Pay London Living Wage, supermarkets told

Darren Johnson, Green Party London Assembly Member,  has called on supermarkets, the Mayor and Government to make work pay for all workers in London, following an investigation by the Fair Pay Network into low pay in the four largest supermarket chains.

Last year the National Minimum Wage fell further behind the cost of living in the capital, rising 2.5% while the London Living Wage – calculated to cover basic living costs in the capital – rose by 5.7%. The higher rise in the London rate was attributed to benefit and tax credit cuts, and rises in food costs, average rents and public transport fares.

Darren Johnson commented:

The minimum wage isn’t keeping up with the rising cost of living in London, forcing more parents to work two jobs to make ends meet. The Government needs to ramp the minimum wage up to be a genuine living wage, but instead they are letting the gap grow wider.

The Mayor of London needs to get on his bully pulpit and call for all employers in London to prioritise pay rises for the lowest paid above bonuses for chief executives. In this age of obscene inequality we cannot leave it to employers to make sure they pay their staff enough for a basic standard of living.

Jenny Jones calls for St Paul's Camp to Stay

Responding to news reports that the City of London Corporation has won its High Court bid to evict protesters from outside St Paul’s Cathedral, Jenny Jones, London Assembly Member and Green Party candidate for London Mayor, has made the following statement:

The Occupy camp outside St Paul’s has for the last three months given a voice to the frustrations felt by many over the current economic situation. The protest has forced issues up the agenda and into the news, such as high executive pay. It’s a pity a completely peaceful protest drawing attention to the inequality in our society is not allowed to continue. 

The Occupy Camp may have lost their court case but they have succeeded in changing the debate – they have drawn attention to ideas such as the introduction of Tobin Tax, abolishing the City of London and sensible banking regulation. When I joined the camp I met articulate young people concerned about the current economic situation with ideas for a different way of doing things. The Mayor has made some harsh and unfair criticisms of the Occupy protesters, and I believe that we should allow this camp to remain rather than stifle protest because it’s inconvenient.
 

Spread the word on Willesden Bookshop - Area Forum tonight

I am unable to attend the Willesden Area Consultative Forum this evening as I am attending another meeting. The Forum is at 7pm, College of North West London, Denzil Road. I hope others will get there early to book a Soapbox to speak on Willesden Bookshop, the regeneration of Willesden Library Centre, and the loss of the locally listed Victorian Willesden Library, a much appreciated local landmark. Cllr Crane told the Brent Executive on  Monday that none of the developers who submitted bids could find a way to incorporate the listed building into the new development,.

As I write there are 186 signatories on the Willesden Bookshop e-petition. Please encourage people to sign and circulate the link. E-PETITION LINK

Many thanks.

'Scrap the whole Brent Cross Regeneration Plan'- Brent Cross Coalition

The Brent Cross Coalition has  welcomed the collapse of what they call  'the grotesque, car-based Brent Cross scheme'. However. they say it is totally unacceptable to still go ahead with the 'easy-profit shopping centre expansion', which they have been told  told is a 'possibility'. Neighbouring Brent Council fought this successfully in the late 1990s, and is likely to again. 

The Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross-Cricklewood Plan say:

We demand the whole plan is scrapped, and the arrogant local developers, and their ineffective PR company, are removed from the project.

Measures in the new Localism Act mean that over-bearing property companies, in alliance with the conceited Barnet Council, cannot get away with “business as usual”. This is a great day for people-power – not Hammerson plc and not Mike Freer (former Barnet leader, now MP).

We want development based on people’s aspirations for a sustainable, low-carbon, exciting regeneration of the area. This means starting from scratch, and will also obviously have to wait for improvements in the economy.

The developers have wasted many years – not ONE home has been built, not ONE transport improvement. Barnet Council has also wasted many hours of work in promoting something nobody wanted - their web site still estimates 29,000 extra cars every day in the Brent Cross area, which would cause traffic misery.

The developers have just received planning permission for a small building at Brent Cross – but have resorted to making the application from a tax haven in the Channel Islands. They have no shame, and are behaving no better than bankers.

Lia Colacicco, Co-ordinator of the Brent Cross Coalition, said:

“The regeneration was always a mirage; despite the PR spin, the developers were only ever committed to building a few hundred new housing units anyway. In return for cheaply purchasing large swathes of public land, their main return to the local population would have been gridlocked traffic. I hope the next deal is more transparent, and involves a stretch of light rail to link to local tube lines.”

Alison Hopkins, Dollis Hill resident, said:

“What we are being offered now is little different from the rejected shopping centre planning application of 13 years ago. We will still get lots of extra traffic, but no transport improvements. The developers want to 'pick the low-hanging fruit' of what pays out quick profits. The Brent Cross Waste Incinerator seems to be a dead project now, but we will continue to campaign, to make absolutely sure.”

David Howard, Chair of the Federation of Residents Associations of Barnet, said:

“The Brent Cross Cricklewood development would have had a negative impact on the infrastructure and the environment of much of North London and for generations to come. Brian Coleman cannot quote my phrase of “hobbit homes”, since he has done nothing to stop the scheme, and we have. We need the public land at Brent Cross to be kept out of the hands of the developers, and corridors across it reserved for future light railway to Brent Cross Northern Line station, and to other local areas.”

Councillor Shafique Choudhary, London Borough of Brent, said:

"Unfortunately, this probably means that the developers and Barnet council are trying to get what they wanted all along, which is the expansion of their Brent Cross 'out-of-town' shopping centre, with no other benefits. This is something that my borough, the neighbouring London Borough of Brent, fought long and hard, but successfully against, in the late 1990s. That included making a convincing case at an appeal inquiry to a Planning Inspector, who found in our favour. The Brent Cross Coalition and Brent Council may have another fight on their hands!

Willesden Observer on Willesden Green Library and Bookshop

Follow this LINK

Burying Brent Council at the Wembley Consultative Forum

In what at times seemed to be a valediction for Brent Council, Cllr Ann John told the Wembley Area Consultative Forum, that by 2014 the Council would be much smaller. It would have withdrawn from the provision of many services, schools would be out of local authority control and school services would be greatly reduced or have gone completely. In what she said was a 'bleak picture' she said the Housing Benefit Cap would move many families out of the area.

In reviewing the cooperative arrangements with other West London boroughs through the West London Alliance, she said that this opened the way for some to press for much bigger local authorities, a London Borough of West London, which would put local democracy as we know it at risk in the future.

There will be a further £14m cuts in the next financial year following the £42m this year. 540 council jobs have gone in the last 18 months. Ann John said that although the Budget Report had said that the freeze in Council Tax was undermining the long-term council finances but Labour had a manifesto commitment to keep it low and no London borough planned an increase. There were signs that attitudes may be changing with some Tory councils in revolt.

Challenged from the floor that given the Coalition cuts the Council was not able to deliver the services required by Brent residents and that the Council needed to campaign against the Coalition, she gave the example of cuts in the popular park warden services. She said that this contributed to children's and women's safety and had led to an increased use of parks but it was an optional rather than core service and so had been cut. She said that we needed a groundswell of opinion  to approach the government.

Asked about whether the new Civic Centre was now too large for the much diminished Brent workforce she said that it was much more than office space for council bureaucrats and would provide library, arts and retail space.

What's the point of Nick Clegg - Captain SKA

I thought we better have some political balance!

Thinking of leaving Labour? Go Green

A timely article by Peter Cranie who has moved from the Greens to Labour and is now back with the Green Party  LINK to his blog:

So the disappointment has begun. Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, both in this together. We've been here before, or more specifically I have.

I was a member of the Greens from 1989 to 1991, but didn't renew my membership. Back then there was a lack of organisation or actual politics in what appeared to be a friendly, but slightly disorganised social club. It was my natural political home in terms of the global issues that faced us, but in the 1992 election, I reverted to the party I had been brought up to support, Labour.

In Scotland, supporting Celtic and Labour was seen as a constant. They were your team. Celtic represented your heritage, Irish Catholic. Labour represented you, as a member of the working class. Ignoring the fact that my mother was in fact, English and Protestant, I was pretty much expected to follow this tradition, and my membership of the Greens was a "youthful error".

Like most people, I went to bed on the 9th April 1992 expecting to wake up with a Labour government, the party I'd voted for. Like many others, I was stunned by the result. When John Smith became leader, I joined Labour. While my uncle disagreed profoundly with John Smith's politics, he essentially said he was a decent man. After the death of someone I believe would have made a good Labour leader, I didn't vote for Blair, but I stayed in the party.

As a young activist, working in a marginal constituency in London in the run up to the 1997 election, I met Blair and Brown. I listened as they explained how it would be different this time. While they pledged that they would match Tory spending plans in opposition, I convinced myself that when Labour did win the 1997 election they would look at the needs of everyday folk around the country and realise that we needed to transform our society. Once elected, with an overwhelming mandate, the timidity and the fear of change quickly left me disillusioned. I didn't renew my membership and I'm glad that I was not still in the Labour Party when a Labour leader decided to side with the most right wing American president in history to invade Iraq.

2010 was the closest election since 1992 and for me there are similarities. Many people who had left Labour in the previous 13 years, for a variety of reasons, were angry and frustrated by the return of a Conservative to 10 Downing Street. Some rejoined Labour, quickly forgeting the mistakes and the anguish of seeing what was once the party for working people. Just like in 1997, those good people are trying hard to ignore that the Labour Party increasingly takes for granted the very many good Labour activists, supporters and voters who still try to hold true to Labour's roots.

I rejoined the Greens in 1999 after returning from a year of travelling and seeing Greens elected in Scotland and to the European Parliament. It is the best decision I ever made. I became an activist after George Bush became US President. Since then I've put whatever I could into the party, in terms of my personal efforts in Liverpool, the North West and our national party, and I am proud of the progress we've made across the country.

While I recognise my party is far from perfect (nor am I), there is not a week that passes by that I don't look at the work done by our local Green councillors in Liverpool, the North West Green Party, our leader and first MP Caroline Lucas and by the very many Greens doing great things around the country.

The Greens are a party that is making progress. We stand for something different. We are the last party standing against the cuts and the last party that advocates radical redistribution of wealth in a country that grew increasingly unequal during 13 years of Labour government.

A few ex-Labour people are joining us. For now it is just a trickle, but there will be many more to come in the next decade. Leaving Labour is not an easy thing to do for people. There are feelings that you betraying your side or your corner, but for many people in Labour, it the party leadership that has left them as a residue from a previous era, taken for granted but no longer respected.

Leaving Labour is also hard because people who you have worked alongside and socialised with stop being your friends. If your whole life and your whole social network is tied to a political party, that makes it very hard. But it can be done and in fact, life after Labour can be even better. The Greens are the redistributionist social democratic party Labour used to be. We still have a way to go in finance and campaigning capability, but each additional activist makes our work easier.

Thinking of Leaving Labour? Then think about Going Green.