Brent Blog

Kilburn Library

I took a walk along Kilburn High Rd this morning, it’s my  first visit to Kilburn for a couple of months. I don’t live all that far from the High Rd, about a mile and a half, and the walk is quite pleasant through the tree lined residential streets of Mapesbury.

My purpose was to take a look at the Kilburn Library Centre and Kilburn Market, I am updating my website Brent Today and it is places of culture and interest that I am concentrating on. I was quite interested to know that Camden Council had developed this building into a Library and Youth Centre.

I passed the building on the day it is closed so I was unable to have a look around. In these days of cost cutting, community services and libraries in particular are facing the axe, it is good to know that a centre that serves the community is active and busy.

Luminaire

Later on my return journey I passed by ‘The Luminaire’ music venue – it is next door to Brondesbury Station or it was. I have supported this venue over the last few years via my website, and was dismayed to see it had closed it’s doors. The disappointment at it’s closure is to do with my overall opinion that Brent Borough is now a cultural wasteland. I think that the ‘Luminaire’ was the last of the medium sized music venues open in the borough, the rest have gone, closed or moved on. There is of course Wembley Arena, I don’t really class that as a Brent Community Venue, it’s aims are to attract people that live further afield than North West London.

With Brent Councils plans to start cutting out the smaller community libraries and close Willesden Library while it is developed into a new centre minus anywhere to park. I wonder where in this borough of over a quarter of a million souls is there anything of Culture to grab our interest, of course we have the Tricycle and long may it live. Maybe Brent residents can descend en-mass to experience a night of cultural experience split between the tricycle Theatre and Cinema.

So to all the visitors and would be visitors to Brent, North West London, claimed by some to be the Multi-Cultural capital of Europe, don’t be too disheartened by what you find when you arrive here.  It might be a borough devoid of culture,  but you can lay claim to have visited the  ‘Largest Cultural Wasteland’ in the Western Hemisphere.

Come to think of it we don’t even have a football team, apologies to Kingsbury Town.

Comment here or on Brent Today

I read today about a restaurant in Soho charging £29 for a 100ml glass of wine. I wonder whether a glass of ‘plonk’ could be actually worth that much, relatively speaking of course. If you are super rich or a highly paid footballer, banker and have money to burn then I suppose £29 is hardly worth talking about.

A wine rated among the finest in the world is to be sold by the glass for the first time in London.

The highly prized Chateau d’Yquem, known as “the king of wines”, will be available for £29 for a 100ml glass at Soho restaurant Bob Bob Ricard.

A 50ml “super sip” measure of the Sauternes pudding wine will also be on the wine list at £14.50.

Co-owner Leonid Shutov claimed it was the first time that Chateau d’Yquem, a favourite with City bankers, has been accessible at an affordable price. He said: “A lot of people would rather spend £30 on a really amazing glass of wine like this than £30 on a bottle of plonk.”

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23918838-a-glass-of-wine-with-pudding-that-will-cost-you-pound-29-madam.do

I don’t spend a great deal of time eating out nor drink very much wine, I used to drink quite a lot but nowadays am teetotal, my last regular work was paid at £25k per annum, I would have to really push the boat out to dine somewhere with a lady, plying her with glasses of  ‘Chateau d’Yquem’, would it be worth it I ask myself, knowing that I would probably have to stay indoors the following week because of my reckless abandon.

Good morning world.

Oh dear! Ricky Gervais makes a tit of himself at the Golden Bollocks awards. I think when he wrote ‘The Office‘ and created David Brent, he was probably personifying himself.

What about the British Politicians though, they are something else, ‘Lord Taylor of Warwick’ what a piece of dog turd that guy is.
He claims through his QC, that he thought is was OK to fiddle expenses because his fellow peers said so.

You can be sure he regrets it, now he has been rumbled and he faces a couple of years in the ‘clink’ might even share a cell with his colleague the right dishonourable MP David Chaytor who is serving 18 months for stealing taxpayers money. I think it’s about time the politicians were treated like normal members of society and held to account for lying and back-tracking on their promises.

Instead of being questioned by their old school chums and fellow rogues, they should be answerable to a committee of selected individuals from normal society. A nurse, a teacher an engineer etc. Any ill-gotten gains they have acquired should be seized by the courts and repossessed, property and assets forfeited and ploughed back into the community.

Britain is run by banana republic caricatures nowadays it seems, making us a laughing stock  in the eyes of the rest of the world. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a statesman as an elected leader, one with integrity and the good of the country and it’s people  as is number one priority.

Alternative site for comments:

http://brenttoday.co.uk/forums/entry.php?7-House-of-Rogues-and-Thieves

What a week I have had trying to get some sense out of that joke of a company, ‘Carphone Warehouse‘ part and parcel of that internet provider ‘Joke Joke‘ sorry meant Talk Talk.

I have one mobile phone that is hardly used, in fact it is used only for incoming calls. I had a contract on the phone and decided to change it to ‘pay as you go‘ saving quite a monthly sum. When I did this Carphone Warehouse called me up and said that as a valued customer they would give me an 18 month contract at £5:99 per month and a few free minutes.

All is well until 22 months later, I check my bank statements and find that my previous 4 months with Carphone had risen to £20:99 per month. I called the company and asked them what was going on? I was informed that my contract was a special offer and after 18 months it reverted to a £20:99 per month account. I did ask them why they hadn’t informed me of this unexpected increase, after all I was going off their web statements.

Will I be disconnected automatically?

You won’t be automatically disconnected when your contract ends unless you ask to leave. Your phone will keep working, and your network will carry on charging you the same amount of line rental each month for the same amount of inclusive minutes and texts.

http://selfhelp.carphonewarehouse.com/SelfHelp/request.do?view%28%29=c{efa2aea0-e8be-11de-da00-000000000000}

Well they decided to ignore the above and kept avoiding the question, about my contract ending and their statement  that “my network will continue to charge the same amount.” Well I have not been able to resolve this issue yet and am thoroughly disgusted with this mickey mouse outfit. The downright misleading information on their website and to have a switchboard attendant deal with your query while asking someone behind her what to say is annoying. I switched to Virgin Mobile as a result of this and my good lady transferred her Broadband back to Sky from Talk Talk (on the cards anyway as the service was appalling).

The moral of the story is – if dealing with Carphone Warehouse, make sure you cancel your contract as you take it out, because if it is a special offer they will up the price without informing you. If you decide to complain you will get a total negative response, as if by divine right they can change pricing without your consent and refuse to discuss any refunds.

My opinion of Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk?  they are the sort of company that is dragging this country to it’s knees, greedy, unscrupulous tossers, that don’t give a monkees about customer service, no better than petty thieves . They get you to take out a contract for quite a lengthy period and will not inform you when it is ending, if you are on special offer they then will quadruple your line rental and hope you are like me, only checks their bank statements every few months. Even if you discover it after the first month, you will still have to pay the inflated prices before you can cancel or seek a cheaper deal.

Hope this little blog, warns people against this kind of dodgy dealing and deters you from companies like this one. Check out other companies because Talk Talk and Carphone are the pits.

Alternative site for comments:

http://brenttoday.co.uk/forums/entry.php?6-Dodgy-Moblie-Phone-Companies

I was quite excited about the World Cup and expected England to do well. The build up during the qualifying stages gave me an optimism that was justifiable, after from a few hiccups and injury worries, all was well in the England camp.

The first game against the USA was a slow start but until the terrible blunder by Mr Green we gave a decent enough performance. It didn’t inspire me to dance around the streets, waving a flag or fill me with pride after a slick performance. Instead I felt that a 1-1 draw was not a disaster and would suffice, I was certain a far improved display was on the cards against Algeria.

The performance against Algeria was nothing but absolutely dire, it was cringe-worthy, my feelings towards Gerrard, Rooney and the rest was anger. How could these highly paid, supposedly cream of the English Premiership perform with such an insipid, gutless, inept display of football. I have seen far superior performances by players in leagues 3 divisions below this shower. Many of the teams in the World Cup had players from leagues that are inferior in quality than our own top league. Algeria included players from Portsmouth, Glasgow Rangers and Wolves. The England squad boasts several multi-millionaires, earning wages way beyond the average mans dreams, £150,000 per-week Mr Terry is reported to be on. How much is Mr Miserable (Rooney) on? It is way above £100,000 per week.

When I think about our troops in Afghanistan, earning the princely sum of average £20,000 per-annum to fight in a desert for the supposed defence of our nation. I think about the shirkers carrying the flag in the name of English football and wonder how such a bunch of livered specimens could be have gained such adoration amongst their fans. So the Algerian match was a disaster but not the end of the road yet. We still had the chance to make amends and pull out the stops with an inspiring display against Slovenia.

The Slovenia match was a breath of fresh air, a vast improvement on the last match. Although it wasn’t an overwhelming display of superiority, we could have scored 4 or 5 goals. We made chances and defended reasonably well, the defence looked shaky at times but Terry and Upson both played well. We ran out winners 1-0, finishing second in the Table behind the Americans, this result meant for the knock-out stages we would be playing the old enemy ‘The Germans’.

The stage is set ‘Bloemfontein’ 40,000 English voices singing the Anthem, I do think the English supporters are a magnificent bunch. Through thick and thin they suffer, continuing to endure the premature exits in international competitions, they weren’t to be let down.

What makes an England team play so badly, a team of class players for their own clubs. Why do they let themselves down when it comes to the big fixture? The defence were clueless and and were torn apart by a German side with the average age of 24. No-one in the England side played well, it was unfortunate that the disallowed goal happened but would it have changed anything? I can’t answer that, I can say that England didn’t have the will to win, the passion was missing, the tactics were wrong and the Germans left our defence out of position time and time again.

I was deflated watching the second half and mystified as to why a manager of such standing as Capello, could not organise this bunch of highly paid individuals into a winning team. It is 46 years since our National Team won anything and it will be another 46 years before we win anything again unless the set-up changes, the attitude of the players change and the structure of English football is changed. It could be a factor that the players them selves have no pride in their country, not many people in our country have much patriotism left.

The England shirt was something every footballer was proud to wear once upon a time. The team of 1966 are national heroes and will always be held in high esteem amongst the sports fans of this nation. The likes of Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard will be forgotten soon enough when they hang up their boots. Lets hope that they won’t be wearing the England shirt come the 2014 world cup, they let the people of this country down badly, not because they lost to a better team but because they played as if they didn’t give a toss for England, or the millions of English fans glued to their TV’s in homes throughout this Island and the World. The thousands that travelled to Africa to give them support, these fans got nothing back from the team to show them, that the team had winning on their mind and would fight for honour and the flag.

Next time we challenge for a competition , The Euro Championship in 2012, lets hope that we can field a team with belief, players that want to give their all for the country, a team with passion that inspire the fans. Sadly the overpaid prima-donnas that infest our game today appear only to be interested in promoting their image, fame and glamour, money and improved contracts.

Alternative site for comments: - The World Cup Campaign

Richmond by the River

I am pleased about this piece of news regarding the take over by TfL from Tube Lines, having personally suffered for many a month because of weekend closures of the Jubilee Line and disruptions on the overground when travelling across London.

Quite often I travel between Twickenham and Brent at weekends and used to use public transport combinations. The most scenic and cheapest option for me would be a  journey combining Jubilee Line, Overground from Brondesbury to Richmond and then using SW trains for one stop to Twickenham. This used to be a pleasant journey and one that I enjoyed, that is until the maintenance disrupted uncounted journeys making travelling by these routes impossible,  constant weekend disruptions on the Jubilee and the overground railway made the journey  a non-viable option. The only option open to me was was the car, the North Circular, Chiswick roundabout and with a good run 40 mins after setting off I had arrived.

Reading this article – follow link below:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23832030-boris-johnson-to-unveil-new-tube-strategy.do

Boris Johnson today pledged to slash the number of disruptive evening and weekend closures on the Tube after securing a deal to bring some of the busiest Underground lines back under state control.

I congratulate Boris on making this happen and reversing a Brown failed initiative into one that will benefit the users of the London Transport systems.

Alternative site for comments:
http://brenttoday.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?20-Talk-about-London