I have heard rumors locally about the closure of Cricklewood library and today signed a petition, organised by Friends of Cricklewood Library to keep it open.

I’ve emailed Brent Council and the Lib Dem Councillors to try and discover more truth or otherwise about this rumor.

Queen’s Park, Mapesbury and Brondesbury have all turned Yellow - congratulations to the Cllrs in these wards. You’ve been trusted with them - look after them. Make sure that you continue with the effort that it took to win the ward as you work the ward.

Noticed more people in yellow safety jackets walking around the streets recently? On Friday last week I saw a member of the Brent Council Street Care team out ward walking in Mapesbury. He was monitoring the recycling collection from both the kerb side boxes and the green wheelie bins - check we residents were using the service and using it correctly? checking up on the contractors? don’t know - either way his purpose was to be highly visible in the ward. Suit, yellow jacket, Brent Council Street Care printed on the back in big letters? A visibility exercise in the ward prior to the ward hustings tomorrow and the Mapesbury Residents Associations (MAPRA) Annual General Meeting?That’s probably just the skeptic in me… …but then this afternoon….

This afternoon I met PC Phillip Pask from the Mapesbury ward Safer Neighbourhoods Team. He was cycling around the ward when we met on Walm Lane. High visibility policing - these are the beat bobbies that people have been clammering for. And policing with the time of day. Great to have 10 minutes of talk with our community police officer because we both had the time - rather than because I had my house burgled.
Anyway. PC Pask and Sargent O’Hara, who leads the team, are both based at Queen’s Park police station. you can call them: 02087212962 or send the team an email mapesbury.snt@police.met.uk and they will add you to their distribution list for local police information.

The proposal for the tower block in Queen’s Park is a lead topic for each of the parties contesting the electoral ward of Queen’s Park. For Labour it is getting like the Monty Python topic not to be mentioned in front of our hosts for the World Cup. The Lib Dems have made great gains from this thread - well, a sitting (yet not restanding) Councillor defected to Team Yellow with the tower plan as a key issue. The defection as on the front page of this weeks Willesden and Brent Times and the ‘bun fight’ at the Queen’s Park Corral was analysed over a double page spread.

The Green’s in Queen’s Park have made opposing the development symbolic of their opposition to decision making without consultation - a characteristic of Brent Council in their view.

While I have not seen any campaign literature from the Conservatives in Queen’s Park (please forward some if you have it!) the Party is opposing developments in the Dudden Hill area - maybe they have the same tac in QP?

More to come:

• Lib Dem scans….
• Labour negative campaigning against the Lib Dems in Mapesbury
• Scans from the press
• Links to other places….

Thank you for reading.

Are you serious?

Each day I walk from Mapesbury to Queen’s Park via Brondesbury/Kilburn wards - sounds like a round about route but I’m just walking cross the boundry corners. In contrast to the General Election last year there are not many posters out on display in gardens and in the shop windows in support of ANY political party up for election in May. However I have noticed that of the posters that are on display the Green’s and the Liberal Democrats have strong support.

Queen’s Park is going green. That is green as in Green not as in blue>green. Here’s hoping that the Green’s can sit in some of Brent’s 63 Council seats. I want to see how Brent Council with Green thinking delivers services in our borough.