Call for support for London Parks Manifesto 2018

From Parks for London

At Parks for London, we love London’s parks and green spaces, and work with the people that manage, maintain and enjoy them.  Our mission is to ensure that London has a strong network of parks and green spaces, that are of high quality, safe, accessible, thriving, stimulating and beautiful spaces.  

Our vision is a London that is a healthy and sustainable world city; a place where parks and green spaces make a major contribution to the health and wellbeing of Londoners and to the environment in which they live and work. 


As such, we are calling on all of London’s candidates for the 2018 Council elections to support parks and green spaces in their borough by:

1.    Protecting and safeguarding parks and green spaces from loss or unwanted development
2.   Managing and maintaining parks and greens spaces to best practice standards
3.    Committing adequate long-term resources for management, maintenance and improvements
4.    Encouraging community and volunteer engagement in all areas, with specific reference to the health and well-being agenda
5.   Collaborating and cooperating across all London Boroughs to protect and promote our parks and green spaces

We would be delighted if you were willing to support our calls for action as you campaign ahead of the Local Elections. Please look out for our tweets this week@parksforlondon and please do tweet and retweet  to show your support & get the message out.

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Labour's nominations for Dollis Hill and Preston Wards May 2018

Dollis Hill branch has selected: Parvez Ahmed, Liz Dixon, Arshad Mahmood

Preston branch has selected: Ihtesham Afzal (Sham), Daniel Kennelly, Anita Thakkar

LATEST: Labour selections for Brent Council elections 2018

Former councillor James Powney failed in his 'come back' selection bid for Harlesden ward last night. Joshua Mitchell Murry, claiming he'd 'put residents first' was selected along with Lloyd McLeish and Mili Patel. Fryent selected Shama Tatler, George Crane and Vincent Lo.

On Tuesday Kensal Green and Barn Hill will select. In Barn Hill it is a formality with Shafique Choudhary, Sarah Marquis and Michael Pavey re-selected without  opposition. Wednesday Update: Matt Kelcher and Jumbo Chan were re-selected in Kensal Green and Claudia Hector won the third position.

Welsh Harp (Amer Agha, Harbi Farah and Roxanne Mashari), Queens Park (James Denselow, Neil Nerva, Ella Southwood) and Tokyngton (Muhammed Butt, Orleen Hylton and Ketan Shah) will all confirm the re-selection of current councillors.

Thursday's meeting in Alperton will confirm the re-selection of James Allie and Bhagwani Chohan with a contest for third place between Nushan Nazemi and Trupti Sangani.

Meanwhile more is emerging about the de-selection of John Duffy in Kilburn which was a surprise to many of the public given his record of robustly challenging the Cabinet and officers.

In an email to Kilburn ward members, following up on an email he sent listing his achievements as a councillor, Duffy said:

Normally I would ignore stupidity like this, but I have had to sit in meetings where the tone has been unacceptable some member calling Hillary Benn “a Fascist”.

At the meetings members often wearing pictures of Jeremy Corbyn these members are normally in their 50’s and 60’s its very odd. If you dare raise the fact working people are turning their backs on the Labour Party they say its not important that the Labour Party win elections. Some times I feel I am at a Moonies convention, without the humour or big wedding at the end.

Like most Labour party members, I am dismayed at our electoral position. So I ignore them and push on trying to deliver socialist answers to problem facing the residents of Kilburn because of the unbalanced Tory austerity attack on hard working families and people who are need support.

These members have apparently decided at Wednesday night selection meeting that local issues and local residents will more or less be ignored and the main issue at the meeting will be about how much you support Jeremy Corbyn.

In an earlier email he accused Momentum members of using the 'pernicious Tory tactic of blacklisting' (regarding Brent Momentum's Facebook listing councillors who supported Owen Smith's leadership bid) and said that his wife would not attend the selection meeting for fear of intimidation.

 A Kilburn Labour Party member reacted with this statement:

This is John Duffy's version of alternative facts. Not a different interpretation of facts, but a "different truth". The idea that members are all in their 50s or 60s, sit around in Corbyn T-shirts and ignore local issues is about as far from the truth as you can get. That and the idea that the main issue at the selection meeting was Corbyn.

The member went on to say that despite Duffy not being at the selection meeting his candidature had been tabled and he did receive some votes. Duffy did not have an automatic right to be short-listed and this had also been the case with Cllr Rita Conneely. He rejected claims that local issues were not discussed citing a recent special meeting on South Kilburn Regeneration and said no one else had noticed an atmosphere of intimidation.

There was a recognition that Duffy had made life difficult for the Council leadership and forced them to retreat on a number of issues but it was also felt that he was not a team player able to work co-operatively with other councillors and campaigners.

Listing councillors who had supported Owen Smith's leadership bid was an attempt to provide political information for Labour Party members to consider when making their selections. In fact most of the councillors named had been re-selected.  It was not comparable to blacklisting by employers to stop militant trade unionists from gaining employment.

The Kilburn member denied that the de-selection of Duffy could be interpreted as a victory for Muhammed Butt and the Labour leadership but instead was about the above issues and a reaction to Duffy's email claims.

Caroline Lucas on Brighton Council Win

Greens now largest party on Brighton Council

The Green Party is now the largest party in Brighton, with 23 seats. It's still five seats short of a majority, but the city that chose Caroline Lucas as the UK's first green MP last year has cemented its support for her party at local level. FULL RESULT

This is the first time a local council in the UK has elected the Greens as the largest party. Brighton and Hove Green convenor Bill Randall said,

The city has listened to the Greens and we have listened to the city.

Greens would now sit down and plan how to take the city forward in these difficult times This is the first time the Greens have been the largest party on any council in the UK and people seem to be  genuinely enthused by the option of a Green-led council.

It's a great result for the city and a huge vote of confidence in the Greens. People went Green across Brighton & Hove. We held all our seats and gained 10 more. We now have 23 Green councillors, making us the largest Green group of councillors in the country.

The next step is for us to talk to other parties about how we will work with them and implement our manifesto pledges at a very challenging time for local government budgets.

We can't say how this will work until we have entered into discussions.