Paul Lorber is the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Brent North.

Matt Sanders has been selected as the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn. Matt will be a Remain MP in a Remain party. He will fight hard to defend our local communities and stop Brexit.

Our executive committee member Larry Ngan attended the Liberal Democrats Autumn Conference in September and he would like to share his wonderful experience.

'I was always tempted to have a first-hand experience of the LibDem national party conference, and this year I finally made it.'

'My overall verdict is: my schedule during those 2 days became so packed, and I got more than what I anticipated.'

'I will definitely come to the conference again on next year and see what I can get. If you've never been I would really recommend it!'

You can read the full story in here!

Despite our effort to stop the dump field relocated to Dollis Hill, Cricklewood, Barnet Council just voted and gave green light for a rubbish dump on the borough borders.

Our former Dollis Hill councillor Alison Hopkins, who lodged more than 4,000 petition signatures against the dump, said: “We are bitterly disappointed that yet again, Barnet has decided to ignore the objections of thousands of its neighbours to this disastrous and damaging plan. It’s clear they had already made their minds up.“Brent admitted on Wednesday that they couldn’t enforce the lorry ban in Dollis Hill which is supposed to stop Barnet’s massive lorries rat running on our roads.

“Brent has also agreed without argument to Barnet’s proposals to change our road layouts, pushing yet more traffic into narrow residential streets here. Dollis Hill is being used as the overspill for Barnet’s extra cars and lorries. We are the forgotten fringe of both boroughs – Barnet only care about Brent Cross and Brent only care about Wembley.

“We will take this to the Mayor of London, but given he refused to intervene in the aggregate terminal, will he act on this?”

The campaign had the support from Cllr Lia Colacicco from Mapesbury, and she proposed a cross borough plea for a public inquiry into the super hub. Unfortunately it was rejected by the new local government secretary James Brokenshire.

Although we did not succeed this time, we did raise the concern to the Borough of Brent and the local newspaper had reported the story. Here is the link.

Our party will still monitor this case and serve our community the best as we can!

And we do need your support for future campaign too! Watch this space for updated news, or you can join our party by clicking on the tab on the right of our website.

Despite the poor weather on the summer bank holiday weekend, nothing can stop us from organising fund raising event!

A tea party had been held this afternoon and thanks very much for all your support.

You can join us in the next event for our member! Just press 'become a member' tab on our website and follow the instruction on there.

See you in the next event!

No one wants to step into a pile of rubbish when you walked out from your house, not to mention a street littered with garbage.

Unfortunately this happens to the residents in the apartment blocks on the Capitol Way, Queensbury.

It located on the edge of the borough of Brent, with a bus stop providing 2 vital connection to the tube station, an Asda Superstore, a brand new M and S, Aldi, and Wilko.

Unfortunately there is only one bin next to the bus station, and no bin on the same side of the street.

The result? The bin was easily filled up quickly, and excessive rubbish just littered along Capitol Way.

Two weeks ago a local resident finally fed up with the situation in Queensbury and Kingsbury and organised a petition on Change.org. The petition is on this link (And in case you haven't signed up with it, please do!).

However, I would like to collect some evidences, and want to find out why the bin collection and the pavement sweeping services are in such a messy situation.

So I took a few pics of the rubbish on Capitol Way and tweeted Brent Council Customer Service (@brentcustserv) and asked them whether they can provide some more and bigger bins:

Their response? They said they are currently undergoing a review of the locations and numbers of litter bins across the borough.

So that is not quite good enough because we don't know how long and what scale is the review going to take. The matter was getting worse after I came home from work on the following day, I found out the council only cleared the rubbish outside the bin, not those inside it, so the rubbish kept falling out from the bin:

The council said the rubbish is next to the bin so it was the street sweepers who cleared those next to to the bin. They are not responsible for emptying the bins, so the Council customer service requested for the location and the name of the bin so they can log the request:

After a whole week of chasing, the council came back and said that is not their bin. So I raised a further question: Why doesn't the Council put their own bin next to a bus stop which is so vital to local residents?

Until the point of writing this article I still haven't received any reply from the Brent Council Customer Service.

Still there are the following questions unanswered:

1. Why doesn’t the council provide any bins next to a bus station which serves the terminus of 2 vital bus connections to the communities?
2. Why doesn’t the council provide additional bins when they knew there are 3 new grocery stores opening next to the bus station? (All 3 applied for either wine licenses and planning permissions before they started operating)
3. What are the arrangements between local businesses and Brent Council regarding the allocation of bins?
4. What kind of review is the Brent Council going to take? How long will that be? And what action are they going to take?
5. How frequent do Veolia UK sweep the pavements on Capitol Way? What is the terms of contract? Is there any penalty involved for substandard service?
6. What action will Brent Council take to remedy the problem? How will they respond to the petition on Change.org?
7. Is the situation in Capitol Way applied to the rest of the borough?

As a party serving the best interest to the local community, we will keep on monitoring the review promised by the Brent Council.

We need action, not just promises.

Feedback are welcome, and if you want to join our party, please click on the 'join party' at the bottom of our website. You can also follow me on my twitter account @LarryNgan1 for the updates.

Former Lib Dems Local Councillor Candidate for Queensbury, Brent

Larry Ngan

(Editor's note: After this article was published, @brentcustserv tweeted: 'Really sorry for the confusion, it was one of ours, it was cleared on Saturday, so thanks again for reporting (and sorry for the delay)'. Yet when I returned to the spot on the same day (Monday afternoon), it was filled with rubbish again. So there are still a lot of work to be done.)

No one wants the grassland in our backyard and the front of our property to catch on fire because of overgrown grass, not to mention if it happens on the public grassland nearby.

Our PPC challenged Brent Council over this and Wembley Matters published the story! It reads as:

' Lorber challenges council on potential grassland fires in Brent as Fire Brigade issues urgent warning

Former councillor Paul Lorber has called on Brent Council to make a risk assessment of potential grassland fires in Brent as a result of the Council's 'no mowing' policy in areas of the borough's parks.

His call follows fires near Heathrow Airport and on Wanstead flats LINK and a warning from the London Fire Brigade:

 Lorber said:

I really hope that the Council is ready to prevent this kind of situation arising in Brent. If not the grass cutting and removal of tall grass from Parks and Open Spaces Policy needs to be urgently reviewed and changed.

 

Councillors and the public needs to be advised on the risks being created and how the Council will respond and take action to protect local people.

The London Fire Brigade's statement issued this morning said:

The London Fire Brigade has today issued an urgent safety warning following the largest grass fire in its history and a series of other grass fires across the capital. Firefighters are concerned that there will be further incidents if the public doesn’t take greater care during the heatwave.

London Fire Commissioner, Dany Cotton, said:

This weekend we dealt with the largest grass fire in our history, as well as a range of other serious fires on grassland. The ground is extremely dry at the moment and grassland and parks will act like a tinderbox when exposed to even the smallest of sparks.

I never thought I’d say this but we are praying for rain....'

A few readers expressed their concerns too.

An anonymous reader said, 'There are glass bottles plus pieces of broken glass in the rubbish that has been dumped in the now overgrown grass and with the excessive heat they are likely to cause the dry grass to ignite. Surely the most sensible action would be for Brent Council to get the grass cut. Cost is nothing compared to safety.'

Another reader Mr. Jamie Dunn said, 'As there is no signage in our Park stating the by-laws i.e no BBQ's and no Park Wardens to enforce them, it's only a matter of time if the hot weather persists.'

The article and the comments is on the following website: https://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2018/07/lorber-challenges-council-on-potential.html

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Thanks very much for your support!

Back in 23rd June, we published a letter written by our PPC Brent North Mr Paul Lorber to the MP of Brent North Mr Barry Gardiner.

We still haven't heard from him yet, so Paul wrote an article on Kilburn and Brent Times. It reads as:

"By a large majority the people of Brent voted to remain in the European Union in the 2016 advisory referendum (60 per cent versus 40pc).

Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, is a “representative” in Brent and his priority should be to look after the interests of Brent residents.

While complaining about the shambolic mess the Tories are making of the Brexit negotiations, Barry Gardiner and the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn are backing the Conservatives in pursuit of the damaging Brexit policy.

As a result of Brexit the value of the pound sterling has slumped. And the prices of food, petrol, travel and other goods have risen.

The British economy is the worst performing economy in European Union, with thousands of job losses being announced every week.

The future prospects and opportunities for young people will be much worse in an isolated Britain outside of the EU.

All the claims of “will of the people” and “taking control” are of course a lot of nonsense. Pandering to anti-immigrant sentiments is a disgrace.

The main beneficiaries of Brexit will be the rich speculators avoiding taxes via tax havens, people smugglers and crime syndicates who will all take advantage of a failing British economy and a divided nation.

Next time Barry Gardiner writes an article for the Brent & Kilburn Times, I challenge him to give three reasons why Brexit is good for the people of Brent.

And, if he cannot, he should explain why he is not standing up for local people and against the Tory Brexit government.

"

The link of the article is here: http://www.kilburntimes.co.uk//news/opinion-paul-lorber-is-challenging-barry-gardiner-north-brent-mp-1-5580875?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social_Icon&utm_campaign=in_article_social_icons

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Our PPC for Brent North Mr Paul Lorber has just written a open letter to the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade Mr Barry Gardiner. Here's the content of the letter:

"Barry

As you know around 60% of Brent residents who voted in the 2016 Referendum supported our continued membership of the European Union.

In my view it is our young people who will lose out most by the decision to leave.

I appreciate that you are a 'representative' and not a delegate - but a representative of the people of Brent North and not of the whole of the UK.

Since you and your Leader are continuing to support Brexit and the so called "will of the people" - despite the fact that the Referendum was only advisory and only around 35% of the total voting population voted to leave (a clear minority) - please explain how you think that leaving the EU will benefit the people of Brent North in practice.

I think local people have the right to know why you as the local Labour representative and the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn are supporting the Conservative Government in a lemming style pursuit of a shambolic policy which in my view will be damaging to most people in Brent.

I look forward to you clear and early explanation of why Brexit is good for the people of Brent.

Regards

Paul"

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