“I recognise that in Harrow there is deep distress at the ongoing appalling situation in Gaza and renewed anger at the injustice faced down the years by the Palestinian people” says Harrow West MP Gareth Thomas.
There have been public demonstrations outside his office in West Harrow as he opted not to vote at the Commons for the ceasefire in Gaza.
Also, Tories have selected Abbas Merali their parliamentary candidate for Harrow West constituency from the community that Mr Thomas had relied upon for votes.
In a very recent email shot, he shares deep concerns about the situation in Gaza, where he sees the suffering “intolerable”, as “millions are displaced, desperate and hungry”.
“Israel continues to use devastating tactics that have seen far too many innocent civilians killed, with unacceptable blocks on essential aid, nowhere safe for civilians, a growing humanitarian catastrophe, and now warnings of a deadly famine” he says.
“I called on the UK Government to galvanise international support for the UN agencies working to help people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” he informs.
Also, that he voted against the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill because in his view “it undermines support for a two-state solution, at a time when that goal is more important than ever”.
The Bill intends to prevent “public bodies when making decisions about procurement and investment from considering a country or territory of origin or other territorial considerations in a way that indicates political or moral disapproval of a foreign state.”
Mr Thomas welcomes the December 2023 UN Security Council vote, believing that “diplomacy is the only route to a lasting peace. Open-ended military action without a clear and desired political outcome is futile”.

Long-time Harrow councillor and a graceful Harrow mayor John Nickolay has passed away yesterday (9/01/2024).
Cllr John Nickolay, 88, actively participated in the work of the council, including the traffic and transport work.
He served as the borough’s mayor in 2008/09 where he attended well over 500 events and told the Harrow Times he has been impressed with the way young people from different background integrate and get on together.
He said: “We have had great fun going round the schools, because this is where it all starts. “You wouldn’t think the kids are sometimes the ones who end up in the papers.
Cllr John Nickolay had consistently voiced his opposition to the proposals, which would see the introduction of a third runway at Heathrow.
He was concerned that further growth at Heathrow could lead to Harrow becoming “another Hounslow”.
His relaxation activities included car engineering. (Correction: we now understand that the councillor did not have any interest in engineering – sorry!)
Earlier, Cllr Asad Omar (borough mayor 2010-11) died in October last year!

There is a strong possibility of a new political party under Jeremy Corbyn in response to the increased public demand for one (thousands are signing a petition via @UKChange).
Sources close to Jeremy Corbyn have hinted that he’s ready to launch an entirely new political party based on an ‘anti-war movement’ and green issues.
Both main political parties – Labour and Tory – have defection as the Tories are facing a similar issue with Reform, the party led by Richard Tice.
On 15 December 2020, we predicted a new political party set up, following the launch of the Project for Peace and Justice – cooperative approach for peace and socialism, more than what Labour opposition is doing.
The Project reminded of the Co-operative Party formation on the reformist agenda, which since 1927 has an electoral agreement with Labour Party.
In welcoming the project, Pamela Fitzpatrick, who was a Labour councillor and parliamentary candidate in Harrow East, and is now a director of the project, had said: “Jeremy Corbyn is a politician who is genuinely altruistic and has been a powerful campaigner for peace and justice for decades. I very much welcome this exciting initiative”.
The new party could provide an option at the ballot boxes – well-known local candidates who actively address the community concerns regarding justice and equality locally, nationally and internationally.
In a quiet Harrow, public protests and demonstrations have been rare. But the increasing gap between how residents feel and what their MPs do regarding the matters like Israel and Palestine situation, has led to many public protests and social media expressions.
In considering the potential of a new political party that encapsulates the public’s changed mood, worth remembering the impact of the Referendum party on the general election outcomes in 1997 in the constituencies like Enfield Southgate and Harrow West, where sitting MPs lost.

Harrow council Planning Policy Advisory Panel, under Cllr Marilyn Ashton who is also the chair of the council’s planning committee, advises the council cabinet on various planning matters, including the infrastructure issues due to the developments in the borough.
The National Planning Policy Framework sets out the responsibility of local planning authorities to identify and proactively plan for the provision of infrastructure to support their projected growth.
One important aspect of the Harrow panel’s work is to give ‘detailed consideration to and make recommendations to the cabinet in respect of the use of the Community Infrastructure Levies (CIL) funds’.
The CIL is a charge that local authorities can set on new development in order to raise funds to help fund the infrastructure, facilities and services – such as schools or transport improvements – needed to support new homes and businesses.
Harrow, like some other London councils, seems to have been inspired by and therefore could benefit from the scope of the London Mayor’s imaginative Infrastructure Advisory Panel that focuses on cross-cutting policy issues such as coordination, resilience, regulation, funding and financing, data and innovation.
What Harrow could also follow is the mayor’s focus on bringing together a diverse range of people in the infrastructure and development sectors.
For example, one of the key aims of the mayor’s advisory panel is to address issues around a lack of diversity in the planning sector by offering a platform for innovative ideas brought forward by independent women and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) professionals.
The inclusion needs to be in real terms and not by a mere reference to ‘diversity’ as is the case in the council’s Spatial Vision and Strategy, and Strategic Objectives (the word ‘diverse’ appears only once in the text).
The Spatial Vision predicts that in the year 2041 ‘Harrow will continue to be a thriving outer London Borough where the “diverse” Harrow community will benefit from an ever-improving quality of life, having a well-connected borough that provides excellent local access to a range of facilities, services, housing, employment, and nature’.
Any community in any borough would benefit from such good conditions and provisions unless the “facilities, services, housing” etc are specific to the needs and aspiration of certain groups of people which has not been said here!!

In a quiet Harrow, public protests and demonstrations have been rare.
But the increasing gap between what residents feel and what their elected or potentially elected representative do regarding the matters like what has been happening in Israel and Palestine, has led to public protests and social media expressions.
November 4 – protestors who feel for a ceasefire outside the office of Labour MP for Harrow West, Gareth Thomas.

November 18: protestors for ceasefire outside the office of Harrow East MP Bob Blackman.

December 6: protest outside the parliamentary candidate Primesh Patel’s fundraising activity.

A judicial review, to overturn the acquittal of two protesters who called Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith “Tory scum” outside the Conservative party conference in 2021, has been unsuccessful.
The high court ruled that the protesters were “reasonable” as the use of Tory scum was to highlight the policies of the MP and was relevant to the “reasonableness of the conduct” in relation to the rights of freedom of expression and assembly. The director of public prosecutions asked for the review.
Sometime before, another judicial review failed, this time in a bid to resist the expansion of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) in London.
Tory run five London councils, including Harrow, launched a judicial review in February against Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s plans to extend the ULEZ to outer London boroughs.
The high court ruled in July that the mayor’s plan was “within his powers”. The judicial review failed.
The court action cost taxpayers £150,000 in each of five local authorities.
Harrow council administration never apologised to residents for wasting their £150,000.
Many big cities have ULEZ, including Birmingham and Glasgow, but of course they had no political reason for a revolt against such an air clear up initiative.
The Tory revolt against the ULEZ, London Mayor initiative, was apparently instigated by the Harrow councillor Susan Hall, who at the time led the GLA Conservatives group and is in the habit of calling Mayor Khan “a disgrace”.
Later, she stepped down from the post and is now the Tory candidate for the London Mayor election next year, heavily exploiting the ULEZ for political gain.

Given the increased stabbings in Harrow and the probing question ‘why’, Harrow council Harrow Community Safety Strategy (2023 – 2026) becomes of specific interest.
The strategy informs that from December 2021 to December 2022, the number of notifiable offences in Harrow increased by 2.6% including knife crime increased by 24.1%  (cases reported in 2023 might show a further increase).
Violence against the person is greater within the Greenhill ward, which includes the town centre and transport hubs, with a rate of 51 incidents per 1,000 residents in this ward, compared with the borough average of 21 incidents per 1,000 for the same period.
Parts of the Greenhill ward are now in Marlborough ward.
The strategy acknowledges the importance of addressing the issue of violence in the borough, including the knife crime, which encompasses all criminal offences committed using a knife or a bladed article as a weapon and can often to be linked with other issues such as drugs, gang involvement, organised crime and exploitation.
Intent to supply drugs has risen by over a third in 2022 in Harrow.
To address drugs and knife crime situations in the borough, the strategy does not seem to be drawing on the experiences of inadequacies in the previous strategies like in Wealdstone or the Harrow Substance Misuse Strategy 2015-2020 and Harrow Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2020‐2025.
Moreover, the council priorities – ‘tackling and reducing offences’ and ‘harm caused by drugs or reducing the number of violent incidents in the borough’ – have no outright focus on engaging with the diverse local communities to tackle the drug dealing and drug taking problems, despite the report highlights the Harrow Borough Context as ‘64% of our population come from a Black, Asian and Multi-ethnic background’.
No single service nor intervention can address these problems alone. Preventing and reducing the harm caused by drugs requires a whole system approach that focuses on addressing the ’cause and effect’, the drugs pushing and root causes of substance misuse, rather than treating the effects in isolation.

Good to see that the Harrow council is working on a Climate And Nature Strategy, though somewhat behind many other councils, to comply with the government’s 2030 Strategic Framework that sets out how the UK will deliver internationally on its climate and nature goals in this critical decade.
The strategy provides a framework of key action areas which could help the council and the communities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
The GLA reported that Harrow’s total carbon emissions in 2015, were around 770 kt CO2e, which represented 2.4% of London’s total emissions. For Harrow to help deliver London’s zero carbon ambitions, it will need to reduce carbon emissions by over 30% from the 2015 level by 2025 and nearly 90% reduction by 2050.
Harrow has a Climate Change Strategy 2019-2024, but its implementation presents a mixed picture.
In May 2020, ‘The Student View’ charity Freedom of Information request revealed that “the issue of budget and additional resources for delivering the council’s pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2030 hasn’t yet been discussed in detail through the Council’s Climate Change steering group meetings with the Cabinet members.”
There have been Environmental Services staffing cuts:  the service is responsible for a multitude of areas, including our parks, open spaces and nature reserves, street trees, allotments, verge maintenance, street cleaning, fly tipping and general waste management.
The fly tipping remains a challenge and the verges in some parts of the borough are poorly maintained.
Harrow was one of the four Conservative held London councils that had gone for but lost a judicial review challenging the London mayor’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion programme, including Harrow, to clear up London’s air.
In view of such a lack of seriousness in addressing the climate change, the council should take on board the key message emerging from the residents survey, which like many other boroughs is likely to be ‘Go Faster, Go Further’.
We have suggested the following:
Publicise climate emergency and promote a greater awareness of the truth of climate change amongst the local population, aiming for a net-zero by 2050.
To ensure that future developments in the borough prioritise environmental sustainability, urgently upgrade the council’s Sustainable Building Design Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) 2009 to sharply focus on the council’s climate and nature action policies and practices in deciding the planning applications.
Facilitate more Solar PV Schemes, actively upgrade street lighting to LEDs and provide electric vehicle charge points in the council car parks.
Develop carbon emission data monitoring processes – use the data to raise public awareness and inform planning for more and better climate and nature action.
Ensure that carbon reduction ambitions that underpin the sustainable development principle are integrated within procurement practice as appropriate.

Gareth Thomas MP has welcomed the announcement that Northwick Park Hospital will get a new ward providing 23 new beds as a result of a government investment of £22.6 million.
“I am delighted to hear that our campaign for more investment at Northwick Park Hospital has had a success! This new 32 bed ward will make a difference, but more investment is still essential if we’re to get our local healthcare services back to where they should be” he said.
Residents and NHS worker had signed a petition and supported the Labour campaign to improve the hospital capacity.
Also, during an intervention in the Commons, he said: “One of the ways to improve retention and recruitment of NHS staff at Northwick Park Hospital, which serves my constituency, would be to invest in doubling the number of Intensive Care beds there”.
He then asked the Health Secretary Steve Barclay, who had visited the hospital, whether he discussed the issue with Northwick Park’s chief executive and when he would announce funding for a new 60-bed unit.
According to data from London Northwest Healthcare Trust and Mr Thomas, the intensive therapy unit (ITU) had regularly averaged as high as 99 per cent of its bed occupancy.
The A&E department in Harrow is one of London’s busiest, and last winter was regularly experiencing a near total take-up of available beds.
Northwick Park hospital serves an ethnically diverse population, mainly concentrated in the London Boroughs of Brent and Harrow.
The Care Quality Commission inspection in May 2022 found that the hospital Requires Improvement. That is, ‘the service isn’t performing as well as it should, and we have told the service how it must improve’.

The high court has dismissed a legal challenge by five Tory-led councils against the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ).
Out of 32 London boroughs, Harrow was one of the four Conservative held London councils – Bexley, Bromley, Harrow and Hillingdon – that along with Surrey County Council had gone for a judicial review challenging the London mayor’s Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion programme.
To help clear up London’s air, the ULEZ is expanding from 29 August 2023 across all London boroughs, including Harrow.
Most petrol vehicles under 16 years old or diesel vehicles under 6 years old meet the emissions standards, and those which do not, have to pay a daily charge £12.50 if driven inside the zone.
The high court challenge, paid by the taxpayers’ money, was apparently instigated by the Harrow Councillor Susan Hall who at the time led the GLA Conservatives group and is in the habit of calling Mayor Khan “a disgrace”.
Later, she stepped down from the post to become the Tory candidate for the London Mayor election next year.
The honourable thing the Tory councillors in the Tory-led London boroughs and their MPs could do is to apologise to the residents for wasting the ratepayer’s money for political gain!
Cllr Hall is known for creating chaos for political gains.
Under Cllr Hall portfolio for environment, residents rejected the unwise change in the frequency of collecting the Brown and Waste Bins by the new Harrow Conservative administration in 2006, to the point that a Conservative seat in the Harrow Weald ward was badly lost in the August 2006 by-election that was held due to the death of the Tory councillor.
During her opposition leadership that started in 2010, Tories lost the councils in 2010 and 2014 – five sitting Tory councillors were defeated – two Tory councillors defected and 2 by-elections were lost in 2013.
The Conservatives lost the Harrow council twice, apparently because of the accumulated backlash of the waste collection arrangements and heavy-handed implementation of the CPZ (controlled parking zone), both being under Cllr Hall portfolio.
Regarding the Cllr Hall mention ‘I became the Leader of the Council in Harrow’, she was not elected by the residents. Many say that her very short-lived administration (late 2013 to May 2014 when Tory group lost the council) was a fluke.
[In mid-2013, the breakaway Independent Labour Group, encouraged and supported by the Tory group, snatched the council administration from Labour because of what was described as the personal grudge within the Labour group.
A few months later, Cllr Hall grabbed the council administration with the support of the well-groomed Independent Labour Group who voted in the Tory group through a highly controversial process which created the political mess in Harrow (i.e. a hung council where both the Labour and Tory groups had 25 councillors each, and Tory minority administration was put in place because of the 8 ILG councillors)]