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Flip Out Wandsworth Taster Session on May 11th!

Flip Out Wandsworth is a huge arena of integrated interconnected trampolines with something on offer all ages! It's located in Earlsfield with a lovely cafe and over 200 car park spaces!Flip Out is running a pre-launch special where you can use our facilities for just £1 on Wednesday 11th May between 5-9pm. You must book online at http://wandsworth.flipout.co.uk/ and use the promo code TASTER11 Make sure you sign your waivers and you can purchase socks for £1 on the door!Looking forward to see you all!

Ezgi Aygan ● 3781d0 Comments ● 3781d

Balham Literary Festival: 10th-12th June

COSTA AND SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE WINNER HELEN MACDONALD, ROBERT MACFARLANE AND CHINA MIÉVILLE ANNOUNCED TO HEADLINE THE INAUGURAL BALHAM LITERARY FESTIVAL IN JUNEAn exciting line-up of bestselling authors, performers, and outdoor workshops has been announced for the inaugural Balham Literary Festival, at The Bedford in Balham (Friday 10th June to Sunday 12th June). Costa-winning author Helen Macdonald, Robert Macfarlane, China Miéville and performance artist Inua Ellams will be headlining the three-day festival, which is curated by Dulwich Books of West Dulwich and will celebrate ‘A Way of Being in the World.’ The festival starts with a taster event on 4th June called The Midnight Run, a night-time cultural exploration of Balham with award-winning poet, playwright and performer Inua Ellams. On Friday 10th June, Rob Cowen, author of the bestselling Common Ground will explain how to find your own piece of edgeland. Later, Helen Macdonald, author of the Costa-winning H is for Hawk will be discussing the resurgence of British nature writing with Sara Wheeler and Patrick Barkham. The day ends with live music presented in conjunction with Caught by the River. On Saturday morning, bird-watcher and author Tim Dee will be discussing ‘the Birds and the Bees’ with poet and artist Sean Borodale, author of Bee Journal, whilst Lauren Elkin and Matt Beaumont will recount their experiences of being ‘flâneurs’ in London and Paris, by day and by night. That afternoon in the Bedford’s Map Room, Kirsty Gunn, Tendai Huchu and Will Cohu will speak about the song of the land, and the creation of landscape and atmosphere in fiction. For those who would rather enjoy the summer outside, Ruth Potts from anarchist collective bread, print and roses will be leading a walking tour around South West London. Back in The Bedford, the festival’s second day continues with Andrea Wulf, James Macdonald Lockhart and Will Atkins on extremes of flight and exploration, followed by China Miéville who will skew the picturesque in an investigation written especially for the event.Sunday begins with Bradley Garrett and Inua Ellams exploring the urban landscape and then sees two events with bestselling academic and travel writer Rob Macfarlane, speaking first about the myth of the Green Man with China Miéville and Nina Lyon, and then later in conversation with Andrew Michael Hurley, author of 2015’s Costa winner The Loney, and Stephanie Cross. Environment writer and author Fred Pearce and architectural writer Owen Hatherley will close the festival discussing our built and natural landscapes and how we can save them. Tickets start from £10.00 and are available at www.balhamliteraryfestival.co.uk.

Hayley Steed ● 3787d0 Comments ● 3787d

Place for Reception 2016 in Wandsworth

Are you disappointed with your child’s allocated school place for September? Are you now considering an independent education for your child? If so, we invite you to find out about the close-knit and welcoming family that is Wandsworth Prep School.Wandsworth Prep School is a co-educational independent day school, for children aged 4-11. Graded Outstanding in our latest Ofsted inspection, we are a small school and pride ourselves on our child-centred approach to teaching and learning, celebrating the individual talents and personalities of each child. We believe that school should be a fun, exciting place where pupils learn in a nurturing environment and are willing to take risks when encountering new ways of learning. We believe that how pupils learn is the key to what they learn and achieve.We have a couple of places available in our Reception 2016 class, so if you would like to find out more, Maria Major, the school’s secretary, will be very happy to answer any questions you may have. Please call 0208 870 4133 or email maria.major@wandsworthprep.com.In the meantime, you may like to look at our website where you can watch a short video showing life in our Reception Class: http://www.wandsworthprep.com/admissions/the-wandsworth-prep-school-family

Amy Hebditch ● 3797d0 Comments ● 3797d

Wandsworth Children's Services Report

It is worth getting a copy of the much improved Wandsworth Guardian today to read their report on the debacle of children's services in the borough.The very excellent Rebecca Taylor has produced another piece of journalism that the Council isn't going to like but needed to be written. OFSTED found that children's services in the borough were so deficient that they were putting youngsters in care at an elevated risk of sexual exploitation. Putting this right is going to be a hard and expensive task

David Parker ● 3802d0 Comments ● 3802d

Earlsfield Business Network

Earlsfield Business NetworkAt the Wandle pub 332 Garratt Lane SW18 4EJ opposite Earlsfield BR stationLocal traders wanted !In business and looking for new markets & ideas ?Join members and local businesses in Earlsfield for an informal business network session, part of the thriving business community in Wandsworth, celebrating the best in Earlsfield and promoting a 'buy local' agenda.Get together over a glass of wine, beer or soft drink in a friendly welcoming environment.Our aim is to keep things simple and allow a natural flow of relaxed and informal networking. There will be an introduction from the Chamber with an update on the Earlsfield Business Network, a part of Wandsworth Chamber devoted to business based in Earlsfield. Register now for this free event via the linkhttp://www.wandsworthchamber.org/events.phpInline images 1 or just turn up.You can also check out & join our new Earlsfield Business Network group on `Meet Up`For more info, Please ring Will on 07957404423

Robert McKinlay ● 3805d0 Comments ● 3805d

Who's paying for the new roofs in Godley Road and Fieldview -- the owners or the taxpayer?

The council are replacing these roofs, but it is not clear to me who's paying the multimillion pound roofs that are being replaced on some, but not all, houses.

Alex Collins ● 3808d0 Comments ● 3808d

Who Gets the Traffic from the New Wandsworth Gyratory Plan?

It is very generous of these nice property developers from China to fund a new design for the roads around the centre of Wandsworth. It will be interesting though to see how the people who live in roads that will get the traffic displaced by the new more pedestrian friendly design that is promised will react.

David Parker ● 4540d11 Comments ● 3826d

Wandsworth in Rotten Boroughs - Formula E

Think it must be a quiet week for Town Hall corruption if Wandsworth made rotten boroughs this week (and surely there must be much worse happening even in this borough).Formula E isn't necessarily something I would go out of my way to see but a large number of people are big fans of motorsport and they get excited about things like this. If hosting it brings in over £200,000 to the borough with the main thing people are complaining about being slightly restricted use of the park for a few weeks, I find it hard to object.

David Parker ● 3826d0 Comments ● 3826d

Save Sunny News Campaign - Please support us

We would be very grateful if you are able to make a donation to help the Save Sunny News campaign to save the shop.  The legal challenge is to stop our local shop from being forced to close but it will have a wider impact, if successful, of helping to protect other small, independent businesses which are now also threatened.  Please click on this link to read more:-    http://bit.ly/1XsWtGl

Southfields Triangle Residents Association ● 3830d0 Comments ● 3830d

Breakfast Run and Picnic THIS WEEKEND

Starfish Greathearts Foundation is having a charity run!We work with children that have been made vulnerable or orphaned due to HIV/AIDS, or poverty in South Africa. This weekend, on 6 March, we are excited to be hosting our annual Breakfast Run and Picnic on Clapham Common. We are expecting over 400 runners to join us for a 5k, 10k and 15k run and they will all bring along their friends and family to enjoy a picnic, tombola, kids 100m dash, a bouncy castle and to soak up the atmosphere. Runners can register in advance of the event and we are currently have a spring offer which means, that if you purchase one space, you can purchase a second for 50% off. To register please visit www.starfishcharity.org, or call the Starfish team at 02075973797. You can also find us on Facebook at Starfish GreatheartsFoundation-UK and twitter at @starfishuk. If participants fancy turning up on the day, they can purchase tickets at the run, but it will be cash only. We are extremely grateful for your support and proceeds from the event will help Starfish bring life, hope and opportunity to orphaned and vulnerable children in South Africa. Thank you very much for your support and we hope to see you on Sunday!

Elinor Middleton ● 3845d0 Comments ● 3845d

DISPLACEMENTS with Ben Rawlence, Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes

Thursday 10th March, 7.30pm. Tickets are £6 and are fully redeemable against a purchase of City of Thorns10% of profits from the event will be donated to CalAid (calaid.co.uk)Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land. To the charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp is a humanitarian crisis; to the Kenyan government, it is a ‘nursery for terrorists’; to the western media, it is a dangerous no-go area; but to its half a million residents, it is their last resort. Among those seeking sanctuary there are Guled, a former child soldier who lives for football; Nisho, who scrapes an existence by pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; Tawane, the indomitable youth leader; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education. In City of Thorns, described as ‘timely, disturbing and compelling’ by The Guardian, Ben interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there.Olumide Popoola is a writer, lecturer, poet and performer. In the last year she has made a number of visits to the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais. Unlike Dadaab, which is administered by the UN, the Jungle is a settlement established by the people who live there, most of whom are trying to reach the UK. Olumide’s experiences will be recorded in Breach, to be published by Peirene Press in August 2016, and will tell the story of the crisis through the voices of refugees stuck in Calais. It documents an illusion disrupted: ‘that of a neatly ordered world, with those deserving safety and comfort separated from those who need to be kept out’. Annie Holmes is the co-writer of Breach. Originally from Zimbabwe, she is a distinguished filmmaker, writer and lecturer. She has worked extensively on tackling the structural causes of HIV at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.What are the root causes of current displacements? What are the long-term prospects for refugee camps and the people who live in them? And of course, what can the UK and the wider international community do to help? Join us to discuss the past, present and future of refugee camps. With an unprecedented refugee crisis in Europe, and the continued displacement of peoples on other continents, there has hardly been a more important time to reflect on the status of these precarious communities.

Dulwich Books at The Bedford ● 3851d0 Comments ● 3851d

Help needed from local residents please.

My name is Janet Humphrey. I have reached the final of a competition which may give my brother and I a chance to take our Father Stan Ball to Gallipoli. You may be aware that 2016 is the 101st year since the Gallipoli campaign was started.My Granddad Ball  (Stanley Arthur William) was born and raised in South London, lived in Eltringham Street Wandsworth, and was married on Christmas Day 1925 at the St Johns Hill Church.He joined the City of London Royal Fusiliers regiment. He had already served in the regular army as a member of  2RF between 14 July 1898 and 29 October 1910. 2RF served in India and Burma, we were told by the Fusiliers Museum in London. He was quite a bit older than others who were asked to join up for the war.He rejoined the army on 8th September 1914 so he wasn't in the first flood of returning reservists. He served in Britain (Home) between 9 September 1914 and 9 May 1915, he then went to join the 2RF again this time in Gallipoli, he remained with them until 12th July 1915, where he earned the Star Medal. He was wounded, there but joined his comrades in France, which lasted from 22 September 1915 to 25 October 1915 he was wounded (a bullet wound in the back) which along with his other injuries lead to his death from untreated gangrene in 1950.My father Stan grew up around Wandsworth, and my granddad was treated at St John Hospital Wandsworth, and after the war he trained and worked as a nurse, partly in repayment for the wonderful kindness he was shown. .We have organised a pledge page below, which gives a lot of extra detail on our pledge, and there is a personal message on there as well from my dad, to potential voters explaining why a vote for our pledge would make such a difference to him.https://www.facebook.com/Discoveryuk-MYWBpledge2016-1513515848952030/?ref=hlVoting closes at midnight on the 29th February 2016 but the more publicity we could get now, the more chance we have of winning. Please vote for "Janet Oxfordshire" as one of your three votes, and support a local WW1 soldier's son. Thank you http://www.discoveryuk.com/pledges/vote-now-2/

janet humphrey ● 3854d0 Comments ● 3854d

AUTHOR EVENT at The Bedford Pub TOMORROW

Have you heard about the event at The Bedford Pub tomorrow with David Aaronovitch and Jo McMillan? They'll be discuss an upbringing on the fringes of political life, portrayed in their new books. Tracing the decline of the communist tradition in Britain, Party Animals is a deeply personal account of what it’s like to grow up in a family on the far-left. Written by David Aaronovitch, a well-known journalist and commentator, it is a memoir that stands out from the crowd. Jo McMillan’s debut novel Motherland, published in hardback last year, is an incredible story of a childhood in struggle. In this case the struggle is that of thirteen-year-old Jessica, whose mother Eleanor is unerring in her attempts to radicalise the sleepy midlands town of Tamworth. Unfortunately for Jessica, those attempts are mostly met with indifference and hostility. But a visit to the Democratic Republic of Germany beckons… 11th February, 7.30pm. Tickets are £6, which is fully redeemable against a purchase of either Party Animals or Motherland

Dulwich Books at The Bedford ● 3866d0 Comments ● 3866d

Lung Songs - Singing Group for Lung Health at St George's Hospital

Lung SongsSinging Sessions for Respiratory & Cardiac Patients at St George's Hospital Blackshaw Road, Tooting, London SW17 0QTFortnightly Thursdays 2.00-3.15pmNext session February 18thRespiratory and Cardiac Patients welcome to join a fun, free and friendly group for gentle exercises and singing for wellbeing - plus tea and biscuits :)Facilitated by Katie Rose For more information contact Jane Nolan Cardiac Pulmonary Rehab Department, Atkinson Morley Wing 020 8725 3016

Katie Rose ● 3871d0 Comments ● 3871d

End of Lpw Taxes in Wandsworth?

Interesting article in the Wandsworth Guardian about the possibility of the borough's low tax regime coming to an end.http://www.wandsworthguardian.co.uk/news/14249692.End_of_the_road__Years_of_low_tax_could_end_after_report_says_council_tax_needs_to_rise_by_75__to_plug_Wandsworth_s___54m_funding_deficit/The headline is actually a bit misleading as the Government has more or less banned Council's from making big increases in Council Tax. This means more cuts or higher charges for services.

David Parker ● 3873d0 Comments ● 3873d

Nail Lace Sausages on Wandsworth Streets

If you own a dog locally you might want to check out this article on the Wandsworth Guardian web sitehttp://www.wandsworthguardian.co.uk/news/14224465.WARNING__Dogs_injured_after__nasty__nail_laced_sausages_left_on_Wandsworth_streets

Peter Higgins ● 3885d0 Comments ● 3885d

New area outside Southside

I must say that after the months of digging and drilling I had hoped for something more exciting of the pedestrian area outside Costa. With all the artists' impressions I thought we might at least get a fountain or those water jets which kids love these days. Instead it's a boring paved area and not very well paved at that as puddles form in various areas already. Let's hope that the eventual redevelopment of the area is more exciting.

Hugh Walton ● 3922d1 Comments ● 3915d

Pedestrian Priority

There is so much being done for cyclists, often costing lots of money.  It seems, though, that nothing is done to encourage or help pedestrians.1. Street furniture should allow the blind and wheelchair users to make easier progress (the back of CJ Station is a nightmare)2. Traffic lights often give pedestrians little time to cross and make them wait for a long time.3. Constructors seem able to block off pavements at will, offering no suitable alternative route.4. Cyclists do not warn pedestrians of their approach on shared paths and frequently use footpaths which are not shared. (plus ignoring red lights)5. Cafes and bars and smokers seem able to spread across pavements, forcing pedestrians into the road.6. Finally other pedestrians: those who use pushchairs at battering rams; walking in groups and not allowing space for someone coming the other way.7. People waiting at bus stops who spread across the pavement (Victoria is a nightmare)

Jane Eades ● 3943d0 Comments ● 3943d

Internet Safety Workshop for parents: 7pm on 30th Nov

Following the excellent feedback received following last year's event, on Monday 30th November, Wandsworth Prep School will be hosting a highly valuable internet safety workshop with internet safety experts, Childnet International.The event is complimentary and will be open to all local parents.The event will commence at 7pm and will consist of a presentation entitled ‘Supporting Young People Online’. The Childnet Team aim to leave parents with knowledge about how to protect young people online and empower them with take home advice to implement into their children’s online lives.Issues covered will include:1. Positive use of the internet - exploration of websites and applications that offer opportunities to discover, connect and create (this includes a beginner’s guide to Social Networking Sites - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.)2. Potential misuse of the technologies - how children and young people can be vulnerable to inappropriate content, conduct and contact risks3. Cyberbullying - ‘Let’s Fight it Together’ is a powerful film produced by Childnet which is used to help sensitise young people and adults to the pain and hurt which can be caused through cyberbullying4. Minimising the risks - practical advice for adults and children to help them stay safe onlineIf you would like to attend, please contact our Office Secretary, Maria Major, to book your place: www.wandsworthprep.com/contact/

Amy Hebditch ● 3957d0 Comments ● 3957d

Earlsfield Business Network

EARLSFIELD BUSINESS NETWORK Wednesday 11th November from 6pm we are atBen`s Canteen 422 Garratt SW18 4HWWhere we will be updating you onEARLSFIELD FESTIVE LIGHTS FOR CHRISTMAS CAMPAIGN Ready for the big `Switch on` 26th November at 5.30 pm Join Earlsfield Business Network Members and guests for a free business networking event on the second Wednesday of every month in 2015.Meet local businesses in a relaxed and entertaining environment at Earlsfield Business Network, a part of Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce devoted to business based in Earlsfield. A place where Earlsfield businesses can meet regularly and make the most of local opportunities to grow and flourish. Wandsworth Chamber's networking events are designed to inform, challenge and present  opportunities for local businesses to network, make new contacts, develop meaningful business relationships and have fun along the way.We look forward to seeing you The EBN team

Robert McKinlay ● 3959d0 Comments ● 3959d