Contact your MP now on Pensions Reform

This government are going back on their promise in the Coalition Agreement, and are forcing 5 million people to wait longer for their State Pensions, with little time to plan. Women born in 1953, 1954 and 1955 are hit hardest, with 500,000 having to wait over a year longer for their pension. 33,000 will have to wait two whole years.

Tonight, we have our first real chance to try to defeat these changes once and for all, when the Pensions Bill is debated in the House of Commons.

The Labour opposition is going to argue that the Pensions Bill should be abandoned, because the proposals on the state pension age are so unfair.

It’s crucial we all get in touch with our MPs to ask them to vote to give the Pensions Bill the chop. Even if you’ve emailed a dozen times already, please email them again – this is crunch time. 

Please sign by going to this LINK

M'Luds won't you help me on welfare reform

Written, sung and produced by Sue Marsh, diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com

Woodfield says NO to academy conversion

The governors of Woodfield Sports College having agreed to pursue academy status in May, decided to drop the proposal at a governors meeting on June 13th. 

This followed a secret ballot in which nearly three quarters of the teaching staff voted to oppose the academy proposal. Union members also voted overwhelmingly to take strike action if necessary to keep Woodfield within the local authority family of schools.

I understand that Brent Council also intervened positively in the debate. If this marks a more proactive stance in safeguarding the local family of democratically accountable schools, it is very welcome.

A chance to talk to councillors about Chalkhill improvements

HOLLAND PARK LOBBY TONIGHT

My internet has been down so sorry for the lateness of this notice:

URGENT: JOIN THE LOBBY OF HOLLAND PARK SCHOOL'S GOVERNORS. MEET AT THE SCHOOL TONIGHT (Thusrday) AT 6.00 PM
 

After a "consultation" with parents which consisted of a meeting with parents on Monday evening oh yes, they also had the opportunity to comment online by, Wednesday - they had received the invitation the previous Thursday - and after promising students that they would be consulted, THE GOVERNORS OF HOLLAND PARK SCHOOL ARE GOING AHEAD WITH THE MEETING AT WHICH THEY WILL DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO CONVERT TO ACADEMY STATUS.

The meeting is at the school tonight at 6.30 pm. If you agree that such an important decision should not be taken without proper consultation with all groups - teaching and non-teaching staff and their unions, parents, students, local primary schools and the community - that this consultation should include information and arguments for and against Academy status and that after a FULL consultation there should be ballots of staff, parents and students, please join us to lobby the governors. 

ASK THEM TO POSTPONE THEIR DECISION PENDING THE COMPLETION OF FULL, INFORMED CONSULTATION.

Save our Gardens

Destruction in Salmon Street

Something that really upsets me is when I see yet another front garden being ripped out and paved over. There's something really brutal about it and it is  regular occurrence in Brent.  Even worse is when there is no attempt to retain even a border or a little container planting:

Car park with house attached, Queen's Drive

 The London Wildlife Trust published a report last week  'London - Garden City?'which recorded the loss of gardens in London. You can download the report HERE .

'As established by this report, London’s gardens cover a vast area. But the speed and scale of their loss is alarming,’ says Mathew Frith, Deputy Chief Executive of London Wildlife Trust. ‘Collectively these losses detrimentally affect London’s wildlife and impact on our ability to cope with climate change. It’s never been more important that Londoners understand the value of our capital’s gardens. A well managed network of the city’s 3.8 million gardens support essential wildlife habitat and offer important environmental benefits in response to climate change including sustainable urban drainage.'


The loss is a combination of hard surfacing to provide car parking space - what the estate agents love to call 'off-road parking'; erection of sheds, garages, glasshouses and bottom of the garden studies etc; and the development of back gardens for new housing. Brent suffers from all these and the transformation would bewilder anyone transported to the present from the 1950's: 'What have we done with our cherished front gardens?'


It isn't just front gardens either. A parent I visited recently proudly told me she had converted the back garden into a playground for her children and took me into her back room to show me the garden,  paved completely from house to back fence,  with nothing growing in it at all. As I stared I remembered our back garden in Kingsbury when I was a kid.  We played hide and seek amongst the shrubs, picked the figs and threw them at each other,  built little camp fires to cook sausages and baked beans, searched in the irises to find snails and have snail races - and even planted seeds and nurtured the young plants. What a loss.


All is not completely lost though.  I have already reported on the Chalkhill allotments which are proving very popular but many of the very small gardens on the estate are something to wonder at. When I have leafleted on the estate I have stopped to admire the ingenious ways people have managed to grow flowers, tomatoes, corn, aubergines, runner beans and courgettes in a tiny space, often in their front gardens. Some conservation areas, such as St Andrew's in Kingsbury have managed to retain grass verges and the ban on drop kerbs. The difference is striking:

Well's Drive in the St Andrew's Conservation area

Even on the busy Church Lane it is possible to have a lovely front garden:

Front garden in Church Lane, Kingsbury

The Report says that on average the equivalent of two and a half Hyde Parks has been lost each year between 1998-99 and 2006-8. In the same period the amount of hard surfacing increased by 26% and the amount of lawn decreased by 16%. Overall vegetation in gardens decreased by 12%. On average 500 gardens, or part gardens, were lost to development each year.

Action needs to be taken at a London-wide as well as a borough level. This not only requires stricter planning controls but also weaning people away from cars by providing better public transport.  It could be that the price of oil will do the trick in the longer term. There is also an issue with people's lack of time in this era of long working hours and multiple jobs and also with lack of knowledge about gardening. The former is obviously a wider social issue but it has been encouraging to see the latter addressed. Metropolitan Housing is running gardening workshops on Chalkhill, the Transition movement has been doing some educative work, and Brent Elders' Voice has introduced a scheme for cross-generational support to keep gardens under cultivation.


I do my bit to encourage wildlife in my very small back garden but is is often hard to persuade visitors that I have planted the jungle deliberately! However they are soon entranced by the many visiting birds, including woodpeckers and the busy pond life.

Council Executive delays festival decision but approves everything else in record time

There was a large delegation from Brent's Hindu community at the Council Executive last night to back up their 5,000 signature petition opposing the cutting of funding for Navratri celebrations and calling for the funding to be restored. There was also a petition to save the St Patrick's Day Parade which emphasised that the celebratiuons were for the 'benefit of the whole community'. See my earlier BLOG.

The Executive deferred the item until July.

There were also representations by carers and users over the 'Day Opportunities Strategy'  which involves the closure of the Crawford Avenue Centre and the reduction of adult social care opportunities for mental health.Some of those who attended told me they had little faith in the Council listening and changing its mind but nonetheless were determined to put up a fight.

The strategy was  voted through unanimously  as was everything else on the 16 item agenda and the meeting was completed in 35 minutes.

Teachers Vote Overwhelmingly for a Campaign of Strikes on Pensions

Teachers in England and Wales have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action against government plans to cut their pensions.

Ballot results released this afternoon for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the National Union of Teachers reflect a high level of anger and resistance.

83% of the ATL voted for a campaign of strikes and the NUT was even higher at 92%/

This is especially significant for the ATL as this is its first ever national strike ballot.

Together with the NUT this result represents the majority of school teachers in England and Wales, in both the state maintained and independent sectors.

Both organisations will now consider these results at meetings in the next two days.

NUT National Executive Member Nick Grant said:

Unless the government makes an immediate and fundamental reversal of its plans to make us pay more, and work longer to get less pension in retirement, strike action will start with one day's stoppage on 30 June.

We also expect colleagues in the University and College Union and the PCS civil servants to join us on strike that day."

We call on everyone who is angry about the unjustified attacks on public services and its workforce to join us on the day at a march and rally from Lincolns Inn Fields, Holborn at 11.30am to go via Whitehall to Westminster for a rally.

This is a fight for the future of properly funded and accountable public services. And it is a fight which is only just beginning