40,000 pieces of chewing gum

I’ve spent most of the day at the Borough Labour Party’s ‘Manifesto Summit’. This was a Conference of Councillors, Candidates and party members which discussed the priorities that we might want to put before the electorate in our manifesto for the 2006 local Borough elections.

The day was opened by Andy Slaughter, our MP in Ealing, Acton and Shepherds Bush, who talked about the interesting comparisons and contrasts between our Borough and LB Hammersmith and Fulham – which Andy used to lead. The rest of the day was spent in workshops looking at issues like the street environment, education and young people, services for older people, finance, and community cohesion. A useful day, providing a chance to sit back from the immediate pressures of local government and think about the longer term.

Phil and Andy Slaughter in their mayoral robes when they were both Millennium Mayors

One particularly interesting statistic came out of the day – that we’ve managed to stop 40,000 pieces of chewing gum being tread in to the pavement. For the last year or so, we’ve been experimenting in Acton town centre with a unique approach in London to gum. Paper boards have been attached to lampposts, and people are encouraged to put their gum on these – rather than on the streets – by having fun quizzes and opinion polls on them. Some of the old fogies were against this experiment but we thought it was worth trying. Well, it’s achieved beyond our best hopes – those 40,000 bits of gum would have cost a lot to clean from the pavement, even when you can clean it off without leaving a mark. Mind you, I don't envy the person whose job is counting all this.