Pokemon Go hits Brent and gets teens outs and about

It started on Friday when a pupil on a class trip with me to Fryent Country Park suddenly captured a Pokemon at the park sign on Fryent Way. An image of the sign, rather cleaner than the real one, popped up on his screen.

Then yesterday on the Brent Walk for Change I came across  half a dozen youths in the churchyard at Old St Andrew's Church in Kingsbury all staring at their iphone screens. They told me they had captured two Pokemon there.

There have been many attempts to persuade children and teens to leave the screens in their bedrooms to get out and about in the fresh air of the real world LINK but this one combining screens with walking or biking really seems to do the trick and its launch well-timed for the summer holidays.

There have been the usual scare stories from the States (children trying to access nuclear establishments to capture Pokemon) but in many ways it is not much more than a 21st century version of the i-Spy books of the 60s where you ticked off your finds.

Parents will be concerned about younger children going out on their own in pursuit of these little creatures but I am sure it can be turned into a family adventure quite easily.

Brent is rich in potential sites so look out for groups of young people in places you have never seen them before - and Brent Council, go easy on the group dispersal orders!

Greens will join Stop Trident protest tonight in Parliament Square

Green activists are organising to be at the Stop Trident demonstration tonight at 6pm, Parliament Square, London:

On the 18th of July Parliament will vote on whether or not to spend at least £110 billion on replacing Trident, Britain's nuclear weapons system.

The Green Party has long been united in the belief that we must decommission the UK’s nuclear weapons.

Please join the protest outside parliament on Monday, so MPs debating the future of Trident know the strength of the movement against nuclear weapons.

Excellent turnout for Brent's first Walk for Change

Some of the walkers assemble at the start of the walk at Stonebridge Park Station

The first Brent Walk for Change got off to a great start today when a group, eventually more than 60 strong, completed an 11.5km (7 miles) walk from Stonebridge Park to Kingsbury following the River Brent to Wembley Park, and then on to the Welsh Harp via Chalkhill Park and St David's Close Open Space. The route then went to the Silver Jubilee Park in Kingsbury via the Welsh Harp and then on to Kingsbury Station via Fryent Country Park.

The children, some on scooters, did very well and the walk covered all ages up to pensioners and truly reflected Brent's diverse population.

Many of the walkers discovered parts of 'secret Brent' that they had never encountered before and marvelled at the green spaces that remain amidst all the industry and housing development. Many were particularly impressed by Chalkhill Park, which gave the children a welcome break, while others were charmed by Old St Andrew's Church and its graveyard.

The walk was aimed at raising sponsoryship for local voluntary organisation and those on the walk included Sufra Foodbank, the Scouts and Brent Friends of the Earth.

Tired but full of enthusiasm at Kingsbury Station

Wembley's united community celebrate together

Pictures from yesterday's two events in Wembley - the Heart of Wembley 2016 Festival in Wembley High Road (thanks to Francis Henry for the pictures) and the Chalkhill Fund Day in Chalkhill Park that I attended.  Despite all the current post-Brexit tensions we remain united and enjoy relaxing together.

Brent Walk for Change today

The Brent Walk for Change July 17^th

Would you like to join us to explore Brent’s lesser known green areas? 

This will be a shared sponsored walk to enjoy ourselves, exchange ideas and to collect some change from our sponsors to help fund our groups.

It is open to any voluntary organisations in Brent working for Environmental and/or Social Justice.

It will take place on 17^th July 2016 starting at 2.30 at Stonebridge Park station and is about 6 miles

We would be glad if your group would like to join us. If you would then please contact the organisers, Martin Francis and Pam Laurance.

Contact details:

Martin - mafran@globalnet.co.uk   

Pam - info@brentfoe.com    

If you would like to do the walk on your own today or another time the guide is below:

Brent Stop the War Meeting: Chilcot - what now?

This was the surprise guest at Brent Stop the War/Brent & Harrow PSC findraising garden party on Sunday

From Brent Stop the War

There is a growing demand that Tony Blair should face a motion of contempt in the House of Commons over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has said he would probably support.

What does the Chilcot Report mean for Stop the War?  How can we build a movement capable of stopping current and future interventions abroad?

Mundher Adhami [a member of the Brussels Tribunal on Iraq, and the Iraqi National Foundation Congress]will speak at a special meeting of Brent Stop the War which will take place on Monday, July 18th at 7.30pm

Brent Trades Hall (London Apollo Club) 375 High Rd, Willesden, NW10 2JR

[It’s very close to Willesden Bus Garage, buses 6, 52, 98, 226, 260, 266, 302, 460 and just five minutes’ walk from Dollis Hill Jubilee Line station]

Green Party responds to Lords Committee report 'Building More Homes'

I thought readers would be interested in this release from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee and the Green Party's response

In their report, Building More Homes, published today LINK, the cross-party House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee criticises the Government’s housing policy for:

· Setting a new homes target which will fail to meet the demand for new homes or moderate the rate of house price increases.

· Restricting local authorities’ access to funding to build more social housing.

· Creating uncertainty in the already dysfunctional housing market by frequent changes to tax rules and subsidies for house purchases, reductions in social rents, and the extension of the Right to Buy. All of these changes reduce the supply of homes for those who need low cost rental accommodation.

· A narrow focus on home ownership which neglects those who rent their home.

The Committee makes wide-ranging recommendations to address the housing crisis, including:

· Restraints on local authority borrowing should be lifted. Local authorities should be free to borrow to fund social housebuilding as they are other building programmes. This would enable local authorities to resume their historic role as one of the major builders of new homes, particularly social housing.

The current historically low cost of borrowing means local authorities could make a large contribution to building the houses we need for the future. Further, the new Prime Minister has announced that the Government will abandon their fiscal target. This paves the way to increase local authority borrowing powers.

· Council tax should be charged on development that is not completed quickly. The Government’s reliance on private developers to meet its target of new homes is misguided. The private sector housebuilding market is oligopolistic with the eight largest builders building 50% of new homes. Their business model is to restrict the volume of housebuilding to maximise their profit margin. To address this the Committee recommend that local authorities are granted the power to levy council tax on developments that are not completed within a set time period.

· Maximise the use of public land. The Government must take decisive steps to build on the very substantial holdings of surplus publicly owned land. The Committee recommends that a senior Cabinet minister must be given overall responsibility for identifying and coordinating the release of public land for housing, with a particular focus on providing low cost homes. The National Infrastructure Commission should oversee this process.

· Local authorities should be given the power to increase planning fees. Local authorities should be able to set and vary planning fees to help fund a more efficient planning system and the upper cap on these charges should be much higher than the current limit.

Commenting Lord Hollick, Chairman of the Committee, said:

We are facing an acute housing crisis with home ownership – and increasingly renting – being simply unaffordable for a great many people.

”The only way to address this is to increase supply. The country needs to build 300,000 homes a year for the foreseeable future. The private sector alone cannot deliver that. It has neither the ability nor motivation to do so. We need local government and housing associations to get back into the business of building.

Local authorities are keen to meet this challenge but they do not have the funds or the ability to borrow to embark on a major programme to build new social homes. It makes no sense that a local authority is free to borrow to build a swimming pool but cannot do the same to build homes.

The Government are too focussed on home ownership which will never be achievable for a great many people and in some areas it will be out of reach even for those on average incomes. Government policy to tackle the crisis must be broadened out to help people who would benefit from good quality, secure rented homes. It is very concerning that changes to stamp duty for landlords and cuts to social rent could reduce the availability of homes for rent. The long term trend away from subsidising tenancies to subsidising home buyers hits the poorest hardest and should be reversed.

If the housing crisis is to be tackled the Government must allow local authorities to borrow to build and accelerate building on surplus public land.

Responding to the House of Lords Economic Committee’s report ‘Building More Homes’, Green Party Housing Spokesperson Samir Jeraj said:

Many of the committee’s recommendations -  on breaking the monopoly on developers, enabling council house building, and the misguided nature of the government’s focus on home ownership - reflect long-held Green Party positions.

However, they do not go far enough in some areas, particularly on Right to Buy. This damaging policy has rightly been scrapped in Scotland, and is on the way to being scrapped in Wales - it must be abandoned in England too.

To make council tax genuinely fair, it should be replaced by a Land Value tax, which would return to the community the value added to a property because of improvements that have been paid for by the public purse.
 

Tackling the housing crisis must be at the top of the new Prime Minister’s priorities, and taking on this report’s recommendations would be a positive first step.

MEP highlights Tory hypocrisy on worker and shareholder representation

Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for the South West,  has slammed the Tories for hypocrisy over worker and shareholder representation and rights. Theresa May has today promised to ensure that workers are represented on company boards and that shareholders get a binding vote on corporate pay [1]. Tory MEPs voted against such a binding vote for shareholders last year when it came before the Legal affairs committee of the European Parliament. She said:

I am delighted Theresa May is talking about what has been Green Party policy for many years [1] – giving workers and shareholders greater involvement and control over the corporations they have a vested interest in. However, Tory MEPs failed to support measures such as binding votes for shareholders on fat cat pay, when they had a chance to in the European Parliament. We can only hope that Mrs May can convince her fellow Tories and the many corporate sponsors of the Conservative Party on the merits of such a policy. I won’t hold my breath; the Tories have a long track record of blocking increased corporate accountability and transparency both in Europe and at home.

[1] Green Party policy: Workplace Democracy

WR616 As part of the process of moving towards the involvement of all the stakeholders, a Green government would introduce schemes in certain organisations which give workers greater control over internal decisions concerning how something is to be produced, or a service provided. These schemes would allow for either equal representation of workers and managers (at all levels), or for the election of certain key managers by the workforce. An extension of these schemes to allow for worker representatives on a “Board of Direction” would also give workers the ability to influence decisions about what is to be produced and what resources would be used. More general decisions about the allocation of resources within an organisation and its priorities, would be made by all the stakeholders concerned. These schemes could be triggered by the agreement of both management and the appropriate local trade union(s); or by a majority of 80% of staff voting for such a scheme to be introduced.
WR617 We will require medium and large-sized companies to be accountable to their employees and to the general public by including on their management boards employee-elected directors and independent directors to represent the interests of consumers.