Tor’s Ealing

Last night I attended the ward forum for Ealing Common at The Grange pub. It was a packed meeting, with a few people not being able to find seats. Presiding over the meeting were councillors Jon Ball and Joanna Dabrowska, along with Dennis Frost (a council officer).

This was the first meeting of this particular ward forum, with a main purpose of deciding how the £40,000 the ward has available to it should be spent. The vast majority of the evening was dealing with roads and parking, in one form or another. With many residency groups having representatives at the meeting, it did become quite lively at times, esp. when their issue came up.

I did manage to put forward a couple of ideas as to how the money could be spent. The first one I mentioned was putting lights on the diaginal path on the Commmon, between Warwick Dene and Warwick Road, for it gets rather dark at night. The other thing I suggested, which looks likely to be put forward as a serious suggestion, is to have a map of my estate put at the entrance to it so that people can find where all the properties are (the layout to the estate is very confusing to those who don’t know it).

All in all it was a good meeting, one that I shall attend more of in future. I already know Jon Ball, so it was nice to meet Joanna. I hadn’t met the other ward councillors before the meeting. I shall be attending future meetings.

Yesterday it was announced that the Ealing Broadway bus terminal, and it’s surrounding bus stops, would get its own Police team. This would consist of a Sergeant, a Constable and 7 PCSOs. This being part of Boris Johnson’s £11.3m scheme to put 440 officers, spread amongst 30 individual teams, to patrol bus stations in order to cut crime and anti-social behaviour.

I am not really surprised that Ealing Broadway was one of the transport hubs earmarked for this scheme. There are several bus routes either terminating there or passing through; not to mention the Ealing Broadway station itself. This new team is set to start patrolling in the new year.

My name’s Toran Shaw (commonly known as Tor) and for the past 3 decades I have been a long term Ealing resident. The first concious memories I have are from the very day that I moved down here, from my previous home in Sheffield, at the tender age of 4 years old.

One thing I need to point out now is the confusion that people are often in when they are referring to Ealing. There are two Ealings. There is the London Borough of Ealing, which covers 7 major distinct areas; then there’s the town of Ealing, of which this blog is mostly about. I shall explain more about this on another page.

I have seen many changes to Ealing over the years. There’s also the fact that Ealing is going to go through some major development projects over the next few years. This blog is one of my primary ways of expressing my thoughts and feelings on the direction that the town is heading towards. Not only this, but I hope to be able to promote the town to those who’ve never been here before, through my writings here.

All that there is left for me to say is that I hope you enjoy what you read here and feel free to comment!

I wish you all well.