Boris Bungles Plan to Reward Recycling

Boris Johnson’s eye-catching plan to reward Londoners who recycle certainly wouldn’t work in Camden as most of our households live in multiple occupation properties. Incentivising or penalising those who do or don’t recycle only works if you can associate households with their bins. We can’t. Back to the drawing board, Boris.

A much better way to incentivise residents to both reduce waste and recycle more would be to copy Belgium. There councils sell colour-coded, bar-coded bags to local shops. Bags for residual waste cost the most. Bags for aluminium cans and plastic bottles – the most valuable type of recycling - cost the least. The cost of waste collection and disposal can then be removed from local taxes. That’s the sort of radical but practical idea that might work.

Tories Now Fourth Behind Greens in Camden

The Conservative councillor for Highgate Paul Barton has resigned. That's hardly a surprise. I think I only heard him speak once in his two year stint as a Camden councillor.

The omens don't look good for his would-be successor. In the three Camden by-elections since May 2006, the Tories have managed just 12% of the popular vote. Arguably they're now the fourth party in Camden after the Lib Dems (46%), Labour (28%) and the Greens (16%).

Balls Up on New Secondary School in South

The recent "offer" from the Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls, to fund a new secondary school south of the Euston Road as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme in addition to the planned new school in Swiss Cottage comes with two important caveats which campaigners (and the Labour group) are ignoring.

The first is that Mr Balls says we need to prove that there is a requirement for even more places south of the Euston Road than we are currently planning for. The second is the availability and affordability of a site. Mr Balls is not offering to provide or buy us a site and, as we have made clear on numerous occasions, we can not afford to buy a site in central London.

In other words his offer to pay for the school is unlikely to be called in. This is policy-making by press release for the benefit of the area’s sitting MP Frank Dobson, whose seat is under threat from the Lib Dems. The Camden New Journal, which headlined Mr Balls' kind offer last week should be more ruthless in exposing such hogwash which gives false hope to parents.