Battle of the DJs - Fantastic Isleworth Event Raises £1500 for Macmillan and Princess Alice

Battle of the DJs at Isleworth Working Men's Club (left to right) John, Steve Platt, Percy Fullicks, Benn Butcher and Kevin Green (acknowledgements to the Hounslow Chronicle)

Several local disc jockeys staged a mock "Battle of the DJs" at a packed event at Isleworth Working Men's Club last Friday to raise an incredible £1500 for Macmillan Cancer Support and the Princess Alice Hospice.

Many local commentators have reflected upon the way in which the local community came together to support this well-organised marathon of music. Community activist Paul Fisher commented on Facebook: "This is what makes Isleworth the best place to be".

The event was part-organised by local girl Jo Manwaring, whose partner Kevin Green was one of the DJs on the night. Jo has previously featured on this blog as the organiser of successful annual local coffee mornings, also in support of Macmillan.

One of those in attendance last Friday was popular Isleworth councillor Lynn Green, who donated £50 in cash as a raffle prize.

Following the enormous success of this community event talk is now rife of turning it into an annual bash. I say go for it.

Macmillan Coffee Morning - Isleworth Working Men's Club, 26th September

This Friday, 26th September there will be a Macmillan Coffee Morning at Isleworth Working Men's Club, St. John's Road from 11.00am till 1.00pm.

It will include an auction of a signed Brentford FC football and a raffle with first prize champagne afternoon tea for two at The Hilton, Syon Park and many more exciting prizes.

The event is being organised by local girl Jo Manwaring who also staged a similar event last year, which was highly successful. Cakes and refreshments will be available.

Everyone is welcome.

Isleworth Girl Jo Raises £430 for Macmillan Cancer Support

Activism is at its finest when it is performed for the benefit of others and not in the cause of self-promotion.  This morning a local girl and good friend, Joanna Manwaring (pictured right), organised a superbly successful local event at the Isleworth Working Men's Club in support of Macmillan Cancer Support's "World's Biggest Coffee Morning", a spectacular nationwide fundraising initiative in aid of the popular cancer support charity.

Macmillan Cancer Support provides practical, medical and financial support and pushes for better care for cancer sufferers.  Nurses help patients through their treatment whilst volunteers give a hand with some of the everyday tasks which so many of us take for granted but which for those suffering the ravages of cancer can be so stressful and difficult.

When I walked into the hall at the IWMC I was pleasantly surprised to see just how many people had turned up to offer their support to this project.  Every table was taken, and locals enjoyed a chat over a cup of coffee and a bite to eat whilst volunteers sold raffle tickets for prizes which had been donated by local individuals and small businesses.

A food stall was well laden with a great variety of offerings that members of the community had prepared and donated, from tasty jam scones (diabetes be damned, they were lovely) to onion bhajis and some truly succulent mini samosas which I was just too polite to eat in the quantities that I would truly have liked, donation notwithstanding.

When the raffle was called out I had a dread feeling that I was soon to become the proud owner of my very own eyebrow threading kit but luckily that was not to be, although neither did I win the Swedish massage (not sure how that would have gone down at home anyway), the meal voucher or the microwave oven - nor indeed anything at all.  It happens, to paraphrase Forrest Gump.

Aside from the charitable side of the event, it was great to reconnect with several people whom I used to see far more frequently when I was a more regular user of the IWMC.  I had a number of interesting conversations in which all the old issues and concerns, as well as a few new ones, were discussed and pondered upon.

Our community is a lot richer for people like Jo, her partner Kevin and her helpers who gave up their time to make today's coffee morning a great success.  A total of £430 was made for Macmillan Cancer Support, and a great community event was enjoyed by a whole lot of people, brought together in support of a worthwhile cause.  Let's hope this catches on.

Eight get cold in Isleworth

There were only eight of us at the ICG Social Drink in the Isleworth Working Men's Club yesterday, but my theory about that is that several of the regular attendees got wind of the fact that the heating had failed and everybody was sitting there in their jumpers and coats, shivering.

Some interesting conversations were engaged in about religion, Marxism, Council Tax and Electronic Data Management Systems, amongst other things. Oh, and elections. It's amazing how rapidly they creep up.

I was taking a look at the results from 2006 today, not just in the wards we are involved in but around the borough. It's difficult to know how the likelihood of a general election on the same day will skew things.

Interesting times.

What a night!

I am posting on a Sunday morning after having spent a day recovering from a wonderful ICG Christmas Social at Isleworth Working Men's Club on Friday night.

Whilst we had had some difficulties during the organisation of the event, the turnout was nonetheless considerably up on last year's and a really good time was had by all.

We were particularly pleased to welcome a dozen or so fellow councillors from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and West Area Independents, and couldn't help noting with a hint of irony that only the "pariahs" of local politics (as defined by ex-Councillor Pat Nicholas, May 1998) could host a social event which brought together such a diverse range of local political figures.

Detractors will point to such a display of unity as "evidence" that their foes are in essence all from the same stable, although we would tend instead towards the view that a new era is dawning in local politics which sees most of its participants divided in politics, but brought together by a common commitment to restore honesty and integrity to local debate.

It was great also to see our old friend Jim Lawes, the legendary and much-missed star of the BrentfordTW8 and ChiswickW4 community forums, looking good and (by means of an explanation for his absence from the forums) working very hard.

I hope to be able to post up some photos of the event shortly. In the meantime a big thank you to everybody who came along and took part.

John Benn

Earlier today I attended the funeral of long-time Isleworth resident John Benn (left), from Dawes Avenue, who sadly passed away last week aged 78.

John's boys Richard and Christopher went to Worple Road Primary School at the same time as I did, back in the 1960s. But I came to know John himself, and his wife Sylvia, on the social circuit in Isleworth many years later.

Both were regular attendees at ICG social events, coming away with us on our old seaside coach trips as well as supporting quite a few of our socials at the Isleworth Royal British Legion. A quiet and unassuming couple, I often found myself a little nervous that they might have felt slightly uncomfortable in the sometimes noisy family atmosphere of some of those events, but they always came back and were regular and welcome participants. In spite of his overtly modest demeanour, John had a real sense of humour and was quite entertaining in conversation. His company will be missed by his many friends at the Isleworth Working Men's Club where, appropriately, the reception was held after the funeral.

John was also a bit of a handyman. On more than one occasion my wife Caroline has taken her broken and punctured bicycles to him, which he would swiftly attend to and never ask for anything in return.

The down side of being involved in local community politics and knowing so many people is that one loses so many friends. For me John will always rank among the best of those. It was a fitting tribute to such a decent man that the chapel at Hanworth Crematorium was filled to the brim with people who had turned up to pay their respects.

I would like to express my sincere condolences to Sylvia, his children, his grandchildren and all other members of his family.

A fine little meeting

On May 12th I wrote: "Whilst we crammed 200 people into Isleworth Public Hall last year to discuss the possible imposition of Controlled Parking Zones in and around South Street and St. John's Road, we are still capable of drawing in less than twenty on a bad day".

Well, last night we didn't have less than twenty at the ICG's Public Meeting at the Isleworth Working Men's Club - thanks to our trusty club steward who came and sat with us between pouring the pints!

All the same, and modest turnout aside, this first in what will be a whole series of Friday night public meetings was a superb exercise, with our team of councillors giving an extremely good account of themselves and several members of the public engaging us with their issues.

Caroline Andrews chaired the meeting with humour and with confidence. Jon Hardy provided a fascinating analysis of local health issues and the work of the Scrutiny committee and panels aided by the imaginative use of stage props. Genevieve Hibbs - Madam Mayor to some - was enthusiastically received as she talked the meeting through some of the work and duties of the community councillor in a coalition administration, and ran us through some of her themes and ideas for the year ahead. And last but not least, new Executive member Paul Fisher left those present with a tantalising insight of how we see the Empowerment agenda unfolding during the last two years of the present council. All that was left for Yours Truly to do was to keep the beers coming.

The small attendance included representatives from Charlton House, Brent Lea, Ivybridge, Worton and the South Street traders, and hopefully residents and businesses in these areas will be furnished with an account of the work we are doing and the efforts we are making to engage with the communities we serve.

Ideas are already being developed with a view to increasing participation at future events, including "themed" meetings and the targeting of special interest groups. In the meantime, I believe we were all enthused and encouraged by the way in which the diverse group of people who did come along engaged with us and with each other. There were no passengers.

Mysteriously, the lights went out on the IWMC shortly after midnight, but the community councillors who represent the wards of Isleworth and Syon have no intention of leaving our constituents in the dark.

ICG Public Meeting to take place later this month

The Independent Community Group (ICG) will be hosting a Public Meeting at the Isleworth Working Men's Club in St. John's Road, Isleworth on Friday 23rd May, starting at 7.30 pm.

We are hoping that all six community councillors will be present at the meeting, and available to answer questions from members of the public about what they have been doing in their various posts and positions, as well as giving some insight into our plans for the remaining two years of the current council.

Those who have been with us throughout that fantastic voyage which commenced with our formation on 1st January 1994 will be mindful of just how far we have come since those days, when five or six comrades would sit around a beer-soaked table with me in the now-demolished Harlequin pub and bemoan the unfairness of the old administration's shenanigans which kept them off their own residents' association.

Most of those who serve the Group today were not involved in that particular battle, and have no first-hand experience of the issues which led to the creation of the ICG and forced our entry into the electoral fray which resulted in us having a councillor elected in 1998, three councillors elected in 2002, and six councillors elected in 2006 to a council with a new administration of which we are now part, with myself being given responsibility for the part of the Housing portfolio which oversees the local authority's relationship with Hounslow Homes and our various residents' associations around the borough. Nevertheless the principles and the desire for fairness and openness which inspired the creation of the ICG back in 1994 remain with every one of us as we set about the business of trying to reshape the local authority and imbue it with a new culture of transparency.

The ICG Public Meeting - much beloved of our first Chair, the late Tom Reader, and the Class of '94 - doesn't look a lot different today to those we held in those uncertain times. Whilst we crammed 200 people into Isleworth Public Hall last year to discuss the possible imposition of Controlled Parking Zones in and around South Street and St. John's Road, we are still capable of drawing in less than twenty on a bad day. It tends to depend on what the big issues are at the time.

Hopefully there is enough going on, and sufficient questions to be asked, to inspire a good crowd along to the IWMC on May 23rd. The Public Meeting is where we learned our trade, and in these heady days of Executive meetings and training conferences we forget our roots at our peril.