June 2024

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

I’m Councillor Shanell Johnson, the independent candidate for Leyton and Wanstead. I have lived locally for over 30 years and I love our area deeply – it has shaped who I am. I left a major party because I was deeply disappointed with its stance on the ceasefire in Gaza, the overdevelopment at Snaresbrook car park, the closure of Wanstead Youth Centre and just not listening to local concerns. I want to hold regular community assemblies to listen. I will be available to truly serve our home and bring back local grassroots politics.

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

Brexit is the single biggest problem undermining our society. It’s the engine behind the cost-of-living crisis; it’s reducing our ability to live, work and travel abroad and it takes away from the next generation the educational opportunities we could all enjoy through the Erasmus programme. By the big parties not mentioning Brexit, we have one of the most dishonest elections ever seen. That’s why I’m putting myself forward: if elected, I will ensure parliament has at least one voice calling out Brexit for what it is: a con!

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

I am standing for mental health services, equality and human rights, and tackling the environmental crisis. I believe improving air quality is vital. I’m against the expansion of the Edmonton incinerator and extending the operating hours of City Airport. I have been in the UK for 10 years. In 2021, I began playing for Leyton Orient women’s team and quickly grew to have a local connection. Leyton and Wanstead are great places to live but our area has been neglected for years by politicians who don’t listen to the needs of the residents.

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

With 30 years as a lawyer, I have given extensive pro bono legal advice to the local community and am therefore in an ideal position to understand local issues. I have actively supported ceasefires and peaceful solutions in conflict zones, advocating for humanitarian efforts to alleviate suffering. I advocate for a safer community through a tougher stance on crime, while emphasising rehabilitation. I am a kickboxing coach and have been instrumental in getting youths off the streets and improving their discipline.

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

I was a partner in a 12-partner firm of chartered accountants before spending several years running my own practice. The following are some policies I believe are essential to reclaim a broken Britain: lift personal tax allowance to £20,000; scrap energy levies and net zero, slashing energy bills and saving the average household £500 per year; no more NHS waiting lists, cut office waste expending money saved on front line staff; tax breaks for medical staff; and illegal immigrants to be detained and deported.

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

I’m so proud to be part of the Leyton and Wanstead community. If elected, I will work hard for the people and the planet and ensure that all in the area are listened to. I will be pushing for every single home in Leyton and Wanstead to be retrofitted and insulated so that we do not have to worry about energy bills going through the roof. I also know that communities here in Leyton and Wanstead are affected by the situation in Gaza. Therefore, I will continue to call for a ceasefire, an end to arms sales and the release of all hostages. 

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

Born in Zambia and raised in London, I come into politics having served 24 years in the RAF. During my service, I advocated for greater diversity in the armed forces, delivered humanitarian relief in Haiti and the Philippines and led the 2021 air evacuation of Afghanistan. I am passionate about education and opportunities for our young people in Leyton and Wanstead. If elected, my top priorities will be the delivery of a new Whipps Cross Hospital and ensuring the next generation have the same opportunities I was given.

Parliamentary candidate for Leyton & Wanstead

As your Conservative candidate, I aspire to create visible positive change, especially in the less well-off parts that have been neglected. I would use my business experience to grow the business networks and bring new investment to create jobs and apprenticeships for young people. I have a big heart for young people and I would focus on their needs as they are tomorrow’s leaders. I will also focus on rebuilding Whipps Cross Hospital as well as creating visible policing to deal with ASB and crime to ensure residents can feel safe. 

A hustings for the General Election will take place at Wanstead Library on 24 June.

Attendance on the panel has been confirmed by the following party candidates for the Leyton and Wanstead Constituency:

• Calvin Bailey (Labour)
• Tara Copeland (Lib Dems)
• Gloria Croxall (Conservative)
• Charlotte Lafferty (Green)

“A hustings is a time-honoured way for an electorate to get to know more about candidates by quizzing them and hearing them speak alongside each other at a live event. Notably, not one of the eight candidates for this constituency have stood here before. This hustings should therefore be of interest both to local residents and to anyone intrigued by the fast changing political landscape,” said a spokesperson for the East London Humanists, which is organising the event.

Doors open at 7pm and the event begins at 7.30pm.

The event is free and open to all. Questions can be submitted in writing on the night.

Making a will is incredibly important both for your peace of mind now and for planning for the future, says Anna Orpwood from local solicitors Edwards Duthie Shamash

A carefully drafted will can save considerable sums of money in inheritance tax and give you peace of mind that your wishes will be carried out after your death.

Most of us would rather not think about our own death and maybe this is the main reason why over 60% of us haven’t made a will. There are also many misconceptions that stop people from making a will. The belief that “everything I have will automatically go to my wife” is a common misconception, or that “my estate is too small” or “it is too expensive.”

There is also a misconception that will writing is something you should do later in life. Having a will is important at all stages of your life. For example, young parents with children should be aware of the importance of ensuring there is a guardianship clause incorporated into their wills, meaning peace of mind for a young family. For a married couple, careful drafting of a will can also ensure inheritance tax is kept to a minimum.

A will is the only way of ensuring the people you want to benefit from your estate actually do inherit it. If you die without making a will, the intestacy rules apply in an arbitrary manner. This may lead to your spouse having to share your estate with your children, whom you may not have intended to benefit straightaway. Under a carefully drawn will, you can set up trusts for beneficiaries under age or for beneficiaries with disabilities.

At present, the intestacy rules do not recognise cohabitees. If you live with your partner and die without having made a will, your partner will not automatically inherit any of your estate – there is no such thing as a “common-law wife”. Your partner may have a claim on the estate, but this is expensive and a situation that should be avoided.

Homemade wills – which should only be used in the most straightforward of circumstances – can be disastrous, leading to considerably more expense than is needed. It is also worth noting that will writing companies are unregulated and do not offer the same consumer protection a solicitor does, backed by professional indemnity insurance and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A carefully drafted will drawn up by an experienced solicitor can save considerable sums of money in inheritance tax and give you peace of mind in ensuring your wishes will be carried out. Time, however, does not stand still and it is necessary to keep your will under regular review.

Edwards Duthie Shamash is located at 149 High Street, Wanstead, E11 2RL. For more information, call 020 8514 9000 or visit edwardsduthieshamash.co.uk

The Wanstead Wildlife Weekend is the perfect opportunity to experience the fine array of butterflies and moths that Wanstead Park is blessed with during spring and summer, says Tim Harris from the Wren Wildlife Group

The reason butterflies thrive here is the rich variety of habitats. Chocolate and cream Speckled Wood butterflies can be seen flying low in sun-dappled woodland glades on warm days, while Purple Hairstreaks (bottom left photo) are denizens of the high oak canopy, often visible only when the sun catches their wings as they flit through the foliage. 

Wanstead Park’s untidy scrubby areas, especially where there’s plenty of brambles, attract Green Hairstreaks, Marbled Whites (centre photo), Gatekeepers (bottom right photo) and Ringlets. Then again, the open grassland between the tea hut and the Temple has its own suite of specialist species, including the skippers, Small Coppers and Small Heaths. Occasionally, a wanderer from further north in Epping Forest – such as a Silver-Washed Fritillary (top left image) – finds its way here in high summer. A surprise visitor is always possible if you keep searching. 

This diversity has been recognised by the Big City Butterflies project, which is working with the Wren Wildlife Group to monitor these beautiful insects. Volunteers will go out every week over the summer months to count numbers and species, with the findings being fed into a national database. Over time, this information will contribute to finding out how our butterflies are faring nationally – and inform conservation measures to help them. 

Children are naturally drawn to the beautiful colours and graceful flight of butterflies and, with that in mind, the Wren Wildlife Group’s Wildlife Weekend this month (22 and 23 June) will feature a butterfly trail. Just turn up at our information tent by the Wanstead Park tea hut and ask for a children’s butterfly pack.

Wanstead Park is also renowned for butterflies’ close relatives, the moths. More than 700 species have been spotted locally, and for those prepared to leave the comfort of their beds early on the Saturday morning of the Wildlife Weekend, the contents of a light-trap will be revealed at 6am. We are hoping for a repeat of last year’s event when one of the moths lured to the light was a magnificent Large Emerald (top right photo) – the first ever recorded locally.

For more information on Wanstead Wildlife Weekend events, visit wnstd.com/wild24

As part of the Wanstead Wildlife Weekend, James Heal will be exploring the mysterious world of plant galls

What do the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence, the notes of Leonardo da Vinci and the music of Bach all have in common? An answer (there may be more) is that they were all written with ink made from plant galls. More specifically, the ink made from marble galls caused by the wasp Andricus kollari.

A plant gall is an abnormal growth produced by a plant under the influence of another organism. It involves enlargement or proliferation of host cells and provides both shelter and food or nutrients for the invading organism. This definition is from British Plant Galls by the renowned cecidologist, Margaret Redfern.

I am a local amateur naturalist with an interest in a range of different invertebrates. I’m not quite a pan-species lister (someone who records wildlife across all the taxa), but I do have an interest in a range of different groups: birds, bugs (Hemiptera, the ‘true bugs’) and plant galls are probably my three favourite groups of organisms to record and study.

Take an oak tree (Quercus robur or Quercus petraea). You may have noticed the hard spheres of marble galls (the ink producers) on retarded saplings (they seem to do less well on healthy, mature trees), strange sticky growths on acorns (knopper galls caused by the wasp Andricus quercuscalicis) or small, colourful discs on the underside of oak leaves caused by one of three different wasps in the genus.

Gall wasps (think tiny black or brown flying creatures, not big yellow and black ones) create some of the most elaborate galls. How about Robin’s pincushion? The messy explosion of red, orange and yellow hairs on roses. But wasps are not the only gall causers. The entire study of plant galls is named after a family of gall midges (flies): cecidology from Cecidomyiidae, and there are many midge-induced galls including the ‘pocket and stitching’ type galls on ash leaves caused by Dasineura fraxini. 

Gall wasps and gall midges are small insects, but some large gall structures are caused by truly microscopic invertebrates, including gall mites. Have you ever seen pointy red nail galls on lime (Tilia) leaves? If you haven’t, they are just starting to develop now and can be found, for example, on the long avenue of lime trees stretching from Bushwood down towards Davies Lane in Leytonstone. They are caused by the mites Eriophyes tiliae. Inside each nail gall are hundreds of hairs with a hairy opening on the underside of the leaf. Inside the gall, amongst those hairs, live miniscule, worm-like mites.

If you would like to discover plant galls for yourself, I encourage you to get closer to plants, particularly the leaves (but certainly not exclusively leaves, as galls also affect buds, fruit, catkins, flowers, twigs, roots and even the trunk). And if you would like to learn more techniques for finding and identifying them, I will be leading a walk focusing on galls (and other invertebrates that we might find on plants) on Saturday 22 June as part of the Wanstead Wildlife Weekend. 

I will leave you with one final fact about plant galls. Believe it or not, even plants can gall other plants. The most famous being mistletoe (Viscum album), which grows on trees of various species and derives all of its nutrients from them.

For more information on Wanstead Wildlife Weekend events, visit wnstd.com/wild24