Brent election meetings and hustings happening next week

Brent Council directed a local resident to Wembley Matters when she asked if the Council could tell her about election hustings in the area.

These are the election meetings and hustings I know are happening in the next week or so. Please email me on mafran@globalnet.co.uk if you are organising a meeting which is not listed.

Monday April 13th (Hampstead and Kilburn and Brent Central) Brent PSC/Stop The War Election Meeting - Pakistan Community Centre, Marley Walk, Station Parade (next to mosque) - Willesden Green station 7pm refreshments, 7.30pm meeting

Wednesday April 15th (Brent Central) Churches Together, 7pm  Tavistock Hall back of Methodist Church, Harlesden High Street, NW10
Wednesday April 15th (H&K) WHAT Hustings, 7pm. Hampstead Synagogue, NW6 1AX

Thursday April 16th (Brent North) Sudbury Residents Association, 7pm St Cuthberts Church, Carlton Avenue West, North Wembley HA0 3QY

Thursday April 16th (H&K)  Time:  7:30pm to 9:30pm Queens Park Community School Aylestone Avenue. NW6


Friday April 17th (Brent North) 7.30pm Association of Churches, St George's, 970 Harrow Road, HA0 2QE
Friday April 17th (Brent Central and Hampstead and Kilburn)  8pm Church of Transfiguration, 1 Wrentham Avenue, NW10 3HT

Sunday April 19th (H&K)  8pm Brondesbury Park Synagogue8pm Brondesbury Park Synagogue 143/145 Brondesbury ParkNW2 5JL (Tickets: https://myus.theus.org.uk/events/19399/general-election-hustings/)

Tuesday 21st April, St Marks Church Hall, All Souls Avenue.7pm (Brent Central)

Organised by Elmwood (and many other) Residents' Association

Tory Barnet and Labour Brent outsourcing: similarities and differences as Barnet Unison votes to strike

Barnet Tory  'Easy Council' is facing industrial action over its outsourcing of services to private companies. 87% of Unison council workers have voted for strike action over the five commissioning projects that were agreed at the March 5th Full Council meeting. 

The proposals would mean outsourcing the majority of the Council workforce into one of five 'alternative delivery models':

1. Education & Skills and School Meals services

2. Library Service

3. Early Years: Children’s Centres

4. Adult Social Care

5. Street Scene Services

In a press release Unison said the Education & Skills and School Meals services is already in Competitive Dialogue discussions with the following contractors:

· Capita Business Services Ltd

· EC Harris LLP

· Mott MacDonald Ltd, trading as Cambridge Education

Looking at Capita’s track record LINK   in bidding and winning contracts it is highly likely they will win this contract making it the third big contract they will have won with Barnet Council.

Unison Branch Secretary John Burgess said:

The vote was never in doubt. The workforce in Barnet is amazing and resilient. The vote confirms that our members have had enough of the ideological obsession with outsourcing. The Council does not value the workforce which can be seen when unpaid overtime and long hours are never recognised when putting together bids for outsourcing projects. The fact that the Council refuses to run in-house comparators has made it clear to our members that their future employment with the Council is threatened.

So where does this leave Brent Labour 'Increasingly uneasy' Council and their own 'alternative  models'? Using the Brent equivalents of the five Barnet services:

1. Brent Council's School Improvement Service has been run down and provides a core service only with many functions handed over to the Brent Schools Partnership. and schools buying in other services from a variety of providers,  School meals have been out-sourced for a long time. In addition the Brent Cabinet on April 14th will be deciding on future provision of Additional Resources Provision and English as an Additional Language  to pupils through a variety of contracts with Academies and Independent schools LINK
2. Brent Council proposed transferring the management  of the library services to an established trust or a new model with similar features.
3. Early Years: Children's Centres - Brent Council has agreed to a partnership arrangement with  the voluntary sector or charities.
4. Adult Social Care: There is a proposal going forward to the Brent Cabinet on April 14th for Extra Care to be provided via Direct Payments and a contract with Plexus/Mears LINK 
5. Street Scene Services (parks refuse etc) Brent has already outsourced street cleaning, recycling, waste collection, parks maintenance, and cemeteries to a sole contractor, Veolia. The Cabinet will also be discussing extending the contract with Gristwood and Toms for Arboricultural  services (dealing with trees beyond what Veolia do as part of the parks maintenance contract).

An additional item at the April 14th Brent Cabinet is a proposal to pay Penoyre and Prasad LLP £831,250  for work on a hybrid planning application for the Peel Site on the South Kilburn estate. LINK

I will leave readers to judge the similarities and differences between the approaches of the two council - one Conservative and the other Labour.  You may also want to consider why Unison's reaction appears to be different in the two councils and whether as a result of the Coalition's cuts to local government that outsourcing is inevitable...

Met and Jubilee lines closed again this weekend

If the phrase  'Rail Replacement Bus Service' strikes dread into your heart, then sorry! Both the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines are closed again on Saturday and Sunday.

Jubilee line There will be no service between Waterloo and Stanmore while we replace the tunnel lining at Bond Street, replace points at Neasden and track at Wembley Park.

Metropolitan line Trains will not run between Aldgate and Rickmansworth/Watford to allow for points work at Neasden and track replacement work at Wembley Park and Moor Park.

Green Party members prevented from standing for parliament for Basingstoke on a joint, job-share candidacy

A request by Green Party members Sarah Cope and Clare Phipps’ for joint parliamentary candidacy submitted to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council on Thursday 9th April was rejected today by the Electoral Returning Officer on the grounds of a ban on job-shares for MPs.

Neither Cope nor Phipps would be able to serve as a full-time MP. Cope is the main carer for two young children, and Phipps suffers from a disability which would prevent her from working full-time. 

Allowing job-share MPs has been Green Party policy since 2012. In 2010 Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, used her first speech as Green Party Leader to call for the post of Member of Parliament to be opened up to job-shares to encourage more women MPs and make Westminster politics more accessible to ordinary people.

Cope, 36, is a mother of two. She has been an active member of the Green Party for over a decade and is the chair of Green Party Women, the women's sub-group within the party.

Cope said:

Allowing job-share MPs would open up Parliament to a much more diverse group of people, including more women, those with childcare and other caring responsibilities and those with disabilities.

At a time when people are disenchanted with 'business as usual' politics, it is an idea which could re-engage people. If voters have the chance to vote for people who are more like them, and who can relate to issues within their lives such as living with disabilities, or coping with caring responsibilities, they may be more likely to engage with the democratic process.

Phipps, 26, is researching gender and health as part of a part-time PhD and job-shares a position on the Green Party Executive. Since 2009 she has suffered from a disability known as idiopathic hypersomnia, a chronic condition which means she sleeps for around 12 hours a day.

It is now almost 100 years since women were first able to vote - yet The Electoral Reform Society predicts that on May 8th only 30% of MPs will be women. At this rate of progress, a girl born today will be drawing her pension before she has an equal say in the government of her country.

It's time our government reflected the people it is representing. Allowing job share MPs is just one way we can change politics for the better.

Phipps and Cope argue that preventing their joint candidature contravenes their Convention rights, including the right to respect for their private and family lives and the requirement of respect for rights and freedoms without discrimination on the grounds of disability. Following the formal rejection of their application for candidacy, Phipps and Cope are seeking legal advice and will be continuing their campaign to become job-share MPs.

Greens call for free public transport today to combat expected extreme air pollution

Keith Taylor, Green MEP for South East England, is calling for public transport across South East England to be made free within cities and towns today to combat the very extreme levels of air pollution that is expected across the region. 

This follows Paris’s example where the authorities made public transport free during a smog episode last year.

In previous pollution alerts France also imposed a reduced speed limit for traffic.

Alongside this the Mayor reduced city centre access for vehicles alternating with odd and even registration numbers. Similarly the Mayor is also talking about removing diesel vehicles (which are responsible for particulate emissions and NO2) completely.

Experts have recently suggested that the death toll from air pollution, usually put at around 29,000 a year in the UK, could be substantially higher because of the effect of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), emitted during fossil fuel burning, which up until now has not been taken into account.

Next Thursday 16^th April the Government are being taken to court by Environmental group Client Earth over consistently high levels of air pollution that break EU rules.

 

Keith Taylor Green MEP for South East England said:

Measures such as making public transport free for the day should be considered during serious smog episodes in Britain such as the one we’re experiencing today. Previous actions taken in Paris shows they recognise the unrest caused by air pollution and that they are prepared to take action.

The Green Party has been warning everyone for years about the serious health problems that are associated with air pollution. 

 

How many deaths does it have to take before the Government will properly act?

A party political that can bring joy? 'Never? ' Watch this from the Greens...

Garden Tax and waste changes start from today

,

Brent Council's new waste collection service came into force today which includes the £40 annual green garden waste charge.  Lorraine Skinner, local environmental video artist and activist, has made the above video giving her view on the changes.

Meanwhile a resident on Barn Hill has sent a photograph of the dumping of garden waste near the car park at the top of the hill. She fears that there will be more as a result of people trying to avoid the charge.

Len Snow: A good and gentle man

The Memorial Bench in its setting in Barham Park

Guest blog by Philip Grant
 

There are many good reasons to visit Brent’s parks and open spaces, and last Sunday another reason was added to the list of why you should visit the excellent Barham Park. A group of family, friends, Labour Party supporters and (my own category) local historians gathered in the park for the unveiling of a memorial seat to Len and Joan Snow. They had been married for seventy years when Len died in November 2013, and both had lived ninety active years, more than sixty of them as Wembley residents.

They had been stalwarts of the Labour Party since the Attlee years of the 1940’s, and Len was a local councillor for more than 25 years up to 1990, and Mayor of Brent in 1976/77. It was not surprising, then, that the main speaker at the short ceremony was Paul (now Lord) Boateng, the former MP for Brent South, whose strongest memories of them were for the kindness and love they shared with everyone they met, rather than their political work.

I had known Len and Joan only since 2007, and the conversations we shared were mainly about local history, not politics. One of my best memories of Len was from a talk he gave to Wembley History Society about Japan. As a 22 year-old British officer, he had been in charge of a district in southern Japan as part of the allied army of occupation after the Second World War. Despite the cruelty displayed by the Japanese army in South-East Asia up to 1945, Len soon developed a love and respect for the ordinary people of that country and their culture. A visit to Hiroshima, just months after an atomic bomb had been dropped on the city, left him committed to nuclear disarmament for the rest of his life.

It is fitting that Len and Joan’s memorial seat is in a peaceful and beautiful setting. I would encourage you to visit it. You can find it by entering the park beside the former Barham Park Library, going straight ahead into the walled garden area, through the gateway at the far side between the two lion head fountains from the 1924 British Empire Exhibition (now sadly damaged), then up the path to the right and turn left along a path to the top of a small hill.

A plaque on the seat asks visitors to remember Len’s legacy, a life of service to his community, carried out with kindness, fairness and humanity – that is something that all politicians, both local and national, and not only within the Labour Party, should reflect on, and an example that they would do well to follow.

Philip Grant.