The Qureshi Report

Reading Tribune last week, l was intrigued to see that I could soon be out of a job (“Conservative government could scrap London Assembly”, October 16). According to ConservativeHome, in the event of a Tory victory in next year’s election, Cameron and Osborne’s slash-and-burn approach to public spending could well result in the Assembly being abolished and replaced with a part-time body composed of councillors from the London boroughs. It is scarcely accidental that among the most enthusiastic advocates of this proposal are Tory council leaders like Hammersmith & Fulham’s Stephen Greenhalgh.

This is the man who has strenuously opposed the Thames Tideway Tunnel on the grounds that construction work will cause disruption to the use of green spaces in his own borough. The first major improvement to London’s sewerage system since it was put in place by Joseph Bazalgette after the Great Stink, the Tideway Tunnel is an urgent necessity from the standpoint of the environment and public health, with tens of thousands of tons of raw sewage currently being discharged into the Thames after every heavy rainfall.

But London-wide infrastructural projects are of little concern to parochial Tory politicians like Greenhalgh, who start from their own narrow local authority perspective rather than from the overall interests of Londoners. It is not difficult to imagine the obstruction that a body dominated by individuals with this sort of mind-set would have raised to Ken Livingstone’s campaign for Crossrail or indeed his bid for the Olympics.

At the same time, with the increasing powers vested in the Mayor’s office, you do need a full-time elected Assembly to hold the Mayor to account between elections. Major decisions over transport and policing that affect the lives of 7.5 million Londoners require rigorous scrutiny, which could not be carried out effectively by a part-time body. Without the efforts of the London Assembly, madcap ideas like Boris’s fantasy island in the Thames Estuary would be allowed to go ahead unchecked.

It is not as though the Assembly fails to provide value for money. Londoners get 11 committees scrutinising the work not just of the Mayor and the Greater London Authority but also of the quangos running many aspects of Londoners’ lives. l would like to think that people who have experience of Assembly Members consider us hard working. The constituencies that AMs represent cover two or three boroughs and five or six parliamentary seats, while for those of us elected on the party list the whole of London is our constituency.

The proposal to scrap the London Assembly shows how little things have changed in the Tory party. Slashing public spending and attacking democratic government in the capital – if the Tories get elected next year it will be back to the ’80s for Londoners.

Published in Tribune, 23 october 2009

The Standards Committee took the right decision in finding Richard Barnbrook guilty of bringing both the London Assembly and Barking & Dagenham Council into disrepute.

Barnbrook’s claim that three murders had taken place over a 3-week period in Barking & Dagenham was shown to be completely false.

He engaged in the worst sort of scaremongering, playing on public perceptions of rising crime when in fact crime figures are coming down. In my opinion, Barnbrook has shown that he is unfit for public office.

In Barking and Dagenham, Barnbrook and his party won support on the basis of their “Africans for Essex” propaganda, falsely claiming that the council was offering £50,000 to Africans to buy homes in the borough.

This is how the BNP operates – by spreading lies and exploiting irrational fears.

I have commented on the issue of identities before on this blog, for example in connection with Sikh girl Sarika Watkins-Singh’s successful court case over her right to wear a Sikh bangle to school, which I related to Amartya Sen’s writings on multiple identities. So I thought I should go on record about my own experience of the issue, in a video shot on the Middle East street of London, Edgware Road, in my own neighbourhood. I hope it is of interest to you all.

Produced by Progressive British Muslims and Dog Eared Films

As chair of the London Waterways Commission (LWC) l have noticed that Londoners’ interest in their waterways has been greatly enhanced in recent times. You only have to look at the great success of cultural events like the annual Thames Festival on the South Bank, the Canal Cavalcade in Little Venice and the Angel Festival in City Road Basin to appreciate that we are increasingly identifying with our waterways. Some have even suggested that this marks the revival of Londoners’ spiritual relationship with the Thames, as identified by Peter Ackroyd in his book Thames: Sacred River.

However, while Londoners have rediscovered the Thames and the canals, they are less aware of the lost rivers that run under our city. For example how many of us know that in central London the river Westbourne flows into the Serpentine in Hyde Park, as well as the River Tyburn into the Regent’s Park lakes? Or that the river Fleet runs from Hampstead Heath to the City? For that matter how many residents of Brent know that their borough is named after a river that runs beneath it? Since becoming chair of the LWC l myself have discovered rivers south of the Thames that I did not previously know existed, such as the Quaggy in Lewisham and the Wandle in Wandsworth.

Hopefully, we are now witnessing an awakening of interest in this issue. Last week l spoke at a public meeting organised by the Friends of Regents Canal, Islington branch, where the topic of discussion was the City Road Basin development, yet in a contribution from the floor we were urged not to forget the river Fleet as it flows through Camden and Islington and major interchanges like Kings Cross. In a recent letter to the Guardian, it was revealed that Housmans, the celebrated radical bookshop in Caledonian Road, regularly suffers the flooding of its basement due to its situation above the Fleet.

So l welcome the recent launch of the London Rivers Restoration Plan (LRAP) by the Environment Agency. Under this plan it is intended that we will have 15 km of river restored and 14 channels uncovered over the next six years. LRAP’s website will also become the “one point of contact” for all the river restoration works occurring in London, keeping Londoners informed about the various stages reached in their development. This will certainly help with the planning process and contribute to sustainable regeneration through the implementation of the Blue Ribbon policies within the London Plan.

Yet when LRAP is completed 70 per cent of London’s 600 km of river network will still be covered over. Perhaps it is time we identified these hidden rivers in some way, particularly the Westbourne, Tyburn and Fleet which flow unseen through central London boroughs like the City of Westminster, Camden and Islington.

My proposal is that these hidden waterways should be marked by simple blue lines along the course of the rivers, similar to the existing yellow or red lines on the roads. The blue line markings would tell Londoners where these waterways are and inform people about this important but neglected aspect of our urban landscape.

I trust l will get support from local people, so that some day soon we may have blues lines going through Central London showing clearly where the rivers are buried beneath our roads and buildings.

Finally, for those interested in the history of our lost rivers there is no better reference then Nicholas Barton’s excellent book The Lost Rivers of London.