Gary Monro’s blog

I have been selected as a Conservative Party local government candidate for Cranbrook Ward in the London Borough of Redbridge. The local elections are in May so I will begin working on my election campaign very soon.

The ward is already Conservative which is good news but nothing is certain in life and there are some recent ups and downs to contend with. I am being supported by excellent people - including the lady whose retirement created the vacancy - so, while I realise I have to work very hard, I know I’m being guided by the best.

From small beginnings…

As I walked home this afternoon I heard from the other side of the road a lady screaming. A very weird sound - it actually started from under the subway and sounded like an animal. But once she got above ground it was very obviously not.

A not-exactly-young Muslim lady was chasing four schoolgirls down the road; they’d stolen her bag and were in the process of emptying the contents all over the place.

The girls - and the chasing lady - were running away from us and distance meant there was nothing I could do except watch them disappear into the distance. An Asian couple looked like they were turning their car around to give chase but she stalled and they changed drivers… It looked like it was all over. I walked off, anger rising at the audacity of some of todays kids and at the injustice of what had happened to the lady. And at the fact that I was unable to do anything to help.

Then - lo and behold - these girls seemed to have doubled back on themselves and the next thing I know they’re crossing over to my side of the road in front of me.

Out comes the mobile phone.

They walk past me to turn into a side street and one says something to the other about ‘why did you take the whole bag?’ - or words to that effect. As I dial the police they head into a park. After a few minutes holding I got to the person I needed and she started taking details from me.

The operator wants a description of the girls - how many (four), age (14 or 15), colour (black), dress (school uniform which I describe). I hope she doesn’t ask me what actually happened becase I didn’t actually see the event take place - I witnessed the aftermath.

While I’m speaking to her the girls start to leave the park. They walk past me and I tell the operator where they’re heading. I hope the police will come quickly.

The police do come quickly. I’m still talking to the operator when they arrive.

The first car comes down the road and is going the wrong way. I call him and he reverses - faster than my old banger can go forwards - up the road the girls are walking along - although they’re quite a bit ahead now - and then into another side road. Hmmm. You won’t catch them there, thinks I.

Then a van comes by, blue lights flashing and speeds down the same road. As I walk up the road in the direction of the girls another police van passes me and then, alittle further on, I see another police car. Two minutes later I catch up with the girls. They are - literally - surrounded. The van and car that had gone the ‘wrong’ way were there too. They basically cut off any escape route the girls had. These chaps have obviously done this before…

Two vans, two cars, 6 or 7 police officers and at least one plain clothes officer. Wow!

I told the operator the lady was a Muslim because I figured, at this delicate time, the police would react exceedingly quickly to a crime against a Muslim. And they did - at the speed of light as far as I’m concerned.

That lady deserved that speedy response. I do hope she’s okay. She had enough pluck - if not enough speed - to give chase to them.

We all deserve such a quick response. I hope we’re all going to get it.

Update Just spent an hour and a half giving a written statement to a police officer who, it turns out, I used ot go to school with. Small world,eh?

Then, as we left the interview room we bumped into what I strongly suspect were the families of the girls who committed the robbery. Great. I wonder what the witness protection scheme is like round here…

Like some sun-baked third-world country hampered by international debt and home-grown corruption England limps into another water-shortage with the first phases of water restrictions - the traditional hosepipe ban - being widely discussed.

South East Water is the third company already to actually enforce a hose-pipe ban and will probably not be the last. Thames Water may be banning sprinklers.

From The Telegraph:

Despite the mixed weather of the past few weeks, there has been a hidden drought since November. Rainfall has been below average for eight months, making it the fourth driest period since records began in 1892.

The problem is worst in the densely populated South and East, where rivers are at half their normal height for the time of year.

Thames Valley, which supplies eight million people, said a ban by early August was “a distinct possibility”.

Well, now. Is it the ‘hidden drought’ or the increased numbers of people living in England’s south-east and south-west regions?

The 2001 census suggests this may be a contributing factor. Regarding population change the census reveals:

Compared to 1981, the biggest increases were found, not surprisingly, in South East England (+10.4%) and South-West England (12.5%) and East England (+11.0%), whilst the North East (-4.6%) and the North-West (-3.0%) have seen a decline in population.

A spokesman for WaterVoice, the consumer watchdog, hinted at the problems of population growth in these areas:

“But if this sort of thing [hosepipe and sprinkler] is happening now, what will happen when we have 1.1 million more households in the South East? It is an alarm bell for the water industry and regulator, who need to look at the long-term position.”

Hmm. Or government could realise that population needs a certain amount of managing and act to spread ours out a bit. It can be done: relocate some government departments, offer tax benefits to companies setting up in areas of lower population density and so on.

One theory as to why the government doesn’t tackle this issue is as follows: most of England’s Conservative Party voters are in the south-east. Better that the area soak up as many such voters as possible in as small an area as possible and leave the rest of the country open for Labour to win. Spreading some of the excess Conservative votes across England might tip the balance in a few key marginals. And Blair wouldn’t want that…

I watched my daughter perform with a local drama group in their annual song and dance show this evening. It’s a good experience both for the audience and the performers: they get the experience of performing and of demonstrating the fruits of a year’s hard work. We get the opportunity to see what our children can do - and we get a fun evening to boot.

There are several things that distinguish such shows from their professional, West End counterparts.

(more…)

Crime in the newspapers doesn’t seem real. Most of it doesn’t, at least. Muggings. Robberies. Credit card fraud. The odd murder, the occasional rape. Seen it all before. It’s callous to say it maybe but there’s so much of it about that any residue of sympathy we may once have felt for the victims of many of our society’s daily outrages has been long ago blunted by constant exposure, endless repetition. Sure, we get riled by the latest ‘thing’ - feral 14 year olds beating 40 year old family men to a pulp, for example - and then the outrage - and the sense of enraged impotence - feels very real for a while. But - and I’m sure our blessed ‘leaders’ are counting on this - helpless in our fury and, simultaneously, hopeless of ever purging ourselves of it we instead allow ourselves to gradually grow numb to it and, in the end, more or less, stop caring.

It may only be when the crimes that are normally so work-a-day are carried out in one’s own neighbourhood that their influence manages to creep under the guard of acquiescent fatalism so many of us live behind.

Last weekend I needed to fill the car but my nearest petrol station was surrounded by a flimsy - but, psychologically, impenetrable - police cordon. Those lengths of tape - the thin blue (and white) line - hid nothing and, beyond the boundary they created, the men in white jumpsuits, their heads covered, told us everything we needed to know without saying a word. Someone - in our local petrol station - had been murdered.

This week, once again needing petrol, that same garage was now open but only dispensing diesel. As I drove to my next local blue and white tape once again thwarted me as armed police directed traffic past, encouraging us to resist slowing and looking.

Today, succumbing to my curiosity, I went to a newsagent and bought something I would never normally buy. A local newspaper.

(more…)

Meera Syal - comedienne, novelist, writer and all round well-known person - expounds the delights of Leytonestone in ‘The Sunday Times’.

“Welcome to Leytonstone, lovely Leytonstone,” she intones in the Indian vowels of her alter ego, Granny Kumar. “Where else could you get a six-bedroom house for only £470,000?”

She’s actually selling up and taking herself to horizons new. Well, ‘horizon’ might be over-stating it a bit: South Woodford. But she retains an affection for her old stomping ground.

“This area of London is brilliant — it has the best of both worlds. It’s easy to get into town, being closer to the centre than Ealing, but it’s incredibly green and and has a wonderful community feel. I’ve grown to love the East End, its history, its people. It’s also a really multicultural area — I have to have access to Asian culture, and I’m very near Brick Lane and Green Street with all their restaurants and fashions and where some of my writing is set.”

Her Leytonstone house was derilict when she’d bought it. One of the first renovations was to the sash windows. Good move. The first thing I did with my sash windows was replace them with PVC double glazing. Warm - but charmless.

Syal wrote many of the pieces that made her famous in this house, including the recently televised ‘Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee’ and parts of the comedy ‘Goodness Gracious Me’. All of which, I’m sure, added a few quid to its asking price when she sold…