This is a follow-up to Bangarang! Pirate Pete and the Lost Bin Collections of Southall and Boomerang! Ten Years Sorting Out Fly-Tipping, which documented how fly-tipping in Ealing doubled the year weekly black bag collections were scrapped in 2016 — …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Community
Features
Research
Exposes
What Happened to Southall?
A substantial new report on Ealing Council’s record in Southall landed this week, and it deserves your attention.
What Happened to Southall? is published by Community Powered Reporting, a volunteer resident-led research group, and it covers …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Boomerang! Ten Years Sorting Out Fly-tipping
Two weeks ago, I reported on the results of my research into the fly-tipping epidemic that has hit Ealing, and Southall in particular.
In short, fly-tipping across the borough literally doubled from July 2016, immediately after Ealing Council reduced …
Commentary
AI
Ealing's Burning
It’s getting heavy around here, so time for some light relief.
Ealing likes to call itself “the Home of Loud.”
It is a reference to Jim Marshall, valve amps, and the glorious feedback of British rock music history.
But after reading a few years’ …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
The Broken Manifesto Promises that show how Labour is Failing Ealing
You’ve got to hand it to Peter Mason.
Every four years he manages to regenerate, reinvent and transform himself and Ealing Labour into a new and improved version of reality.
He has a creative imagination. His ambition is unbridled. He is resilient …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Housing
Section 106 money: where did Southall’s “developer tax” go?
With council elections less than three months away, Ealing Council is busy using “Ealing Council’s magazine for residents” to promote news of Ealing Labour’s local “achievements” in an effort to persuade voters that, …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Research
Exposes
Bangarang! Pirate Pete and the Lost Bin Collections of Southall
This is the shocking story of how for sixteen years Ealing Labour councillors talked rubbish about having to make “difficult choices” to cut services to save money, ignoring thousands of residents' protests, and in doing so created a …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Exposes
The EA Files: What Regulators Knew About Fire Risks at Southall Recycling Site
A Site That “No One Checked”?
When a commenter asked why “no one from the council checked” Sam’s Recycling before the Johnson Street fire, the short answer is uncomfortable:
The council did check. Repeatedly. For over a year.
And officially, they …
Local Democracy
Environment
Community
Commentary
Health
Pollution
How to Report Nuisance and Pollution in Ealing
Reporting a Nuisance in Ealing
A short epic of civic persistence (and becoming the problem)
Please complete this form.
![Ealing Council's website interface offers options to report noise nuisances, including noise, odor, or a combination of issues, with links for further information and guidance. [SATIRE]](https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/251858/2026/screenshot-20260120-231400.png)
Invocation
Sing, website, sing.
Of forms and thresholds, boxes small,
of windows that open into darkness,
of daytime hotlines …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Community
Commentary
Pollution
Exposes
The Council Investigation That Found Nothing
They Did Check It Out. That’s What Makes It Worse.
A response to “Why didn’t the council investigate?"
Following publication of my article on the Johnson Street fire, a reader asked: “Why did no one from the council check …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Housing
Demolition Man: Peter Mason's Legacy of Half-Built Homes and Hollow Promises
This is the story about how a council leader failed to deliver the new homes he promised to build, and how he wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money in doing so.
It’s also about how he ended up demolishing half-built homes …
Investigations
Environment
Community
Health
Pollution
Exposes
A Fire We Were Warned About
Literally within a couple of hours of posting my update on the Southall Gasworks / Toxic Town scandal yesterday, the recycling site just behind our home burned to the ground. My wife was terrified the fire would spread to our home with our two young …
Investigations
Community
Research
Health
AI
Toxic Town - Have You Been Affected?
Last week I watched last year’s Toxic Town series on Netflix, and then the Horizon documentary from 2020 (available on DailyMotion).
For anyone unfamiliar with it, Toxic Town tells the story of families in Corby, Northamptonshire, who were …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Corruption
Exposes
Ealing For Sale
Peter Mason’s foreword to Ealing Council’s 2023-2027 Land and Property Strategy [pdf] promises to “retain assets for maximum resident benefit.” It’s a reassuring commitment from the council leader who styles himself as …
Campaigns
Commentary
Podcast
Children's Centres
AI
Save Ealing Children’s Centres Campaign Update
Save Ealing Children’s Centres campaign raised over £5,000 in just eight days to begin legal action against Ealing Council to prevent closure of ten and of the borough’s twenty-five children’s centres.
An audio summary of my …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Children's Centres
Personal
Corruption
The Pied Piper of Ealing
A couple of weeks ago, big kid sang at the Royal Albert Hall in “Ealing Together: Harmony in Diversity,” performing lyrics by Jewish socialist and renowned children’s author Michael Rosen in a new song “Ada in Ealing”, a …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Podcast
Children's Centres
Corruption
AI
So it Goes: AI on the Absurd Logic of Ealing Council
🎧 I fed my satirical piece about Ealing’s democratic innovations into Google’s NotebookLM.
Two AI hosts discovered how perfectly logical it is to close children’s centres while voting yourself a 70% pay rise. They marveled at the …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Commentary
Children's Centres
Ealing Labour
Features
Corruption
Exposes
Perceval House W5: Where Local Democracy in Ealing Goes to Die
The Children’s Centres Crusade
Chapter 1: The Art of Political Contradiction
In the London Borough of Ealing, our elected representatives have perfected something remarkable: the ability to hold completely contradictory public positions …
Local Democracy
Environment
Community
Commentary
Gasworks
Features
Personal
Pollution
Southall Odours
I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have …
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Research
Health
Personal
Pollution
COPD
Last week I received confirmation of a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on results of spirometry tests back in August (it took that long for my GP surgery to get the results from the test centre, and only after my own …
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
The Cuckoo's Nest
Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Features
Housing
Health
Developers, if you Really Want to Help
This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Personal
Corruption
ToryBoy
ToryBoy The Movie is the account of filmmaker John Walsh’s disillusionment with what he saw as the corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of Blair’s Labour government, and his conversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party …
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Health
Ethics
AI
Risks to Health from Remediating Southall Gasworks
AI is more ethical than Ealing Labour Party. No money was exchanged.
What are the risks to health from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air? The land is highly contaminated with benzene, naphthalene and a while host of other VOCs, …
Local Democracy
Environment
Community
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Health
Ethics
AI
I am the Leader of Ealing Council
I asked Google Bard to advise me on a local matter.
I am the leader of Ealing Council. I have received more than 250 reports about a BAD odour nuisance and air pollution from the remediation of the highly contaminated Southall Gasworks land. We had …