On it are the poems of Robert Auton, who lives in Walthamstow. Here is one he performed earlier.
]]>The sight of a new neighbour to bring footfall seems to have cheered up some of the other businesses - Style Overdose, directly opposite was having its own signage washed and polished yesterday as well. Style Overdose, by the way is a shop I once royally slated for stocking gangster clothes, but I do notice that they have weathered the recession. They seem to have done this by having a much more thoughtful, fashionable and also softer edge to their offerings. These have been very carefully and as a result attractively displayed.
]]>"Apparently Ed Miliband is coming to Walthamstow this month, to lecture us all on climate change. I'm sort of looking forward to that, as our Labour-Lib Dem council is about to introduce five neighbourhood "improvement schemes" which involve a massive re-allocation of pavements and cycle lanes for car parking."
Freewheeler's "first solitary rifle shot" in advance of "the heavy artillery" was fired in his usual style, mocking the preachy local council for running pseudo-green enviro-campaigns while never quite getting round to practicing what it preaches.
His subsequent salvos continue to hit the mark.
Bob Belam, who as the man in charge of pot holes, car-parking and bins is a much maligned man locally - with a job which his Labour partners in the council rarely try to make any easier - did respond to Freewheeler and is quoted in the Guardian, though the statement does to me have some of the bland linguistic traits of having had the life kicked out of it by a vast committee of council spin doctors:
"We are committed to improving the safety of all road users in our borough. The highway improvement scheme in Forest Road will make transport safer and reduce the number of injuries to all road users as it is designed to reduce vehicle speeds between Hale End Road and Woodford New Road.
The scheme will involve reducing the width of the carriageway and adding cycle lanes on both sides of the road. Meanwhile pavement parking bays will be installed. Double and single yellow lines will be installed to eliminate parking across the cycle lanes and the white lines which mark the central reservation will be removed, as research shows this is a proven method of reducing vehicle speeds."
As even I have noted, the roads in question can have as many cycle lanes as the council likes to spend our money on, but if the council continues to employ people to block them by deliberately parking their own vehicles across the lanes, the rhetoric will continue to be unconvincing.
]]>The captioning is now out of date in that there are no cinemas locally.
Big hat-tip to Tilski though, who I hope will be able to complete this work one day.
]]>The window to the left of the door now contains a Union Flag and reproduction of the Kitchener recruitment poster from World War One. In front of this is a stand with a wreath of poppies with the insignia of an unidentifed military formation.
This is accompanied by a helmet from some non-British provenance and is surrounded by a small collection of relevant books. These include a copy of David Lloyd George's War Memoirs, Martin Bell's 'In Harm's Way', Tonie and Valmai Holt's 'Battlefields of the First World War', Elleston Troud's 'The Killing Ground', Gilda O'Neil's 'Our Street' and a volume of Lorca's poetry. There are also a number of videos, such as The English Patient, War and Remembrance, The Great Escape and Pearl Harbour.
This ensemble is tastefully framed by some black ribbon, more silk poppies, a card of remembrance and a wooden pedestal adorned with artificial ivy.
]]>Thus it is that we are told that Ed Miliband is to attend a "community meeting" in Walthamstow at Willowfield School in Clifton Avenue on Thursday, November 26. This is for a discussion about "the environment" between 6.30pm and 8.30pm.
I presume this is part of the local party's attempt to counter activists' perceptions that the LibDems may be out-performing them locally. Ed Miliband is an interesting choice. He is said to be quite well liked in higher political circles (unlike his stuck-up brother the foreign secretary). Nevertheless, despite also being reasonably clean on expenses, his background as an elitist does not automatically mean he will stem the rot. Ralph Baldwin in Labourlist sums up the issue thus:
"Political assistents, think tank researchers, sycophantic suck-ups of the PM and pals with a guaranteed trip to Parliament are reminiscent of the final days of Tory rule back in 1996 when Tory candidates secured their seats by heavy donations and similar arrangements. There is consequently too little practical experience entering Parliament; the majority sweeping in from the educational establishments into the Parliamentary establishments and relying on think-tanks and PR, without the first clue of how to relate to those who they will fail to properly represent. To these institutionalised elites, the electorate have become a nuisance; they cannot afford to speak and debate with the local people for fear of being exposed."
Like Ms Creasy, Ed Miliband sadly seems to fit the bill for this critique. He seems to be the type of out-of-touch and gilded carpet bagger who has wrecked New Labour: After graduating from university, Miliband had a very brief and unsuccessful career in the media, basically going straight into a job in politics as a Labour Party researcher. No doubt his father Ralph's reputation as an influential Marxist helped him secure a role as a speechwriter and researcher for Harriet Harman. That was in 1993. In 1994 he switched his personal allegiance to Gordon Brown. By 1997, following Labour's landslide election victory, Miliband was appointed as one of Gordon Brown's special advisers with specific responsibility as a speechwriter. Guess who paid his salary. You did.
He rose to become one of then-Chancellor Gordon Brown's confidantes, being appointed Chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers.
In late March 2005, just weeks before the General Election, Ed Miliband elbowed aside Michael Dugher, a local candidate (though also a "special adviser" to Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon) to be the Labour candidate in the safe Labour seat of Doncaster North. The shortlist for the seat was drawn up without consultation with the local party. Miliband 'shrugged off concerns of some local party members that he had no previous ties to the area', just as we are told Ms Creasy has shrugged aside the still rumbling concerns that she was also "imposed" through an exercise using a restricted shortlist in Walthamstow.
Miliband has only 4 years experience as an MP. He was elected Labour Member of Parliament for the South Yorkshire constituency of Doncaster North in the 2005 general election. After only two years as an elected MP, Brown appointed him Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office. On 3 October 2008, Miliband was promoted to Secretary of State at the newly created Department of Energy and Climate Change in a reshuffle. He is also a Privy Councillor.
It is presumably in his capacity as minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change that he today announced his support for nuclear power. On 16 October he'd announced that the British government would legislate to oblige itself to cut greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050, rather than the 60% cut in carbon dioxide emissions previously announced.
It is no doubt a pure co-incidence that his partner is a lawyer who specialises in environmental, planning and international law.
]]>It is this august body of men that Darren Chant rose through the ranks to become the Regimental Sargeant Major of. He has been described as a man who was “carved from the rock” that forms the foundation stone of the Grenadier Guards. His rank made him the most senior soldier in the most senior regiment in the British Infantry.
He was born in Walthamstow on 5 September 1969. He completed his basic training at the Guards Depot, Pirbright, in 1986 and was deployed to South Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1993.
After an attachment to the Pathfinder Platoon from 1997 to 1999, he returned to the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards before being posted to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS) as a Colour Sergeant instructor until 2003. At Sandhurst WO1 (RSM) Chant quickly made a name for himself with his straight-talking, no nonsense approach to training and soldiering.
After two years at Sandhurst, WO1 (RSM) Chant rejoined the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. As the Company Sergeant Major of Inkerman Company he deployed to Bosnia from September 2004 to June 2005 as part of NATO's, and latterly the European Union's, peacekeeping operation.
On return from Bosnia he was posted back to RMAS as a Company Sergeant Major from August 2005 until December 2006 where he met his future wife. After a year at RMAS he returned to the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, firstly as a Liaison Officer for the battalion while deployed to Afghanistan on Operation HERRICK 6 in 2007.
On return to the UK he took up the post of Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant (Technical). In the summer of 2008 he was appointed Sergeant Major and moved with the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards to London and on to pre-deployment training. In September 2009 he deployed to Afghanistan on Operation HERRICK 11 as the Sergeant Major of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards on operations at the town of Nadi Ali in central Helmand.
Instead of returning, however, Darren Chant, was this weekend being honoured on Remembrance Sunday as yet another casualty of the war in Afghanistan.
RSM Chant leaves behind three children from his first marriage and a grieving widow who is carrying his unborn child. He died last Tuesday at the hands of an Afghan policeman believed to be called Gulbuddin, who turned on him and four other British soldiers who were also killed when they were resting in a compound.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Darren Chant's mother Elizabeth said his wife had to send the London-born Grenadier guardsman a duvet because he was not given adequate bedding to cope with the bitterly cold Afghan nights.
The 59-year-old said: "My son said Afghanistan was a living hell. They need more of everything, more equipment, more troops, more rifles and more clothes and boots which fit properly.
"Gordon Brown is a joke. He should never have been put in power. Darren's wife had to send him a duvet - bought out of her own pocket - because it was so cold at night".
Then let us fill a bumper
And drink a health to those
Who carry caps and pouches,
And wear the loupèd clothes.
[Updated 9 November 2009]
]]>There is probably an idiot's guide to leadership suitable for everyone. Just about any self-deluded soul can find the guidance to say that they have exactly what it takes to be a good leader. Even Gordon Brown, one of the most unpopular leaders this country has had since, say, Tony Blair, no doubt has some pamphlet by his bedside from a guru or somesuch who lets him think he has the Right Stuff, if only one written by one of the sychophants and chancers who make up and support the modern Labour Party. (With some honourable exceptions, such as Frank Field MP, who once said of Gordon that his "premiership is inept and the party standing is pitiful.")
So in criticising someone's Leadership skills and potential, I think it is good to stay away from the big sweeping vision stuff which people legitimately argue about. Nor am I going to go on in this post about style, charisma or looks or about what it is the leader wants people to follow them to do (though it is important that it makes sense, will benefit the public and can stand up to the competition of ideas which are at the heart of democracy). Instead I think it best to concentrate on something more basic.
At a very fundamental level, leadership involves making it possible for people to follow, no matter what it is being asked of people. For instance, a leader must have basic skills of organisation and communication. A real leader needs to be able to clearly tell people where and when they want them to be in order to do what they want to ask them to do.
'Let's all meet up over there and save the world/tell each other how fine we are/decide what to do'
It's pretty basic stuff, as important as telling people what they will be doing if they decided to follow the great leader. Now, astute readers of my blog will be wondering what all this is leading up to. An analysis of the leadership abilities of Anjem Choudary maybe? He is the over media savvy man who told his followers to demonstrate in Westminster against the evil forces of the oppressive British state and non-Shariah legal system last Saturday and then meekly followed the police's advice that such a demonstration might not be a such good idea and they would be safer playing their silly games elsewhere. (A rational decision by the way, and one that suggests that the guy is not so loony as he appears - he is clearly capable of taking advice from someone other than his nutty supporters).
No. Sadly for the people of Walthamstow, whose hopes may come to rest on her as their Member of Parliament, it is Stella Creasy I find myself discussing. She is a professional spin doctor who currently makes her living trying to convince children and the world that her boss, Bear Gryllis, AKA Chief Scout is not a fraudulent show-off but rather a 'role model' and wonderous example of where it gets you if you would only 'be prepared' to join the scouts.
Stella Creasy, is also an aspirant to replace the honest Neil Gerrard as MP for Walthamstow. As such she spends far less time than you would think communicating directly with ordinary locals but instead seems to rattle around in an echo chamber of her own tiny clique of surviving Labour supporters, she sometimes also tries to campaign via her website. This shows her as a champion of the cause of bats and the EMD Cinema. Unfortunately for the many local families affected she chose these causes over a lot of other more important issues. These include the disproportionately high numbers of local unemployed people or the local businesses, groups suffering as a result of Gordon Brown's recession.
However, she has now decided to meet the public and 'take on' the BNP, despite the poll evidence that their influence locally is negligable. This is an opportunity, after all to show what a Great Leader she is and follow up on the recent leaflet drops her party has been conducting locally. I shall quote her in full. This is not just because as an opponent of the BNP and all it stands for, I do not wish people to think in any way that I might not agree with her sentiments on this topic. Even if I think her way of tackling the extremists is a tad feeble (will they will not sleep soundly knowing she is eschewing the internet to personally set up a street stall?) I think I should be fair and let people know what she is actually saying to them. I would do this for her challengers, the LibDems, Independents like Paul Warburton, the Greens or even the Tories if they could be bothered to do any real politicking locally:
"Lest We Forget: Tackling the BNP through Hope Not Hate
By Stella Creasy on November 3, 2009 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm organising a street stall on Saturday 7th November to tackle the threat the BNP pose to our society.
I recognise that there are many differing and complex reasons why people consider supporting the BNP. I feel it is beholden on all of us who are involved in mainstream politics to accept responsibility for addressing this and play our part in tackling them. I'm proud to live in a part of Britain that benefits from being so diverse. I don't want to see these people claim to speak for my country.
On the 7th, we'll be holding a leafleting session to gather support for action being taken by Hope not Hate. Organisations like Hope not Hate, and Unite Against Facism, are taking on the BNP and the politics of hate and fear that they stand for. They're bringing people together from a wide variety of backgrounds to say that this vile party has no place in modern Britain. If you feel the same, please come to this stall on Saturday between 11am and 2pm to take some leaflets to deliver to your neighbours. Together we can spread the message about what we can all do to help the fight against the BNP, both here in London and across England. Please email if you would also be able to help with staffing this stall during the day itself."
So why bring up the issue of leadership and question Stella's abilities? Simple. She doesn't say where the stall is going to be she wants people to meet her at. All it says is there will be 'this stall' and it will be at 'the street'. Doesn't she have any colleagues in her team who can proof-read?
I suspect she has many great qualities and no doubt will prove good at talking the Chief Scout up into a fine upstanding citizen, but where the demonstration of simple organisational skills and communicating the basics is concerned, all I can say is that for very basic reasons, Stella Creasy is currently falling short.
]]>As I have said elsewhere, sometimes the group's demands are so bizarre you have to suspect them of being on the CIA's payroll as agents provocateurs.
Having earmarked Buckingham Palace to be turned into a mosque, (it has better views than the Chingford Holiday Inn) they are certainly setting their sights high, but not much higher I suppose than some of the other eccentric groups who are attracted to this neighbourhood, like the Taiwanese sect who have turned the old Walthamstow Town Hall into a Yi Guan Dao temple, the dodgy Brazilian wierdos called the United Church of the Kingdom of God who bought up the EMD cinema, or even the El-Shaddai sect who have infiltrated one of the local Catholic Churches.
We love these peddlers of nonsense on stilts, all in their wierd eccentricities and charlatanism, just as we tolerate Anglicans who are more High Church than the Vatican and a Church of Spiritualists up in the village. This is, after all, a town with a centuries old tradition of nutty religious types seeking the limelight - home to dreamers and utopians like the rebellious Quaker and spoilt little son of Sir William Penn and even, dare I say it, William Morris. Maybe there is something in the water.
Anyway, back to today's headline act. Be aware that I have never yet actually met anyone who gave the likes of Anjem Choudary the time of day. None of his group of religious show-offs are representative of the muslims I know. The group's demands are so bizarre that one current theory is that they are really on the CIA's payroll as agents provocateurs, acting as a lightening rod for extremists, a good excuse for agents on expenses to hang about in London or even as cover for the agency's alleged drive to track down the real extremists.
One clue, for the Internet Connoisseurs of Conspiracy, to this American involvement, might come from some rather odd captioning on You Tube. This is for a clip of an interview with these people today, with an error that you might think only a New Yorker would make: the Town Square is described as 'Walthamstow Central Park':
"31/10/09 at Walthamstow Central Park today Islam4uk and Al-muhajiroun carrying the Call of the Deen of Allah to be implemented in Britain. Many of the Media came to interview Sheikh Anjem Choudary Head of Al-Muhajiroun UK Branch, along with Islam4uk:"
Not much to go on, I admit, but the history of the moon landings has been re-written based on less.
]]>So why the interest in the departure of Robin Tuddenham, head of 'community safety' at Waltham Forest Council? Why the comments about 'rats leaving ships' in the local paper and insincere guff about "a new challenge and career progression" from the council's spin doctors?
Well, he is only one of a group of officers (Iain O'Donnell (head of finance), Rachel Tiffen (head of audit) and Tony Jain (head of corporate procurement)), who have left recently.
All four ran departments which were involved in the administration and spending of funds intended to help the poorest parts of Waltham Forest under the Better Neighbourhoods Initiative (BNI).
What is BNI? I hope I shall not be in trouble with his publishers at The Star Magazine. I think though I should let the expert on the subject, Professor Nick Tiratsoo (my Unsung Hero of 2008 and the best local candidate for a knighthood I can think of), explain:
"...from 2003 onwards the local Council has received substantial amounts of government money in order to level the playing field, the idea being to improve key aspects of education, employment and health in the poorest wards, and thus help them close the gap with their richer neighbours.
So far, this programme – at first called Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and more recently the Better Neighbourhoods Initiative or BNI - has involved no less than £15.2 million of expenditure. Such a sum could have made a lasting difference. But the sad truth is that it has not. For, as recent stories in the Waltham Forest Guardian have graphically revealed, money that should have benefited the poorest people in the Borough has all too often evaporated in a fiasco of mismanagement and waste.
The sheer scale of what has gone wrong is quite staggering. One of the Council’s basic strategies was to use third parties to deliver on the ground, based upon the assumption that they had the specialist knowledge and capabilities. It is natural to assume that such arrangements would have been closely supervised - after all, this was a substantial amount of public money. However, in fact, supervision was the one thing that was almost completely lacking. Contracts with the third parties were awarded minus the required paperwork, and in ways that completely ignored the basic anti-fraud tendering rules that are specified in the Council’s constitution. Perhaps even worse, there was little or no effective monitoring and auditing, so that no one could be sure what any of the money was actually achieving.
Lest this be thought an exaggeration, it is worth looking in a little detail at a couple of examples. Predictably, the Council earmarked a good deal of the available cash each year to help vulnerable youth. That in itself was sensible. But when it came to actually spending the money, all common sense seems to have gone out of the window. The Council used its education provider, EduAction, to deliver, yet failed to build in normal safeguards. The result was chaos. Thus, one of these contracts, worth £340,000, apparently contained ‘terms detrimental to the Council’s position without adequate explanation’; allegedly was signed off by a single Council officer acting on behalf of both parties; and when later assessed, involved outputs that could not be verified.
Other parallel projects aimed at strengthening community cohesion suffered a similar fate. Of the nine that were commissioned in 2006-07, for instance, none were procured according to the rules, monitored, or audited, and several seemed decidedly peculiar – for example, the 66,011 paid to a man on the Isle of Wight, which the Council later claimed was a misprint, and the £24-26,000 spent on a one day conference for perhaps 50 local teachers, fair enough if the venue had been in the Seychelles, but puzzling to say the least given that it was in fact at Leyton Orient! To be fair, some of those concerned have now held their hands up and admitted that, yes, this was, indeed, a highly unsavoury episode. And it is to his credit that the new chief executive has set up a high-powered inquiry to make sure there is no repeat. Yet few believe that the full truth has emerged.
How could a local authority have lost its way so thoroughly and completely? What were the Council’s auditors up to? Given that several prominent Councillors appear to have known about some of the problems from a pretty early stage, why did they wait until 2008 before doing anything effective about them? Ultimately, it was the Cabinet that oversaw these programmes, and it is the Cabinet that should now do some explaining. The MPs’ expenses scandal provides a piquant warning."
ISSUE 10 2009 THE STAR 25
As with the MPs scandal, there are a number unresolved issues about heads of these departments leaving the council without the money which is missing or has been mis-spent being fully recovered. We have not yet been given all the facts of course. No doubt a report will shed light on the entire scandal when its findings and evidence is published and a copy put through every voter's door.
In the absence of any arrests or trials, of course, all the quitters concerned are innocent of any crime. Until proven guilty. And they have not been charged with any. But one has to wonder why no charges at all have been brought against anyone in all these years (and I am not suggesting that these four were anything other than incompetant), and no-one has ever been sued to recover the missing funds. On the assumption that whereever it is they have gone to is not run by crooks or idiots who would ignore a timely warning, I have to also wonder why senior ex-council officers were given references adequate for their future employment in positions of responsibility anywhere else?
]]>Now this may not sound too exciting, kids' stuff in fact, but I would not be so sure. It could be fun. Anyway, £1 for five origami sheets to start on sounds like a bargain to me. It is not just the paper you would be buying. This should become apparent when you realise that from such small beginnings bigger and greater things may grow, as this talk by Robert Lang shows:
]]>In so doing, they have also ignored the need for a financial appraisal and have conducted no studies to see whether the High Street is the right place for a swimming pool. This is all against the recommendations of the council's own scrutiny committee.
What can I say? These people are an embarrassment; not financially potty-trained at all.
]]>Its all a bit disappointing, and maybe symbolic of something about modern life. The team of Mancunians who put together a replica of the first all-British plane failed to get their plane (piloted by Judy Laden) off the ground. They made only two attempts and now intend to put their 'replica' plane in a museum. This raises the philosophical question though as to whether it is a plane if it has never actually flown.
The team, all ex-workers from the former Avro factory in Woodford, Formby spent four years constructing their version of the original Walhamstow made aircraft. It seems a sad waste of effort. I'm in no position to know the technical reasons why these modern people were unable to match AV Roe's 1909 achievement. Who knows the reason? Maybe we will never know now they seem to have decided to give up on the project to make a working replica.
It may not see a tactful suggestion at this stage, but maybe if they carry on trying to get the plane to fly they might have more success if they try to take off closer to sea level on a hot summer day on Walthamstow marshes, more closely matching the likely conditions when the first flight took place.
]]>A couple of days ago I wrote about a council meeting to be held tonight to deal with the important and pressing problems caused by an increase in air traffic and noise disruption over the rooves of our houses in Walthamstow. With the council supposed to be considering conducting an investigation into the issues relating to that, I foolishly assumed they would be discussing conducting an investigation into issues relating to the recent increase in air traffic over Walthamstow.
Silly me. It turns out that the good councillors were more interested in discussing conducting an investigation into whether they had read their own pre-postal strike mailbag.
Under the probably slightly sarcastic headline that "WALTHAM FOREST: Councillors vote for action against airport expansion", the local paper is reporting that in fact all the councillors have decided to do at this stage is launch an investigation "to find out whether or not Waltham Forest Council was consulted on plans to expand London City Airport."
Questions were put to ex-Council Leader Clyde Loakes about whether, when he was in charge, he was contacted by Newham Council as council leader about a planning application to expand the airport. Clyde Loakes said he never received a letter. It seems though that his word is not worth much to the people who are closest to him and know him best. Rather than take him at it, the council have decided that the best course now is for "a monitoring officer" to establish whether any officer at the council received a letter and whether a response was provided.
I shall no doubt sleep soundly tonight knowing that the wheels of our local govenment grind on and that growing numbers of pilots will get a bird's eye view of the local town hall while a "monitoring officer" pokes about in an unknown number of dusty intrays at taxpayers' expense before shrugging his shoulders. But I should apologise. I completely under-estimated the capacity of our councillors to fail to get a proper discussion of the issues off the ground without first running into a bureaucratic headwind.
]]>I have finally bothered to find the answer to his vaguely nerdish question. It turns out that Irn Bru, or their parent company AG Barr, actually have a distribution centre locally, at 1 Pristley Way on the Forrest Trading Estate (Tel 0208 527 7660).
Their trucks can also be seen from time to time on their rounds. An interesting feature of this is that the firm is using one of the world's largest electric trucks for their deliveries from Walthamstow, a 10 tonne Smith Newton. It costs next to nothing to run (under 3p a kilometer, which is a tad over a groat per mile). Apparently it runs on lithium-ion batteries which take up to 8 hours to recharge, but it can get up to 50 mph and has a range of up to 100 miles per charge.
]]>Anyway, there will be a demo tomorrow outside the town hall organised by London City Airport Fight the Flights to coincide with Waltham Forest Council feverishly discussing legal action against neighbouring Newham Council over increased flights from London City Airport.
A motion proposed by Cllr Farooq Qureshi (LibDems) condemning the lack of consultation and the decision to approve the changes, also calls for the inevitable wide-ranging and no-doubt expensive 'investigation'. Not only does the motion call for Andrew Kilburn (council Chief Executive) to write to the mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, but the Mayor of London is to be written to, the 'air authorities' are to be asked to explain their role, and a faceless EU Commissioner called on to investigate the impact the expansion has had on residents.
Er, let me save them the inquiry as its pretty obvious actually: noise (and allegedly pollution) have predicatably risen over Waltham Forest as a result of the expansion of London City Airport.
I have no idea whether the motion will make blind bit of difference even if it is passed, but if it is I am not sure I am looking forward to Boris 'Clean Air' Johnson and the EU Commissioner (how will I know who he is?) beating a path to my door to seek my as-yet-unasked-for views.
]]>At some point I also learned that 'homosexual' was more polite than 'homo' and 'gay' was to be preferred to that, unless the person concerned referred to themselves as 'queer'. It was all very confusing. Despite that, the playground term 'homo' never quite went away.
With all these variously nuanced terms available I also found over time I had a number of friends who were 'out' to varying degrees. Some of them would regularly get themselves into trouble and bring trouble onto others, (much of it also criminal in nature). I have never felt entirely comfortable about the use of the stock phrase 'homophobic crime' to mean a situation in which a gay man (or woman) comes to be a victim of crime, especially as there are a number of assumptions involved regarding the sexuality and motivations of their perpetrators.
I always have this odd feeling. It has never quite gone away over the years, from assumptions I made on first hearing the term that 'homophobic crime' that it was like 'homicide' - some kind of crime against man, as in Mankind. For reasons that I don't understand, it apparently means something wider than what used to be called 'gay-bashing', and almost includes any instance where a gay person comes to be the victim of crime.
Only relatively recently has it been measured by the police as far as I know, and when reported in the press, it is either done so as a curiosity or only in the specialist news outlets, such as Pink News. Thus it is that the trial of Adil Zahid, 27, has not received much detailed coverage locally. He used gay chatlines to find men to rob, which is apparently fairly common.
Zahid, from Walthamstow, pleaded guilty to four counts of robbery, one of false imprisonment and one theft of a motor vehicle between June and August at Wood Green crown court on Thursday last week. (Zahid is to be sentenced on November 5th). At the time of his crimes, police urged gay men to take care when using chatlines, saying that people should only meet in busy public spaces.
Meeting in public spaces, however, is not always that good an idea for gay men. Statistics out recently indicate that homophobic crime has risen a whopping 107% in Waltham Forest in the last year.
According to Stonewall, a study conducted last year, showed one in five lesbians and gay men surveyed in London had experienced a homophobic hate incident in the previous three years. But three quarters of those experiencing such an incident did not report it to the police. In fact, seven in 10 people did not tell anyone else about it.
"Over a third of respondents in our research didn't report incidents to the police because they didn't believe the police could or would do anything about them," says a Stonewall spokesman. So the number of people experiencing homophobic crime could well be far higher than crime figures show.
]]>I appreciate that the people of Walhamstow have particularly high standards - the constituency has been home to Parliamentarians such as the retiring Neil Gerrard, (one of the few honest men in the current corruption-riddled Commons), and in the past luminaries such as Clement Attlee have represented us.
Chaps of the calibre of Winston Churcill (who has the status almost of a local as he represented the constituency next door) would brave this unique part of London in political times past. In the General Strike of 1926, Churchill's coach was reportedly overturned on Walthamstow High Street. With such a rich political history, it may therefore be a little intimidating for Ms Cope to actually set foot in the constituency and meet the public she wishes to convert into voters in order to fill such boots.
Nevertheless, I am a bit surprised to realise just how timid Ms Cope has been this past year. Ms Cope does not mention Walthamstow or meeting the voters of Walthamstow once in the whole course of this year on her personal website and she has only been photographed once in the constituency. This was on 6 October. She was accompanying the Euro-trougher Jean Lambert on a lame exercise to get a petition going about the arcade site. This petition shows the pair to be either totally ignorant of or irrelevant to the current debate about the development of the site, merely calling meekly for the council to build something "in sympathy with the character of Walthamstow" blah blah blah. The news is, Sarah, they ain't building anything but a temporary ice rink, which is what the whole scandal is about.
Apart from this one documented foray, Ms Cope has been to Apple Day at Hornsey Vale Community Centre, politicked about in Brighton and Blackpool, discussed the work of the Royal Free Maternity Services Committee at a Hornsey Neighbourhood Health Centre's User Group meeting, done her bit to Defend Haringey Health Services, fussed herself over making energy monitors available to users of Haringey Council's library service, worried about dead-end streets in Stroud Green, played 'spot the councillor' at a Sustainable Haringey Network stall (no point residents playing 'spot the candidate' in Walthamstow when that's what's entertaining her), cavorted round a climate camp in Blackheath and at Kingsnorth and also implied she had been kettled on the G20 demo, (though providing little by way of detailed evidence that she really was in the thick of it at all. Nice banner, anyway).
It is, as I mention above, what she hasn't done that is what interests me. She hasn't done anything meaningful to get to know about the needs of the people whose votes for Parliament she will be asking for in the next election. Walthamstow clearly means nothing to Ms Cope, who is actually concentating only on getting elected to the local council in Stroud Green. That is not here.
Back in December 2008, when she was selected, Ms Cope described herself as a 'hurricane'; telling those who cared that standing for Walthamstow was going to be a 'challenge' - 'especially if the local elections and the GE are called on the same day in 2010'. Back then she was saying a load of guff about how she would be 'rather busy', but that it was a 'Good job I'm not afraid of hard work'.
So I ask, what hard work? She has not shown hard work at all in her role as Green candidate. She seems to want to take the Green voters of Walthamstow for fools. Of course, Sarah Cope being a dud perhaps should not bother people who will not be voting Green at the next election; not unless they believe in democracy.
But I ask myself, why political parties should be allowed to put up pig's-bladder-on-stick candidates like Ms Cope who can't be bothered to take their roles seriously. The Green voters in Walthamtow should be entitled to be taken seriously, not taken for granted. There must be someone else who lives in Walthamstow and who cares about the place who could stand for the Greens. Someone whose opportunity the unimpressive Ms Cope has taken and is clearly wasting.
Why doesn't she stand down and let someone who is seriously interested in representing this constituency as a Green have a go as candidate?
]]>Deputy Borough Commander Sue Williams, (before the article was mysteriously pulled by the Waltham Forest guardian), was quoted as saying she thinks this is partly because of "the effect of the recession" and partly because more people are reporting crime. She did not mention any other reasons.
I wonder. Unless the police have arrested people and thereby worked out why they have been doing what they are alleged to have done, putting things down to 'the recession' seems a bit pat to me. I think things are more complex. Crime was well above average before Lehmam Brothers took a dive. I would tend to the view that being seriously under-policed has more to do with things.
By under-policed, I don't mean not enough bums on seats, though there are suspicions you hear about the place of people using their time sitting in their offices making up numbers. I mean not enough well-lead police out on the streets fighting the gangs or responding urgently to urgent calls from the public for assistance.
The police have, to be fair, also had to deal with a somewhat higher murder rate than they would want as of late, but even here, they have yet to arrest anyone for the murders of Melita Jo and Michelle Samaraweera. For the life of me I can't see what the recession would have to do with either of these womens' deaths.
]]>For people who have never been inside their shoddy housing stock or taken even a general a look around one of their crappy housing estates a series of lies and leaseholders not being consulted properly would have been the early symptoms of Ascham Homes poor management. News in the press of the botched legal process which followed should at the very least have rung alarm bells at Waltham Forest Council. Sadly, it didn't. The matter dragged on for ages before someone finally woke up to the need to have a look at the failing institution.
After Ascham Homes has wasted millions, the cash-strapped council is now going to have to dip into a £5m council contingency fund to pay for the repairs and meet its Decent Homes targets. Additionally, a probe into the fiasco at the social housing organisation was announced last week by the council. This, however, looks like a classic stable door-bolting exercise, in which the council, "working with Ascham Homes", will undertake a “detailed internal review” of the way Ascham consults leaseholders in an attempt to find out what went wrong. A spokeswoman is quoted in the Waltham Forest Guardian saying: “This is to ensure we don't make the same mistakes in the future, and that people are properly consulted.”
My advice for the council is to also read the court papers and go and talk to the leaseholders. As I mentioned over a year ago, there are also a number far-reaching questions which can be asked about this organisation which don't just relate to their inability to consult leaseholders.
Since my last blog on the topic, the public have discovered that our old friends Kier Group (well known for our dirty local streets) were implicated nationally in contract cover pricing, a practice which rigs the market prices which public sector contracts are set at. Their turnover in the year running up to June 2008 was £2.3bn.
Did I not mention this turnover includes the work they get from being one of the contractors which Ascham Homes' management likes to do business with? Kier were among 103 construction firms fined £129.5m by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for “cover-pricing” and other forms of collusion to artificially boost contract prices. Kier Regional Ltd and its parent company Keir Group Plc, were "very disappointed" to be fined £17.9m, the largest single fine in the industry.
Meanwhile, the cheeky monkeys at Ascham Homs who hve wasted so much public money have the gall to pretend that “Our aim is to empower residents to make informed and better choices during the credit crunch." A continuing spin operation has it that their brilliant team of employees have formed themselves into an Orwellian body called, with no apparent thought to the irony of this, the "Proserity Team". Their role being to "help residents make informed and better choices in terms of financial management and sustainability". In oher words, peoples' landloirds r gpoing to be poking about in theri tenants private business in order to make sure that somthing is done about the number of them ho default on their rent.
The potential conflicts of interest involved in the ideologically motivated employees of an orgnisation whih fails to provide decent homes for its tenants and which is demanding money at the threat of eviction from them, also trying to tell them how to run their finances and pioritise their spending does not seem to be obvious to the social engineers in our council and at Ascham Homes. I wish they would just stick to providing decent houses. But no, they want to spend their time on nagging people make "better choices".
"This isn’t just about giving away free low-energy light bulbs and reminding residents to recycle their waste. We are promoting financial inclusion by helping residents get access to the benefits available to them and helping them understand the importance of keeping up to date with priority debt repayments."
Don't get me wrong, low energy light bulbs and recyling are all laudible aims. But not aims that a failing landlord should be spending its time on. Other agencies can do that. Sign-posting people to independent finnacial advice may be something that a well-run social housing provider which understands the conflicts of interests involved may be able to do at some later date. But when Ascham Homes waste the money they do collect in rents and are still leasing out sub-standard hovels dripping with damp? This is not prosperity.
[Updated 24 October 2009]
]]>Here are a couple of films by Andrea Sturt Grosbois which look at life for people down at that magical, marginal place in the valley where Walthamstow abutts Hackney.
It is surprising how often I day-dream about joining them.
]]>Roger Gilham, of the Chingford Rail User's Group is disappointed that the rail link to Stratford is not in the plan. His group have said they will be putting forward 'objections and comments' to the Mayor. Mr Gilham is quoted in the local press saying “I was disturbed to learn that the Hall Farm Curve was listed. We would have expected to see it as a possible scheme and will be requesting that it be part of a programme in the period of 2014 to 2019.”
Interestingly, the not very-well-liked-in-some-quarters (See Item 8 in these minutes of the North Chingford Community Council) councillor Terry Wheeler is blase about all this. He was milking the issue for all the popular publicity it was worth earlier on in the year. Back then he was insisting that Boris Johnson should re-open the Hall Farm Curve. He does not however seem too bothered now, even though he has been ignored on this pressing issue. He said: “I don't think anything has changed. It is probably not there because it is still a work in progress and the details have not been prepared." To which one has to ask of the man supposed to be in charge of making the case for this project - why weren't the details prepared in time?
Anyway, here is what this is supposed to be all about:
]]>There are some interesting claims. She says that the Labour Party, and presumably Ms Creasy personally, is:
campaigning for more police for our streets
fighting to save Walthamstow's EMD cinema
Lobbying to get Walthamstow's dog track re-opened
Leading local action on climate change and bringing Ed Miliband to Walthamstow
tackling child poverty and family debt in partnership with voluntary organisations
She also says that the streets are rubbish, that this is the LibDems responsibility and asks, would you want them to run our schools? I take all this to mean that Labour has woken up. They may even lose this place if they don"t stop dreaming about bats and start looking at the things that really bother people.
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