A gentle stroll from Bexhill to Hastings.

Yesterday myself and "Her Indoors" had one of those unremarkable days out that are none the less precious. We set out by train to Bexhill and wandered down from the station to the De La Warr Pavilion. "The Peoples Palace", this wonderful example of 1930s Modernism, must surely be one of the most beautiful buildings in the country. The pavilion is hosting an exhibition of artwork from Ladybird Books. Free admission and well worth a visit.  

From Bexhill we walked along the seafront path the five or six miles to Hastings. We wondered at Marine Court in St Leonards. The iconic old girl looked ready to slip her moorings but bound not on the luxury Atlantic voyage that the architect envisioned but rather for the breakers yard. The fabulous block has alas seen better days.                         

Onward to Hastings Old Town and a stroll round the junk shops. A well deserved pint in the First In Last Out was followed by another in the Jenny Lind, a fine pub with good music, friendly staff and no less than ten beers on hand pump. Extra large cod and chips in The Lifeboat and the train back to Clapham Junction. Bliss!

Cold and wet but not beaten yet.

Despite the rain and cold there was a good turnout for yesterday's march. It was nice to see such a mixture of people taking part and although I doubt how much can be achieved by A to B marches at least it got a few thousand people out on the street. One thing is for sure - there is no more important issue facing London than the housing crisis. There is very little time left. Soon the corporate vampires will have sucked the life blood from out of our city.

It's no use giving them statins, they'll just keep the coal in it.

If media attention could solve inequality the struggle against poverty would be done and dusted by now. Never a day passes without comfortably off journalists churn out yet more evidence that the gap between rich and poor has never been wider. On the same day that Oxfam launched a campaign to highlight inequality between rich and poor nations comes the latest news on the wealth gap here at home. Apparently doctors prescribing their own bodyweight in statins everyday are wasting their time and NHS funds unless the patient is fairly affluent. It seems that there is a direct correlation between income and how well the drug works. I have yet to hear that this is due to the poor being too thick and lazy to read the instructions but it's only a matter of time.

Open City? Well not quite.

There is much to dislike about the City of London Corporation and you might be forgiven for thinking that it is little more than the administrative arm of that greedy and corrupt edifice that we call "The City". That dagger on the coat of arms does after all celebrate the murder of Wat Tyler. There is however one aspect of the Corporation's work that can't be faulted and that is the way that they run the many open spaces that they are responsible for. Much of the best loved open access woodland available  to Londoners, Epping Forest, Burham Beeches, Ashstead Common for example, are administered by the Corporation. But apart from these large areas on the outskirts there are any number of parks and open spaces in the City itself. My favourite is probably Postman's Park just a short walk from the Museum of London. Famous for it's George Watts Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice that commemorates ordinary folk who gave their lives saving others, the park is truly an urban gem.

                                                                     

Mooching about the other day I came across a tiny garden that I have never visited before. Like many other open spaces in The City, Cleary Gardens is part of the legacy of the blitz and was created from a former bomb site. Just off the busy Queen Victoria Street the garden is built on the sloping ground that leads down to Queenhythe.

The architecture of Central London is changing dramatically and it's hard to find any social or aesthetic improvement. As more and more of the urban landscape becomes privatised so our parks and open spaces become more precious. I hope that we can hang on to them.

The water is rising again.

Here we go again. Heavy rain is forecast for the UK tonight, rivers are full, the catchment is saturated and some parts of the country had a full months worth of rain in the first twelve days of January. If things continue like this we will certainly have another round of flood misery and despite the best efforts of  Environment Agency staff on the ground, we are woefully unprepared. The insurance industry will soon just wash their hands of the whole shooting match and move on to some better investment. Nothing short of a full scale national flood policy that covers everything from the location of new development, the re-evaluation of some existing flood plain settlement and a flood defence system that includes both soft and hard engineering will suffice. If just some of the wealth and endeavour that is being used to build investment properties for the international super-rich in London was diverted to flood defence and flood risk management we might be able to face the future with some  confidence. As it is we must just seek consolation in contemplating all that effluent contaminated water seeping over the door sills of all those Lamborghini's in the underground car park of another luxury block.

Butler-Sloss sums it all up.

Lady Butler-Sloss thinks that only a pillar of the establishment such as herself would be capable of chairing the independent enquiry into child sex abuse. The horrendous old god botherer seems to be under the impression that only the sons and daughters of high court judges are capable of organising a piss up in a brewery let alone something as sensitive and important as this enquiry. There are of course thousands of men and women from all walks of life more than capable of doing the job. In one short statement Butler-Sloss sums up everything that is wrong with our forelock tugging society. The privileged minority who consider themselves the establishment are there because of the self-serving, self-perpetuating  system that they are a part of.

Out and about on Boxing Day.

Yesterday I walked up to the top of Box Hill and then took the footpath down into Dorking and the bus home. Hardly a wilderness experience but it got me out of the house and into the fresh air. There is a very English tradition of recovering from the excesses of Christmas by getting outdoors and active on Boxing Day. After all that sitting around eating and drinking people feel the need to get outside and do something even if it no more active than watching a local football derby or a days racing at Kempton Park. For many of course the day's activity is probably confined to a good tramp in the countryside; or at least the nearest thing to countryside that they can reach from home. Dogs, children, toddlers and elderly relatives ensure that the pace is steady to say the least but, as with presents, it's the thought that counts.
For many people in the countryside Boxing Day is an important date on the fieldsports calender. Unlike most on the left I have never felt strongly opposed to hunting, shooting and fishing. Certainly I prefer the idea of the artisan hunter with terriers and ferrets to the toff riding to hounds and I think that it's easier to justify rough shooting for the pot rather than the ritual slaughter of driven birds bred for the occasion, but all in all I don't have a problem with field sports. I have never found it necessary to oppose everything that the upper class do in order to be an enemy of the class system.
Hunting with hounds might well be the most humane method of fox control but certainly any interaction with animals results in some suffering. Perhaps our responsibility is to keep that suffering to a minimum.  I have never had any part in foxhunting but I think that I can understand why others do it.
Mind you, a sympathetic stance on the hunt can bring a chap some strange bedfellows!

New Era. A tale of two very different estates.

It's going to be a Christmas to remember down on Hoxton's New Era Estate. Hard work and gritty determination on the part of tenants resulted in rent-racking landlords Westbrook Holdings deciding to sell up to Dolphin Square Charitable Foundation. Affordable rent now seems a certainty for New Era tenants for at least the next twelve months and I for one just doff my cap to an outstanding victory by ordinary folk against a seemingly powerful adversary.  But nothing is quite what it seems in the London  property market and there is a backstory here that I suspect we will hear more of in the New Year.
Dolphin Square Charitable Foundation has an interesting history.
The Dolphin Square development in Pimlico was built by Costain in the 1930's and after passing through the hands of several owners was eventually acquired in the 60's by Westminster City Council who sub-let the site to Dolphin Square Trust who would manage the development and act as a kind of housing association for the next forty years.
The list of former tenants and sub-tenants at the square reads like Who's Who of twentieth century scandal, show-biz, politics and espionage. Everyone from William (Lord Haw Haw) Joyce to Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler, Bud Flanagan, Oswald Mosley, Harold Wilson; all lived in the square at one time or another. If ongoing Met investigations are anything to go by there was also a very dark side to Dolphin Square with the possibility of a paedophile ring and even the murder of some children taking place there.
In 2005 Westminster City Council and Dolphin Square Trust sold the site and with an endowment  resulting from the sale Dolphin Square Charitable Foundation was set up. Some tenants were less than happy with the new owners but such is life.  Now the foundation seem to have rescued New Era tenants from the rapacious clutches of Westbrook Holdings. And the 2005 purchasers of Dolphin Square?  Er… Westbrook Holdings.
For those who have the stomach for it, the full financial and legal low-down here.

A short walk in the West End.

There are only a few days left of the Ansel Kiefer exhibition at the RA so I had a look at it this morning. You certainly can't fault the artist when it comes to scale, some of the works are the size of a small house. True much of the exhibition does resemble the contents of a skip but I found some of the huge canvases strangely moving and walked out feeling in need of a quick straightener in The Red Lion.
From this cracking little boozer I set off toward the Drury Tea Company in New Row in order to replenish supplies of their wonderful London Blend. Cutting through Panton Street I was shocked to see that The Stockpot restaurant has closed. Apart from running a huge number of excellent cafes, Italian immigrants also opened many cheap restaurants serving good honest lunches and dinners at a price that most could afford. Now both the cafes and the cheap restaurants are disappearing. There is still a Stockpot in Old Compton Street in Soho and another in the Kings Road but the Chelsea Kitchen, also in the Kings Road, closed a few years back and the New World Order of coffee and panini outlets marches ever onward. Resisting the temptation of a quick one in the Tom Crib, I also marched onward, picking up the tea and crossing the river to Waterloo and the train home. Mission accomplished.

Old school tax avoidance.

The stats of inequality, global and national, have been the common currency of left polemic for as long as anyone can remember. In the unlikely event that readers of this blog need convincing further, there is a depressing wealth of information on The Equality Trust site. Of course not everyone is convinced that inequality is necessarily a bad thing. The view that attempts to achieve a more equal society are not only doomed to failure but will simply increase the sum of human misery is not confined to the likes of David Mellor, and "trickle down" is still the economic theory of choice in some quarters. But given that like me you probably think that at least some redistribution of wealth and opportunity might be a good thing, how best to proceed? Well first off how about hitting the private schools where it hurts, in their pockets. I don't mean the kind of wet dishcloth attack of the kind proposed by Twiswam Hunt but a simple, straightforward removal of the charitable status that absolves private education businesses of the need to pay tax. Make no mistake, these schools are just that, businesses. Let them sink or swim in the rough seas of the market place their supporters are so fond of. No Labour government, not even Attlee's post war one, has had the bottle to take on the public schools. I'm convinced that doing away with the unfair advantage of the private education sector would be a step toward a fairer and more just society.

Poor door protesters stick to their guns.

For the past twenty weeks, come rain come shine, a small but dedicated group of activists have picketed One Commercial Street in protest against the segregation of social housing tenants and a "rich door-poor door" policy. Developers Redrow eventualy sold the freehold to Texas playboy Taylor McWilliams and his development company Hondo. The protest continued. Now comes news that McWilliams is entering into negotiations with all stakeholders.  There's a long way to go and we don't want to be counting chickens, but this just might be the begining of the end for the poor doors.

The strange world of the Kibbo Kift.

The British political fringe holds a fascination for many people. Some have made a lifetime commitment to tracing and detailing the family tree of various Trotskyist organisations.  Others have become experts in the genealogy of  extreme right wing groups and burn the midnight oil looking for suspected neo-nazi connections. Of all the unusual organisations in the shadowy world of the political margins few can be quite as odd as The Kindred Of The Kibbo Kift. Founded by one John Hargrave, The Kift was a splinter group from, of all things, Baden Powell's scout movement. This unusual combination of camping, pseudo-Saxon folklore, woodcraft and Social Credit, would eventually split into The Greenshirts (who famously lobbed a green painted brick through the front window of 11 Downing Street) and the other part of the movement that aligned with the Labour Party.

The Labour faction would in turn evolve into what Alexei Sayle once described as "the paramilitary wing of the Co-Op", the Woodcraft Folk. The Greenshirts would fall foul of the 1936 Public Order Act that banned the wearing of political uniforms and would re-form as the Social Credit Party before disappearing altogether. The Woodcraft Folk are still going strong as far as I know but the nearest thing to Social Credit now is the citizens income policy of the Greens. The archives of Kibbo Kift are held in The Museum of London.

I also stumbled across this very interesting and detailed history of Kibbo Kift. Well worth a look

Black and Red poppies.

I thought that I had said just about all I had to say about the WW1 commemorations already but Remembrance Sunday, the poppies at The Tower and the latest offering from Martin Wright and the usually spot on Black and Red TV force me to come back to the horrors of war in general and WW1 in particular. Having performed a first rate hatchet job on idiot Brand's Wevolution Booky Wooky ( well at least Martin had the patience to read it which is more than I would have had.) the old class warrior goes on to denounce the ceramic poppies in the Tower moat and Poppy Day in general. I think that it's important, but sometimes difficult, to separate the horrors of war and the politics that lead to wars from the soldiers who fight them. I can see nothing wrong with remembering the fallen and understand that it's some consolation to families of the victims of more recent wars. I can feel this without in any way endorsing the pomp and hypocrisy that surrounds Remembrance Sunday. As for Poppies, I can see nothing wrong with supporting an ex-serviceman's charity. As well as remembering the fallen of two world wars we might also remember the shockingly disproportionate number of rough sleepers who are ex-military.
I had a look at the poppies at the Tower the other day and thought it a spectacular enough art installation and, gutter press endorsement aside, if it raises a few bob for disabled ex-squaddies so much the better. While I was there I paid a visit to the Merchant Navy War Memorial in Trinity Square. All those names. All those men who lost their lives in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. I always find such visits moving.

Hi-Yo Silver Screeners.

  Yesterday a lady was telling me that the local Odeon is running morning performances for coffin dodgers at the knock down price of three quid a head including complimentary tea and biscuits. I'm afraid that I was a bit dismissive and said that I thought that I was not quite old enough for such extravaganzas yet. But the truth is that it's a good idea, anything that gets the elderly out of the house is a good idea. The hard reality of life is that many of us will end up reasonably healthy but alone and anything, absolutely anything, that helps people escape from the isolation of four walls and a cat must be good. The erosion of the extended family, and the elderly's place within it, is a matter for regret or rejoicing depending on your point of view and experience but, for old and young alike, replacing human contact with Facebook will result in a very strange world indeed. Meanwhile, all those silver screeners will be old enough to remember going to that other cinema initiative to get bums on seats, the Saturday Morning Kids Club. Let's hope that standards of behaviour have improved.

Duck keeping. But not for long.

                                                                     Live aboard boaters who squat the towpath or river bank are never that popular with local communities. I have always reckoned this antipathy and suspicion is partly due to jealousy and the "why should they" factor. Why should they, not have to pay mooring fees, sit about all day smoking roll-ups and drinking tea when I have to work to pay my mortgage on this dull little house etc. It's part of the human condition to want freedom but also to fear it, and fear those who we think may have more of it than we do. But another reason for a negative attitude toward the  towpath squatters of our inland waterways is the junk that tends to accumulate on the bank. The cramped conditions on a narrowboat or small cruiser mean that it's very tempting to keep stuff out on the bank and although this might start out as a pile of firewood and a couple of bikes, it's amazing how stuff builds up. I was certainly no better than anyone else in this respect when I lived on the canals, graduating eventually to the keeping of poultry on the towpath. There is a sad story attached to this that I was reminded of by a recent comment on the blog. The poultry keeping started with a few bantams but eventually I decided to diversify, as farmers say nowadays, and expand into duck rearing. At no small expense I ordered four Khaki Campbell ducks from an advert in the Exchange and Mart. The beautiful looking birds were dispatched by rail, collected from the nearest station and bedded down in the new home I had made for them. In the morning they were gone. Had made a successful bid for freedom and were happily swimming along the canal where all efforts to recapture them proved futile. I was heartbroken.

My efforts at guerrilla gardening were far more rewarding. I found a small clearing right next to the canal that was almost completely surrounded by brambles and by some adjustments to the hedge was able to create a secret garden safe from both the cattle in the adjacent field and the prying eyes of passers by. The watering of the plot during what was to prove to be a very hot, dry summer, was a masterstroke. As the hidden plot lay below the level of the canal I was able to rig up a syphon with a hosepipe and in this way was able to grow quite a bit of veg and a not inconsiderable quantity of dope. That's yer towpath squatters for you all over - give 'em an inch and they take the piss.

Where City meets the fringe I believe.

It should never have come to this of course. Social housing should never have been sidelined as a planning gain concession from developers of luxury investment apartments for the international rich. The issue of one door for the rich and one for the poor should never have arisen in the first place. But we are were we are and that means an increasingly polarised and segregated capital city and truly, if we put up with poor doors we will put up with anything.
The weekly poor door picket of One Commercial Street has been running for the last three months and largely because of the efforts of a handful of activists some of whom are not in the first flush of youth or in the best of health. At last night's picket, with some 80, 000 at the earlier TUC march and a couple of thousand supposed anarchist just up the road at the bookfair, a large turnout had been expected. Well, perhaps a hundred and fifty of us did turn up. It could have been bigger but was lively, spontaneous affair with  a couple of bands, the Durham Miners Association and the irrepressible Women's Death Brigade keeping the coppers on their toes. Well done all.

A garden bridge too far.

Man cannot live by bread alone and deciding spending priorities between, for example, arts and music projects or schools and hospitals is never going to be easy. There are however some total no brainers and the proposed "garden bridge" spanning the Thames between Temple and the Southbank is one such. The estimated £175 million that the bridge would cost would be far better spent  alleviating some of London's chronic social housing shortage. The further greening of London, one of the greenest cities in the world incidentally, is best achieved by a number of small community based initiatives rather than mega vanity projects. The bridge has the backing of Joanna Lumley apparently. Well the old trooper was on the money when it came to the Gurkhas but seems to be talking out of her bottom this time. A case perhaps of the old maxim about never taking any notice of what actors say unless someone else has written it for them holding true.

Freedom Passes for all.

This blog is not just the Home Of The Freedom Pass Anarchists but a strong defender of Freedom Passes and their equivalent for all pensioners, regardless of their political affiliation. It's not just a matter of free public transport for important journeys like hospital appointment but the way that a free travel pass can transform peoples lives. There is a whole world out there waiting to be explored and for many pensioners the Freedom Pass is aptly named as armed with a flask of tea and a packet of sarnis they take their dreams for reality and make the world their oyster. Think tank the Social Market Foundation have been harping on about doing away with free travel for the elderly and disabled, or at least making it means tested, for some time. Now a group of Walsall pensioners have taken up the challenge, launched a national petition to save the free National Bus Pass, and are delivering it to Downing Street.
The Labour Party, instead of making a big deal out of proposals for a derisory increases to the Minimum Wage would be better advised to get behind something really helpful - free public transport for all, regardless of age or income. Go on Ed. Show 'em what you're made of.

On the door at One Commercial Street.

Yesterday evening I finally managed to make it over to Aldgate for Class War's weekly "poor door" picket of One Commercial Street. It was far from being a massive turn out. It's a shame that challenging this issue has been left to a handful of anarchists but I suppose that the left are far too busy dealing with islamophobia and Ukraine to bother with such trivia. The response from passing members of the public was generally sympathetic and I had an interesting chat with a young woman who worked at a local estate agents, had recently let one of the "posh door" flats, had no idea that there were segregated entrances and seemed genuinely shocked and upset at what she had unwittingly become party to.

I have heard it suggested that without the kind of planing gain social and affordable housing such as that at One Commercial Street there would be an even worse housing crisis than there is now and that segregated apartment  blocks are a small price to pay. Perhaps the whole issue of planing gain should be looked at afresh. Perhaps local authorities should grant planing permission to those developments that will have some advantage to the community regardless of bribes in the form of planning gain. 

If developments are populated by some tenants with well paid jobs who are renting from wealthy overseas investors, and some other less affluent ones who rent from a housing association, there is no rational reason why the two groups should be kept apart. This is just another example of the increasing polarity of this country in general and London in particular.  

Today might have been no food day.

How did you cope food wise yesterday? Note anything different? I thought not but the seventh of August is as far as home grown food would last us. From now until the end of the year we are totally dependant on imports while only a few short years ago we could have been self-sufficient right into October. Just another piece of National Farmers Union Red Tractor propaganda some will say. Perhaps they are right. The debate about self-sufficiency (protectionism?) versus free trade might have been going on since the Corn Laws but for global capital the argument was won a long time ago and it makes perfect sense for basic commodities to be continually criss-crossing the world. Maybe my nagging doubts about food security are all down to a failure to understand the dynamics of global trade but Putin has placed restrictions on Russian food imports from countries critical of his foreign policy and this is bound to impact on EU farming. Again, why would a self proclaimed  internationalist like myself care about the UK farming industry? What's more, is all of this in some way connected to "patriotism" or as I prefer to think of it, "love of place"? It probably is.