Council Meeting: High Speed 2, Local Hospitals and Mayor of London

Last night the main Council meeting took place. It started off with a number of announcements by the Mayor relating to people who had passed away over the Christmas period. Council held a one minutes silence.

The main item of the meeting was to discuss two motions (one put forward by the Liberal Democrat group and another by the Conservatives) about High Speed 2. My party are in favour of High Speed 2 rail as our transport system needs improving to reduce congestion, increase reliability as well as speeding up the time to get from London to Birmingham and further North.

The opposition are only looking at the negatives that might occur in Ealing. The Government need to reduce as many of these as is possible but the country will benefit hugely from High Speed 2. It will also create a large number of jobs, locally and nationally, as well as making business more successful (especially those out of London).

During the speeches the common thread was that both the Tories and the Labour party were using it to be rather party political whilst saying this was a cross party issue - it certainly is not that. Very few Tory or Labour councillors dealt with the issues and the need for investment. It is a fact that all of the three major parties support this nationally.

After this debate there was a discussion about the forthcoming election for the Mayor of London. It was obvious from the comments that both Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone have lied about their plans knowing some of them are not possible financially or for other reasons. On this Ken has certainly always promised to cut bus fares and then after being elected they go up and up and up.

The Liberal Democrat party have not made so wild claims. We want the bus, rail and tube network to be fairer. This can happen if you introduce a Part Time travel card, a One Hour Bus ticket and an Early Bird travel card to reward those who travel earlier to help reduce the congestion. Check out libdems4london.org.uk/ for more details.

We then went on to discuss a motion about Central Middlesex Hospital and its possible closure. This is an issue that has been relatively non party political. Let us hope the decision-makers make the right decision and not close a hospital that is helping lots of local residents.