Tuesday 4 December 2012

Calling Brent Youth: All I want for Christmas is a Future that works


 A one-day rally and workshop for 16-27 year olds on Youth Unemployment, Education, Apprenticeships and a welfare system that works.

Tell your story on youth unemployment and find your voice in our activism workshops.

Organised by Brent Youth and SERTUC Young Members Network


CONTACT: David Braniff on 020 7467 1283 or email LondonYouth@TUC.org.uk


 Saturday December 8th, 11am-4pm
 Harlesden Methodists Church,
25 High Street, Harlesden, NW10 4NE London, United Kingdom

Leveson: Green Party wants conscience clause, union representation and action on concentration of press ownership



 The Green Party has welcomed many aspects of the Leveson report, while expressing disappointment that there was little in it to practically address the concentration of ownership in the press.

 Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said the call from Lord Justice Leveson for a new independent self-regulatory body, with the majority of its board comprising non-industry representatives and no serving editors, was a step forward.
 "We would welcome the creation of independent oversight with majority civil society involvement.”
"But although there is the call for independent regulation here, the mechanism suggested is indirect, clunky and open to subversion, rather than the direct creation of an independent body along the lines of Ireland's Press Council. There's also no reference to union representation, which would provide an important expert, hands-on view within the new regulatory body."
 Natalie said that although the call for the new regulator to run a whistle-blowing hotline, and for a "conscience clause" to be inserted in journalists' contracts of employment was positive, the judge had failed to recommend direct action to ensure this happened.
"The NUJ has long been calling for journalists to be protected if they refuse to act in manners they consider unethical, and it is essential for a future decent, independent press that this right is provided."
 Natalie also welcomed the judge's call for a legal duty for the freedom of the press to be enshrined in law, which is not currently the case. She said: "Whilst the Leveson inquiry has rightly focused a spotlight on inappropriate and outright illegal behaviour by the press, we must never forget that a tenacious, questioning, independent press has in the past served Britain well, from the Sunday Times thalidomide campaign, to the Guardian's exposure of Jonathan Aitkin.
"This must be preserved and protected, and Leveson has rightly made his opposition to government regulation clear right from the start."
 Natalie also welcomed the judge's recognition that the public was rightly suspicious of close relations between press and politicians when it came to lobbying about media issues.
"He was right to say that this undermines public trust and confidence, and his call for transparency in the form of registration of lobbying contacts was a good one, and potentially revolutionary, insetting a model that could be used across other industries and sectors. Registration of lobbyists is something the Green Party has long been calling for and this report provides a real opportunity to return to that broader issue."
 The Green Party's chief criticism of the report is in the area of media ownership. While the judge makes a strong statement about the importance of plurality, he fails to make a direct recommendation for action, or taken board submissions made to him about limits for media concentration.  Natalie said:
"His call for greater transparency when ministers consider whether or not to refer a media merger to the competition authorities on plurality grounds is welcome, but does not go far enough. An independent regulator or overseer should have the power to make this referral."

Brent spends £11m annually on temporary staff

A report LINK going before the Brent Executive at their December 10th meeting reveals that the Council spent £10.7m on temporary agency staff last year. A new contract is proposed giving the Council more say over  who is hired  The fee element of the current contract was £735,282.56 and the new arrangement is expected to reduce this by £212,966.51 as a result of employing a 'Master Vendor' that directly employs some categories of agency staff and sources the remainder from other agencies. Previously the contract was held by a 'Vendor Neutral' Supplier who employed nobody directly but sourced all Brent temporary staff from a number of agencies. Thus there was a fee to the Master Vendor and to the agencies.

Nevertheless the new contract is valued at £11m.

Wembley Matters passes 200,000 page view barrier

Wembley Matters today went through the 200,000 all time page views barrier. The blog currently gets between 400 and 700 page views a day.

Monday 3 December 2012

Another planning application for an ex-Conservative Club

The Red House behind hoardings

Hot on the heels of the sale of the Queensbury pub in Willesden Green by its former Conservative Club owners, a planning application has been made for another former Conservative Club.

The Red House in South Way, next to the Ibis Hotel and opposite Wembley Stadium Station, used ot to be the Wembley Conservative Club. It has been empty since 2006. There still seems to be a linen cloth and glasses on a table in the upstairs bar.

Now a planning application has been made on behalf of a company called Anitan Limited for change of use to a leisure facility. Anitan was only registered with Companies House in July 2012 with capital of £100,000.

The proposal, unlike the Queensbury application, leaves the Red House itself intact. The planning application is for the building to be used as a indoor play facility with a soft play area, storage area, room for classes and a cafe for customers of the play facility only.

The play facility is for younger children and aimed at visitors to the nearby London Designer Outlet Centre as well as local residents. The application claims that it will revitalise the area and provide up to 10 jobs.




Climate Change: Fears and Failures

Submerged footpath at West Hendon Playing Fields last weekend

Let's face it, the turnout at Saturday's Climate Change march, whether the BBC estimate of 300 or the organiser's 500, was poor. A climate crisis billed as threatening the very future of humankind could only get a handful of humans out on the street.  In the circumstances the media coverage we achieved was generous helped by the spectacle of a the erection of a fracking rig outside the House of Parliament.

Chatting in the crowd we speculated why with Hurricane Sandy, the floods in the UK, harvest failures in the US, more people were not concerned enough to come out. We joked that perhaps we needed the Thames Barrier to fail and Westminster to flood, before MPs took notice.  After all it was only when the stench of the Thames got severe enough to penetrate the Palace of Westminster that action was taken to build a proper sewage system.

However, also on Saturday, Anne Karpf's article in the Guardian LINK  reviewed the recently published Engaging with Climate Change, Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives LINK .

Confessing to being a 'Climate-Change Ignorer' she says despite not being a sceptic she 'tunes out' when she hears apocalyptic warnings about global warming:
The fuse that trips the while circuit is a sense of helplessness. Whatever steps I take to counter global warming, however well-intentioned my brief bursts of zeal, they invariably end up feeling like like too little, too late.  The mismatch between the extremely dangerous state of the earth and my own feeble endeavours seems mockingly large. 
She goes on to describe some of the coping mechanisms described  in the book, including blame-shifting, technoptimism, hedonistic fatalism and dark optimism. It is argued, against the view of my colleague Brian Orr, that apocalyptic warnings are counter productive:
As Ed Miliband has observed, Martin Luther King never inspired millions by saying 'I have a nightmare'.
I would argue that the sense of helplessness is caused by the failure of politicians, governments and the UN, to face the crisis head on. It is as  if, faced with the Nazi menace in the second war, the government had, rather than mobilise troops and the economy and pour money into production and research,  instead asked everyone just to perform the home front task of digging for victory. Of course people would have felt helpless as German troops massed at the channel and bombs fell on our cities. Politicians now are in the equivalent position of those who ignored or down-played the rise of Nazism for fearing of frightening the people.

Here in Brent, in our own small way, following the briefing for councillors and the public, a paper has been produced outlining the extent of the crisis and some ideas for moving forward. A copy is available by clicking the link below:


 
Another dimension is making a link between the current economic crisis and climate change and on Sunday the following resolution from Green Left was passed by an overwhelming majority at the AGM of the Coalition of Resistance:
This conference notes that the current economic crisis is closely linked to a global ecological crisis particularly involving human caused climate change,. Neither crisis, in so far as they can be separated, is soluble under capitalist socio-economic arrangements. Technological fixes and geo-engineering enacted under capitalism can only be short term at best, since ecologically damaging forms of consumption and production are engendered and maintained by capitalism.

We therefore call on the coalition of resistance to recognise this publicly and include combating climate change in its campaigning agendas.

Saturday 1 December 2012

Scenes from the Climate Change March

Green Party stall at Grosvenor Square
Laying the pipeline from US Embassy to Canadian Embassy

International support
At Wesminster
The fracking rig is erected outside Parliament

Natalie Bennett's speech at Climate Change Rally



Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party, spoke today at the rally outside the Houses of Parliament where the march culminated in the erection of a fracking rig.