A victory for Gloucester Green residents and their right to sleep at night

I attended a licensing hearing yesterday as ward councillor as I had made a representation against an application for yet another late night takeaway on Gloucester Green. The application was by a food outlet very similar to the other two that are already there with late night licences.

Although I like to see businesses thrive in my ward, there always must be a balance between the needs of business and the needs of residents. The problem with having lots of late night food outlets on Gloucester Green is that it is more-or-less en route to taxis and buses for people leaving the bars and clubs.   Many of these now shut at 3am and do so for most nights of the week what with different themed nights for students, locals, and other groups etc.  The effect of the takeaways is to make the (often drunk and aggressive) people gather and it makes it very hard for the Police to encourage them to go home.  As Thames Valley Police said at the hearing there has been a marked increase in crime and disorder or Gloucester Green since the later food outlets have been open and this is in direct contravention to the licensing objective of reducing crime and disorder.  Although CCTV and SIA-registered door supervisors were requested, these still won't stop drunk people making a lot of noise and causing much public nuisance for the residents of Gloucester Green - the flats called the Chilterns and the Heyes.  Prevention of public nuisance is another licensing objective that the licensing act says licences should encourage.  It seemed clear to me that this one would not do that.

In my speech I did suggest it might be just about bearable to allow this new business to trade until 2am and that would mean it closed before most of the club but unfortunately the applicant was not able or willing to pay for door supervisors so in the end the panel made what I think was the right decision and rejected the application in its entirety.  This means the outlet will not be allowed to trade past 11pm, as is the current situation.

I have written to all residents of Gloucester Green today to tell them this good news and hope it might well be the start of a move to cut back the hours of some of the other food outlets in the area so that they don't attract the crime and disorder and public nuisance that is currently blighting Gloucester Green in the small hours at a totally unacceptable level.

This blog post has no official status as a record of the licensing hearing and I can’t guarantee it’s error free so please don’t rely on it. Written notification of the decision is available from the Council.

A problem with a taxi rank location in the new Westgate Development?

I had a meeting with a council officer today to discuss concerns about a proposed taxi rank as part of the new Westgate Development that looks to me like it will be incredibly close to residential accommodation on Pike Terrace and Faulkner Street in my ward.  My concern is that in the small hours it will attract a lot of noise and antisocial behaviour from people leaving clubs and bars and that this will disturb a lot of residents in the area.

There is a very good consultation site about the west gate development and I recommend you have a look and give any feedback you want to give via that.

See http://www.westgateoxfordconsultation.co.uk/ and follow the navigation in the top right.

Celebration Dinner Dance for Diwali

What an evening this was!  I had spoken at an event with the Oxford Hindu Temple and and Community Centre Project before so I was delighted to invited to the Diwali celebration dinner and Dance at the Rover Sports and Social Club.

I was welcomed again by Dr Gopal and his wife as well as by the wonderful Chinta Kallie and was pleased to be able to take Gordon, my partner, along too.



There was a great band and some amazing music and dancing.  We had a delicious three course meal and I know that many of the OHTCCP committee and members had been at the venue since 10am that day.  It all looked amazing and the food was delicious.  I got to help open the event by lighting a Diwali lamp and gave a short speech after the vote of thanks.

Divali, the festival of lights, I understand, is one of the most important festivals of the Hindu religious year so I was glad to see everyone having a fantastic evening and hope all enjoy a really great festival, in the coming days and weeks, culminating on 3rd November. The five day festival of Diwali honours Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. And the row of lamps – the Diwali – is lit to help Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, find her way into people's homes. I hope that the homes and lives of all those present are prosperous so that OHTCCP can realise its dream of having a Hindu Temple in Oxford soon!

It’s lovely to see that In Britain, Hindus celebrate Diwali with great enthusiasm.  Diwali is becoming well known in Britain with many non-Indians joining in – I was indeed very pleased to be at the event with Gordon doing just that!

Licensing hearing for Christmas Light Festival

I attended this evening's licensing hearing and spoke on behalf of a St. Giles college that had concerns about the disruption the three day Christmas Light event on 22-24 would cause to it, particularly in terms of noise disturbance to those living on St. Giles with windows directly out to it, and such extensive road closures and parking suspensions, over a whole weekend in full Oxford University Term.  An extremely different proposition to St. Giles' Fair which happens after most tourists have left Oxford post-summer and before most students have arrived back.  The City Council has a web page with more information about Christmas Light Festival.

The license application has reference 13/02305/PREM and you can see some extremely rudimentary information about it online.  I'm not sure why the council has not put adequate information there - I have asked!   The outcome was that the license was granted but with some changes. It is a perpetual license but there is a robust review process in place so if there are problems this year (I fear there may well be) then I will request a review of the license as soon as reasonably practical after the event. A future licensing panel can amend or revoke a license just as easily as it grants it!

Following discussion the applicant volunteered that there will be no licensable activities on Beaumont Street and the provision of late night food has also been removed from the application. That means the kebab vans will stay on St. Giles (and will be allowed to trade as normal as they have their own licenses). I am told that alcohol sales from some stands will be licensed by Temporary Event Notice.  These can only be objected to by the Police so I have asked Thames Valley Police to watch out for them and consider the effect they will have on a city that will already be full of drunk people on Friday and Saturday evening.

Regulated entertainment (live or recorded music, performance of dance and exhibition of films) hours have been cut back a little to:

Friday noon-10pm
Saturday 10am-10pm
Sunday 10am-7pm

The following conditions were imposed:

1. Notification of dates of future events to be at least 12 months in advance to all stakeholders and this will include all stakeholders fronting St. Giles.

2. There must be a stakeholder meeting six months in advance of each annual event.

3. During the event a 24 hour control room will operate to allow anyone with complaint or grievance to address them with an appropriate person.

4. A draft event plan will be submitted to the Safety Advisory Group at least 60 days before the event.

5. A noise management plan will be prepared and submitted to the licensing authority for approval.

6. No amplified live entertainment on Sunday between 10am and 12.15pm

And some informatives about keeping noise down while the event is being built on Thursday night and taken down on Sunday night.

I am unimpressed by this but I think it is probably realistically all that was going to be conceded at this stage.  I just hope those that come to the festival stop and think about how they would fee about three days of their own road being closed and lots of noise outside their bedroom windows for three nights.

This blog post has no official status and I can't guarantee it's error free so please don't rely on it. Written notification of the decision is available from the Council.

A letter about Christmas light night road closures and of introduction to JCR and MCR presidents

I sent the following letter today to all JCR and MCR presidents at Colleges of Oxford University that are in my Carfax ward today:

Dear JCR/MCR president,

Introduction and news from your Oxford City Councillor about major end of 6th week event.

I’m writing to you at the start of this academic year, firstly to introduce myself, so you and your common room members know how to contact me (see phone and email above, or tweet @tonybrett) for any city issues while you are resident here; and, secondly, to let you know about the City Council Christmas Lights event that is planned for the end of sixth week as it will involve some multi-day road closures and parking suspensions in large parts of the City Centre that will affect you.

An Oxford graduate myself, I’ve been representing Carfax ward since 2010. About 65% of its people are students so I am very keen that I am accessible to you so I can help you with anything you need while you are here in Oxford. I work at IT Services at 13 Banbury Road, so I’m very close at hand if you or any of your college’s students have any questions about city issues. You can ring me on internal 83354.

I want to do all I can to ensure you and all your fellow students feel as welcome in this city as possible, and part of it. I’d be really pleased to come along to a suitable common room meeting or any other appropriate event, perhaps to give a quick 5-minute run-down on what councillors do for people, how we can help and to take any questions. Would that be useful? Did you know, for example, that Oxford City Council is responsible for shared houses; parks; licensing live music venues; pubs, clubs, taxis and kebab vans; planning permission, collecting rubbish, and dealing with complaints about noise nuisance? I’ve helped students with all of those. Remember my job is to represent you to the council – not the council to you! You can read more about my work at http://tonybrett.mycouncillor.org.uk/

Turning to the Christmas event at the end of sixth week I am very keen that students get advance warning of the road closures as I think the Council has been pretty poor at keeping you informed. I only found out about them myself last month! All of St. Giles and some surrounding roads will be closed from 7pm on Thursday of 6th week right up until Monday of 7th week. That will mean no cycling and certainly no driving into town for friend or parent visits etc. I’m sure the Christmas event will be good but I wanted all your college’s students to know about it as I thought you might have concerns or questions. I’ve put a map of the closures on the back of this letter – I’m assured, after querying the council, that the green area will actually be closed from 7pm, not 4pm on Thursday of sixth week. Please do let me have any queries or comments and I will make sure they are passed on to the appropriate council officers and dealt with properly. As a past student of Oxford myself I know how important it is to be able to get around the City when you live right in the centre of it.

Thanks very much for taking time to read this and I wish you a happy and successful Michaelmas Term and academic year.

I hope some will find it useful.  You can click the image to see a larger version.

A meeting about Christmas light night

Jean Fooks and I met today with two council officers and a contractor about the events planned for 22-24 November in the City Centre to Celebrate Christmas light night.

We made quite a few points but the main one was about our fears that such a long closure of so many City Centre roads would cause utter havoc for the thousands of City Centre residents who had not been consulted about the event.  I also had not been consulted as a ward councillor which I find frankly staggering for an event of such size and disruption.  There are many disabled and inform people extremely worried that they will not be able to get to their regular places of worship on the Sunday too.

I am not very sure our points were taken very seriously and it does increasingly like councillors who are not part of the Labour administration really are not taken seriously by the paid staff and that the need to consult us as ward councillors doesn't really seem to register.

I wish the City Council would understand that Oxford University is not just an historic backdrop against which it can do what it likes, but rather a busy and active world-leading centre of excellence in education and research.  I don't think it is reasonable to disrupt that so comprehensively in what is the height of University term.  Without the University there would be very little of Oxford - it is one of the main wealth-creators of the City and certainly one of the biggest employers.  The City Council would do well to remember that before it tramples all over its activities with such massive disruption.

 

Interfaith evening for better understanding

This evening I attended an interfaith event at the St Clement's family centre on Cross Street.  Canon Bruce Gillingham of St. Clements' Church opened the event and the topic of discussion was "The founders of our religions". We heard some excellent talks both from Dr Richard McCallum of the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies in Oxford and from Mr Abdul Ghani Jahangir Khan.  I was delighted to accept a cheque for the Lord Mayor of Oxford's charitable trust, which came frrom the good works of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community nationally.  The event was chaired by Ch Waseem Ahamad, National President of the Elders of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association.



I am impressed that the Ahmadiyya Muslim community UK has been doing great work for 100 years and that the Oxford chapter has been active for about 30 of those. I think it's great that the community puts such emphasis on education, values, peace, harmony and service to humanity and it is an example to all people in our City, be they of other faiths or none. I was particularly pleased to hear that the centenary activities include making regular contributions to feeding Oxford's many homeless people and that so many members are donating generously to charitable activities in Oxford and beyond. It is a sign of a healthy, compassionate and committed community that it is engaged in humanitarian efforts in other parts of the world too, under the auspices of its own national community, and I want to thanked all involved for their current fundraising efforts for the victims of the Syrian humanitarian crisis.

Drug and substance abuse, antisocial behaviour, gang culture, violence and promiscuity are all plagues of our time on the younger people of our society and I am grateful for the work the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community does in encouraging our youth to take alternative, more healthy and wholesome pathways.

I think we really benefit from a multi-faith approach to such issues in jointly showing our youth that there are better ways to live a fulfilled life. In any faith, evangelism is important so I was interested to see that the Oxford chapter of the Admadiyya Muslim Community has visited nearly 30,000 homes in Oxford to spread the peaceful message of Islam with leaflets - I joked that maybe I should invite some of them out for election campaigns! Spreading peaceful messages is so important in these times of terrorist threat and it does a huge amount to help the public resist the temptation to be suspicious of all Muslims just because a tiny minority have some radical views that they express as hateful terrorist actions. There have been plenty of radical Christians in history too and I hope we can all agree that all religions of peace have no place for radicalism, hatred and terrorism. These peace symposia, held in Oxford since 2011, are very useful in spreading the "love for all, hatred for none" motto.

We ended the evening with some wonderful Asian food, prepared on the premises for us.

Freshers' Fair

I took a couple of hours out over lunch today to join the Oxford University Liberal Democrats on their stall at Oxford University's Freshers Fair.  I had some really good conversations with lots of new students and lots were asking interesting questions.  It was interested being sandwiched between the Labour and Tory tables  and hearing some other conversations too.  We signed up dozens and dozens of new members so I look forward to an exciting year of events with this important student society.  I'm pictured here with Andy McKay (Wadham), the current Social and Events Officer.

Planning application for St Cross College rejected

St Cross College submitted a planning application over the summer I was quick to alert residents in the immediate area about it.  It would be fair to say that the area of the application site does need some sorting out as it's a bit of a mess at the moment but it seems to me that the St Cross planning application had some features that seemed more about ticking boxes than actually doing some appropriate development.

I worked with the St. John Street area Residents' Association and had a very constuctive meeting with them back on 10th August to help better understand their concerns and work out how best to articulate those to the council and to the members of the West Area Planning Committee who would be determining the application.  I was impressed at how well people pulled together to get all the points in a high-impact, extremely effective summary that was delivered to the planning committee when it met.



I think the image here shows how the design with very square and blocky features would just jar terribly against the existing chapel and against the roof-lines of the existing St. John Street properties.

As it turned out, despite the planning department recommending approval of this rather inappropriate proposal, most members of the West Area Planning committee voted against the proposal so it was rejected.   The application fell 6 against, 2 for (Cllrs Cook & Gotch in favour; Cllrs Van Nooijen, Tanner, Price, Canning, Clack & Jones against).  I believe this is the right result and I hope that a more suitable proposition will be forthcoming in the future so that St Cross can build the extra accommodation it badly needs without doing quite so much damage to the amenity and beauty of this sensitive part of Oxford's historic centre.

Lovely to be thanked!

I had a really lovely email today following my last-minute attendance at the Oxford-Léon link meeting and AGM from the organiser, sent to me and to the Lord Mayor's PA Anjana who organises our engagements:

"I would like to thank you both for Thursday evening: Anjana for organising Tony to deputise at our meeting at short notice, as Cllr Sinclair, the mayor was ill and Tony for stepping in. It was clear that Anjana had efficiently forwarded the notes - and that Tony had read them. Your system for dealing with these situations clearly works.

Tony, I appreciate that it must have been difficult with little notice, but your speech was excellent and thank you for staying for the meeting and taking an interest in our work. Thanks especially for your technical help with the Skype link. It was (again) a tad embarrassing that the problems were at this end and that Oxford City Council's technology was out-done by that of a small NGO in a developing country. Our contacts in Leon were very amused by this.

I'm glad that, with your help, we were able to establish the connection and speak to Jane and Andrew. It is a pity that there were no speakers, as we requested so even had we got Skype working on time, the audience would not have been able to hear them as intended.

All in all it was a good meeting and making £70 on the raffle was an added bonus."

Receiving such messages is wonderful and really makes it feel worth making the effort to attend everything I am invited to as Deputy Lord Mayor.  I feel honoured and very blessed.

Opening of The Individual Funeral Company

I really had no idea what to expect today, being asked to open a funeral directors.  I needn't have feared though as the owner of this new business, Lucy Jane, was really lovely and made me feel so very welcome.

I know that Lucy Jane has a local history in this business, training in Oxford and then becoming the first female hearse rider in the world for Motorcycle funerals. That sounds very exciting and quite fitting for those who have motorbikes and indeed probably petrol in their blood.

I am delighted that Lucy Jane has decided to come back to Oxford to fulfil her dream of helping local families to have an individual funeral tailored exactly to their needs and wishes. She says that people are not gold, silver or bronze packages and that the Individual Funeral Company won’t treat them as such. I think that’s really important as funerals are a very difficult time for friends, family and loved ones of those that have passed away. Getting the details right, including treating everyone with dignity and respect is so important in properly enabling the grieving process and helping those that are left to come to terms with their loss.  I loved the way everything was accessible and there were some really beautiful decorated coffins on show in the window as well as a model of the motorcycle hearse.

The individual Funeral Company is a small independent company and although it is principally a funeral directors I am pleased that the intention is very much to become an integral part of the community where people can just come and say hello to Lucy Jane and her staff as friends as well as providers of this important service that we all ultimately need! It’s great that the company is family owned and managed and is happy to give honest advice on any matters to the local and wider community. I’m sure that as a small local company it will be a great asset to the Rose Hill community and beyond.

It was an honour to give the business, its owner and all its staff the formal blessing of the City.

Oxford León Association and Trust AGM

This was another last-minute engagement due to the Lord Mayor being unwell.  I was invited to speak and indeed did so the minute I was through the door!

I am a great advocate of town-twinning activity and in my time so far on the council have made some great friends in Bonn, another City with which Oxford is privileged to be twinned.

The link with León in Nicaragua is different to all Oxford’s others because Nicaragua is a developing country and this Association and Trust raises funds for important projects in that country. It’s a real credit to everyone involved that the link has been alive and doing great work since 1986 – nearly 30 years. I am pleased that two of my councillor colleagues, John Tanner and Mike Rowley were able to visit León as part of the delegation back in February.

Of course fundraising should also be fun and indeed many in Oxford had great fun earlier this year swimming at Hinksey Pool, our wonderful heated outdoor pool just down the road, in the sponsored swim. It raised much needed funds for a pipeline to carry clean drinking water into a Nicaraguan community where the previous supply was contaminated with Arsenic.
I know there are plans to bring two young people from León to Oxford next year and I think that’s a really great thing to do to strengthen then link. I’ll certainly do what I can to get the City Council to support this.

I also thanked the Association for the gigantona (giant puppet woman) that was a gift from León to Oxford. I know it was used in the Cowley Road Carnival this year and provided great entertainment and delight for many people – I hope Oxford can use it much more as time goes on!

We were treated to a Skype link conversation with some volunteers actually in Nicaragua and indeed some rather delicious Nicaraguan Rum.  I also bought some fair trade coffee that had been got as part of a project running also in Léon.  There was also a raffle but I didn't win anything!

Opening of Andrew Wiles Mathematics Building for the University of Oxford

This event was a last-minute stand-in as the Lord Mayor was ill.  It was a great privilege to see this building and its opening as it really is stunning. Speeches were made by the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and by David Willetts, the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science, as well as the Head of the Department, Sam Howison.  I was treated to a wonderful tour by the department's head of administration and hugely enjoyed the visit.  The building is quite amazing in that it has all sorts of mathematical quirks built in, including the Penrose paving, based on a non-repeating pattern discovered by famous Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, and two "crystals" which are based also on mathematical structures.



The building provides more than 300 offices in a range of sizes, identifiable space for graduate taught course students and 4th year undergraduate students working on projects, an extensive suite of teaching and seminar spaces as well as a range of meeting rooms, breakout spaces and a large departmental common room. It provides workspace for a diverse community of more than 500 mathematical researchers and support staff, including faculty, research fellows and postgraduate students. It is a centre for the academic life of approximately 900 undergraduates.

The project incorporates Ground Source Heat Pumps which will supply heat in winter and cool the building in the summer. This is achieved by submerging pipes deep into the ground that can transfer the temperature to the building by use of pumps. The Institute building was designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects.

Music and the Deaf Concert

This is possibly the most inspiring event I've been to yet as Deputy Lord Mayor.  It was a concert in aid of the charity Music and the Deaf, at the Town Hall.  This charity is unique in that it enables the 10 million people in the UK with hearing loss (1 in 6) to enjoy the world of music.  Dr Paul Whittaker OBE is the Artistic Director of MATD and has been profoundly deaf all his life.  He was admitted to Oxford by Wadham College to read music in 1983 after rejections from many other UK Universities on the misguided basis that "deaf people can't do music".  Paul founded MATD in 1988 and has I thinkemphatically proved how wonderful music is to deaf people and how they contribute just as much to music as those with non-impaired hearing.  I'm sure he has changed and enriched thousands of lives through his amazing work and commitment.

The concert was really good both in terms of being fun and being musically excellent.  I hugely enjoyed along with the Mayor of Witney, the Chief Examiner of the London College of Music and Steve Webb MP.    It was just stunning to hear some Mozart piano duets played by two profoundly deaf men and Paul Whittaker's command of the pipe organ was just wonderful.  I parituclarly enjoyed Paul's rendition of Noel Rawsthorne's Hornpipe Humoresque.

Opening RADECS 2013

This evening was a fairly brief event for me in that I was invited to the Town Hall to the opening drinks reception of RADECS 2013, a large conference that took place in Oxford this year.  It is the The 22nd European Conference on Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems.    My brief was to give a bit of history on the Town Hall and the Civic office of Lord Mayor. Did you know that The present Town Hall is the third on the site and its foundation stone was laid in 1893 by the Mayor Thomas Lucas and without mention of the first builder - a Mr A Chappell of Lambeth - who was declared bankrupt in October 1893. The present design by Henry T Hare was built by Messrs Parnell and son of Rugby for £94,116 (note, Oxford’s average house price is now £356,299) . The official opening of the Town Hall was on Wednesday 12 May 1897, by HRH the Prince of Wales Edward VII.

The Lord Mayor of Oxford is a very old tradition, with the first recorded names going right back to the 12th century. There is a long unbroken line of Mayors of Oxford right up until 1962 when the dignity of Lord Mayor was granted to Oxford by Queen Elizabeth ll.  In Oxford, The Lord Mayor represents the City at civic and ceremonial events and spends a great deal of time promoting the City, the key initiatives of the City Council and supporting a wide range of Oxford based voluntary and other organisations.

The Lord Mayor generally carries out in excess of 300 engagements each year. These engagements cover a wide spectrum of events from high profile Royal visits and leading the City's annual Remembrance Sunday service, to small community group meetings and charity events.  The Lord Mayor also chairs meetings of full council.

International day of Peace

This event was held jointly by the Oxford Islamic Information Centre, The Oxford Council of Faiths, The United Nations Association (Oxford) and the Global Ceasefire Project.  It was a good coming together of those passionate about peace and there was an excellent speech by the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Tim Stevenson OBE, and I was invited to say a few words on behalf of the City of Oxford.

Although the last world war ended almost seventy years ago I think we can all agree that the world sometimes feels like it is not a very peaceful place, with terrible things going on right now in Syria, Afghanistan and many other parts of this our world so I am grateful to all the work all organisations like those that organised today's event do to promote global peace.

On a national level, in these times of economic difficulty it can be very tempting for people to start blaming their problems on other groups of people and we have seen some of that with the far right and the far left in unfortunate clashes that I think do nothing to bring peace and understanding to our country or our communities. What an amazing example however the members of the mosque in York set earlier this year by offering tea and a game of football to those who were trying to intimidate them. We all have much to learn from that.

On a more local level, I am extremely proud to live in a City where we are largely at peace with each other. Faiths co-exist and there are generally good relationships between councils, employers, universities, other places of education and churches. It’s wonderful to be able to celebrate that with the friendship walk each summer and I think it sends a very strong message both of intent and warning to those who might try to disrupt peace in our City and beyond.

English Youth Ballet - Swan Lake in aid of Oxford Children's Hospital

I attended a performance of Swan Lake by the English Youth Ballet this evening at the New Theatre, Oxford.  It was absolutely stunning and I hugely enjoyed it.  It was an honour to meet Janet Lewis MBE (English Youth Ballet Director) and to learn a bit about the wonderful work of the English Youth Ballet.  The performance this evening was special because it was in aid of the Oxford Children's Hospital.  After the performance there was a speech by Janet Lewis as well as by a young girl who is a patient of the Children's Hospital.  I also gave a speech thanking everyone for such a wonderful performance, commending the work of the Children's Hospital and encouraging people to give generously to such a worthy cause.

The performances of Swan Lake in Oxford by the English Youth Ballet feature around 120 talented young dancers from around Oxfordshire who were selected for the performance in an audition in May.  EYB raised £2,700 for Stoke Mandeville Hospital Children’s Ward last summer when it gave 3 performances in Aylesbury.  English Youth Ballet (EYB) is one of the UK’s largest ballet companies and previously won The Stage Award for special achievement in regional theatre.  The company brings together the finest professional principal dancers from London and around the world with local ballet students selected for their talent and potential.

What a wonderful evening!

UCare's meet the researchers event

UCARE (Urology Cancer Research and Education) is an independent charity committed to improving the treatment and care of cancer patients through research and education.  I went along this evening to an event where three researchers spoke about how funding from UCARE has really helped them to make progress in cancer research and treatment.

UCARE (Urology Cancer Research and Education) is a local independent charity founded by a group of clinicians, patients and supporters who care about fighting urological cancers, those of the kidney, bladder, prostate and testes.

Treating people with urological cancers continues to be a major challenge, 20% of all new cancers diagnosed each year will be a urological cancer; 54,000 new urological cancers are diagnosed each year – 10,000 cases more than breast cancer. Despite the frequency of diagnosis of these cancers, they receive little detailed or sustained media coverage and consequently no information enters the public consciousness.

We know that with early diagnosis more people than ever could survive the disease. Awareness of the signs and symptoms of these cancers remains woefully low amongst the general public. With early detection and diagnosis many more people could survive. There are known to be gaps in cancer survival rates between the UK and its European counterparts, and it is recognised that the primary reason for this is late diagnosis.
Research and awareness go hand in hand, so the health care needs of the community are at the forefront of the UCARE charitable object. Our part in educating the public on what to look for in the signs and symptoms of urological cancers, to help people make improved life style choices, and to give advice on seeking early intervention is vital. Since health awareness campaigns in the UK encouraged women to ‘know their bodies’, mortality rates for breast cancer, have fallen dramatically. Women are aware that they must seek early intervention. A higher public profile has resulted in more funds for research leading to new and more effective treatments and we aim that UCARE will have the same impact for urological cancers.

I didn't have to speak at this event but was really impressed at how sometimes quite modest funding can enable work to continue or be started that enables much larger amounts of funding to be achieved from larger bodies.  Oxford is one of the world's leading centres of cancer research and treatment so I was very pleased to be at the event to represent the City of Oxford and offer its full support to the excellent work of UCARE.

Private View of Francis Bacon / Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone

This was another special treat at the Ashmolean Museum.  I was representing the City as the Deputy Lord Mayor and was really impressed by the work that has gone into putting together this fantastic exhibition.

We heard a good speech by Dr Christopher Brown, the Director of the Ashmolean, and some remarks by the co-curators of the Bacon Moore exhibition. Then daughter of Henry Moore, Claire, gave a great speech and formally opened the exhibition.  I had had a look around the exhibition before the speeches and it is truly impressive being in a tall gallery and with a fantastic juxtaposition of paintings by Bacon and sculptures and drawings by Moore.

Oxford Hindu Temple & Community Centre Project 5 year celebrations

I attended this event today at Deputy Lord Mayor at Kennington Community Centre and was welcomed by Dr. Gyan Gopal and heard the 5-yearly report of the project from him as well as enjoying sharing worship and offerings with those present and a good talk about how beneficial it would be to Oxford Hindus to have a permanent temple.

One of the many things I love about our wonderful City of Oxford is its ethnic, cultural and religious diversity so I was particularly pleased to attend these celebrations. I am impressed that OHTCCP has such a strong organisation with so many committee members who clearly do so much for this Hindu community.

As a person of faith myself I know how important the discipline, community, shared responsibly and time for prayer and reflection that come with faith are to a healthy and fulfilled life. I am really pleased to see how many communities in Oxford take their faith so seriously and how much of a positive influence it has on their lives and the lives of those around them. Well done to OHTCCP for its work to advance Hindu religion and culture and promote spiritual teaching and observances that serve to enhance understanding of Hinduism.

In Oxford it is great that faiths work together so well through the Oxford Council of faiths and I’m always pleased to join the annual friendship walk that happens earlier in the summer. It’s a great achievement that this community also has a stop for Hindu prayers as part of the walk.

I wish the Oxford Hindu Community every success in its aim of acquiring premises for a Hindu Temple and a Community Centre to cater for the religious, social and cultural needs and activities of its members and I hope the fundraising strategy and efforts produce resources to realise that dream soon.