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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 18 January 2008

Tories are hitting boxing club when it’s on the floor

• THE news that Westminster Conservatives have, yet again, rejected a grant application from the All Stars Boxing Club after repeated promises of support from top Tories and their parliamentary candidate to help the club, is an absolute disgrace (Youth boxing club left on the ropes, January 11).
The All Stars, on Harrow Road, has been providing first-class boxing coaching and youth services to young people in North Paddington for over 25 years. The club’s work has been praised at the highest levels and I was proud to have supported the call for All Stars founder Isola Akay to receive an MBE in the year 2000.
Yet Westminster Conservatives have, time after time, turned down grant applications on the spurious grounds that club founder Isola Akay and his colleagues did not have have the “right” qualifications or have not submitted a complicated and bureaucratic “delivery plan”.
The All Stars’ record, however, speaks for itself with five (yes, five) current national boxing champions on the club’s books.
But, of course, these real achievements by local youngsters have no meaning for the Conservatives who would rather spend council tax-payers’ money on lavish dinners for themselves and their cronies.
This year, the Conservatives say that they have refused the All Stars’ grant application because they have not got enough money. Yet, next month the “cash-strapped” Conservatives will be spending almost £25,000 of council tax-payers’ money on a slap-up dinner for the “great and the good”. Hands up all those who would rather the money went to Westminster’s young people and sports clubs like the All Stars?
Cllr PAUL DIMOLDENBERG
Leader of the Labour Group
Westminster City Council
City Hall

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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