Wednesday 30 May 2018

Carillion case shows crisis public interest auditing


 Four Auditors!
by Brian Bamford
WHEN Carillion collapsed in January this year, it brought into focus the Government's relations with major suppliers and showed how it impacts on vital public services in local communities such as Tameside MBC, which since at least 2011 had deveoped a partnership with the company.  

How could the decline of Carillion have been overlooked by Government, and the firm's auditors, when readers of the Financial Times, the markets and particulary those shorting its shares since May 2015, were well aware of what was happening?

On the 23 May 2018 the Select  Committee Chair, probing the Carillion case and the role of its auditors  Meg Hillier MP:said:'Government has become dependent on large contracts to deliver public projects and services.  Great secrecy surrounds them.   If a company providing a number of these contracts fails, this is bad news for service users and the taxpayer.........

'When a contract breaks down, Government is the provider of last resort.  While it did not bail out Carillion – the company went in liquidation – it did inherit responsibilities and costs, ultimately borne by taxpayers, that would otherwise not be met.
'Failure of essential services is not an option so we need to understand the potential risks to the taxpayer....'

Of the 'Big Four' auditors available three were already deeply implicated and involved doing Carillion's accounts with KPMG, which had been carrying out an external auditor for Carillion for 19-years, while Deloitte had carried out the internal audit, and EY had provided turnround advice before Carillion was declared insolvent last January.  

Thus, it was left to the auditors PwC, which despite earning £17 million in fees related to Carillion in the last 10-years, as the least compromised by a conflict of interest to handle the liquidation when the Official Reciever came calling for a special manager to do the job.

In the Financial Times John Plender wrote on the 19th, May:
'Overall, this quartet of accountancy behemoths (KPMG; Deoitte; EY and PwC) .collectively received £51.2 million for services to Carillion in the 10 years before the collapse, a further £1.7 million for work on the company's pension schemes and £14.3 million from government for work relating to contracts with Carillion.  small wonder the MPs concluded that this was a "cosy club incapable of providing the degree of independent challenge needed".'

Somehow, perhaps owing to vain expectations, the Government failed to grasp the the seriousness of the situation.  As the Select Committee Deputy Chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP pointed out lasr week:
'The Government’s RAG scale for Strategic Suppliers appears to be too slow and clunky. Profit warnings for Carillion were issued in July and September 2017 and yet a high-risk recommendation to Ministers was not made until 29 November 2017. The City, in contrast, knew well before July 2017 that Carillion was in trouble.
'Too many Government facilities contracts were concentrated in one large firm giving the impression that it was too big to fail, hence the perception that the Government would bail them out when push came to shove.
'The Carillion Board’s erroneous belief that the Government would not let the company collapse appears to have contributed to their failure to take the necessary action to save the company and prevent the sad loss of jobs and damage to numerous suppliers and subcontractors when Carillion went into liquidation.'
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Even if the audit of Carillion by auditors KPLM in December 2016 was wildly over-optimistic and effectively valueless, it did show a company in trouble, and John Plender in the FT wrotes:  'I did not require a degree in accountacy to see that this tecnically insolvent company was paying more in dividends than it was generating in cash, while borrowing heavily, under-investing and sitting on a growing pension fund deficit.'

Investors who were selling Carillion shares short began to spot what was happening as early as  mid-2015.  The problem is that there is a reluctance to prosecute the auditors in these cases, as was demonstrated with the US attorney-general's decision in 2005 not to pursue a criminal prosecution of the auditors KPML over the sale of fraudulent tax products for fear of putting KPMG out of business.  The problem is that we are all now seemingly at the mercy of the global 'Big Four' auditing companies and the public interest audit function is suffering from a de facto 'too few to fail' regime.
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Monday 28 May 2018

Review: 'Slow Burning Fuse' & Anarchist Aspects

by Brian Bamford
Reviews:  'The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British 
Anarchists' by John Quail, published by Freedom Press [2014] price £15.,
and 'Aspects of Anarchism' published by the Anarchist Federation price £1.  
 Both available from Freedom Press: 
84b, Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. 

IN concluding his book 'The Slow Burning Fuse; The Lost History of the British Anarchists', John Quail writes: 
'...the anarchists of England have paid for the gap between their day-to-day activities and their utopian aspirations.  This gap consists basically of a lack of strategy, a lack of sense of how various activities fit together to form a whole, a lack of ability to assess a general situation and initiate a general project which is consistent with the anarchist utopia, and which is not only consistent with anarchist tactics but inspires them.' 

Mr. Quail admits that 'Such general Anarchist projects have existed, perhaps the best examples being the anarcho-syndicalist trades unions of Spain and France.' 

In his Forword to the Freedom Press 2014 edition of Quail's book Nick Heath*[1] writes 'I would take issue, as very much an organisational anarchist, with some of (Quail's) comments on organisation in his conclusion.'    

John Quail's book fundamentally emphasises the reactionary nature of English anarchism:  only capable of responding in a series of fits-and-starts to specifically social and political conditions.  In contrast to Quail, Mr. Heath no doubt believes what is documented in his Anarchist Federation's pamphlet 'Aspects of Anarchism' (2003) that 'The structure (of an anarchist communist organisation) must increase the ability of the organisation to perpetuate itself while its ends remain un-realised'. 

The historical characteristic of the British left in general has been to react to the agenda set by the establishment and initiatives developed by governments.  The Anarchist Federation in Britain is well within this defensive tradition of reactionary responses as is shown in their pamphlet under review 'Aspects of Anarchism' in the closing paragraphs of this booklet under the subheading 'Our Role' the author writes:  'Large demonstrations and strikes can often turn to violence and we should accept the need for self-defence.' 

Or the author writes:  'In non-revolutionary periods anarchist communists will be a conscious minority with “the leadership of ideas”.'  

There is much talk of 'revolution' here, but the writer mentions 'self-defence' because the nature of British politics is so much about reacting to the authorities in a tactical way rather than developing a serious strategy for social change.  And in the very next sentence the writer continues:  'Groups like the hit squads arising from the miners strike (1984-5) are genuine expressions of working class resistance.'  And then the writer goes on to argue 'we will need to defend ourselves against the violence of our enemies.'  This is all about 'defence' and 'resistance'  not about a pro-active program for social transformation, what's so revolutionary about that? 

The fact is that this is typical of the British left over the ages, and of the most memorable struggles in this country from the General Strike of 1926, to the Peace Movement of the 1960s, to the Miner's Strike of 1984-5, have been reactionary in that they have been responses to the actions of governments. 

Much of the rest of the AF's pamphlet in an act of belief in commitment or act of faith and of solving the problem of 'other minds', or as the writer puts it: 

'Determination and Solidarity:  To create effective organisations we must know our own and other's  [sic] minds, therefore there must be a high degree of communication, of sharing. We must set about creating aspiration, setting achievable targets, celebrating success, rededicating ourselves again and again to the reasons why we have formed or participate in organisation.'

When at random I compare this kind of feeble analyse to an interview in 1977, between the Spanish anarchist, Juan Garcia Oliver entitled 'My revolutionary life' the nature of the abstraction of 'Aspects of Anarchism' becomes clear.  When the questioner, Freddy Gomez asks 'What were the circumstances in which you became active in the libertarian movement and the CNT?'

Garcia Oliver answers:  'We need to be precise about this.  The idea of the “libertarian movement” surfaced well after the period we are talking about.  The CNT, on the other hand, was a long-established battle organisation which in those days marshaled revolutionary syndicalists, especially in Catalonia and therefore throughout Spain.  I join as a 17 year old.  I was working in the hospitality trade, as cafe waiter.  We had just seen the “La Canadiense” strike which is still famous because it was handled to perfection and won by the CNT's Light and Power Union.'

For people like Nick Heath they want to create an organisation or anarchist movement before there are anarchists, were as Garcia Oliver realises that it is in the practical life of the social body of the working class that anarchists are formed and from which the political organisation may then arise. I became an anarchist out of my experiences in the national strikes of engineering apprentices in the early 1960s; those experiences showed me first-hand how the bosses operated, and how the trade union officials and the local politicians operated, just as Garcia Oliver learnt through his experiences in the strikes of waiters for the abolition of tipping.

The point is the theory and the ideas evolve out of the shopfloor struggle.   It is this half-baked idea of the struggle developing out of the theory that is wrong with the approach of the Anarchist Federation: theirs is a form of cookbook anarchism in which the chef knows best. 

The dispute over what Peter Kropotkin stood for 'anarcho-communism', and what Bakunin believed 'collectivism', according to the anthropologist Gerald Brenan in his 'The Spanish Labyrinth' (1962), divided the Regional Federation of Spanish anarchists in 1888:  the argument was about whether anarchist organisations should consist just of convinced Anarchists or if all workers should be included if they were willing to join.  Brenan writes: 

'...with the introduction of Anarcho-Syndicalism in 1909, it was finally decided in accordance with Bakunin's ideas, the question of the nature of the future form of society became less importance.'

It is necessary to mention that this Spanish experience because the history of anarchism there is significant as a consequence of its success in that country.  Garcia Oliver responding to a question about the time when in about 1920 he joined the anarchist 'Bandera Negra' about 'some sort of understanding between syndicalists and anarchists' said:  'We were still a long way from what came later – anarcho-syndicalism – which overcame this dichotomy.  Anarcho-syndicalism allowed anarchism to become part and parcel of trade unionist groups which were imbued with anarchist thinking'.  Garcia Oliver said that he had joined 'Bandera Negra' by mistake and implies that at that time he ought to have been more syndicalist or 'revolutionary syndicalist', because 'Bandera Negra' (Black Flag) 'spent its time liaising – nationally and internationally – with other groups and its main activity was reading incoming correspondence and replying to it.'  The Spanish 'Bandera Negra', according to Garcia Oliver, like the Anarchist Federation was firmly against trade unionism and the CNT.

John Quail recalls the International Anarchist Congress of 1881 in London thus:
'The International Congress was basically an affair of and for Continental and Russian revolutionaries.  The minutes ... reveal that the English delegates played little part; yet many of the people involved were ... exiles in London and the British socialists that a more sophisticated libertarian philosophy was to develop relevant to British conditions.'  

Brenan has written of the same 1881 Congress:
'The Spanish delegate, when he went back to Madrid, took several new ideas with him.  (But) Spaniards lived then at a great distance from the rest of Europe.  Besides, anarchism had still a large proletarian following.  Under such conditions terrorist action was madness and would not find any encouragement among workers.  The new Regional Federation had in any case no need to appeal for violent methods.  Its progress during the first year or two of its existence was rapid.  A Congresss held in Seville in 1882 represented some 50,000 workers, of whom 30,000 came from Andalusia and most of the rest from Catalonia.'

In England, John Quail has demonstrated in his conclusion:
'The anarchist movement in England has shown itself capable of a progression of initiatives taken according to circumstances.  Take, for example, the beginnings of the squatters movement in London.'

Quail realises that the English anarchists are prisoner's of historical circumstances when he argues 'it is only when anarchist strategies develop [and] move from pin-prick defiance and piecemeal defence to confront and change all this that the anarchist movement will make history instead of being dependent on it.'  But this is true of the British left in general and even the trade unions, nay especially the British trade unions in this country, in so far as they are always reacting to events.  Perhaps it is because he now sees change in this respect as such an hopeless expectation in this country that I understand Mr. Quail is no longer sees himself as an anarchist.  As one northern anarchist once said to me:  'Each new batch of English anarchists have to learn the same old lessons every few decades, until in the end some of them give it up as a bad job.'

Starting in 1881, Quail identifies 'the first systematic propaganda defining itself as anarchist that had any effect within the (English) socialist movement came from America the shape of Benjamin Tucker's paper Liberty'.  It seems that Liberty was a 'lively and far ranging and even (Tucker) was prepared to give space for the Anarchist Communist view', though according to Quail, Tucker had 'a good eye for revolutionary humbug'.  And, on the English left there is so much 'humbug' about.

John Quail then goes on to remind us that '[t]he introduction of specifically anarchist ideas into the working class  movement was thus going on well before the alleged Year One of English anarchism, 1886, which saw the foundation of Freedom.' (p37)  (Freedom was finally closed down in 2014, and since then there has been an ongoing disputes between those who scuttled the ship of Freedom and their critics).

In conclusion Quail [page 333] writes:
'The anarchists have since shown the same astonishing ability to suddenly come from nowhere when everyone had assumed that they were finished...  A new movement emerged out of CND and the Committee of 100 and to dispersed.  The student movement of the 1960s again showed strong libertarian proclivities.   And that too seems to have disappeared.  I do not propose to talk about these movements in this book...  A bare mention, however, is sufficient to bear out the general thesis that has emerged throughout the book that the anarchist movement grows in times of popular self-activity, feeds it and feeds off it, and declines when that self-activity declines.'

In contrast to Quail, Nick Heath wants to keep the anarchist movement alive in the fallow years with what he calls the 'leadership of ideas'.  John Quail's book is very London oriented and it fails to include what the northern anarchist  James Pinkerton sometimes called the 'anarchist fellow travellers':  for in the same way that some say 'Christianity doesn't depend on the Christians', so very often anarchism doesn't depend upon the anarchists, as people like Colin Ward seems to have been aware.  William Morris was close to anarchism politically but his influence was larger than mere politics and people like both Quail and Heath will both tend to overlook the 'Arts and Crafts movement' intellectually dominated by Morris, John Ruskin's ideas and the development of the National Trust, and self-help societies, and other kinds of cultural and intellectual spin-off. 

Colin Ward's ideas developed in around 1960 is a more recent example of this approach, which in those days he described as 'permanent protest' or as some claim 'revisionist anarchism'.   In a soon to be published memoir by the veteran anarchist Laurens Otter writes:  'Colin (while retaining the term Revisionist Anarchism) was by 1961 defining his aim as “widening the sphere of  freedom”.'    Mr. Otter then writes:  'Ward's then desired journal (which became “Anarchy: a journal of anarchist ideas”) would from its beginning reject any belief in progressive fundamental change.'

These ideas of Colin Ward contrast not just with the kind of intellectual bigotry of Nick Heath and the the more refine historical determinism of John Quail, but also with the whole of left-wing ideology in this country.  This rupture which Colin Ward developed in the 1960s can best be understood by considering what George Orwell has to say in his essay 'Writers and Leviathan' (1948):

'The whole of left-wing ideology, scientific and Utopian, was evolved by people who had no immediate prospect of attaining power.  It was therefore, an extremist ideology, utterly contemptuous of kings, governments, laws, prisons, police forces, armies, flags, frontiers, patriotism, religion, conventional morality, and, the whole existing scheme of things.'

Anarchism, like the rest of the British left, inherited a certain evolutionary faith associated with the Whig theory of history, or as George Orwell writes:

'Moreover the Left had inherited from Liberalism certain distinctly questionable beliefs, such as the belief that the truth will prevail and persecution defeats itself, or that man is naturally good and is only corrupted by his environment.'

Elsewhere, Orwell points out in his essay 'Inside the Whale' (1940) that no 'real revolutionary feeling' had not existed for years and that the 'pathetic membership of all extremist parties show this clearly'.  In that situation the British Communist Party became a subservient tool of Russian foreign policy and the rest of the left became for most part insignificant.

It seems to me that it is hard to see how English anarchists can escape the 'fate of history' or what Mr. Quail calls 'its pin-prick defiance and piecemeal defence' anymore than the British left can transform itself from the perpetual reactionary role of resisting changes imposed by the British establishment.  Mr. Heath and his Anarchist Fed. show no sign of capturing the public imagination with his own belief in what Wyndham Lewis once called the 'associational habit' of membership organisations.

The Spanish anarchists, as Garcia Oliver says, benefited from having the trade union 'battle ground' of the CNT, and British anarchism gained vast influence when it had the peace movement to work inside in the 1960s.  Today, anarchism lacks any focus or serious social movement to seriously promote its energies, in that situation some of us have found it more prudent to adopt politics with a regional tinge.

*    Nick Heath leads a small sectarian grouping called variously the Anarchist Federation or A.fed. which grew up in the 1980s.  Unlike John Quail, he does not embrace the broader Church of British anarchism.

[1]  Since this review was first written over a year ago the Anarchist Federation: 'fight[ing] for a world without leaders'  has split in two, with Nick Heath and what was the old class war trend have now formed a group called 'communist anarchism', leaving the more modern trans-tendency inside the A.Fed, with its distinguished international affiliations, to soldier-on under the old AF label.

It was once said that the old Liberal Party MPs could just about fill a taxi, but now Nick Heath and 'communist anarchism' tribe could just about get by on a tandem made for two:  Battlescarred in London and Serge Forward in the provinces.   

For example, we learn that on Saturday 17th February [2018], 'anarchist communist militants met in Leicester to found a new organisation, the Anarchist Communist Group (ACG).'

Saturday 26 May 2018

Small fine as contractor is electrocuted


submitted by Joe Bailey


THE partners running a Suffolk farm have been sentenced after a haulage contractor was killed by an overhead power line strike.  Basildon Magistrates’ Court heard how on 30 August 2016, haulage driver Christopher Wilson, 36, was killed when his tipping trailer was raised and made contact with overhead power lines that ran across part of the yard hard standing at the Airfield Grain store in Parham.  The site was managed by Nicholas and Roger Watts, partners in FS Watts & Sons.
  
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that FS Watts and Sons had failed to take suitable precautions for work near to the overhead electric power lines, despite recommendations given to them previously by NFU Mutual Risk Management Services (NFU RMS).  Nicholas Watts and Roger Watts each pleaded guilty to criminal breaches of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 and were each fined £9,500 and ordered to pay costs of £4,700.

HSE inspector Saffron Turnell said:  “This tragic incident led to the avoidable death of a young father. This death could easily have been prevented if those in control of operations at the grain store had acted to identify and manage the risks involved and put a safe system of work in place.”

ALLEGATIONS: Being left wing or anti-Semitic?

Attacks on Ken Livingston point to sad confusion

 by Martin Gilbert

LIKE a number of British Jews I’m an anti-Zionist. In the heat around this issue the Board of Deputies of British Jews have suggested that they speak for our entire community.  They may speak for all paid up members of
synagogues, presuming that they all support Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  It suggests that all Christians are paid up at their local parish church.  That Board do not represent the much larger number who identify as being Jewish and are entirely secular.

Contributing to an attack on the left is a confusion that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.  Corbyn’s Labour party are trying to deal with this smear. In resigning from that party Ken Livingstone described it all as
'a distraction'.  After meeting with the Board, trying to show some balance Corby attended a Passover service organised by some left wing Jews. Passover services are very jolly affairs with much singing and wine-drinking.  It is a festival of liberation but the radical, left wing theme is 'we cannot celebrate our liberation while we oppress others'.

A possible source of anti-Jewish feeling has been neglected.  If there is confusion generally about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, some of it may be found in immigrants with personal experience of Israeli oppression.  If that were my background it would be very hard for me to be liberal and internationalist.
Martin Gilbert, 25.5.’18.
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Friday 25 May 2018

Let’s Talk About Sex!


by Les May

ON Friday 16 March this year Amy Desir and her friend Hannah joined a ‘men only’ swimming session at Dulwich leisure centre wearing a pair of trunks and pink swimming cap.  They used the men’s changing rooms having told the staff they could join the session because they ‘identified as male’.   When a man asked if she realised it was a men-only night she told him she was a man. His response was ‘Oh really’.   No one was arrested.   No one was kicked out.

You might like to imagine the response if a couple of men had tried to join a ‘women-only’ swimming session at the Leisure centre.   I doubt the headline in the following Monday’s Metro would have been the matched the ‘Feminists set the a-gender at men-only pool session’ which was used for Amy’s exploit.

It was of course a stunt designed to highlight what she called ‘the ridiculous and dangerous move towards self identification’ and a call for women (though seemingly not men) to be consulted about the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

Two days ago Labour suspended David Lewis, who attempted to stand as a candidate to be Basingstoke Labour party’s women’s officer.  He said he had decided to stand for the role, which party rules say can only be held by a woman, in order to draw attention to Labour’s policy of self-definition, where a person is recognised as a woman if they define themselves as such.   His intention was to inform the local party, and maybe some other people, about what this policy means and about what happens when you say that someone’s gender depends only on what they say and nothing else.

Lewis was attacked by James Morton in a long article which appeared in The Guardian. Calling Lewis an ‘anti-trans campaigner’ Morton produced no evidence to substantiate his claim.  Arguing for the seriousness of the process of identifying with a different sex Morton ignores the fact that some self styled ‘trans activists’ insist that ‘gender is fluid’ and thus give credence to Lewis’s flippant comments.

Like Morton Labour seems determined to prevent any discussion about the potential problems of self identification.  Men and women may have very different views about why or if they feel uncomfortable about self identification and should be allowed to air those views without being dismissed as ‘trans-phobic’.  Amy Desir and David Lewis are trying to draw attention to this.

And please don’t tell me that in writing sympathetically about Desir and Lewis I am being ‘trans-phobic’.  As a man I have no greater objection to sharing a potentially intimate space with someone who was once a woman than I have to someone who has always been a man.  But I recognise that some women might feel uncomfortable about sharing such a space with someone who says they are a woman whilst sporting a full set of wedding tackle.  Their feelings should be respected. It is called tolerance.


Monday 21 May 2018

Rochdale Labour Party Split?

ROCHDALE LABOUR PARTY, according to sources inside the party, is for all practical purposes split in two.  Following the local elections on May 3rd, the Labour councillors voted to re-elect Councillor Brett as their leader and therefore the Council leader by 29 to 16.

Since then, a meeting of the local Heywood and Middleton Constituency Labour Party (CLP) members has voted by 32 to 1 against Coucillor Brett, on the grounds that he has brought the party into disrepute, owing to his recorded comments about possible discrimination in how road repairs are conducted in the town.  

It is believed that elements within the party with entrenched cultural preoccupations in central Rochdale have been propping-up Councillor Brett in face of his critics.  One source close to the Labour Party told Northern Voices that there are now two Labour Parties in Rochdale.

On the 16th, December last year, the NV Blog in a story entitled 'Musical Chairs on Rochdale Council' reported:
'COUNCILLOR Allen Brett, Coun Farnell’s deputy, got the job as leader of Rochdale Council, after he was nominated by Councillor Sara Rowbotham and seconded by Councillor Neil Emmott,  The motion for Allen Brett to become Coucil leader was also supported by Councillor Ashley Dearnley and a number of  Conservaties.'  

Since then on the 5th, May this year, over a hundred 'grass-roots' Rochdale Labour Party members from 18 local wards issued an open letter calling for fresh leadership 'to take the borough forward'.

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Sunday 20 May 2018

"Sohm 2020" NEWSLETTER

  Below is the latest newsletter from Sohm Schools Support. In it you will find details of some very real recent successes and our most ambitious project yet: Sohm 2020. This is our project to raise £20k by 2020, in order to completely refurb 6 classrooms and demolish a condemned school kitchen and dining area, and replace it with a fit for purpose multi-functional school hall.
WE are delighted to announce the launch of "Sohm 2020", our drive to raise £20,000 over the next two years to fulfil two extremely ambitious projects.

Our sights have been raised as a result of an extremely fulfilling partnership we have struck with Beech Hill Primary school in Luton. 

We have also been encouraged by help from some other very generous donors and a working arrangement with a Swedish charity in The Gambia, that specialises in training and employing Gambian construction labour to work on not-for-profit projects, at cost price.

Our Beech Hill partnership


Beech Hill primary school in Luton is a large school in a modest, mainly Muslim area of the town. Its recently appointed deputy head, Natalie Carson, is daughter of SSS co-founder, Sandra Walker.  Natalie has previously worked with SSS in Sohm, when five years ago she and a colleague, undertook some training of teachers in the Gambian village.

Friendship cemented in Sohm 
with Beech Hill school, Luton

In her new role, in Luton, she has persuaded the school to "adopt" the Lower Basic school in Sohm. This will involve developing twinning arrangements, exchanging correspondence with individual pupils, exchanging curriculum materials and helping to fund raise on behalf on Sohm LBS. 

Beech Hill has already raised almost £1,500 for Sohm in the six months since the arrangement was agreed, and has committed itself to assist the school for upto three years. Sohm has also adopted the twinning enthusiastically, as the photo, above - taken in February - shows.

Beech Hill has other, exciting, twinning and fund raising events planned over the following months - and we will keep you up to speed on their progress.

Initial target - met!


Over the last year, our charity efforts have been focused on raising enough money to completely refurb and re-furnish broken down classroom in a decaying block of six at the Lower Basic school.  Supporters have generously provided us with the £2,500 we felt necessary to undertake this task. And we thank them (they know who they are!), very sincerely for their generosity.

The six photos in this sequence 
are of some of the damage to the 
walls in the classrooms which will 
be fixed, via steel girder
supports in the six classrooms




Above and below - close ups of the 
extent of the damage to the 
walls, on the photo, two up

Your generosity will also pay to 
replace the broken classroom 
furniture, desks and chairs

Termite damage has made this, the 
door to the deputy head's office, 
unusable.  This will be fixed by September
We have, in fact, been able to raise twice that amount for this project! 

In January we were given an estimate, by the government's education building surveyor for refurbish and re-equipping the whole six-classroom block. We have given the spec to the local Swedish/Gambian charity, mentioned above and they have given us a cost price quotation for the work.

Working on a "matched-funding" basis with our colleagues from Jersey, we are delighted to announce that we have now collected enough to restore the whole six classroom block, and an office within it!

Work will commence at the end of the summer term and we hope everything will be complete in time for the pupils' return to school in September.

More innovative funding


Until two years ago we had free container space to ship donated items out to The Gambia.  This arrangement enabled us to take, among other items, a whole classroom computer suite, with associated equipment.

Stationery: donated ...

The "free passage" offer has, unfortunately ended. One of our long-time supporters, forgetful of this, however, donated a large supply of unwanted stationery to us, as he was closing down his stationery business. It would have been ideal for the children in Sohm - but the commercial transportation costs of getting it there would have been greater than it was realistically worth to the schools in the village.

... and transported.  That's another 
classroom refurb paid for!

A generous, local-to-us, retailer stepped in and offered to buy the stock from us.  Friends and colleagues transported it free.  Result? Another few hundred pounds to help restore the classrooms! Thanks to all concerned in that transaction - on behalf of the children of Sohm Lower Basic school!

The big one!


Flushed with success, and some certainty about future levels of funding, we began exploratory talks, while in the Gambia earlier this year, about embarking on our most ambitious-to-date project. The demolition of the school's decrepit, unusable, 35-year old school kitchen and dining hall and replacement with a fit-for-purpose facility.

Above and below: the existing, but condemned 
kitchen and dining room, from outside. 
Note the interesting curvature of the roof!




It has been condemned and out of use for three years now. Even when it was operational the 'dining area' was inflexible, as the "furniture" consisted of immovable concrete blocks. In the absence of a proper kitchen and dining room, children have to make to with pieces of bread, dipped in a sauce, from outside stalls in the school grounds.

Complete with dilapidated windows - above -
and holes in the wall (not ATM's unfortunately)
 - below- you can put your fist through


Once more, we got the schools' building inspector to give us a price for demolition of the building and the reconstruction of a kitchen area and multi-functional hall.  The initial estimate is £20,000, inclusive.

The hall will have movable tables and chairs - so it can still be used as a dining area, and so much more.

The current kitchen area, above, with a close-up,
below, of the cement units in which wood is 
burned to heat the pots to cook the rice


The furniture can be moved to one side - so offering the school its first ever: assembly hall, indoor gym, meetings room, performance area and prayer room.

Above - the condemned dining hall, with 
immovable cement "furniture". Below the outdoor 
"dining" arrangements the children are making 
do with in the absence of the unfit dining hall

We aim to raise £10,000 over the next 18 months to pay for this - and so, with our Jersey partners, reach our £20k by '20 target.

Your help - as ever, would be much appreciated! And, as ever, we will keep you up-to-date on progress with the project.
 
John Walker 07954 153 305 Gambia stuff: www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk @GambiaSchools Forest Gate stuff: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen
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