By Jes Salter
THERE was no jam or Jerusalem but last night more than 50 young women gathered in a crowded pub to form Islington’s first Women’s Institute meeting.
Ali Budjanovcanin, 26, and Katie Best, 25, marketed their WI group, called WIN1, at other young women in London by blogging on internet message boards and handing out glossy flyers. As a result, there was standing room only at their first meeting in the upstairs of the Cedar Rooms on Upper Street.
Ms Best said: “We were really overwhelmed by the turnout – we thought it would be 15 of our friends who we’d dragged down, but this was brilliant.”
Traditionally Women’s Institutes are based in rural towns and WIN1 is only the second Women’s Institute to be set up in London. A group in Covent Garden was established in March, but Ms Budjanovcanin said she wanted something younger and with a “more urban feel”.
The girls said they wanted to be part of something that had a community feel.
“We wanted to do something different every month without having to join a different group or book club and we wanted to meet other people our age, which is something a lot of people feel in London," said Ms Best.
Sarah Norris, 34, agreed: “I live in Highbury and you never meet your neighbours. I just came along because it sounded like a fun group – I didn’t even realise it was a Women’s Institute.”
Among many suggestions put forward for future meetings, the group decided on cookery, DIY, self-defence lessons, ultimate Frisbee games, wine tasting, make-up demonstrations, and learning how to design and look after an inner city garden.
Ms Budjanovcanin said: “All the boys I know thought it was a secret girls club and they wanted to join.”
Tuesday, 14 November 2006
Young women form 'urban' WI
Committee back down on consultation plans
By Jes Salter
LABOUR councillors have taken a u-turn over earlier proposals to spend up to £20,000 of community grants on consultations.
The West Area Committee met last night to discuss the progress of the Community Chest scheme that has already attracted criticism for delays and wasted money. They also proposed to raise the limit of individual grants, which currently stands at £5,000, to avoid having money left in the pot at the end of the financial year.
Emily Fieran-Reed, a Liberal Democrat councillor for St Mary’s ward, said: “The pressure is really on now because we’ve delayed it quite a bit. It’s very much our responsibility to promote this. We know the need is out there and if the money’s not spent, it will be a failure of this committee.”
Fieran-Reed raised worries about the criteria the committee would use for choosing between local groups, but other councillors seemed less concerned.
Rupert Perry, Labour councillor for Caledonian ward, said: “How do you compare between football shirts for a kids team and an old person’s tea party? It’s apples and pears, we’ll just have to decide when we see the applications.”
To keep costs down, the application scheme will be advertised in Islington council's residents' magazine, which reaches 20,000 households. The publication only comes out on November 22 and the deadline for applications is December 8.
Small shops suffer under chains and regulations
By Jes Salter
HIGH STREET shops in St Mary’s ward are being squeezed by council parking regulations and nearby supermarket chains, local businesses complained.
Russell Fulton, 52, owner of SX, a DIY shop on Essex Road, said the council has effectively forced him to close up shop.
“Since the council banned parking on the main road, I can’t even get delivery vans to stop because they’re scared they’ll get a ticket, never mind customers,” he said.
Marathon Sports, six premises down the road, has been forced to close and Mr Fulton said he will be quick to follow suit. He said: “I’d take an offer tomorrow.”
Essex Road has double red lines and Transport for London fines offenders £100 for stopping.
Only 100m away Alberto Ferrari’s Italian delicatessen cannot compete with the supermarket squeeze. After 36 years on Cross Street, he blamed the two Sainsbury’s supermarkets on Upper Street, along with Marks and Spencer, and many competing restaurants for deflecting customers’ interest from his shop.
Mr Ferrari, 74, used to form a parade with a greengrocers, butchers, bakery and fishmongers, but all have since turned into clothes shops.
He said: “In Italy, a tobacconist sells tobacco. In England the shop is a bazzar: they sell newspapers, sandwiches, butter, everything. In Sainsbury’s you can buy anything you like, but where is the distinction, where is the pride in your shop?”
Wilf Altman, ex-assistant to the chairman at Sainsbury’s, defended the rise of the chain shops.
He said: “The world has changed. More women work, they are time short.
“Would they really want to shop and face queues at the old-fashioned high street grocer, the wine merchant, the butchers, bakers and delicatessen?”
Lucy Kennedy, 22, an Islington resident, agreed with Altman. She said: “It’s a shame that businesses are being forced to close, but at the end of the day, when you get home from work, the last thing you need is queuing up in lots of different shops, and most of them aren’t open at 7pm anyway.”
Islington Council are due to publish the results of their small retailer survey by the end of the year. They asked shop owners their perceptions of council support, the accessibility of council services and what the council could do better.
Wednesday, 4 October 2006
Cancer bus tour makes a difference
By Jes Salter
A CANCER charity that has toured the UK offering advice to patients ended its six month tour on Upper Street today.
Julie Hodkinson, a councillor who has been manning the green Macmillan Cancer van, called the tour “successful”.
She said: “We’ve made over 6,000 contacts and given out thousands of leaflets.”
The charity provides practical, medical, emotional and financial support for cancer sufferers.
Hodkinson said: “It’s actually quite amazing when you go round the country and you see that in different parts of the country different cancers are more prevalent.”
She admitted that the service’s weakness was that it did not provide support for relatives of those living with cancer.
She said: “We are particularly bad at providing support groups for men and hopefully that will change. But it’s been really positive to see the number of people who have come in and said they haven’t been able to open up to anyone else. I really think we’ve made a difference.”
Councillor warns of wasting grant money
By Jes Salter
COUNCILLORS are wasting up to £20,000 of community grant money by playing party politics, one councillor on the committee warned today.
Emily Fieran-Reed said that the West Area Committee, which has a Labour majority, ignored her community proposals and instead said they needed to spend up to £20,000 on consultation.
Fieran-Reed, a Liberal Democrat councillor in St Mary’s ward, said: “Each area got £80,000 to spend on the community and I was the only one who submitted any ideas. I liaised closely with different community leaders but my ideas have all been thrown out.
“Labour councillors have suggested spending £10-20,000 on a consultation. That has not even been costed, it’s just a figure plucked from the air.”
Fieran-Reed also suggested that the committee should involve local residents but this was refused by other councillors.
Fieran-Reed said: "This budget is meant to fund local projects. I had several things that local residents told me they wanted, so I put them forward. It seems that Labour just aren't in touch enough with their residents to be able to get ideas together.
"As far as I can see, when Labour saw that a Lib Dem was the only person with any suggestions, they just decided to delay it. They wouldn't even consider my suggestions and voted instead to create more bureaucracy and waste £10,000 from this small fund.”
The community chest has £80,000 available to local groups in St Mary’s, Caledonian, Barnsbury and Holloway wards who pledge to make West Area cleaner and safer. Applicants have to apply for the money by December 8 and Fieran-Reed accused her fellow committee members of wasting time.
The Lib Dem councillor’s proposals included an environmentally friendly garden, more CCTV cameras, revamping a football pitch and a new stage at Unity Church.
She said: “I don’t feel like I’ve let people down - I presented their ideas. Labour have let people down.”
Coffee with The Apprentice
By Jes Salter
SIR ALAN Sugar’s protégées injected a shot of excitement into Camden Passage today with a competitive game to make money from a coffee stall for the BBC’s The Apprentice.
The caffeine-fuelled wannabes, accompanied by a film crew, tried to haul punters off the street to buy hot drinks and a range of sweets and biscuits from a stall set up next to the market.
The Apprentice’s 14 candidates are given weekly tasks to show off their entrepreneurial skills in a bid to work for Sugar - and earn a six figure salary. Every week one is fired.
Team leader Natalie, in charge of Stealth coffee, said the official line was that their company was conducting a profit maximising experiment. A researcher on the BBC team said they were filming a documentary about a new start-up company selling coffee from a barrow stall.
Natalie said she was not allowed to talk about the company and later confirmed that they were filming for the BBC show, The Apprentice.
By 1pm the team were pleased that they had made £200 and needed an extra £80 to break even.
'Malicious' patient cause neighbours stress
By Jes Salter
IGNORED complaints about a violent and noisy mental health patient living in council accommodation in St Mary’s has caused so much stress that one resident has signed off sick from work.
The resident, who has lived in St Mary’s for nearly five years, did not want to be identified but said he had complained to the mental health unit and police several times. The mental health patient has lived in the flat below him for four years, minus a spell in hospital.
He said: “This man is malicious in the way he keeps us all up at night. Some mental health patients I do have sympathy with, but I can’t with him. He has threatened to attack the woman next door.”
“I’ve told the police and the mental health people, but they say there’s nothing they can do.”
The patient was allegedly taken away for treatment in June, but released back into his former house after a few months.
A spokesperson from Canonbury Mental Health Team said: “There are many negative stereotypes that people living with a mental illness have to overcome and once their neighbours know that they have a problem, they can often become unsupportive.”
Emily Fieran Reed, St Mary’s ward councillor and a non-executive member of the Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust, said: “The mental healthcare in Islington is one of the best in the country. We spend more than anyone else.”
Council tow truck ignores disabled badge
By Jes Salter
A DISABLED woman helplessly watched her car swinging four feet above the road today, ready to be towed away from its parking spot.
A parking attendant had not spotted the blue disabled badge on the dashboard, which entitled the driver to an extra hour of free parking.
As the blue Volkswagon was being winched onto a council tow truck, the woman’s daughter, who owned the car, sprinted out of Budgens on Upper Street to confront the parking attendant.
The young woman, who did not want to be named, said: “I’m so angry. I’ve come out to take my elderly mother shopping and she can’t walk far. I don’t know whether they work on commission, but when their job is to check for these blue badges and they miss them, it’s not acceptable.
“It should not have even escalated into an argument - he should have just apologised and put the car down.”
Katy Miller, 24, watched from the pavement. She said: “It was quite a show really. The argument lasted for about five minutes, and the car was just swinging in mid-air. The lady wasn’t giving up though, and eventually the parking warden told the guy in the truck to put it back down on the road.”
The tow truck then drove metres down the restricted parking zone and moments after the attendant wrote a ticket for the owner of a black BMW, the man tore it off his windscreen, jumped in his car and manoeuvred out of the parking space.
Miss Miller said: “It was quite dramatic for a lunch break.”
Emily Fieran-Reed, St Mary’s ward councillor, said: “Traffic wardens should be trained to have more common sense especially when dealing with disabled people. There are two traffic wardens – one for Transport for London and one contracted out by the council which causes confusion. More power should be given to the borough.”
The parking attendant said: “We get hassle everyday. Sometimes mistakes are made, but they have to take it up with the parking services, not give me abuse.”
A spokesperson from Islington Council’s parking service said: “We generally only remove vehicles from the street if they are causing an obstruction, parked in incorrect bays such as a disabled bay, parked in a bus lane, parked on zigzag lines, are persistent evaders or suspected of being stolen.”
They could not comment on specific cases, but pointed out that last month Islington council fined three men for fraudulently using the blue badges.
Owners are fined £150 to release their vehicles from the pound and every additional day costs an extra £25.