Karen Buck visited Gateway Primary School this morning for her annual Eid Card Awards Ceremony. Dozens of children from Gateway Primary School took part in designing Karen’s Annual Eid Card but it was ten-year old Abdullah al-Mobin’s stunning design that edged the other wonderful entries for first prize. Excellent designs from runners-up Khadija Kalam, Ruhi Begum and Rahim Ahmed were depicted on the back of the card and all collected book tokens and other prizes as part of the short ceremony.

Please note that if you usually receive an Eid Card from Karen, but have not received one yet, this has been because of delays with the postal service, following the recent strike.

At Prime Minister’s Questions on Ocotber 23rd, Karen asked Gordon Brown to re-affirm the Labour government’s commitment to end child poverty in Britain, and as a next step, to close the gap between the number of young people between 11 and 14 and the provision of affordable, high quality out of school clubs available to them- including school holidays, evenings and weekends.

On Monday, Karen will join the national children’s charity 4children in launching a report on out-of-school facilities for older children. “Stlll Home Alone?” will be available on-line on the 4children website.

At a packed awards ceremony for the players and volunteer helpers from one of London’s top community sports projects, Ken Livingstone announced a quarter of a million grant to help London Tigers develop employment opportunities for disadvantaged young people.

Speaking at the ceremony, Karen praised Mesbah Ahmed, who has led London Tigers through their phenomenal growth in recent years, and called upon Westminster Council and the Royal Parks to show their support by finding a permanent home for Westminster’s only semi-professional football team.

“London Tigers reach young people who no-one else can, offering not only sporting opportunities but an alternative to the grimmer aspects of life on the city streets. Yet inflexibility, high prices and inadequate backing have driven London Tigers to base their football project in Ealing. This is madness, and we must work together to turn it round”

Auschwitz is not an easy place to visit. On a glorious afternoon, it is beyond human capacity to imagine those calm, green acres as an extermination camp. Impossible, in the autumn sunshine, to grasp the grief and terror of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children herded off trains inside Birkenau, separated and led either directly to the gas chambers or to a short, brutal existence of forced labour, packed inside cattle sheds, twenty to a bed, stripped of the last vestiges of humanity.

Yet a visit is profoundly worthwhile, because it is an opportunity to remember again the enormity of the crime and to make it more than just a brief historical reference point in the continuing story of war, genocide and human cruelty.  And the impact of the display cabinets full of human hair, abandoned luggage, spectacles and shoes has a poignancy that no written words can achieve.

Congratulations, then, to the Holocaust Educational Trust, which organised this trip for London school-children and other guests, such as Members of Parliament. The HEF has an ambitious programme of school visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau, supported by the government, and I hope more local children will get the opportunity to participate in future in this sad but powerful experience.

Karen Buck MP wishes Eid Mubarak to residents celebrating the end of Ramadan this weekend.

This year’s Eid card (pictured) was designed by 10 year old Abdullah al-Mobin of Gateway Primary School.