Daily Photo 31/01/09: Greenwich Church Street
January 31, 2009 by Rob Powell
Daily Photo 30/01/09: Thames at Greenwich
January 30, 2009 by Rob Powell
Daily Photo 29/01/09: Inside Foot Tunnel Entrance
January 29, 2009 by Rob Powell
Inside the entrance of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and looking up at the ceiling. Or as Tubbs might have put it on the BBC’s League Of Gentleman: “Lines and lines and lines and lines and lines”.
Stockwell Street Development “Off”
January 28, 2009 by Rob Powell
Following on from the rumours that the University of Greenwich was buying the land in Stockwell Street where the Village Market is held, it seems that Docklands 24 has managed to find out more about this and is reporting that the owners, Capital and Counties Ltd, have cancelled the planned development for the site which included flats, shops and offices. It confirms that C&C are also considering selling the site.
Have a look at the article yourself – it mentions the University of Greenwich as possible buyers but also raises the interesting scenario of Greenwich Market relocating to the site whilst its own planned works take place.
Dancing On Ice Live Tour at the O2 Arena
January 28, 2009 by Rob Powell
Dancing on Ice Live at the O2, 28th & 29th April 2009
Ask someone before last week what their favourite ever ice skating moment was and they’ll probably say Torvill and Dean’s Bollero. Ask them this week and they’ll quite possible say the moment when Todd Carty went stumbling off the set on Dancing on Ice (see video at bottom of post).
If you want to catch the Dancing On Ice action live, then you’ll be able to see it all at the O2 Arena on the 28th and 29th April.
DANCING ON ICE LIVE TOUR TICKETS – 28/04/09
DANCING ON ICE LIVE TOUR TICKETS – 29/04/09
If your visiting from out of town, your nearest hotel for the O2 is the Greenwich Express by Holiday Inn.
See Todd Carty in action on Dancing on Ice
Andrew Gilligan: Taxing Times
January 28, 2009 by Andrew Gilligan
AM I SE10’s Max Mosley? Just to make clear, I do not live in a basement being whipped by whores – but I am surely the only person in the entire London Borough of Greenwich who actively seeks out our dear council’s ludicrous parody newspaper, Greenwich Time.
Most of us, of course, have as much choice about receiving this publication as we have about paying for it – it is thrust through our doors whether we want it or not, just as the money it costs is taken from us through the council tax. But my street isn’t assured of a reliable supply (it’s pretty rough down Hyde Vale, where even the milkmen fear to tread) – so most weeks, with a sick feeling of guilt, shame yet also secret, forbidden pleasure, I make the trip to West Greenwich library.
Furtively, hating myself, I enter the building, blow the dust off that week’s thick, virgin pile of Greenwich Times and – trying to ignore the staff’s incredulity and contempt at my actions – slip a copy, perhaps two, into a brown paper bag. I tell myself it doesn’t do any real harm – surely everyone involved must be over 18 – but that ignores the terrible price paid by all those vulnerable young trees, whose innocence has been quite literally pulped to print this ghastly perversion of natural, healthy journalism.
I get it to find out what the council wants us to believe it is doing – from which, through a simple formula (assuming exactly the opposite), you can usually work out what it is actually doing. It looks like a real newspaper. Quite intentionally, I’m sure, there’s no mention that it’s an official municipal propaganda sheet on the front cover. There are even bylines. Someone called “Peter Cordwell” seems to write most of the stories – surely this must be a pseudonym? Would anyone with any professional pride at all want to be associated with this stuff?
Because the front-page news story on the latest edition is just about the closest you can come to taxpayer-funded political propaganda without actually putting “Vote Labour” as the headline. “It’s not just freezing outside!” starts ‘Cordwell’ (who has a regrettable weakness for the exclamation mark – another sign that he cannot be a real person.) “Council leader Chris Roberts intends to bring the chill into the council chamber next month when he proposes to freeze the council tax.”
Goodness me – as recently as last October, Greenwich was one of 16 London councils which rejected a council-tax freeze proposed by the shadow chancellor, George Osborne. Could there possibly be an election coming up?
Anyway, back to Greenwich Time: “Chris told GT: ‘For the past ten years Greenwich has established a record which is all but unparalleled across London for rigorous and efficient management of its budgets. While continuing to levy what is almost the lowest cumulative Council Tax increase in London, we have seen Greenwich go from having the second-highest Council Tax in London to being 22nd of 32 boroughs.’”
Both these latter claims are in fact misleading, since they relate to council tax in the current financial year, 2008/9 – not next year, when the freeze Greenwich Time trumpets comes into effect. We don’t actually know how Greenwich will compare to other London councils next year yet, because not all have yet announced their 2009/10 council tax levels. It seems likely that many other boroughs will also freeze, or even reduce, their council tax, which might make Greenwich one of the more expensive authorities again.
And as for that “all but unparalleled” efficiency, the truth – which Greenwich Time somehow forgets to mention – is that our current council tax is in fact the fourth highest in inner London, the class of councils in which we are included, and almost precisely the average for London as a whole.
It’s true that the level of any authority’s council tax depends on factors other than its own efficiency – such as Government grants. But since the level of the council tax is the ground on which Greenwich Time has chosen to blow its PR bugles, a more accurate claim would therefore be that the council tax shows our efficiency is, at best, average.
No doubt the purpose of all this, and all the other Greenwich Time bullshit, is to persuade us to love the council, and to re-elect the wise and beneficient leader who features so constantly in its pages. But I feel increasingly sure that it is having precisely the opposite effect.
I never used to have all that many quarrels with the people who run Greenwich. I’ve even voted for some of them. It isn’t one of the more outrageously useless authorities – it was quite good over Greenwich Market, for instance.
But I, and other people I know, feel insulted by the sheer stupidity and relentlessness of Greenwich Time – now published, incredibly, every single week. We feel angry at the simply improper way that our money is being used to promote politically-motivated distortions. And with non-council related feature material alongside all the Town Hall happy-news, I feel concerned that the clear intention is to undermine independent local newspapers which can paint the full picture.
They no longer have a state-controlled press in East Germany, Poland or the Czech Republic. But below the radar, and in keeping with our new status as a country where freedom is being nibbled away, we are getting one in Britain.
Daily Photo 28/01/09: Trafalgar Tavern
January 28, 2009 by Rob Powell
The Trafalgar Tavern on the Greenwich riverside.
University to buy Stockwell Street “Village Market” land?
January 27, 2009 by Rob Powell
Has the University of Greenwich purchased the land at Stockwell Street where the Village Market is held? That was the question sent into me by Johanna, who heard this from a Cabbie – usually the best informed people in London.
The site in Stockwell Street, which includes John Humphries House and hosts the “Village Market” every weekend whilst being a private car park for the rest of the week has had redevelopments planned for it for as long as I can remember. In fact, I had an office in John Humphries House about four years ago and was told not to expect to stay too long as it would soon be demolished.
Plans by the developers – WestCity Plc and Capital & Counties Properties Ltd – for a mixed use development of flats, offices, shops and space for new market stalls were granted permission by the Council last year, and also got the nod from the Mayor of London and the Government Office for London.
But with new home building coming to a stand still, have the developers decided against going ahead with their plans? I contacted the University of Greenwich to find out if there was any truth in the rumour, and their spokesman told me:
“The university does have plans to move its School of Architecture & Construction to Greenwich and we have been looking for a suitable site for some while. Although we have been in talks with a number of landowners, we have not yet purchased a site.”
So, intriguingly, the Cabbie was half right – the University is looking for a site but no, it hasn’t purchased the land in Stockwell Street… yet!
What would you like to happen to the site in Stockwell Street? Would you like to leave it as it is – a private car park for five days a week and a market for two days – or do you think it could be more productively used?
Daily Photo 27/01/09: Polar Bear In Greenwich
January 27, 2009 by Rob Powell
Many thanks to Nick Davison from the University of Greenwich for allowing me to use this photo he took yesterday of a polar bear in Greenwich. The sculpture was created by 15 artists and was floated down the Thames to highlight the issue of melting ice caps.
Daily Photo 26/01/09: Greenwich Foot Tunnel
January 26, 2009 by Rob Powell
Staircase at the Greenwich side of Greenwich Foot Tunnel.
