End the Counihan family's stress. Demonstrate on Monday.

Message from campaigners for the Counihan family.  Their plight will be repeated many times across the borough as the Coalition's housing benefit cap hits more families.

 

 We are coming together to demand justice from Brent Council for the Counihan family, who have been victimised by the actions of our council support agencies. We will be demonstrating outside Brent Town Hall, Forty Lane, Wembley on Monday July 16th at 6pm ahead of the Brent Council Executive's Meeting. Your support will be appreciated.

Isabel and Anthony Counihan and their five children, Vinnie, Aidan, AJ, Orla and Sarah, have been shunted out of the Brent to temporary housing in Ealing where they have been left since April2011 waiting for the Council to even make a decision on their situation, let alone re-house them in Brent.

Their story is an extreme and devastating example of the way lives are being ruined by benefit cuts, and the refusal to build council housing and regulate the private housing sector.  We are living in times when the powers that be think they can get away with punishing working-class people for the fact of our being poor.

Across London poorer people, especially young people, are being pushed out of the city to make way for the better off. Glenda Jackson MP's response to the family's plight was “you can't afford to live in London”. This has been echoed by council officers: Brent Housing Advice advised the family “they could afford to live in Wales”.

We are saying to Brent Council that they must immediately find the family appropriate, secure and really affordable housing in the borough -and put an end to the unbearable stress and hardship that would have totally broken many people long before now.

The Counihans have nothing to justify -their need is clear and we support them unconditionally -but their story may help illustrate how the council is failing in their moral and legal responsibility to assist people in difficult circumstances, but instead mounting attack after attack to remove people from the area.

We ask you to join us in supporting the Counihans and invite other people facing similar injustices to come forward and challenge together the vicious policies and practices of the council.

For more information, to support the Counihan’s, or raise your own issue contact:

Lesley Ryan -London Irish Centre (personal capacity): 07894 348 610

Gerry Downing -Brent Trades Union Council and Brent Fightback: 07792 966 910

Clarence -Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group: 07752 574 943

Care UK or DON'T Care UK?

Guest blog by Sarah Cox:

If the Accident and Emergency Department at Central Middlesex Hospital closes, as proposed in every option in the NHS NW London consultation document Shaping a Healthier Future, residents in Brent’s poorest wards with the greatest health needs will be at the mercy of private health care provider Care UK which runs the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex.

Urgent Care Centres are designed to take the pressure off A & E departments by dealing with minor injuries and less serious illnesses. Fine, but one of the reasons people go to their doctors or to A & E when the doctor isn’t available, is that they are not medically qualified so don’t necessarily know how serious (or not) their condition is. One of the NW London NHS documents gives the example of a mother who takes her baby to A & E with a high temperature. She is told that the baby is just teething. One of the functions of qualified medical staff should be to reassure patients. What about the case where the baby’s high temperature is not caused by teething but is a symptom of meningitis? Meningitis is hard to diagnose, but if not treated very quickly, can be fatal. There have been reports of Urgent Care Centres failing to spot meningitis and sending a stroke victim home http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5185165/Urgent-care-centres-putting-patients-lives-at-risk-doctors-warn.html

 

As a patient, Care UK’s record doesn’t fill me with confidence: 

X-rays: At the CMH Urgent Care Centre, Care UK failed to carry out the required checks on 6,000 x-rays, missing such details as broken bones http://www.channel4.com/news/flaw-leads-to-review-of-patient-x-ray%20records. All x-rays should be reviewed by a specialist to make sure that nothing has been missed, they should also be checked against the child protection register and GPs should be informed when their patients have attended the UCC. Care UK neglected to do this and took more than a year to find the flaw in their system and start to review the x-rays. Channel 4 reports, ‘Asked how it had happened, Care UK blamed it on "a couple of changes in the management structure of the team that ran the centre". They also failed to report it to the Care Quality Commission. Care UK said that although it was not legally obliged to do this, it "probably should have told CQC, but nobody picked up the phone".’ What a caring attitude!

The contract to run the CMH Urgent Care Centre was given to Care UK by the former Brent Primary Care Trust. All eight Brent NHS clinical directors wrote urging them not to sign the contract, but were told they were too late. Former members of that PCT are now non-executive directors of Care UK and NHS Brent is tied into a contract with Care UK that they cannot get out of.

Friends in high places: The wife of Care UK’s then chairman gave £21,000 to Andrew Lansley when he was shadow Health minister to help run his constituency office in the run up to the general election, an investment that has certainly paid off when you see how many contracts the firm has been awarded in the NHS and social care sectors. 

Tax avoidance  Care UK, which operates NHS treatment centres, walk-in centres and mental health services, has a reduced tax bill by taking out loans through the Channel Islands stock exchange and coming to an agreement with HMRC Guardian 17.3.12 Care UK join the likes of Vodaphone and Jimmy Carr in claiming that they’ve done nothing wrong.

There’s more about Care UK, but I’ll leave that for the next instalment. What’s your experience of Care UK or specifically of the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex?

Summer activities in Brent for 4 to 19 year olds

For those who may not have seen it on the B My Voice site:

 If you are aged from 4 to 19 and want a fun-packed summer, then Brent is Summer (BIS) is for you. There are over 200 exciting, free or affordably-priced activities on offer over the summer holidays.

BIS combines, for the first time, all the holiday activities provided by Brent Council, including the Summer University, Summer Sports programme, Summer Reading Challenge and Brent Museum and Archives.
All activities will be very popular, so even if the activities are free of charge, we recommend that you book where stated, to guarantee your place.

It is easiest to book online but you will have to pay by credit or debit card.

Courses / activities start from Saturday 21 July and run until Friday 31 August 2012.

• Search for an activity / course and book
• Browse through list of all activites available
• Browse through a list of all activities at Bridge Park
• Download a booking form
• How to book in person - location details
• View terms and conditions for attending a Brent in Summer activity 

 Booking online

1. Register an account
You will need to create an account in order to book on BIS courses this year, by registering online.
If you are aged 16 and under
You will need your parent / guardian to create an account.
Once they have created an account they can add an entry for each child and book them onto a course.

If you are aged 16 and over
You can create an account for yourself and start booking.
2. Search for courses
Use the course search box to discover what's on offer this year. You may start searching for courses but you need to create an account to book the courses.
3. Book courses
Bookings open on Monday 2 July 2012, click Book this Course on your chosen courses. Places are limited so book as soon as you can.

Once you have booked onto a course, you will receive an email confirmation.

Greens: End PFI scam and stop privatisation of the NHS

Greens have called for urgent action to cure the NHS of cancerous PFI payments and have written to the Secretary of State for Health calling for action to ensure that health care provision is maintained rather than allowing hospitals to go into administration. The Greens are the only mainstream party to oppose PFI and to campaign to stop the privatisation of the NHS.

The revelation that the South London Healthcare NHS Trust is going into administration with debts incurred by its contracts under PFI (Private Finance Initiative) has come as no surprise to the Green Party. The Green Party has warned of the financial dangers of hospitals being built under PFI. The news that up to 30 other Trusts may be facing administration has prompted the call for action to prevent closures.

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Deputy Leader, said: "It is time to cut out the cancerous PFI deals that are killing the NHS. While successive governments seem to find billions to bail out banks and to quantitatively ease the economy they seem utterly beholden to the companies that they now rent hospitals from having sold them off in the first place.

"The PFI deals were simply an accounting fix that put money in the pockets of big companies and locked the NHS into huge debt. The taxpayer will end up paying £63bn towards hospitals that cost £11bn to build. As hospital trusts go into administration we can expect to see health care provision drastically reduced. This is unacceptable and the Green Party has written to Andrew Lansley calling for a solution that protects services.

"It is surely time to end the PFI scam and let the NHS focus on providing care for patients, not profit for shareholders."

Poor TV signals in Wembley - any advice?

From the Law. Forum website LINK

Hi I would appreciate any help from anybody more knowledgable than me on this subject.

I live in Wembley, as you may know the erection of the monstrous stadium was erected in the last few years, now there is non-stop building works of huge new buildings. Flats, tall ones!

Since all this, my television and phone reception, along with all my neighbours and family have been affected so badly that I can no longer even speak to people on my mobile, and my TV just freezes ALL the time, at least twice a day...I don't even watch that much TV, maybe an hour a day at MOST.

I live in a nice area in Wembley where the council tax bills are so large I feel like I'm paying it like a sucker.

Such a large proportion of Brent council's income comes from me and my neighbours round here and now we can no longer make full use of our technology, which we need for work etc. No doubt this has devalued the house, as my neighbours have recently sold their house and had been told by estate agents that they had to drop the price as people would realise how bad the signal is and find it terribly impractical.

I have spoken to the council and they do nothing but brush me off!

Is there any legal action I can take? I have lived here for 20 years and loved it, now it's a nightmare!

Keep Willesden Green enters positive new phase

Although we don't know precisely what led to Galliford Try withdrawing their planning application for the redevelopment of Willesden Green Library Centre, it is likely to be a combination of the scale of local opposition, internal Labour Party debate, technical and legal risks; and national and international opprobrium.
The reason given for withdrawal was to allow for more consultation and a possible redesign which amounts to a victory for the Keep Willeden Green's demand to 'Stop, Listen and Reflect' (above)

Whatever the detail, the successful mobilisation of local opinion by the energetic and resourceful  Keep Willesden Green campaign, which saw the council's planning department deluged with objections to the plans,  must have played a part. Thus, last participants in last night's well attended meeting of the campaign allowed themselves a modest celebration at the planning application  withdrawal whilst recognising that this was only the end of Round 1.

It was a sign of the strength of the campaign that the meeting included about eight newcomers who wanted to contribute to the next phase. Rather than tailing off as a result of the pause in the process, the campaign has drawn strength from the decision and become even more determined to influence events.

The consensus that emerged about next steps  emphasised a positive, proactive approach that will seek participation in the formulation of new plans from the start, aided by the provisions of the Localism Act. In reaction to new council leader Muhammed Butt's stated desire to work with the community, rather than against them, KWG will seek a meeting with him to discuss the way forward to ensure that any development meets the needs and aspirations of the local community.

Mark Twain House: Brent needs 'mental food'

Dear Secretary Hunt, Minister Vaizey and Brent Council Members, 

Good morning!  I would like to grab a moment of your time and some brief attention as you hurriedly prepare for the arrival of the Olympians this Summer.  Stateside, we are all very excited to see how you celebrate this monumental event!  There is great anticipation for the Olympics as it is a wonderful opportunity for the world to come together in the spirit of competition and excellence.  It is, of course, also an opportunity for you to showcase the assets of your great city.

One of the assets of any city, any culture or any society great is its repository of knowledge.  Mark Twain, the man we honor here at his home in Hartford, CT, USA, knew this when he said:

“A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.”

The one thing Twain might not have anticipated a library having to survive is our current economy.  Another of his wonderful quotes:

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

I understand, due to tight budget constraints, you have had to close or are considering closure of several libraries in the Brent borough of London.  This may seem necessary to bring shortfalls in budget in line.  Being an American, I may not know the difference between a chip and a crisp or a loo and a lift, but I do know that closing a library is an Olympian decision where everyone loses.  We all know that libraries are important, vital and essential to the livelihood of a community, especially a financially challenged one. 

In 1900, Mark Twain on a visit to Dollis Hill attended the opening and dedication of your historic Kensal Rise Library.  It is dismaying to hear of its closure, but the reason is not so surprising.  Twain, in a way, anticipated it at its opening:

“If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand in its pocket and bring out the penny tax.  I think it a proof of the healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it taxes itself for its mental food.”

I would heartily encourage you in your decision-making roles to reconsider the closure of libraries and find the means to reopen ones like Kensal Rise that may have already found themselves on the chopping block.  

What you are losing in a library cannot be replaced in a community.  You are leaving a legacy, much as Twain left a legacy of 5 books when he helped dedicate Kensal Rise’s library.  I pledge, on behalf of The Mark Twain House & Museum, to personally come over to Kensal Rise with another 5 books to donate at the rededication of this irreplaceable institution.  

Looking at the Brent Council website, I can see that you are all incredibly attractive.  On top of that, you are incredibly diverse.  I hope that in your diversity you can find unity of purpose to make sure that you nourish your community with, as Twain called it, “mental food.”

I wish you the best with your Olympic preparations and hope you can clear the hurdles to return your libraries to full operations.

Sincerely,

Jacques Lamarre

Director of Communications

The Mark Twain House & Museum

351 Farmington Avenue

Hartford, CT 06105

Kilburn celebrates despite the rain and tennis

Despite grey skies, sudden heavy rain showers and a tennis match on the other side of London, Kilburn came out to celebrate yesterday at the Kilburn Festival.

Tara Brady, senior reporter at the Kilburn Times (pictured), was there with colleagues, once again in solidarity with the local community. This time the paper supported people as they battled with rain and mud, rather than the usual struggles over cuts and closures.

It was good to see all ages and ethnicities coming together, epitomised by communal dancing drawn from Brent's many cultures, and sad to reflect that following cuts in the Festivals' budget there are fewer such opportunities now.