I'm Not Dreaming of a Bottle-Green Christmas

This last time it snowed - February 2009 - Greenwich Council saw fit to grit the roads with pieces of broken glass. It is easy forget Labour's old stupidities - local and national - because they are quickly replaced with new stupidities and the human memory, being decidedly finite, has a limited capacity for them.

Which is why this oddly seasonally apt snowfall is a good reminder of ten months ago when residents of Greenwich had to navigate bottle-green pathways very gingerly lest they tripped and were injured by the broken bits of bottle.

Not only that, but bicycle tires got punctured and linos were ruined where glass was transported, from out-doors to in-, between the tread of footwear.

Not only that, but bits of broken bottles do not melt snow where as good old salt does. You can not but wonder why the Labour Council thought broken glass to be equal or superior to salt in the first place.

Save Severndroog Castle

Atop Shooters Hill stands Severndroog Castle, a Gothic-inspired Grade II architecture the preservation of which, not for the first time, is under threat. It is currently on the "at risk" register.

In an age where the urge is for generic edifices which aspire to be no more than warehouses and in such a hilly location that is worryingly suited to phone masts, we need this lovely tower more than ever.

Any building which is architecturally exceptional contains a history that, all the time it stands, educates and reminds us about that history. It would be a great sadness if this historically - and architecturally - significant building could not continue in its present state due to lack of funding.

A brief encapsulation of the history is that: "It was built in 1784 as a memorial to Sir William James by his wife, Lady James to celebrate his most famous exploit in 1755 when he destroyed the fleet and stronghold of pirates on an island fortress off the west coast of India". (Quote extracted from the introductory text on the charity's website)

The charity which works to preserve Severndroog Castle (the SCBPT) requires funding and is running a sponsor-a-brick programme, more of which can be read at the Severndroog Castle website.

All Compass No Compassion

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary who doesn't lay awake at night worrying about population growth, has proved, yet again, in his assertion that he will not obstruct hacker Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US, how morally invertebrate the Labour government is.

If Gary McKinnon were to be tried at home then he could be hopeful of a fairer sentence. It is plainly obvious that Gary McKinnon is not a terrorist, is not a threat to national or international security and is a little too enthusiastic about computer techonology for his own good. These factors, I am sure, are more likely to count as mitigators on home soil.

That is, Gary McKinnon's case is a rare instance where you would prefer one of our liberal judges to preside.

However, Gary McKinnon is the latest in a catalogue of examples of this government's failure to understand the public's sanity and sentiment on popular issues - Recall, for instance, Labour's heavy-handed, objectionable treatment of the Gurkhas which was, perversely, the government's miscued attempt at demagoguery.

Clearly this government is insentient to the injustice and unfair treatment of one of its own citizens and unprepared - as it is in most things - to take action.

I wonder when Gordon Brown will realise that he should be eligible for a refund for that fabled moral compass.

Labour: Hitting the Bar and Moving the Goalposts

It is still hilarious, a couple of weeks later, Meg Hillier's argument that ID cards would be good for young people "going to bars". Identity cards are the zenith of the Labour Party's scheme to infringe, absolutely, upon our civil liberties and this latest sales-pitch proves how bad the ID bargain is for citizens.

Ms Hillier's argument about ID cards making it easier for eighteen year olds to buy drink is telling because it tacitly admits that the government's original apology for identity cards - that they will improve security against terrorism - is specious and hollow.

So hollow, in fact, that all they can do now is to appeal to nineteen year olds that they will be admitted to drink at the Stoat & Carburettor without interrogation from the publican.

That is, if Labour's mismanagement of the economy hasn't forced all the pubs to close by the time ID cards are introduced nationally...

Labour Plans £26.8M in Cuts

A leaked document has revealed that the Labour Council of Greenwich are proposing at least £26.8M of cuts to services.

This story was first reported a couple of days ago by Andrew Gilligan and has been circulated in various local blogs and newspapers but deserves as much publicity as possible so that Greenwich residents are fully aware of the Labour Council's lack of openness and honesty about these cuts.

As my colleague Simon Emmett from Shooters Hill ward points out: "The fact is that the Greenwich Labour party have a history of doing this. Shortly after the 2006 local elections, millions of pounds were cut from services, although much like the spin of the national party, they were dubbed 'efficiency savings'".

These are some of the services that Labour would have hoped to cut by sneaking them through the back door: Street cleaning, the Metropolitan Police Violent & Organised Crime Unit, voluntary sector contracts and so-called "low priority" projects.

Cllr Spencer Drury, leader of the Conservative opposition, said: “Labour have a hidden programme of cuts in place and are refusing to be open about their plans. Greenwich Council’s incompetence and inefficiency is what leads them to have to make these dramatic cuts. They have already wasted £27 million because they are three years late on their new school building programme. There are lots of ways they could have saved money by running themselves differently.”

Desi Spice

Good news. One of my favourite curry houses, Desi Spice, has re-opened. It's situated on Bramshot Avenue, by the underpass.

I've always enjoyed eating at Desi Spice and find their menu to be more extensive and their flavours more subtle than other curry houses.

It has been under a few different managements in the past so I do hope that the business it does isn't too modest, forcing it into temporary - and what luckily has never been transpired to be permanent - closure.

Not only is the food great but I've always felt reassured by its presence beside the underpass as it offers illumination & presence to an otherwise dark place.

Desi Spice,
27 Bramshot Avenue
London
SE7 7HY

020 88583777

A Blog For Peninsula

I strongly recommend Charlie's Greenwich, a blog written by Charlie Easton about his life in Greenwich and, in particular, his ward of Peninsula.

Along with Malcolm Reid and Toks Bailey, Charlie forms the Conservatives' Peninsula Action Team.

I am indeed glad that we have Charlie, Malcolm & Toks campaigning for Peninsula, as they are an extremely dedicated, hard-working team.

I hope I will be excused the iota of selfishness in my gladness; that is because Peninsula overlaps part of the SE7 post code. Therefore, Charlie & Co. will be responsible for the Charlton which lies south of the rail line and west of Anchor & Hope Lane. The place at which Charlton shifts in nature from the residential to the industrial.

Vandalism (& Litter) Update

Further to my last post about removing graffiti from Lansdowne Lane, I am pleased to report that litter has also been cleared from the street.

In response to our actions, a local blogger, 853blog, suggested that:

[I]sn’t that a tick in the box for the Labour-controlled authority, which cleaned the stuff off, and not the Conservative “action team”?

Maybe I should have clarified in my earlier post that we were responding on behalf of residents who feel that their streets are accumulating rubbish and being vandalised precisely because the Labour-controlled authority have not kept them under control.

We are listening to residents and acting on their behalf when they report that they have been unsuccessful in achieving a response from our Labour-controlled authority.

853 goes onto say:

Indeed, if the “action team” wanted to do some good, they’d give out Cleansweep’s number and maybe tell us about the service they got.

Cleansweep's contact details are:

Tel: 020 8921 4661
Textphone: 020 8921 4650
Email: cleansweep@greenwich.gov.uk
Write: Cleansweep
Crown Buildings
48 Woolwich New Road
London SE18 6HQ

This information can also be found on the
council's website, here: http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/Greenwich/YourEnvironment/StreetsBuildings/Cleansweep/

Charlton Action Team Get Graffiti Removed

In my previous article about graffiti in Charlton I wrote about some incidences of vandalism in Lansdowne Road. Since writing, the Charlton Action Team, who alerted Cleansweep to the problem, managed to have the following piece of graffiti removed:


before




after

Graffiti in Charlton

A fallacious justification of modern (or is it post-modern? Post-post-modern? Alter-modern?) art, perhaps as an attempt to excuse a history of pretentious extravagances that came after the Impressionists, is that "anything can be art".

As such, you could violently yoke together Caravaggio and Tracey Emin as artists without anyone raising objection to this act of violence.

Which makes me fearful of making an criticism of street-level graffiti in case someone chimes in with the admonition of "Banksy!"

Yet I hope I am on safe ground when I say I find nothing redeemable about the graffiti on the walls around Charlton.

Tagging - that is, spray-painting a pseudonym in sharply angular fonts - an export from the US, became popular here in the 1980s. (The underpass that links Bramshot Avenue to Invicta Road has long been a site for graffitists).

I expected that tagging would fade in popularity eventually, but it has been stubborn in its longevity.

So what can be done about it? As a short-term solution Cleansweep have a facility for removing graffiti from public property (and I know that devoted residential committees get together to remove graffiti from walls) but there is a Sisyphean element to removing graffiti - rolling a boulder up a hill over-and-over for the rest of eternity.

In the long-term we need to find exhaustive and definitive ways of making the act of graffitying uneconomical or too troublesome for the offender.

The photograph in the top-right corner is of a wall in Lansdowne Lane which leads to the Fairfield Clinic. The Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman Spencer Drury and Louis, Richard & myself have asked Cleansweep to deal with the graffiti in Lansdowne Lane.

Why I Became Active In Charlton

Last winter I went shopping down by the Industrial Estate (sometimes known as New Charlton, other times the Cable Industrial Estate) and, walking along its Woolwich Road perimeter, I was appalled and fascinated by - what you may forgive me for construing as - entirely new genuses of trees and bushes which blossomed with plastic carrier bags.

A tree of plastic bags. A tree of plastic bags scrooping and whipping about in the winter winds beneath grey skies and before grey industries as if conspiratorial in their greyness - where the weather and the architecture marry as fittingly as that of the Stalinesque Soviet.

It was both the pathos and bathos of this small attempt to beautify this area that got to me: How could the trees and bushes along Woolwich Road by the Industrial Estate be left in garlands of plastic, like Hula girls whose leis are substituted for rags, and no one seem to care?

And neither was it only plastic bags, but cans of carbonated drink nestled between naked twigs, cigarettes and cigarette boxes - all the excesses and privileges of our lifestyles.

I thought about those plastic bags flapping about in the branches. I recalled a statistic about plastic taking to biodegrade. I wondered if anyone would do anything to clean up this rubbish, or would it be four-thousand years after the birth of Christ before these plastic carriers rot away into the soils and drift into the aether?

It occurred to me that I could take photographs of the rubbish and ask of the council that something be done about it.

A nano-second after this thought, I reminded myself the maxim If you want something doing, do it yourself.

And so I endeavoured to find out how I could involve myself in local politics and make a tangible contribution to local quality of life.

I had always been a Conservative, so I was excited when I was chosen by the Greenwich Conservatives to be a member of the Conservative Action Team for Charlton.

As a local resident, and as an active Conservative, I would like to see - and will work towards - a cleaner environment in Charlton*, so as to improve life-quality for all its residents. The memory of last winter's plastic-bag trees spurs me on.


*NB. To avoid accusations of geographical inaccuracy: The part of Charlton I refer to is in Woolwich Riverside ward, not Charlton ward. The point is no less relevant as we have serious litter problems in many parts of Charlton.

About Charlton

Charlton is a town and political ward within the London Borough of Greenwich, South East London.

The etymology of the word "Charlton" is coerl and tun, which can be rendered into modern parlance as "homestead of free peasants" (according to Wikipedia).

Charlton has two parks (Maryon Wilson and the eponymous Charlton Park), the home of Charlton Athletic Football Club known as The Valley, and a splendid Jacobean House.

The town and political ward are not interchangeable as the town encompasses all roads with the se7 postcode and the political ward seeps into parts of Blackheath.

Conversely, there are parts of Charlton town which are seceded to Peninsula, Woolwich Riverside, Woolwich Common and Hornfair.

Your Charlton Action Team are active in the political ward of Charlton - This is the land encompassed within the boundaries of the Charlton rail line to the North, Thorntree Road to the East, the A102 to the West, and parts of Canberra Road to the South.

About Your Action Team

Your Conservative Action Team for Charlton is (l-r: Richard Shackleton, James Garry, Louis McLean-Wait).

About James

James was born in Charlton in 1979, where he has lived ever since.

He earned a first class psychology degree from the University of London and has worked in an eating disorders clinic. He currently works in Goldsmiths College library.

James is an active member of Greenwich Conservatives and forms one-third of the Conservatives' Charlton Action team along with Richard Shackleton and Louis McLean-Wait.


To contact James, please write to jamesincharlton@googlemail.com

Contact James

I invite & welcome Charlton residents to write to me about any local matters or concerns. To contact me, please write to:

jamesincharlton[at]googlemail[dot]com

I look forward to hearing from you.