Sticker clean up needed

Trevor Ellis, Chalkhill Road, Wembley, writes:

I’m concerned about the effect the stickers may have on impressionable school children who come out of the Wembley Park tube station and wait at the traffic light to cross the road.

The recent protest in the aftermath of the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, revealed that a growing number of women in the capital feel unsafe and the aforementioned stickers obviously ignore their concerns.

I share their concerns and I believe we have an opportunity to play our part by doing whatever it takes to drive out everything that encourages immorality of all kinds and especially in places where young, impressionable schoolchildren, many of whom have smartphones, pass through, such as Bridge Road, Wembley, and see stickers on the traffic light screens and lamp posts advertising ‘massage services’.

Having lived in Wembley Park for over 30 years, I have noticed that standards on a number of levels are noticeably low and little is being done by the local authority to raise them and I’m very concerned about that.

Until residents come together and urge the local authority to work with them to reset the negative balance, standards will continue falling and the idea of a Better Brent will prove to be nothing but a useless pipedream.

Our Covid heroes

Ray Wilkinson, chair, St John Priory Group (Greater London) writes:

March 23 marked the anniversary of the first Covid-19 lockdown and your readers will be very aware of the huge and continuing efforts to tackle the pandemic by our colleagues in the NHS, our St John Ambulance volunteers and many other organisations nationwide.

Details of our work over the last 12 months can be found on our website: sja.org.uk.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all these groups in Greater London for their ongoing work to keep us safe and help us move carefully into the post-Covid period – whether they are working in vaccination centres, training vaccinators, working in hospitals, crewing ambulances or providing a wide range of other vital services in their communities.

We should all also take some time to remember those who lost their lives over the past 12 months.

Another date we will soon be marking is St John’s Day on June 24.

Traditionally, our volunteers and staff have used this as an opportunity to reflect on the work of our charity around the country and take part in an annual service of rededication in the magnificent surroundings of St Paul’s Cathedral. This year, coronavirus will once again make this impossible. Last year we observed St John’s Day in a variety of new and different ways because of the pandemic, and one of the most visible events was the lighting up in green of more than 40 buildings and landmarks around the country.

We are hoping that many more buildings will light up in green in 2021 and, if you are a building owner or custodian and would like to get involved in this year’s event, we’d love to hear from you.