Homes4People

Gavin Grant’s five-year career with Millwall, Wycombe and Bradford ended when he was convicted of a 2004 shooting. The north London estate where he grew up is now transformed, but his Old Bailey trial shed light on its notorious history of gun crime

Gavin Renaldo Grant had potential. An aspiring professional footballer, he was never going to give Cristiano Ronaldo competition, but he possessed, in the words of one fan site, “lightning pace and tricky wing play”.

A journeyman footballer who could play as a striker or winger, Grant started his career in 2005 with his local non-league club, Tooting and Mitcham in south London, scoring 10 goals in 16 matches – an impressive haul that attracted interest from clubs in higher divisions. Between 2005 and 2010, he had spells with Millwall, Wycombe Wanderers, Gillingham and, at the end of last season, was turning out for Bradford in League Two.

“He’s got bags of potential and he’s a good finisher,” said Peter Taylor, who managed Grant at Wycombe and Bradford. “He’s got an eye for goal, he’s quick, he’s an athlete and he will get better.”

Taylor’s words, spoken in 2008, sound hollow now. Grant’s attempt to escape the drug-fuelled violence of the London estate where he grew up for the glamorous world of professional football ended last week when he was jailed at the Old Bailey for a minimum of 25 years, convicted with two others for the murder of his former friend, Leon “Playboy” Labastide, in May 2004.

The trial, the culmination of a six-year investigation by Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police unit that investigates black-on-black killings, heard how Grant, now 26, Gareth Downie, 25, and Damian Williams, 32, had orchestrated an execution-style killing, one of a series of tit-for-tat shootings in the Stonebridge Park estate in Brent, north-west London, in the 1990s.

Once an intimidating fortress of tower blocks, Stonebridge supplied the labour to a giant industrial estate, home to employers including Wall’s, the ice-cream maker. But as the firms moved out, unemployment soared. Stonebridge became home to large migrant populations and assumed a reputation among Trident officers as a “hot spot”.

Stonebridge looms large in the story of Grant’s descent from promising athlete to killer. A lawless, no-go area of poorly lit alleyways and concrete walls, it was the perfect breeding ground for crime. The estate became enmeshed in a turf war fought between gangs battling to control the supply and distribution of crack cocaine. The violence was so bad that in 1995 John Major, then prime minister, cancelled a speech he was due to give there over fears of being shot.

“There were always problems between Stonebridge and the [nearby] Church End estate,” said Detective Inspector Steve Horsley, who led the investigation into Labastide’s murder. “You couldn’t go from one estate to the other because different gangs ran it.” Gangs from neighbouring Kensal Green and Wembley were also vying for control, while Jamaican Yardie gangsters overseeing the importation of the crack into the UK were never far away.

In August 2005, Rohan “Chunky” Chung, a Yardie drugs importer, tied up a stepfather and two sisters in their flat on the estate and shot them in the head. Chung was furious that the sisters’ brother, one of his “mules”, had disappeared with 4kg of his cocaine.

Today Stonebridge’s towers are gone, replaced by award-winning low-rise housing, interspersed with communal areas, trees and street lights – a committed attempt to “design out” crime. A Stirling prize-nominated children’s centre is a visual testimony to the area’s £225m renaissance. Crime is down dramatically. Prostitutes, junkies and guns are no longer ubiquitous. Much is down to the success of Trident working in conjunction with local police and the community. When Grant and those involved in the revenge attacks were arrested, shootings on the estate plunged by 50%, according to some reports. These days Stonebridge is regularly held up around the world as a success story when it comes to transforming problem estates.

“The area is transformed beyond belief,” said Chinyere Ugwu, who has lived on the estate for 13 years and is managing director of Hillside Housing Trust, which runs Stonebridge. “The residents are actively involved in the community and are running things for themselves.”

But Grant’s trial shone a light on the days when Stonebridge was notorious. As the prosecution suggested at the start of the trial, it was “more the law of the jungle than the law of civilised England”. Grant, though, had a better chance than some of avoiding being sucked into its gang culture. An impressive athlete in his early teens, he signed schoolboy terms with Watford when he was 14. Money, fame and girls beckoned. He could earn more in a week than his friends could in a year if he made it big.

But, like thousands of other hopefuls, Grant was let go by his club at 16. With no qualifications, he took a job at Tesco. But, as his trial was told, Grant was impressionable and revelled in the kinship of gang culture. It was suggested that Williams’s “larger personality” had been a huge influence on him. It was Williams, the Old Bailey jury heard, who convinced the other two that Labastide must have been involved in a burglary at the flat of his cousin, Romain Whyte, Grant’s best friend and someone he looked up to.

Days before he was shot, Labastide, a member of a rival gang, had seen Whyte crash his motorcycle outside his house.Sensing an opportunity while Whyte was incapacitated, a gang, rumoured to be led by Labastide, raided his house and stole £20,000 of what the court heard was suspected drug money. As the gang piled into Whyte’s flat, its three occupants – Whyte’s girlfriend, Sabrina Edwards, his sister Melika, and a 16-year-old girl – jumped out of a first-floor window, fearing for their lives. Two of the women broke legs in the fall.

Williams was incensed. Grant, who was best friends with Whyte, was similarly furious. In the warped world of Stonebridge, they considered the fact the burglars had carried guns “disrespectful”. Labastide had often eaten at Williams’s mother’s house. “How could he do that?” the three accomplices raged.

Urged on by Williams, Grant and Downie, armed and wearing motorcycle helmets, went looking for Labastide. They found him outside his mother’s house talking on the phone to a friend and shot him six times. Grant was heard boasting about the shooting hours later.

The killing unleashed a wave of violence. Typewritten letters accused Whyte and others of killing Labastide. “YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY THE PAST WILL HAUNT YOU,” they proclaimed.

Sean “Fusey” Cephinis, a friend of Labastide, was suspected of writing the letters. In a case of mistaken identity, gunmen looking to silence Cephinis killed Jahmall Moore in January 2005. Two years later Whyte and Grant were tried and acquitted of the shooting.

After the acquittal, Grant must have been hoping to turn his back on his murderous lifestyle. Stonebridge was being transformed and Grant had a fresh opportunity, too. By the time Moore died in a hail of bullets, ambushed by four gunmen while in his car, Grant had been signed by Gillingham. As the defence at last week’s trial observed: “Whatever he did in the past, he had turned his life around by the time it [the murder case] was resurrected.”

But the Trident officers had a theory. They had noticed the burglary at Whyte’s flat and were aware that the day before it occurred Whyte had come off his motorbike in front of Labastide’s house. Were the incidents connected? “We got an indication things were not quite right,” Horsley recalled after questioning the three young women who had jumped from the window. He suspected they might be holding something back.

Then, in 2008, new intelligence prompted the Trident officers to reopen their files and track one of the women to the south-west of England where she admitted hearing the three men plot the murder. “She was almost relieved that someone wanted to ask her,” Horsley said. “She had held it in since she was a girl of 16.”

Appearing under a pseudonym, “Susan Norwich” supplied the testimony at a first trial and then a retrial in which Grant’s conviction was secured. “She was a brave little girl to have done it twice,” Horsley said. Her decision to testify was startling. Criminologists say it is rare for the police to receive such co-operation. Horsley agrees. “You can imagine you’re a witness to a gun crime and the people who have done it are seriously bad guys. You have got to worry about your own safety, especially if you are from that community. We have to disclose names to defence and names will come out [in court], but we do our best to protect people.”

Grant’s conviction was a stunning success for Trident officers. In two earlier related trials they had relied on evidence from Britain’s first black-on-black supergrass, Darren Mathurin, a drug dealer, whose testimonies failed to convince the juries.

As he was sent down last week Grant was seen to weep. Only months before he had been playing professional football, trying to resurrect a career that had stalled when he was 16.

“Because he hadn’t made it with Watford he went back to Stonebridge and hung around with friends and family there and got into the wrong things,” Horsley said. “Then after the shootings he tried to sort himself out.”

But it was too late. Far too late.

Originally published here

• Olympic site could be rendered useless after the 2012 Games
• Further development could expose waste posing serious risks

The development of the Olympic site in east London after the Games have finished could be in jeopardy because of radioactive waste buried beneath the site, experts have warned.

According to a Guardian investigation, any development of the site risks unearthing a hundred tonnes of radioactive waste dumped at the former landfill site decades ago. Documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) rules reveal that, contrary to government guidelines, waste from thorium and radium has been mixed with very low-level waste and buried in a so-called disposal cell under, or close, to the Olympic stadium.

After the Games, the demolition of the Olympic stadium in Stratford to make way for housing is a possibility because government and sporting authorities so far have been unable to agree on its future use. Despite a possible bidding war between AEG, which runs the O2, and Live Nation to possibly turn the stadium into a music venue, bookmaker William Hill recently made demolition of the Olympic stadium 5/1 third favourite behind its continued use for athletics or conversion into a home ground for West Ham United. “There seems to be no obvious usage for the stadium after the games,” a William Hill spokesman said.

But while officials insist there is no risk from the waste to athletes or spectators during the event, further development of the site could expose the waste, which some experts claim should have been moved to a safe site.

John Large, an independent nuclear analyst, said: “The Olympic site’s hurried and unplanned development may have resulted in a great deal of public harm to the local communities remaining around the site. Overall, there is some doubt about the applicability and validity of the radiological risk analysis undertaken for the future legacy use.”

His sentiment is shared by Andrew Boff, a member of the London Assembly and Conservative spokesman on the Olympics. “I thought the £9.3bn cost would provide a remediation level sufficient for future development. But what we are left with is remediation which is just enough for us to hold the Games. The ODA is very proud that it came in under budget on remediation. I wish it had spent the whole amount and made the site fit for the future.”

Assessment

Boff is tabling questions for London mayor Boris Johnson on the Olympics site. He wants to know if the mayor will commission an independent review of the way in which radioactive material has been disposed of and he also wants the mayor to ask the Olympic Park Legacy Company, responsible for transforming the site into a lasting metropolitan area once the Games are over, to investigate the additional costs of remediation that may be required for redevelopment.

Developers are concerned that a complete reassessment of the site would have to be carried out for any future work to go ahead. Steve Wielebski, divisional development director at Miller Homes and a leading authority on contaminated land, said any housebuilder will want to examine any contaminated land carefully before constructing new homes.

“There are many safeguards put in place by the planning and regulatory regime, which ensure that a finished development is fit for purpose. However, if a subsequent development represented a change of use to a more sensitive end-use, for instance the construction of houses with gardens, then the developers would need to go through the whole process again of assessing the potential risk to end users,” Wielebski said. “No house builder will compromise on safety.”

The Olympic Park Legacy Company said: “Our assurance from the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is that the land has been remediated to the highest possible standard.”

The site where the world’s greatest athletes will compete in two years’ time was once home to several dirty industries working with thorium and radium and also home to a number of landfill sites, where illegal dumping of toxic waste was commonplace in the 1950s and early 1960s. Although the Radioactive Substances Act of 1960 tightened the law, dumping was allowed to continue for another three years.

In July 2008, the ODA told the Environment Agency that it had found 40 cubic metres, about 50 tonnes, of waste that showed radioactive readings up to three times higher than the levels at which waste is treated as exempt. But it argued that when put together with 1,500 cubic metres of material that was “definitely exempt” this would bring the whole waste into the exempt category.

The Agency accepted this argument in July 2008. By the time the waste was buried on the site three months later the total waste had doubled to about a hundred tonnes and the total exempt waste had risen to 7,500 tonnes.

“Overall contamination levels in the waste at the Olympic site is within exempt levels. The waste has been correctly disposed of and no rules, or laws, have been broken,” the Environment Agency said.

Much of this information is contained in a dossier of hundreds of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by campaigner Mike Wells and intelligence analyst Paul Charman, who have spent more than three years trying to establish what has been going on at the Olympic site where 28,000 documents have been submitted for planning approval.

Disposal

The dossier has been reviewed by John Large, who has been engaged to analyse the data. He said: “As part of the on-site assaying, the ODA contractors were clearly separating out exempt waste from non-exempt batches of low-level waste with the intention, then, of sending this higher [radio]activity non-exempt waste to a radioactive waste disposal site, such as Drigg [in Cumbria].”

He continued: “At the best, this might be interpreted as a misplaced interpretation of the radioactive waste regulations or, at the worse, some might view it as blatantly cooking the books to save on the high cost of off-site radioactive waste disposal.”

The ODA denied that it had misinterpreted or manipulated data and Allan Ashworth, the principal consultant who oversaw the remediation work on the Olympic Park, said it was the Environment Agency that had encouraged the elevated radioactive waste to be kept on site in a disposal cell. “EA guidance says the waste should stay on site and Drigg should only be used where strictly necessary,” Ashworth said.

Asked about Ashworth’s claim, the EA said: “The waste did not go to Drigg because it is so low risk.”

The discovery of so much waste has prompted John Large to call for an independent review to remove any doubts about risks that workers and former site residents may have been exposed to.

But the ODA director of infrastructure and utilities, Simon Wright, said: “The Olympic Park and all venue sites are completely safe with no radiation measurements above the normal background levels that people would experience in their everyday lives.

“We have been open and transparent about the contamination found on the Olympic Park site, a former industrial landfill site. As previously announced, a small amount of soil containing traces of very low-level radioactive material, classed as ‘exempt’ under current environmental law, has been safely buried in a cell on site … using a proven, safe and approved method of disposing of such material.”

Originally published here

Developer CPC Group accuses Qatari Diar of deliberate removal of 19 emails in breach of contract hearing

A senior aide to the Qatari royal family deliberately deleted emails alluding to the Prince of Wales’s involvement in the collapse of plans for the £3bn Chelsea barracks property development, the high court heard today.

Mr Justice Vos was told that John Ward, the managing director of Qatari Diar, the Qatar royal family’s development arm, deleted 19 emails from his inbox and his sent items folder which referred to either the Prince of Wales or Sir Michael Peat, the prince’s private secretary.

The deletion of the emails represents the latest twist in a high court battle which pits Christian Candy, a London developer, against Qatari Diar, his former development partner on the project. Candy’s company, CPC Group, alleges that Qatari Diar breached a contract between them by withdrawing the planning application on the orders of the emir following pressure from the prince.

“The court should infer that Mr Ward deliberately deleted sensitive emails in order to prevent their disclosure in these proceedings,” said Lord Grabiner QC, representing CPC. “This was a determined effort by Mr Ward to delete what he believed would damage Qatari Diar’s case.”

The emails have been discovered on Qatari Diar’s London server even though they were erased on its Doha server and have been placed before the judge, who had already retired to consider his judgment.

The allegation that email evidence relating to the prince’s involvement in the withdrawal of the planning application for the barracks redevelopment adds up to a suggestion that Qatari Diar “perverted the course of justice”, said Joe Smouha QC, defending Qatari Diar against the allegations.

He said that the emails sent by Ward would have been available because they would have been held on their recipients’ servers even if he had deleted them. Souha said they had not been released earlier partly because “the disclosure of electronic documents [in court] is never a perfect process”.

Ward deleted 24 emails, all but five of which referred to Prince Charles or Peat, the court heard.

“It looks on the face of it that whenever he spotted a reference to the Prince of Wales he deleted the email,” said Grabiner. “Mr Ward’s practice, we are told, was to free up space in his inbox, to delete emails he no longer required, to delete emails he did not think sufficiently important to retain … it is not sustainable to say this was inadvertent.”

The court also heard that witnesses in the case “concocted an untrue story” to cover up the role of the Prince of Wales and emir of Qatar in the cancellation of the modernist housing project.

Lord Grabiner said executives at Qatari Diar knew all along about the emir’s involvement but had given evidence in court that the withdrawal of the planning application was triggered by other causes.

“What it comes to is simply this,” he said. “All those witnesses lied to your lordship when they gave evidence. They were motivated by concern to conceal what actually happened to protect Qatari Diar and the emir to enable them to avoid paying the money under the contract. It was a political decision not permitted under the terms of the contract.”

The judgment is due to be handed down in early July, Mr Justice Vos said.

Originally published here

Former London mayor needs to exorcise his past mistakes

To a degree unusual even among politicians, Ken Livingstone gives a wide berth to the words, “I was wrong”. I guess he has his reasons: over decades he’s proved himself right by confounding conventional wisdom, from “fares fair” and gay rights in the 1980s to winning the London mayoralty as an independent in 2000 and introducing congestion charging in his first term. It’s no surprise, then, that displays of contrition over his defeat by Boris Johnson in 2008 have not been a feature of the start of his campaign to take back the mayoralty in 2012. Look closer, though, and there are signs that certain lessons may have been learned.

Exhibit A is a launch piece he wrote for the London Evening Standard, which is once again a newspaper, as opposed to the unofficial Boris propaganda organ it had become. “I will speak for the whole of London,” he declared, criticising Johnson for shelving transport schemes for Dagenham and Croydon. Both are examples of the outer London areas that swung behind the Tory candidate two years ago – and that Livingstone needs to woo back.

His peroration asked all non-Tory Londoners to get behind him and for “black, white, Jewish, Asian, straight [and] gay,” to work together. The composition of that list is worth dwelling on: many Jewish Londoners have become furious with Livingstone over the years and while the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland was prepared to set aside the reasons for that fury two years ago, many others were not; a lot of gays (and Jews) have not let him forget his very public embrace of the Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Where Islam is concerned, Livingstone sometimes plays with fire.

Warm words about unity and protecting ordinary Londoners are only a start, of course. Livingstone will need imaginative yet practical policies too, especially on the core areas of mayoral responsibility and power. He should be careful about what he promises and has been so far. In his Standard article he pledged to “hold down” public transport fares, rather than freeze them. Transport for London’s strained finances would make such a promise reckless. How, though, can he significantly resist the huge upward pressure on fares?

Linking his revived plan for an extra-high congestion charge for gas-guzzler vehicles to the wellbeing of voters in the outer London boroughs of Bromley, Barking or Barnet is a cute ploy, but can he be sure that the policy “would raise millions to protect the fare-payer”? If the higher charge deterred those motorists from entering the congestion-charge zone in substantial numbers, revenue would reduce accordingly. Would Livingstone bring back the C-charge zone’s western extension, which Johnson is (reluctantly, if truth be told) seeking to abolish by Christmas Eve – a move that will cost £75m a year in precious revenue? Back in January he said he would.

In his Standard article he says nothing. That might be sensibly cautious for now, but the question will require answering before long. The issue of roads and road congestion in London is divisive and fraught, largely along inner-outer lines. The wrong move could cost him or any other Labour candidate dear.

On policing, Livingstone pledges to protect all safer neighbourhood teams, but while calling for a “halt” to the coming reductions in Metropolitan police numbers, he doesn’t say how he’d secure one: doing so would mean getting more money from a budget-cutting government (unlikely) or raising the mayor’s share of Londoners’ council tax (unpopular). He is measured in a different way on a third core mayoral responsibility of housing, promising to seek powers from the government to raise money on the bond markets to build more homes. With housing minister Grant Shapps announcing that the public money for affordable house building has run out, Livingstone wouldn’t be alone in looking for finance from such sources.

A judiciously pitched start then, shall we say. Importantly, it’s one that seems to recognise while not, of course, admitting – perish the thought – that candidate Livingstone needs to replenish those parts of the voter coalition that carried him in to city hall in 2000 and 2004 and shrank on him in 2008. These crucially include the middle classes in general, many white working-class voters (whose four-year revolt against London Labour politicians was, encouragingly, ended at in the recent general and borough elections), and of course the residents of those outer London boroughs in general, a point well made by his campaign chair David Lammy.

Much of this looks fixable: some big reassurances about any future stewardship of public money, clear policies to show that his commitment to fighting inequality is not limited to London’s ethnic minorities and a sustained love-bombing of the suburbs in partnership with Labour activists on the ground would go a long way to repairing Livingstone’s appeal.

But there’s another issue too: attitude. Perhaps the biggest barrier Livingstone faces is the feeling among London voters that he’s old news and has “had his time”. This is related to his being on the crinkly side of 60 but mostly, I suspect, it’s a perception that he’d got ratty and weary inside Norman Foster’s glassy orb. He needs to keep a sharp eye on his angry side.

Oona King’s decision to play the age card has not gone down well with him, but the senior politician needs to keep smiling alongside her through the coming hustings. He should suppress any remaining urge to continue pointless feuds with critics – he gains nothing from them but trouble and avoidable strife.

The toxic parts of his history need to be remediated by Livingstone if he’s to fully rebut King’s case that it’s time for a change and maximise his chances of a remarkable comeback in 2012. He should embrace this as an opportunity. That may be the sort of thing conventional politicians say, but in this case that wouldn’t make them wrong.

Originally published here

Land Registry figures show house prices have risen by 8.5% over the past 12 months, and by 0.2% in April

Houses in Brighton and Hove produced the highest annual price change during April, rising by 16.8% year-on-year, according to latest figures from the Land Registry.

Bristol also experienced big price rises with an average annual increase of 15.9%, but Middlesborough is still in the grip of a house price crash, suffering the greatest annual price fall of -9.5% and the biggest monthly price fall of -2.9%.

Overall, house prices rose slightly by an average of 0.2% in England and Wales during April and 8.5% over the past 12 months, the figures showed. The sixth consecutive monthly rise takes the average property value in England and Wales to £165,596.

The north-east experienced the biggest monthly rise with an increase of 3.1%, followed by the east Midlands with a 2% increase.

However, house prices fell in some regions during April: properties in the north-west fell by 0.3%, in the East by 0.6%, in Wales by 1.6%, and in Yorkshire and the Humber by 2.2%.

Although all 10 regions in England and Wales experienced increases in average property values during the past year, there were big variations.

London showed the biggest increase with a 14.8% annual change, followed by the south-east (11.5%) and the south-west (10.7%). This is the seventh consecutive month that London’s house price rise has been above zero.

The regions with the smallest annual increase were the north-west (3.5%) and Yorkshire and Humber (0.7%).

The Land Registry figures, which are based on completed transactions, follow mixed performance figures from other sources. Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “The Nationwide reported a 1% month-on-month rise, while the Halifax data showed a 0.1% month-on-month fall. House prices were up 10.5% year-on-year in April on the Nationwide measure and by 8.8% on the Halifax measure (but by 6.6% in the three months to April).”

He added: “The Land Registry data for April is consistent with our view that house prices will struggle to make significant gains over the coming months. The economic fundamentals – high unemployment, still falling employment, low earnings growth and looming tighter fiscal policy – are still far from robust for the housing market, credit conditions remain tight, and house price/earnings ratios have moved back up.

“There are also growing concerns that the Bank of England will have to raise interest rates before the end of the year due to higher-than-expected inflation.”

Volumes up

Sales volumes in England and Wales averaged 53,137 a month from November to February – a big increase on the average of 32,089 a month for the same period a year earlier, but still way below the peak of about 120,000 a month in the spring of 2007.

The highest number of sales – 8,997 in the 12 months to February – were for properties costing between £100,001 and £150,000, followed by those costing £200,001 and £250,000 (7,775 sales), poular price bands for first-time buyers which benefit from the stamp duty waiver.

The Land Registry warned that price volatility is greater in areas where recorded sales are low, such as Merthyr Tydfil, which showed the strongest monthly growth in house prices with an increase of 10.2%.

Archer said: “Very significantly, more properties are coming on to the market thereby moving the supply/demand balance more in favour of buyers. This is particularly relevant as a shortage of properties has been a key factor in the recovery in house prices from their early-2009 lows.

“Furthermore, if household confidence suffers from widespread significant doubts about the stability and longevity of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition governments, this could impact negatively on the housing market.

“On balance, we believe that house prices are likely to be erratic over the coming months and at best will make very modest gains over the rest of the year. Indeed, we would not be surprised if they were only flat overall through the rest of 2010.”

Originally published here

Former mayor targets ‘last political role’ and pledges to protect Londoners from recession and cuts

Ken Livingstone today launched his bid for his “last political role” – a comeback as the mayor of London.

The Labour veteran, who was ousted by the flamboyant Tory Boris Johnson in 2008 after eight years in City Hall, officially opened his campaign to be the Labour candidate in 2012 by attacking his successor over steep rises in public transport fares.

If selected to be the Labour candidate, Livingstone, who indicated that he had intended to make a comeback bid early last year, would be entering his fifth decade in political life.

He said his priority would be to “protect” ordinary Londoners from the recession and government spending cuts, and promised to freeze his own and senior advisers’ pay for the full four-year term.

In a nod to critics who accused him of having focused on inner London as mayor at the expense of the rest of the capital, Livingstone launched his campaign in a shopping centre in Croydon, outer London.

He turned his fire on the incumbent mayor and released a list of high-profile Labour politicians from across the capital backing his campaign.

“I want to be mayor for one overriding reason: if I am elected, my focus will be to do everything I can to protect Londoners from the recession and the effects of the government’s policies,” he said.

“The global economic crisis, a fragile recovery that may go double-dip, and a government removing billions from the economy and planning cuts on a scale that Britain has not seen for decades, mean the mayor’s priority must be to protect Londoners.

“I will use every lever to make sure our quality of life is protected and improved. Not a mayor who spends his time defending bankers – instead, one who will use mayoral budgets and powers to protect ordinary Londoners.”

He said his top priority would be transport fares, which saw above-inflation rises in January to plug what Johnson described as a “massive black hole” in the finances of Transport for London, which the capital’s mayor chairs.

Livingstone added: “Under Boris Johnson, a single bus fare by Oyster [the smart card travel payment system] has risen by a staggering one-third, as has the price of a weekly bus pass.

“Instead of wasteful projects, the obsession with academy schools, the zany floating airport in the Thames Estuary, we must concentrate on defending public services and holding down fares.”

The mayoral hopeful also vowed to tackle “scandal” of the lack of affordable housing in the capital, which results in long waiting lists.

He intends to press the government for powers to raise money on the bond markets to build affordable homes, including for rent, and cut energy bills by improving insulation in every building in London over 10 years.

He entered the contest days after the ex-MP Oona King announced her intention to fight him for the nomination and promised “a breath of fresh air” for the capital.

Livingstone said he and King presented a “straightforward left/right contest”, citing as an example King’s support for the 2003 Iraq invasion – expected to play badly among some of the 30,000 Labour members in London who will have a say in the candidate selection process.

Livingstone, a vocal opponent of the invasion, said he would not make Iraq a feature of the contest against King unless “she wants to get into negative campaigning”.

The 64-year-old has been angered by thinly-veiled attacks on his age by King at her campaign launch last week.

Referring to the choice facing voters at the last mayoral election as “between a man with blond hair and one with grey hair”, King said Londoners did not need a “popularity contest based on who’s wacky or who’s stale”.

Livingstone said: “It is not a question of age. It is a question of politics. She stands on the right of the party and I stand on the left. I don’t think my hair colour is a relevant feature. It if was, I would start dyeing my hair.”

He insisted few candidates would put their hat in the ring because he is standing, adding: “I am sure if I dropped dead lots more people would run.

“A lot of people in politics do not want to stand unless they are certain of winning. My view is that the worst thing that can happen is that you do not win. I don’t see that as a personal rejection, just that someone is better or it’s a bad time.”

Livingstone is hoping for a rematch with Johnson, who beat him after securing 53.2% of votes in 2008, although the latter has kept his options open about a standing for a second term.

The former mayor is a regular attendee at the monthly City Hall question time in which Johnson is put in the hotseat.

He blames the double whammy of Labour’s unpopularity at the last mayoral election and critical coverage of his mayoralty in the run up to the 2008 election by the Evening Standard for his defeat.

“I could not think of a worst background for an election,” he said, pointing out that 200,000 more Londoners voted for him in 2008 than at the previous poll in 2004.

Livingstone quipped that his only regret as mayor was not to close down the Standard a year before the 2008 election.

But in a sign of rapprochement with his old foe, now under different management, Livingstone set out his stall in the London paper beneath the headline “Comeback Ken”.

“I will use every lever to make sure our quality of life is protected and improved,” he wrote. “Not a mayor who spends his time defending bankers – instead, one who will use mayoral budgets and powers to protect ordinary Londoners.

“I would overhaul London’s budget priorities in favour of Londoners as a whole, not hedge fund managers or polluters.”

Labour’s decision to run the selection timetable for the mayoralty almost parallel to the party leadership contest will give the candidate at least 18 months to campaign and shadow Johnson.

Hopefuls have until 18 June to put their names forward, and will then be whittled down to a shortlist by a panel of national and London party representatives on 24 June before a series of hustings across the capital.

An electoral college, made up half of votes by London party members and half by members of affiliated organisations, will then pick the candidate.

The result will be announced on 24 September – the day before Labour reveals who has won the race to succeed Gordon Brown as the party leader.

Originally published here

Property tycoons take dispute over prince’s alleged torpedoing of £3bn Richard Rogers residential development to high court

A bitter dispute involving the Prince of Wales, the Qatari royal family and architect Lord Rogers, who claims a multibillion-pound property project was wrecked by the prince, will come to a head in the high court this week.

Luxury property tycoons Nick and Christian Candy have lodged a claim for breach of contract over the withdrawal of plans for their Rogers-designed residential scheme at Chelsea Barracks by Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment, a property company backed by the emirate of Qatar.

The Candy brothers’ company, CPC group, and Rogers had planned to develop the 5.2-hectare (13-acre) site, opposite Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital Chelsea near Sloane Square, London, into a £3bn mix of luxury flats and more affordable housing.

But the planning application was dropped last June, after Prince Charles wrote to the head of the Qatari royal family’s firm, which owns the site, branding the design of 548 flats in 17 blocks unsympathetic and unsuitable for the area.

At the height of the dispute some of the world’s leading architects, including Frank Gehry and Lord Foster, criticised the prince for using his position to interfere.

While the prince, whose outspoken views against modern architecture are well-known, will not be called to the stand, his presence is expected to loom large in the proceedings as letters and other documents reveal his influence over development at one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the UK.

The brothers claim it was the prince’s interference that persuaded the Qataris to abandon the project, and are suing for a reported £81m.

The controversy was sparked after the leaking of a letter the prince had written on 1 March last year to Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim, the chairman of Qatari Diar. It emerged he had voiced concerns over “one more brutish development” and that, in May last year, he invited the Emir of Qatar and his wife, Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missnesd, for tea at Clarence House.

In an interview last June after the project was scrapped, Lord Rogers told the Guardian: “Up to two months ago we were pretty convinced we were going to get out scheme through Westminster’s planing committee. We enjoyed some of the strongest support I have ever had from Westminster and the Greater London Authority … I thought we were home and dry. I just don’t know what happened.”

The scheme had been opposed by a residents’ group, though much of the local opposition had been assuaged by changes to the scale of the blocks of flats.

The row carries echoes of previous disputes where Prince Charles has made his views on modern architecture plain. Twenty-five years ago he described Lord Rogers’s planned extension to the National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend”.

Today, a spokesman for Clarence House said: “Prince Charles is entitled to his private opinions. Any dispute between the Candys and the Qataris is for them to resolve, not us. The prince knows the emir and his wife extremely well and the meeting would have happened anyway as part of his royal and diplomatic role.

Originally published here

10-month-old baby boy found dead at home in London despite being under the care of at least nine health professionals

A baby boy was found dead after having starved for several days despite being under the care of at least nine doctors, social workers and health visitors, it was disclosed today.

The emaciated body of the 10-month-old, the son of an HIV-positive east African woman, was found in his family flat in St John’s Wood, north-west London, on March 8.

His 29-year-old mother was arrested on suspicion of child neglect but died two days later from a rare brain condition linked to her medical condition, the Daily Mail reported.

A post-mortem examination earlier this month has not yet fully established a cause of death for the baby boy and officers are waiting for further test results, Scotland Yard said.

But an internal management review by one of the health trusts involved, Central and North West London NHS Foundation, leaked to the Daily Mail, said: “Post-mortem results on the infant showed that he had no food in his gut at all and so had not eaten for several days at least.

“However, there is evidence of a long period of malnourishment.”

A serious case review has been launched into the circumstances surrounding his death.

The boy, who was said to have had “massive” developmental difficulties, an underlying serious health condition and a history of being underweight, is reported to have been seen at least 15 times in the last six months by care professionals.

The agencies involved in the case are said to be two health care trusts, Westminster City council social services and a consortium of London boroughs providing health visitors.

Westminster council said the baby boy and his three-year-old sister were not on the child protection register.

The family were said to have been rehoused from Birmingham to London in September after the mother claimed she was beaten up by the children’s father.

The Daily Mail said the mother avoided contact with care workers by claiming that using a interpreter to question her could breach her confidential status as HIV positive within her close-knit east African community.

Terry Bamford, chairman of Westminster local safeguarding children board, said: “This is an extremely tragic case and our thoughts are with the surviving family members.

“A serious case review will now be conducted by somebody completely independent of all the agencies who had contact with the family.

“The review will look into several aspects of this complex and challenging case, many of which are still unclear at this early stage.

“Police inquiries and medical investigations are still ongoing so speculation surrounding this or the role of any individual or agency is not helpful.

“When we have investigated the full circumstances that led to the baby’s death, we will be able to determine if anything could have been done to help prevent it. The review will make recommendations if any changes in policies and procedures are necessary”.

He rejected a “misleading impression” that there were no lessons to be learned from the case.

“I think that virtually every serious case review finds that there are lessons to be learned, often, sadly, lessons learned with the benefit of hindsight,” he said.

His remarks come after the Daily Mail published an excerpt from Central and North West London NHS Foundation trust internal management review, which concluded: “Are there any lessons to be learned from this preliminary investigation? No. Are there any immediate actions that need to be taken? No.”

Michael O’Connor, Westminster council strategic director for children and young people, said: “The family was new to London and the council had arranged their housing.

“They were under the care of the health service, and social services were working closely with health professionals to help support them.

“Neither of the children were on the child protection register and there is no suggestion that they were at risk of harm from neglect or abuse.

“We do not know the cause of the baby’s death yet, and until we do we will not be able to determine if anything further could have been done to help prevent it.

“This is one of the saddest cases I have ever come across, and our thoughts are with the surviving family members who we are supporting at this difficult time.”

Originally published here

The BNP leader seems to have abandoned the people of the North West for a bigger goal – the parliamentary seat of Barking

Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, has decided to run for a parliamentary seat in Barking. Too many puns, not enough time.

But my first thought is: what about the people of the North West region he wanted to represent in Europe? They’ve already been ditched in favour of Griffin’s bigger dreams, exposing him as the power-hungry politico that he accuses members of the Westminster establishment of being.

My second thought is: what about poor Richard Barnbrook?

The BNP’s sole London assembly member came third in Barking at the last general election and had fancied running again. In fact he even unveiled massive posters claiming “Barnbrook for Barking” only weeks ago, with one picture in the style of Superman.

Bizarrely, there’s no mention of the fact that the leader of the BNP has decided the area would suit his own plans to represent the people of Britain, and pushed out Barnbrook. The latter will now run for leader of the council in Barking instead.

And what will the election be about? Barnbrook said he would fight to clean our streets of knife crime, a nice but unfortunate sentiment given he was recently caught lying about murder claims in the area.

Griffin, on the other hand, wants to fight on the bread and butter issues: housing and education. Last time, they circulated a leaflet in the area called “Africans for Essex”, claiming that the council leader was paying £50,000 to Africans to move into the area to buy votes. It was a blatant lie.

On the surface, Griffin’s decision looks like a good once since that part of east London is seen as a stronghold for the BNP. But there are good reasons why the BNP will be even less successful this time.

First, Griffin is clearly banking on his increased media profile to give the BNP a boost. At the press conference he said “people vote for someone they recognise … and respect”. But his last media appearance, which brought a tonne of coverage, brought no bounce to the BNP.

Second, BNP councillors elected in the area since 2005 have received tonnes of bad press. That alone should depress some enthusiasm for their claims to improve the local area.

Third, the Conservatives are widely expected to win the next election. Given the party’s hardline immigration stance – voters passionate about that issue are likely to vote Tory or not at all.

Fourth, the area has since 2005 become more racially mixed, which usually depresses BNP votes. Most BNP votes come from areas that have very low percentages of ethnic minorities.

A factor in favour of Griffin, however, is the local Labour MP Margaret Hodge. Her voting record was in favour of the war in Iraq, student top-up fees, ID cards, foundation hospitals and a range of issues that traditional Labour voters oppose. A percentage of them will stay at home. Her record for claiming expenses brings her down further and will be used by Griffin.

But worst of all she has repeatedly pandered to the BNP’s talking points, once claiming the political class was not engaging on the issue of race (unless of course you read the entire rightwing press), and another time blaming new migrants for housing shortages (which also turned out to be untrue). With his narrative of white victimhood already legitimised by the sitting Labour MP, Griffin only has to repeat her words to point out that the only obvious solution is the BNP.

Either way, Griffin is looking ahead. The people who elected him as an MEP can get stuffed, clearly.

Originally published here