It has been a very busy few weeks or so for me both in the Town Hall (and Tooley Street!) and at London Met as the Academic Year is in full flow!

But firstly I have to mark the sad passing of Alf Wallis(pictured on far left) from the D'Eynesford Estate. I have known Alf ever since I joined the Labour Party over 23 years ago, as fellow party members and of course since 1994 as his local Councillor. Alf had a long career in the Merchant Navy and Commercial Shipping and was a very hard working and straight talking Tenants Rep on the D'Eynesford Estate, in recent years becoming a key voice on the Southwark Pensioners Forum. I was very proud to have nominated Alf for a Civic Award some years ago and the Certificate has pride of place in his home.
Alf in recent years found a huge amount of enjoyment visiting West End Shows and his home is covered in signed opening Night posters of some of the biggest shows, he had also become for me a great source of good tickets!!
This picture was taken at the Armed Forces Day in June where Alf had a great day out with all of us at Potters Field. Shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer and he dies 3 days ago with his family and friends around him. We will all miss him very much!!
We had a very good Camberwell Communcity Council last week with lots of good news on Camberwell Leisure Centre, Burgess Park and Camberwell Green.
I do like the Council's "REVITALISE5" logo with the 5 by the SE even though I cant work out how 4 signs can cost £15,000!!
We had a long and frustrating Camberwell Community Council Planning Meeting last night with rogue developers carrying out conversions in spite of a Planning Permission refusal and coming back to us for retrospective permission as they know how limited the law is, very difficult for us and very hard for local people to understand the limits on what we can do!!! very frustrating!!!
I am extremely annoyed that despite expensive "Revitalise" signs springing up over Camberwell on the key Core Strategy Consultation there are no plans for investing in Camberwell apart from packing more flats into an overcrowded part of the borough to protect the North and South where this cynical Tory/Lib Dem Administration see all their votes coming from!!
We will be making this clear at Council Assembly next week and hopefully get our views taken seriously in the next round of consultation!! I hear that our beleaguered Housing Department is about to be "Red Flagged" as a failing service which for the largest landlord in London is nothing short of a disgrace and which can all be traced back to the now infamous "100 days of Change" which has wrecked the Housing Department and which is continuing to do so with the imminent reorganisation of Resident Involvement staff which means getting rid of some of them and moving the rest of them as far away from residents as they can to the Tooley Street Titanic!! This shambles may be this discredited Administrations real "Iceberg" upon which they will flounder next May!!
Rumours are rife that the Elephant and Castle deal with Lend Lease is soon to be signed and not before time!! Clearly the clock is ticking and the right deal has to be done before the end of this year or I feel it will be time to look elsewhere!!
Shortlisting and Selections are well underway within the Southwark Labour Party and some really excellent people have already been selected to stand next year, young and bright people who will be a real credit to the Labour Party and a real asset to Southwark Council. I am still clicking my heels but hope it will all be resolved in the next few weeks and the real fight commences!!
Hibs continue to impress with a fighting 1-1 draw against Rangers at Ibrox and looks like we were unlucky not to take all 3 points at the end!! Anthony Stokes continues to score and hit a fantastic skillful strike against Rangers on Saturday!!
You can see highlights of the game on the BBC site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scot...

I am coming to the end of my break in Edinburgh and of course the big story has been the release of the convicted Lockerbie Bomber,

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Clearly the SNP Minority Scottish Government have made a huge political error of judgement and I hope that the Scottish electorate will not quickly forget it. There has been significant damage worldwide to the reputation of Scotland which I think will have a lasting negative effect and it really shows how out of touch the SNP are with Scottish and World public opinion!!
I have had a restful but active time in Edinburgh visiting the Scottish Parliament, an impressive building and I really like the openness of it and the accessibility to ordinary people to look at and use the building! I went on a very informative Tour although the buidling was busy due to the Lockerbie bombing issue of course!
I spent some time going to Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows highlight being Frank Skinner's "Credit Crunch Caberet". I have never seen Edinburgh as busy as it is this year and some nice weather really helped the experience! The Edinburgh Festival's are really fantastic events for Edinburgh, Scotland and the UK!
I also reached the 50 year Milestone on Saturday and we had a Birthday Barbeque at my Sister's in St. Andrews. Bernadette worked very hard and made me a fantasic Birthday Cake! Saw all my Nephews as well so a really nice day and week!!
Despite some initial worries Hibs have started off fantastically well in the SLP with 2 very good wins and yesterday a 1-0 defeat to Celtic but all reports are of an excellent display by Hibs with Celtic Goalie, Boruc, the busier of the Keepers! Made me laugh to see McGeady sent off for diving after all the Eduardo furore! I recall that great Celtic hero Henrik Larsson get more late penalties for Celtic at Parkhead than anyone!! As they say what goes around comes around! Celtics comprehensive defeat at Arsenal does highlight the widening gap between the English and Scottish game which in my view is largely down to the incompetence of the people running the Scottish football!!
"Yogi" Hughes looks like he is putting a good sqaud togther and getting Anthony Stokes from Sunderland may prove to be the buy of the Season!
Posted by John

Last night I attended a packed meeting of Lakanal residents in the Sceaux Gardens Tenants Hall, organised by the local T&RA in response to the council's apparent refusal to hold one on the night!
The Meeting was packed and an overspill meeting was heard in the Town Hall with Council Officers apparently "surprised" at the numbers that turned up?
Harriet Harman MP and Val Shawcross AM attended, along with Labour Group Leader Peter John, Ian, Alison and Sandra Brunswick Ward Councillors and me as Community Safety Spokesperson (Ian also has Housing Brief in Labour Group).
I was disappointed not to see any Executive Members at the meeting but have since been informed that the Leader and Deputy Leader took advice from the tenants reps who were apparently keen for the meeting not to be politician focussed which I of course understand. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding as I think that it would have been good for them to have attended and observed as we did and show a degree of solidarity with the tenants but I cant criticise them for taking and following the reps advice! None of the politicians present made any comments on the night which was exactly the right thing to do but I think that our presence was appreciated!
A very interested observer was Sir Ken Knight, the Government's Chief Fire and Rescue Advisor who will be Chairing the Inquiry. The Chief Executive and other Officers, Government Officials along with Senior Fire and Police Officers made up the rest of the top table!
The people at the meeting were clearly very distressed and many of them seriously traumatised so it was never going to be an easy meeting to manage but over the three hours there were a lot of traumatic evidence given and many good questions asked which I am sure will greatly assist the Inquiry.
Whilst a number of detailed questions were asked of the Fire Brigade and Police response to the incident the overwhelming view was one of thanks for their efforts and for rescuing a significant number of people from the building who would have otherwise died!
Many questions were also raised over Council Policy of high rise blocks, their evacuation, the Decent Homes works carried out in recent years and previous plans to demolish the block.
In such early stages it would be wrong for me to express any views on any of these matters as it will take a lot more investigating before many of these questions can be satisfactorily answered!
I was concerned at some of the comments about the Council's response and am very keen to follow up issues over lack of money for food and clothing, no proper meals in Emergency Shelters, sending people to alternative homes with just an address and then some finding filthy unfurnished properties, lack of one to one advice and lack of counselling to name but a few of the apparent Emergency Response shortcomings and I think we need answers and the Council need to learn from the mistakes! We will be keeping a very close eye on this to monitor how the Lakanal residents are treated in the short and long term and to date the verdict is very mixed althought I think that there was overall agreement that the Council and the Emergency Services were committed to doing the right thing !!
The Labour Group will be putting down an Emergency Motion tomorrow evening at Council Assembly simply expressing our horror and grief at the tragic event and promising to do everything we can to find out what caused it and what we can learn from it and to ensure that it never happens again. Rumours are the Lib Dems are trying to stop us doing it and putting pressure on the Tories to vote it down!! Cant imagine what they are thinking about?