Total: 23 posts
Posts in: Exposés
Exposés of corruption in local democracy in Southall and Ealing.
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
BREAKING NEWS
Who Does Peter Mason Really Represent?
Shots were fired early in this election campaign.
In late March, Ealing Labour issued a statement attacking the Ealing Community Independents (ECI).
Their candidates, Labour said, include people:
“expelled from the Labour Party, supporters of the far-left Socialist Workers Party, and have connections to the Communist Party of Great Britain.”
ECI, Labour concluded, are:
“hardly independent” and should “tell the truth about who they really represent.”
It is …
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Housing
Ethics
Exposes
The Man in the Middle
Yes, yes, yes, he’s on the right in this picture!
On 6 November 2023, Berkeley Group’s Southall development — The Green Quarter, rising on the site of the former Southall gasworks — handed a £2,500 cheque to the Western Road Urban Garden Project.
The cheque was branded with Berkeley’s logo and The Green Quarter’s name.
It was presented in the garden and photographed for Berkeley’s website, where the story was published on 23 January 2024.
The image is striking …
Investigations
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
BREAKING NEWS
The Smell of Success
Six days before local elections polling day, Southall Green councillor and Ealing Labour council leader Peter Mason has been named a semi-finalist for SME4Labour’s Labour Councillor of the Year 2026 award.
It seems only right to mark the occasion by celebrating Peter Mason’s achievements as a councillor.
The nomination form had a strict set of criteria to narrow down the list of possible winners from almost 6,000 Labour councillors nationwide. To make it to the last sixteen is an …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
When "deport six million" becomes mainstream: what Ealing Labour won't tell you
Two weeks ago, and again today, Ealing Labour attacked Grace Hunter, a Conservative candidate for Pitshanger ward, after a TikTok clip surfaced in which she said:
“The solution to our housing problem isn’t building six million more houses… it’s deporting six million people.”
This is fascist propaganda reminiscent of the policies of the National Front in the 1970s and 1980s — and of our own present-day far right, which is leading the polls and looks set to reshape the …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
First They Came for the Socialists
This is a story about what happens when you speak out against Peter Mason — on opposing the closure of children’s centres, on backing a Gaza debate, on attending a public meeting with the wrong person in the audience. It is also a story about a pattern that began long before any of that.
This pattern did not begin with Padda, Crawford or Martin. In April 2021, as Mason stood for the Labour group leadership, more than fifty Ealing Labour members and activists signed an open letter to …
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
Canvassing with Minni Dogra: A Councillor in All But Name
Last week I spent a lunch hour with my friend and former Ealing Independent Network “running mate” Minni Dogra, as she canvassed a street near me in her effort to win enough votes to be elected as a councillor in Ealing Labour council leader Peter Mason’s own Southall Green ward.
In 2022, I did the same canvassing and amassed a whole 223 votes — 2,633 fewer than Peter Mason. It is a mammoth task. But four years ago, Mason lost the largest share of votes of any Labour …
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 waste, housing, asset disposal, health, democratic accountability and pension fund investments — with extensive sourcing from council documents, FOI responses, and public data.
I haven’t read every page yet, but what I have read is rigorous, …
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 and resourceful. Nothing, it seems, can stop him recycling ever more of the same old rubbish manifesto promises while simultaneously presenting them to the public as successful achievements we should want more of.
Of course, it would be unfair to …
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 massive mess that a decade later still costs millions to clean up every year and leaves children’s and disabled people’s lives unnecessarily poorer.
It’s a story about an ambitious New Labour leader - politically aligned with Tony Blair …
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 found nothing.
Yet the risks were documented.
What follows is drawn from Environment Agency inspection reports, enforcement correspondence and Environmental Information Request disclosures obtained in early 2024 by a local resident (anonymised here). …
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 it out?”
The answer is more disturbing than regulatory neglect.
They did check it out.
They conducted almost a year-long investigation.
They made site visits. They reviewed evidence.
And then they claimed to find nothing.
This isn’t a …
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 children and now my elderly mum, too. Fortunately for everyone living nearby the emergency response was rapid and effective, and while the fire caused a great deal of inconvenience for weary travellers due to the closure of the adjacent Great Western …
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 protector of public services.
But scroll through Mason’s 26 page document, and you’ll find the reality: 760+ community assets across Ealing marked for “strategic review” - the euphemism that precedes disposal. The strategy …
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 without experiencing any apparent cognitive dissonance.
Take our Council Leader. On January 15, 2015, he tweeted: “Think its really important that we put people before buildings. Important we keep activities going & that can be done in a …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Corruption
Exposes
Ealing Labour Leaks
Is anyone interested in seeing a selection of leaked WhatsApp group messages from some Ealing Labour councillors?
An inside look at what they really think about Bell, Mason, Sharma?
The institutional bullying and corruption they kept quiet for years?
#EalingLabourLeaks
A couple things before I get started.
My source has obviously said that it's ok to publish these.
I've edited the screenshots to remove some names. I don't want to embarrass people unnecessarily, or make them feel …
Campaigns
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Personal
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Strawberries for Pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Environment
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Health
Personal
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Southall under Siege: the Neighbours from Hell
‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.
He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.
‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’
Moving swiftly on.
Oppressive odour
The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.
Carcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail …
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Pollution
Exposes
PHE cover-up?
Levels of benzene exceeded the EU and UK ambient AQS of 5 ug/m3 during January to April 2019.
Public Health England’s third report released today is a cause of real concern.
Of course, it basically re-states its position in previous reports that there is nothing to worry about.
But in PHE’s second report (p.11), it showed a handy comparison table between weeks 1-16 and 17-27:
This table shows significant increases in average and maximum (range) recorded
levels of benzene and naphthalene in …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Podcast
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Exposes
Pull the Other One, Julian
Conspiracy theory?
Our Great Leader, Julian ‘Two Jobs, Two Homes’ Bell, claimed on Desi Radio this morning that, “unfortunately”, none of the air quality monitoring data provided to him by Berkeley Group, the developers of the old gasworks site, provides any evidence of levels of chemicals harmful to health.
Well, would you believe it?
Bribery and corruption
The same developers who paid their former finance director £9.5m to keep quiet about years of Tony Pidgley, …
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Pollution
Exposes
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics?
From my original Facebook note.
Berkeley Group founder and chair Tony Pidgley promised to share their onsite air quality monitoring data with us almost two months ago. We’re still waiting.
Today,I finally received a response to my email of 29 September, in which I asked Tony to confirmm what his trusty sidekick Karl Whiteman told us when we met with the both, that benzene levels were ‘averaging 3.25 parts per million (ppm) [sic], and never exceeding 5ppm.’
‘Dear David,
I …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Pollution
Exposes
Countering the Southall Waterside Narrative
From my original Facebook note.
1.Look how great we are!
Berkeley will tell you about all the good work they do in the Southall community:
·Giving a tiny fraction of their £600m profits to the local homeless shelter
·Creating the ‘edible’ garden (and ad hoc public toilet) outside the college on Beaconsfield Road
·Partnering with the Let’s Go Southall project to get Southallians fit, healthy and active!
·Making the (acid) Rain Garden at Blair Peach Primary School for children to …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Community
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Berkeley's School Governors Board Member
This has shocked us all to the core.
@BerkeleyGroupUK's Head of Construction at #SouthallWaterside asked to join the board of governors at the adjacent Blair Peach Primary School.
This is from the minutes of that meeting (29/11/17). 1/7
"The HT reported that a smell/odour from the building works has on certain occasions been extremely strong, resulting in headaches ad asthma attacks. In addition, a white cloud / mist was apparent for two days." 2/7
"The HT confirmed that she …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Visit to Southall Waterside (aka The Green Quarter)
Visit To #SouthallWaterside
1:40 @damian_leydon 'We had to shut the site for 2 days when it snowed, it was unsafe... it cost me a lot of money to shut the site, but it was the right decision... We all know that ice can be dangerous!'
#SouthallLivesMatter
2:07 Visitor: 'Can we go into the soil hospital?'
@damian_leydon 'Er... no. No we won't be able to go in there today.'
#SouthallWaterside #MakingSouthallStink #Southall
Old story, but: 'Berkeley Homes is threatening hundreds of …