A great eating place in Chalkhill, Wembley

A few years ago such a claim would have been met with disbelief but the Lounge Cafe at Chalkhill Community Centre has joined the amazing new Chalkhill Park (oposite the cafe),  the popular and high-achieving Chalkhill Primary School and the diverse local community in challenging the negative stereotypes that used to be attached to the Chalkhill Estate.

Maria Kuehen, Director of the Lounge Cafe says:

This is a second cafe, the first being in Kilburn which has received a Good Food Award (out of half a million food businesses we were one of 160 to achieve this) and also The Time Out Best Cafe 2105. 

Our philosophy is simple. We prepare everything on a daily basis. We make all our soups and specials, have an eclectic breakfast and brunch menu and have an 'ask and we will do our best' policy. 

My food blog mindingbellieswell.blogspot.co.uk has 500 entries which include local restaurant reviews and hundreds of recipes. 

I have also started my programme "Walk, Talk, Fork' at the cafe, aimed at individuals who want to better their health through exercise and healthy cooking lessons. 

People are welcome to book the cafe for an event, a lunch or dinner party as well and we also cater for take out food.

The Cafe is rapidly building a reputation beyond Wembley but retains its community feeling. A recent reviewer on Trip Advisor said LINK:

Of course, it's the first place you'd think of to go and have a good breakfast, not! I mean, c'mon, it's a café in a Community Health Centre. Who wants to eat in those sort of places? Well, put your pre-conceived ideas aside and check it out. Heard of hidden gems? Read on..

Light and airy space with fresh flowers on the table. Good menu choice and reasonably priced. Service was warm, welcoming and attentive. We had breakfast; smoked salmon and scrambled egg on toast for my partner and for me, breakfast burrito. Both delicious.

After settling our bill, and the owner realising we weren't locals, she took great interest in to what our plans were and also gave us a number of her personal recommendations as to where to eat in Central London. That's engaging.

We left very satisfied and what a lovely start to the day.

Visited March 2017

Here is the menu but remember the 'ask and we will do our best' policy:

Lounge Cafe, Chalkhill Community Centre, 113 Chalkhill Road, HA9 9FX  Tel:  07790 506609

Nearest station Wembley Park (Met and Jubilee) 83, 182, 206, 297 buses alight at station or 245 alight at ASDA.

Great Tricycle events at Yellow Pavilion today and tomorrow

The Tricycle Theatre is reaching out into various venues around the borough as part of their #Takeover2017 Mapping Brent activity.

These are the events taking place at the Yellow Pavilion, Engineers Way, Wembley Park

Culture Clash
Venue: Yellow Pavilion, Engineers Way, Wembley Park, HA9 0EG
Monday 3 April, 18.00 – 19.00
Suitable for all ages

Musicians, dancers and singers from Brent representing different backgrounds, ethnicities and nationalities are collaborating for the Tricycle Theatre’s Culture Clash. Through their art, different groups will come together for Takeover 2017 to create new pieces of work. Featuring the renowned St Michael’s and All Angels Steel orchestra’, Armenian and Bollywood dancers it is not to be missed.

 BOOK TICKETS

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Puppetry Workshop
Venue: Yellow Pavilion, Engineers Way, Wembley Park, HA9 0EG
Tuesday 4 April, 10.00 – 12.00
Suitable for all ages.

Harlesden’s Mahogany Carnival Designs is offering a workshop for Brent’s budding puppeteers. For 90 minutes you will learn how to wield and move with exciting, unique and colourful designs. By the end of the session you’ll be ready to perform with professionals! Mahogany has performed at numerous events such as the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations and has contributed to BBC commissioned events.

 BOOK TICKETS

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Mapping Futures: A Q&A about Creativity in Brent
Venue: Yellow Pavilion, Engineers Way, Wembley Park, HA9 0EG
Tuesday 4 April, 15.30 – 16.30
Suitable for all ages.

An opportunity for Brent’s youth to come together and discuss creativity and exploration, express opinions and ideas, in order to look at how they can build and better themselves whilst also changing their communities. With a panel including Brent Youth Parliament representative Dilan Dattani and Authors of the Estate poet Andre Anderson as well as local business owners and prominent figures, this promises to be an engaging and inspiring event.

 BOOK TICKETS

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Mariah Idrissi: Talk and Q&A
Venue: Yellow Pavilion, Engineers Way, Wembley Park, HA9 0EG
Tuesday 4 April, 17.30 – 18.30
Suitable for all ages.

A talk and Q&A with Brent resident and former Tricycle Youth Theatre member Mariah Idrissi. Mariah is known for being the first hijab-wearing model to be featured in a campaign for H&M, and is also signed to ‘Select’ model management. The discussion will focus on Mariah’s life, achievements and obstacles she has faced, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

 BOOK TICKETS

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Wembley Lycee restores memorial gardens

The Lycee Internnational de Londres LINK which now occupies the former Brent (and previously to that Wembley) Town Hall had been criticised by locals for the neglect of the former municipal gardens in front of the building LINK but now seem to have taken action.  The gardens include a number of memorial trees, some to former councillors and others to major world events. Memorials to the latter have been incorporated into the formal garden next to Brent Civic Centre.

Although  the planting of privet around the perimer of the gardens and the restoration of flower beds to grass may have been done by professional gardeners some of the planting appears to have been done by Lycee students.  Their action is a welcome recognition of local sensitivities.

The Holocaust

Hiroshima

Abolition of Slave Trade

40 years of Peace in Europe

Granville and Carlton submission on the South Kilburn Masterplan

The following submission on the SDP Masterplan for South Kilburn has been made to Brent Council by the users of The Granville Plus Centre and The Carlton Centre who live, work and study in South Kilburn: (please  click at the end for the full article which is well worth reading)

Brent Council launched a consultation on its review of the South Kilburn Masterplan Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) in February 2017 which ends on the 30 March 2017. For this consultation the Council released a document over 180 pages long over 3 sections. The people from South Kilburn were given 6 weeks to comment on this document which lays out the plans for their homes, parks, health, education,small businesses, and community services in the area for the next 10 -15 years.

Each site is given 2 A4 pages in the document. The first half of the page gives the details about where the property is with the second half of the same page incorporating a short paragraph about each of these three issues: 'Description', 'Justification' and 'Design Principles'. The second page gives a vague shadow drawing of a huge block or blocks in the place of the current buildings.

There are repeated justifications for redevelopment; that the buildings are poorly built, internal design problems, or poor design and construction. Some of the justifications to tear down buildings are absurd such as "there is a lack of clarity about what is the front or the back of the property" (Crone and Zangwill) or the property "is currently in a prominent gateway position and the current development does not capitalise on this" (William Dunbar and William Saville Houses). Any idea of refurbishment is brushed aside as not viable. On the basis of this paltry and inadequate information people are expected to agree to a massive reconstruction of their lives. The end result is unclear. Certainly this document gives very little information about it. Further, much of the detail about the buildings in the document is inaccurate calling into question the accuracy of the whole document and its legal status.

We, the people of South Kilburn, reject this document for 2 reasons. Firstly, the bad process and secondly, loss of trust in what the Council are doing and why. With regard to the process, the length of the consultation coupled with the importance makes it unable to be agreed in the time period. To read the plans and think what they mean in this the time period is far too short. The vagueness of the document along with the inaccuracies make it virtually meaningless and allow the Council to do anything in South Kilburn, making any idea of a consultation farcical. Most important the vision is not the vision of the people of South Kilburn. It is an imposed vision whose prime purpose is to maximize housing.

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group join in national demonstrations against punitive benefit sanctions

Outside Kilburn Job Centre today

Members of Unite Community, Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group and local activists protested outside Kilburn Job Centre today as part of a national protest day on sanctions.

Unite said:

Members came together across Britain today in a national day of action to stop benefits sanctions, with demonstrations in cities and towns up and down the country at over 80 job centres.

At the main demonstration, protestors gathered in London outside the Houses of Parliament and marched onwards to the Treasury and then to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to reiterate their call for the government to stop its ‘cruel and ineffective’ benefit sanctions regime.

Unite wants to highlight the shocking impact the government’s benefit sanctions are having on individuals, driving people further into poverty, misery and even death.

Since the Tories first came into power in May 2010 over 3m individuals have been referred for a sanction 8m times.

Punitive sanctions have resulted in over 318,000 people having their welfare payments cut or stopped without warning in the last year, affecting thousands of children and dependant adults. Sanctions are given for reasons such as missing or being late for appointments with the job centre, or being too sick to ‘actively seek work’.

According to the Trussell Trust, one of the main providers of food banks, more than 500,000 three day emergency food parcels have been distributed to people in crisis in the first half of 2016/17 – over 188,500 to children. The most common reason given for people turning to the food bank charity is problems and delays with their benefits.

Unite is also concerned that if people do not appeal against their first sanction, if they are sanctioned again, they will be sanctioned for longer – leaving people without money for three months or up to three years depending on the level of ‘offence’.

Figures released by DWP in December 2016 show that of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for between 1 and 2 years during 2010 to 2015, 37 per cent were sanctioned, after challenges; of those claiming between 2 and 3 years, half (49 per cent) were sanctioned; and of those claiming between 3 and 4 years, 85 per cent were sanctioned.

Head of Unite Community Liam Groves said:

The government really needs to stop the cruel use of benefit sanctions which are destroying lives. The stress they are putting on people, and the effect on their children and wider families, is unacceptable. We should all be shocked.
 
The government has shown no evidence that benefit sanctions are working. The opposite is true, when people are in survival mode, fighting to put food on their family’s table or stressing how they will pay their bills means their mental and physical heath suffers and finding work is so much harder.

Rather than punishing the unemployed for not having a job the government should be helping people get jobs. People need a hand up – not a slap down.

Unite Scotland Community co-ordinator Jamie Caldwell highlighted the dire situation facing claimants in Scotland:

Last year an estimated total of 25,000 benefit claimants were sanctioned across Scotland – many of whom were left with nothing. What kind of a country are we living in, where a government can deliberately set out to leave children without enough to eat? It’s heart-breaking for that to happen in developing countries, but it’s a source of national scandal and shame in a rich country like the UK.

Unite in the Community co-ordinator Albert Hewitt explained that Northern Ireland’s working class has to date largely escaped the full brunt of the Tory government’s so-called welfare reforms, including benefits sanctions:

But with the Fresh Start agreement, this situation has changed. Despite the mitigation measures agreed as part of that agreement, the most vulnerable are being hard-hit by the range of punishing changes.

Unfortunately as a result of the Fresh Start Agreement, benefits sanctions are becoming an increasing reality for many of the most vulnerable in working-class communities across Northern Ireland.

Fair Funding for All Schools - Get Your Voice Heard

The changing Wembley skyline as highrise blocks reach higher and higher

View from Chalkhill Park

This view drew my attention yesterday as I walked past Chalkhill Park, Wembley. It shows the central lift shaft of one of the tallest blocks so far approved in the Quintain regeneration area. As each block goes higher it sets a precedent for future planning applications: what's a couple of extra storeys between friends?

This Independent article from 2015 discusses some of the issues surrounding new highrise developments. LINK 

See also the Skyline Campaign HERE

March 30th: Haringey Against the HDV: The Social. No Permission for Demolition

Haringey Against the Haringey Development Vehicle: 

The Social. No Permission for Demolition

Thu 30 March 2017 19:00 – 23:00 TChances Arts & Music Centre, 399 High Road, N17 6QN

Haringey (Tottenham/Wood Green/Hornsey) is facing the largest attack on Council Housing and public commercial land of anywhere in the UK. This onslaught is opposed by the Labour Party in Haringey,opposed by Unite and GMB, and both MPs have called for a halt. Multiple estates are due to be demolished as the council signs a deal with Australian multinational Lendlease, a known blacklister. We know what happened in Southwark where Lendlease took the stock of council homes from 1,194 to 79.

Under The Cranes. A film by Emma-Louise Williams.

"Using the script of poet Michael Rosen’s documentary play, the film is intercut with rarely seen archive footage, much of which shows the locality’s commitment to social housing. As we hear from the famous – Shakespeare in Shoreditch, Anna Sewell, Anna Barbauld – alongside a Jamaican builder, a Bangladeshi restaurant owner or the Jewish 43 Group taking on Oswald Mosley in Dalston, we see past and present streets, parks, cemeteries and markets."

Q and A with Director Emma-Louise Williams.

Michael Rosen: Comment, questions and poetry from the award winning author Michael Rosen (ps his new book on Emile Zola is excellent).

MC: Ava Vidal: Famed Comedian and star of Mock the Week, Newsnight,Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow, Comedy Central's The World Stands Up, Edinburgh and Beyond and C4 reality show Kings of Comedy.

LIVE MUSIC With the superb Franco/Roma singer FLORENCE JOELLE and Band. A Truly excellent performer and a friend of Tottenham, who else could write an ode to the 29 Bus.

Campaign Update: Find out what is going on with the largest assault on Council owned properties in the UK and how we address it. Featuring Veteran Tottenham Activist Stafford Scott and other local activists and what you can do to help.

If you haven't booked you can still pay at the door.