Whats best in Barnet week - Spotlight on High Barnet

We've had a great response to the Whats Best in Barnet week. All sorts of people have emailed me in suggestions. One of the first off the mark was Councillor David Longstaff. Here are his suggestions

Within the High Barnet/Chipping Barnet area:

Barnet Guild of Artists

Whale Bones Farm, Wood Street, Chipping Barnet. http://www.barnetguildofartists.org.uk/

The Bull Theatre, High Street, Chipping Barnet. http://www.thebulltheatre.com/

Paul Baker is an excellent guide on Barnet Walks. http://www.barnetwalks.talktalk.net/yourguide.html

Barnet Museum, Wood Street, Chipping Barnet. http://btconnecthosting.com/barnetmuseum/

Barnet Football Club... sadly not for too much longer

Barnet Colts Cricket Club. Barnet Lane http://barnetcolts.com/

Ye Olde Mitre Inne, Barnet. http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/27/2779 

Not in my ward, but worth going to see:

Garden Suburb Theatre (who play occasionally at The Bull). http://www.gardensuburbtheatre.org.uk/

Incognito Theatre Group, Holly Park Road, Friern Barnet. http://www.incognitotheatre.co.uk/

Also... there's a blue plaque for William Wilberforce in Totteridge Lane/Mill Hill end.

Spike Milligan lived in The Crescent, High Barnet 

David Garrick once owned Hendon Hall

Sir David Jason was brought up in Lodge Lane (they knocked his house down to make the car park)

Many thanks to David for his response. I'd thoroughly endorse these and may well look into doing the guided walk. I've done these all over the place but never in my own home town.

Please keep the suggestions coming

Finchley Traders have had enough!

Last night I attended a meeting of Finchley traders, to discuss their response to the council, who have done nothing about parking in the 6 months since Brian Coleman was unceremoniously dumped in the GLA election. It is clear to everyone that the council have damaged the local High Street severely with their parking policies. When Coleman was sacked as Borough Parking Officer (AKA Cabinet member responsible for shafting local business), they had a fantastic opportunity to reverse the damage. Coleman first proposed the parking massacre in August 2011 and it was implemented in November 2012. That is four months. Dean Cohen has been in charge for six months and we don't even have any proposals.

As well as local traders, we also had two Labour Councillors and a Conservative cabinet member. The Tories sent David Longstaff, who seems to be the candidate for the sane brand of Conservative in Barnet. David made a  startling confession to me last night. I hope he will forgive me for sharing this indescretion. He said "You do realise I didn't get elected to screw everything up in Barnet?".  Yes David, I believe you, but as you are a cabinet member, now is the time to step up to the job.

For Labour, we had Alan Schneiderman and Pauline Coakley-Webb. Alan is probably the smartest cookie on the Labour benches, always well on top of his brief. Pauline is the voice of common sense, a business owner who is straight talking. I find it mildly amusing that the Labour party is becoming the party of small business in Barnet. The Conservatives seem to have walked away from the sector completely, which strikes me as a bit of a silly strategy.

So on to the meeting. The agenda consisted of three topics and was chaired by Julia Hines, chair of Age UK Barnet.

1. The effects of Scratchcards
2. What Traders want to see happen.
3. How we can get there

The discussion was interesting and it was 100% clear what the views of traders was.

Traders were dismissive of scratchcards. They felt these were of no benefit whatsoever. One trader told me after that as a solution, this resembled going to the doctor with cancer and being told "don't worry about that, we want to operate on your ingrown toenail". Several traders stated that the system was unworkable and told of drivers being ticketed whilst they purchased the cards.

The discussion as to what people wanted was again very straightforward. People wanted a return to pay and display. New meters which accepted credit cards would be even better. Traders spoke of improvements to operating hours. It was suggested that the CPZ hours could be adjusted. Other suggestions were adoption of the Federation of Small business proposal to have 1/2 hour free parking. My fellow Barnet blogger gave some start facts, 160,000 parking tickets were issued in Barnet this year, a rise of 30,000 on last year. That is 30,000 extra voters who have been alienated. Parking revenue is down, so the wardens are being made to work overtime to catch up.

Helen Michael asked the traders for a solution, local trader Paul Shea suggested full page adverts in the local paper. Traders agreed. The Barnet Eye detailed the price of these adverts and the assembled traders agreed to fund this. The Barnet Eye suggested that Councillor Longstaff report back to the leadership on the meeting. If there is no satisfactory movement from the council, the adverts will be placed next week. Other traders also agreed to display posters .

Gail Lazar of Barnet Traders suggested other messages to boost high streets, including pop up shops and other improvements. Some traders were sceptical and others resented the suggestion that other businesses could be given rent free periods, as they had to pay.

The meeting finished with Councillor Longstaff agreeing to do what he could to ensure that the Leadership fully understood the strength of feeling.

Mr Mustard observes as NSL parking warden tickets car on bay with vandalised sign

Prior to the meeting, there was a rather amusing (for us, not the motorist concerned) incident, where a NSL traffic warden was caught giving a motorist a ticket, despite signs being vandalised. As both Mr Mustard and myself were there, we indulged in some mischief.

As you can see, the sign on the left of the car has been vandalised and is unreadable

Mr Mustard left his card with the motorist and then explained to her that she should not pay the fine.

It is rather saddening that the Council has engaged in a war with its own residents. It is disgusting that unpaid bloggers seem to be the people left to fight the corner for residents, rather than the elected and rather well paid councillors running the adminstration

The Hendon Times reported on the meeting last night
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/9986288.Traders_prepare_to_fight_to_save_high_street/

Barnet Council datacentre at risk of being eaten by Rats !!!!!

I kid you not. I have just received a shocking set of emails in response to FOI requests. I really could not have predicted that such a shocking response would emerge. Just read the risks. They've redacted some of the responses. There is no comment from me that would adequately do this justice, so I won't make one, other than to point out that this was a result of outsourcing the service, and they want to outsource the whole lot !

Click on the picture for a more readable format. The bit which especially concerns me is this risk :-

The Data Centre and Comms Rooms are at significant risk as the A\C is not working correctly, the sprinkler system has been turned off due to a water leak and cables are at risk of being eaten into by Rats.

Which seems to have the action plan redacted.

This is what 9 years of Conservative mismanagement has done to Barnet Council. They are currently having a month off. It is truly unebelieveable. What an amazing coincidence that the respose arrived just as the Council went on holiday !!! I do hope Nick Walkley and Councillor Richard Cornelius are enjoying themselves, whatever they are up to and our data centre does not burn down or get eaten by rats until the council come back from there holidays. It seems to me that 6-9 months to fix sprinklers, put down rat poison and mend air conditioning is a bit excessive, but then when I need to do such things in my business, I don't spend £1,500 a day on getting a consultant to tell me what needs doing (The document is entitled IS Action Plan Final (readacted).pdf)

Being a lazy git, I've got the ball rolling with this blog and have now circulated the documents to my fellow Barnet bloggers so they too can be amazed and astounded as well. I will be returning to these documents over the next few days.

I have also circulated this to the Trades Unions as I believe it is truly shocking. If any Barnet Councillors would like a copy (you know, to help you do your job running the Council), please get in touch. I do hate to disturb you as we know that, as Councillor David Longtonguestaff says " I’ll decide what’s urgent in my life" and I'm sure he speaks for many of you. Enjoy your saturday night, I'm off to hang myself

Barnet Eye weekly round up - Philistines trash Barnet

I've been in France, no internet, no papers for a week, so I've been totally out of touch with the news in Barnet. For me the big news (and sad news) is the story that Barnet Council is selling off Church Farmhouse museum.
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/9167638.Farmhouse_museum_sale_sparks_anger_among_supporters/ 

I made this video about Church Farmhouse museum on the sunday before it shut. It features Gerard Rootes, the now Ex curator of the museum, giving his views on the museum. Sadly this video and a few memories are all that is left of the museum, thanks to Councillor Robert Ramsbottom and his Tory chums.


Shame on them. This is an act of philistinism. I had absolutely no doubt that this would happen, from the first moment that the cuts to it's budget were announced. Barnet Council really do make me sick. It's OK to concrete over green spaces, build mini cities in Brent Cross, build incinerators next to them, but when it actually comes to providing things for the people of Barnet to enrich their life what happens?

Museums budgets are cut
Libraries are closed
Football pitches are sold off
Grants to voluntary sector organisations are cut

So I hear you ask, how can we justify supporting the arts in these times of recession and debt?

Well lets look at a few things which haven't been cut

The pay of the CEO of Barnet Council and other senior executives
The allowances for Councillors (committee chairmen got a 50% rise)
The budget for consultants to outsources the council

Do I hear you say that "The consultants are increasing efficiency". This is complete codswallop. The Future Shape/OneBarnet/Barnet Track project has been running for over three years, has sucked millions from the coffers and delivered no net savings whatsoever. In fact if they had just concentrated on realising efficiencies using the Councils own staff and resources, they would have had enough money in the kitty to fund all of the chopped museums, libraries and other voluntary sector grants.

Whilst spending huge amounts on these consultants, they've let purchasing run out of control. This has been demonstrated by the Metpro fiasco, where £1.4 million was spent on a company which didn't even have a contract or the licenses to legally provide the services.

As for the Barnet blogs - my pick of the week. Mr Mustard notices that the One Barnet project has ceased to exist. Imagine my surprise. A week in Lourdes and we have a miracle whilst I'm away !


http://lbbspending.blogspot.com/2011/07/one-barnet-now-you-see-it-now-you-dont.html

Sadly Mr Mustard had played a nasty practical joke (we have a good sense of humour, us Barnet bloggers). Nope, OneBarnet hasn't disappeared, they've just stopped telling us how much they spend on it.

Mr Reasonable reports that he's listed a whole plethora of errors in the way Barnet Council pay invoices without proper supporting information.
http://reasonablenewbarnet.blogspot.com/2011/07/audience-with-auditors-part-two.html

There is an absolutely fantastic post from VickiM on Colindale. Vicki shares my concerns about the fact that the council is obsessed with shiny new developments, whilst leaving existing Council victims housing tenants to rot in run down, badly maintained, pseudo slums. Top blogging Vicki - no one seems interested in Graham Park, Burnt Oak etc, it is truly shameful.
http://vickim57.blogspot.com/2011/07/colindale-can-you-feel-rhythm-or-would.html

Mrs Angry reports provides documentary evidence showing that Councillor David Longstaff is without doubt a prize cock. Which stone did they find this failed actor under?
http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2011/07/recall-performance-appraisal-for.html

I would also have given a roundup of Robert Rams blog, but old lazybones couldn't be bothered to post anything, despite being responsible for selling off Church Farmhouse museum.