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Tuesday 3 June 2008, Brent Town Hall, London, NW9 – in a noisy meeting filled with members of the public opposed to the project, Brent council members approved the planning application for Ark child charity private Wembley Academy school.

A short video has been posted on YouTube.

Previous YouTube videos on the Wembley Academy Campaign – one, two, three, four.

Previous blog post.

With only one council member voting against the application the deal was secured, allowing Ark to open the school by September 2008.

Ark claims they have already accepted more than 200 places for the school. The only problem is the school is not built yet, as ITV London Tonight recently reported .

The planning approval authorised 200 children to be taught in rundown shacks and portacabins on the Wembley Sports Ground, next to Wembley Park underground station, while construction of a six storey school is built around them. This allows the private funder Ark to receive funds from the UK taxpayer and being profiting from it.


Local campaigner, Copland school teacher, Brent Secretary for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and Brent Secretary for Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), Hank Roberts said: “It is the usual sort of stitch up. They [the council] are not interested in what the people think.

“We will never accept this. We are going to continue to fight it and we will win.”

Pimlico School

The idea of a private investment school building the Academy school around children is not a new thing. This year Pimlico school in Central London also came under the hold of the Academy school system.

Venture capitalist, and Conservative party donor John Nash, owner of Sovereign Capital, took control of the school, and began demolishing the building around 1050 school children.

“When they first started pulling down the swimming pool we thought it was another earthquake,” said Pimlico teacher Bridget Chapman. “We’re working with the Battersea Crane Disaster group. They’re concerned because there have been a number of crane collapses.

“The cranes will be overhanging a school with children in.”

So, just how is this capable, to be able to risk children’s lives on construction sites so Academy school funders and profiteers can start reigning in the profit?

Arki Busson (middle) with Will Self

Busson has some highly influential friends, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair for one. Busson claimed Blair was “engaged” with Ark’s Academy program.

Ark is building 12 Academies, six of which, including the newly approved Wembley construction site, will be open for business this September.

The one question to ask, I guess, is will the Wembley Academy be doing a course in construction site safety.

Reel News has given near constant coverage to the Wembley Academy Campaign and the slow privatisation of the UK education system, which culminated in the 22-minute film Save Our Schools! on issue 13.

Please support Reel News to keep our coverage going on the issues important to you.

All material on this blog, stills, video and print, is (c) Jason N. Parkinson 2008 All Rights Reserved.

Please contact the AUTHOR for access to any material and the extensive four-year video archive.

jasonnparkinson@googlemail.com

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Lord help us. Terrorists? No. Climate Change? No? Another series of Big Brother, The X Factor, or any other of those brain-destroying abortions that are passed off as entertainment? No. Not even American Gladiators.

No, the Queen, our Queen, the monarch, symbol of our sovereignty, £40 million of taxpayer’s money per year – although I remember figures in 2000 being somewhere in the region of £300 million. Another 1984-style fact, rewitten and hope no one bothers to research it – The Queen, God bless her Corgi dogs, the Queen, one of the richest people in the country, the Queen is feeling the credit crunch.

This has to be one of the most rude, depraved and insulting news headlines, even by London newspaper Evening Standard standards.

It had to be a joke, to the point that when I saw the first ES stall tonight I remarked: “You gotta be fucking kidding me!”

In a time where “recession” was newspeaked to “necessary downturn” to “credit crunch”, when the average household has seen an increase in weekly costs of 40 percent, pay strikes popping up all over the country because workers can’t even squeeze a working wage out of the private corporations now in control of our public services – taxpayers expected to bail out private banks like Northern Rock to the sum of £100 million – the Queen is complaining they don’t enough have money to replace the lead roofing on Buckingham Palace.

You may have guessed by now this has really got my back up. Objectiveness out the window, I found myself today almost agreeing with certain comments by Ian Bone of Class War, for about five minutes, but then I managed to calm down . The sheer arrogance to make this statement defies belief, in any climate, let alone now.

All material on this blog is (c) Jason N. Parkinson 2008 All Rights Reserved.

That includes all stills, video and PRINT.

Please contact the AUTHOR for access to all material and the extensive four-year video archive.

jasonnparkinson@googlemail.com

>Saturday 15 March: The Stop The War Coalition (STW) called yet another protest in London, massing in Trafalgar Square then marched on the Houses of Parliament.

Police estimated the numbers at 10,000, but the organisers said 40,000. The fact of the matter is until it exceeds the numbers of two million or more on that historic day back in February 2003 then it may as well be ten, or two.

From the day, this was probably the most entertaining banner I witnessed. Again, young and energetic types stole the show from those, now seen by many, as stale and stagnent in the movement that never wanted this war in the first place.

Even Tony Benn has recently come under scrutiny for his statements back at the beginning of the war, for one, “we have to take whatever steps necessary to stop this war. If that means taking direct action like blocking the roads and railways then so be it!”

But – despite the same rhetoric coming from the same speakers, that resembled scenes imagined when reading from George Orwell’s 1984, the after-work groups and public gatherings orchestrated by the state to create the idea you are working for a better society and have an active role – at least I got the cute dog shot of the day.

This little pooch seemed to love the day, as it was, for this dog, a day of constant patting and petting.

The only other highlight for me was catching these shots of band King Blues, who set up a roaming sound system, thanks to Rob The Rub, attached five musicians to the amplifier and kicked out some solid tunes around the entire protest.

There were various groups from the anarchist movement there on the day…

…some of whom openly vented their frustration at what they, and others, saw as yet another march from A to B under complete control of the police and authorities, the very organisations the protest was against, the very organisations that took the UK into the War On Terror and held the public there for finiancial and corporate interest.

The march headed from Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall, past Downing Street – where the everso elusive Gordon Brown, the most secretive and undetectable of all UK Prime Ministers, is housed – across Westminster bridge – where in days of old those against the state had their heads removed and placed on stakes – on to the south of the river, back over Lambeth Bridge, past the MI5 building and on to Parliament Square for yet more speeches.

The FIT Watch group were also on the protest, to highlight and disrupt the Metropolitan Police surveillance of peaceful protestors. But as their blog states, “FIT Watch is not an organisation, it is a tactic”.



As the protest moved along Whitehall FIT Watch unraveled their banner and police halted the protest. STW protest stewards attacked the FIT Watchers, accusing them of halting the march…

…but as several masked proterstors pointed out, from the pavement, it was the police who had halted the demonstration, and not them. But these words went on to unheard ears of an STW steward, who, unfortunately for them, have the reputation of being rude, powermad, with no concept of solidarity with other protesting factions.

This still from my footage that day shows the FIT Squad filming and photographing the footwear of the FIT Watch protestors. This tactic, as far as I know, was last used against anti-G8 protestors in Genoa, Italy, way back in 2001.

One thing to note here is, from my coverage of the FIT Watch, this tactic of blocking police surveillance photographers with something as simple as a small piece of black cloth, is working. The frustration in the officers is blatant, hence the four arrests for obstructing police operations on that Saturday (correction: the arrests were under s241 TULRCA), although this charge has been called into question in recent months, as the photographers for the Metropolitan Police are not police officers, but civilians working for the police.

The reasoning behind the FIT Teams has also been brought into question in recent months.

What happens to all this “evidence” gathered?

Why are they continually documenting journalists who cover protest, specifically the independent and freelancers – all lawful NUJ and IFJ registered newsgatherers?

How much are these units costing the UK taxpayer and what is the cost per conviction obtained from the evidence gathered during peaceful protest?

These are all, for myself and many other journalists, very interesting questions, questions that so far have not been answered.

In the fight by pro-civil rights protestors against police surveillance, in a country with more CCTV than any other country in the world, in a country with more intense surveillance that can read the time on your wrist watch and hear whispers from a helicopter hovering at 500 foot, this has been, and continues to be, an interesting story to follow.

These three final stills from the day show myself and photojournalist Guy Smallman yet again being accosted by a senior member of the police.This time we were asked to move off the road and get behind the barriers. When questioned why, as we were not causing obstruction, hampering the police operation, or obstructing the highway – baring in mind some 30 metres behind us 30,000 people had already done that for us – the final words from this officer was he would get more people to deal with us.

The “more people” never came.

All stills from footage taken on the day.

Footage (c) 2008 Jason N. Parkinson

For access to footage or stills please contact the author.

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15 November 2007: Rock band Aaron John And The Stalkers played at the Storm Club on Leicester Square, London.

Recorded live, this video was put together for the bands further promotion.

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Sunday night, 10 February 2008, saw Zip Sklad and WWO play in Cardiff, Wales.

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In early 2006 I met with Sadiq Alwohali, an FA acredited international football coach. He was born in Sadr City, the poorest area in Iraq, but escaped Saddam Hussien’s regime and sought residency in Britain, where he trained towards his life-long ambition, to be a footaball coach.

For two years Sadiq has self-funded his dream, the Football For Change Iraq program, to train footballers and football coaches in Iraq.

In 2006 Sadiq brought children over from Sadr City to play in friendly tornaments with children from deprived areas of London, but the UK government in Jordan intervened and refused to issue visas to the Iraqi children.

Since then Sadiq has returned to Iraq and begun training the children and adults in his own city.

The Football For Change Iraq program was reported on by The Times and The Independent in January 2008.

I caught up with Sadiq in Hyde Park and interviewed him on his continuing project, and the reasons behind why he feels such programs should continue.

The video can be viewed on YouTube.

To contact Sadiq please contact the author.

All footage and stills (c) Jason N. Parkinson 2008.

For footage and stills availability contact the author.