Leicester - The Real story

Great News! England will have a World Cup song this year and a banger it is too. Written and recorded right here on the St.Matthews. It showcases local talent and  will inspire the national team to do their best. The St. Matthews England Supporters Club came together for this World Cup and recorded this song to inspire both the team and the fans. Our club is as diverse as our estate. We have a very disappointed Irishman, a Portuguese key-man (possible spy), a travelling Rasta, football mad youths, some African women, and all mixed in with the Leicester blood and very very relaxed membership policy. #LetsMakeItOfficial #officialWorldCupSongEngland #England #WorldCup2018 #ThreeLions Enjoy and share with complete abandon! Here is an iTunes link. http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1394698710?ls=1&app=itunes For those of you without Spotify or iTunes you can hear it here. We're Going to Russia in 2018 Come on England by St. Matthews England Support

Parking on St. Matthews has become the major driver behind the currant degradation of the built environment here on this inner city estate surrounded on three sides by major roads. Over half of the people on this estate are under 20 and are most at risk from the resultant pollution. On any given night there are nearly a 100 empty car park spaces available on the St Matthews ( near Bargain Booze) so why do we need more car parking? The SMTA (St.Matthews Tenants Association) is the driving force behind this constant growth in hard surface tarmac and the chopping down of the few trees and green spaces we have on the estate. They have probably spent £400,000 in the last 3 years rolling out a vision of 'Living in a Car Park' where we are providing unregulated parking for people visiting town and our children breathe in their fumes. By the way, according to the Leicester City Council website none of these car parks have planning permission. They claim widespread support for c

I would like to extend condolences to the victims of the fire in Grenfell Tower and hope that some positive change will come about. The health and safety of people living on council estates is more important then purely aesthetic measures designed to put money in the hands of greedy subcontractors.  Spraying dangerous chemicals on wildflowers from quad bikes falls into this category.  As does the cutting down of trees and the building of car parks instead. The people of St  Matthews want a greener and cleaner environment. Unfortunately our tenants association which has no public forum has failed to represent the people of the estate in this matter. Our tenants association has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on unregulated car parking at the expense of our small number of trees. They haven't even had planning permission to do this.  I personally like to see weeds and wildflowers growing on the concrete and the aesthetic taste that wants us to live in an architectural drawi

The first question I have is about planning permissions. Let me illustrate. This sign needed planning permission. This carpark didn't. Which one had the biggest effect on local people and their built environment? The same road had two other car parks built on it that also had no planning permission. Check planning applications for Manitoba Rd, St Matthews  here  . These car parks were paid for with money made available to the local tenants association to meet the most pressing demands of their constituency and to improve life on the estate. Remember over half of the population on the estate are children who have no say in the shaping of the environment they are to grow up in.  Let me remind you  Manitoba Rd in 2008 and 2016  It doesn't take a genius to work out which is the best for children, a few trees or a carpark! I will be asking Ms Jean Williams, the Chair of St Matthews Tenants Association how she can justify the spending of

It is with great sadness that I hear the Contact Project is closing here on the St Matthews. Leicester City Council takes £6 million off of this estate annually in rent and Council Tax. The average spend on property maintenance is less the £50 per unit. 2500 x 50 = £1.25 million. Our tenants association have been useless, preferring to cut down trees and build polluting car parks instead. I presume the cost of the car parks, which by the way don't appear to have any planning permission, was astronomical. Obviously we should have spent the money on keeping the Contact Project going instead. On a personal note my son has and is using the Contact Project weekly and it has helped him greatly to develop as a young man. It really is time to see where the money goes. The figures the Council produces are aggregated for the whole of the city, a technique which hides the spending instead of shedding light on it. Hey LCC! we all have computers, and spreadsheets, and can handle looking

Today a friend brought me an unsolicited copy of the Sunday Times. He showed me a big article in the middle of it which basically said that the protests and criticism of Israel over Gaza was part of a rise of anti Semitism in Europe. I felt the shiver of sinister forces trying to shape public opinion to the now standard criticism of anything vaguely hostile to the apartheid Israeli state as anti-Semitism. A view which is and has been pushed and promoted by the Israeli state for a while now. The 1% look like they are lining up criticism of the apartheid state as some kind of race crime. The constant portrayal by the Israelis of a narrative of being under attack by "terrorists" is wearing a bit thin. They are the ones who have imprisoned a whole population of 2 million people mostly children under 17. We know that Israeli drones could tell what sort of weapons the Hamas unit that attacked the kibbutz from the tunnel were carrying. This was the reason they gave for being