Letters sent by Islington Green Party members to the local papers
Letters
1st March 2024 / 2nd April 2024 by Islington Green Party
Islington Tribune, March 2 2024 Hundreds of thousands of UK households are affected unfairly by the ‘Two Child’ benefits cap, which restricts universal credit and child tax credit to a family’s first two children and provides less or nothing for any others. It is one of our country’s biggest causes of child poverty, which has […]
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27th February 2024 by Islington Green Party
Thanks to the Tribune for reporting how Islington’s opposition councillors have ‘called in’ the council’s decision to merge Montem and Duncombe schools, but it’s disappointing that Executive Member Cllr Ngongo has chosen to attack this call on party-political grounds in your letters page (‘For first-class education’). Admittedly the government’s decision to make Poole Park an […]
24th January 2024 by Islington Green Party
I congratulate you on your 8 page climate feature. It is encouraging that a paper such as ‘The Islington Tribune’ can devote such a large part of its content to the Climate Emergency. Your editorial invites readers to debate the issues and encourages them not to feel helpless and overwhelmed, and you make helpful suggestions […]
During the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, 250 of the world’s richest people wrote an open letter to political leaders, calling for greater taxes on their own wealth. The signatories, including members of both the Rockefeller and Disney dynasties, recognised that increasing global inequality is putting economic, societal and ecological stability at risk for […]
12th January 2024 / 24th January 2024 by Islington Green Party
Published in the Islington Tribune, Jan 12 2024 For many years Islington Green Party have been campaigning to exempt Islington Council’s poorest residents from paying council tax. It used to be the case that people on the lowest incomes were given a 100 per cent discount from council tax, but the Conservative and Liberal Democrat […]
15th November 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Storm Ciaran was already the third ‘named storm’ of this autumn and October has been the wettest ever recorded in some parts of the country. So-called ‘one in a hundred year’ weather events are happening more like every two or three years, now. And impacts are being felt across all sectors of the UK, with […]
It’s disappointing, to say the least, that Islington has had to be fined by the Housing Ombudsman for delayed repairs to its own housing stock (‘Council fined for housing complaints’, 27/10/23). Council budgets have of course been badly depleted by years of government austerity policies but every delayed repair is yet another household living in […]
28th October 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Last week, I and my wife, both in our eighties and both white skinned, joined thousands upon thousands of others to walk, in the drizzle, through central London in support of peace in the Middle East. What we encountered was, yes, some very angry people. But also acts of such kindness, love and concern from […]
10th October 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
From the eighteenth-century campaigns against slavery, when the sugar boycott against buying goods produced by enslaved peoples attracted 300,000 supporters, to their role in bringing to an end apartheid and segregation, boycotts have been shown to work. They are a vital democratic tool to address global injustices, which take power back to the people from […]
4th October 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
As my seventieth birthday approaches, it occurs to me I’ll never know, personally, if humanity manages to overcome the Climate Emergency challenge. With the best will in the world, it will still take years to slow and turn the ship of our carbon economy, then decades more to be sure we’ve avoided the catastrophes it […]
18th September 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
John Wilson asks if the Green Party has said nothing about ULEZ or has taken a stand which just hasn’t been widely reported (‘Will the Greens come to Khan’s rescue on ULEZ?’). I can confirm that we have been pushing Mayors for London-wide clean air zones for more than a decade now and have backed ULEZ on the Assembly […]
28th August 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Transport for London has announced that its roadworks along Holloway Road will shortly move into Phase 2, around the Drayton Park and Liverpool Road junctions. Local residents have been campaigning for safer crossings at Drayton Park and Palmer Place for literally decades, so were delighted in 2019 when TfL announced it would be putting improvements […]
16th August 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Every time I turn the TV on I seem to find either worldwide floods, wildfires and other extreme weather events or programmes enjoying the globe-trotting lifestyle of millionaires in Dubai and luxury hotels in the Maldives. Published research shows that from 1990 to 2015 the world’s wealthiest 1% were responsible for more than twice as […]
28th June 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
As councillors for Highbury ward, we’re delighted that the new design we’ve been pushing for, for the new café and facilities on the Fields, has been broadly well received by your readers (‘Look again at the new café design detail’ and others). We truly believe it will be a gamechanger for the Fields and will […]
21st June 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Congratulations to Cllr Champion on reaching the milestone of Islington’s 500th on-street bike hanger (‘Five hundred hangars…’), but the Council’s promise to install a hundred more a year is too slow. There are still 2,500 people on the bike hangar waiting list, apparently, here in Islington, and this demand for secure on-street cycle parking will surely […]
12th June 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
While her constituency may be down in Brighton, many Islingtonians are sorry to hear that Caroline Lucas has announced her intention to step down as an MP at the next General Election. Since 2010 she has punched far above her weight as the Green Party’s only elected representative at Westminster, securing significant policy changes, shaping […]
6th June 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Following my letter, last month, Islington Council still hasn’t managed to distribute all of its Hardship Fund, so has extended the application deadline again, till the end of June this time. This entirely worthwhile initiative, to help low-income households who need support with paying their rent, still has grants available, but, so far, only 50% […]
29th May 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
The Sobell Centre is a wonderful resource for our borough, which, over the years, the community has had to fight hard to keep open. Now we may have to fight, again, to make sure the facilities offered there are actually what we want. The ice-rink has been closed there since the flood from Thames Water’s […]
8th May 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
Cllr Diarmaid Ward rightly recognises how people are suffering during the current cost-of-living crisis, so I welcome that he has extended the deadline to the end of May for low income, working households to apply for £250 one-off grants, from the Council’s Hardship Fund (‘Help available at this time of crisis’). The scheme’s direct payments […]
2nd May 2023 / 15th November 2023 by Islington Green Party
No-one in the NHS wants to go on strike and nurses and doctors are well aware of the impact on patients of ongoing strike action. The facts are that wages for nurses have fallen by 13%, in real terms, since 2009, compared with a 2.5% drop for the average UK worker, while junior doctors’ incomes […]