Future Camberwell
Published by Peter | Filed under Development
Architects drawings of the planned changes to Denmark Hill.
Thanks, NickW & oldphotofan!
July 31st, 2009
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Welcome to the Camberwell Online blog, a place for free and spirited exchange on anything with even a tangential connection to the South-East London district.
Wow. Now that’s what I call a makeover!
Cheers NickW.
Glad the building’s listed — reckon it led to a bit more effort being put in.
Nice station. Sweet. If only the rest of our lives were beautifully drawn by architects.
John Betjeman, gah, always wanting to be super-wistful like Philip Larkin, but only managing wistful lite. “If only the rest of our lives were beautifully drawn by architects.” Pah!
That doesn’t look much better than it does now?
I think it’s less about looking better, and more about being better; at the moment everyone entering and leaving the platforms are funneled through a single door; there’s no wheelchair or lift access; nowhere to put oyster barriers. This is a good modernisation of the building.
It would be far better, stylish, understated elegant and much less intrusive as a simple flat topped steel and glass box without that silly half tunnel entrance that makes it look like a model of a bad shopping centre. No doubt cheaper too.
Like a Frank Lloyd Wright. We’re missing a chance here. This could be a modest architectural landmark rather than an over sized bus shelter.
I like it.
Carnavale del Pueblo tomorrow in Burgess Park…
Peter
Good design works well AND looks good. If it does not do both ( and its not rocket science) then it is bad design.
I strongly disagree with Mark on this one. I think the side entrance looks GOOD. The elegant arched roof is not only aesthetically pleasing mirroring the older grade II listed station house’s roof lines but its design is also much more practical than a flat roof which never adequately allow rain water to run off without over engineering often leading to leaks. However as in any design the proof is in the materials used. The way I interoperate the drawings is that the roof is green oxidised copper. It reminds me of a gallery or quality European station design. If I remember rightly Mr Dodds was one of the St Georges Camberwell Grove developments fiercest critics I hope you’re eating your words on that one now Mark.
@ deb
Doesn’t that rather depend on your subjective opinion of what ‘looking good’ is?
I quite like it, though I mistook the patch of shadow cast by the the tree in the illustration for graffitti at first.
I’m still a critic of the St George development. Cosmetically the exterior brickwork and detailing of the imitation Georgian facade is impressive. The whole is nowhere near complete yet and it’s far too soon to be eating words.
Anyone else looked into any of the cupboards at the bottom of Grove Lane?
As for the station entrance, inspite of my eyes having being opened, it still looks like a mini 1970’s Arndale centre to me.
The plans are a huge improvement and will make for a better station experience…More natural light and lifts for people with physical problems to use Denmark Hill for King’s — Very important.
I too think that the half turrets are unnessasary — I think an architect would prefer a nice clean line but somebody somewhere will make him/her add a mock-Victorian florish that will look crap in comparision to the original booking hall which is alongside
But we’re getting a Tube (of sorts) so I’m not complaining about that — It’s a cause for celebration
It’s low key and modest — typically Camberwellian!
…and it will be nice to see all the overgrown shrubbery removed that only encourages litter and rodents
I agree with Mark that the “entrance pavilion” could have been more elegant and less like a retail park bus shelter.
Whilst we are talking about planning and new developments, was in the snooker club last night.
Here’s a link to the latest plan…
http://planningonline.southwarksites.com/planningonline2/AcolNetCGI.exe?ACTION=UNWRAP&RIPNAME=Root.PgeDocs&TheSystemkey=9532228
It would be great to get a cinema back in Camberwell…
Hopefully we could get the bingo hall re-converted — if only to prevent one of the execrable unregulated free market economic “Blessed Celestial Church of The Miracle of the Pastors Brand New 450s Lexus” from taking it’s place…
Conning their flock is their only game…
@Monkeycat: Which document should we be looking at?
And to all the ‘design should be beautiful’ types: my potato peeler is perfectly designed to peel potatoes, but it looks rubbish.
Mark -
I know what you’re saying about good design and more often than not I will always agree — but I believe it’s better to keep the new entrance clean,functional and as unobtrusive as possible…
Whatever they build cannot possibly compare or look better than the original booking hall…That is what will always catch the eye
I would rather they spent the money on talented thoughtful architects to build some decent apartments and social housing rather than the ugly breeze block and cladding jobs that are being put up all around London (especially Southwark)
Non?
That is stark, a dull potato peeler.
Starker still, you should not peel potatoes at all, because much of the goodness is in the skin.
The Routemaster bus is back in the garden at the bottom of Bromar Road. It has had a respray in a maroony red, not quite the pillar-box red of the originals, but a good job. It almost looks as though the owner is turning it into a permanent annex to his house. What a wonderful idea. I wonder what the planning permission is for that — what a fabulous loophole that would be. The chap has merely bought and parked a vehicle on his own property, but now he also has a finely designed, two-storey urban cottage in his back yard. Brilliant.
The hanging baskets in Warwick Gardens are splendiferous. Half the people in Camberwell must be away in Tuscany and Provence at the moment, but surely they search in vain for greener grass or more bountiful floral displays?
The Book of the Week on Radio 4 at 9.45pm is the new, long-awaited biography of Muriel Spark, the author of “The Ballad of Peckham Rye” and “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” It is very intriguing and intimate. We will hear this week of her move to a Camberwell bedsit and her huge crisis of faith and sexuality, an intoxicating cocktail. Sex is not a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that.
Talking of which, the Carnaval del Pueblo was throbbingly vibrant yesterday. There were incredible sights corseted into tight, tiny, aggressively, suggestively, shinily, provocatively, leathery clubbing gear.
Thus the beat goes on, right here, right now, in the bedsits and bordellos, the flats and fancy houses, the parks and public houses, the sumptuous bedrooms and on the hard, hard kitchen floors of Camberwell.
Attended the planning committee meeting on the redevelopment of the Kings Car Park on Coldharbour Lane last week. The two blocks (108 flats of 100% affordable social housing) got approved, despite objections that they are too tall and will dwarf other buildings in the area.
This will be the biggest development in the Coldharbour Lane area for many years. Link to architect’s impression below — note the bright yellow balconies which I fear will actually look vile.
http://loughboroughjunction.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/img_2138.jpg
Blimey, that’s funny. Ben, can you design Pete a better potato peeler?
@ Peter:
All the documents you see are relevant to the pool hall scheme, but I suppose the one that would be most interesting / give an idea of what they are planning is this one.
@Monkeycat — do you know if they will be voluntarily moving their facade back a metre to give a decent width of pavement near the town centre, as recommended by Jeremy Leach in his Vision?
Absolutely no idea if he’s moving the facade back.
However, since the presentation by Jeremy L. was only a week or so ago, I would imagine that the plans for the redevelopment were developed well before that.
Those front elevations of the Coldharbour Lane development immediately remind me of new builds in Harlem.
Here’s one of them
Where is Camberwell going? I wonder.
Oh dear I’m marked as spam. At least I must be well preserved.
“Baldwin Crescent was a quiet street behind the thundering traffic of Camberwell New Road… It was a rackety district… the area is much the same today: tumultuous, largely working class, spliced with some tranquil rows of yellow-brick houses like Baldwin Crescent, left over from Victorian and Edwardian prosperity. To live there was to live in two worlds. Muriel could sit in silence at her desk, staring at the patch of lawn, or walk down the road and turn a corner into the noise. She loved it, and stayed there for eleven years…”
No.13 Baldwin Crescent. There, we are on the map once again good and proper. How many East Dulwich people can say they had Muriel Spark living in Camberwell?
@ regen– I wondered about that, the new builds on the other side of the railway bridge are built right upto the boundary (ie. the pavement). It’s leaves so little pavement and feels really oppressive. The whole line of the buildings along Camberwell new road is ignored. I hope that the snooker hall development won’t be the same.
Regarding the flats on Coldharbour lane. Does Camberwell really need more social housing? I know London generally needs more affordable housing, but SE5 does seem to have more than its fair share. It would be nice to have mixed developments and fewer pockets of concentrated deprivation.
Has anyone been watching “Desperate Romantics” starring Camberwell’s John Ruskin? It is most amusing and very saucy. I am thinking of becoming a muse myself — I have already done the sauce bit.
I’ve been watching that Dagmar, really enjoying it!
When not marvelling at the 50″ plasma TV and new kitchen in my neighbour’s pigpen, I often wonder what Spice of Life is like.
Took the plunge at the weekend and, yes, we were the only folk in there, which is something that had put us off til now.
But what a find. I must recommend this place as the best curry option east of the crossroads.
The first surprise is that it’s quite smart, unlike most SE5 restaurants which have a cafe / eaterie feel about them. So, serviettes on the tables, wine glasses out, old school style. The waiter was very pleasant and wryly funny.
Menu was the usual curry house fare but, unusually, had a few beef dishes on it too. We went with one of the beefs, chicken dhansak and okra. All were very pleasing without being outstanding, with the sweet dhansak the best. Fine naan. Portions were generous, especially the amount of meat (compared with frugal offerings at Ambrosia). Prices very reasonable.
And the best bit is that it’s bring yer own booze. So, we got a bottle of the DIY shop’s finest £7 red and emptied that, saving considerably on what it’d have been at restaurant prices.
Competent food, cow curry, nice surrounds and cheap booze. It’s the place to be. They need to lose the classical music CD though. Anyway, give it a go before it goes bust. An empty restaurant is always a sad sight…
Looking at the Denmark Hill pics again it’s not clear if they’re planning to keep/restore the old shelters with the cast pillars etc. Anyone know if they’re going?
It would be a shame and they must be salvaged if so! Stick them in parks? Put in seating and make an outdoor theatre? One in the garden of the S&D?
@copeywolf ‘old shelters’? I’ve missed them. Put a word in for S&D garden. How about the forecourt could a couple be put there without being too incongruous?
@Phil G — fantastic observation about your neighbour’s ‘pig pen’. Thanks! And I was in Safa a couple of nights ago, looking at the ludicrous, lop sided bowls swimming in various sauces with a smattering of bits of meat or veg wondering ‘why do they do this to their customers?’, gazing across at Spice of Life on the other side of the road and wondering ‘Why?’ about them as well… and thinking about Ambrosia too. Wish I’d had the nerve to go to somewhere other than Safa but I was tired, ill, and not feeling open to stimulation.
Dagmar
I too have caught the odd episode and snippet of Desperate Romantics on BBC2 — a bit MTV with a few historical accuracies thrown in
Seems like John Ruskin had a bit of a problem motivating his “old chap” — If only the Metro newspaper had existed in those days he could have contacted the address on the full page erectile dysfunction advertisement…
Millais was a bit of a wet blanket according to this adaptation
The best thing about it though is their appreciation of red-haired lily skinned ladies — The two muses in the show are most agreeable…always a pleasure never a chore
Phil G, Why don’t we all go to Spice of Life and make it look full, just for once?
Would be a good night out it would appear to me, and we could meet each other.
One wonders whether the current rash of red-locked, quirky pop stars like Sodium Laureth Sulphate is not an echo of the pre-Raphs. Ruskin writes like an angel, but is heavy on the meaning of art and life at the same time as being useless on the impulses that make those redheads positively thump with blood. Still, Ruskin is our lad and was a big thinker. He is counterbalanced by Robert Browning who ran off with a woman 10 times his age, Elizabeth Barrett, a poet. They had a son called Pen.
I keep hearing that redheads are on the way out genetically — a recessive gene or something and their numbers are weedling away gradually to nothing. The more I hear this the more I see them. EVERYWHERE. Is this because I have become sensitised or because the information is wrong? Or is it coincidence they are homing in on me?
Like the zombies in the Thriller video
@chunters — good idea — set the date and post it here and see how many people say ‘yes’ then we can all rendezvous at Spice of Life and pretend not to know each other. Errr as if we do know each other anyway. I bet they’d be terrified by the shock success of it all and cock up service and we’d all be waiting interminably for cold food.
We could all go our separate ways and come back here and comment on what an interesting time we had and say ‘I wonder who all those other people were that night?’.
@Desperate Romantics — I don’t watch television so NO I haven’t seen, or heard of it until it was mentioned here. It’s the way I feel though but.
Florence, her of machine inclinations and blessed with associations of our great neighbourhood, is:
a. barking mad… Or likes to think she is, in an “oh how different i am” 20 year old kind of way.
b. has a great voice (saw her at Camp Bestival last month)
c. is not a real redhead.
Interesting idea Chunters but not sure how I feel about it. Aren’t these things best anonymous? The shock that Peter looks nothing like his icon in real life might be too much.
Anyway, I’ve had a bit of a jerk overdose at Lambeth Fair and our Carnaval del Pueblo, but this looks good http://www.horniman.ac.uk/events/jerk_fesitval.php
I can think of a few jerks who could do with being cooked off.
OK. What about the 15th in the Spice of Life at 7pm?
It is after all The Feast of the Assumption.
Perhaps we could wear name badges.
I’d love to meet Peter as he thinks he has the measure of me.
The George Canning is closed. The end of a little era. You heard it here first.
And I’m not even in Camberwell, I’m in the Algarve lording it up at my inlaws for a week, without a hire car because hire cars are in short supply because of the cash credit crash crisis and they couldn’t buy enough cars so thousands of holiday makers have no transport and are having to walk klicks to the shops to get bread and milk and butter and cannot get to restaurants or beaches or anywhere else… now THAT’S a knock on effect. And it’s the cheapest holiday I’ve had since I used to hitch around southern Europe when I was a teenager.
Shame about the Canning… I blame the pubcos.
Shame about the Channing,
I blame the fact that it wasn’t that good.
Well that in part is because the pubco took all the profit and there was nothing left to reinvest. The pubco did the original refurb and it was scandalously crap.
Bad that the Canning has closed — it may be that it is becoming difficult to run a pub at all. The Walmart factor means less public life all round.
The Dagmars are also on holiday. The debate down here rages over whether the Sterling Eccles is better than the Swift Charisma.
The dregs bark, but the caravan debate moves on.
There was a time, three or four years ago, that the Canning was a decent little boozer with good bistro-style cooking; but it’s been going downhill since then.
I suspected the writing was on the wall the last time we went, as most of the beers were off, and the fridges were empty of bottles; and despite a little spruce up recently, the area behind the bar looked run down and dirty.
I really hope someone takes over the tenancy and it gets a good cleaning and renovating.
Damn it, another pub down. I went there now and then. Sometimes it was OK. Weekend afternoons on the sofas were not bad.
Thats a shame — when I used to live in Canning Cross it was very handy to walk the 10 metres or so down the road to the George Canning.
I hope they manage to re-let (or whatever they do) it soon
Yeah, the last time I went there it was very quiet…
They had about 3 pumps out of action — it felt all wrong too…
It needs 150K spending on it, it’s a tied pub — Enterprise are the freeholder — and the rent will be too high — as it is now and there’s no chance it will work as long as the tenure remains the same.
If it were a freehold it would work a treat. I’ve been banging on about this sort of thing for years. Tied pubs are screwed. Most of the pubs in the area are tied. Silver Buckle, Petit Parisien, Sun and Doves, Hermits, Castle, Cambria and so on.
The Silver Buckle appears to have closed too. Not that it’s any loss. Anyone know if it’s for good?
The Hermit is tied? I thought it was all in the hands of that snowy haired Irish bloke and his mattress packed with cash from all the arts students. What about the Bear?
He is not a bear! He is a shrewd operator, highly switched-on fellow and the most experienced and professional landlord in Camberwell, probably in London. We will not see his like again.
Sorry the Canning’s gone, they did a good Sunday roast
We’re all dying, get over it.
The Bear is leasehold free of tie. The Buckle is same as S&D S&N tied. It needs 300k spend at least to get it into shape.
So, Mark, if a complete stranger can intrude for a moment on your impromptu walking holiday, how does all this look from the point of view of the pubcos? Will the loss of rent matter to them as pubs go down like skittles? Or are they somehow so well insulated they won’t have to change?
AHA. An open door!
As everyone here will attest Vic, complete stranger’s intrusions are more than welcome on Sir Peter Gasston’s Camberwell blog. And what a good, simple, down to earth question too.
This may seem over simple an answer but believe me, I’ve spent years working on this with others burrowing away at what’s broken in the pub industry, to find the banal and stupid reality and have not got it wrong. There may be small exceptions to the rule below but by and large it all holds true.
Pubcos are Private Equity companies who stayed in their asset stripping game too long. They got their fingers caught in the till and there’s not a lot can be done about it. They got lazy largely because, until the current financial mess made their gravy train hit the buffers, it seemed their conga like charabanc in the world of pubs simply had no end. As the two pubcos who began the current form of operation — Punch and Enterprise — way outperformed the rest of the pub market, year after year, the other, smaller and perhaps more traditionally minded pubcos found the new model irresistible and copied them. Some ‘family’ brewer laggards, such as Youngs and Thwaites, are still now converting their estates from managed to fully repairing and tied leased even though it’s obvious to most ordinary people that none of it is sustainable in any way shape or form.
The collective business model of pubcos has simply been to totally, comprehensively, shift all fundamental repsonsibility for the operation of their business, whether financial, practical, legal or day to day, onto onto the shoulders of thousands of ‘entrepreneurial lessees’ who willingly invest in their ‘own’ individual businesses (that is the thousands of ‘units’ (pubs) which pubcos lease to individuals) while the pubco, from the outside, appears as responsible ‘partners’ working together with their lessees in the operation of their very large, and very unrealistically profitable, property portfolios.
The model is simple: Devolve ALL responsibility and concomitant costs for a pub’s operation, from foundation to rafters and everything in between — over to individual lessees by contract: Make available to market property leases with Fully Repairing and Insuring liabilites (common in the property rental business) from which people will run their own entrepreneurial business and reap whatever financial rewards they deserve for their hard work and endeavour. What is NOT common in other property letting situations if that these leases come with legally binding product supply contracts which mean, at least, that all beer sold by the lessee has to be bought through the freeholder’s price list, and at most ALL products they use, from mopheads to french fries. The freeholders (pubcos) advertise their wares using language like: ‘we operate the highest quality portfolio of pubs in Britain, offering an unrivalled package of core branded products, backed with the dedicated business support of our team of highly trained experienced trade Business Development Managers to individuals who want to run their own business secure in the knowledge that they are working with the best in the business’ blah blah blah.
The bottom line is that these conditions imply the pubco works in ‘partnership’ with individuals but the reality is VERY different. The contracts confer no legally binding obligation for shared responsibility of operation of any aspect of the business — except the right of the pubco to profit from rent AND on all products supplied to the lessee. The ENTIRE costs and responsibilities of running the operation, maintaining every aspect of the property from foundations to rafters; keeping up to date with ALL legislative obligations, whether general health and safety issues, from building code certification to climate change levy on decrepit buildings, and local and national fire, gas and electrical compliance, licensing implementation, employment law, minimum wage legislation to every aspect of marketing, promoting and long term investment in the business are entirely the responsibility of the lessee.
This means the lessee carries ALL the costs and obligations of operating the porperty and the freeholder NONE. Neat business model for the pubco who spends NOTHING directly (unless it’s on capital investment in which case the lessee’s rent increases to repay the pubco’s outlay — they don’t give anything without taking back — at userer’s rates of return) on the business other than looking after the ‘team’ of BDMs and their company cars, performance related bonuses (resulting from making sure rents increase above inflation and that lessees never buy ‘out of tie’), their pensions and industry related incentives, sporting days out, training and free products — which lessees are never entitled to of course.
Lessees are milk cows nothing more nothing less.
How this came about is The Fundamental Problem facing pubcos now. They all have gone hell for leather to jump on this free for all bandwagon. They all agressively increased the size of their estates by acquiring new properties at ball breakingly high prices as the property market rocketed, with pubco property values artificially infalted by the notion that there is unlimited, ever increasing future income based on rents and tied supply always going up and up. They borrowed to buy their new buildings and securitised their debts against future income and in many cases even sold their existing freeholds to banks and other ‘Private Equity Partners’ while retaining ‘operational responsibility’ for ‘managing’ the estates, using the proceeds from the sales to borrow MORE money with which to buy MORE pubs which they then let to individuals as above, who, eventually began to start LOSING money and sufferign BUSINESS FAILURE as all of the figures began to fall apart once their margins had been squeezed so much that laying off staff and working all hours god sends to compensate could no longer take up the slack for a failing business losing cash.
The two biggest pubcos’ borrowings are so high that the annual interest payments alone amount to £700 million between them. This equates to £40,000 per pub in their estate. JUST TO REPAY INTEREST on the two pubcos’ borrowings. ALL the other pubcos have gone down this route and are now ALL in DEEP doo doo with the financial crisis and people’s drinking habits moving away from beer to other products, with pubs closing left right and centre because they cannot afford to keep on paying the sky high rents and beer prices as their income falls so does the income of the pubcos.
Is this a sustainable business model? NO. Pubcos are knackered.
Something like that. Sincere apologies of there’s some repetition in there. I have not had time to re read and edit as I am on holiday.
Great explanation Mark but…
You are on holiday…to relax…stop thinking about it and stop writing on here. Then come back nice a refreshed for round 27.
Bonnes vacances Mark.
Sorry to hear about the George Canning but agree with Peter’s summing up. A lovely bar that stopped being loved.
Hope Steve’s ok.
Mark,
I think what you’re saying is the Pubcos embraced the free market economy too enthusiastically.
Shame about the Canning, wasn’t a massive fan of their roasts though, the Bear does the best Sunday Roast in Camberwell, and by a country mile.
Peter Mandelson the consummate politician has come home to save Vauxhall, its clubs, its cricket ground…
Dagmar Wrote…
“Peter Mandelson the consummate politician has come home to save Vauxhall, its clubs, its cricket ground…”
So one unelected bafoon taking over from another unelected bafoon then…
This from another site…
Despite Mandelson’s attempts not to publish the report into the collapse of MG Rover, by referring the case the the SFO, the SFO have told him to take a running jump. That is the reason for all the late night telephone calls on your Blackberry.
OK Mandy lets have a look at the report which you are running scared of publishing, lets see how the ‘Party of the People’ sold the Engineering workers of the West Midlands down the Swannee, with all the supplier industries in the Region.
You have tried to smear the former Directors with allegations of Criminality by referring this case to the SFO. You are an utter disgrace to one of the high offices of State, with your overt attempts to pervert the course of Justice just for a few votes.
‘Blaming the bosses’ is meat and drink to your followers, open that report so that the voters of the West Midlands can see what BERR under Labour and your stewardship has been doing to industry in this country.
Its going to make interesting reading just before a General Election
UPDATE
Mandelson ‘welcomes’ the £175m ‘private’ finance deal for TATA Motors (JaguarLandrover to you and me) on the SAME day as the OFT decline to take on the MG Rover investigation.
Does he think we are all stupid, not to see the spin and ‘good news sandwich’ here. I suppose Peter Poppet will be dishing out British Passports as incentives again.
This is just such a crock of sh1t.
Hat tip Old Holburn.
This on the day we are, or should be talking about the death of baby Peter and the shits who did it.
Another day to bury bad news.
Tip of the hat comrade. Industry belongs to all people via the state. Couldn’t agree more.
Yes, that approach worked a treat for Chinese and Russian industry.
You ever try buying a half decent radio in Beijing in the early 90s? It’d be so much easier now that they’ve adopted a virulent form of cowboy capitalism.
Plans have been submitted to the Council for the Camberwell Baths refurbishment. They look great.
This is a link to the planning application.
http://planningonline.southwarksites.com/planningonline2/AcolNetCGI.exe?ACTION=UNWRAP&RIPNAME=Root.PgeResultDetail&TheSystemkey=9532357
This is a link to the Camberwell Baths Blogspot.
http://www.camberwell-baths.blogspot.com/
Here’s another little snippet about the consummate politician Mandypop…
Quite clearly a thieving tosser.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6011346/Lord-Mandelson-pays-off-his-750000-mortgage-within-a-year.html
The Telegraph is a great paper if you are an old codger with prostate trouble or already dead. The best bit of the paper is the Obituaries. The religious affairs chap Christopher Howse’s column is excellent and well worth reading if you are in the waiting room (of life).
The Daily Mail, however, who really have it in for Peter Mandelson, is for ladies, not lads. They have an especially strong line in the murders of attractive suburban women in the south east — many of these tales are probably made up. These stories supply a frisson for the pampered lunching-lady readership who must be thrilled that various spun-out nutcases are testosteroned up enough the care for them that much in that way.
Recently, the Mail ran an article on how bee stings cure cancer. A few pages later came an article on how eating fish adds four years to your life — the piece was written by “Peta Bee”.
As the Mail’s Richard Littlejohn would ay, “You couldn’t make it up.” He is the most bitchy of all about Mandelson, for whom he uses the epithet, “odious creep”, a phrase utterly made for the Gorblimey-why-oh-why-it’s-political-correctness-gone-mad-I-lunch-with-Clarkson artist himself.
The Conservatives will have an indubitably, absolutely corking landslide next time round when the louche Cameron and Osborne will represent everything that is British in this Daily-Maily, death-notice, impacted-stool, in-need-of-a-strong laxative, capitalist lackey, lickspittle, bum-munching way. What a carry on that will be!
@dagmar: this would be very funny if it wasn’t prophetic!
Liliana says:
@dagmar: this would be very funny if it wasn’t prophetic!
Prophetic? Pathetic I’d say.
@dagmar:“The Conservatives will have an indubitably, absolutely corking landslide next time round”
Thankfully.
@dagmar:“The Telegraph is a great paper if you are an old codger with prostate trouble or already dead.”
I am neither.
.…OH and BTW I don’t read the Mail either.
So Dagmar where did the money come from to pay for the gap that clearly exists in his finances?
If you know this, which you seem to it is only fair to tell us.
Have been looking around the net for the history of Mandypop.….
‘Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, Privy Councillor (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who is the current UK First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council.
Mandelson served as Member of Parliament for Hartlepool for twelve years, a seat he vacated in order to become a European Commissioner. When he returned to the Cabinet in 2008, he was created a life peer.
In 1971 left the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) to join the Young Communist League, then the youth wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
He was a delegate in 1978 to the Soviet-organised World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Cuba, with Arthur Scargill and several future Labour cabinet colleagues.
He worked as a television producer at London Weekend Television on Weekend World, forming an enduring friendship with John Birt, then LWT’s Director of Programmes, before being appointed as the Labour Party’s Director of Communications in 1985. Mandelson was able to secure close friendships within the Labour Party due to uncle Alexander Butler who had worked alongside many important Labour politicians during the 1960s.
He ceased being a Labour Party official in 1990, when he was selected as Labour candidate for the safe seat of Hartlepool. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1992 general election.
After the election, Blair appointed him as a Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office, where his job was to co-ordinate within government. A few months later, he also acquired responsibility for the Millennium Dome, after Blair decided to go ahead with the project despite the opposition of most of the Cabinet (including the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport who had been running it). Jennie Page, the Dome Chief Executive was abruptly sacked after a farcical opening night.
In December 1998, it was revealed Mandelson had bought a home in Notting Hill in 1996 with the assistance of an interest-free loan of £373,000 from Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire Labour MP who was also in the Government, but was subject to an inquiry into his business dealings by Mandelson’s department. Although Mandelson alleged he had deliberately not taken part in any decisions relating to Robinson, he knew he should have declared the loan as an interest, and he resigned on 23 December 1998. Mandelson had also not declared the loan to his building society (the Britannia) although they decided not to take any action, with the CEO stating “I am satisfied that the information given to us at the time of the mortgage application was accurate.”
In January 2001, it was revealed Mandelson had phoned Home Office minister Mike O’Brien on behalf of Srichand Hinduja, an Indian businessman who was seeking British citizenship, and whose family firm was to become the main sponsor of the “Faith Zone” in the Millennium Dome. At the time, Hinduja and his brothers were under investigation by the Indian government for alleged involvement in the Bofors scandal. On 24 January 2001, Mandelson resigned from the Government for a second time,insisting he had done nothing wrong.
On 22 November 2004, Mandelson became Britain’s European Commissioner for Trade. On 22 April 2005, The Times revealed that Mandelson had spent the previous New Year’s Eve on the yacht of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, which is at the centre of a major EU investigation, although it did not allege impropriety.
On 3 October 2008, as part of Gordon Brown’s cabinet reshuffle, it was announced that Mandelson would return to government in the re-drawn post of Business Secretary, and would be made a life peer, entitling him to a seat in the House of Lords. On 13 October 2008 he was created Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham.
In October 2008 Mandelson was reported by the press to have maintained private contacts over several years with Russia oligarch Oleg Deripaska, most recently on holiday in August 2008 on Deripaska’s yacht at Taverna Agni on the Greek island of Corfu. News of the contacts sparked criticism because, as European Union trade commissioner, Mandelson had been responsible for two decisions to cut aluminium tariffs that had benefited Deripaska’s United Company RusAl.Mandelson denied that there had been a conflict of interest and insisted that he had never discussed aluminium tariffs with Deripaska
Reports at the time said that he had sold his shares in an advertising agency and received a large legacy from his mother, but Companies House records showed that the shares were not sold until 2007, while a copy of his mother’s will revealed that he had been left only £452,000.
In a reshuffle on 5 June 2009, Lord Mandelson was appointed to the honorific office of First Secretary of State, making him Deputy Prime Minister in all but name, a controversial position for an un-elected politician. Mandelson was also appointed to the position of Lord President of the Council. It was also announced that he would continue in his role as Business Secretary, with much expanded powers.’
Basically Mandelson you have never had a job in the commercial world,yet you have become the most powerful man in this country though a combination of the moral weakness of Blair and Brown.
@ Chunters:
How much do you earn?
He “he had been left only £452,000″. You don’t think this is a large legacy?
Be careful of the writing of people who have a bias or an opinion. Words like only, insisted, denied, all tell us what the author wants us to believe.
Compare “Prescott says he did not have an affair” with “Prescott denies affair”.
Not a Mandy fan, but if he curbs city bonuses then I’ll cheer that. Difficult to do though, and it’d restrict the size of yacht he blags his holidays on. Maybe it’s just for a headline so that muppets like me think — hey he’s not such a **** after all. But I’m not fooled. He is a ****, and an unelected one too.
It’s easy to knock the Mail. But we need them to flag this sort of thing up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206444/Boy-15-gets-exam-pass–just-using-bus.html
Sadly the ability not to play gangsta rap or nauseous RnB out of some tinny mobile is not covered by this test. If it were many in Camberwell would fail it.
Better an unelected **** with intelligence than an elected fool.
Good point Monkeycat. And he hates Harman too, so he’s not all bad.
The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail sure do not like Alan Duncan, the Conservative MP for Rutland, who is an out gay. They have outed him for saying that MPs are now on “rations” and have been nationalised. Queer he may be, but he is dead right.
Talking of dead right, the Mail wrote of Hitler last week — again. The Daily Mail was pro-Nazi during the late 1930s. The British Daily Mail was pro-Hitler — oh dear — oh dear — oh dear.
Sigfried Mischner, an old German sportswriter, claimed that he saw Jessie Owens shake hands with Hitler after his famous 100m win at the 1936 Olympics — Jessie’s, not Adolf’s — behind the “honour area” so that he they wouldn’t be photographed. Owens kept the shot in his wallet. It’s an interesting snippet — Jessie Owens said he was treated OK in Germany whereas he was segregated in America. All the same, the Jews were segregated in Germany somewhat.
Old Siegfried wanted to set the record straight, that Hitler had always been “painted in a bad light” with regard to Jessie Owens.
“Painted in a bad light.” Perhaps it was a self-portrait. But that was all a long time ago and we should look to the future. Soon we will be all in thrall to the rapacious ladies of the suburbs.
There is talk of Jon Cruddas leading the Labour Party. He is a bright & solid chap. If he needs a politician in his team, he can call on Peter Mandelson, proper job. Mandelson sold his shares in Clemmow Hornby Inge — an advertising agency so brilliant that it sells a mineral water called Drench to trendies — so that he could buy his house. OK, he doesn’t live in Camberwell like Harriet Harman, but he is true to himself.
And before there is all this playground “Please Sir, Dagmar said…” -
Mandelson as politician, proper job. Jon Cruddas as leader of Labour, has to be.
I bought and read the Sunday Times last week for the first time in a very long time. I was surprised, more shocked really, at how any pretence of being a newspaper has been abandoned in favour of it being an easy read under a well worn ‘this labour lot is useless’ veneer. A comic without the support of nicely drawn cartoons. And the front page made a very a big thing out of a soldier with a prosthetic leg going back to give the Taliban a proper seeing to.
There can be no doubt that making government work anything like effectively is akin to being in a never ending wrestling round with a very slippery leviathan. Mandelson’s extremely capable and when it comes to it prepared to say it like it is can actually get things done instead of procrastinating as most others do all the time.
Dagmar wrote “doesn’t live in Camberwell like Harriet Harman”
She doesn’t live in Camberwell, thankfully. I may see her too often in my local and that would surely mean I would have to go to jail for offencive language.
Monkeycat wrote “How much do you earn?
He “he had been left only £452,000?. You don’t think this is a large legacy?”
I think £452,000 is an immense amount of money, I would be very happy to receive that kind of money.
What I earn is my own affair, but I can tell you it is far lower than any MP, I live on rations. I would have sacked Alan Duncan if I was leader of the Tory party.
I used to vote Labour but it was then the party standing up for workers rights etc.
It has been taken over by a strange bunch of nutters and is not the party my Dad used to support. Full of Champagne Socialists, the worst kind. Do what we tell you but we’ll do what we want.
Illegal war in Iraq, our freedams slowly but surely being taken from us, it’s becoming more and more like East Germany before the wall came down.
ON ANOTHER SUBJECT
Went for a beer in the Hermits yesterday afternoon and it looked like the Sahara, nobody in it. I then went to the Old Dispencery for a meeting, there was about 25 people in there and the barmaid never stopped serving. Mark what’s that all about?
People who think that Peter Mandelson is a pest should take a long hard look at ladybirds. No, not the ladyboys of Bangcock, but the ladybirds reported in the recent 4 August edition of the Daily Mail, which terrorised “families” in Somerset and Norfolk. They came in search of the “natural larder” of aphids, but clung onto “families” or “famblies” to give them the correct mealy-mouthed spelling, presumbably terrorising “tots” in particular.
And what have the government done about it? Nothing. Zilch. De nada. Zero.
Then there is the harlequin ladybird, which might seem like an Alan-Carr-like gay jester, but there is nothing funny about it at all. This species comes from Asia, of all places, and is edging out our natives species.
We all like a good curry or Thai ladyboy but the Asians’ harlequin ladybirds are political correctness and so-called health and safety gone mad, not to mention immigration.
I was pointing out the foreign species to my tots in Lucas Gardens only the other day. “Lucas Gardens is the Sangatte of Camberwell!” I offered, flecks of spittle blowing in the warm summer air like old man’s beard.
Our native ladybirds are red with seven spots, I said. They are called ladybirds after the Virgin Mary, I told the bewildered tots — I was positively frothing at the mouth by this time — and the seven spots represent the Seven Joys and Sorrows of Our Lady.
“YES!” I spluttered, “these darn red ladybirds are all CATHOLIC!” At that moment my Super Brew spilled all over my denim miniskirt making me look not just obdurate but incontinent.
Bah!
I am not being sarcastic, but these ladybirds are racaille.
Gah!
I’m no fan of Mandelson — far from it — but unelected advisors are the norm nowadays; some of the biggest decisions regarding planning the future of London are in the hands of Boris’ advisory team.
By the way, I saw ‘pshaw’ to the old party loyalties; flipping between two parties for hundreds of years is not in the best interests of democracy. Time to campaign for proportional representation and electoral reform.
Hallucinating, now. Miracle happened. Saw Britten pass Camberwell, Class 92, made by Brush Traction, now part of Bombardier.
At last, something British!
This great British composer, the stature of Vaughan Williams, in a country now pestered by “gays”, homosexuals, queers, buffons, bassoons, bafoons, baboons, osbornes, obornes, oboes, french horns, cors anglais, pediatricians…
And where’s Mandelson? On a yacht somewhere!
HELL’S TEETH!
Ms. Chunters has just pointed out to me that already Morrisons are selling out of date foodstuff.
A container of coalslaw dated eat by the 6/8/09 was sold to her at the 8th.
As this is a brand new supermarket it would be assumed that brand new food and supplies would be the norm?
Have tried a new e-mail address to avoid being moded and it doesn’t work so am trying a new log on name and we’ll see if it works.
Best regards Chunters
So that doesn’t work then???
Peter get this sorted will ya.
Whenever you post with a new email address the first posts will be held in moderation; hopefully now I’ve approved your comments, we won’t get this problem again.
It’s insanity gone mad!
Not in any way condoning selling out of date food BUT yesterday I made scrambled eggs (Lidl organic eggs £2.50 for 12) for breakfast and used Sainsbury’s double cream to keep the mixture soft and forgiving (delicious!) the sell by date on the cream was 26 July. Purrrffect.
eurgh that sounds like instant death by cholesterol!
A while back Dagmar mentioned that Florence from Florence & The Machine lives in Camberwell. I looked up her pictures and realised that I recognised her. She used to work as a barmaid in the Old Dispensary when Ross was running it. The reason I remember her is because she’d always forget to put at least a couple of drinks on my tab, sometimes three or four, so my bill at the end of the night was always a pleasant surprise. I’d kick up my heels walking home some nights.
Re scrambled eggs and cream. I am still alive.
Re scrambled egg with double cream. I’m still alive and not regretting it.
Different things happen I followed the “Leave a verified comment using” instructions and posted it seemed not to be there and now it is but it wasn’t before. And, clearly tyhe verified comment route does not possess the image of my younger self in its catalogue of verification. Modern life eh?
Been thinking about next year’s local elections and wondeing what might happen to Camberwell.
Will definitely not be voting for SANDRA RHULE.
The only one of my 3 Brunswick Park Labour ward councillors never to have replied to my queries.
Got this from Iain Dales Diary…
Mrs. Harmen or is it Dromey or is it Mr Harmen, even their kids are called Harmen??? I’m confused.com
Dromey to Bypass All Women Shortlist for Leyton & Wanstead?
Iain Dale 10:32 AM
Labour has a system whereby if an MP retires, the constituency party is supposed to instigate an all women shortlist process to replace them. So what’s this I hear that Leyton & Wanstead is being targeted by Mr Jack Harman (nee Dromey) who is desperate to join his wife in the Commons. And who oversees the whole process? Why, the chairwoman of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman herself. How convenient.
If Labour think they can parachute any old party hack into Leyton & Wanstead they would do well to remember the Leyton by-election of 1965. In that year, Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker, who had lost his seat the year before, tried to re-enter Parliament in a “safe seat”. He ended up losing by 205 votes to the Conservatives. Tony Blair once said history rarely repeats itself. Let’s see whether he was right…
Hello All, off topic…
I’m after a second hand color TV.
Does anyone have one they want to clear out, or possibly sell for a small fee?
The green has gone on our current TV. Purple is taking over.
Phil G — are you suggesting that we vote on calibre of candidate and track record, rather than Party allegiance?
I doubt this will happen. Despite the weakness of Party at local level, most Camberwellers vote for the opposite main party to the one they could not stomach getting in, based on prejudices dating from the 1970s and 1980s against each.
Camberwell is destined to attract less investment than surrounding areas, because we do not force the parties to compete for our votes. So some local councillors become complacent, metaphorically overweight with lack of effort to represent.
Some of the most intelligent posters on this blog are guilty of this, and with all the wit in the world have to accept their co-authorship of our slumdom.
@(former Chunters): I wouldn’t blindly trust anything Dale says; first because he’s obviously biased, second because he’s already been responsible for the Daily Mail being forced to pay “substantial damages” for allegations he made in that paper. Not saying that what he says in your comment is untrue — just that I would consider the source.
@Regeneguru: True. The old party loyalties are becoming less relevant with every election; time to start judging on record and calibre.
@Gabe: You missed one by weeks; I let a decent-sized colour TV go on Freecycle.
another off topic posting but may be of interest:
This Saturday the Council is featuring Brunswick Park as its “Love your Park” park of the week.
Which means that from 10.30am until 1pm, you are invited to go along to the park and help plant a load of plants that the Council is providing. They also provide tools.
Enjoy.……
Now THAT’S what I call Community Action — the council getting ratepayers to do the council’s work for free while doing very little to improve the area themselves. Very entrepreneurial.
@sg: do you know anything more about the “retail outlet in park” being sold by the council? I presume it’s the building in the middle by the tennis courts which would make a nice little caff.
@Reg. It’s an interesting question isn’t it. My experiences when I used to cover councils for a local newspaper were thus:
On the one hand visible figureheads who cared about the area and were very active could stand under any party or, as they often did, as independents, and the community would back them. Big politics didn’t seem to come into it. It was all about who sorted this bit of funding here, and who got the planning committee to listen there.
On the other I remember all the Labour folk getting turfed out as they were blamed for Bliar’s War. To me — and much as I dislike a lot about Labour — that seemed wrong, as these were grassroots folk who had no say in Iraq whatsoever, and they should’ve been voted on their local record — which wasn’t bad in many cases.
I think that situation arises because voters who aren’t that engaged with the community do vote in local elections, and vote along national party lines and record.
As for me, I recognise that one of my Labour councillors is bothered and does try, so I’m tempted to vote for him, but we’ll see.
Also the question arises in my Labour controlled ward whether we’d be better off voting LibDem or Tory in what is a LibDem dominated no overall control administration.
@ Matt. Yes, that’s it.
I believe the Council have already had some expressions of interest about it, so hopefully one day (soonish) it might become something more than an abandoned toilet block.
e.g. a cafe or a gallery maybe
Why is it always in Camberwell huh? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8206546.stm
It’s a longstanding Met policy. Alienate them young with such encounters with overpaid underworked coppers. Then they go on to reoffend and reoffend and the cops just have to keep tabs on them and keep rearresting them. Makes the numbers look good. Boxes ticked, luvverly, plod earns as much in retirement as he/she ever did working.
IF the block which was a toilet, and still is, is the building up for sale, it’s TOO SMALL to do anything commercial with sensibly. IF the council think they can get a deal on that they are nuts. IF they are to sell it and it is to work it will need to be expanded and paved around, with much improved services and needs LOADS of work doing to it to get it up to code. There will be planning and licensing issues. Very expensive for its size and with a wing and a prayer of making a go at a viable business in the park. Crazy idea.
THERE IS A TERRAPIN IN THE POND IN RUSKIN PARK. It suns itself on a log sticking up from the water and freaks out the pigeons.
The toilet on Camberwell Green must be the finest building in Camberwell. It is like the Tardis. It is automatically flushed out — the whole floor — after each visit. The hot air blower stays on too long, so the room fills with hot air, but that makes the humid Green outside seem cool.
The old-fashioned water pump on the Green ought to be working in this hot weather to cool down the children. It feeds a small snaking of cobbled conduits which are currently blocked and full of stagnant water. The pump is made by Allweil of Germany, so must surely work well when it is connected up.
The memorial on the Green to the family who died in the bomb shelter is intensely moving. They had been celebrating a wedding in the Redcap and rushed down the shelter when the sirens sounded. All the wedding family were killed. The Redcap a few yards away stands to this day.
Swanley Park is brilliant — like Clacton in the 1950s. The miniature railway is stonkingly non-health&safety and rattles along at full pelt perilously crammed with kiddies. We were pulled today by a miniature of the mighty Deltic D9015 named “Tulyar” after the Derby winner of 1952.
It was the happiest moment of our lives.
back on the met — we had them ‘executing a warrant’ a floor below us two days ago, which, translated into a language meant four loud bangs (one tear gas, one door breaking and 2 possibly gun shots) and absolutely no information about anything whatsoever (when we heard the first two bangs, we thought it was fire & immediately called the fire brigade). it wasn’t till i ventured down the stairwell that i found out from a heavily bullet-vested, gas-masked & helmeted policeman that we did not need to evacuate. turns out it may have been a drugs raid. they even had at least one machinegun person squatting in the back garden :S
@Mark.
I believe the Council is offering the building for a year (maybe more, can’t recall exactly) rent free, and separate surveys have estimated the work to fix up the building to make it usable as being at around £20k, I think.
I too am surprised they’ve had interest but I guess they have a captive audience during spring / summer as the park is often quite busy, esp during weekends.
@Dagmar: There are terrapins in Peckham Rye too.
For anyone who hasn’t visited: Peckham Rye is an astonishingly beautiful park.
The stop and search thing sounded ridiculous when I first heard about it, but then the level of dysfunction in some kids lives is fairly ridiculous too. Children of this age are getting caught up in serious crime, so maybe stop and search can be appropriate. Kind of depends on the reason for suspicion really.
There are young kids carrying knives or drugs in South London and someone needs to look out for them.
Apologies for my melancholy yesterday, I’m just used to seeing a negative headline in the local press (in this instance BBC London) and just knowing it will be something to do with Camberwell.
To take a more balanced view, a couple of weeks ago I received a leaflet through my front door informing me that I was now living in a “dispersal zone” which meant that residents were perfectly entitled to call the police, actually even dial 999, if there were groups of people displaying antisocial behaviour in the immediate area.
I understand stopping and searching a 9 year old might have seemed outrageous to many but if these kids were in the dispersal zone and they were behaving antisocially, and someone reported them then the police are obliged to respond. If this was the case then the article should have included more detail and is biased in it’s view (i suppose it is anyway coming from the kid’s Mother’s view point).
Of course, if none of the above criteria were met then the victim is entitled to feel slightly aggrieved.
Meh, that wednesday feeling.
I’m given to believe that the older kids will get the youngerns to carry their drugs’ guns and knives because the under nines are not criminaly responsible.
According to the law that is, perhaps we should know better.
If you would like to tell Alan Duncan what you feel about him and his idiot views on living on rations, here is his No.
[snip]
Don’t apologise Genfink! Plod gets to shoot plumbers on the Tube and kettle people and hide their numbers with nary a “whoops, pardon me”, so why should you say sorry?
I’ve removed the phone number from your post, (former Chunters), because I don’t know where it’s from, and I have a general policy of not letting people post other people’s numbers or email addresses. If you can show me it’s from a publicly available resource, I’ll be happy to put it back.
Phil G says:
I’ve removed the phone number from your post, (former Chunters), because I don’t know where it’s from, and I have a general policy of not letting people post other people’s numbers or email addresses. If you can show me it’s from a publicly available resource, I’ll be happy to put it back.
http://www.bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/
Phil G, you are a cuckoo at the controls of the starship! Golly, they’ll have that Chunters as manager of Newcastle next, or as the Pope or Queen.
The corner shop on Azenby Road at the top of Warwick Gardens that does such a sterling job selling sweets to kids for 2d — not a lot of profit in that — has been turned over again by a gang who beat two of them up because they gave a witness statement to the police after their motorbike was nicked. They have had loads of trouble from the gangs. If this really was America as dem youth think it should be, shopkeepers could pull out a gun, shoot them dead and carry on selling sweets to kidz, all quite legitimately.
I meant if it was an office number that was published on a website or a public directory, for example, not because some prick with a blog thought it would be funny.
That poor newsagent seems to get the worst of it. I try and support them by buying a can of beer on the walk to the cinema sometimes. Good idea on the guns Dagmar. These punks want America? They can have it.
My wife was in that newsagent when it got held up at gunpoint a couple of years ago.
@Phil G: Do you think the answer to combating gun crime is to put more guns on the street? You’re crazy.
No, not on the street, but I think corner shops should be allowed to hold a shotgun. Imagine the look on these stupid hopeless little bigshot gangstas’ faces when Mrs Patel pulls out a 12 bore and lets both barrels fly. Don’t tell me that wouldn’t be good.
I just liked Dagmar’s comment about how if they’re looking up to America with their behaviour, music, attitude etc, then they can have some of the consequences back.
Le PP looking busier in the warm weather. It might survive yet.
Those who haven’t really should read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s how it’s going to be. People get ready. I read it almost two years back and am going to do so again in advance of its Hollywood release later this year.
In two 1970s publications, Dr Mayer Hillman concluded there was an exact link between increased car ownership by a privileged class, and urban decay and crime amongst a neighbouring impoverished class, in the same inner city area. The deprived community sees investment follow the tyre tracks, realises it is held in contempt, and grows embittered, its youth ‘feral’.
“Personal Mobility and Transport Policy” and “The Social Costs of Hypermarket Developments” were written almost 40 years ago, when car ownership was a fraction of current levels in SE5.
CPZs in Camberwell have led to a steady increase in car ownership and short car journeys within the area, as more and more residents respond to the new safeguards of local storage provided by Southwark Council, with no end of supermarket free parking destinations for the 1st class shopping citizen in SE5, what-ho!
PARP PARP — Out of the way, bleeding shopkeeper, and mind the paint.
Peter says: “I meant if it was an office number that was published on a website or a public directory, for example, not because some prick with a blog thought it would be funny.”
I guess if the quote was from Labourlist it would have been ok?
The Public Sector Borrowing Requirement for July came in at £8.016 billion. That means the government was over-spending by more than £258 million per day last month, which is living beyond our collective means by more than £10 million an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Gordon Brown and Ed Balls reckon the government should spend even more. John Redwood blogs “No wonder the Governor thinks we ought to print some more money – who is going to lend us all this?” The Zimbabwean dollar rose 15% against the British pound last month…
So there you have it, the man Gordo told France and Germany they were doing it all wrong and they are coming out of recession and we are not. So thats all right then.
I am suddenly being moderated again…I wasn’t yesterday.
I have a feeling whatever e-mail or name I use I would be moderated.
Former Chunters:
Just to dispel a couple of misconceptions:
1. I don’t allow people to post other people’s numbers or email addresses unless they are a publicly-available resource. First because I don’t think it’s right, and second because I could be legally responsible.
2. I don’t vote Labour, so wouldn’t make an exception for Labourlist even if point 1 weren’t true.
3. As you can see, your second comment was passed immediately; all comments are run through an automated filter over which I have very little control, and which it chooses for moderation are not down to me.
Why would I go to the effort of blacklisting you (as you seem to be implying) only to then go ahead and publish every comment you make? I promise you I that I don’t have any agenda against you; you should get over your sense of persecution.
I have just watched The Bolt break the world 200 metre record, 19.19 seconds.
It would be a good idea if de guys who want dem gangs could do the same and follow this guy to stardem.
Idiots.
chunters
You cut and pasted that from guido fawkes’ blog. Original insights only please. Like: it has been a slightly rubbish summer weather wise
Reg’s point about cars and juvenile delinquency — what’s it called these days? — has its point, that people get detached from each other in a car culture. Mind you, previous London’s in history were as rough as hell. But the boastful lines alone of the embattled 4 x 4s, all of the recent models aping the Hummer, are provocative enough.
Motorways are incredible — the flow of people in tin boxes with no communication. Trains are great, but you can’t run a first-rate service as a business. The rest of the country needs to pay its due to it.
It is rotten seeing the men at the Azenby Road shop shocked and beaten up, with the ambulance and police doing what they can, which is nothing, despite their efforts. It seems extremely hard to get a conviction or to police the violence. Animals that foul their home environment are very ill indeed.
And another thing. The toilet block in Ruskin Park is a stinking disgrace. Not long ago there were people working there in the block, old-style, during the summer. Now any health inspector would closed the pool down completely with bogs like that next door, unattended and uncleaned, and the kiddies’ water fountain next door swilling with stagnant water.
This is extremely sad. The next step will be for the paddling pool to be shut. If Southwark knew the state of the place, they would not have the bogs cleaned, they would simply shut the pool.
That terrapin, stretching to the sky in the algae-filled primordial soup of the duck pond, is like a roadside prophet in “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy which Phil G mentions.
The massive-tax generators of the City were not SO bad. If they could see the Ruskin Park play area before the crash and now, they too would exclaim something like, “F***ing hell!”
“Has it come to THIS?”
Minor correction, Dagwood: Ruskin Park is operated by Lambeth Council; at least, the tennis courts are, so I assume the rest is.
Maybe he IS Guido Fawkes?
florian says:
08/21/2009 at 11:00 am
“chunters”
“You cut and pasted that from guido fawkes’ blog. Original insights only please. Like: it has been a slightly rubbish summer weather wise”
So your problem?
This was my “Original insight” “So there you have it, the man Gordo told France and Germany they were doing it all wrong and they are coming out of recession and we are not. So thats all right then.”
Those figures are in the public domain and why would I type again what is clearly the truth? Copying and pasting is such a time saver.
BTW I am not Guido Fawkes. I read his blog because he does dig up good stuff.
Lambeth, yes, where the lambent light of civilisation is dimming. At any rate, Ruskin Park paddling pool has long been a major feature of young Camberwell. People travel a long way to go there. It has come to a sorry pass when Lambeth have to employ a terrapin to keep down the algal bloom in the duck pond and to engage a festering toilet to keep down the kiddies splashing in the pool next door.
Baldwin Crescent has had its fortunes changed. Now one of the houses has been bought by a property developer and serious money has been invested into the house. Other houses are being developed and the grand houses will shine once again.
They are very large grand houses with huge double wide reception rooms that are usually only reserved for the Stucco houses in West London.
Lets hope more houses are sold to the middle classes
THIS SATURDAY BUS “n” DUS @ THE CASTLE CAMBERWELL CHURCH ST SE5.…..
SPECIAL GUESTS THIS WEEK“DJ STAN DA MAN” FROM FLEX FM(garage).…
PLUS “DJ DOLLA G”(RnB/Bashment) PLUS MANY MORE DJS & MCS
THIS WEEK ITS FREE FOR EVERY BODY B4 11PM.…£5 AFTER
LOADS OF DRINKS DEALS @ THE BAR £2 A SHOT… SO ITS TIME TO PARTY HARD!!
SEE YOU ALL ON THE DANCE FLOOR!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSsGMXn_ZWw
DJs huh? You push the record one way, then you push the record the other way. Wow!!!
I don’t want to party hard.
I don’t want to see you on the dance floor.
I’d rather read Don DeLillo with a nice shot of bourbon.
Push de record on de left hand side
push de record to de right hand side
rub a dub
CHUNK
er
CHUNK
er
oh rubber dub
CHUNK!
er
CHUNK!
er
we in de sub
in de sub sub sub
we de sub
in de sub sub sub
de sub
burban
zone
widdee
bourbon
down
and di brain own
zone
wid de dell-aye
LOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
LILLY LILLY LO!
eh man
Delilah o
rub a dub
CHUNK!
er
CHUNK!
er
CHUNK!
er
Come on SE5, is good! Let’s coalesce! More coition wivverdee coalition!
isnee!
eh!
CHUNK diddi CHUNK!
er
chunk
a
chunk
a
chunk
[fades]
x x x x x x
mmm!
x
MC Dagmar in the house. respect
Number One with a bullet!