Archant redundancies likely to hit Kilburn Times

Norwich based Archant, publishers of the Brent and Kilburn Times, and many other local papers, has announced a new 'audience led' strategy which will see News Editors replaced by 'content editors; who will oversee a system in which digital content will feed straight into the printed paper.

Redundancy notices were being issued today by email and are likely to include Lorraine King, veteran news editor of the Brent and Kilburn Times.   King's strength has been the fact that she is firmly part of the local community and has been unafraid to campaign on issues such as retention of local libraries, saving Stonebridge Adventure Playground and the future of Central Middlesex Hospital.

Importantly King has not given in to pressure from Brent Council's political leadership to adopt a more friendly approach to the Council. LINK

Staff will be only offered statutory redundancy pay.

There was a wave of redundancies in 2011-12 at Archant which eventually left the Kilburn Times with the equivalent of 1-1/2 reporters, now the combined role will be equivalent to one person running the newspaper AND website.

Readers will have noticed how the number of pages of the BKT has shrunk in the past few years which means that many stories that are published on the web do not make it into the print edition. This can be frustrating for local people who want to see their cause given publicity.

Archant seems determined that they will not suffer the fate of the Wembley/Harrow Observer which switched to 'digital only' and in the guise of Get West London LINK has all but disappeared.

Matt Kelly, Archant's chief 'contents officer' said LINK :

Our strategy to be more relevant than ever before is not dependent on platform.

Our strategy begins and ends with our audience. That’s why we describe our approach, quite simply, as audience-first.

Editing the newspaper will be done with a very light touch from title editors – I do not want editors spending hours deciding between the page 9 and page 15 leads, or coping with the perennial last minute need for dozens of fillers to complete news pages.”

I think the results are stunning, and that both you and – even more importantly – our readers will love them.

Senior reporters and specialists will be encouraged to publish direct to digital and – liberated from the domineering task of filling the newspaper – I expect to see us create even more content than we do today.

To facilitate the easy production of the newspaper, we will create content in pre-ordained styles that will both look great online and in print. But the practice of holding content back for print will end, with very few exceptions.

In a nutshell, I am asking us to stop editing a newspaper, and instead edit the community we serve.

This sounds remarkably like a print edition of the web-pages and with the accompanying centralisation perhaps less sensitive to local issues.

A spokesperson for the NUJ told me this afternoon that they were still in meetings about the changes but stated that they were very concerned about the impact on the quality of journalism and the service local newspapers give their readers.  In particular they had had nothing from Archant on how the remaining staff would cope with the new workload and were concerned about their members' well-being.

I hope the NUJ, as they did in 2011, will put up a fight for their journalists, but meanwhile I salute Lorraine King and her other news editor colleagues for the job they have done in maintaining a robust scrutiny of local democracy and publicising and often backing local campaigns.

Our democracy cannot afford to lose this essential service, unfortunately with one person being left to cover the whole borough and the inevitable impact on the quality of the newspaper, I can see the eventual demise of the Brent and Kilburn Times.

Has Sam Stopp been shot down over Heathrow?

Cllr Sam Stopp announced a week or so ago that he was seeking the Labour nomination for Richmond on a pro-Heathrow, pro-growth, pro-jobs ticket.

More recently he announced that he had been long-listed for the nomination.  Today his Labour councillor colleague Cllr Neil Nerva posted the above tweet on Facebook.  It says:

@Cllr Stopp

I would've stood as a pro-Heathrow candidate for #RichmondPark NEC wants anti-Heathrow candidate, which makes me wonder why we're standing.

I can't see that tweet on Stopp's timeline now LINK  but that is not surprising. Stopp has deleted nearly all of his tweets many of which backed Owen Smith in the Labour leadership election and criticised Jeremy Corbyn.  One tweet stated he was ashamed that Brent Central CLP had backed Corbyn and another accused Labour colleagues of refusing to allow him into a meeting about the Labour leadership.

Stopp's twitter account now shows just 28 tweets akthough there are 1,970 'likes':

All rather strange.  It is not clear whether this marks the end of his Richmond Park bid or whether he is still in the race.

For the record this is what Stopp said previously about the Richmond Park by-election:

Lucas: Parliament must debate and vote on triggering Article 50

Caroline Lucas MP has responded to the High Court ruling that the Government does not have power to trigger Article 50 without a vote in Parliament.

Lucas, Green Party co-leader, said:

We welcome this ruling which shows that Ministers do not have the power to trigger Article 50 without consulting Parliament.

Parliament must have the opportunity to debate and vote on triggering Article 50, rather than a group of Ministers at the top table having total control over this country’s future place in the world.

The Green Party will continue to fight to protect free movement, workers’ rights and the vital environmental protections we currently have as part of the EU.

Sufra call for fair treatment of employees by small businesses

The Newsletters from Mohammed S Mamdani of Sufra NW London, who run a foodbank, edible garden, cooking classes and  a pop-up restaurant are always interesting.  They combine reflections on current issues with practical organising. This is the latest Newsletter:

Let's take a stand against  unscrupulous businesses
 

If there is anything that bothers me most, it’s cheating people. Especially those who have no option or choice but to comply. I’ll cut to the chase. What I mean is, I can’t stand it when people get screwed over by those who can afford that little bit more.

Farida is a single mother who attends the Community Kitchen on a weekly basis, with her 9-year-old son. She was employed by a hairdresser on minimum wage, £7.20 per hour for 16 hours per week. Well, that’s what her contract says. At the end of month, after completing her due hours, her employer transferred £300 into her bank account and gave her a pay-slip for £518.40. In effect, she was paid just £4.17 per hour, well below the minimum wage. Illegal, unethical and frankly, outrageous.

Her story is by no means unusual. I’ve even heard stories of people working for weeks (regrettably without contracts) and being paid nothing at all. After 3 years of working at the food bank, you begin to recognise these nasty trends.

The logical assumption is that this is easily solvable. Report to HMRC. Call ACAS. I tried everything. It’s just not worth their while to investigate one complainant at some small business down some alleyway in Harlesden (no offence). No one gives a damn about the little people. Even less, if they don’t know how the system works, speak with an accent or are simply desperate.  

So, who are these deceitful employers? Yes, there are the likes of Sports Direct, who after much uncomfortable media attention decided to atone publicly for their sins, but I’m thinking of those small businesses close to home. The barber down the road. The takeaway where you stop off on your way home from work and the dodgy electrician who always seems to have a lackey to do the dirty work.

I’m not here to hound or stereotype small businesses. The climate is tough and the margins are narrow. But there are plenty that manage to treat their staff equitably. Let’s make a stand against unscrupulous businesses that screw over their staff.

Recruiting: Volunteer Coordinator

Sufra NW London in partnership with Brent Care is recruiting a Volunteer Coordinator to support a new NHS pilot, which aims to reduce non-essential GP and A&E visits. Working as part of a team of 5 Care Navigators, the Volunteer Coordinator will recruit and supervise volunteers to support patients navigate various social care facilities to enable them to become independent and less reliant on front-line NHS services.

A full job-description and application form can be found here. There is no deadline for applications, as we are interviewing on a rolling basis. We recommend early application to avoid disappointment.

Supermarket Collections

If you want to sign up for your first good deed of the week, put your name down to volunteer at one of our upcoming supermarket collections.

This weekend we’re at Asda Wembley Park (5/6 November), and a fortnight later, at Waitrose Brent Cross (19/20 November). We just need you for a couple of hours.

To sign up for Asda Wembley Park, click here.
To sign up for Waitrose Brent Cross, click here.

Help us stock up for the Christmas rush.

Emergency Welfare Fund

Next week, the government introduces the reduced benefit cap, which will leave an estimated 498 food bank users living on just £35/week. You can find out more, in my last newsletter here.

To cope with the chaos, which will soon unravel, Sufra NW London has launched a £5,000 emergency welfare fund to provide short-term financial support to families in crisis for gas/electricity, travel and other household costs.

To make your donation, click here.

Sami’s Chicken Club

The race is on to gather enough votes to help Sami, our 16-year old Assistant Gardener, win an Aviva Community Award of £1,000 to build an aviary and chicken coop on St. Raphael’s Edible Garden. Please support him and vote here.

SAVE THE DATE: Pop-Up Restaurant

Our next pop-up restaurant will be on Saturday 17 December, prepared entirely by graduates of our flag-ship programme, Food Academy Plus. Save the date for this very special Christmas dining experience. 

Christmas Dinner @ Sufra NW London

No one should be lonely on Christmas Day.

Sufra NW London will be open on Christmas Day for a very special dinner for those who are living alone or cannot afford a traditional dinner. There will also be a minibus collection for those who are reliant on public transport.

The cost of the Christmas Dinner is £360 – so if you know a company or a generous individual who would like to sponsor the dinner, please get in touch.

News and Appeal from Barham Community Library

Challenge issued to NASUWT as NUT and ATL set to ballot on education union merger

Hank Roberts, a long-time exponent of the need for one education union and Organising Secretary of  UNIFY has issued the following statement ahead the special conferences of the ATL and NUT to be held on Saturday. The conferences will decide whether to ballot members on proposals to merge the two unions.

Special conferences of the ATL and NUT will be held in London on November 5th. It will be an historic day for the education unions. Prediction is fraught with dangers but may I be so bold as to predict that both unions will have an overwhelming majority for going forward to a ballot of their respective memberships. Further I have no doubt that the respective memberships will return a yes vote in their ballots. Opinion polls over the years have repeatedly shown a majority in favour of uniting the unions. And why wouldn’t they? Our experience shows we have suffered because of our division in the face of ruthless government attacks on education. 

The question is why has it taken this long to break the logjam? I and others in 1996 set up a cross union body campaigning for professional unity. We called it Professional Unity 2000 in the somewhat optimistic belief that it was such a self-evidently good idea we would be able to achieve it by the year 2000.

In the event it has taken us 20 years and we detailed some of the history and events surrounding this in our 20th anniversary issue of our magazine UNIFY which was handed out at this year’s annual education union conferences.

Our immediate task is to win the ballots by the biggest majority possible and, immediately the ink is dry on our agreement, for the new union to take our great cause to the rest of our colleagues in the other education unions. The new union, the National Education Union, will have 500,000 members and be the fourth largest union in the TUC. But a union of all of us working in education would be over 1 million. A mighty force to be reckoned with. It would not be a magic solution to all our problems, but it would make a major difference to getting the Government to take our voice seriously. 

The other education unions need to reflect on the results of this and why it happened, in particular the NASUWT. My challenge to Chris Keates, NASUWT General Secretary is; you say the majority of your NASUWT members don’t believe in and don’t want a single united education union. In that case prove it. Commission an independent opinion poll of your members.

If they back your stance you can legitimately continue with NASUWT as a separate union with you as its head. If they don’t, start informal talks towards building unity further. The education barbarians are not just at the gates, they are in the stockades. We need to unite to have any chance of saving state education, and to build a future education system worthy of our children.

Knitters needed to help dementia patients

Goverment must act after ClientEarth's air pollution victory

Responding to the news that the courts have ruled against the government in a vital legal challenge on air pollution, Keith Taylor, Green Party MEP, said:

The government has been exposed, yet again, as failing in its duty to take even the most basic action to combat an air pollution crisis that needlessly claims the lives of more than 50,000 people in Britain every year."

The failure highlighted by the judge today is as much moral as it is legal; Ministers have displayed an extremely concerning attitude of indifference towards their duty to safeguard the health of British citizens."

ClientEarth has worked tirelessly to hold to account this government for it's irresponsible and deadly apathy in the face of a public health crisis that costs the British public more than £20bn a year.

Theresa May's administration is failing to do even the bare minimum, as required by EU laws the UK itself helped to set, to improve the quality of the air we all breathe. The bare minimum.

Where embraced and enforced, EU air pollution limits are helping to prevent thousands of deaths every year. In fact, this government readily acknowledges that it is EU law that has been the driver of any positive air quality action in the UK. For the sake of the health and prosperity of the British people, we cannot risk scrapping these safeguards.

The government must finally face up to its moral and legal responsibility for tackling Britain’s air quality crisis. Ministers must now be forced to make a firm commitment to maintaining and strengthening vital EU air quality laws.

Cycling UK today, celebrated ClientEarth’s victory and called on government to rebalance its investment in roads towards cycling and walking.

The presiding judge, Mr Justice Garnham, ruled this morning that the government’s 2015 Air Quality Plan failed to comply with the Supreme Court ruling or relevant EU Directives.

ClientEarth’s legal challenge followed their previous 2015 victory in the Supreme Court, which ordered ministers to devise a plan to bring air pollution down within legal limits as soon as possible. ClientEarth took the government back to the High Court in a Judicial Review this November, deeming their plans as “poor”.

With road traffic widely recognised as one of the largest contributors to air pollution, Cycling UK wants the Government to rebalance its £15bn Road Investment Strategy towards non-polluting forms of transport such as cycling and walking, which are set to receive only £300m up till 2021 through the forthcoming Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy.

Cycling UK has calculated this to mean that by 2020/21 the government’s investment in cycling and walking will have declined to just 72 pence per person (outside of London), compared to £84 per head for trunk roads and motorways.

Policy Director, Roger Geffen said:

Cycling UK hopes ClientEarth’s victory will act as a wake-up call to Government that it needs to stop dithering on dirty air, and address its root causes, such as motor traffic.

Government should rebalance its spending on roads towards its long awaited Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, which will fulfil its ambition to normalise cycling for shorter day to day journeys.