The man of the moment

As my friends  will know I have a very limited knowledge of , or interest in Football: however every time I mention the subject for reasons that are lost on me the hits recorded by this blog sore through the roof !

But even I did not fail to notice the wall to wall coverage of the retirement of the Manchester United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson . No media outlet was immune from endless tributes to the great man and normally serious and rational journalists ( yes you Nick Robinson) were euogising the man as some sort of modern saint . Indeed as I write I suspect there is a Committee sitting in the Cabinet Offfice under the Chairmanship of Francis Maude drawing up plans for Sir Alex's eventual State Funeral at Paul's Cathedral complete with a gun carriage and Falklands veterans and presumably the obligatory demonstration at Ludgate Circus from a few die hard Socialist Workers supporters claiming Football is a Capitalist conspiracy to control the masses.

Sir Alex , along with Totteridge resident Arsene Wenger have defied the ridiculous trend in modern football that if you do not achieve instant success you lose your job . The merry go round of football league managers over the last six months has proved that many club owners have more money than sense . Indeed some league clubs have had so many managers in the last year or two that they make Harrow Council appear a model of stable Leadership .

Back in 2008 I reluctantly accepted an invitation to a Dinner at the House of Lords to mark the 125th Anniversary of the Boys Brigade . Why reluctantly you might ask because I have never had a reputation for declining a decent dinner ?  Well the after dinner speaker was to be the aforementioned Sir Alex Ferguson and as I had no interest in football and Sir Alex is a well known and firm supporter of the Labour Party I had no particular desire to meet him or listen to his after dinner musings  .

Indeed in my experience sportsmen are not necessarily the best after dinner speakers . I once endured Kris Akabusi at a Conservative function at the Savoy and after 20 minutes every time he paused for breath the audience applauded hoping he would take that as his cue to sit down , likewise Sir Steve Redgrave may well be  a much decorated distinguished sportsman and indeed now earn his living from "motivational speaking " but on the night I heard him he appeared not to be able to motivate anybody to fight their way out of a paper bag .

However how wrong I was .

Sir Alex Ferguson turned out to be my sort of man ( Party Politics aside) . A rather competent after dinner speaker he explained how from his working class upbringing in 1950s Glasgow he owed so much to the Boys Brigade and the firm Christian Faith and ethos it installed in him . He produced from his pocket his small Boys Brigade Bible which he carries with him everywhere and which continues to be his inspiration . He may well have a reputation of  not tolerating dissent and of throwing a football boot at David Beckham but all great men have a temper and without one you are a complete wimp. His practise of banning journalists who are disrespectful, of in the case of the BBC produce programmes insulting to members of his family seems a sound practise to me and one that other public figures should follow . Certainly Newcastle Football Club have done the same and locally Barnet Football Club have apparently  refused to cooperate with the Press Group for many years because  supposedly  the Chairman took exception to something they printed.

So I wish a happy retirement to Sir Alex Ferguson , a Christian Gentleman of the first order and a man with a firm determination and a track record of achievement . A genuine "man's man" .

So what if he was nicknamed the "human hairdryer " , telling it how it is never did anyone an harm !

Rejoice ! Rejoice !

The late Enoch Powell recounted how when he came down stairs  and picked up the morning paper the day after the February 1974 General Election( which he had opposed and refused to stand as a candidate in )  and saw that Ted Heath had failed to win he sang the Te Deum.

I did exactly  the same yesterday afternoon when I glanced at the football results !

If I had the power I would be ordering that the Church bells in Barnet be rung this morning in celebration of the relegation of Barnet Football Club from the Football League.

I know I am not the only Conservative adding a little Champagne to my orange juice over breakfast this morning at what seems like an end to the 15 year saga of Barnet Football Club.

The Chairman claimed last week that Barnet had been "ushered out of the Borough " well now the Club has been ushered of the Football League entirely due to their own performance and not something they can blame the Council for .

Apparently the Supporters Trust wish to exlpore the idea of building a 10,000 setter stadium on the now defunct Underhill site : Not a chance !  Anyway why would you need it ?

No doubt there will be some residual issues to resolve over the future of the site ( Please can the Council have the freehold back for the £10,000 the Club paid for it ? ) but the construction of a housing estate on Metropolitan Open space and greenbelt land is not an option .

I always  believed that the Chairman of Barnet Football Club was badly advised throughout the whole saga but the attempts by some elements to make the whole issue Party Political and extremely personal were always going to end in failure for the Club .

I wish the fans and players well in the years to come in Harrow in non league football  , but forget a return to Barnet , no Politician of any Party or Local Government Officer and few residents are going to want a repeat of the last 15 years .

Thank you and Hallelujah !

The School Nimbys are at it again !

Here we go again !

If there is one issue dominating local and increasingly national politics it is the shortage of school places and the radical reforms being introduced by Michael Gove , the best Secretary of State for Education since Margaret Thatcher .

Although there is a brief respite this year for children due to enter Primary School at age 5 this coming September due to a blip on the birth rate , from September 2014 Barnet, like most local Councils will have to enable more school places to be created.

The Gove reforms allowing the creation of Free Schools and the conversion of successful Local Authority schools into Academies are increasingly reaping benefits for Barnet parents . Most Barnet Secondary Schools have converted to Academies but so far only two primary schools.

One of those Primaries that has become an Academy is Grasvernor Infants in Underhill , the Borough's smallest school that has several times resisted attempts by Barnet Council to close it as totally uneconomic. Indeed its Governor's decision to go for Academy status is no doubt partially influenced by a desire to prevent Barnet Council from closing it in the future, not to mention that Academies do not have any Local Education Authority appointed Governors . Indeed it has become increasingly difficult to sustain  long term LEA Governors at that school , several having received an indifferent welcome and raising eyebrows at the alleged practise at the Governors meetings of ordering in Pizzas and opening bottles of wine and going on till half past ten at night !

The sooner all Barnet Schools opt of LEA control and we can wind up the activities of the Education Department at North London Business Park, with the resultant savings to Barnet Council tax payers , the better. I have long advocated the abolition of the Education Authority role for Town Halls as it is entirely synonymous with the "One size fits all approach " which has lead to so many young people across the Country being failed by the school system . At least in Barnet we have always had a fairly light touch from the Education Authority and successive Conservative Administrations have encouraged a diversity of schools , maintained , Voluntary aided and Grammar amongst them .

However it seems to me that every time the Community tries to add to the diversity of schools available for parents in Barnet  attempts are made by the NIMBY (Not in my back yard) element to prevent progress.

In my view new schools should be opened slap bang in the middle of residential areas . That is where the demand is and it encourages residents to use and appreciate their local schools. I am entirely pro motorist but would make it a criminal offence for parents to drive their children to school . I and probably the vast majority of my generation were never driven to school , we walked or took the bus. Among the excuses I have been presented with are that it is not save for their precious darlings to walk the streets of Barnet . Well the latest crime figures show another welcome reduction in violent crime and of course Barnet is one of the safest Boroughs in London. The number of random child killings in the UK is dreadful , about one child per year is killed by a stranger , and tragic and appalling as every child killing is , this is the same level as the 1950s !

The suggestion that somehow the streets are awash with paedophiles on the prowl looking to kidnap children and that the only answer is that they need to be driven everywhere in huge 4 by 4s by women with only a vague sense of the rules of the road is absurd.

The suggestion that the Avanti House School should move to the Broadfield area of Edgware should be welcomed with open arms . This successful school run by a Hindu foundation and currently located off the Harrow side of the Edgware Road wants to expand but is already faced by a well organised group of local residents who fear that somehow their area will be ruined by the schools arrival .

Well I have news for the good folk of Edgware , the area is changing and has changed dramatically over the last few years and one of those most welcome changes is the influx of a new community of middle class , professional families from an Asian , particularly Indian background.  This Community is well behaved , law abiding and ambitious for its' children hence the demand for the original establishment of the Avanti School and now for its' expansion .

We have a successful history in Barnet of welcoming new schools both faith based and secular across the Borough . However whereas the secular Archer Academy in East Finchley received little opposition to its' planning proposals on the disused Stanley Road playing fields , the faith based schools seemed to have had a harder struggle . The opposition to the Jewish Cross Community School ( JCOSS) in East Barnet was vicious at times and yet it was being sited on an existing school site and the outrageous and over the top objections to the conversion of the closed down garden centre in Daws Lane to the new Etz Chaim Jewish School wasted thousands of pounds of tax payers in pointless and ultimately unsuccessful Court cases. Fortunately the Greek Orthodox based school St Andrew the Apostle, due to open on the North London Business Park site in October has yet to attract the NIMBY brigade.

JCOSS is going from strength to strength and has not brought East Barnet to a halt and work on Etz Chaim goes on a pace. There is actually less traffic in Daws Lane and it is far easier to park  with Etz Chaim operating in temporary Council owned premises next door to the new buildings and the doom and gloom mongers have been proved wrong .

So it will be with Avanti .

Is it me or are the usual NIMBY objections to any development spiced up in the case of these schools by a dose of old fashioned racism and anti semitism ? I would have hoped that the type of objection I received from one so called Community activist when Akiva Primary School applied to rebuild its' facilities "These people are ruining Finchley " "What people ? " I asked "The Jews" she replied , were long gone .

I welcome all new schools to Barnet whether Free Schools or Academies, secular or Faith based ( about time we had proposals for a Muslim School ) or even private . I would dance with joy if we could persuade the wonderful Michael Gove to allow new Grammar Schools !!

She saved the Nation , but she put Finchley on the map !

I somehow thought she was immortal .

Only last month I was reading an obituary in the "Daily Telegraph" of an old acquaintance of mine , Sir Fergus Montgomery former MP for Altrincham amongst other places, and recalling that the last time I chatted to him was when he , along with other former Parliamentary Private Secretaries to Margaret Thatcher, acted as an usher at Sir Denis Thatcher's Memorial Service at the Guards Chapel .

I had a vision then of Lady Thatcher reading the same article over her cornflakes at the Ritz Hotel and thinking "Oh dear another good  friend gone" but as many people do a they get older secretly congratulating herself  on outlasting someone else from their past.

Over the last few years Lady Thatcher's declining number of public appearances were mainly restricted to funerals and Memorial Services , the "cocktail parties of the geriatric set" as Harold Macmillan famously described them, and as former friends and foes joined those green benches in the sky Lady Thatcher sailed serenely , although increasingly frailly on .

I last saw her about a year ago having lunch in the excellent  restaurant of the Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace with three friends . I was delighted to see that I was not the only one who could manage three courses from their first class lunch menu and that age and ill health  had not diminished her appetite .

In Spring 2010 whilst I was Mayor she agreed to attend a Mayoral Charity lunch I was hosting at Mossimon's in Belgravia , we told no one in advance she was coming and of course she received a rapturous reception and enjoyed the lunch . However by that time she could only respond to fairly straightforward questions requiring simple answers and the then Lord Mayor of Westminster Duncan Sands and I kept the conversation going.  A year of two previously I had given an interview to the distinguished historian Philip Ziegler who had been commissioned to write the official biography of Ted Heath and I asked him if he had interviewed Lady Thatcher ? "I am told there is no point as she cannot remember " he replied " yes she may have difficulty remembering three weeks ago but she still remembers  thirty years ago " was my advise to him .

Her recent ill health, she struggled to get over the death of her devoted and extraordinary husband Denis who was her complete rock , slightly overshadowed her legion of achievements which will fill acres of newsprint over the coming days .

However whilst she certainly put Great Britain back on the map after the Nation's decline under Labour in the 1970s she put Finchley firmly on the map !

When she was selected for the then Finchley and Friern Barnet Constituency ( and many commentators forget the Friern Barnet element )  to fight the 1959 General election nobody could have envisaged her future career.

Sir John Crowder , the retiring Member of Parliament firmly told his Conservative Association that he was sure they would  want to select "a younger man ",but younger members of the Finchley and Friern Barnet Conservatives ( and in those days there were many as apparently it was the best place to met members of the opposite sex ) took one look at this strong , determined young woman who knew how to make a decent speech and decided she was the candidate for them . As a young backbencher she introduced a Private Members Bill ensuring access to the meetings of public bodies although I suspect she would have been applled at the behaviour of some  who choose to exorcise the rights that her Act conferred in the Barnet public gallery .

Indeed over the next 33 years the Constituency always came first for Margaret Thatcher . When Prime Minister she gave the best part of a Friday or Saturday about  every three weeks to local matters and events, she missed the Finchley Carnival only once and that was for the World Economic Summit at Versailles , there was virtually no local organisation she was not part of as President or Patron  and she never attended any event without ensuring she had spoken to everybody in the room and nipped into the kitchen to lend a hand with the washing up as well  . "You can never have enough tea towels " I once heard her remark at a Finchley Conservative Bazaar , somehow I cannot image David Cameron making that remark with total naturalness.

Her support for Finchley Memorial Hospital was unstinting and we knew that the hospital would never be earmarked for closure, ( yes NHS cuts are nothing new) , whilst she was Prime Minister .

She had that unique gift possessed by few Politicians ( Tony Blair has it in spades as well I have to say ) that whilst you were talking to her YOU were the most important person in her life , she was not looking over your shoulder for someone more important or interesting to talk to .

She fought a last ditch campaign to save Grammar Schools in Barnet and when Secretary of State for Education clashed with a number of Conservative Members of Barnet Council who wished to rush headlong into comprehensive education . Indeed on the whole she had little time for the then Conservative Adminstration of Barnet considering several of its leading members wet and far too patrician in their approach and she could not understand why her own Borough Council was constantly increasing the rates and was not like Wandsworth and Westminster in the vanguard of Conservative local Conservative local government innovation . When Council Leader the late Leslie Pym would explain that Barnet did not receive the same level of grant as Westminster and Wandsworth he would be dismissed with a waive of the hand , he still got his CBE  . She supported those of her Councillors who kept to proper Conservative values ( the  formidable Barbara Langstone, wife of her long term devoted Constituency agent , who stood for no nonsense , John Tiplady who carefully controlled planning and the great Frank Gibson whom she credited for her selection and whose funeral at All Saints  she attended even though there were pressing National issues to be dealt with  ) and accepted their explanations that they were always out voted by the wets from Hendon and Chipping Barnet .

Her support for the State of Israel and the local Jewish Community fundamentally changed local Politics in Finchley . Memories of the  "Great Golf Club scandal " of 1962 which saw Jews excluded from Finchley Golf Club and was blamed on the local Tory establishment leading to the loss of the Finchley Borough Council  were  well and truly banished by Mrs Thatcher's barnstorming appearance at a hastily arranged "support Israel " meeting at Moss Hall Junior School during the Six Day War . Her decision to allow American planes to use British bases to bomb Libya in 1986 ensured a record number of subscriptions for the Finchley Conservative Association.

There were many thousands of ordinary Finchley and Friern Barnet residents who benefited from her advise and help over the years , from my late Father who in the 1970s had difficulties with the Inland Revenue over tax on properties he owned ( a helpful letter from the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury Robert Sheldon soon  arrived following Mrs T's intervention ), to a fellow Finchley Methodist infamously imprisoned in Moscow by the KGB for alleged Bible smuggling who to this day recalls Mrs T's support of his wife and keeping up the Parliamentary pressure on Harold Wilson which eventually lead to his release in a spy exchange .

Whatever the world crisis her constituency correspondence was dealt with quickly and efficiently and across Finchley there are hundreds of people who have fading Prime Ministerial correspondence on every subject under the sun siting in the back of draws waiting for the grandchildren to inherit it . She found time for her constituents as individuals.

Her contribution to the Borough was recognised by the award , just after she was elected Prime Minister, of the Freedom of the Borough. It needs a two thirds majority of the Council and Labour had done so badly in the 1978 Council elections, being reduced to a rump of nine seats, that they could not block it . Her death leaves only two living Freemen of the Borough , Lord Sacks and former Councillor John Apthorp founder of Bejams and Majestic Wine.

Prime Ministers of course enjoy total power except for that brief period during a General election when the polls have closed and they are waiting for the count to be declared in their own constituency , Lady Thatcher of course could not stand incompetence and inefficacy and Barnet Council who to this day are renowned for their slow election counts would feel the wrath of her anger as she sat in the Mayor's Parlour at Hendon Town Hall sipping scotch and watching the clock tick forward into the early hours . In 1987 as David Dimbleby told the Nation on the BBC that "Mrs Thatcher was heading back to Downing Street " she yelled at the telly " No I am not , I am still waiting for this Bloody count !"

Some were disappointed when she choose the area of her Lincolnshire Birth place (Kesteven) in her House of Lords title rather than Finchley and certainly had she continued the (now abandoned ) tradition of accepting an hereditary Earldom for ex Prime Ministers,being Countess of Finchley had a certain ring to it but that geographical designation remains available for a future political star .

When I used to serve on the Council of Europe and visit Eastern Europe to monitor elections and when asked where I came from I would say "Finchley" always the reply came " Ah, Have you met  Margaret Thatcher ?"

In a hundred years time when all of us are forgotten, Margaret Thatcher will still be remembered and revered on every continent   and the North London Suburb of Finchley will have earned its' part in world history .

A rare win , win situation !

Some issues in local government just go on and on and whatever effort successive Councillors and Council Officers put into resolving them there is often no end in sight.

So it is a pleasant change to report the ending of one long running saga in Barnet affairs , the Stanley Road Playing fields issue which has been occupying the minds of Barnet's finest for about the last 10 years . This site is bang in the middle of East Finchley near the Grange Estate and adjacent to the Northern Line .

Next week the Cabinet Resources Committee will be asked to agree the disposal of the Stanley Road Playing fields and the site of the former Herbert Wilmot Youth Centre to the Department for Education for the construction of facilities for the new "free school" , the Archer Academy due to open in September .

This non denominational school created very much by parent power and lobbied hard for by Mike Freer in a clear justification of Michael Gove's policy , in East Finchey has already acquired the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute Building round the back of East Finchley tube station and will fill a huge need for secondary school places for East Finchley children . The other Secondary School in the area , the Roman Catholic Voluntary Aided Bishop Douglas has long been recognised by local parents as a disaster area in Education and it is a complete and abject failure of the Catholic Arch Dioceses of Westminster that this long running disgrace has not been sorted . Repeated attempts by the Borough over the years have been rebuffed by the Arch Diocese and the only solution now for Bishop Douglas is closure or a relaunched Academy ( a la Wren Academy in North Finchley ) .

Over the years I did not win many friends in the Conservative Cabinet by constantly objecting to the sale for a housing estate of the playing fields , first we had to see off a Cllr  Brian Salinger scheme and then a Cllr Dan Thomas scheme . Back in 2005 Cllr Salinger won himself few friends by sending in the bulldozers one weekend to knock down the former Herbert Wilmott centre on the pretext of Asbestos issues, hoping for a quick sale of the site and Cllr Thomas , I suspect badly advised by his Officers saw only the pound signs of a Capital receipt .

What East Finchley does not need is more social housing . As a Ward it has more than its' fair share. What the area is desperately short of is green space , sports facilities and Community assets.

The Archer Academy proposals will provide a sports centre , an all weather pitch , and ancillary community facilities available outside school hours and protected by a proposed deed of dedication with the local organisation Sport EF . The local Community have worked hard to try and acquire the site themselves but were always doomed to failure as many organisations gave them warm words of comfort but no hard cash and their plans were unfortunately over ambitious and there seemed a reluctance to compromise .

East Finchley as an area is changing dramatically . Young middle class families unable to afford Muswell Hill and needing to be in easy reach of the tube are moving arriving in  large numbers . Now the facilities they demand  are following, with the creation of a decent Secondary School to which they can send there children . All they need now is a Waitrose ( and they could have had that , together with a new Library if Councillor Brian Salinger had not derailed the disposal of Park House near the station back in 2002) .

The Stanley Road proposals are a win for parents wanting secondary places for their children ; for the Community who want sports facilities ; for those opposed to yet more dense social housing and for the Council where the £3 million odd ( according to my source at the Dfe) capital receipt will compensate for the delayed receipt for the eventual sale of the Friern Barnet Library site .

I am rather proud of my small  role in this saga and look forward to the new Academy being a huge success .

No doubt one or two whingers will emerge and the Hendon Times will adopt its' usual sour attitude to good news but to quote a Finchley icon "Rejoice at the news  " !!!

The Underhill Soap Opera drawing to a close ?

News that the Football League have given Barnet Football Club permission to play their League matches next season at The Hive facility at Edgware in the London Borough of Harrow seem to herald the end of the longest running Political saga in Barnet Politics , the future of the Underhill football ground.

I will not bore readers with all the background but since 2001 when a Government Planning Inspector refused permission for Barnet Football Club to redevelop Copthall, what happens at Underhill has occupied the minds of Barnet Council Officers , Councillors , successive MPs and hundreds of local residents .

The support of the Labour Party for a planning application on green belt land at Underhill for a new stadium actually cost the then Labour / Liberal Party coalition control of Barnet Council in 2002 as local residents took the Conservative Party at their word when it was made clear a Conservative Administration would not allow a 10,000 stadium on Green Belt land. Anyone who has knocked on doors in roads around the football ground will know residents are eternally grateful that successive Conservative Council Leaders have kept their word.

The decision by Barnet Football Club to move seems the only sensible solution as the Chairman of the Club must have realised that no Politician of whatever Party would support a substantial redevelopment of Underhill . The Labour Party who in the early years of the decade appeared supportive of the clubs planning proposals has in recent years distanced itself from its' earlier position .Successive Council Leaders,  have endured endless meetings with the Barnet Football Club Chairman and his acolytes but on many occasions just as deals appeared close the goalposts would move , sometimes literally !

Alan Williams , the late Victor Lyon , Brian Salinger , Mike Freer , the late Lynne Hillan are among those who had the scares on their backs having dealt with the Football Club issue.

Negotiations were never helped by the habit of the late Dennis Signey OBE ,former Editor of the Hendon Times and a distinguished sports journalist and media adviser and director of Barnet Football Club leaving confidential meetings at the Town Hall and immediately ringing local journalists with a complete briefing , I suppose once a journalist always a journalist.

The sale of the freehold of the club ground by the Labour / Liberal Administration during the 2002 local election campaign purdah period ( a timeslot when no important decisions are suppossed to be taken  ) left a huge suspicion in the air over the behaviour of the outgoing Labour Administration and lead to endless Enquiries that cost the taxpayer thousands and never really proved anything except possible Council incompetence .

For someone who has little interest in Football , although I did attend Barnet v Port Vale at Underhill a couple of years ago , and once slept  with an Arsenal striker , I am not fussed if Barnet survive in the Football League or bothered where they play . However I did have some sympathy with the Chairman of the Club when he thought Barnet Council were applying double standards over Copthall by granting Saracens Rugby Club a lease and planning permission.

Saracens undertook a smooth PR and lobbying operation with Councillors and threw money at the local Community . They received a far friendlier reception from many Councillors because Rugby Union is followed on the whole by middle class Tory voting Barnet residents . Indeed the average age of a Saracens' attendee is apparently 59, hardly the age group known for rowdy behaviour. The lobbying worked as Councillors , with one or two  noble exceptions forgot about their scruples and principals about green belt development and duly voted it through .Although I think few realised they were going to get a stadium named after a German Insurance company with a rather dodgy history under Nazi Germany including one former Director General serving as Hitler's Economics Minister  . Mill Hill residents have already begun to complain to their local Councillors about the huge Controlled Parking Zone with yellow lines stretching across a vast area of Mill Hill.

Guarantees made to the Hendon MP by the Mayor of London were simply ignored . Not much unites Andrew Dismore, Matthew Offord  and I, but opposition to this  redevelopment of Copthall did.

The key factor that ensured Barnet Council eventually saw off Barnet Football Club was that successive Council Leaders and ordinary Councillors stood firm in the face of sometimes appalling intimidation . Who can forget the Coffin paraded through the streets of Chipping Barnet during the 2006 Council elections of the leaflets handed out by Football Club supporters at tube stations advising people not to vote for specific candidates on the basis of their perceived support or otherwise for the football club or the dreadful behaviour of gatecrashers at the 2006 Mayor making and buffet.

Saracens are being a little more subtle.

Last week the Club sent me an invitation to attend their match against London Welsh in March . I declined . I may be a lot of things but a hypocrite I am not . I assume that  no Councillor who has accepted such hospitality is able to vote on future planning and licensing hearings involving the Club. The "sponsoring " of all the Town Centre signs across the Borough gives the impression that somehow Saracens has the Borough "bought and paid for" . The constant positive coverage in the Hendon Times is of course unrelated to the money spent advertising in this increasingly desperate  publication . No doubt the details of the " deal" being given by Saracens as they host the Mayor's Charity dinner at the end of his year will appear in the register of members' interests in due course and is unrelated to the fact the Mayor as a Mill Hill Councillor seems to have failed listen to many Mill Hill residents who objected to the planning application .

However suddenly Barnet Political Leadership has woken up and told Saracens " enough is enough"
The Leader of the Council , Councillor Richard Cornelius told the last Conservative Group meeting that Saracens had been told in no uncertain terms that any further planning application to add 5,000 more seats ( on top of the current 10,000 ) to satisfy European Club competition rules would be given short shrift.  So how much longer before Saracens follow the Barnet Football Club route and claim the Council are uncooperative on attempts to extend their stadium and will have to consider moving elsewhere ........................

I suspect the Council has not heard the last from Saracens nor from Barnet Football Club . The Chairman has a ground to sell and quite for what development the green belt Underhill site will be sold for may ensure the Underhill soap opera still has some distance to run !

scratch the surface and see what you find

A few weeks ago the United Kingdom marked Holocaust Memorial Day . Since the introduction of this commemoration in 2001 ( due in part to the efforts of Andrew Dismore)  Barnet Council has been prominent in ensuring a suitable civic event is held. We have progressed from a cold tent in Hendon Park to the more comfortable surroundings of Middlesex University and have ensured schools participation not least in the campaign supporting the planting of snowdrops in remembrance of the children murdered during the Shoah.

The Barnet Civic event this year took place despite thick snow on the ground and attracted a reasonable attendance including all three of the Borough's Members of Parliament, the GLA Member , the Borough Police Commander and a sizeable phalanx of Councillors . The responsibility for arranging the event lies with the Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Community Engagement ( a title dreamt up by Mike Freer when Leader of the Council to keep me busy ) and now held by Councillor Longstaff who duly introduced ( very briefly ) the event . However as Councillor Longstaff spoke I could not help thinking of a video that I had watched on You tube a few days before of that same Councillor's appearance at a recent meeting of the Eastern Area Planning Committee when the subject of an "Eruv" to cover the Chipping Barnet area was on the agenda .

Applications for Eruvs have always caused a flutter of controversy ever since Barnet Council dealt with the first one covering parts of Finchley/ Golders Green/Hampstead Garden Suburb  20 years ago. However a long and through Public Enquiry at the time  decided there were no planning grounds to reject applications for Eruvs and as Council Planning Committees can only by law consider planning matters all subsequent applications have been allowed .

However this did not stop Councillor Longstaff appearing before the Committee to argue against the Barnet Eruv not least by suggesting it would encourage Jews to move into the area !!!!!

The man in charge of Holocaust commemoration in Barnet is worried about Jews moving into the Area ??????

The fact that existing  Erus have made no difference to house prices , population mix or anything else but have made the life of some observant Jews with young children or elderly relatives easier seems to have escaped him . Thousands of Barnet residents pass through Eruvs everyday of their lives and have no idea they are doing so . Councillor Longstaff's objection that residents did not want to see religious symbols outside their windows was dismissed by Councillor Joanna Tambourides who asked him if this meant he objected to public Christmas Trees ?

However Councillor Longstaff is not alone in attitude to the Jewish Community . The Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Bradford East David Ward managed to cause uproar with his comments about Holocaust Memorial Day and "The Jews" inflicting "atrocities " on the Palestinians. At least he apologised unlike the long term insulter of Israel Baroness Tonge who quite rightly lost the Lib Dem Whip over one of her ignorant outbursts . The cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in "The Sunday Times" published on Holocaust Memorial Day was rightly condemned by Rupert Murdoch , a long time supporter of Israel and the Jewish Community .

Here in Barnet, despite or perhaps because of our substantial Jewish population there are still far to many examples  of nice middle class" respectable" people seeming  to think there is nothing wrong with making anti Semitic remarks and behaving as if they were members of Finchley Golf Club in the early 1960s . A local blogger who thinks there is nothing wrong with objecting to the Sternberg Centre Planning application on the grounds "these people are ruining Finchley "; Activists on picket lines outside meetings of the North London Waste Authority oozing with anti -semitism  as they attempt to intimidate Politicians deciding on the awarding of a waste contract objecting to a multinational doing business in Israel; or objectors to a Planning application for a Mill Hill Jewish School inventing reasons why it should not proceed when everyone knew what their real agenda was ! Oh and quite why has there been such a concerted campaign against the proposed redevelopment of the Fallowcourt Avenue Synagogue ?

I spoke at the Planning Committee that agreed the application for an Eruv for the Woodside Park/ North Finchley/ Totteridge Area and before I did so I read through the two lever arch files of objections that had been received . After 20 minutes or so I could take no more. Whilst some residents had restricted themselves to objecting on what they considered planning grounds there was letter after e mail ( one of 28 pages !) containing vile anti - Semitic abuse some of which would have made Oswald Mosley blush . It made me feel physically ill .

And before the usual suspects claim anti Zionism  is not the same as being anti Semitic , that may be the case at Islington Dinner Parties but not in my book .

I look forward to the day when those who fail to understand or apperciate the Jewish Community restrict their comments to the Golf Club Bar