Working together to make West Ealing a better place for residents, businesses and visitors.
I’ve just had a phone call from my wife Elizabeth to say she just came out of Wilkinson’s with some shopping and she walked straight into Boris Johnson who was doing a walkabout. I think Boris’s main reason for coming here was to visit the Lido Centre and hear about their London Ambassadors Recruitment project. The volunteer Ambassadors will be welcoming visitors to the Olympics and Paralympics.
David Highton
Just a brief report back on last night’s meeting for the moment. We had about 30+ residents come along and we heard from the police and Council’s Community Safety team.
Some useful ideas came up about the importance of high-visibility policing, the need to document local hot spots for various anti-social behaviour (such as the bus stop by Dean Gardens on Friday nights and weekends) and an offer by the Community Safety team to walk round some of these problem spots with local residents so they get a good feel for why people feel able to deal drugs etc in certain places.
As ever, the question is will any of this happen? WEN wants to keep a close eye on this so we plan to include a progress report on these ideas and initiatives at our next public meeting in the autumn.
We’ll publish fuller notes of this meeting soon.
David Highton
We have some good speakers for our meeting on Monday so please do come along and find out not only what’s being done to deal with the local drug dealing problem but also what part the local community can play.
Our speakers are:
The meeting is at St John’s Church in Mattock Lane and starts at 7.30pm
David Highton
Sitting quietly at the reception desk at OPEN Ealing this morning I heard wafting down two flights of stairs the unmistakeable sound of an opera singer practising her scales. She is the lead singer with Opera Viscera, a group of graduate musicians who have moved into OPEN Ealing for three weeks to compose, rehearse and then perform their brand new opera Narcissus and Echo in preparation for the company’s performances at this year’s Secret Garden Party.
Based on the classic Greek myth about love, vanity and decay this new young opera company is throwing open its inner workings
and running a series of free opera related events culminating in the first ever performance of their opera on Wednesday 20th July at OPEN Ealing (this is £8 a ticket). The events are:
For more details and to book your places for any of these online visit www.operaviscera.com
OPEN Ealing is at 113 Uxbridge Road Ealing W5 5TL (opposite the fire station) Tel: 020 8579 5558.
David Highton
I hope you will be able to join us at 7.30pm on Monday 11th July at St John’s Church in Mattock Lane to hear what the police and the Council’s Community Safety team are doing to tackle the problem of drug dealing in West Ealing.
For a while now we have been worried about reports of increased drug dealing on the side streets of West Ealing. The feeling is that the CCTV cameras along the Uxbridge Road have pushed it on to the side streets. We have been speaking to the police about this and feel it is important that they get an opportunity to let residents know what they are doing to tackle the drug dealing and in turn residents get the chance to ask questions.
We will have Supt Ian Jenkins along with the sergeants from the Walpole and Elthorne Safer Neighbourhood Teams as well as a member of the Council’s Community Safety Team. In addition to letting us know about tackling drug dealing we will also hear about the police’s work on street drinking problems and, in particular, their project with the soup kitchen at St John’s.
David Highton
When I took a break from being on the WEN Abundance stall at the Hanwell Carnival on Saturday I wandered over to visit the W7 Emporium stall. W7 Emporium has been set up by Hanwell resident Claire Rosser and is a brilliantly simple idea. She offers a monthly cheese subscrption service whereby for £24 a month she will deliver a carefully sourced and selected range of British and international cheeses. For your £24 you get 1kg of cheeses, often award-winning, which you’re not likely to find in your local supermarket.
I bought five cheeses from her at the Carnival and we had a tasting last night, and they were all good. Some deliciously strong cheddars, a tangy ewes milk cheese and a very creamy Shropshire Blue amongst them. She will deliver to the W7, W13 and W5 areas on the last Friday of each month.
I’m about to fill out my subscription form and you can find out more details by emailing w7emporium@gmail.com or call Claire on 07828 971200.
I’ll update this post after we get our first delivery.
David Highton
Not for the first time West Ealing Neighbours has heard about parking problems of residents in the Lido House (corner of Northfield Ave and Mattock Lane). The Lido is one of a number of new local buildings that are designated low car housing with little or no car parking space. Sinclair House and Luminoscity are just two of the others. This is part of a deliberate plan to reduce car usage in London.
Until fairly recently if residents of Lido House owned a car they could park it in some of the nearby streets without parking restrictions. However, this came to an end when the new CPZ was introduced around St John’s Church and nearby streets. When car-owning residents applied for a parking permit for the new CPZ they were told that restrictions were in place and that residents in designated low car housing are ineligible for either resident or visitor permits.
The key question is did residents know this before they moved in? If not , would it have affected their decision to move there. On top of that when new residents now move in or buy a flat there are they made aware of the parking permit restrictions? If not, whose responsibility is it to make these parking restrictions clear? Is it the estate agent, the seller or the building’s owner A2Dominion?
It’s a tricky one and I’m not sure where I stand on this. Is it fair or unfair to residents of the Lido House, and similar local blocks of flats? What do you think?
David Highton
At last night’s meeting (14th June) hard work and people power helped persuade the Ealing Labour group not to recommend closure of four libraries – Hanwell, Northfields, Northolt and Perivale.
Petitions signed by over 8,000 residents were presented to the meeting and a packed gallery listened to the debate. At the end of the debate Cllr Dheer made his announcement which will go for approval to full cabinet on July 5th.
One service that will be lost is the mobile library service and changes do lie ahead as the Council wants volunteers to play a key part in providing future library services.
Congratulations to everyone who signed the petitions, the councillors who helped organise some of the petitions and who fought hard and the residents groups who worked tirelessly to save these libraries.
David Highton
If you’ve ever tasted the locally grown beef sold on occasions by Tony Luckhurst in Melbourne Avenue you’ll know it is absolutely delicious – it melts in the mouth. The beef will almost certainly have come from Rowley Farm near Slough, which is pretty local for West Ealing.
Rowley Farm lies three miles north of Slough and is home to three generations of the Whitby family. As well as the beef cattle, the farm grows various cereal crops and is now part of Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship Scheme, so looking after the wildlife is a key part of the farm’s role.
This Sunday (12th June) is Open Farm Sunday when the farm is open to the public from 10am to 5pm. There are tractor and trailer rides along with children’s activities, a live band and hot food. You can watch the cows being milked at 2pm and meet the other animals – calves, chickens and a pony.
Contact details: Black Park Road, Wexham, Slough SL3 6DR. Tel: John Whitby 07768 473787 or email john@rowleyfarm.co.uk.
Entrance is free.Parking is £2.50. No booking needed.
I went to second in a series of history of modern art talks last night at OPEN Ealing. Admittedly, the talks are given by an artist friend of mine Nick Pearson but he’s always been a good talker and I really enjoyed hearing about the radical impact of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists and how they were rubbished by the press at the time in much the same way as modern artists now.
I’d never realised the impact of Japan on 19th century art and how the influence was initially through some goods imported from the newly opened up Japan being wrapped up in copies of prints by Japanese artists. It’s odd how seemingly trivial things can end up having an enormous influence. Japanese art was very different to Western art. It was more stylised and, for example, whilst Western art would have its main subject clearly visible and obvious, Japanese art might have its subject, such as Mount Fuji, almost tucked away discreetly in the distance.
I also enjoyed hearing that Constable’s painting The Haywain, which is now used on biscuit tins and goodness knows what else, was one of the most radical paintings of its time. It caused a sensation in Paris when exhibited in 1824 and was praised for its honest depiction of a contemporary rural scene. And it had a major influence on artists and contributed to the birth of Impressionism. Strange how what was once a ground-breaking painting of a rural scene can a century or so later become almost a cliche of a romantic rural idyll.
The talks (12 in total) will take us up to the ‘Young British Artists’ of the late 20th century so there’s lots to go yet. They are every Thursday evening from 7-9pm at OPEN Ealing (113 Uxbridge Road) and cost £7.50 each. So you can always dip in and out if there’s something you particularly want to hear about.
David Highton