothing approach locally is exactly what they would repeat nationally if given the chance. You don't have to take my word for it when I highlight the Tory do-nothing policies George Osborne and Justine Greening keep arguing for: you just need to take a look at what Wandsworth Tories are already doing.

Or rather, what they're not doing.

Who represents you best?

Below are two responses to the Tileman House planning application. One is what the council officers have described as a "general comment" from Justine Greening - probably because they can't work out whether she's for or against the application. The other is my response. Which one better represents - and advocates for - local opinion?

Click on each image for the larger version.

Inquiry launched into Putney Tory donor

The Electoral Commission is - at last - investigating the Belize billionaire who contributed thousands of pounds to Putney Conservatives in the run-up to the last General Election.

Lord Ashcroft, who operates out of Belize refuses to disclose whether he pays tax here in the UK. British electoral law bans donations to political parties from non-British nationals or companies not trading here. But Lord Ashcroft uses a registered British company called Bearwood Commercial Services to channel over £3.6 million of funds to Justine Greening and dozens of other Tory candidates.

It is at best questionable whether this sort of bending of the rules meets the letter of the law (hence the inquiry) but it certainly does not comply with the spirit of it. There is nothing wrong with anyone making political contributions but there is a great deal wrong with non British nationals interfering in - some might say rigging - our elections with overseas cash.

If the Electoral Commission's investigation finds that the Conservatives have broken the law then Justine Greening and Putney Conservatives should be obliged to repay every single penny of the £19,733 they took from this source.

£19,000 may not sound that much in the context of the £3m+ given in total, but in context, constituency political parties like Putney's are only allowed to spend about £10,000 once a general election has been called - so Lord Ashcroft not only paid for their entire campaign but gave them £9k on top!

Below is the register of contributions to Justine Greening and Putney Conservatives since 2003: you can check for yourself by visiting the Electoral Commission site and, in Name of registered political party scrolling down to "Conservative And Unionist Party", and in Received by typing "Putney". You can also do the same for Putney Labour Party.

Anyone who believes in a level playing field should be concerned about Lord Ashcroft's influence, and relieved that this is finally being investigated by the Electoral Commission.

Our patch: safest in inner London

Over the weekend I was asked by the Putney SW15 website to comment on the latest Home Office crime figures which (unsurprisingly) echo the ones I report on here every month.

The figures show Wandsworth is the safest borough in inner London. They also chime with other opinion-polling carried out by the Council that shows an increase in the number of people satisfied with the local response to crime and anti-social behaviour.

All of a sudden, however, the Conservatives are trumpeting these figures. This after years and years of attacking and undermining our Police; misleading people about police numbers, scaremongering about their effectiveness, claiming that our area is less safe than it is.

Here's an example of the new Conservative spin - the Tory councillor who holds the community safety portfolio in Wandsworth commented: ?The Home Office?s figures confirm the findings of our own research - that Wandsworth is the safest place to live in inner London and crime rates are going down.?

Now I'll be delighted if Justine Greening and Putney Conservatives have turned over a new leaf and now genuinely support our Police - but let's just see how long it is before they next put out a press release complaining about the number of police locally or post a comment on a local discussion forum implying our safer neighbourhood officers are not "proper" police.

If they have finally woken up to the reality of policing in Putney, I hope they might even work with me on focussing resources - council as well as police - on Putney town centre so we can cut the high amount of crime in Thamesfield ward. The way to start would be to introduce town centre patrollers, who'll cut street crime by a third on previous experience in the borough.

But stepping back into the real world, the Tory attacks on Putney's Police will continue. Boris Johnson will forge ahead with his half-billion cut in the Met Police's budget. And the Tory council will refuse to introduce town centre patrollers despite the evidence and the need.

The Conservative Party isn't David Cameron. He's just a front. Behind the soft, fluffly Cameron facade, Putney's cynical, self-serving and out-of-touch Tories are the true face of that unreconstructed party.

That's why we need change locally at the next General Election.

More fall out from Justine's Question Time performance

Justine Greening's excursion to Bath to appear on BBC Question Time appears to be backfiring on her in all sorts of unfortunate ways.

I've already featured her comments about not wanting to help Putney, Southfields and Roehampton constituents with their problems, but I suspect this latest revelation is going to prove far more distressing to her because it's evidently doing her some damage among Conservative activists, which could tarnish her careerism.

Leading Conservative blogger Iain Dale was also watching Question Time on Thursday, and he was less than impressed with Miss Greening's response to the question of banning Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP who was denied entry to the UK to present his film attacking Islam in the Houses of Parliament. This is what Iain Dale had to say:

"I was particularly shocked by Conservative MP Justine Greening's attitude to this. I suppose it echoed the tepid response of Chris Grayling [the Conservative Home Affairs spokesman] yesterday, but it was nevertheless discomforting to see a Conservative MP seemingly unable to comprehend the importance of free speech, especially when she hadn't seen the film."

There's a clear difference between Miss Greening and me on this. I believe in freedom of speech and I think the government was wrong to prevent Mr Wilders coming into this country. Miss Greening either does not believe in freedom of speech (as Iain Dale thinks) or she will say and do whatever her party tells her to without really thinking whether she agrees or not. Pretty unedifying stuff from the MP who represents the constituency that was home to the Putney Debates.

Justine Greening on having to help local people

When I got back home from the meetings I had been at in Putney last night, I got a message from a constituent asking me to look at Justine Greening's performance - in Bath - on BBC Question Time.

They were somewhat unimpressed by her comments about the sort of people who seek the help of their MP. So I had a look on BBC I-Player - you can watch it here - and sure enough, about 43 minutes in, on a discussion supposedly about the Nanny State, this is what she said about Putney constituents:

Justine Greening: "I think it's said to an awful lot of people that, you know, when you have children they're not completely your responsibility. And I think, ultimately, they are - and I see this even in my surgery from week to week - sometimes you know the situations you're confronted with, um, from families, it's just, it's amazing. They're looking to other people, perhaps sometimes too much, to sort out problems that they've got themselves into and I do think we need to balance it up again perhaps."

Now maybe I'm being a little old-fashioned here, but I thought the job of an MP is precisely to help sort out difficulties people find themselves in. Many people will not be responsible for the problems they have. Some will. All deserve help from their MP. But I've come across far too many constituents who have asked Miss Greening for help and been told it's not something she gets involved with to know that, on this issue at least, she means exactly what she says.

Business vs Justine Greening

In a recent report Putney's MP - a member of the do-nothing Tory Treasury team - wrote:

"Like many businesses, I have some grave concerns about [the pre-Budget report's] effectiveness."

I find that a really odd comment, especially from someone who is supposed to have some interaction with business in her Treasury role. To recap, this is what those who actually speak for British businesses have said about Labour's Pre-Budget Report:

"This Pre-Budget Report, except in one important aspect, recognises the need to address the challenges posed by globalisation. The new emphasis on training, skills, planning, transport and intellectual property are all welcome and could make a real difference to the UK's future competitiveness if delivered fully, quickly and intelligently."

Richard Lambert, Director-General, the Confederation of British Industry

?This Pre-Budget Report is a sign of the importance of small businesses to the UK economy. The Government?s Small Business Finance Scheme, which closely resembles the Small Business Survival Fund the FSB has been calling for, will provide a vital cash boost to businesses struggling with rising costs and a lack of credit.

?Many of these measures, such as giving businesses longer time to pay bills and offsetting losses, will give small businesses a welcome breather from the taxman and allow them to concentrate on sustaining their business, supporting their staff and growing the economy in the long term.?

John Walker, National Policy Chairman, the Federation of Small Businesses

"The scale of the fiscal stimulus is what the IoD has called for"

Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors

Those are the comments of the three main trade associations for British trade and industry - including small business. They don't offer unqualified support for the PBR - I wouldn't expect them to - but any objective reader will be unable to square them with Miss Greening's "talk down the UK" approach to politics.

No wonder the public has such legitimate concern about the Conservatives not being competent to run our economy when we hear these simply untrue summaries of what business thinks from the area's Tory MP.

Putney deserves better representatives than this.

Our MP should know better

Putney's Conservative MP, one of the architects of the Tories' do-nothing response to the international financial crisis, grew up in Rotherham.

Rotherham was one of the communities decimated by the Tory recessions of the 1980s and 1990s; recessions made far worse both by the destruction of the coal industry but also the Thatcherite policy of not investing to mitigate the impact of the recession.

As a result, millions more lost their jobs - not just for a few weeks but for the rest of their lives; and the social fabric of towns like Rotherham took years - and a Labour Government - to repair. I cannot believe the financial hardship wrought by her own party would have been missed by Justine Greening as she was growing up there.

But instead of learning from that experience, she now wants to re-enact exactly the same policies that so damaged places like Rotherham. Yet this downtown will not affect the UK in the same places as the earlier downturn: our economy is far more dependent on the service, construction and financial sectors: sectors predominating in the south, in London and the Midlands.

For most of us, our experiences whilst growing up shape who we are and what we think in adult life - and those of us in public life should use those lessons to make our country better. Putney's Conservative MP should know better, but has proven that she has learnt nothing from the ravages her party wrought on her home town not that long ago.

Conservative cant over Queen Mary's

When it comes to Queen Mary's Hospital, Putney's Conservative MP has some nerve.

She's been in the local press this week attacking the hospital for its record-keeping, which the hospital itself denies is harming service.

Given that the last Conservative Government all but closed Queen Mary's, axing its Accident & Emergency Department in the process, I find it hard to take any expression of concern about the hospital from her at all seriously.

Justine Greening has voted the way her party told her to 96.4% of the time since she was elected in 2005 - sycophantic even by Tory standards. So it's safe to assume that she would have been a cheerleader for her party's closure of Queen Mary's Hospital back in 1997 and would have voted against the increased Labour investment in the NHS that funded the rebuilding of it had she been in parliament at the time.

So forgive me for being contemptuous of her pathetic criticisms of the hospital, on the basis that the hospital is disadvantaging patients.

The Tory closure of Queen Mary's A&E disadvantaged patients.

All-but closing the hospital down entirely disadvantaged patients.

In comparison, complaining about the storage of patient records at nearby Barnes Hospital while the system for storing them electronically at Queen Mary's is being set up is a pathetic, trifling criticism aimed - just as her turning up to the opening of the rebuilt hospital in 2005 was - to get herself a cheap headline.

The real newsworthy story, which would be a first for her, would be to apologise for the appalling damage her party did to Queen Mary's last time it was in power. If she can't quite manage that, the least she could do is stop criticising the hospital - especially on such spurious grounds.

Number crunching...

Due thanks to Private Eye for the original feature and the national facts and figures. All £91,893 of donations to Putney Conservatives (up to June of this year) can be found on the Electoral Commission website here. Lord Ashcroft's donations are the ones titled "Bearwood Corporate Services".

Greening's preposterous petrol policy performance

A few days ago, I drew attention to the Conservatives' policy on fuel duty, which is that right now all drivers would be paying a lot more tax.

That being the case, it is the most obscene hypocrisy for Putney's Conservative MP to be complaining about increases in road tax. Yet at Treasury questions on Thursday, there she was, shamelessly and shamefully whining about road tax changes that reward smaller, less polluting cars and penalise larger, more polluting vehicles.

Before she gets up to make another spectacle of herself - and Putney - in the House of Commons she should at least try to come up with an answer to the question posed to her by Treasury Minister Angela Eagle MP:

"Why is the hon. Lady talking about that, when her policy would put 5p on fuel duty now, creating an increase that would feed right through to the pumps? That is bad judgment."

What's happened to Alton Gate?

When Tony Colman was Labour MP for Putney huge strides were made to get a pedestrian gate from the Alton estate into Richmond Park.

After she was elected Justine Greening, somewhat to her discredit, tried to pretend that the idea had been hers all alone and that she was the champion who would finally deliver a gate.

That was over three years ago. Since then she has stopped talking about the Alton Gate. So have her council colleagues. And the Alton remains along its entire length without access to the park it has such magnificent panoramic views of.

I have today written to the Royal Parks Agency to find out the status of the plans for an Alton Gate to Richmond Park and, unlike my Conservative opponent, intend to keep going until we get the gate we deserve.

Hypocrisy

Each year, Members of Parliament receive about £10,000 as a "communications allowance".

They can spend this pretty much how they like on communications - funding a website or distributing a parliamentary report are the most common uses.

The Conservative were strident in their opposition to this allowance. This is what Conservative Shadow Cabinet Minister Theresa May said at the time:

"Of course MPs have a duty to communicate with their constituents. But we also have a duty to spend our constituents' taxes wisely. With modern means of communication, we can communicate with our constituents without spending great sums of taxpayers' money...The real risk of these proposals is that the money will be used for political marketing and therefore give an unfair advantage to incumbent MPs. I'm sure the sceptical public don't want more of their taxes spent on MPs' spin funds."

Putney's Conservative MP Justine Greening was clearly convinced by that argument - she joined most of her colleagues voting against the allowance. That's a perfectly honourable position to take - I disagree with her, but it's nice to see her taking a clear stance on something substantive.

In this light, you may have been surprised, recently, to receive through your door a newsletter from her - a party political leaflet in all but name - paid for entirely out of the Parliamentary Communications Allowance (i.e. by you and I). One day she's voting against MPs getting this allowance - the next she orders thousands of newsletters, paid for by the allowance.

Some Conservative MPs had the courage of their convictions and didn't claim the allowance because they knew that to do so would have been hypocritical. Justine Greening had no such qualms.

Wandsworth Museum Obituary

The borough's amenity societies: the Balham, Battersea, Putney and Wandsworth Societies, the Wandsworth Historical Society, the Friends of Wandsworth Museum and the Wandsworth Museum Action Group have joined forces to write an obituary of the museum that the Tory Council - backed by Putney's Conservative MP - closed on New Year's Day.

You can read the obituary on the putneysw15 website here - it gives a very effective picture of the resources the borough has lost with the closure, as well as the breadth of support the Museum had throughout the community.

Housing letter

I had a letter on the housing crisis published recently in the Wandsworth Borough News and Wandsworth Guardian, following parliamentary debate about the Government's housing green paper. Here's what I wrote:

Last week Parliament debated one of the most important issues facing Londoners - the need to provide more affordable homes.

The shortage of affordable housing in Putney means that many couples, families and first-time buyers are priced out of living locally.

There are almost 9,000 Wandsworth residents on the council's waiting list, many of whom have no realistic prospect of being offered a home in the foreseeable future.
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And the amount of affordable homes to rent in the borough has been halved by council policies: from over 32,000 to less than 17,000.

The Government's Housing and Regeneration Bill is a step in the right direction, promising three million new homes by 2020 and 240,000 zero carbon homes built every year.

That is why it is so disappointing that Putney's Conservative MP Justine Greening voted against these plans to build more affordable homes.

But this should come as no surprise as there is no reference to housing problems on her website, and there is no record of Ms Greening ever raising local housing problems in Parliament. She has, however, found time for 10 parliamentary questions on tobacco smuggling and two on the problems of the Island of Sark.

By voting against the Bill, Ms Greening has voted against helping local families to stay in the area as their families grow; she has voted against more affordable homes and she has voted against ensuring the new homes built are low and zero carbon and environmentally-friendly.

I encourage your readers who share my priority for local housing to visit my website at http://www.stuartking.net/housingsurvey and share their housing views with me.

STUART KING
Labour parliamentary candidate for Putney

Tories in denial about their role in our housing crisis

There was a quite extraordinary story in yesterday's Wandsworth Guardian flagging up the out-of-control homelessness problem in our borough.

New figures showing homelessness in the borough now standing at over 9,000 people: that's up a stunning 187% in the space of 6 years.

The figures from the independent London Housing Federation also show over 1,300 people in hugely-expensive temporary accommodation.

These are both disgraceful figures - and I personally would consider resigning if I had been responsible for causing such a problem, as Wandsworth Conservatives have been, by flogging off thousands upon thousands of council homes for rent and aggressively refusing to build any more to replace them.

It beggars belief that the Tories are still attempting to ply the line "Sure, we've halved the number of affordable homes in the borough from over 32,000 to less than 17,000 but it's nothing to do with us guv". It's the reason why I want the law changed so that for every council home sold off, two must be built - for rent - to replace it.

And it really is untenable for Putney's Conservative MP to remain utterly disinterested, oblivious and aloof about the local housing problem. She hasn't asked a single parliamentary question about it since she was elected over two and a half years ago. Yet again, she'd rather shut up about the failings of her Tory friends on the council than side with the constituents who elected her and it's just not good enough.

Read the Guardian article here.

Nothing changes...unless you change it!

Here's an example of why Putney, Roehampton and Southfields needs a Labour MP. Three years ago, residents of the Lennox estate - the estate at the north end of Priory Lane just by Upper Richmond Road - contacted us about fly-tipping problems the council was ignoring. They had tried to contact their three Conservative Councillors and got nowhere: they just couldn't be bothered.

A few days ago I held a walkabout on the estate with local residents and Councillor Leonie Cooper, Labour's Wandsworth Housing speaker and London Assembly candidate for our area, and what did we find?

Exactly the same problem unresolved three years later and after the election of new Conservative councillors despite the failure of their predecessors. And this is the problem: every single councillor in Putney is a Conservative - they have no interest in rocking the boat, making the council do what it's supposed to do, holding the administration to account. And Putney's Tory MP does exactly the same: side with her friends on the council rather than with the residents who elected her. She's done it over the closure of West Hill Library, the debacle over Wandsworth Museum, the embarrassing state of Putney High Street, and she does it time and time again by failing to take up bread-and-butter complaints like fly-tipping.

Here are three photos from the Lennox: the first two taken on our visit, the other three years ago. Can you see any improvement?

My August parliamentary report

It?s difficult to find a more imaginative way to kick-off these reports than: ?it?s been a really busy few weeks? ? and it really is true for me, at least on the personal front.

I got married at the end of July and been on honeymoon for the past fortnight so I hope you?ll forgive me this short distraction from my duties as your parliamentary candidate.

But as you?d expect from a politician I?ve still got plenty to say, so let?s get back to business!

I mentioned last month that I?m making housing my number one priority, and the Government has now published its consultation paper. While it?s a promising start, some of the ideas don?t really apply to the crisis in London which is on a bigger scale and where land is scarcer.

We need a twin-track approach in London: a large increase in affordable rented homes built for those who will never have the sort of income to benefit from the property market; and far more practical help for those who are struggling to get a foot on the ladder ? which means a higher stamp duty threshold in London, more homebuy schemes, and more imaginative shared-ownership solutions

Some will argue that this is why we need to sell off even more council homes, as ex-council stock tends to be most affordable private housing around. But the stock of affordable rented homes locally has become so small that it causes real problems for the remaining council tenants and their families. I support right-to-buy but for every council home sold off, I want to see two new homes for rent built. We must put an end to the stigma the Conservatives created that there?s something wrong with being a council or housing association tenant: there is not.

I was really surprised to discover that in the two years Justine Greening has been MP not once has she asked a parliamentary question on the issue of affordable homes or providing help for first time buyers in Putney. Politicians rightly have differing outlooks and priorities: but as your MP, housing will be at the top of my list of priorities and my words and deeds as your MP will demonstrate this.

Although the scale was nowhere near as damaging as the rest of the country, our borough wasn?t spared from the freak floods that hit towards the end of July. The Wandle burst its banks flooding several homes in Southfields and roads throughout the constituency were for a time transformed into rivers. Whether or not you were directly affected permanently higher insurance premiums may be on the cards if this erratic weather is ultimately linked to climate change.

Climate change is possibly the biggest global threat we face but already I sense a tiring of the incessant attempts to link any freak catastrophe with global warming, or to use it as an excuse to levy new taxes seemingly for the sake of it. I?ve led on the environment locally all my political life ? I became interested in it at school when non-one was talking about it and on the Council it was my portfolio for eight years. I am not a climate change sceptic, but those of us who do care passionately about the issue must be careful not to over-reach because we need to be trusted in order to take the tough decisions necessary.

When confronted with a massive problem like climate change people understandably demand facts and action. The problem is that this isn?t maths: there isn?t one right answer and everything else is wrong. The warnings about climate change are based on forecasts; forecasts are based on assumptions and assumptions are not facts, no matter how much analysis lies behind them.

There is a tendency to dismiss out of hand anyone who dares differ from the climate change orthodoxy. We need to be teaching climate change in our classrooms, but as part of a syllabus that demands that pupils challenge assumptions, test to destruction arguments and not accept that the easiest answer is always the right one. And we adults shouldn?t do that either.

Finally, just a quick plug: if you?re on Facebook, please join my Stuart King for Putney group by clicking here.

Congratulations Justine

Justine Greening was today given a junior shadow role in the Opposition Treasury team in the House of Commons. This is one of the most challenging briefs given the dismal economic record her Party still hasn't shrugged off from its last stint in power compared to the longest period of sustained economic growth in 200 years with Labour.

But this is a great opportunity for her so congratulations, Justine. I'm sure she'll bring her accountancy skills to bear in trying to make some sense out of her Party's confused spending plans!

That means two of the borough's MPs are newly promoted: as mentioned in an earlier post, Tooting's Labour MP Sadiq Khan was appointed a juinior Government Whip last week - along with Shahid Malik the first Muslims ever to hold government positions. I think it shows that regardless of party, Wandsworth has a deep bench of high quality elected representatives; something we can all take some pride in.

UPDATE: 16.07.2007
The Wandsworth Borough News has stories on both promotions:
Sadiq Khan here
Justine Greening here