Take for instance the big story in London yesterday. A helicopter crashed into a crane and cascaded fire and debris down onto the street in rush hour. The pictures were terrifying. Former chief of Police in Barnet was on the news saying that it was a miracle only two people lost their lives and paid tribute to the brave members of the emergency services who helped stop the situation be so much worse. Then we find out that the first fire engines on the scene were from a station which Boris Johnson is planning to close. The Tories in City Hall said "it doesn't matter, the response time would only be 45 seconds longer from the alternative". Well if you are trapped in a fire and being asphyxiated, 45 seconds can seem like a very long time. If you don't believe me, turn you radiator up to full and hold your hand on it for 45 seconds. Then tell me that 45 seconds doesn't count. If you are trapped in a fire, with smoke choking you, 45 seconds can be the difference between life and death.
There are certain areas where we should make cuts, fire response is not one of them. It says a lot that the Conservative politician with the biggest personal mandate in the country, the man responsible for our protection doesn't get it.
But lets look closer to home. Lets look at Barnet. What vision do the Barnet Conservatives have? What makes Barnet a desirable place to live? Here's my list
* The Green Belt
* Good Schools
* Good transport links
* Harmonious community relations
* Safe and relaxed street scene
* Great place to have children
Do you agree? Will you still agree in ten years? You may not because this council is embarking on a whole swathe of policies which could destroy every one of the above great features of Barnet. Let me explain
* The Green Belt
Barnet plans to outsource planning control to Capita as part of the One Barnet project. Whatever you may or may not think of the planning process, nobody can argue that putting it in the hands of people with no links to Barnet and motivated by profit, can possibly improve the way decisions are made. Sure, it may be cheaper, but when our green and pleasant Borough has been wrecked by bulldozers and covered in concrete, will we still think that cutting costs was such a great idea. A Barnet Councillor recently told me that all "important decisions" will still be made by councillors. That can be demonstrated to be a complete lie. Barnet Council has recently imposed a completely overbearing match day parking scheme on Mill Hill. This covers the vast majority of the ward, but local Councillors who opposed the scheme were ignored and an officer, Ms Pam Wharfe signed it off.
* Good Schools
Our schools are under threat as never before. The biggest threat is from the over development of the Borough. Barnet Council plans to grow the size of the population from 320,000 to 380,000 in ten years. The indiginous population numbers are stable, which means there will be a huge influx of immigrants from elsewhere. One nature of economic migrants is that they are largely of child bearing age. This will put a massive strain on our educational infrastructure. I am not someone who seeks a ban on immigration, but no one has told me how Barnet can possibly cater for the rise in pupil numbers which we will see over the next ten years.
There is also the issue of Free Schools and selective academies. Tory zealots claim these raise standards. This may be true for pupils who attend these institutions, but they suck the best pupils out of the rest of the schools locally. We will end up with a two tier system and institutionalised "haves and have nots". Property prices will become even more distorted as parents move next door to good schools.
* Good transport links
As with education, with Barnet set to grow by 60,000 people, where is the extra capacity on the transport system going to come from? There is nowhere to put more roads and the rail and tube services are already packed like sardines. Barnet Council hasn't even got a transport policy.
* Harmonious community relations
Community relations are one thing we pride ourselves on. Over the years various waves of immigrants have been successfully assimlated and make a valuable contribution. No one could imagine Barnet without it's Jewish community, Greek Community, Irish Community and Asian community (to name but a few). We all get on fine. I have deep fears for the future given Barnets lack of forward planning. When parents start to find that there is no place at the local school for their children, we have a fertile breeding ground for people set on stirring up trouble and discontent.
* Safe and relaxed street scene
Yesterday we saw two sixteen year olds stabbed in Burnt Oak. I ask myself, what sort of society we are becoming. It appears that this happened during a robbery in a well used park. I know the park well as my 12 year old son's football team play their home games there. You can imagine how I feel about that. Police numbers are under threat. Boris says that front line officers will not be cut. This is a smoke and mirrors trick to fool us. If the back room people who type reports, send emails, process lab reports, collate crime statistics, destroy the hashish recovered from busts of drug warehouses, etc, etc are sacked, the work still needs doing. Highly paid and highly skilled officers will end up spending their time on menial tasks. I do not believe that anyone wants less police. I think we'd all forgoe the cost of a pack of Tescos hamburgers a week to pay for it.
* Great place to have children
My kids mean the world to me. I love the London Borough of Barnet but I love my kids a million times more. None of the things I mentioned above will make the lives of my children better. No one at Barnet Council has told me a single thing in their plans which will make the lives of young people easier or better. My elstest daughter is seventeen. She achieved ten A* at A Level and an A. She would like to go to University. Thanks to this governments policies, she will leave Uni saddled with debt. She will probably never be able to afford to buy a flat unless mummy and daddy help her or she moves away. Her children will find a very different Barnet to grow up in. One less green, overpopulated, declining school standards, overcrowded roads, buses and tubes, communities at loggerheads, each segregated in their own ghettos and schools. It won't be the Barnet we know, it won't be the Barnet we want. And why are we going down this route? Because the people in charge of the council don't think that we're willing to pay the price of a packet of value Tescos hamburgers a week for something a bit better.
The London Borough of Barnet is twinned with many places. Our local dignitaries often go off on nice little trips to these other Hamlets for civic receptions and other such things. I suspect that by the time I am laid to rest, the only place we'll be twinned with is Hell, and I don't mean the town in Norway.
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