Posts

St. Mary’s Primary School, Walthamstow, and asbestos: the final verdict (2)

July 27, 2017 Asbestos at St. Mary's School, Martin Esom

Lest there be any doubt about the matter, this excerpt from AEC Ltd, “Independent Report on the Potential Risk of Exposure to Asbestos during Refurbishment Works in 2011 at St Mary’s School Walthamstow” (NPSL, 2013), p.6 demonstrates that LBWF had overall responsibility for what went on at St. Mary’s, and also (according to AEC) specific culpability for the events that led to the likely exposure of workers to asbestos, and eventually the HSE prosecution: »

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St. Mary’s Primary School, Walthamstow, and asbestos: the final verdict (1)

July 26, 2017 Asbestos at St. Mary's School, Martin Esom, Town Hall asbestos

The Waltham Forest Guardian‘s Tom Barnes has just filed an online story reporting that, following a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE),  Balfour Beatty Regional Construction, NPS London Ltd., and Squibb Group Ltd. today have been fined in all over £1m. for breaking various safety regulations in connection with the removal of asbestos at St Mary’s Church of England Primary School in Walthamstow during 2012. I first found out about events at St Mary’s when I was investigating the fiasco surrounding the treatment of asbestos in the Town Hall (see references appended), and was particularly appalled by the stark contents of the various reports that I ob... »

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Policing in Waltham Forest: performance

July 19, 2017 Policing/crime

This post turns from its predecessor’s focus on police priorities to police performance. For reasons that are unclear, the most up to date figures borough by borough on number of offences and related sanction detection rates (SDRs) are no longer widely circulated, but some careful searching has unearthed the table appended below. The series therein largely speak for themselves, and paint a rather uninspiring picture. In fact, focusing on the 41 Waltham Forest SDRs for 2016-17 (the extreme right hand column), 34, or 83 per cent, are worse than in the preceding year. And placing Waltham Forest in a relative perspective only marginally modifies the overall impression. Again focusing on the 2016... »

Policing in Waltham Forest: priorities

July 19, 2017 Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

Following on from my series about knife crime, this and the succeeding post look at wider aspects of policing in Waltham Forest. A sensible starting point is police priorities. Under Mayor Johnson, the focus was on the so called Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) Seven – violence with injury, robbery, burglary, vandalism (criminal damage), theft from the person, theft of motor vehicles, and theft from motor vehicles. However, shortly after taking office, Mayor Khan introduced some important changes. The previous system, it was argued, had imposed an inflexible and centrally determined model, ignoring the variations on the ground. A better approach was to focus on ‘the things that ... »

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John Cryer MP and Labour’s endemic anti-semitism UPDATED

July 7, 2017 anti-semitism, John Cryer MP

There is a sobering post on the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s website, here https://antisemitism.uk/three-months-after-107-labour-mps-issued-an-ultimatum-to-expel-livingstone-the-labour-party-remains-a-dystopia-for-jews/ which looks at what has happened – or rather not happened – since Ken Livingston advised the world that ‘Hitler was supporting Zionism’. And for some reason, this got me thinking about my old friend, John Cryer, MP. Because though 107 Labour MPs (including Stella Creasy) responded to Mr. Livingston by expressing their disgust, and declaring ‘We stand with the Jewish community and British society against this insidious racism‘,... »

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