The Mapesbury Residents Association are holding the groups' Annual General Meeting on the 19th April. After the formal meeting there will be an Election Hustings. All the political parties have been invited and it will give you the opportunity to meet the candidates for election - councillors as well as MPs. The MapRA AGM is a lively and informative event. With the usual high-quality nibbles, there are also stalls and information stands from the police, Brent Council and other local groups and organisations....

The deadline for nominations closed at midday on 8 April 2010 and details of the candidates for the local elections are available in this PDF, published on 9 April. A PDF? Have Brent Council learned nothing about publishing information online? I’ll rework the list and make it nice and human-readable without having to download a PDF!

There is to be a General Election on May 6th, along with the local elections. You would think it had been called back in December given the fluster and bumph in the media. The snow wasn’t enough to distract us from the political machinations at Westmonster. That snow will probably become an election issue this year, if anyone remembers it - perhaps there will be some more before the election....

From your local Labour Action Team. The theme of this newsletter is rubbish. Brent Labour argue that the charge made by the council for bulky refuse collection has lead to an increase in fly-tipping in Brent and pledge to ‘dump’ the £25 charge if elected. If that isn’t inducement enough for you, they claim that cuts, CUTS!, will reduce the frequency of rubbish collection. The main flytipping problem in Brent is caused by unscrupulous builder, dumping domestic building waste....

“A letter of complaint against Sarah Teather was sent to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, supposedly from a man at an address in Brent. Then a second letter of complaint was sent, again from this man, but giving a new address. However, this new address does not exist. There is a real address with the same house number and postcode (but different rest of address), at which there is one person on the electoral register – a woman who has the name of someone listed on Labour MP Dawn Butler’s register of interests as being a member of her staff....