WEMBLEY MATTERS News and views on local politics, the environment, climate change, culture and local history
Friday, 18 July 2025
'Discriminatory' Live Facial Recognition technology deployment at this year's Notting Hill Carnival questioned
The BBC reports that the Metropolitan Police are to deploy Live Facial Recognition at the Notting Hill Carnival this year. LINK The technology has been used in Brent in Wembley Central and Kilburn High Road,
Lord Boateng AKA Paul Boateng raised concerns about its use in the House of Lords ealier this month and was backed up by Green peer Baroness Jones AKA Jenny Jones.
Lord Boateng was MP for Brent South from 1987 to 2005. He asked (They Work for You):
My Lords, a US Government study suggests that facial recognition algorithms are far less accurate in identifying African-American and Asian faces than Caucasian faces, and that African and Asian women are 10 to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than Caucasian ones. The study identified 99 developers, including Intel, Microsoft, Toshiba and the Chinese firms Tencent and DiDi Chuxing, as potential problems in this area of procurement. What research are the UK Government going to commission on this, and how are these firms to be treated for the purposes of procurement by police forces in this country?
Lord Hanson (Minister of State at the Home Department) responded:
My noble friend touches on important issues and again, I refer to the point I made earlier to the noble Baroness. A survey of the existing use of facial recognition technology estimated that there was no discrepancy between gender and race. My noble friend shows slight dissatisfaction with that potential outcome, and I say to him that those are the very factors we want to look at in the guidance my right honourable friend is considering bringing forward. Self-evidently, if we are going to use facial recognition technology, it needs to be accurate, regulated, proportionate, intelligence-led and organised in a way that does not discriminate against sex, race or any other characteristic.
Baroness Jones was not convinced on safeguards:
My Lords, noble Lords have had the opportunity twice in the last month to be briefed by the Met Police on facial recognition. On both occasions, including when Minister Johnson from the other end was present, it was clear, as the Met admitted, that it does not have clear oversight, which the Minister also admitted in an earlier answer. When are the Government going to provide some clear regulations? In what other area of public-facing policing do the police make up their own rules?
Today Responding to news that the Met plans to use facial recognition at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, Big Brother Watch interim director Rebecca Vincent said:
It is worrying to see the Met resorting to the use of invasive live facial recognition technology at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival after scrapping it when a prior trial led to widespread outcry on the grounds of bias. We know that LFR is less accurate in scanning minority faces, so using it to target attendees of this beloved cultural celebration is particularly sinister. Plans to use this dangerous and discriminatory technology should be immediately scrapped.
This planned deployment is even more concerning given the continued lack of a legislative basis, leaving police to write their own rules with no accountability or oversight. Capturing biometrics on a mass scale will not make London safer. The Met should channel its resources into a proper on-the-ground police presence to deal with actual criminals rather than compromising the privacy rights of millions of innocent carnival-goers and local residents.
No statement from Brent Council on the future of the Welsh Harp Environmental Study Centre as schools break up for the summer holiday
Pond dipping nets stand ready for what may be the last groups to use the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre
Today marks a week since Brent Council were asked for a statement on the future of the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre.
Today also marks the last day of term. A lively crocodile of excited primary children walked by the nearby allotment this morning, oblivious to the fact that they might be the last to make use of the Centre.
As far as I can ascertain local schools have not yet been informed of the withdrawal of the charity Thames21 from managing the Centre or of any transitional arrangements while a new sponsor is sought.
A prettty poor show that raises doubts about Brent Council's commitment to our young people and their education about the climate and ecological emergencies that will shape their future lives.
Brent Jewish Network meet Brent Council leader to express their 'strong support ' for Nablus twinning as positive step towards international friendship and understanding
Brent Jewish Network delegation with Brent Nablus Twinning Association outside Brent Civic Centre, 16 July 2025
A delegation of the Brent Jewish Network met with Brent Council Leader Muhammed Butt on Wednesday (16 July 2025) to express strong support for the borough’s proposed twinning with Nablus, arguing for this positive step towards international friendship and understanding.
The diverse group included synagogue members, secular Jews, young people and elders. They shared their own experiences of visiting Nablus, the vibrancy of its city life, the warmth with which they were received by its people and the difficulties that their communities face under illegal Israeli occupation. They pointed out that visiting Nablus as visible Jews did not cause any hostility whatsoever from its people, who were unfailingly hospitable. They noted that Nablus, as home to Muslim, Chrisitan and Samaritan Jewish communities, was a great twin city for proudly multicultural Brent.
The group expressed its dismay at the recent intervention in this matter by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. They reaffirmed that a significant threat to community cohesion is the false conflation of Jews with the Israeli State and the fraudulent presentation of every Jew as being in support of the Israeli war on Gaza. They explained that the Board, by choosing to assert these falsehoods, was directly undermining community cohesion in Brent.
The group also reaffirmed that the Board is not representative of the whole Jewish community, evidenced by its failure to include the Reform synagogue in Brent or any non-Orthodox synagogal bodies in its delegation to the Council. The Board’s highly sectarian attitude was demonstrated by its recent disciplining of 36 of its own elected representatives for expressing mild anti-war views.
Following the meeting, Brent Jewish Network member Daniel said:
We congratulate Cllr. Muhammed Butt and Brent Council for the progress made on the Nablus twinning project. Nablus is a city that I was privileged to visit in 2015, where I was received with warmth and hospitality. Much like Brent, Nablus is a bustling, vibrant place. It is diverse, with many different communities living together. People in Nablus have much the same problems as us - unemployment, housing scarcity, inflation - in addition to facing a brutal Israeli occupation. Twinning is an exciting opportunity to build links with the people of Nablus in a spirit of friendship and solidarity.
It is pure chutzpa for the Board of Deputies to criticise anybody’s efforts towards community cohesion. Their intervention into Brent Council’s democratic process has nothing to do with defending Jews or community cohesion, but instead has everything to do with their steadfast support for Israel. Rather than affirm the separation of local Jews and the Israeli state, they knowingly conflate the two. We urge the Board of Deputies to step back from sectarianism.
Cllr Butt thanked the Network for their support for the twinning project and remarked that it was important to hear the alternative view of the local Jewish community to the one presented by the Board of Deputies delegation. He said that the council will continue to seek engagement will all parts of the local Jewish community, including the sections represented by the Brent Jewish Network. They were told that the meeting was helpful in documenting that the council was proactively engaging Brent communities
Kenton Residents' Association formed
From Kenton Residents' Association Brent
A group of Kenton residents had an initial gathering on the evening Wednesday 9th July to discuss the formation of the ‘Kenton Residents’ Association Brent’ at the Harrow Masonic centre in Northwick Circle, Kenton.
A packed hall of well over 100 residents gave support to the initiative led by local Kenton ward councillor, Sunita Hirani, and long-standing Kenton resident, John Poole.
Shirley Holmes, Brent Council neighbourhood manager for the Kenton and Kingsbury Connects Area, chaired the first part of the meeting before opening up the meeting for questions and discussion.
There was strong support for the idea of Kenton Residents’ Association Brent (KRAB) and several residents came forward to volunteer in a temporary capacity to help set up the association with the aim of having a formal meeting in September where a constitution will be presented and adopted and officers elected.
Speaking after the meeting, Cllr. Hirani said she was amazed at the turn out and that it clearly indicated a desire from local residents for the formation of a residents’ association.
The meeting was sponsored by the Harrow estate agents, Empire Chase.
Tuesday, 15 July 2025
What our children will miss out on if the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre closes
There were two primary classes happily engaged at the WHEEC today when I popped by after watering my allotment on Birchen Grove. I thought it would be useful for the general reader to know what their offer to local schools and nurseries is. This brochure is from 2019 but I suspect little has changed, except perhaps for the very reasonable pricess.
Road closures and diversions from 3pm on Saturday for Wembley Boxing Match
From Brent Council
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Monday, 14 July 2025
BREAKING: Thames21 confirms it is withdrawing from running the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre at the end of this month
Following my request for information on Friday, Thames21 today released this statement:
Thames21 has given Brent Council notice that it is withdrawing from running the WHEEC at the end of this month.
After recent discussions with Brent Council, Thames21 is sad to announce that it will no longer continue to support the operation of the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre as of from the end of July 2025.
Unfortunately, Thames21 has been operating the centre at a loss for several years. Despite the value of the work being done, we simply cannot continue to sustain these financial losses. We had hope—and still hope—that the Council might step in, especially given their plans to redevelop the site.
Chris Coode, CEO at Thames21, said:
Over the last nine years, the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre has had a significant impact on the local community and is a much-loved facility.
I want to pay a special thanks and tribute to the schools, schoolchildren, volunteers, employees (especially Debra Frankiewicz), members and local community who have made this place so great.
We hope that the Council will work with local partners to find a long-term suitable solution to keep the Centre open and offer vital opportunities for children and local people to learn and spend time in nature.
Thames21 remains committed to working in the borough and will continue to focus on working with communities to restore and care for our rivers.
Brent Council was also asked for a statement on Friday bit so far has not responded,
EXCLUSIVE: Brent Jewish Network request a meeting with the leader of Brent Council to discuss their support for Nablus twinning.
The Jewish Bloc on a National March for Palestine June 2024
The Brent Jewish Network has written to the the leader of Brent Council requesting a meeting so that they can discuss their support for the twinning arrangement with the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
The move comes after Cllr Butt promised consultation with the Jewish community about the issue after presentation of a petition opposing the twinning at Full Council last Monday.
The Brent Jewish Network was initially a loose grouping formed in late 2023 as a consequence of the development of a Jewish bloc at pro-Palestine demonstrations. Latterly it has adopted a more formal structure.
The list of signatories has grown since the letter was sent last week:
Cllr Muhammed Butt
c/o Labour Group Office Brent Civic Centre Engineers Way Wembley
HA9 0FJ
11 July 2025
Dear Cllr Butt,
We would like to congratulate you and Brent councillors for successfully passing the motion to begin the process of twinning Brent with the Palestinian city of Nablus. We want to pay our appreciation for the many hours of work undertaken by yourselves and the Brent Nablus Twinning Association to reach this point. Twinning with Nablus is a deeply meaningful act of solidarity with the long-suffering Palestinian people and an exciting opportunity for our communities in Brent to develop fraternal links with the city of Nablus.
We are a diverse group of Jewish people in Brent who care deeply about our home borough, our neighbour communities and the global struggle for a fairer, peaceful world. We include synagogue members, secular Jews, young people and elders - yet we speak with one voice in wholehearted support for twinning with Nablus.
Following comments made at the full council meeting on Monday, in particular your intention to consult with the local Jewish community on this matter, we are formally requesting a meeting with yourself to share our views as Jewish residents and community members of Brent. We strongly believe that the majority of Jewish residents support (or at least, do not oppose) the twinning proposal.
Exclusive consultation with just one part of our community is counter-productive, reductive and divisive. We firmly reject both the ludicrous claim that twinning with Nablus is “sectarianism” as well as the false presentation of this view as the sole voice of the Jewish community.
Additionally, those of us who have previously visited Nablus seek the opportunity to share these experiences with the council cabinet.
Please respond with your availability for an in-person meeting in the coming days and we will make the relevant arrangements.
With much gratitude,
Daniel Wernberg
Ben Samuel
Rabbi Dr Frank Dabba Smith
Dr Jonathan Fluxman
Carol Foster
Dr Ian Saville
Pamela Laurance
Lucy Cox
Tessa Van Gelderen
Tom Goodman
Juliet Sampson
Emma Tait
Ilana Machover
Saturday, 12 July 2025
Will we have to fight yet again to keep the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre open?
As we experience extreme heat as a result of climate change and an escalating bio-diversity crisis it comes as a shock to learn that once again the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre might be in jeopardy.
In the penultimate week of the school term Thames21 who currently run the Centre have given notice that their involvement will stop at the end of the month. The Centre is well-used by local primary schools (I know because my allotment is next door to the Centre and I hear excited children coming and going).
David Attenborough has repeatedly said we cannot expect children to defend nature if they haven't experienced it and the Centre plays a vital part in giving that experience in an era when Brent council has declared a Climate and Environmental Emergency.
With schools busy with end of term activities this news may not get through before the long summer holiday and it will only be when they try and book for the autumn term tht they will find the facility is no longer available.
It may be that Brent Council has safeguarding the Centre's future in hand but ominously neither the Council Press Office nor the lead Cabinet members responsible have responded to Wembley Matters' request for a statement. Thames21 have not yet responded to a request for confirmation of their withdrawal. I had hoped that it might be temporary while building work took place.
The two classrooms that form the Centre have been deteriorating for years and it was envisaged that the WHEEC would share the new build accommodation planned for a 16-19 SEND facility in the grounds.
Generations of Brent pupils have enjoyed visits to the Centre and many adults will have memories of bug hunting, pond dipping and much else. Let's hope if necessary we can get together and Save Our Centre.
Third German airman from the February 1944 Dornier bomber captured in Alperton
Guest post by local historian Philip Grant
A WW2 German Dornier DO-217-M bomber aircraft. (Image from the internet)
In a guest post last February (“The Curious Incident of a Dornier in the Night”), I noted that the Wembley newspaper reports had only mentioned two of the four German airmen who parachuted out of the plane being captured. I wrote: ‘I don’t know where the other two landed …. If you have any information on this, please add a comment below!’
In May, Martin received an email from Sarah, and after I contacted her, and we exchanged some emails, I am pleased to report that her grandad, Leonard William Pursey, captured a third member of the Dornier bomber’s crew that night (23 February 1944) on ‘the last road on the Carlyon Road estate in Alperton’.
Leonard Pursey and his wife Lilian on their wedding day in the 1930s.
Leonard would have been in his mid-forties at the time. He had joined the army in the First World War, lying about his age, and fought for more than two years before it was found out that he was still only 17 (he enlisted again as soon as he was 18). By 1944, he was living at 68 Carlyon Road and working just across the North Circular at the Waterlow & Sons printing works in Park Royal (built in 1936 to print the “Radio Times”).
Waterlow’s “Radio Times” printing works in Park Royal. (Image from the internet)
Like around 25,000 other adult civilians in Wembley, Leonard would have to spend around twelve hours a week (usually in three 4-hour shifts at night) on fire watching duties in his local area. It may well have been while he was patrolling on the Carlyon Road estate as a Fire Guard, at around 10pm, that he saw a parachute coming down, and sprang into action (his passion was boxing!). His family don’t have much detail about his capture of the German airman, but they do know that he relieved him of an armband, which he kept as a “souvenir”. Sarah still has that armband, and has sent me a photograph of it.
A Luftwaffe bomber aircrew flying suit, and Leonard’s “souvenir” armband.
Leonard Pursey may have done his captive a favour by taking the armband, as it was not part of his Luftwaffe uniform. It was worn by members of the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party, and the airman might have got much rougher treatment, from the police or armed forces he was handed over to, if he was still wearing it!
According to the “Wembley News” report in my February article, the ‘docile’ young German airman captured in Douglas Avenue, Alperton, wearing a ‘blue battledress’, was treated quite sympathetically. He probably looked similar to our own RAF airmen – but if he had been displaying the hated swastika emblem on his arm, it could well have been different.
Street map of Wembley Central and Alperton, with locations showing roughly where the three German airmen who parachuted from the Dornier bomber were captured.
You can see from the map above that the damaged Dornier aircraft was already flying in a north north-easterly direction when the airmen bailed out. I have managed to find a bit more information about this German bombing raid from the Operation Steinbock website. The website states: ‘Amongst the losses this night was Do 217M-1, code U5+DK, Werknummer 56051. At 10,000 ft over London the aircraft was hit by predictive fire from the ground. Pilot Oberfeldwebel Hermann Stemann ordered the crew to abandon the aircraft over Wembley and they were promptly captured.’
The plane had flown from an airfield near Brussels, in Belgium, part of 185 German aircraft, mainly from Luftwaffe bases in France, which took part in the 23 February 1944 raid on London. The Isle of Dogs area was the main target, not Alperton, but what would Leonard Pursey’s reaction have been if he had known that the German Air Force command in Berlin had an aerial photograph (discovered after the war) of the building where he worked, as a target for another attack? They had cut it out from a 1936 British building magazine!
Aerial photograph of the Waterlow & Sons printing works at Park Royal, found in Berlin.
We still have one more airman from this Dornier bomber to find! If you have any information on where he was captured, please add a comment below.
Philip Grant.
Friday, 11 July 2025
UPDATED ALERT: Watch out this weekend, Labour wannabes will be out proving their door knocking skills and taking lots of pictures of themselves in action. Imposed selection process is 'a tragedy and a farce'
The Labour selection of candidates for the 2026 borough election by a special force of assessors from outside the borough appointed by the London Region of the Labour Party, seems to be in trouble. Applicants, after a delay last week have now been told that interviews been not been rescheduled, despite hopes that selection would be completed by July 31st. No decisions have been made as yet and no rank and file Brent Labour Party members have been involved.
If that is not enough to get them biting their nails, applicants will be jumping through hoops for the assessors in order to demonstrate their skills. These do not include demonstrating their political thinking skills or their independence of thought.
Instead they will be expected to demonstrate their 'doorstep skills' by taking part in canvassing, their pavement pounding skills, by delivering leaflets and brown nosing skills by getting involved in local Labour Party branch meetings and other activities.
Currently Alperton ward has two Lib Dem councillors and one Labour, and was of course once the seat of much respected Lib Dem Anton Georgiou. What's more natural then than Labour organising a mass litter pick in, yes, you've guessed it, Alperton. Candidates will be able to show their prowess at community involvement (even if it is only for a couple of hours this weekend).
Following the exemplary self-promotion of Cllrs Muhammed Butt and Krupa Sheth applicants will be expected to 'share updates and successes' of Brent Labour and the Council on their social media as well as those of Sadiq Khan and the Labour government. Among the suggested targets is the community website Next Door.
I hope this helps you prepare for the onslaught and perhaps escape for a day at the seaside.
Meanwhile intense dissatisfaction with the imposed selection process has been rife, Here is an example shared to Labour Party members:
As the days and weeks pass by, we have no dates for interviews, no shortlist and no idea who our candidates will be. Contrast this with the 2022 election where the LCF produced a manifesto and shortlist, and the selection process was managed by our CLP and two lay members. They managed this in difficult circumstances as ward boundaries had been redrawn and this had delayed the process. Two lay members sacrificing their time and energy to ensure that we fielded strong candidates have outperformed the bureaucrats at the London Regional Labour Party who should be hanging their heads in shame. A tragedy and a farce and no way to treat lay members or potential councillors.
Wednesday, 9 July 2025
Upcoming Climate Events in Brent
From Brent Council
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