'What the Trump Presidency Means for the Anti-War Movement’ Murad Qureshi 7.30pm Monday

Source LINK

  Speaker:  Murad Qureshi (Chair of Stop the War) ‘What the Trump Presidency Means for the Anti-War Movement’

 Monday January 9th 7.30pm Brent Trades Hall, 375 High Road, NW10 2JR

 The talk will be followed by Brent Stop the War AGM

How we should challenge gang culture

In September last year the Brent and Kilburn Times published an article by Cllr Zaffar Van Kalwala (Stonebridge) on gangs. I republish it here as a contribution to the debate taking place LINK on this blog ahead of the Time to Talk About Gangs event to be held at the Roundwood Centre on January 17th.

The immediate challenge is to get the young people directly affected along to the event.

Recently, six people wearing balaclavas began firing gunshots at each other on the streets of Brent. What should have been a quiet Thursday afternoon turned into something resembling a scene out of a Hollywood movie. It was a timely reminder that gangs still cast a dark shadow over our community.

As chair of Brent’s Gangs taskgroup as well as having been born in the borough, I have become all too familiar of the impact gangs have on our area; some of the people I grew up with are either in prison or no longer with us – guns and gangs did that. Current estimates indicate almost one in every ten Brent 11-19 year old is a gang member and according to the Met. Police, gangs are responsible for 16% of the total drug supply, 26% of aggravated burglaries and 14% of all types of rapes. Even international events are adding to the toxic mix. My ward’s Safer Neighbourhood Team Sergeant once remarked that young people arriving from conflicts in Syria and Libya, traumatised by their experiences of violence and death were joining gangs. 

Although there are some very good examples of work being done in Brent. Initiatives carried out by the youth offending service, the police and the voluntary sector such as Stonebridge Boxing Club, which worked closely with ex-gang members to develop mentoring and physical routines to help change their lives around. 

The efforts of those working with some of the most hard to reach young people have not gone unnoticed – these are committed people genuinely trying to make a difference. But the truth is that many of the responses have at times been uncoordinated and fragmented. This is further exacerbated by the closure of youth facilities such as the Brent Adventure Playground, youth unemployment and the erosion of ‘community spirit’.

Gangs are also leveraging in brand new Nike trainers and designer clothes for gang members who have more often than not experienced family breakdowns and live chaotic lifestyles. A lack of positive role models, poor educational attainment, mental health and lack of aspirations are just some of the factors that lure young people to this violent subterranean street culture. Young women are also at risk from gangs whether it’s sexual exploitation, violence or becoming involved in criminality.   

Our solution to gang culture needs to move away from a one-dimensional approach, which focuses solely on increasing resources. Although this is important, increased investment in young people will achieve nothing without paying attention to other factors such as housing, education, family support and tackling social deprivation.

We need a more inclusive approach, which empowers the local community to develop youth-led initiatives. Local models can respond to local dynamics, and can be specific to the communities in which gangs operate. This should also be extended nationally and locally where we encourage young people to use their skills positively. Perversely, gang members can possess an entrepreneurial drive namely, building up their ‘gang business through clever branding and slick You Tube music videos. 

We should develop innovative schemes to provide business ‘start-up’ funding for young people who could be at risk of joining gangs to help them achieve their real potential. Moreover, we should have wider apprenticeship opportunities whereby those that display the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ are given opportunities to work in sectors such as banking and finance to make better use of their abilities. 

Brent is home to the largest industrial estate in Europe, Park Royal. Our young people should be given the opportunities to be apprentices at some of the largest companies in the world. And with Brent collecting £15m from the community infrastructure levy (CIL) from developers building new homes, maybe some that funding should go towards building the future of our young people. 

We are at a tipping point, do we accept gangs and gang culture or do we together as a community say enough is enough?

WANTED: Councils to take the lead in campaigning against cruel cuts to local government

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Just over a year ago Labour leaders Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell issued their instruction to Labour councillors that in the face of cuts to government funding of local authorities that they should set legal budgets - in effect implement cuts.   This was accompanied by talk of leading a mass movement of councillors against austerity and the cuts.    At the same time many independent activists and some from smaller left parties, including the Greens, had joined Labour or Momentum seeing it as the only way to oppose austerity.

The campaign never materialised but the 'legal budget' edict disarmed critics of Labour council cuts. The impact of cuts can be clearly seen in terms of  closure of  youth provision, closure of libraries, the increase in pot-holed roads in many city areas as well as the crisis in social care and the out-sourcing and privatisation of services.  Many activists who would have been in the forefront of campaigns are now involved in the debilitating  internal Labour and Momentum struggles.

At the time a Green Left colleague wrote LINK

No doubt JC & JM feel that they “have no choice” as 95%+ of their councillors support this approach. But it does undermine those trade unionists and campaigners actively arguing for them to stand up to the Tories. It implies there is no choice, when of course there is a choice. Labour has over 100 Councils. If Labour nationally opposed the cuts and organised some or all of its councils to refuse to implement them, there is absolutely no way the Government could send in Commissioners to run them all. It would provoke a huge national debate on the cuts and local democracy, and have the potential to force the Government to back down partly or wholly. As it is, right-wing Labour councillors are tweeting the letter to attack anyone on the Left campaigning against the cuts.  

In the end, the problem with the JC letter is that it completely understates the scale of the attack on local government and local democracy. This is not “business as usual”, a few nasty cuts etc.  This is a once in a lifetime, permanent dismantling and shrinkage of the local state, a huge extension of privatisation of local services and an undermining of local democracy itself - there is little point in having locally elected councillors if their job is (from Nicholas Ridley’s famous quote): “to meet once a year to hand out the contracts”.  

The only silver lining in the letter is its appeal for councillors to support local campaigners (even if this is clearly contradictory to their councillors supporting cuts budgets!) and to be organising mass campaigns against local government cuts. This gives an opportunity to campaigners to point out that Labour councillors are only doing one half of the message from the JC letter, and not the other.

Michael Calderbank, of Brent Central Labour Party and a Momentum supporter responded:

Well, yes, I tend to agree with your Green Left colleague. But in order to have dictated terms to local councillors, JC and JMc would have need there to be a mass campaign against local cuts. At long last they are trying to kick the Labour LGA into actually running a political campaign - all too often it's as though Labour councillors have forgotten they are members of a political party and just presented themselves as competent and compassionate administrators, powerless to do better in the circumstances. Frankly it's no good claiming to be an anti-austerity party in opposition whilst going along with it where we're in power.

Soon Brent Labour will be selecting candidates to stand in the 2018 local election and the candidate's stance on cuts will be a test for those who joined Labour in the Corbyn. One current anti-Corbyn councillor has already announced that he will not stand again and will move out of Brent. Those elected will have been left a legacy of cuts to be implemented in their first year:

Source Brent Budget Scrutiny Report

Bristol Green Party, in a city facing damaging cuts again this year, yesterday returned to the need for a national campaign LINK:

As January blues begin to kick in and the grim extent of the cuts to Bristol City Council becomes even clearer, Green councillors have responded to the Mayor’s Corporate Strategy consultation 2017-2022  calling for bold opposition and creative alternatives to the downward spiral of austerity. 

Greens are warning that the £92 million cuts forced on the Council by the Tory austerity programme will devastate public services across Bristol. The Greens are calling upon Bristol’s Mayor to take a leading role in opposing national austerity alongside other cities, networks, unions and progressive parties. They have also put forward an alternative vision for local government financing, including calls for a return of unallocated business rates to local government and for Bristol to receive its fair share of infrastructure spending. 

Leader of the Green Councillor Group, Charlie Bolton said:

Further cuts to the council will destroy many of the public services we all rely on. Services for older people, those with disabilities, our young people and children will all be slashed. Local traffic schemes that keep our children safe as they walk to school, well-loved library services and the parks that provide the ‘green lungs’ for our city will all be affected.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. These cruel cuts to our services are a choice that is being made by this Tory Government – to dismantle our public services instead of raising money by closing tax loopholes, reforming our finance system, bringing good growth to our economy or increasing tax for the top 1%. Essential public services are being abandoned, yet Government remains committed to the soaring costs of replacing Trident, building a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point and developing the HS2 vanity project.  

Molly Scott Cato, MEP, Green Party Economics Spokesperson and Green Parliamentary Candidate for Bristol West said:

We know austerity is a downward spiral. As you cut the state you reduce job quality and tax revenue, leading to less money available for investment, which in turn cuts the state still further. It’s time to say loud and clear that austerity has failed and that we value our public services and believe they should be properly funded. 

Tony Dyer, Green Party Local Government Spokesperson and Green Parliamentary candidate for Bristol South added: 

Many of our cities are being disproportionally affected by Tory cuts. Bristol has already suffered three times more cuts than neighbouring authorities. The 10 Core Cities outside London are all run by Labour. They are home to almost 19 million people and contribute more than a quarter of the combined wealth of England, Wales and Scotland – so why aren’t we seeing more vocal opposition to this latest unjust assault on our services? We call upon Bristol’s Mayor to take the leading role in opposing national austerity alongside other cities, networks, unions and progressive parties.

Figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies demonstrate that cuts have not been shared equally across the country LINK  

LATEST: Global warming near 1.5 degrees in 2016 - warmest on record

 From Copernicus Climate Change Service LINK

The first global analysis of the whole of 2016 has confirmed last year as the warmest on record and saw the planet near a 1.5°Cwarming, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). 

The latest figures from C3S, part of the EU's Copernicus earth observation programme, LINK show that 2016's global temperature exceeded 14.8°C, and was around 1.3°C higher than typical for the middle years of the 18th century. 2016 was close to 0.2°C warmer than 2015, which was previously the warmest year on record.

Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

A more dangerous climate 

Global warming increases the likelihood of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts and floods. Future warming could cause billions of euro of damage each year and affect the availability of fresh water and crop yields in the most vulnerable countries.

Director of ECMWF's Copernicus Services Juan Garcés de Marcilla said:

We are already seeing around the globe the impacts of a changing climate. Land and sea temperatures are rising along with sea-levels, while the world's sea-ice extent, glacier volume and snow cover are decreasing; rainfall patterns are changing and climate-related extremes such as heatwaves, floods and droughts are increasing in frequency and intensity for many regions. The future impact of climate change will depend on the effort we make now, in part achieved by better sharing of climate knowledge and information. 

To help decision-makers develop effective adaptation and mitigation solutions we make the data from Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) freely and openly available. By mainstreaming the information that the Copernicus Services hold into climate policy and strategy, governments, the private sector and society can identify and unite around opportunities to tackle further climate change and reduce vulnerability where its effects are unavoidable.

C3S found that global temperatures in February 2016 already touched the 1.5°C limit, though under the influence of a strong El Niño, an intermittent event involving a period of warming. Global temperatures still remained well above average in the second half of 2016, associated partly with exceptionally low sea-ice cover in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

C3S found that most regions around the world experienced above-average temperatures during 2016. The largest differences in regional average temperatures were found in the Arctic but conditions were also extreme over southern Africa early in the year, over southern and south-eastern Asia prior to the summer monsoon, over the Middle East later in summer, and over parts of North America in summer and autumn.

In addition to record temperatures, ECMWF's Copernicus Services monitored other extremes occurring in 2016, including significant global wildfires and the growth of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Destructive fires were observed around Fort McMurray, Canada in May and then extensive wildfires across Siberia, associated with the year's high surface temperatures, during June and July.

For the first year CO₂ levels did not return below 400 ppm as summer turned to autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. In previous years, take-up of CO₂ by vegetation during the summer growing season has typically seen September mark the lowest point for CO₂levels.

Note on data

Copernicus temperature data are based on millions of diverse daily measurements analysed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) using methods developed for weather forecasting.

Annual global temperature variations derived from Copernicus data and from other widely used sets of data typically agree to better than 0.1°C for recent years. The spread in values is likely to be larger than 0.1°C for 2016 due to differences in the extent to which datasets represent the warm conditions associated with exceptionally low sea-ice cover.

The estimate used here is that the climatological average temperature around the start of the Industrial Revolution is estimated to have been 0.7°C lower than that for 1981-2010.

From Fire to Fountain - Film & Television at Wembley Park - 20th January

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Philip Grant posted a well-received article about the closure of Fountain Studios in Wembley Park recently LINK and mentioned the above presentation that he was planning. 

For more  information you can also contact Philip directly Philgrant69@aol.com

Brent primary academies perform less well than the best maintained primary schools

Regular readers of this post will know that I am extremely sceptical of the value of the SATs, especially the Year 6 tests, and even more so after last year's fiasco.

Because it is a new system with new expectations the 2016 results cannot be compared with previous years and comparison between schools is unreliable given that some schools may have been panicked into 'teaching to the test' and abandoned much of the rest of the curriculum.  The changes in the curriculum and testing resulted in much press coverage of distraught children and we saw the launch of several national parent campaigns against the tests.  Teachers felt that the new 'expected standards' were far too high and unattainable for many children.

Nevertheless readers may be interested in the results for Brent as announced by Brent Council:

The headline measure for Brent of the proportion of pupils attaining the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics is 55 per cent compared to the national average of 53 per cent and the London average of 59 per cent. The proportion of Brent disadvantaged pupils attaining the expected standard is 48 per cent, well above the  national average of 39 per cent and just below the London average of 49 per cent.

This is the first set of test results following the introduction of the new national curriculum and cannot be compared to the results of previous years. 

The new measures of the progress that pupils made during Key Stage 2 show that the average progress scores for Brent pupils are above the national averages for reading, writing and mathematics. Brent is below the London average for reading and writing but well above London for mathematics:

An ongoing issue is of course the merits, or not, of academies versus local authority schools, faith schools and 'all-through' schools (catering for 4-19 year olds). Independent schools do not have to take SATs so no comparative data is available for them.

SAT results are a very limited measure and I would argue that there are more important aspects of schools that should be taken into account.

Bearing in mind these caveats it is possible to review those issues in the data published by the DfE which can be found HERE along with much more background information about schools.

Using the rather crude measure of the percentage of Year 6 children reaching the new 'expected standards' the figures are:

National: All Schools 53%
                All state funded schools 55%
London Average: 59%
Brent Average: 55%

The highest faith school in Brent was Our Lady of Grace (Catholic) at 93% an exceptional result compared with other Brent schools. The highest other faith groups were:  NW London Jewish Day School 76%.  Islamia Primary 67%. St Mary's CofE Primary 56%.

The highest local authority school in Brent was Wykeham at 80%

The highest academy was Oakington Manor which has only recently converted to academy status  from foundation status at 75%

Other academies:

Ark Franklin 57%

Sudbury Primary 56%

Ark Academy (all through) 53%

St Andrews & St Francis Academy 47%

Preston Manor Academy (all through) 31%

It doesn't appear that all-through schools can claim any superiority on this measure and other academies are mixed.  Although Our Lady of Grace has a stand out result other faith schools  are lower than the best local authority maintained school.

From this very limited survey I cannot see any clinching argument for mass conversion to academy status.

REMINDER

If you have a child born between 1 Sept 2012 and 31 Aug 2013 you need to apply for a Reception place before Sunday Jan 15th https://www.eadmissions.org.uk/eAdmissions/app

Health Forum on Inequalities Jan 25th

Please note that registering will help us to cater for and make other arrangements that will deliver a successful event. If you have not done so already, please register to attend:

·       Online via https://brentnhshealthforum_Jan2017.eventbrite.co.uk
·       Emailing on brentccg.engagement@nhs.net 

Shock at closure of Harlesden's beautiful The Royal Oak

Local landmark The Royal Oak, Harlesden, has announced its closure.  The pub posted a notice today saying:

We are extremely sorry to inform you that we are closing The Royal Oak. Having invested so heavily in this wonderful pub in the centre of Harlesden we have reached a point where we simply cannot continue to sustain the losses we are incurring.

For several months now it has cost us more to operate the pub than it costs to keep it closed. This is no doubt heart-nreaking. not only for the good people of Harlesden who have supported us, but for us as a company because this really is one of the ost beautiful pubs and we have invsted a lot of time and energy in trying to make it work.

So thanks to those who supported us - sorry we just couldn't make it work for us all...

Reaction on Twitter was shocked with many expressions of sadness at the news.  On Facebook the closure stimulated a discussion about gastro pubs, gentrification and much more. LINK

It is not clear yet whether the pub will be put on the market. It may become a test case for Brent Council's Pub Protection Policy.

This was the pub's website today: