Enlightened Entrepreneurs, Remembrance and Boston Manor Park
Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back
Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert
November 12, 2026
I have an ambition to take Fridays off and do something different than sitting at my PC reading other people's problems and creating magisterial responses. Sometimes this works well (like a week or 3 ago when I went exploring in Coulsdon) but it depends whether I have the inspiration.
At present, my inspiration tends to be drained by the shenanigans in the council which take far more than my mental and emotional energy than is really healthy. I will get back on track, meanwhile what I have been doing is reading quite a lot and watching ancient TV - I have gone through the whole 'boxed set' of Seven Up which I have been fascinated with since I was - well - 12 rather than 7.
I have recently read 2 important (to me) factual books. One is called 'Enlightened Entrepreneurs'. This book was written by one Ian Campbell Bradley who has had an astonishing career as an author (40+ books) professor, churchman, expert on Gilbert and Sullivan and spent a weekend with the old Queen at Balmoral (nothing immoral, only Balmoral).
The book covers briefly the careers of 10 businessmen who built major businesses in the 19th century. Many you will have heard of - Jesse Boot, George Cadbury, Andrew Carnegie. Others less well known though William Lever was our local lord when I was growing up on the Wirral, known locally as LH and giving us (amongst many things) the model village of Port Sunlight.
Cadbury of course has a particular relevance to Brentford (and Isleworth) with Ruth having George as (I think) her great great uncle and of course Ruth has continued the Quaker tradition of her family.
Andrew Carnegie, who of course gave us our library is another in the book. The library is back to looking splendid (especially if I ever persuade the council to renovate that flaking paint on the windows above the door) despite being denuded of trees.
I didn't know much about Carnegie but I discovered he was brought up in poverty in Dunfermline before emigrating with his family to Pennsylvania. Starting as a bobbin boy at $2 per week, but he was determined, clever and hard working and went through various jobs earning more, saving hard and investing shrewdly. He ended up as the 1900 equivalent of Elon Musk - the richest person in the world via railways and steel manufacture.
Reaching 65 in 1901 he sold his business for megabucks and began on his next project - to give all his wealth away. That turned out to be quite challenging. He returned to Dunfermline, built over 3000 libraries around the world, endowed universities, started foundations for world peace but that pesky interest kept accumulating. When the war broke he went permanently back to the US where he died in 1919 and gave most of what was left to various charitable foundations.
This approach - usually less extreme than Carnegie - was common with these rich industrialists of the 19th century. The industrial elite today seem to have a very different approach, focusing on moving all their money to places where there is little or no tax to pay and accumulating more and more. The only exceptions I'm aware of are investor Warren Buffett and Bill Gates of Microsoft who has given away large chunks of his wealth (though he seems to have had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein) but has said "I’ve paid more tax than any individual, and gladly so. I've paid more than $6Bn in taxes".
I should mention Julian Richer – definitely not richer than Gates – who gave away his chain of shops to employees, including the one in Chiswick which is the only one I will use for video or audio equipment.
The other book I've just finished is called "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Sarah worked for many years near the top of Facebook, now Meta and she is not allowed to promote the book or even be in the same shop as one that is selling it. Of course, hearing that made me eager to find out what Facebook is trying to hide. Read it. It is an easy read and is illuminating (naturally Facebook seem to be saying it's fake news). It makes me wonder whether I should delete Facebook (and WhatsApp and Threads and Instagram) as I did with X a couple of years ago. I dislike most of those anyway but Facebook is hard to avoid until local news outfit moves from it. And of course WhatsApp has become a habit I will find hard to kick.
I don't think Facebook can get me for promoting this book but if I end up in pokey send me a cake.
Back to normal blog. It has recently been very quiet in Councillorland. Brentford West is quite a small ward and quite a content place, plus for the first time since the wonderful but brief episode when Lara was my ward partner I actually have a ward partner in Craig who works hard and is a proper Councillor. We don't agree about everything but we are usually on the same page except when it comes to the behaviour of his leader and (most of!) the Cabinet.
On Saturday I went to the Red Lion in Isleworth to catch Doc Stenson and his Amazing Hotshots. As you can see Doc is really a teenager and is down with the kids like me, as the audience proves.
On Sunday it was the Remembrance service at the Library. I joined the impressive parade from St Paul's Church and had the rare honour of having been invited by the Mayor to lay his wreath on the monument.
It was good to see my old mucker Honorary Aldermanperson The Melvinator in his usual good voice (he really can sing!) leading the singing of the National Anthem.
A lot of locals to briefly say hello to, before rushing off with Katherine and Dan for our joint surgery at the Digital Dock. One of my 'flock' from Brentford West came to see me about a series of parking tickets he has received. He has appealed them but is about to uproot himself to Uxbridge (safer now that the pest service have removed Boris Johnson) and worries how to play it all. I do worry about people who find they have to leave Brentford and I send out my sympathy for their reduced situation.
In the evening we had a postponed Hounslow Green Party meeting. I will not say much beyond that it is not a happy party at this moment in the world. We have a tea break in the middle of the meeting in Isleworth and frankly I had had enough and hopped on my bike to come home and reconnect via the Hounslow Wide Web. Very sadly indeed those of us who were remote could not hear the pearls of wisdom which were undoubtedly being created in the mouth of our coordinator. We could see the passion in his face and the movement of his lips. No doubt it will be recorded as is his wont but I doubt I will get around to listening to it.
I'm still being heavily doctored by West Middlesex following my fall. It all works very well once you're 'in the system'. This time it was registrar on Monday who was pleased to see my wounded finger was no longer bleeding or infected and I can mainly wag my finger. All quick and on time, which meant I could get to South Bank for a meeting.
Turns out a friend of mine has acquired a 'boyfriend' (is that allowed for people over 70) who is now an officer of the Green party in Enfield. Having avoided the chaos caused by a graduation event at the Royal Festival Hall we shared a few beers in a nearby pizzeria and got on like a house on fire. He has a new retirement profession as a dog sitter and suddenly he realised he had to go pronto to avoid breaking a date with Fido.
In the evening I was at Boston Manor Park with our wonderful resident gardeners Vanessa and Natasha. BMP was always an asset but (despite the concerns of many when the park was revived by ecologists funded by the Lottery) it is now a true delight. Basically Vanessa and Tasha are now tasked with generating income which basically pays for their costs.
They promote their activities (whether or not they generate income!) by informal notices etc. like this. I try to help when I can and they made their income last year, which is a tribute to their hard work and creativity. It is all a bit precarious though, and I have no idea what happens to the money generated by tennis, events like Junction2, plays etc in the Walled Garden, cafes etc. They love the park and that love shows in how well it is looked after but I worry that it is quite a stress for them so I will be trying to help make things more secure. The council (and its sponsors) spent a lot of money improving the park and we must ensure this is sustained by making sure it gets sufficient attention and funding. I had been trying to attend this group for many months but this is the first time I made it, due to date clashes.
On Tuesday I had a session with a physio at West Middlesex for my largely functional but still swollen and a bit sore ring finger. The physio (I accused her of being slightly Welsh but she responded she was extremely Welsh!) gave me a velcro 'splint' thing and observed they didn't know whether there may be a chipped bone somewhere inside the finger that Mr X-Ray can't always see. He should have gone to Specsavers. Anyway, my waggling now has a specific routine that I am urged to go through 3-4 times a day, called Tendon Gliding Exercises. My mother (who was slightly Welsh) fell once outside the newsagents one day and had a crooked finger forever after that.
Also on Tuesday I took a look at Whitestile junction with Windmill Road. The works there (or often the 'no work' there) have caused quite a lot of upset because it is very restrictive for an already restricted area, and the originally notified dates have not been achieved. Whitestile seems to be complete but still quite a lot of earth 'spoil' as well as many fences etc on site.
Likewise, a lot of the work on Windmill looked complete, though there was work taking place further down near the A4.
All this is to improve the sometimes really bad draining round there - especially Windmill but sometimes other roads too so the SuDS scheme hidden under the road should make a big difference. The dreaded Cadent decided that gas works were needed at more or less the same time so it has been a nightmare trying to make these both happen. Nevertheless I think we should communicate better and manage better (though I know some of this is difficult construction works.)
Today, Thursday, I will be going to the Holiday Inn for a session with a new (for me) council officer who is Local Economy Manager. Delighted we have such a beast and I may be asking him some tough questions, but certainly offering him whatever I can to support his task.
Tomorrow I am letting the train take the strain as I firkle off to the NEC for my visit to the Classic Car show. I keep my dream going, though I always end up concluding it costs too much to have a little used old car which I am not competent to maintain myself. But dreams are good for the soul, I reckon.
Councillor Guy Lambert
Like Reading Articles Like This? Help Us Produce More This site remains committed to providing local community news and public interest journalism. Articles such as the one above are integral to what we do. We aim to feature as much as possible on local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents, community-based initiatives and even helping people find missing pets. We’ve always done that and won’t be changing, in fact we’d like to do more. However, the readership that these stories generates is often below that needed to cover the cost of producing them. Our financial resources are limited and the local media environment is intensely competitive so there is a constraint on what we can do. We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area. A suggested monthly payment is £8 but we would be grateful for any amount for instance if you think this site offers the equivalent value of a subscription to a daily printed newspaper you may wish to consider £20 per month. If neither of these amounts is suitable for you then contact info@neighbournet.com and we can set up an alternative. All payments are made through a secure web site. One-off donations are also appreciated. Choose The Amount You Wish To Contribute. If you do support us in this way we’d be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor. For businesses we offer the chance to be a corporate sponsor of community content on the site. For £30 plus VAT per month you will be the designated sponsor of at least one article a month with your logo appearing if supplied. If there is a specific community group or initiative you’d like to support we can make sure your sponsorship is featured on related content for a one off payment of £50 plus VAT. All payments are made through a secure web site. |