Springtime and random cross thoughts

Ready for a mixture of spring blossom and angry writing? I thought so. Here goes

There's so much to be cross about right now - the budget, the ever widening pay gap, the libraries - you've heard about the Willesden Green Library centre rumpus I suppose? It's the usual story in Brent - despite the wishes of the local community the council is set on a course of destruction. This time of the original Victorian reading room, and the Library Centre - to be replaced with flats and a much smaller library. You'll remember that this particular library is heavily used for studying, so it needs to have plenty of space for students. But of course when Brent set young people as a priority that's something different altogether - it doesn't mean something practical like making sure there's study space available

 "All our services will enable local people to fulfill their potential and improve their quality of life. Public resources will be used creatively and wisely to produce lasting benefits for our residents and the borough" 

Er, right. This is from Brent's Corporate Strategy 2010-14. I've tried to read the whole document, but I really can't make myself - it's a load of idealistic drivel about supporting young people, creating a network of modern and fit for purpose libraries in high quality buildings in convenient locations across the borough. How few libraries make up a network? 4, 5? Could 6 possibly be a network?

And something else that caught my eye. Who do you think this was quoted in the Kilburn Times supporting the residents of St Raphaels estate whose local bus now bypassess them: "It was great to see so many people from the community coming together to campaign for something that affects a lot of people...I think TfL has agreed to meet with them again so it's fantastic that they have got them to listen" Can you think of any other long running recent campaign in Brent where residents came together to campaign for something that affects a lot of people? And where it would have been fantastic if the decision maker had listened? Answer at the end. Enjoy some more blossom first.

Yes, you guessed it! Our very own Brent Council leader, Ann John, throwing herself behind the residents' campaign. Even more amusingly, Tfl claimed to have carried out a "detailed review and consultation" - does that sound familiar too?- but Ann John's comment on that is not recorded. I'd love to know whether she thought it was an adequate consultation and whether TfL should have taken any notice of the views expressed.

One bit of good news though - All Souls College, Oxford (to whom Kensal Rise library would "revert" if it ceased to be used as a library) have indicated that they would be happy for the library to be run by a community group

This blossom was in a van - but I like it!

 More soon - like What Happened to Frugal February?

We love Kensal Rise Library and Cricklewood and Tokyngton and Neasden and Preston Road and Barham Park

Today is National Libraries Day with the slogan

Fine if you still have a local library to use/love/join!

The Friends of Kensal Rise library and Preston Road library are organising family activites today to celebrate National Libraries Day - muffled in hats and gloves and at the pop-up library at Kensal and in a nearby local school at Preston Road. Have a look at this on the Save Preston Library site and see if you agree with Boyd Tonkin that "no local authority has behaved with quite such pig-headed arrogance in pursuit of the destruction of much-loved branches as Labour Brent".

You've probably heard the news yesterday that the Supreme Court turned down the application by the Save our Six libraries campaign for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. This means that the legal challenge to Brent's decision cannot be taken any further through the courts. But is this the end of the fight? Not at all. Spirits were high at last night's Fundraiser in aid of the campaign - the launch party of the limited edition prints designed by artist and anarchist Jamie Reid.

Local Paul Stolper who has a gallery - the Paul Stolper Gallery at 31 Museum Street, WC2 (just opposite the British Museum) generously arranged the printing of a limited edition of prints designed by Jamie Reid and the print was launched last night. It's a great design as you can see, and all proceeds support the campaign. I think there are still a few left...

How else are you going to get kisses from Jamie Reid?

We were packed in an upstairs room at the Mason's Arms with our own bar and pub food to share, listening to "One man and his Beard" and Tim Dowling playing banjo in his band "Police Dog Hogan".

Most frequently overheard
"It's the first time I've been warm for a week"
"I could have left my thermals off"
"Pass the spare ribs"
"If you believed Tim Dowling's column you'd think his band was rubbish"
"What's wrong with Brent council - you'd think they'd be pleased we want to run Kensal Rise library?"
"We'd never have kept going this long without Margaret Bailey"
"Our solicitor was brilliant - if anyone could have won the case it was him"
"MORE BANJO MORE BANJO MORE BANJO"

David Butcher gave us a brief update on the campaign including the good news - if I heard correctly - that Brent have now agreed to look at the Business Plan drawn up by the Friends of Kensal Rise library and submitted to the council in December. Read the Business Plan here.

Thanks from all of us to Rachael Newberry who organised an evening which warmed us all up - in every sense, the Mason's Arms for hosting and to David and Margaret and all the supporters, the bands for donating cds and downloadable tracks in aid of the campaign, and everyone who came along.

You'll remember that even if we had won our legal challenge in the Supreme Court the effect of that would just have been to set the decision to close the 6 libraries aside. It wouldn't have stopped Brent making the decision again, but making sure they considered everything relevant including the risk of indirect discrimination against part of the community.

As Margaret Bailey reminded us in a recent e-mail
"This campaign has always been about keeping as many options open as possible in the face of the intransigence of the council. The legal option has been one of the options we have pursued, not the only one, but one that has allowed us to focus on challenging the right of councils to make decisions that damage communities. Cuts to local authority budgets is a serious issue but an unwillingness of the council to find a solution, co-operatively, imaginatively, has made the options that we as a community are forced to consider difficult and not without risk.

We consider these options with hope and if they are not successful we look elsewhere.

We may not be given leave to appeal to the Supreme Court in which case we will explore other options, and we have other options.

We believe this community needs a library and that is the end we are pursuing."

I can't put it better than that!

And here's One Man and his Beard with WE NEED LIBRARIES NEW WE NEED LIBRARIES NEW

Buy it to support the campaign

Garden - what worked last season and what didn't

Maybe it's a good time for a quick round-up of the successes and failures of the last growing season. So the spring was okay but the summer cool and damp then the autumn was great. Overall that was fine for salad leaves and chard, beans - all kinds, globe artichokes and courgettes but not much good for tomatoes and chillies and aubergines (despite my home-made tomato shelter... that's a good place to start... with tomatoes)

Tomatoes then. Every year I grow them outdoors and often they get blight. Blight is an airborne virus which is much worse in damp years and which can be passed between tomatoes and potatoes.

Blight is really horrid. Once it starts on outdoor tomatoes all you can do is pick unblemished fruit straight away and use it straight away - in green tomato chutney or ketchup or green tomato curry or as fried green tomatoes. All delicious once you've got over the disappointment.

Usual advice is to grow tomatoes and potatoes as far apart from one another as possible, to leave space between tomato plants for air to circulate and to keep their foliage as dry as possible. All of which are easier said than done (especially if you're short of space and don't have a greenhouse), but this year I spent an afternoon building a "tomato house" following these instructions.
This is what it was meant to look like... but I knew it wouldn't...even if I used exactly the right ingredients (which of course I didn't)

I had to buy a few more canes of the right size but I had suitable plastic (from a new mattress). I now remember it wasn't all that suitable as it was too small so wouldn't tuck under the pots at the front.

This meant that the whole thing was in danger of blowing away so I improvised by threading string through sections of cut up old bicycle inner tube and running that under the pots. This was better than string alone which tends to slide around - and more importantly justified my hoarding of old inner tubes in the first place. Using old tennis balls to make the joins between canes at different angles was one of those ideas which end up being more trouble than having a tidy shed and remembering that you had a pack of Build-a-Balls all along. But that was later...

The tomato house was against a west facing wall so I used the plastic to create a roof and to protect the plants on the north side, leaving the south and west facing sides open. This was partly because there wasn't enough plastic...

So in May everything was looking promising - here's a few home-grown tomato plants and a couple of aubergine plants (bought from the organic veg growers at the Farmers' Market). In the end there were about 6 tomato plants and a few chilli peppers in there sheltering from the rain. The stones around the plants are to deter foxes from digging them up.
And the massive crops? Well... those tomatoes were the only ones in the garden not to get blight but they still missed the sun and they didn't do very well despite regular feeds of "comfrey tea". That's the foul-smelling concoction made by cutting stems and leaves from your comfrey plant, putting them in a bucket with a brick on top to hold them down, covering with water, waiting until the smell is bad (a lid's a good idea), then diluting with anything between 4 parts to 10 parts of water (approx) and using as an excellent, free, plant food. Once it's "brewed" I keep it in old plastic bottles by the water butt.

Bees love comfrey too. And you can eat it, but I don't bother. I use it to make the comfrey tea and also as a slug-attracting protective barrier around plants and then I eat them instead (the veg, not the slugs)

Yellow tomatoes coming along well.

The chillies had to come indoors to finish off ripening

And the aubergines? I was hoping you'd forgotten them. Nothing doing. One died early on, the other took about 4 months to make a couple of flowers and then gave up, but I'd love to have even just one, tiddly home-grown aubergine, so maybe I'll try yet again.

So will I build a bigger and better tomato house this year? I think so, using the Build-a-balls and buying a bigger sheet of plastic. I know that a corrugated plastic roof would be better, but my carpentry skills are not up to building the frame.

No skill, no effort sounds too good to be true, but I'll give it a go and report back.

While looking at photos I've just remembered another problem - distorted growth on tomatoes and beans which looks as though they've been sprayed with herbicide by mistake. I don't use any herbicide and I didn't think it could have come from my neighbours, but I got suspicious of lawn mowings from a friend which I compost (wrongly, as it turned out).

I was puzzling about this until I read an article by Alys Fowler in October where she was urging us to collect leaves for leafmould and mentioned that farmyard manures "contain potential hazards (aminopyralid herbicide residue is still about and it is hard to find truly organic manures)". A quick google later and I'd turned up heart-breaking tales of market gardeners whose crops entirely failed because of this problem. Aminopyralid is a herbicide used to kill broad-leaved weeds (thistles, docks and similar). I regularly brought horse manure and straw back from a riding stables and I worked out that the problem could have come from straw or hay which had been treated. Passing through the digestive system of a horse doesn't affect the potency of the herbicide either. Worse still, it takes about 3 years to break down and become harmless - and to do that needs to be exposed to the air - so regularly turned over - not left in a heap or in sacks. Read more about it.

Now I see why advice for really truly organic gardeners is never to introduce anything into your garden unless you're really sure where it's from and whether it's been sprayed... so, as Alys says, leaves should be fine, but be wary of manure/straw. It's maddening because straw is so great in the compost heap - adds bulk, helps the rest to rot down. I'll see how I get on this season manure-free. Part of the solution will be to grow more green manure - but the only one which works well on my soil is Phacelia balo - and it's so pretty and bees love it so much that I never want to dig it in.

I did sow loads of forage peas back in the autumn but mice/birds/slugs were very interested and even with netting there are only about 4 plants in a large expanse of bare soil.

Time to think of something which worked well! Borlotti beans which I grew for the first time. Easy, attractive, cropped well, can be eaten fresh or dried. Next year I'll grow more. Except that I've just looked at my dried stored beans which obviously weren't dried enough as some have grown mould - or maybe I shouldn't have stored them in a plastic box.

And nasturtiums - they did so well. Okay, they always do - but I really want to include a photo of something orange

In a salad with other garden leaves, grilled halloumi and toasted seeds - made on 5th November to take to a friend's bonfire party

And globe artichokes

Finally, if you're thinking of ordering seeds soon, have a look at Stormy Hall Seeds which I wrote about last August

Libraries Latest - Court of Appeal decision 19th December 2011. The fight goes on

No early Xmas present for Brent Library Campaigners as the Court of Appeal today dismissed our appeal - but don't go - the fight continues as we voted to take our solicitors' advice to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court (the highest court in the land).

A quick look at the written judgment doesn't reveal any in depth legal analysis of the sort one might expect from the Court of Appeal - very disappointing after all the efforts of Dinah Rose QC and the rest of our Legal Team.

Lord Justice Pill (we'll keep the bitter pill jokes for later) gave the main judgment. He agreed with Dinah Rose that, to establish indirect discrimination it was sufficient to show an adverse impact of the proposal on the Asian Community as compared with non-Asian communities. Given the scale of the spending reductions the council was required to make and the information available following earlier studies, a decision tht the library service should bear a share of the reduction was not, in his judgment, unlawful. There was no reason to doubt that the council was aware of its statutory duties, including those in relation to race discrimination.
He said it was "fanciful to suggest, taking the best view we can of the appellants' evidence, that it was so obvious that library provision, as distinct from other services, had discriminatory effects upon the Asian community that it needed to be a significant factor in funding decisions as the the apportionment of resources."
He found that "the decision as to which librares to close was carefully considered by the council... a full consultation was conducted and fully reported to the decision makers." and "I do not consider that the council was in breach of duty in failing to give further consideration to the racial dimension, in so far as it affected the Asian community in relation to other communities."

As to the second ground of appeal, Lord Justice Pill was satisfied that "the council exercised its functions in this case with due regard to the requirements under s149 [of the Equality Act 2010]. To put forward a reasoned proposal for closures was a reasonable reaction in the circumstances, including the urgent need to economise. It was not necessary for an Equalities Impact Assessment to be conducted before the forumlation of the proposals on which the public were to be consulted."

As to the third ground he found that the duty under s7 of the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 "was also in mind and the council was aware of the duty specified. Decisions as to closures were taken with that duty in mind, the proposals included improved ways in which the expectations of users might be met. Mitigation measures were proposed in this regard".

So, in other words, the Court of Appeal agreed with the judgment of Mr Justice Ouseley.

But it's not the end of the road! Even though the Court of Appeal refused leave to appeal (which was predictable, and what usually happens).

Our solicitor, John Halford, from Bindmans, explained his view that the case does raise issues of public importance and that we should petition the Supreme Court for leave to appeal because
1. It's the first case ever decided about large scale library closures in the UK
2. The judgment addressed a number of points about he way to make cuts in public services, and was incorrect in what the law requires in relation to the closure of public services because of the risk of indirect discrimination to the Asian community. The court said that Brent could be excused because no one brought it to their attention until the legal case started and that anyway it was not significant enough to justify quashing the decision and making Brent start again.
3. It's important not only becase of what happened in Brent but because very similar decisions are being taken up and down the country in relation to other libraries and public services. If this court is correct then a number of legal protections which parliament put in place won't be as strong as they need to be.

Read John Halford's Press Statement on Bindmans website

With the benefit of that advice, and the amazing offer by John Halford on behalf of himself and the barristers, to continue on our behalf despite uncertainty about whether or not Legal Aid will be granted, it was unanimously agreed to continue with the fight and to take the next step which is to ask the Supreme Court for leave to appeal to it.

In the meantime, John Halford has asked Brent not to further dismantle the libraries. If they don't agree it will be necessary to apply for an injunction restraining them from doing so. The injunction which was in place was discharged today.

John urged us to press on showing the same spirit, and the mood outside court today was for doing just that. There was a vote of thanks to John and the rest of the legal team for their fantastic work on our behalf so far, and their preparedness to help us go to the next stage.

Read the view from Preston Road campaigners

From Kensal Rise campaigners

Twitter has been a-tweet all afternoon, the Kilburn Times has an excellent piece by Tara Brady

The Guardian

BBC News with a particularly apt photo of Alan Bennett looking glum

And Brent? Well, you heard about the unbelievably crass presentation of Team of the Year award to the team who have worked tirelessly to dismantle the library service? Sorry, I mean the "Libraries Transformation Team".

I think we need to end with an uplifting song - optional of course. How about Johnny Cash's Walk the Line?. Not entirely inappropriate.

You'll have realised that the Save Our Six Campaign still needs to raise funds to carry on to the next stage, so please continue to support the fundraising events and just donate here

Quinces fight back

Last quinces on the tree on 24th November

Ever since Giles Coren (now he really is funny) recently described quinces (and medlars) as "semi-extinct Medieval fruit", quinces up and down the land have been planning their revenge.  Yes, I know, he wasn't really talking about the fruit, but trying to remember the name of a restaurant which AA Gill (why isn't he on twitter?) had recommended - which was Quince, or was it Medlar?  As I'm too frugal to subscribe to the newspaper he was writing in, I can't give you the link...

Part of the main quince harvest in October

As for the medlars, I'm with him... we'll return to them for their one good point later, but for now it's the turn of the quinces

"We're agreed that Giles Coren is a semi-extinct food critic"

First to clear up some confusion.  I'm talking about the big pear-shaped yellow fruits with furry down  on them which grow on trees, not the "quinces" which grow on prickly bushes with white, pink or red flowers.  It's a different thing altogether, but its greeny yellow fruits are also edible and people do make them into jelly (and rave about how a bowl of them will scent a room - if that's the sort of thing you like)

Flowers and fruits of Japanese quince or Chaenomeles japonica

Okay, back to the real quinces.  My quince tree is very vigorous - its response to any type of pruning, even brutal (yes, that's you I'm talking about, Gordon), is to promptly double in size- it doesn't have any pollination issues, it flowers quite late so it doesn't have any frost issues (you know, where fruits which have just formed are damaged, sometimes resulting in no crop at all that year) and it usually produces an overwhelmingly enormous crop of fruit.  If there's a dry spell followed by a lot of rain the fruit may swell up too quickly and split and start to go bad, but in a consistently wet (or dry) summer this doesn't happen much.

Mould caused by cracking

Now, what to do with these quinces?  You do see quite a few recipes in magazines at this time of year for "pork chops with quince" or that type of thing, but they usually turn out to use only one quince "peeled and diced" or "peeled, cored and sliced neatly" per quarter pig - not much use when you're looking at about 200 quinces.  Also, have you ever tried to core or neatly slice a quince?  They are incredibly hard - it's difficult even to cut them in half, yet alone do anything fancy.

Nigella Lawson has a good but strange-sounding recipe in "How to Eat" for baked quinces where you peel and core them (Nigella does warn that "these fruits are rock-hard and coring and quartering  takes strength") then bung everything - including the trimmings -in the dish with a good slosh of muscat sweet wine.    But this is good in the end and the quinces take on that wonderful rich ruby colour (or "glorious burnished terracotta" to Nigella) which foodies rave about.  Also baked quinces with pomegranate seeds in "Feast", equally delicious

What I usually do is cut the quinces into halves (or quarters if I'm feeling strong), cook them in the pressure cooker for about 15 mins (or in a normal pan for a lot longer - maybe an hour) then make either quince jelly or jam or quince cheese or membrillo (as they call it in Spain).

Cooked quince put through a mouli ready for the next stage of membrillo making

This is beginning to sound a bit Medieval - pressure cookers (they've been around a while, haven't they?), moulis.  It gets worse though because once you've added vast amounts of sugar to this pulp you have to cook it for ages, stirring to stop it sticking to the pan and burning, and it behaves like lava, spitting hot jam high into the air.  A welder's glove on the stirring hand is a sensible precaution, as well as covering all nearby surfaces with newspaper.  Last year I was just congratulating myself on my uncharacteristically careful approach when I noticed that the ceiling above the cooker was liberally splattered with orange sticky blobs.

But we haven't finished yet - when "you can see the bottom of the pan as you draw the wooden spoon through the mixture" (as the books say) or you're bored with the whole process or your hand is burnt with molten jam, you can either put the mixture into small jars or (more authentically but with a risk of future mould spots) pour it into trays lined with greaseproof paper and dry it off further.  Then cut it into squares and dust with sugar, pack in boxes.  Jane Grigson in her learned "Fruit Book" says the cooking can take seven hours! 

Or you could just pile them up attractively

Or leave them on neighbours' doorsteps under cover of dark

Or wait for me to give you a pot of jelly or jam or membrillo.  Don't worry - I always scrape any visible mould off first

Or make quince vodka

Or make quince chutney

If you've only read this far to hear the medlars' redeeming feature, it's that their uncannily visually accurate nickname is "dogs' bottoms".  Even Jane Grigson in "Fruit" again admits that "the medlar has long been the happy target of  jokes in much of Europe".  How do we know the medlar was that happy about it though?

"Go on then, laugh at us, see if we care"

Brent Libraries Latest - the Appeal

 photo by Martin Francis from his Wembley Matters blog

Just back from court 63 where Lord Justices Pill, Richards and Davis have spent the last two days hearing the appeal against Mr Justice Ouseley's decision in favour of Brent Council on 13th October.

After a slightly surreal start with the usher announcing a case involving the "London Borough of Trent", conjuring up unlikely images of Ann John as Maid Marion, he corrected himself, and the hearing began.  We have a new barrister - Dinah Rose - and she was very impressive.  She opened the case yesterday with the complicated indirect discrimination point - but she explained it so well that I think all 50 or so supporters - (the court was packed and folding chairs had to be brought it!) may now be able to explain it to someone else.

Well, here goes... the point is that armed with the knowledge (from the last census in 2001) that 28% of the population of Brent is Asian, and that 46% of active borrowers were Asian (from Brent's own figures), the Council should have been alerted to the possibility that closing Barham Park, Tokyngton and Preston Road, three of the four libraries in the most densely Asian wards (leaving only Ealing Road library open- already the second busiest library in Brent, with 261,000 visits in 2009/10 according to Brent's figures) might have amounted to indirect discrimination against Asians.  Having identified that risk, Brent should have considered it in its Equalities Impact Assessment.

Ms Rose recognised the very real economic difficulties faced by local authorities and the fact that hard choices have to be made by them but subject to their statutory duties - in this case Brent's duties under section 149 of the Equalities Act 2010 and under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964.  She stressed that the merits of the decision were not being examined (that's going on elsewhere - across the borough wherever there's an activist, library user or defender of places to study and read), purely the process by which it was reached.

The fact that only 21% of the questionnaire responses were from Asians should also have alerted Brent ("the red flag should have gone up" as Ms Rose put it) to the fact that they were under-represented in the consultation.

Brent should therefore have realised that any proposal to close libraries was likely to affect the Asian population disproportionately and they should have considered why this was (ie the cultural, social and economic reasons).  Brent conceded that it wasn't considered at all, but argued that giving no regard to it could nevertheless amount to "due regard" under the legislation.  Ms Rose's argument is that having wrongly concluded that there was no risk of discrimination against Asians the council (wrong again) didn't go on to properly consider it and therefore failed to fulfill their obligations under the legislation.

A witness statement by Sue Harper (Director of Environment and Neighbourhood Services) showed that Brent had concluded that the only disadvantage would relate to mobility (ie difficulties in travelling to other libraries) and that only the elderly, young or disabled would be adversely affected.  They failed to consider whether a racial group could be disadvantaged.

In fact the Asian community have been disproportionately affected because a new witness statement showed that Ealing Road library is now overcrowded, with children (mostly Asian) sitting on the floor to do their homework and great pressure on the computers.

Incidentally children have been sitting on the stairs at Willesden Green library doing homework!  So much for the transformation of the libraries by digital and outreach services (well, I know, we never believed that anyway).

Ms Rose handed up demographic maps (a graphic representation is always a good idea) taken from Brent's website showing the density of the Borough's Asian population with the locations of the 12 original and 6 remaining libraries superimposed.  Miss Laing, on behalf of Brent, did not accept that this detailed ward information was before the Executive when they reached their decision to which Ms Rose riposted "well it should have been: we got it from the council's website".  With a good barrister you really can hear the punctuation- that colon was as clear as anything - but back to the issues.

Ms Rose went on to assert that the judgment contains errors of law relating to indirect discrimination as Mr Justice Ouseley found that Brent did a proper Equality Impact Assessment (which she says they did not)

One of their lordships seemed surprised that councils were required to carry out this exercise every time they wanted, for example, to close a swimming pool.  As Ms Rose explained "these practices have been carried out by local authorities since the legislation came in.  They may be novel to your lordship but they're not novel to local authorities: Brent have a form to help them make these decisions"

Dinah Rose also argued that Brent paid no regard to the impact of its policy until the 11th hour of 11th of April 2011- by which time it was far too late because it had already decided to close 6 libraries and had already set the budget.

A third point was that Brent was in breach of its duty under the Public Museums and Libraries Act, and the fourth point that it had engaged in procedural unfairness by not revealing the "seven secret criteria".  The judge below said they were obvious.  Dinah Rose said they were not.

An interesting factual point which Ms Rose highlighted is that Brent did not simply close the six libraries with the lowest usage figures - Kilburn Library (which has lower usage figures than Neasden - now closed) was reprieved because of the special characteristics of some of the users.  This means that Brent feared that there might be indirect discrimination against certain groups who use Kilburn if it was closed, but they failed to carry out the same exercise in relation to the Asian population's usage of Barham Park, Preston Road and Tokyngton.

I'm afraid I missed the afternoon and following morning during which Ms Rose concluded her application and Miss Laing replied, asserted in essence that Brent used the correct procedure and that the judgment below should be upheld.  But I was back for Ms Rose's response on Friday afternoon.  She dealt with Miss Laing's assertion that the amount of regard which a council had to have under the Equalities legislation was a question of degree by pointing out that "it was a major policy decision which on any view would have very significant effects on the lives and opportunities of those who live in Brent".

 Ms Rose described one part of Miss Laing's argument on indirect discrimination as "completely nuts", a phrase which is unlikely to find its way into the judgment (however appropriate it might be), but which cheered us up at the back of the court.

The final point was about the "seven secret criteria".  Ms Rose dealt with the daft suggestion on behalf of Brent that engaging fully with the  groups who had put forward proposals would amount to re-opening the whole consultation by pointing out there were only ten of them!

Tara Brady has written an excellent piece about the first day and the indirect discrimination point on the Kilburn Times website which is well worth reading.

So has Martin Francis, with great photos (see below), on his excellent Wembley Matters blog.

photo by Martin Francis from his Wembley Matters blog

Our solicitor, John Halford of Bindmans, again helpfully stayed behind to answer any questions after the hearing.  He thought it could be about a month before the Judgment is delivered.  It's impossible to predict how it might go, but Dinah Rose put the case very strongly and persuasively for us, and all three Lord Justices were taking a keen interest and asking plenty of questions to test the strength of both sides' arguments. John felt that no further steps should be taken by Brent in the meantime- no more stock should be removed from libraries or from where it's being stored.

So, fingers crossed, and keep supporting the various events - the next is the fabulous sounding Disco Dance Fundraiser next Saturday 19th November in the Preson Mall Community Centre -more details

Which has given me a good idea to end with - Dance the Night Away by the Mavericks.  Just imagine that the "she" who "has gone away and can't do a thing to me" is someone senior in Brent council and you'll enjoy it even more than you usually do.