Thank you to all of the people who have helped raise money for a brand new Community and youth centre on the Regents Park estate and the brand new state of the art New Horizons youth centre on the Somers Town estate. These two estates are closely linked, both geographically and socially. Both are severly deprived and therefore problematic [through no fauklt of the people living here I hasten to add] so it's very welcome and needed that these tow youth projects at long last are being built.
When I tell people I live on the Regents Park estate people who have heard about the R.P.E. respond "Fuck that" or "Fucking hell, that's a rough estate, what's it like living there?" or "Nice...NOT!" and this often comes from people living in places like "Clapton's Murda Mile"...so you get the picture...
So deprived is the large Regents Park estate that it has become notorious and subsequently a documentary was made about the problems facing young people [which made things worse through irresponsible journalism] and a block of flats very close to mine featured on the front page of the Evening Standard labelled "The House Of Horrors" [pissing off everyone who lives in the block /on the estate]. A lack of youth facilites has in the past resulted in hundreds of young people "going on the rampage" when the youth club was closed....So a massive big thank you to all of those who helped to raise a massive 1 million pounds for the new Samuel Lithgow community and youth center.
The estate most affected by the lab, Somers Town, where the Wellcome Trust want to build, also has a lot of problems so agin it is very welocme that the brand new state of the art New Horizons youth project is being built. This will provide much needed facilites for some of London's /Camden's most vulnerable young people. See
www.nhyouthcentre.or.uk

However...while this is good news we feel it is innapropriate for a "danger lab" to be built here & we need so much more for people. People living here have a life expectancy 11-15 years less than people in nearby posh Hampstead.
There a no proper facilities for vulnerable women. Eversholt Street runs alongside the Somers Town estate [across the road form the Regents Park estate] from Euston into Camden and is lined with massage parlours, saunas and strip clubs yet there are no speciallised facilites for sex workers. Women in the sex industry are routinely raped [some women have been raped / violently assualted many, many times each] and yet there is no Haven centre [for women affected by sexual assault] no needle exchange for drug users, no speciallised drop in for sex workers etc and little [if any] funding to help women who are vulnerable. [Westminster isn't much better...despite Soho being a "red light district" facilites are severly lacking and the Turnung Point / Hungerford project for drug users aslo know as the hungerford project is a joke. These problems and the number of sex workers is about to increase dramatically with the new link to Europe at Kings Cross and the arrival of the Olympic Games.

So what are going to get in Camden? An animal testing lab /virus containment facility.

This facility poses a risk of virus leak and "terror" threat. This will inevitably lead to communties, especially Muslim communties being targeted by MI5 / MI6 and the police especially as it will be so close to St Pancras International / Channel Tunnel under "terror" legislation. Some people believe that the facility maight even become a "virus containment / immigration detention /compuslory health testing centre" which given the news that the WHO want to give compulsory vaccines following the "Swine Flu leak / pandemic" isn't that far fetched.

We do NOT want this lab.

 http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BLISS-Lab

 http://www.myspace.com/stopcamdenanimallab

 http://www.myspace.com/mandycamden

This is no place for this. Local people are asking whay arent' they putting it somewhere like Porton Down, out of the way? Why here? It's dangerous. There will be armed police all over the place.

Like alot of people I don't always spell the best but you can still all read it and understand it. There are many people living on these estates who need help with basic reading and writing and there isn't much to help adults with learning difficulties etc here and it is desperately needed. Rather than a lab. The lab consortium have promised "hundreds of jobs for locals"...er doing what exactly?

Get your pens / keyboards out and write to Camden council to oppose the lab.

Camden Council
Camden Town Hall
Judd Street
Camden
WC1

The animsl have to see it....

[Proper link for the youth center]
 http://www.nhyouthcenter.org.uk
We are also relieved [again at long last...] to announce that further new youth facilities have been provided on the affected area. There is the new Euston One Stop on Hampstead Raod [close to Silverdale flats on the R.P.E.] and the Connexions project on Parkway [goes into Camden High St at Brittania Junction].
It's a shame that it had to take this and that it has taken so long for some new youth facilities to be built here but at last it's happening for real.

There is still the question of safety around the lab and the fight is very much still on.

This provides help for homeless young people, benefit advice, housing, education, employment, lunch, lifeskills, IT, showers and laundry, health and primary care, counselling, advocay and court support, connexions pa, clothing and clothes storage, drug and alcohol support, mne's group, women's group, urban gardening, cooker workshops, art photography and film making, drama, music and DJ workshops, peer education, sports, weekend ervices, outreach and a volunteer programme.

We are pleased to announce that the Regents Parkk estate has a new turf [plastic] 5 aside and 7 a side football pitch. [We have to check if this is free to use for young men from Regents Park estates etc and not just something for students...!] and there are now several free to use outdoor gyms across Camden including one in Cumberland Market.

I should also point out that the massage parlours / saunas and strip clubs on Eversholt Street / Chalk Farm Road etc are safe places to work and to visit. This does not lessen the need for a safe place for working women to go for support and advice, especially women who work from flats or the street. I support the rights of working women to go about their business safely and for their customers to do the same.

The police and Camden council have decided to punish young people on the Regents Park and Somers Town estates and have turned the whole area into a dispersal zone.
This also means that any demos or outdoor meetings held against the lab come under the control order zone.
The youth club / community centre is not yet open. The New Horizons Youth Centre is not yet built.
Young people have now had the estate turned into something resembling an open prison where they cannot do things that their posh neighbours can.
Posh and drunken freshers form the nearby Uni can puke in the streets, shout at night, shag each other in nearby doorways and leave their pants in the street unhindered while young people on the Regents Park and Somers Town estates are expected to be treated like caged animals.

It's how the estates are being treated. Unless you live on an estate where young people are stoning the police, gathering in groups of 60 in people's gardens, living under restrictions where people can't gather in groups of more than two you won't take this seriously. ...but it's not particularly funny for people affected by it. Unfortunately it's the most vulnerable people who will be most affected and they are also the people most likely to be ignored when decisions affecting them will be made.