Wanstead’s local councillors will hold two advice surgeries this month (instead of the usual four). Wanstead Park ward representatives – Councillors Sheila Bain and Paul Merry – will be available to meet residents at the Allan Burgess Centre on 7 December from 10am to 11am. Wanstead Village ward representatives – Councillors Paul Donovan, Jo Blackman and Daniel Morgan-Thomas – will hold their session in the vestry of Christ Church on 14 December from 10am to 11am. Visit wnstd.com/councillors...

John Cryer is the Labour Party candidate standing for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency at this month’s General Election. Here’s why he thinks he deserves your vote on 12 December So, the country is going to the polls again. With Brexitmania dominating everything, you could be forgiven for forgetting that General Elections are about more than just one issue. However, the winning party will govern for the next five years and will be responsible for our health, our children’s education, our rights at work, transport and so much more. Brexit, of course, touches on all of these issues, and it will quite rightly be high up on every voter’s agenda when they decide in which box to put their cross. The Labour Party is the only one of the major national parties pledging a second referendum, with an option to remain. Even as an outspoken...

Henry Scott is an independent candidate standing for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency at this month’s General Election. Here’s why he thinks he deserves your vote on 12 December I am the UK’s youngest candidate taking part in this General Election and I have decided to stand as an independent candidate for Leyton and Wanstead. I turned 18 in November, having grown up in Leytonstone with my older brother and younger sister. My parents, Peter and Victoria, are both musicians. Victoria currently teaches music at Riverley School in Leyton, while Peter is the organist at St John’s Church and runs a business in London. My education began at the Kids-R-Us nursery at the Welsh Church and I now attend David Game College in London. “How on earth did you come to the decision to stand as a candidate?” I hear you ask. Well, I remember...

Ashley Gunstock is the Green Party candidate standing for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency at this month’s General Election. Here’s why he thinks he deserves your vote on 12 December The Green Party will be standing to promote solutions to the important matters of the day and through the eye of the climate emergency storm. There may be doubters, deniers and downright liars who challenge the science that says we are, at the very least, causing the quickening of our own extinction. Yet, we will address all issues from an integrated environmental perspective, as follows. Education: would be comprehensive in the truest sense of the word (no division of intakes on the grounds of religion, race, gender, disability or social status). University fees would be greatly reduced and Ofsted scrapped. Pupils, alongside the core subjects, will be taught an eco-curriculum, to encourage them to respect...

Dr Noshaba Khiljee is the Conservative Party candidate standing for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency at this month’s General Election. Here’s why she thinks she deserves your vote on 12 December My name is Dr Noshaba Khiljee and I am the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency. I was raised in Walthamstow and have many friends and family in the Leyton and Wanstead area. I understand there are a number of issues that voters in Leyton and Wanstead are concerned about. Ending the uncertainty over Brexit More than three years after the referendum result, the country needs to be able to move on. A Conservative majority government will implement the new deal negotiated with the EU, and we can then fully focus on our agenda for improving people’s lives. Improving the NHS I am a practising NHS hospital consultant and am...

Zulf Jannaty is the Brexit Party candidate standing for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency at this month’s General Election. Here’s why he thinks he deserves your vote on 12 December At this momentous time in British history, we should all ask ourselves a fundamental question: why is our country in such political and social turmoil, with a huge gulf between us the citizens and those meant to represent us? Well, I think we all know the answer: the politics and established parties of yesterday are no longer fit to serve us today or into the future. This has become obvious to all of us over the past three years. To change politics for good, we need to rebuild our nation’s democratic foundations so that Parliament serves us all, whatever our backgrounds and lifestyles and across all generations. To do this, we must first see the largest...

Ben Sims is the Liberal Democrat candidate standing for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency at this month’s General Election. Here’s why he thinks he deserves your vote on 12 December Our politics is broken. The Conservative Party has abandoned any claim to economic competence for an ever-harder Brexit. The Labour Party spend their time squabbling rather than opposing a Brexit that would do untold damage to our communities. Both are stuck in the past, failing time and again to deliver a better future. Re-electing a Brexit-backing, Corbyn-supporting Labour MP means more of the same. Thankfully, things are changing. In May, the Liberal Democrats won the European Elections in London. We have an ambitious plan for the future of our country, where every person, every community and our planet can thrive. We can stop Brexit and use the £50 billion Remain bonus to rebuild our country....

The organiser of Wanstead’s Remembrance commemorations – which once again saw large crowds gather at the war memorial earlier this month – has insisted the tradition will continue. “There have been suggestions that it should no longer happen, that after 100 years society should ‘move on’… Each to their own view, but I believe our history teaches us a valuable lesson and so I personally pledge to you all that so long as I’m alive, Wanstead will always have its Remembrance commemoration,” said Colin Cronin....

Rising at Molehill Green in Essex, the River Roding passes through the Wanstead and Woodford area en route to the Thames, bringing with it a very real flood risk to local homes. In the sixth of a series of articles charting the River Roding Project – which aims to reduce that risk – Laura Hepworth from the Environment Agency reflects on the project’s recent community events. River image by Anna MacLaughlin Since our last article, the River Roding Project Outline Business Case has been approved, which means we are now working to produce detailed designs. We are aiming to apply for planning permission by spring 2020. We have also submitted a bid for funding to the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund, and should hear if we are through to the next stage early next year. During October, we were busy hosting local events, which took place on Ilford...

In the 19th of a series of articles, David Bird discusses the work of Redbridge Music Society and introduces us to local jazz pianist Keith Nichols, who will be performing at Wanstead Library in early December One of the aims of Redbridge Music Society is to bring high-standard live musical events of all styles and genres to local venues at affordable prices, performed within a social and genial atmosphere. On 3 December, Keith Nichols will provide a programme of festive music performed in his own inimitable way at the Churchill Room in Wanstead Library. Keith is considered to be a foremost authority on classic jazz and ragtime and is a widely respected exponent of the Harlem Stride style of jazz piano playing – a style developed in the large cities of the American East Coast during the 1920s and 1930s. He also specialises in all...

At next month’s meeting of the Wanstead Historical Society, Mark Gorman and Peter Williams will explain how Wanstead Flats was used as a venue to spread political and religious messages Take a fascinating journey through the history of the flats showing how this semi-regulated space became the base for the free expression of ideas, whether religious or political, at the end of the 19th century. Some notable local characters from Leytonstone stand out. Bushwood, it turns out, was our local Speakers’ Corner. The talk will also discuss how the conservators, the City of London Corporation, sought to exercise control and some of the court cases that ensued. Political and religious groups have long seen Wanstead Flats as a natural meeting place, as ‘public property’ for the use of the people. However, since the passing of the Epping Forest Act in 1878, the City of London, as ‘conservators’...

In the first of a series of articles, local photographer Geoff Wilkinson discusses his new exhibition – entitled ‘Quick! Before it goes’ – depicting London’s East End, an area which resonates with many residents here. Growing up in London’s East End was a fascinating experience for a young boy. In the 1950s, bomb damage from the war was still very much evident. Living mostly in Stratford, I remember the area just to the right of the old Angel Lane street market which had been completely flattened. No houses or buildings remained; it was just a playground or used for parking vans and cars, such as there were. Perhaps it is the memories of this loss of buildings and architecture that has made me so determined to photograph what is left of the old East End. When I opened my Whitechapel exhibition last year at the gallery,...