If you had someone telling you they were going to build a load of goodies, like a swimming pool, multiplex cinema, hotel, with some shops and restaurants, in your neighbourhood, you might think that it was a good idea. In fact, seeing as we do not have a swimming pool, multiplex cinema or a hotel anywhere near where I live, I ought to be cock-a-hoop at the suggestion that this is what is being planned for a piece of derelict land known to one and all as the 'Arcade site', at the top of the High Street. My enthusiasm for such a scheme should be overflowing. So why is it not?

Readers of this blog and people who live in Walthamstow will know how depressing the piece of waste ground up there on the corner with Hoe Street and Church Hill is. It has stood empty for about 9 years, ever since the council demolished the old arcade with its useful post office and old fashioned barber shop. I used to go there to have my hair cut and listen to a guy shooting the breeze to his customers as he cut his way through the queue on Saturday mornings. It was a place that had men's magazines and sold things for the weekend.

Nine years is a long time in politics. Consultations have, in that time, come and gone, whole careers have been ruined and prospered on the promise of the good things which have been claimed for the site. Various Council officers and local politicians have consulted, liaised, planned, resolved, committeed and generally done nothing at all of use to man or beast with the site. Other, of course, than the pigeons and rats who live there. The politicians, have, for 9 years, taken their allowances and eaten their lunches and made their speeches and resolutions, in cahoots with varous architects, consultants, developers, planners and other assorted ne'erdowells, but not a single cubic meter of concrete has been poured.

The depressing nature of the site is not therefore just caused by its physical appearance as wasteland. It is not even so disturbing to me as wasteland. I grew up near the fens and can appreciate a stretch of flat land when I see one. The depression is also not just caused by the thought of the lucrative gravy train which has chugged its metaphorical way across this patch of land. No, the depression is caused by the fact that in all that time I have yet to hear a single word of truth or sincerity from the local authority about what they have been up to. The small cabal which runs our local authority (a clique within a clique)have been lying through their teeth and actively deceiving the public.

There was a small breakthrough recently, when a local councillor admitted what everyone of sound mind already knew, which was that they had been lying to us . The developers, St Modwen's, who are spun as geniuses at redevelopment partnerships, but who appear to me to be masters of mediocrity and getting their noses into the public purse, are not, we have finally been told, about to embark on construction of the new development. After all, they didn't do it when conditions were right, so why would they do it during a combined housing slump and credit crunch?

In fact the developement for the whole site is back at square one, with fine sounding projects being plucked out of mid-air by people (you know this by the use of the word 'concept') who have no vision, plans, drawings or costings, which they are working towards. In fact, they haven't a clue.

So, I suppose, we can have what we like there. The swimming pool, which is my favourite because I think it would be more fun than a Primark, has not yet been shot down in flames, though I suspect the sports Nazis will insist on so much space for unproductive seating for non-existent spectators on club nights that that idea will a) be no fun and b) too expensive.

The multiplex cinema is already under fire from the McGuffins, who want to renovate the old cinema next door which is not owned by them but by a christian group who bought it but then had its new use for worship denied them by the planning committee. Fixed as they are on renovating the old cinema, they will lobby hard against a new one. The old cinema is currently only being enjoyed by squatters.

The hotel idea seems batty. Waltham Forest is not much of a tourist destination for people who want to sleep the night, and even business hutch operators shun us. That just leaves shops (again, the timing is not good, now that the retail space at Woolworths has become available) and housing. The housing would have to be high-rise to make the costs viable, something which we already have a well-organised lobby working hard to prevent.

There are, of course, other suggestions - the Walthamstow Guggenheim was once as serious a contender as the one we've just been lied to about, no more pointless than the current Plan B of the Council's - which I am willing to bet will involve talking a lot while doing nothing and letting the patch of land slowly revert to nature as a pigeon and rat sanctuary. Maybe in another 9 years someone will have come up with a plan which will work. In the absence of the swimming pool, my Plan B would be to sell off the existing Town Hall and move all the offices to arcadia.