Monday 29 September 2008

Getting back to church on Sundays

Several churches across the country have been encouraging people to come back to fellowship in Back to Church Sunday.

The event is important because in culturally diverse areas such as Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney, faith has a key place for people from different backgrounds.

The church does make a difference in the lives of these people, as I discovered when I wrote an article about the role of the church in East London.

Back to Sunday saw churches in these areas this weekend fling their doors wide open and welcome all kinds in.

But the numbers aren’t so important as the heart of the matter, which includes taking a close look at why these people left church in the first place, and secondly, why they should come back again.

Monday 22 September 2008

Racing to help keep women off the streets

Many homeless women in London are not getting access to help, or to housing facilities provided by their local councils.

I learnt of this from the Crisis website. This East London organisation, on its part, provides money to help homeless people get into a work-based goal.

This is one way of helping the vulnerable homeless women in East London, and other parts of the city, get closer to becoming self sufficient.

This weekend Crisis’s fund racing event, The Rat Race Urban Adventure, kicks off. Those more active than I am have the option of taking part in various fundraising activities, such as hiking and abseil, to raise funds.

Monday 15 September 2008

Bandana boys banned from Stoke estate



People living in a Stoke Newington estate now feel safer to walk on their streets, after the police introduced a new 3-month dispersal law banning youngsters from wearing bandanas in the area.

The Hackney Gazette reports that the youths mainly use the bandanas to cover their faces to hide their identity, and were intimidating residents. Its understood they were mainly from Islington and came to Milton Garden estate to cause trouble.

Every night the police would receive several calls from the residents who were too scared to go outside once the bandana boys hit the area. Since the law has been indtroduced, some boys have been ordered out of the area and calls to the police have been greatly reduced.

The dispersal order means police can order such people to leave the area and not return for 24 hours.

Monday 8 September 2008

Waiter, there’s a spicey roach in my soup!



Goodness knows how long folk in Walthamstow have been eating cockroach dropppings buried in the dishes served at a Srik Lankan restaurant.

Help me out if I’m being an alarmist here, but, according to Walthamstow Council, the restaurant was forced to shut down because of the severe cokcroach infestation; the entire place was filthy with dirt and food accumulating on every surface, and cockroach droppings were also found in the cupboards containing food trays.

What I can’t fathom is that the owner was given a warning and told to start treatment before this action took place.

But when health inspectors visited the place again, little had been done to get rid of the ghastly creatures.

Perhaps, being a small business owner, he could not afford the fumigation costs? Or maybe, like the other dodgy restauranters lurking out there, he simply didn’t think it was a pritority.

Whatever his reasons, he’s learnt the hard way; and I’m not sure if I pity the guy or his customers/victims more.