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Saturday 12 September 2020

CNJ home page leads with closure of Kingsgate Community Centre

I have just been alerted to this by way of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group e-list:


Camden New Journal home page leads with Kingsgate Community Centre closure
while rolling home page headline reads:
'Experts warn of a catastrophic economic event that may hurt economies financially'

CNJ: Kingsgate Community Centre to close down due to Covid losses:
Sad day for Camden as association's board of directors file for liquidation
Richard Osman of the CNJ writes:

USERS and supporters of a community centre in West Hampstead have been left shocked this evening (Thursday) after its board of directors announced it will not re-open after the coronavirus crisis.

The Kingsgate Community Association had largely relied on hiring out its building – the Kingsgate Community Centre in Kingsgate Road – but saw its revenue wiped out by the pandemic and is now filing for liquidation.

The nursery on the site will also remain closed.

Camden Council owns the building and said this evening that it was determined that it would be used for community use in the future....

[More at http://camdennewjournal.com/article/kingsgate-community-centre-to-close-down-due-to-covid-losses ]

As I see it, it's in line with 'The Shock Doctrine: Disaster Capitalism'
and how the Central Government diktat that community centres should act "more like businesses and less like charities [code for less like the 'charity cases' Disaster Capitalists attack as they set about the Corporate Demolition of the Welfare State
)
In early 2017 before I left London, the CEO of Kingsgate Community Association gave a talk to Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG, aka 'Kwug') about Government demands that local community centres should "act more like businesses" while expecting less subsidisation from local government. When I moved to Tory-controlled Herefordshire later that year, I got a taste of the prospective consequences for places like Kingsgate Community Centre, and why it was unlikely that community facilities in a Tory-borough would be hosting meetings of 'the underprivileged of working age'. The frontage of my new local community in one of Hereford's lower income areas cried out for volunteers.

Kingsgate CC as a hub for personal transformation for the least privileged


Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group's regular meetings on a weekly basis at Kingsgate Community Centre while I was with them from early 2012 to the time I left London gave my life a renewed sense of purpose after my years of jobsearch as a disabled jobseeker proved fruitless in terms of 'getting me a job', and my disappointments as an activist within political parties.

Before lockdown, Kingsgate Community Centre was fully accessible to people of limited mobility at least, and quite a few attended the weekly term-time meetings of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG). KUWG activists had demonstrated volubly outside Kilburn and other local jobcentres and the phony 'disability assessment centres', talking with people at risk of benefit cuts who then attended our meetings at Kingsgate CC, got support with their claims and returned to us at Kingsgate CC as satisfied customers while too many going though what they would have otherwise gone through were at much greater risk of corporate homicide dressed up as suicide.

My last official role  other than Web Log editor within Kwug was as attendance monitor, in line with the Equality & Diversity criteria of LB Camden as principal funder of our meeting facility and the responsibilities imposed upon Kingsgate Community Centre as a beneficiary of public funds.
The then newly appointed CEO of Kingsgate Community Centre told us he was delighted by the diversity he saw before him at that meeting.

Thursday, 19 October 2017


Toghether we are stronger. Join us!

Together we are stronger. Join us!

Some equality & diversity attendance statistics from when this blog editor was Kwug's attendance monitor

KUWG meeting attendance figures, 6 Jan-to-28 Apr 2014
KUWG meeting attendance figures, 14 Apr-to-14 Jul 2014
KUWG meeting attendance figures,24 Jul-to18 Sep 2014

Closure of accessible public facilities highlights the government lie that they will protect the most vulnerable

That was before the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) closed Kilburn and other local jobcentres, isolating disadvantaged claimants more and more while making them travel further as a Kwug-led demonstration outside DWP HQ highlighted.

Save Our Job Centres — a 1 minute 45 seconds video by Shootroot

Video of demo outside DWP HQ, Caxton House, Monday 6 November 2017


This video was originally posted at https://youtu.be/p8jnYVjqtfQ ...

Further, people incapable of using a computer unaided were compelled to claim benefits online by default, while cuts in council funding led to loss of Social Services for the most vulnerable, as KUWG's friend Kate Belgrave has highlighted.

Learning/literacy difficulties & can’t use online Universal Credit? “Find a friend to help,” says DWP. This is dire

Yesterday, I rang the Universal Credit helpline number (0345 600 4272) to ask about DWP support for Universal Credit claimants who have learning and literacy difficulties, and who struggle to use computers. (I’ve posted a transcript of a recording I … Continue reading

What now?

I would advise those with reading speed and stamina and sufficient Internet Literacy to download a free Portable Document Format (pdf) copy of Kate's book that results from her talking with people facing benefit cuts.
'Abusing Power: How an aggressive austerity state shaped people's politics and lives'e-book by Kate Belgrave available to download until early October 2020from https://nx10568.your-storageshare.de/s/LJ2ajSRXYYt7z8e#pdfviewer
Kate is a responsible journalist following the diktats of the National Union of Journalists Code of Ethics more than any corporate mass media diktats.
National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct

 
One of the most dreadful things about closure of public facilities for the most vulnerable is that isolating vulnerable people is in tandem with the capacity of the 'austerity state' and its lies to go unchallenged as the lies about 'strivers and shirkers' continue to be financed by public funds. As someone has said, democracy presupposes information.

And yes, it is very much a time to get more active in supporting the future of Kingsgate as a community resource, and people giving personal testimony regarding how Kwug's ability to meet regularly at a local community facility was a life-saver and life-transformer for them that should be extended to others. But I also believe that the campaign should be wider than just the London Borough of Camden, and be a national one.

Alan Wheatley

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