Total: 15 posts
Posts in: Campaigns
Current and former campaigns including Save Ealing’s Children’s Centres and Clean Air for Southall and Hayes.
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Updates
Lift-Off! Ealing Elections Special
🐸 Going Green 🐸
Peter Mason celebrated another election victory yesterday morning by going green.
Solomon Cuthbertson, a Labour activist, posted a photograph at 6:08 a.m. captioned:
“Good morning from Ealing where @EalingLabour has just won an historic fifth term."
The photograph shows Mason at a podium against the Ealing Council branded green backdrop, in an olive-green suit.
Mason had spent much of the final week of the campaign amplifying national Labour’s attack line that …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Features
When is a Hustings not a Hustings?
I attended the West London Citizens “Accountability Assembly” at St Anselm’s Church in Southall Green on Tuesday night. I left after an hour, before any of the candidates had answered any of the preset questions.
In that hour, I listened to Peter Mason talk — yet again — about his family upbringing in damp and mouldy temporary accommodation.
[Video courtesy of another audience member.]
Three months that made him a lifelong socialist, committed to ensuring others don’t …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Features
BREAKING NEWS
"This Place Has Turned Into a Bloody Slum": Southall Wards Meeting with ECI candidates
I arrived late to the Ealing Community Independents' Southall Wards Engagement Evening at Parkside Yards — the usual traffic gridlock on The Green and South Road up to the station. Normally I would walk, but I’d walked all the way up to Oswald Road via the canal footpath the previous afternoon and my poor feet and body were telling me no. After a beautifully warm and sunny spring day, the heavens looked like they might open soon, too. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.
I …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Community
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
When "deport six million" becomes mainstream: what Ealing Labour won't tell you
Two weeks ago, and again today, Ealing Labour attacked Grace Hunter, a Conservative candidate for Pitshanger ward, after a TikTok clip surfaced in which she said:
“The solution to our housing problem isn’t building six million more houses… it’s deporting six million people.”
This is fascist propaganda reminiscent of the policies of the National Front in the 1970s and 1980s — and of our own present-day far right, which is leading the polls and looks set to reshape the …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Exposes
First They Came for the Socialists
This is a story about what happens when you speak out against Peter Mason — on opposing the closure of children’s centres, on backing a Gaza debate, on attending a public meeting with the wrong person in the audience. It is also a story about a pattern that began long before any of that.
This pattern did not begin with Padda, Crawford or Martin. In April 2021, as Mason stood for the Labour group leadership, more than fifty Ealing Labour members and activists signed an open letter to …
Campaigns
Commentary
Podcast
Children's Centres
AI
Save Ealing Children’s Centres Campaign Update
Save Ealing Children’s Centres campaign raised over £5,000 in just eight days to begin legal action against Ealing Council to prevent closure of ten and of the borough’s twenty-five children’s centres.
An audio summary of my satirical take on what it’s all about.
In English:
In Punjabi:
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Commentary
Children's Centres
Ealing Labour
Features
Corruption
Exposes
Perceval House W5: Where Local Democracy in Ealing Goes to Die
The Children’s Centres Crusade
Chapter 1: The Art of Political Contradiction
In the London Borough of Ealing, our elected representatives have perfected something remarkable: the ability to hold completely contradictory public positions without experiencing any apparent cognitive dissonance.
Take our Council Leader. On January 15, 2015, he tweeted: “Think its really important that we put people before buildings. Important we keep activities going & that can be done in a …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Weasel Words on Air Quality Monitoring
Weasel words from Ealing Labour Council, who for six years have shown utter contempt for the health and wellbeing of Southall’s schoolchildren forced to live in the toxic stink created by Berkeley Group’s unsafe development of the old Gasworks site. 1/11
aroundealing.com/news/240000-in…
Take Blair Peach Primary School, adjacent to the highly contaminated old Gasworks site in Southall.
In 2016, Ealing Labour Council removed a functioning air quality monitor from the school grounds. …
Investigations
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Environment
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Pollution
Questions for Cabinet Leads
Questions for Cllrs @_petermason, @DrAyshaRaza, @jkblacker, @JasbirAnand2 and @kamnagpal on tackling inequalities, healthy lives, thriving communities, a fairer start, specifically in reference to the ongoing air pollution and odour nuisance from the old Southall Gasworks site.
1) Why was there no Equalities Impact Assessment, taking into account the local area's existing economic and health inequalities?
2) Why weren't local residents informed about the risks (including …
Campaigns
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Personal
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Strawberries for Pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Environment
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Health
Personal
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Southall under Siege: the Neighbours from Hell
‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.
He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.
‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’
Moving swiftly on.
Oppressive odour
The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.
Carcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Research
Health
Ethics
Pollution
Naphthalene Poisoning Risk in People of African and Asian Heritage
Scientific and medical research shows that people of Asian and African ethnicity are genetically more susceptible to naphthalene poisoning via inhalation.
@PHE_London representative Robie Kamanyire falsely claimed this is from ingestion only.
youtube.com/embed/ZdTj-l3S…
@PHE_London 50% ingested, 50% inhaled vapours.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…
@PHE_London Roby Kamanyire has emailed the following response to my query. 
@PHE_London It beggars belief, his response. …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Community
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Berkeley's School Governors Board Member
This has shocked us all to the core.
@BerkeleyGroupUK's Head of Construction at #SouthallWaterside asked to join the board of governors at the adjacent Blair Peach Primary School.
This is from the minutes of that meeting (29/11/17). 1/7
"The HT reported that a smell/odour from the building works has on certain occasions been extremely strong, resulting in headaches ad asthma attacks. In addition, a white cloud / mist was apparent for two days." 2/7
"The HT confirmed that she …
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Research
Health
Pollution
Health Risks of Exposure to Benzene
'Benzene evaporates easily, and most people can just detect its distinctive smell at concentrations between 2.5 and 5 parts per million (ppm) in air.' (hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg329.… [PDF])
aresok.org/npg/nioshdbs/c…
convertunits.com/molarmass/Benz…
#Benzene #Cancer #SouthallWaterside #Southall @berkeleygroupuk @EalingCouncil @EalingCustSer @pejmason @juliangbell @EnvAgencySE @PHE_London @kamnagpal
hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg329.…
- short term exposure to benzene in air may cause …
Investigations
Campaigns
Environment
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Visit to Southall Waterside (aka The Green Quarter)
Visit To #SouthallWaterside
1:40 @damian_leydon 'We had to shut the site for 2 days when it snowed, it was unsafe... it cost me a lot of money to shut the site, but it was the right decision... We all know that ice can be dangerous!'
#SouthallLivesMatter
2:07 Visitor: 'Can we go into the soil hospital?'
@damian_leydon 'Er... no. No we won't be able to go in there today.'
#SouthallWaterside #MakingSouthallStink #Southall
Old story, but: 'Berkeley Homes is threatening hundreds of …