July 2008 Archives

By Tom Lawrence

Brent Council has used controversial spying laws to monitor more than 300 residents without their knowledge, the Wembley Observer can reveal.

Local authority spooks have employed a variety of covert surveillance techniques to spy on noisy neighbours, people who let their dogs foul in parks, benefit cheats, underage drinkers and businesses that flout trading standards laws.

By Tom Parnell

A Brent college is encouraging students to fly out to an island for the latest extension to its campus.
The College of North West London's new facility includes an outdoor amphitheatre, business park and relaxing garden and waterfall.
However, visitors will not need to move from their classrooms to explore the extensive grounds, as it is all online.
The further education college, which has campuses in Wembley, Willesden and Kilburn, has become the first in the country to have its own operational island on the worldwide web.
Gas and heating lecturer Martin Biron rented 4,000 square metres of space in virtual world Second Life to explore the possibilities ofrunning an online 3D classroom.
He then persuaded the college to support a programme of exploration anddevelopment, which led to it renting 65,000 square metres of land in the the programme and attracting as many as 15,000 visitors in a month.
Visitors can fly through the air using an avatar or humanoid figure of their own choice to represent them inside the virtual world creating a game-style virtual reality environment for educational use.
Second Life opened in 2003 with properties entirely built and owned by its residents, who range from IBM and the NHS to Honda and lighting manufacturer Osram.
The virtual 3D environment is designed mainly for social and entertainment purposes, and has 11 million registered users worldwide who can do anything from watch a rock concert, shop or just have a chat with friends.
Visitors to the college's island can play chess, visit the garden and waterfall, check out the outdoor amphitheatre or enter the public sandbox to build their own 3-D objects.
There is also a business park where companies with college links can set up exhibitions to support students.
Mr Biron has installed a veritable giants house with an interactive central heating system that plumbing, gas, and heating and ventilation students can access and study.
Visitors can fly round the virtual central heating and hot water system, turn on taps and follow the movement of water through the pipes.
The house also features a U6 diaphragm meter to allow students to take a gas reading from a virtual appliance and get instant feedback on whether they are right.
Mr Biron said: The technology is so refined, its amazing - you can create anything you like. Second Life offers an excellent platform as a distance learning tool to support a blended learning approach.
It can be instantly accessed by students in a classroom or anywhere on the planet to undertake learning and assessment in their chosen field.
"Additionally, it supports their individual develop of IT and design skills.
We have set up a picture gallery from the Colleges recent Industry and Competitions Day, where visitors can walk through as though they were in a real gallery, and we are talking to other areas of the College, especially Art & Design, with a view to displaying their work.
Second Life can be accessed free on www.secondlife.com.

By Tom Lawrence

Protesters have built a seven foot high blockade outside the Bridge Road Recreation Ground in a last gasp attempt to stop the Wembley Academy.
Workmen were due to turn up on the site today (Monday) and start building a number of temporary primary school classrooms.
But their lorries were unable to gain access after the activists piled up mounds of tyres, branches, concrete and barbed wire at one of the entrances.
An eyewitness said: "There were about four or five protesters building a seven foot blockade right on the driveway at the far end of the site.
"It was apparently where the lorries were going to come in. Some council staff came down and asked the protesters to leave but they refused."
The demonstrators, from the Grass Roots Association for Social Sport (GRASS), also set up tents on the site, when they moved in on Saturday (26) night.
It comes just a week after Brent Council ordered bailiffs to remove members of the Wembley Park Action Group, who had also set up camp on the sports grounds in a stand against the academy.
Sam Cole, from GRASS, said the latest wave of protest was an attempt to save the sports facilities at the site.
He said: "We are here to protect the playing fields as they are an affordable, accessible and inclusive public space for the people of Wembley to come to.
"We are hearing a lot about youth crime but this place is somewhere where kids can come and interact with each other through sports."
Mr Cole said the group would be staying indefinitely and invited all residents to come and show their support.
"All the decisions about the academy have been made in a very undemocratic way and local people are not being asked their views until decisions have been made.
"We are doing this for the people of Brent."
The local authority said it was taking legal advice about removing the protesters and hoped to have them evicted.

To me, the most stupid thing I've heard recently is the rush to stick a price tag on a plastic bag at my local supermarket.
They claim it is to make shoppers buy more expensive bags which are curiously named, "Bags for Life"!
Whose life, I ask, mine or the darn shop's life?
They can't fool me, this is not really a concern for reducing the use of the bags, but rather a cute way to make money.
There is a frighteningly easy way to ensure used bags do not end up in landfill.
If the shop puts its name on the bag and then charges the person 10p to purchase it, wouldn't it be a very simple task to advertise that they would pay 5p per bag to anybody who brings one into their place.
Like in the 'good old days' of yore when there was a deposit on bottles, children would delight in collecting as many bottles/bags as they could carry to supplement their pocket money.
Turn bags into valued commodities and they would completely disappear from all the rubbish bins
Plus, the darn shops would have spend some of our precious cash which we paid them for the blooming bag in the first place, in disposing of the offensive item.
When, many, many years ago I was a young lad, my Mum would pack me off on a shopping trip with a string bag in my pocket.
Shopkeepers in those days wouldn't ever dream of giving you anything to carry your purchases home with you.
Simplest way to get rid of the plastic bags is just to stop supplying them.
I have tried, unsuccessful, I hasten to say, to buy one of those string bags of my childhood.
Anybody out there in the internet world know where I can get one?

Did you see that drivel complaining about there being one CCTV camera for two folk in this land and this is considered an invasion of privacy!
The idea was probably touted by the same folk who don't want us to carry ID cards.
During my wandering around this planet I discovered, most lands require you to carry your passport or some locally issued ID card at ALL TIMES - even swimming!
During one of my 'off' days in Japan, I made the mistake of going to the airport to meet a mate without positive proof of identity and the Authorities jumped on me.
Obviously, I didn't speak the local lingo, but luckily had half a dozen of my business cards showing I was an employee of a small company in Tokyo.
If you carry more than three of the same card, you are considered to be that person..
The airport police who are SCARY, called my office, talked to my boss and then they got him to chastise me over a speaker phone.
Now, there is a land festooned with CCTV cameras.
Our efforts in Wembley are pretty good however.
In one of my odd volunteer posts in this borough, I managed to visit the CCTV HQ at Brent House - Whow!
The video pictures they look at are of television quality, and can follow you along most of the major roads with a central large screen on the wall where they can blow up the image to small cinema size.
Of course the proliferation of cameras are really necessary for crowd control during our assorted 'Event Days' at the stadium when they are in the control of the police.
Talk to your local councillor and see if you can chat him/her into taking you to the HQ, it is quite a surprise.
I tell you what, I'll never scratch myself or pick my nose in public ever again!

Police are appealing for help in tracking down a missing woman who may be in Brent.
Carol Gilroy went missing from her home in Hemel Hempstead on July 8. Police believe she may be in the north-west London area, possibly Brent.
She is 38-years-old, white, 5ft 10ins tall with a large build, curly shoulder length brown hair and a tanned complexion. She was last seen wearing a grey t-shirt, a Gap hooded jumper, navy Adidas tracksuit bottoms and white trainers.
Police are concerned for her welfare. If you have any information, please contact Hertfordshire Constabulary via the non-emergency number 0845 33 00 222.

A mother, father and five children narrowly cheated death after their house went up in flames during the early hours of this morning (Tuesday).
More than 20 firefighters were called to the semi-detached property in Second Avenue, Wembley, at 12.37am, after an electrical fault sparked the blaze.
The fire damaged part of the roof but did not spread to the adjoining house and was under control by 1.29am.
The family managed to escape before the fire brigade arrived.

Did you hear that English Heritage is using criminals to work out the age of some ancient trees.
It turns out many of our ancient manor houses which contain most of our large magnificent trees are now used as prisons by our Authorities.
As the Heritage would not ask their members to commit any crime to get onto the property, they are getting the inhabitants to hug-a-tree.
Calculating the length of the average prisoner from fingertip to fingertip, they can work out the age of the trees they hug.
Also, they need to know the type of tree because a four armed circumference of an oak would be many years more than the same measurement of a beech tree.
Obviously, the tending of these trees is a matter of pride for the local forestry commission, but not so for our council workers.
When our Borough woodsmen come around to hack at branches of our street trees, they seem to care more about not impeding the bus lanes than anything approaching aesthetic pruning.
These poor plants are turned into sterile balls of leaves on trunks which are often festooned with stringy suckers.
They are like some sort of giant vegetarian lollypops for a jumbo Kojac
Brent, apparently, is now trying to be more green, thus if you walk along many of our streets, like Grassmere Avenue or Thirlmere Gardens you can find plenty of greenery on their own land.
The pavement is strewn with hundreds of weeds which nobody in the parks group looks after - or bothers to dig up!

We have been preached at by our 'powers that be' about the distinct lack of dental services in our fair land.
Having been born in India to an English Dad and a Finnish Mum, I developed a penchant for all the sweet products available in that country and, obviously, acquired a bunch of rotten teeth.
In those far off days, dentists were thought of as some form of torture experts and I firmly believe mine had a hand cranked drill to perform excavations on my molars.
By the age of seven, I had so much metal in my mouth, I firmly believed that if I fell over, my head would automatically point north.
Some 56 years later, living in Wembley, two of my front teeth, wobbled and then fell out, which to me was like losing two members of my family.
I panicked.
Following the government warning, I feared there were no available NHS dentists in Brent so I rang a midnight programme on Radio Five Live to chat to their dental consultant.
He advised me to visit my local library, who would have a list of all dentists in my area with available space in their surgeries.
Certainly easier than my thought of traipsing the streets around my home, knocking on dentist's doors pleading to get admitted.
With list in hand the next morning, after only one call, I had secured my place a couple of days later for a visit to a very cheerful lass in my own street only one hundred houses away.
Some two weeks after that. I could again talk without whistling and chew my food properly.
My daughter has been complaining at me for weeks since, because I am smiling too much.
So, now you know, if you need a dentist, visit your local library!

It seems that Banksy, London's most famed street, wall and pavement artist has been unmasked as a former public school, middle income, middle aged bloke called Robin.
As he doesn't live anywhere nearby, we can't look forward to selling off bits of our new Wembley town centre to bemused American collectors
We have our fair share of graffiti scribblers and provided it is not on their own private property most people don't care about it.
Brent Council does care however and will remove any obscene scrawl within 24 hours of it being reported to them.
My problem is, most of the rubbish written on street furniture is small and thus is passed virtually unobserved by the authorities.
Unfortunately, none of our local 'artists' have any aptitude at drawing real images they just miss-use our alphabet.
Also irritating is the fact that most of the writing is unintelligible and even though I do not read nor write all of the 63 common foreign languages spoken in Brent, I can swear that the writing is not in any one of them.
It is a lot like trying to comprehend the meaning of the keys on a keyboard, if just read out aloud from left to right - or even from right to left, but I've been informed, QWERTY is now in the Oxford English Dictionary as an acronym for Typewriter.
The best bit of graffiti I have seen was actually a computer generated image of the White Cliffs of Dover, with the words, "GO HOME - WE'RE FULL" scrawled along them.
I complained to one of the regulars at the Windermere pub about some idiot who had scribbled all over the bus timetable outside the building.
"If you end up standing around waiting for a late bus," he advised me sagely, "even you might be tempted to vent your anger on the signpost."