Daily Photo: 27/05/2010 – Action!

Spotted this young crew doing some filming in Roan Street last week, just outside Robert Gray’s B&B, Number 16.

Greenwich Beer and Jazz Festival 2010

Greenwich Beer and Jazz Festival gets underway this evening with a performance by the James Taylor Quartet.

The Festival, now in its third year, lasts through until Bank Holiday Monday and will also include performances by, amongst others, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Brand New Heavies, Incognito and Tony Hadley with his Swing Band.

The festival takes place in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College and tickets are available to buy online.

Daily Photo: 25/05/2010 – Prince of Greenwich

When the Prince Albert in Royal Hill was renamed as the Prince of Greenwich, there was shock at the name change and that terrible paint job. The owner has kept the new name but has tried to do something about the sign so here’s a picture of the the Prince of Greenwich’s second attempt at a sign. What do you think?

25 years of Art and Crafts at Greenwich Market

Greenwich Market celebrated 25 years of trading for the art and crafts market on Friday.

Visitors to the market enjoyed free food tasters, craft demonstrations and live music, including a string quartet from Trinity Music College and a performance by kids from the James Wolfe school.

To mark the anniversary, a new clock was unveiled with help from local MP, Nick Raynsford, out-going Mayor of Greenwich, Cllr McCarthy, and director of the Greenwich Hospital Estate, Martin Sands (pictured above). The four-sided station-style clock, which hangs a rafter in the middle of the market, was made by local clockmaker, Les Grayson.

After pulling the cord to unveil the new clock, Nick Raynsford spoke to Greenwich.co.uk:

Greenwich Market is one of the great attractions in Greenwich, and over the years it’s evolved and changed. Two hundred years ago it was very different to what it has become in the last twenty-five years where it’s been an arts and crafts market and recently we’ve added in the food as well. Greenwich Market will go on evolving and changing but it’s a fundamentally important part of the attraction of Greenwich and I, along with everyone else, are determined to see a vibrant market continuing here.

Click here to see more photos from last Friday

Theatre Review: Elephant, Greenwich Theatre

‘Elephant’ is a stunningly inventive show and the only disappointment is that its run at Greenwich Theatre is limited to five days. It’s difficult to come up with a simple word that sums up its style as it combines dance, theatre, puppetry, music, Commedia dell’Arte and ritual in a joyous telling of the life story of an African chief This collage of styles and images is amazingly coherent, and thoroughly engrossing.

The production is a hybrid of South African and European influences. This can be most clearly seen in the contrasting performances by Pady O’Connor, as the Devil, and by Zamuxolo Mgoduka as the Chief’s Brother. O’Connor has the physicality of the Devil himself, hissing and sliding his way around the words and the stage, incorporating into his performance a very European style of physical expression. The Devil has all the best lines and he brilliantly uses his hat to emphasise his words and create an extension of his own slippery personality. Contrasting with this, Mgoduka’s movement and speech is rooted in South African dance and language, he often slips into a regional language. The powerfully physical nature of his performance, his feet constantly pounding the earth, emphasise his connection with the land and his ancestors.

The show is supported by exciting music played by a single musician, occasionally enhanced by the cast when the score demands it. An array of percussion instruments provide haunting echoes of the African plains during the darkest and most moving scenes, whilst drumming and singing drive forward the dance sequences with huge energy and enthusiasm.

When the elephants (and it’s no secret that they appear in the play) lumber onto stage the audience has its breath taken away. ‘War Horse’ hasn’t got a monopoly on stunning puppets from South Africa, and for sheer impact the elephants knock Joey the horse and his friends into a cocked hat. They are impressive not only because of their extraordinary visual presence and beautiful movement – the mother elephant taking the baby one under her trunk for protection is a highly emotionally charged moment – but also because they are lit so wonderfully. Sometimes they appear as in a dream behind a gauze, and at other times in shafts of light that mimic the shade of trees in the African bush.

Whilst the play has a strong and compelling narrative, containing many comic and emotional moments, there is a very forceful message. The colonisation of Africa, as visualized by two actors in ragged uniforms selling guns to the tribesmen, is at the root of the modern disjoint conflict between man and nature. It is, ultimately, the reason why at the start of the story our narrator, Chief Zanenvula, cannot take his rightful place in heaven.

This show has been created with real love, and every member of the ensemble contributes to a highly successful evening. Even the programme, rich with photographs and text, is the best value I’ve come across for some time. If it were the West End it would be a souvenir edition sold for £10; here it’s a modest £3. The collaboration between South Africa’s Market Theatre and Newcastle’s Dodgy Clutch Theatre Company is enormously rewarding. The show has, in different guises, been on tour for around ten years and if you haven’t had a chance to see it at Greenwich my guess is that it will be at another venue near us soon.

Daily Photo 21/05/10: Scaffold of St Alfege

The tower of St Alfege church covered in scaffolding whilst renovation work is undertaken. I suspect an even better picture could be taken by someone at the very top of that scaffold.

Mouse infestation forces temporary San Miguel closure

Greenwich Council forced the temporary closure of a tapas bar in Greenwich last week.

San Miguel in Greenwich Church Street was closed for three days after evidence of mouse and cockroach infestations were found by Environmental Officers from Greenwich Council.

Council officers initially found evidence of the infestation in an unannounced visit on May 4th, and then found that there was still evidence of mice and cockroaches in the basement, kitchen and food preparation area when they returned a week later.

Greenwich Magistrates Court issued an emergency prohibition order on May 10th, and San Miguel was allowed to reopen again last Thursday after undertaking the improvements required.

Councillor Maureen O’ Mara, Greenwich Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Community Services, said: “The majority of food businesses in Greenwich comply with the law but there is a minority that despite our guidance continue to put their customers’ health at risk. The Council is urging food businesses to take advantage of the free advice available to them in order to protect public health and safety. We also want residents to enjoy their leisure time in the borough without putting their health at risk.”

Andrew Gilligan: Park Olympics: A Potential Nuclear Bomb for the Council

After giving the Olympics planning permission in March, Greenwich Council may dare to hope that the issue is over. I’m much less sure. It would, for instance, be wrong to see the recent council elections, at which Labour was re-elected, as providing any endorsement for the council’s policy. All the opposition parties supported the Olympics, too.

More importantly, and more dangerously for the council, the way Greenwich made its decision appears to be in direct breach of two key principles of planning law and the Local Government Code of Conduct, and of broader legal principles governing the way in which public bodies must make decisions.

Under these rules, local authorities and their members have a duty to approach planning applications with an open mind and without prejudgment. They are under an absolute legal requirement to invite objections, consider them properly and go through a full consultation process. They are supposed to judge each application on its merits, carefully examining the details presented to them for compliance with their planning policies.

And there were many details. Locog’s application amounted to thousands of pages – setting out all the things the council was supposed to think about before it gave the go-ahead. We can, however, definitively prove that the entire process was a charade. Long before any actual application was presented, the council stated publicly that its mind was made up. Before even a single objector was heard, the council said, in effect, that they would all be ignored. Before even a single page of evidence was produced, the council made clear that the application would be passed.

The key piece of evidence is Greenwich Time, the council’s propaganda newspaper, performing a useful service for perhaps the first time in its sorry life.

On 9 September 2008, more than a year before the planning application was even submitted, a Greenwich Time headline about the proposal piped: “Course the Royal Park will be fine!” and described the park’s hosting of the events not as an if, but as a when (“The o2, Greenwich Park, Woolwich Barracks – three world-class venues that will put Greenwich firmly on the world stage when they host up to a third of the events at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”)

On 30 September 2008, Greenwich Time trumpeted: “A first look at the new [Olympic] cross-country [course] map – and it looks just great!”

On 6 October 2008, Greenwich Time described the park’s use for the Olympics as a “field of dreams” and stated: “The Olympic and Paralympic Games are coming to London – and Greenwich – in 2012… at the 02, Greenwich Park and Woolwich Barracks… Let the excitement sink in.” It described the use of the park as a “’natural’ for the Games” which would offer an “unparalleled opportunity” for the area. This is the council’s official voice speaking, don’t forget. Does it sound a bit like prejudgment to you?

On 8 December 2009, just after the planning application went in, Greenwich Time announced: Greenwich will host a number of Paralympic sports in 2012… The Paralympic equestrian events will be held at Greenwich Park.” The same words were used in an official council press release, four days before.

And on the morning of the planning meeting itself, 23 March 2010, Greenwich Time plopped onto my mat complete with a big map showing the Park as an Olympic venue and a double-page spread on how “a temporary arena will be built within the Park to host the equestrian events.” Actually, boys, at that stage it was still theoretically an “if” – because you hadn’t made your decision, remember?

In an age when even the most trivial decision has to be consulted on, at the risk otherwise of being struck down by the courts, Greenwich Council has left a huge flank open here. Of course, many such decisions are fixed well in advance. Consultations and suchlike procedures are usually shams. But great care is normally taken to pretend, to go through the motions of open-mindedness. I can’t remember any case in the past where a public authority has so blatantly announced the outcome at the beginning of the decision-making process.

This indisputable evidence that the council acted with predetermination and a closed mind seems to me to offer significant scope for legal or other challenge.

Chris Roberts re-elected as Council Leader

Greenwich Council met this evening at Woolwich Town Hall for the Council Annual Meeting.

The meeting, which lasted just 13 minutes, saw Cllr Chris Roberts (Glyndon, Labour) re-elected as Leader of the Council for the next four years – a post he has held since 2001.

Also on the agenda at the meeting was the appointment of Cabinet Members and the establishment of, and appointment of members to, Council Committees and Panels for 2010/11.

Cllr Barbara Barwick (Woolwich Riverside, Labour) was elected as the Mayor of Greenwich for 2010/11 with Cllr Jim Gillman (Kidbrooke with Hornfair, Labour) appointed as her Deputy.

The Mayor-elect’s inauguration will take place next Wednesday at the Old Royal Naval College’s Painted Hall.

Daily Photo: East Greenwich Pleasaunce

Apologies for the Daily Photo not being quite daily lately, but thanks to Fergal Spelman for this photo from East Greenwich Pleasaunce.

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