Tony Benn will be visiting Newham in October and launching his new book ‘Making Time for Politics’ at Stratford Circus. This is your chance to put your questions to him and buy a signed copy of the book.
Wednesday 10 October
7pm
Stratford Circus
Theatre Square
Stratford
London
E15 1BX
Ticket prices: £5 from Newham Bookshop - 020 8552 9993
The campaigners trying to stop the redevelopment of Queens Market in Upton Park have published their submission to the Greater London Authority's "Review of London Markets'
The submission sets out the hard-fought campaign and can be downloaded from here.
The Space Hijackers, veterans of the protests against the DSEi arms fair in Canning Town, are now, after several months of fundraising, the proud owners of a Saracen Mk1 tank, which they intend to drive to the arms fair. As the protesters line up against the heavily armed police, they intend to auction the tank to the highest bidder. They said:
"If this so happens to be an angry teenager in a balaclava, then so be it. We don’t see how destruction caused with our tank can possibly be our responsibility."
To those who have accused the Space Hijackers of recklessness and wonder what might happen if someone drives over a police car in the tank, they have responded by saying that "we are simply looking to make a profit, it’s just business transaction. As with the arms dealers and their weapons, once the goods are out of our hands, how can we be held accountable for how they are used?"
For more information, visit www.spacehijackers.org/tank/index.html
Defence Systems and Equipment International, or DSEi, is one of the world's biggest arms fairs and has been held in the ExCel centre in Canning Town since 1999. It is a "tri-service defence exhibition", which means it is a forum for selling military equipment of all kinds for land, sea and air. The arms fair is organised by a commercial company, and receives major support from the UK government: financial, logistical and political.
The current commercial organiser, Reed Elsevier, has announced it is to pull out of the arms trade and plans to sell DSEi by the end of 2007. This has sent a clear signal that DSEi is a liability and that reputable businesses don't deal with the arms trade. Read more.
However, the campaign to stop DSEi continues. If another buyer is found, protesters will continue to put pressure on them and continue to call on the government to end its support for DSEi.
Demonstration against the arms fairTuesday 11th September
Meet at 11am, Plaistow Park, Newham.
Plaistow park is between Balaam Street and Greengate Street, London E13 0AS. (Nearest tube 
Plaistow, District or Hammersmith & City Lines). Map.
The demonstration will then move off at 11:15am to end at the ExCel exhibition centre, where the arms fair takes place,. A rally will be held next to the Custom House 
Docklands Light Railway station at 12pm. Map.
The distance of the demonstration is about 3 km, or just under 2 miles. People with limited mobility are very welcome to join the demonstration at Custom House for the rally if preferable. Custom House DLR station has full disability access and the rally will take place just next to the station.
The rally is expected to finish by 1pm.
More information at www.dsei.org
A new Newham website claims to "bring together people who live near the Olympic venues in Stratford" and who want to get away from the Games in 2012 "with visitors or media types from around the world who face renting accommodation in one of the most expensive cities in the world."
Escape 2012 offers to put visitors who are looking for somewhere to rent in 2012 in contact with local people looking to escape the Olympic madness.
Apparently it has been created by local people who have been involved in community campaigns or voluntary groups in east London and who "were, it has to be said, pretty much opposed to the hosting of the Olympics in the midst of our communities. But now it's happening and we just have to live with it... By getting as far away as we possibly can."
For more, visit www.escape2012.org.uk
Two years ago on 22nd July 2005, an innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead at Stockwell tube station as the result of a disastrous police anti-terror operation. But two years after his shooting:
The memorial event celebrated the life of Gilly Mundy, who died in March (see earlier article) is taking place this Saturday at the Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
The event will start at 6pm and will feature contributions from Gilly's family and many friends. From around 8.30pm until 1am, there will be music from the Purple Banana Sound System.
If you would like to attend, please could you RSVP to gillymundy_friends@yahoo.co.uk.
Many of the fears expressed by opponents of London's Olympic bid, which were scorned by the bid's supporters in 2005 but based on the track-record of previous Games, have already proven to be accurate.
The costs of the London Olympics were seriously underestimated at the time of the bid and the private sector funding seriously overestimated, according to a report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. The budget for the Games has spiralled to over £9 billion, an increase of around £6 billion on the position at the time of the bid, because whole categories of cost were omitted, including tax, contingencies and security. The Government also claimed it could raise £738 million of private sector funding, which would have covered a quarter of Olympic costs, but the Public Accounts Committee have said that "now there is little prospect of significant private sector funding being achieved" and that "as the ultimate guarantor of funding for the Games, the Government is financially exposed."
The report also highlights "a lack of clarity about how venues will be used after the Games, with the risk that designs fail to reconcile the needs of the Games in 2012 with those of subsequent users." The bid's opponents had pointed to exactly this position with mothballed and decaying stadia in both Sydney and Athens. However, as the report notes, "funding the Games means that there will be about £1.7 billion less money available for the other good causes supported by the National Lottery" - exactly the 'daylight robbery' of lottery funding that more sceptical observers of London's bid had warned of.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report can be found here.
Newham is awash with junk mail. Our letter boxes are stuffed full of it every day and leaving aside the content of the rubbish that people distribute, the impact on the environment is immense.
On average, each UK household receives 18 items of junk mail every week, leading to 21 billion junk mail items distributed to UK households on average every year. The annual total of unsolicited mail and hand-delivered flyers in the UK weighs about 550,000 tonnes. The vast majority of this is unsolicited unaddressed junk mail. The production of junk mail also uses a significant amount of energy and causes air pollution. Each tonne produced uses enough energy to heat an average home for 6 months and causes 26 kilograms of air pollutants.
According to Environment Agency, reducing 1 tonne of junk mail saves 17 trees, 2.3 cubic metres if landfill, 31,400 litres of water, 4,200 kilowatt hours of energy, 1,600 litres of oil and avoids 26 kilograms of air pollutants.
Fortunately, you can do something about it.
Firstly, put up a sign saying 'no junk mail'. You can make your own, or buy one - we like the fancy (and cheap) ones available from www.nojunkmailsigns.com
Next up, return the junk mail you receive to the people that distributed it.
Download this flyer (PDF), cut it into 'compliment slips' and post the junk mail back to the companies that produced it - no need for a stamp, making them pay may help them to focus on the bigger picture.
If enough of us start to do this, maybe the junk mailers will get the message.
As for the unsolicited mail that is actually addressed to you, you can cut down on this by registering with the Mail Preference Service.
Some junk mail is actually delivered by your postie - you can cut back on this by registering with the Royal Mail Opt-Out Service
Random Blowe is the personal and political blog of Kevin Blowe, a campaigner based in Newham in east London. 
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