Shan Oakes endorses Romayne Phoenix for Green Party leader

Shan Oakes, Equality and Diversity Coordinator on the Green Party Executive endorses Romayne Phoenix for leader:

Warning: Navin Shah's email account hacked in scam

Navin Shah's office has sent an urgent message after his contacts received an e-mail purporting to be from him asking for money after he had been held up by armed robbers  in Spain. This is a version of a fairly common scam that is sent out to all the people in the victim's address book after the account has been hacked.

IGNORE NAVIN SHAH'S E-MAIL

Dear all,

Navin Shah's personal account has been hacked so please delete it and take no action if you received it. Navin is currently in India, in case you have tried to contact him to tell him about the fraudulent.

Apologies for this.

Kind regards,

Sophie

Sophie Kimber
PA to Navin Shah AM
London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow
London Assembly Labour Group
City Hall
The Queen's Walk
London SE1 2AA

New Kensal Rise campaign video released

See the website HERE

Old Library may be retained, rest of 'consultation' just tweaking

Details of the new round of consultation on the Willesden Green Library redevelopment published today LINK show how limited any rethink is likely to be.

The Keep Willesden Green group demanded that the Council and developers Galliford Try 'stopped.listened and reflected' on the proposals with the suggestion that they go back to first principles and involve local residents and users from scratch.

Instead it appears that the housing development,  loss of the Town Square and the bookshop are still taken for granted. There is a concession over the Old Library building which goes only as far as that new early sketches will be on display and 'will show how the old library may be retained as part of the building'. These sketches will be on display throughout August for feedback and 'developed proposals will be ready in September'.

The second phase of the consultation to take place between September and October is limited to 'details like how the library space will be divided or what could go inside the old library'. Brent says stoutly, 'We know where we think each activity shold go (e.g. the library, museum etc).  So no consultation on housing, council offices, cafe, Town Square, car park, bookshop space, or the size of the library.

They have organised workshops for specific target groups, which run the risk of setting different groups against each other, rather than working out priorities through face to face discussion:

Tuesday, September 4 - Seniors
Thursday, September 6 - Small and medium enterprises
Tuesday, September 11- Community groups
Thursday, September 13 - Ethnic minority groups
Tuesday, September 18 - Teens
Thursday, September 20 - Families with young children

 Although of course many people will cover several categories so may end up attending 3 or 4 times!

The Council says it will carry out outreach in local schools and will develop details with schools in the Autumn.

The third phase is the 'Interim Strategy: October-November' and the Council say that core services will continue to be delivered at the Willesden Library Centre as well as non-core such as the markets. Unfortunately one vital 'non-core' service, the Willesden Bookshop, has already closed when the Council could have extended its lease during this period.

Reviewing this timetable it seems clear that the Council's intention is to get planning approval in December and  hand over the site to the developers by January 2013.

Meanwhile I am sure Keep Willesden Green campaigners will be considering their next moves in the light of the above.

Neasden stink source is Seneca

I can reveal that the stink reported over the weekend between Neasden and Wembley Park emanated from the Neasden recycling yard of Seneca. The Environment Agency has given Seneca until Friday to clear it up but there are warnings that the smell could get worse while this happens.

Seneca, a subsidiary of Careys, was given planning permission by Brent Council for a Materials Recycling Facility on the site, despite concerns about the number of waste facilities in the area. Latterly the Wembley Plan consultation mentioned the impact of 'bad neighbour' waste processing and handling firms in the area on potential redevelopment, including the possibility of a new primary school in Fulton Road.

Seneca is named after the Roman philosopher and politicam 5BC-65AD. One of his popular quotations is...

Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement-seat of the Gods.

...so I had better be careful. However it is worth pointing out that Seneca's parent company, Careys, was much praised by ex-Brent Council leader Ann John, when they stepped in to help save the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre.



Next year the procurement process will start for a new Brent Waste Contract worth millions of pounds. The contract for waste collection and recycling and street cleaning is presently held by Veolia. The new contract may also include park maintenance.

The Environment Agency can only work if they get information/ complaints from local people . You can speak to them on 0800 807060.

Closed bookshop a reproach as new consultation on Willesden Green is scheduled for Wednesday

The empty shelves and locked doors of the Willesden Bookshop were a sad sight in Willesden today. The threatened old Victorian Library was clearly reflected in the windows on which were posted Zadie Smith's New York Review of Books article about the Willesden Green redevelopment and an article about the bookshop closure from the Brent and Kilburn Times.

In the few minutes I was there several people came up to use the bookshop and were rather bewildered to find it closed. Just as people had been at the closed libraries when they had come to use them and found them shut down.

This is another photograph along with the Wall of Shame at Preston Library which should make any Brent Labour councillor with a millilitre of socialism left in his or her blood tremble with shame. It was their partnerhip with a private developer, sneaked in behind the back of residents, compounded by their subsequent misinformation about alleged subsidies to the bookshop and failure to provide any real help with relocation, which sounded the death knell of this loved and valuable local resource.

Shame.

Meanwhile on Wednesday the Library Lab (an organisation 'supported' by Brent Council) will be holding a consultation about the redevelopment. I was at Willesden Green to find out more. When I asked if Library Lab would be neutral staff member Joanna said  that they aimed to be more thorough and open than the previous consultations with this one spanning two months. Asked if the previous consultation organisers, Remarkable PR, were still involved and if so what was their role, she said she didn't really know but that there was lot of documentation from them to get her head around before Wednesday.

Wednesday's consultation will be at the Library Lab (the old cafe space within the building) between 11am and 8pm with presentations at noon, 2pm, 4pm and 7pm.

Martin Redston of Keep Willesden Green, told the Wembley and Willesden Observer:

The fact is they (Brent Council and Galliford Try) are making this up as they go along. They hoped to get this all through the back door and weren't expecting this level of opposition. They have given 10 days notice for  this meeting. It is in the middle of the Olympics and when everyone who is not watching it is on holiday. If this isn't a case of burying bad news I don't know what is.

Ealing Council shows Brent the way on hospitals campaign

There is an e-petition on the Brent Council website calling on the council to do 'all in its power' to oppose the plans for the reorganisation of hospital services in the area, including the closure of Central Middlesex A&E. The petition can be signed HERE

If any Brent councillors need help with ideas on how a local council can get behind the campaign they should look on the Ealing Council site where there is a Save Our Hospitals page http://www.ealing.gov.uk/soh

It includes campaign materials for the public to use:

Campaign materials

On this page you can download various materials to help you show your support and take part in the campaign to save our local hospitals.

• A pre-prepared letter (word) that you can print and send to the NHS medical director responsible for the proposals (no stamp required)
• Poster (pdf) and banner (pdf) that can be downloaded for you to display in your window
• A pre-prepared letter (word) to send to your own GP
• Download copies of the petition leaflet (pdf) which you can use to obtain signatures of your family, friends or neighbours if they are unable to complete the petition online. This can be returned using the Freepost address on the leaflet.
• You can also download a separate petition form (pdf) if you want to get more actively involved in the campaign and obtain signatures for our petition more widely from within your community.
• A map (pdf) of the hospitals affected by the proposed closures.

Anger mounts in Harlesden over Central Middlesex A&E closure

 I was down in Harlesden this afternoon for our regular spot publicising the closure of Central Middlesex Hospital A&E and the planned protest march on September 15th. We often had queues waiting to sign the petition to local MPs asking them to take a stand against the closure and opposing the privatisation of the NHS.

Local people, many wearing  special T-shirts and Jamaican colours ahead of the 50th anniversary of Jamaica independence, expressed anger at the closure, blamed the Coalition and its attitude to the poor and several took away petition forms to collect additional signatures in the community.

Many expressed support for the hospital where they had been treated and where their children had been born and stressed that the needy local community, particularly the young and the elderly, needed a readily accessible local A&E. They were scathing about the proposal that they should go to Northwick Park in future.There was fury at the likely downgrading of the hospital after millions of 'our money' had been spent up grading in the recent past.

There were frequent comments about privatisation and comments such as 'this government wants to make this country like America where you don't get treated unless you have the money'.

One local shopkeeper who has signed the petition last week came over and told me that he had been down to Central Middlesex to try and find out what was happening. He said that he had been told it was a 'done deal' and that the Trust intended to sell off surplus land created by the closure to build  housing or a hotel. I was rather doubtful about the latter but the sell of makes sense in terms of the Trust's debts. Once again it seems that it will be the poor who pay, this time with their health or in the worst scenario, their lives.