From the Harrow Observer:

Jun 24 2010 By Giles Lury

The internationally renowned London Oratory School Schola gave a celebratory concert to start the Patronal Festival at St. John Fisher Church in North Harrow on Sunday 20^th June.

The Schola was founded in 1996 at the London Oratory School which is based in West Brompton. It has established itself as one of the country’s leading boys’ choirs singing a large and varied repertoire of pieces from traditional sacred and secular works to contemporary music.

They recently performed with “The Priests” at a sell-out concert in Cadogan Hall and appeared on their second album “Harmony”, but they are perhaps most famous as the voices behind soundtracks for the platinum award winning “Lord of the Rings” films. They have also been chosen to make up the core choir that will perform in Coventry at the beatification of  Cardinal Henry Newman before Pope Benedict  when he visits the UK in October.

The choir comprises choristers aged between 7 -11 and choral singers, boys from the senior school. They are often joined by ‘lay clerks’, professional singers from some of London’s leading musical schools and choirs.

The boys come from all over London and the choir currently includes a number of local Harrow boys. One of these, Wilf Jones, sang both ‘Dulcis Christie’ by Michelangelo Grancini in a duet with Michael Watkins and then gave an expressive solo interpretation of ‘Thou shalt not break them’ by Handel.

The concert, conducted by Mr. Aidan Coburn and accompanied by Mr. Lee Ward on the organ, also included works by Haydn and Mendelssohn. It was a well chosen selection that was at times reflective, at others joyful with the overall result being undoubtedly uplifting. The highlights included two versions of Ave Maria, the first by Matthew Martin sung by the choristers and the second arranged by Giacomo Caccini and sung by the full choir.

Father Kevin Jordan, the priest at the Church of St. John Fisher said afterwards “We were delighted that the school and all the boys were willing to give their time to our church to help us start our Patronal celebrations again this year and we look forward to welcoming them back next year.”

Services have been completely suspended between Hammersmith and Green Park while “emergency engineering works” are carried out. Passengers have had to take the District Line between those stations instead.

Of course, as ALWAYS happens when there is the slightest hint of disruption to the Piccadilly line, it’s the Rayners Lane branch which gets hit the hardest.

There were reports of severe overcrowding at Acton Town during tonight’s rush hour as commuters waited at least twice as long as usual for a Rayners Lane train, while Heathrow services were prioritised.

One Harrow commuter told us: “I left home at 7.30 this morning and didn’t get to Fulham until 9.45am. Tonight it’s taken me an hour and a half to get home. I’m sick of this.”

No-one from London Underground was reachable for comment.

Damage was confined to outbuildings but smoke could be seen several miles away.

No-one is thought to have been hurt. An investigation is underway.

As a result, it’s really hard to get a sense of what is happening here. Normally, people would get their local news from their local paper or local radio station. But in Harrow, we don’t have a local newspaper worth its name*, and the London Evening Standard and Metro freesheets are just rehashes of national news. As for a local radio station, there isn’t one at all.

Yesterday, News from Harrow spoke to a group of people about last week’s election results. Only 2 out of 8 knew that Gareth Thomas had been re-elected as Harrow West’s Labour MP. Only ONE of the eight knew that the Tories had been dumped by the local electorate, and that Labour was now in overall control of Harrow Council.

This has to be a major weakness for the democratic process. If you don’t know who’s in charge, how can you form an opinion about them? While the national media were not surprisingly focussed on the nonsense going on between the Liberals and Tories over which side of the bed to sleep on, in Harrow (and presumably other London boroughs), the story is just not being told.

So let’s spell it out. Labour runs Harrow. The Tories lost spectacularly. The Liberals have one rump councillor. Ends.

*the Harrow Times and the Harrow Observer are published weekly in the borough. The former is a free sheet fit only for the recycling bin, the latter is a paid-for paper.

Me and my big mouth

The lovely Cllr Susan Hall, ex big mouth on Harrow Council, now thankfully just another nobody, said on election night:

“It is looking better by the minute, but having said that, we realised very quickly on the doorstep that things were looking up. I have high hopes for Rachel Joyce in Harrow West.”

Tee hee.

Those Harrow election results in full?

Click here.

Today in Harrow we saw something quite remarkable. You won’t have seen this in the conventional press because they couldn’t be bothered to cover it properly.

But thanks to Twitter, we were able to bring you the first hint that something was seriously amiss in Tory Harrow.

The local election, the cinderella election if you like, had sneaked round the back and delivered a hammer blow to Dave Cameron’s Harrow acolytes.

Labour quietly, methodically and honestly, showed the Tories up for what they are: a bunch of self-serving, self-congratulating, self-publicising useless idiots, who have sought to run Harrow into the ground for the last four years.

Over a period of a few hours this afternoon, the grindingly slow count at the Leisure Centre revealed a massive story. Harrow people don’t like Tories. They can’t stand them.

One by one the big Tory names fell: Jeremy Zeid, letter-writer extraordinaire (never a week goes by when his name doesn’t appear in the local advertising sheets), Eric Silver, the CURRENT mayor and Anjana Patel, the Tory’s education spokesman among them.

Labour now controls Harrow council with an overall majority. We look forward to the next four years with optimism. Congratulations to all who helped make it happen.