Boris for Mayor
Paul Johnston has launched a ‘Back Boris’ page on his blog, www.pauljohnston.wordpress.com where you can keep up to date with the latest news and policy developments.
Next Ward Surgery
Our next ‘surgery’ for constituents will be at School Lane Community Centre on Saturday 15th March between 10.30 and 12 noon.
Carton recycling goes borough-wide (from RBK website)
Kingston Council has teamed up with Tetra Pak Ltd to make recycling waxed cardboard-based drinks cartons easier than ever.At the end of last year five new recycling banks for drinks cartons were introduced at various locations across the borough and because of the amount of cartons that are being recycled, a second bin has now been added to each site:
- Raeburn Avenue, Surbiton
- Cox Lane, Chessington
- Cocks Crescent Car Park, Cocks Crescent, New Malden
- The Hawker Centre, Lower Ham Road, Kingston
- Sheephouse Way, New Malden
This dramatically increases the number of carton recycling banks in the borough from just one (located at Sainsbury’s in North Kingston) to 11.
Each year UK drinks carton manufacturers produce nearly 60,000 tonnes of cardboard-based cartons for milk and juices. Since the inclusion of the banks, carton recycling in the borough has been increasing steadily and more than 1.7 tonnes of carton waste has already made its way to the recycling mills – that’s approximately 6,300 one-litre cartons!
Boris Johnson launches Transport Manifesto
Conservative Mayoral Candidate Boris Johnson has launched his Transport manifesto today. This link takes you direct to the Adobe .pdf version of it; http://www.backboris.com/assets/completed_transport_manifesto.pdf
Prominent features include scrapping Livingstone’s plan to charge a £25 congestion charge on people carriers and reconsulting on the western extension of the Congestion Charge zone. Unlike his Lib Dem rival he does not propose to include Surbiton Hill in an All-London CC zone, where people from outside London (at the Elmbridge end of Lovelace Road, for instance, will have to pay £10 a time to drive into it. You will find the relevant passage quoted verbatim at www.pauljohnston.wordpress.com under the heading ‘Weak thinking Brian!’
Council Tax still highest
Last night the Council Tax for 2008-9 was fixed following a last minute transfer of £100,00 from balances to give an increase which the Liberal Democrat Administration boasts is ‘lower than the rate of inflation’. And so it is, if you use the Retail Price Index, which currently has inflation running at 4.1%. In fact the figure the Government uses is one of its own creation, called the Consumer Price Index. Somehow this has inflation running at about 2.4%, 1% lower than this year’s CT rise of 3.4%
The bold figures are that Band D payers will pay £1580, Band F £2282 and Band H £3159 next year. The full list can be found on the RBK website.
Residents might like to take on board, in this year of Mayoral Elections, that Band D payers will pay £309 of their £1580 to fund the Mayor of London and the services he ‘provides’. Band F will chip in £447 and Band H will contribute £619. This will fund some essential services but it will also be paying Ken’s crony ‘advisers’ salaries of £123,000 a time and funding the ’embassies’ Ken has set up in seven other countries, including Venezuela. If people don’t think this is a good way to spend OUR money they have it literally in their hands on May 1st to do something about it.
Surbiton Forum 