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Star youth club deserves proper financial support
•“THERE are just lots of meetings but no action,” sums up the experience of All Stars founder Isola Akay MBE after months of being promised financial help by Westminster Conservatives to help the embattled Queen’s Park youth club build on its remarkable success over the past 30 years.
Many of your readers will recall the song and dance made by the Conservatives earlier this year of saying how much they wanted to help the All Stars get over its financial problems. Their local candidate organised a petition which, for no apparent reason, has still to be presented to the council. They even drove their mayoral candidate up the Harrow Road to mouth a few platitudes about the importance of giving young people a sense of direction and instil some discipline into their lives.
But talk is cheap and that’s really all the Conservatives’ promises have amounted to so far.
As Mr Akay said last week: “Everything’s gone quiet.”
Apparently, we impressed the council when it came, but in the meantime we’ve got bills to pay.” So what is holding back Westminster Conservatives, who run the wealthiest council in the land and with £77 million sitting in the bank from making a grant to the All Stars as promised?
Well it seems that when the Conservatives talked about giving the All Stars financial help they didn’t actually mean that this would involve the city council! Instead, the All Stars have been told by the council that they should be applying to private firms and national grant-giving bodies for much-need funds to finance their local activities with young people.
Of course, it’s good to see the Paddington Waterside Partnership of companies at Paddington Basin putting on a promotional sports event in June and I hope that it raises a lot of money.
But well-meaning hand-outs from local firms can only achieve so much and, if the All Stars are to succeed in providing first-class boxing and youth facilities for young people in Paddington, they need sustained, long-term funding.
Such long-term financial support can, realistically, only come from the public sector and the council is failing the All Stars and all of its young members by its refusal, so far, to make this sort of long-term commitment.
Labour councillors will do all we can to help. Last week I wrote to the All Stars (and others) inviting them to make a bid for part of the £100,000 Queen’s Park ward budget. I hope that they put in a good bid which Barrie Taylor, Mushtaq Qureshi and I can support.
Of course, the limited resources we have at our disposal means that we can only make a small contribution, but I am a firm believer in “action not words” – unlike the Conservatives!
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg
Leader of the Labour Group
Westminster City Council
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