Cllr Dan Alexander Bowring

Promoted by Ted Wall, on behalf of Hounslow Labour, at 367 Chiswick High Road.

@Idlibie @matt_tt_smith Ealing would be far more likely…

As a Syrian Londoner, I never thought I’d see the words ‘Assad’ and ‘Richmond upon Thames’ in the same sentence

@jamesgoldstone Perhaps, although unclear. There are criticisms I would make of the Greens in Hounslow, but - broadly speaking - standing candidates who don’t reflect local racial demographics wouldn’t be one of them.

@Dan_Alexander I suspect because the Greens haven’t broken through to the same extent

Has there been any study on how much whiter local councils have just become? A quick survey suggests some of the most diverse areas of London are not seeing that diversity reflected by their representatives.

@Calum_OBM *chef’s kiss*

@Dan_Alexander A portion of all S106 goes to a pot for sustainability. To date we have for example, used £5.6m from that type of pot to retrofit council owned buildings (not allowed use for housing, but other buildings) and the bike voucher is next thing we want to use this for.

Check out the Greenwich Labour Policy Track(stand). Our £150 bike voucher for every child in the borough is entirely funded by money from developers that has to be spent on sustainability - so no council tax money is needed. Learn more here 👇

@Taj_Ali1 @ZackPolanski @chakrabortty In Hounslow we built 1,169 in 2018-2022, and another 3,617 affordable homes for the same period.

‘In the 1980s, Labour-controlled London built 52,000 council homes. During the Tony Blair decade, just 280. It’s brought this local-election catastrophe on itself.’ @chakrabortty theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@joshcarlosjosh That also a description of the period of time between Boxing Day and NYE.

The gap in my resume is from when darkness took me and I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as the life age of the earth. But it was not the end.

An odd thing to say given that it was the 2016 Brexit referendum that has totally crowded out more important issues from British political life. The single biggest cost of Brexit is its opportunity cost – all the things that could’ve happened between 2016-24.

@lewis_goodall @akalamusic would be brilliant.

Lots of great feedback on this political book and ideas series we’re occasionally doing on Fridays! If there are any political authors/writers (and their books) you’d like us to have on let me know.

@Paul_SLG Planning reasons. Spurious refusals are binary, conditions are nuanced and granular. 4/4

@Paul_SLG officer naturally wouldn’t recommend a strategic application for refusal over a tap! The committee can make a judgement if a condition is reasonable and relevant, and insist on it. This is a world apart from committees refusing applications that are not rooted in solid 3/n

Planning committees are supposed to be quasi‑judicial, but decisions are increasingly being made based on political, rather than planning, considerations. Policy‑compliant applications refused. Officer advice ignored. The cost lands on applicants, councils budgets, and families waiting for homes. My latest for Housing Today digs into why, and how a national scheme of delegation could help fix it. Full piece below.

Left: 24-year-old me, a journalist when Orbán was in opposition.
Right: 45-year-old me, still a journalist—two days before he’s there again. Between those moments: lots of work, lost jobs, closed papers, smear campaigns. And yet, we are still here. That’s all that matters.

@NicholasTyrone But how will this ‘protect households from energy price shocks’ when British Consumers pay the international market rate for oil and gas?

Tony Blair is 100% correct in this instance. Ed Miliband's approach is ideologically driven and incorrect.

I sent ChatGPT an audio file of a series of FART sound effects and asked what it thinks of "my music" and this is what it said

@rcolvile I think phasing this out would be a positive thing, but there is a scent of class coded moralising/Bourgeois environmentalism to it..

Guardian fires up the random number generator and comes up with *ban balloons* (especially at funerals) theguardian.com/environment/20…

@siennamarla It’s probably both, but if you have never styled a young girls hair before, practice on a bust/mannequin is a good idea. Also anything that encourages men to be hands on Dads is great.

The Pints and Ponytails thing. Call me a cynic but why not practice hair styling on your actual daughter at home? Or is it more about going out for a pint and meeting other dads? That’s perfectly valid but the pretence that it’s about quality time with your kid is questionable.

@adamtranter I was discussing this with someone who was concerned that this could cause lower levels of compliance on roads with no side zebras, as drivers may think they only need to give way when there was a zebra. Do you know of any data or studies that could address this query?

What if I told you we could make crossing the road easier, more comfortable, and make walking more attractive for short journeys? What if I told you this could be done at a fraction of the cost of the usual way, by using "simplified" or "side road" zebra crossings? What if I told you the studies have shown they have high levels of compliance, even without the usual Belisha beacons? What if I told you the presence of these simplified crossings is merely reinforcing pedestrian priority already detailed within the Highway Code updates? What if I told you civil servants and Government ministers use them every day (the video shown is outside the Department for Transport offices), but only because one local authority decided to take a risk and try them out (credit Westminster City Council), despite official guidance not permitting them. What if I told you they could cost as little as £300, compared to between £50,000-£100,000 for a full zebra crossing with Belisha beacons. What if I told you they were already commonplace all across Europe? What if I told you, starting March 11, 2026, Welsh local authorities can install simplified zebra crossings at side road junctions in 20mph zones? (because: Devolution) It's about time England got a move on and permitted them through updating The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016. The Government could also publish the long-awaited Manual for Streets 3, while they were at it.