Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Stephen Timms Leads Residents Up The Garden Path


It's always nice to know when there is a local MP who really cares about his constituents. And there are many of them, who REALLY DO CARE. However we can't say the same for Stephen Timms.

Stephen Timms has been approached by residents for some months now, he's ignored some, deleted their emails and not responded to others who he appears not to like the questions they present.

However Stephen did meet with some residents and he asked them to provide evidence that London City Airport has not met its Section 106 requirements regarding operations. A whole list of issues was then collected from residents - about 2 pages long. Did Stephen Timms respond to this? No.

Did Stephen Timms ask what was happening when it was revealed that the airport had broken the section 106 agreement by not taking any noise measurements for 7 years? No

So Stephen Timms seems to like to give his local residents who are most affected by the threat of the flight expansion the runaround, just for the fun of it perhaps. Why else would you ask for the evidence, it is then provided, as hard as, and then not do anything with it?

He did however manage to elicit a response from LCAs Richard Gooding, which revealed that LCA did not know how many Newham residents they employed - yet another failed requirement of the Section 106 - did he do anything about that? No.

But what Stephen Timms did do was talk to the Newham Recorder this week , not to question the quality of the consultation, or the quality of the data provided in LCAs application to expand, oh no nothing as helpful to residents as that. We'd just like to see the evidence of any statistics he quotes. Perhaps he would also like to see if he can get some accurate noise contours for his constituents at the same time?

We're sure Newham voters really feel valued and listened to by Stephen Timms. Still big business is far, far more important isn't it?