It’s good to think opposition parties can sometimes make a difference at Lambeth town hall.

Let’s take the trade unions and the cosy arrangements they have enjoyed for successive administrations enabling around a dozen trade union officials to enjoy full pay while pursuing political union work.

The Conservative alternative budget for 2011 recommended abolishing these subsidised union posts.

Just a year later the word in the corridor is that the administration is now proposing reducing the subsidy by 70 per cent meaning that most of the officials will have to go back to their former jobs delivering services or teaching in the classroom.

On a less controversial note it is good to see that Lambeth Council listened to opposition parties and last year supported an all party motion to put more resources into taking care of the borough’s war memorials.

Five sites including the iconic Holy Trinity Church, Clapham Common, Streatham Memorial Gardens, and the Stockwell War Memorial will be restored by early 2013 at a cost of £200,000.

The timing is apposite because in 2014 Lambeth will like other London boroughs commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I—still in living memory for older people who grew up in the 1920s.

I can only agree with the Cabinet Member for Finance who commented:”All Lambeth councillors agreed that the £200,000 financing had to be allocated to honour our responsibility to our own war memorials in memory of those who have fallen.”

Councillor John Whelan, Conservative group leader and representative for Thurlow Park ward.