Who are these 'security' people people in Barham Park? Some questions.

Illustrative image - not an actual scene from Barham Park!

 

 

Dear Edtor,

In the past few weeks I have observed what  appears  to be security guards patrolling Barham Park.

 

They have been using high spec binoculars and questioning people in the park.

 

Could anyone answer  the following:

Why are they there?

Who are they?

Who is paying them?

Do they have the right to stop and question people?

Do they have the power to arrest or ban people from the park?

Also, surely this is a job for the community police  officers.

 

Be grateful if anyone can answer  the above?

 

Local (name supplied) 

Will Brent Cabinet decide to set up its own review of Euro2020 Final disturbances and security breaches?

 

A month ago Brent Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee decided to recommend that the Brent Cabinet set up an internal inquiry, open to the public, into the disturbances and security breaches at the Euro2020 Final at Wembley Stadium. LINK  (The precise working is not available  as the Minutes of the meeting have not yet been published.)

The recommendation was not tabled at the subsequent Cabinet meeting but references from the Council's Scrutiny Committees are on the agenda for Monday's 10am Cabinet meeting. No reports are attached to the item.

The Brent CEO made a statement shortly after the Final but Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt was silent until the Football Association set up its own review. He welcomed the review in a statement on the Council website but did not mention any independent Brent Council review:

We welcome the independent review, announced by the FA, to get to the bottom of the scenes we saw at the EURO 2020 Final. It is important that a full and thorough review takes place and that any lessons that can be taken from the events of the England v Italy game are learnt.

The council will be fully participating in that review and will take on board any recommendations Baroness Casey has for activities under our remit.

Clearly there is a difference between participating in another organisation's review and carrying out your own. Cllr Roxanne Mashari, chair of the Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, recognised this in her own tweet after the FA's announcement:

Promising to see the FA announce an independently chaired review of security breaches at Wembley Stadium. Essential that this review includes Brent Council who have yet to commit to reviewing their own actions and producing a report on lessons learned.

The Torch reviews security for Tottenham home games

Spurs fans at the Torch in April for the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea

I understand that the Torch Pub is to review its security for Tottenham home games following skirmishes in the pub and outside at the weekend.

The Torch management company are meeting today with Brent Council officials and the police.

The pub is designated a 'Tottenham' venue for home games and fans have adopted it as their own. I understand that locals were refused entry at the weekend for their own protection.

Butt engages with top Prevent 'experts' but not with local concerns

Local community groups involved in Monitoring Prevent in Brent are still awaiting a public statement critical of the Prevent Strategy from Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council. Meanwhile he is ascending the ladder of Prevent experts...

Let's hope he communicates the concerns of local organisations and tells his fellow speakers why the Prevent Strategy is counter-productive, silents open discussion and helps feed both Islamophobia and disaffection.

Wembley French School leaves the workers out in the cold

I have been getting comments from locals, who like me live close to the French School now housed in the old Brent Town Hall.

They have seen the security guards standing at the gates in freezing temperatures with no shelter.

One man said to me this morning, 'It is disgraceful. It is a private school with big fees. Can't they provide them with a little cabin or something. It is because they know people need work so they walk over the working man.'

That's not very good public relations Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill. Especially when you are named after the man who advocated machine gunning the miners during the 1926 General Strike.

Met's message on 'hate crime' following Paris attacks

The Metropolitan Police have sent this message following the events in Paris. The Football Association has advised fans attending tomorrow's England France friendly at Wembley Stadium to arrive early to allow time to get through additional security checks. They are also asked to be in their seats by 7.55am to take part in post-Paris preliminaries.

How to opt out of the NHS care data scheme

At a meeting last night I couldn't find anyone who had received their letter about the sharing of individual's medical data so it is good news that implementation has been delayed for six months.

There are concerns about the security of the system and its possible misuse. This was discussed in the Guardian 18 months ago: LINK

If you decide you want to opt out of the system, which is your right, Fax Your GP Com LINK have set uo an easy facility. This is what they say:

We’re a very small group of volunteers who think it should be very easy for people to opt out of the new NHS care.data centralised database of medical records.

Unless you opt out now, care.data will soon store the medical records of everyone in England, yours included, in one giant database.

Our confidential health information will then be shared with companies and other public bodies.

Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a good thing.
Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a bad thing.

What we know for certain is that the NHS hasn’t made it easy for you to exercise your right to opt out. We think this really isn’t wise.

The NHS leaflet explaining care.data says you should ‘let your GP know’ if you want to opt out.
But GP surgeries are busy. If you ring up wanting to opt out they’ll ask you to write to them instead. That’s fair enough – their priority is treating the sick.

It’s 2014. The NHS really should have made it easy to opt out via the web.
So we thought we’d help out.

First, we found the fax numbers for every GP practice (sadly, very few let you email them). After you’ve entered your details, our clever computers automatically fax your letter asking to opt-out of the care.data database straight to your GP practice.

It’s free. It’s secure. And we don’t store any of your personal data once your opt-out fax has been received by your GP. So we won’t email trying to sign you up for other campaigns.

Sadly we can’t make any 100% watertight promises that this site will always work. Your GP’s fax number might be listed incorrectly on the NHS website, for example.

So if you want total reassurance, it might be best to print out an opt out letter and pop it round to your GP yourself.

However, we have done this sort of thing before, and so know it works well. Back in 1999/2000 some of us built FaxYourMP.com, to make it easy for people to contact their MP, since in those days most MPs didn’t publish their email addresses. A bit like GPs, today, in fact.

We didn’t expect to have to resurrect a similar service nearly 15 years later. Frankly, we shouldn’t have had to, but needs must.

— Stef Magdalinski and friends.

The Keep Our NHS Public leaflet downloadable below contains an opt-out letter you can take to your GP:

Oxford College destroys pop up library and dumps books

 

There is consternation in Kensal Rise this morning following the destruction of the Kensal Rise  pop up library before dawn by security agents hired by Cluttons, the property agents for All Souls College, owners of the library.

The library was unceremoniously torn down and its books dumped.

The pop up library has been on the site since Labour Brent Council closed the library in its 'library transformation' project. Campaigners have bee pressing for a community library space in the proposed new development by developer Andrew Gillick.

Gillick is due to submit new plans  but the investigation into fraudulent emails submitted to the Council about his previous planning application have not yet resulted in any action despite frequent reminders from local residents to the council and the City Police.. Emails in favour of his planning application were submitted from an address that allegedly  he owned and sublet to tenants.

The action has followed quickly on the Friends of Kensal Rise Library's statement yesterday that they would be unable to support Gillick's revised planning application:

 Following refusal of planning permission last September, the developer and his architect are submitting fresh proposals for the library building to the planning committee of the council. Negotiations with regard to the space reserved for the community have been on going since before Christmas in so far as we have been shown and have commented on preliminary drawings. According to the architect these were a 'work in progress'. 

The Trustees of the Friends of Kensal Rise Library voted to agree, in principle, to accept the offer of two thirds of the ground floor, contingent on seeing the final drawings and the developer's planning application and also subject to an agreement being drawn up that would give an assurance that the Friends would be the tenants of the space in which to run a community library. We have also had the support of the Brent Council Lead Member for Libraries, Cllr Mashari, for this. 

Both the College and the Friends contributed to an agreement document that was to accompany the planning application. However, this was not agreed by the developer.

The Friends do not regard it as appropriate to approve a planning application on behalf of the community without first seeing that planning application. Furthermore, they have so far not had an assurance from the developer that in return for their support their tenancy of the library space would be assured.

We have informed both the College and the developer that we have been unable to support a planning application in this way.

Is this the consequence?

Campaigners had taken their case all the way to All Souls College in Oxfo0rd only to see the college engaged in the:shameful action of destroying a community library and its books.

Tight manoeuvres at the Brent Civic Centre

Chaotic scenes outside the Brent Civic Centre caused by the closure of  Engineers Way for road works were made worse yesterday when a 92 bus lumbered into the closed road and then got stuck trying to reverse out of the trap.

As wedding guests in all their finery tripped through the roadworks to the Civic Centre entrance the bus driver was rescued by an  exasperated Civic Centre security man who gingerly guided him into the marriage garden entrance for a tight manoeuvre.

Perhaps a place for drivers to avoid completely at the moment.