£157k payout leaves Davani laughing all the way to the kennels

The Brent and Kilburn Times LINK today reveals that former Director of Brent Human Resources, Cara Davani, was paid out £157,610 when she left the Council, almost to the day, last year. Davani as well as her job with Brent, also had her own HR Consultancy and a dog breeding business.

At the time Brent Council said:

'Cara Davani, Director of HR and Administration, will leave the Council at the end of June. She intends to take a career break for a while.

The Council is grateful for the significant contribution that Cara has made over the last 3 years.’

Part of Davani's 'contribution' was to land the Council with an Employment Tribunal case in whcih she and the Council were found to have victimised and racially discriminated against an employee, Rosemarie Clarke.

Cllr Butt and Cara Davani

Council leader Muhammed Butt went out of his way to protect Davani and refused to allow any disciplinary action against her.  The Pavey review of Brent Human resources was excluded from dealing with the Employment Tribunal case. This was a decision that Pavety recently said he regretted remarking that he should have fought harder for a broader remit LINK.

Philip Grant and I both tried to raise the case at Brent Council meetings but were denied the opportunity.  LINK

I very seldom agree with Tories but Cllr John Warren's comment to the BKT hits the nail on the head:

£157,610 compensation for loss of office is a sick joke. There's no way they should have given her a penny because it's a reward for failure. It would be interesting to see how they justify it as I don't believe they needed to pay her that. Not a bad deal to be rubbish at your job and get a payoff like that.

Green Parties propose talks on progressive alliance post-Referendum vote

This is the text of the open letter that has gone from the Green Parties of England, Wales and Northern Ireland to Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron and Leanne Wood urging talks about a progressive alliance.

 Dear all,

In a spirit of openness and transparency, we are writing to you as Leaders of parties which oppose Brexit, to invite you to a cross-party meeting to explore how we best rise to the challenge posed by last week’s vote to leave the EU.

Britain is in crisis and people are scared about the future. Never have we had a greater need for calm leadership to be shown by politicians.

We have a UK Government in chaos, an economy facing a crisis and people up and down the country facing serious hardship. There is an urgent need to make a stand against any austerity and the slashing of environmental legislation, human and workers’ rights that may come with Brexit.

With the growing likelihood of an early General Election, the importance of progressive parties working together to prevent the formation of a Tory-UKIP-DUP government that would seek to enact an ultra-right Brexit scenario is ever more pressing.

This is an opportunity to recognise that a more plural politics is in both the Left’s electoral and political interests. This crisis exposes the absurdity of our first past the post electoral system. Just 24 per cent of those eligible to vote elected the government that called the referendum. The only fair way to proceed is to have a proportional voting system where people can back the politicians who they believe in, rather than taking a gamble and not knowing who they will end up with.

The idea of a progressive alliance has been floated for several years, and proposals have once again been put forward in the context of the current crisis. We believe that the time has come to urgently consider such ideas together in the context of a Westminster Government. We recognise the very different political situation in Scotland, given the strongly pro-EU majority there. We hope that co-operation between progressive parties their can ensure that this mandate is respected, and we will support them to keep all options open.

We look forward to your response,

Natalie Bennett, Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales

Alice Hooker-Stroud, Leader of Wales Green Party

Steven Agnew MLA, Leader of the Green Party of Northern Ireland

Caroline Lucas MP, Brighton Pavilion

NUT strike on July 5th to go ahead

Assemble outside Broadcasting House W1A 1AA 11am and march to rally in Parliament Square

The NUT and UCU are due to strike on Tuesday July 5th.  This is  Kevin Courtney's message to NUT members:

Thank you for all you are doing to build for the strike action. We have received a number of messages from members concerned about the efficacy of taking action given the current political turmoil but we are also experiencing a large spike in joiners and members reinstating.

Tomorrow, we will be emailing members in the ballot cohorts with the message below which has a link to a letter I have sent to Nicky Morgan MP setting out our concerns and reminding her of the steps she can take to avert the strike:

POST-REFERENDUM SUPPORT

Following the referendum we have being considering steps we need to take to support our members and our pupils.

• We are writing to our members from overseas - reassuring them of our support and determination to do everything we can to help.
• We are working on materials for teachers to use in schools at a time of increasing racial tension.
• We have decided that it is important to go ahead with the strike on July 5.

I'm writing to explain that decision and to ask for your support.

THE STRIKE IS ON

Firstly, it is important to know that under the UK's union laws there is no option of simply delaying action to September; action must be started within 28 days of the ballot closing.

Secondly, we believe the demands our strike is putting forward are now more important than ever.

Schools are facing a very difficult budget because George Osborne has FROZEN the money he gives schools, while INCREASING the money he takes from them.

As a result we are seeing:
• increases in class sizes,
• cuts to subjects especially Arts subjects,
• less individual attention for children,
• worsening of terms and conditions for teachers.

The referendum result makes this all the more important. If inflation now rises then George Osborne's funding freeze will damage education even more.

It is also vital for the Government to acknowledge that they bear the responsibility for increasing class sizes. They are not due to migrants, but due to a lack of funding and of school place planning. We are therefore calling on Nicky Morgan and George Osborne to commit to investing in education, not cutting it. This is in the interest of our country as well as our children's education and our teachers and support staff. I have written to Nicky Morgan outlining some steps she could take which would allow us to suspend our action.

But in the meantime, if you can, please support our strike - in the best interest of education, teachers and the young people we teach.

1,000 new members have joined the union since last Thursday.

Not many people know this....but there's another party leadership contest starting on Friday!

Amidst the raging publicity over the Conservative and Labour leadership contests readers can be forgiven for not registering that the Green Party leadership and deputy leadership contests are about to start.

Nominations close tomorrow at noon and the campaign commences on Friday until July 24th followed by a month of balloting.

Half of the Green Party Executive positions will also be contested.

Results will be announced at the Green Party autumn contest which assumes greater importance in the light of a possible Autumn General Election.

There has been an increase in Green Party membership applications in London since the Referendum result.

Barry Gardiner joins Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet

Barry Gardiner, MP for Brent North, was reportedly booed by fellow Labour MPs yesterday evening when he had the temerity to speak up in defence of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Corbyn has now appointed him shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Gardiner is my member of parliament and I have clashed with him many times, as well as agreed with him on some issues, such as the Prevent Strategy. I stood against him in the General Election before last as the Green Party candidate.

We share a concern about the environment and climate change and although our specific policies, not least on the major question of whether our current economic system based as it is on continuing economic growth is compatible with tackling climate change, may differ, I welcome his appointment as strengthening the Labour Party's approach to the issue.

This is what he had to say in a recently updated Huffington Politics LINK article that demonstrates his ability to analyse the political implications of resource competition.:

Exactly one week before the Queen’s Speech President Obama gave a speech - not in London, but in New London, Connecticut - to the United States Coast Guard Academy. He said: “I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country... And so we need to act - and we need to act now.”

He said that climate change would shape how every one of America’s services plan, operate, train, equip and protect their infrastructure, because climate change poses risks to national security, resulting in humanitarian crises, and “potentially increasing refugee flows and exacerbating conflicts over basic resources like food and water.”

Last summer I was critical in this House of the government’s decision not to provide financial support to the Italian government’s coast guard operation to rescue refugees from Libya. The Government’s responded to me then that such rescue operations acted as a “pull factor” and were only increasing the number of attempts. I thought it an obscene argument then and in the intervening months we have seen that it was not only obscene, but wrong. The numbers have increased. This Saturday the Italian Coast Guard announced that more than 4,000 migrants had been rescued off Libya’s coast in 22 separate operations in just one day.

We need to look deeper into why those migrants are coming in the first place. It would be convenient for me to point to the British and French air strikes, not to mention the failure to prepare a post-Gadhafi strategy that left that country in chaos. But I want to look deeper still into why the civil war started in the first place. It was part of a much wider pattern of regional upheavals that we called the Arab Spring that began in Egypt in 2010 with the uprisings in Tahrir Square.

If we track back those disturbances we come inexorably to the 2010 drought in Russia’s wheatbelt. It was the longest and most severe drought in Russia in over 50 years. The country lost 25% of its crop and it led Russia to impose an export ban on wheat that it had traditionally exported to Egypt. The food crisis in Egypt was the pre-curser to the Arab Spring. It was the same in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world.

On the 9th September 2010 when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that Syria’s drought was affecting food security and had pushed 2-3 million people into “extreme poverty” few people took any notice. In fact Syria had suffered four successive years of drought: the longest and deepest failure since records began in 1900. The losses from these repeated droughts were particularly significant for the population in the northeastern part of the country, in Al-Hasakeh, Deir Ezzor and Al-Raqqa.

Small-scale farmers were worst affected — many of them not able to cultivate enough food or earn enough money to feed their families. Herders also lost 80-85 percent of their livestock. Thousands left the northeast and migrated to informal camps close to Damascus. Experts warned at the time, that the true figure of those living in “extreme poverty” was higher than the official 2-3 million estimate. What is astonishing in military terms is that nobody predicted in September 2010 that such a tinder box might give rise to civil unrest and civil war only six months later.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies is very clear on the impact of resource shortages. In 2011 they published a report claiming that climate change “will increase the risks of resource shortages, mass migration and civil conflict” and the MoD has said that it will shift “the tipping point at which conflict occurs”.

The degradation of natural resources such as forests and freshwater has removed much of the resilience that societies formerly enjoyed. And what is perhaps equally disturbing is that we are beginning to see evidence that efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate change by some countries can actually shift increased risk onto others.

Climate change brings pressures that will influence resource competition between nations and place additional burdens on economies, societies and governance institutions around the globe. These effects are threat multipliers. They will aggravate those things that lead to conflict: poverty, environmental degradation, political instability and social tension. If Britain is to play a positive role in the world then this must be understood by our military and we must adapt.

We as politicians have to understand that the greatest threats to our security are no longer conventional military ones. You cannot nuke a famine. You cannot send battleships in to stop the destruction of a rainforest. But you can spend money on clean technology transfer that enables countries to bring their people out of poverty without polluting their future. You can invest in adaptation measures that will protect communities from the effects of climate change that are already placing their societies under stress.

Green MEP: Letwin appointment confirms worst fears about Brexit

Letwin on 80s riots

Molly Scott Cato, the Green MEP for the South West, a strong supporter of the UK remaining in the EU, has responded in dismay to the announcement that West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin is to head up a special “Brexit Unit” to work on the details of the UK leaving the EU.

Mr Letwin has a chequered history. Comments he made after rioting in inner city black communities in the 1980s were widely condemned as racist and he was forced into an unreserved apology. He was also a keen supporter of the highly divisive poll tax and has championed privatisation of the NHS. In 2011 he was caught dumping his constituent’s correspondence in a bin near Downing Street. He is also a climate sceptic and has generally voted against measures to prevent climate change .

Molly said:

The appointment of Oliver Letwin to this crucial role shows our worst fears on what might happen post Brexit being borne out. Rather than choosing a unifying figure who can help a divided nation heal after a bitterly divisive campaign, the Tories select yet another Etonian; a man who comes with a history of prejudice and who played a key role in pushing the deeply divisive poll tax in the 1980’s. His free market views on the NHS and disregard for climate change, the biggest environmental challenge we face, fills me with foreboding for what a post-Brexit England will look like. Cameron needs to bin Letwin and choose a more inclusive and unifying figure to steer us through this extremely difficult process.

Given the vital role that the EU has played in protecting civil and employment rights and environmental protection, Greens believe it is essential that there is political leadership from across the political spectrum during the post-Brexit negotiations. Only in this was can we avoid the risk that the Tories will engage in a destructive and divisive race to the bottom.

Natalie Bennett calls for General Election to deliver a people's government

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has called for a General Election in November to select a Government to lead Britain into a decision on its future relationship with the European Union. The leader of the Green Party, who campaigned for Britain to remain a member of the EU, is calling for a period of calm and reflection.

Bennett said:

“What we need is calm and time for reflection, not knee-jerk reactions. Despite the imperative of the half-hour Twitter news cycle, and the pressure to take definitive steps, what we really need is time for what’s happened to sink in, then sober consideration of what comes next.

“It is critically important that we resist pressure to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, from European states and institutions and the financial markets. This is something we must not be bounced into. It is legally our decision, and one we can put off until the people’s wishes are clearer, until we’ve cleaned up our democracy.

“Before negotiations start, we need to know what we’re asking for.

“That has to mean a General Election – that’s the only way we can reach a mandate on a way forward. We’d have a minimum period of months (the earliest practical date would be early November) to debate, discuss, inform voters, who’ll then be able to weigh up the offers by various parties.

“Dissatisfaction with the status quo in this election is clearly closely related to the failures of our current electoral system, which disenfranchises the majority, who don’t get the representation they want.

“We need an election to deliver a way forward for Britain – and a fair voting system to deliver a government that truly reflects, and delivers on, the will of the people. That’s why progressives must now consider working together for our best chance of success in any coming election. Any sort of pact must be based on an agreement to implement a fairer voting system.

“What we need above all is for a chance for the people to decide, after a full, honest, open debate. To deliver that, we need a people’s government, not the tottering 19th-century structure we have now.

Brent Cabinet amend Tenterden Pavilion community asset transfer

Following representations from residents the Brent Cabinet amended the proposal on the community asset transfer of Tenterden Pavilion and playing fields to Wembley Education Charitable Trust (Lycee  International des Londres Winston Churchill).

The amendment made the granting of the 30 year lease to the WECT subject to them entering an agreement with Forest United (1973) Youth FC, a local charitable football club for its use of the pavilion and grounds during periods when it is not in use by the WECT.

Members noted 'the additional opportunity for community access by other groups, in what will be a significant new local sporting facility.'

Members delegated authority to the Director of Resources to finalise and agree terms of leasehold and associated licence disposal to WECT in consultation with the Operational Director of Environment Services.

Speaking on the proposal Cllr Roxanne Mashari made it clear that if WECT did not reach an agreement with Forest United the proposal would come back to Cabinet.

Welcoming the amendment Cllr Michael Pavey, (Barnhill ward in which the Lycee is situated) said that the Lycee were not good neighbours- overgrown grass on frontage and refusing use as a polling station - while Forest United were good neighbours and had been responsible for kicking off the CAT process.

He pointed out that WECT was based at the French Embassy, not in Wembley.

Residents had asked for the original  proposal to be deferred or rejected. In a letter to the Council written in May, Forest United had asked  that their original bid remained on the table as a viable proposal.  They asked that a project with WECT be 'an entirely joint venture from the start with both parties having an equal say in the process and subsequent build.'  They said that 'security of access to facilities is vital to the long-term growth and sustainability of Forest united.

The amendment did not meet these demands entirely and it is clear that much will depend on the negotiations carried out by Council officers with both parties.