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Pick of posts of 2012: Allders, comics and sinking ships

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Yesterday, we listed our 20 most-read posts of 2012. We also asked some of our readers and contributors for a more subjective selection and to choose their favourite articles from the past 12 months.

Here’s some of their answers:

Architects’ drawings of how Croydon’s new HQ on CostYouAMint Walk will look when it opens this year. Is it £140m of your money well-spent?

If I had to choose one headline, it would be TaxPayers’ Alliance say Fisher is “part of entitlement culture”. For me, the term “entitlement culture” summed up all that is wrong with Croydon.

The domination of the Council, all major local charities, and key decision-making by one small group of people who are obsessively secret, but feel to believe that they are entitled to behave in the way they do. Croydon would be a healthier, richer society if there was greater transparency and a far wider group of people were genuinely involved in decision-making.

For 2013 and beyond it is vital for the health of our society and our economy that every organisation has separation of personnel: that the same small coterie of people do not dominate every aspect of public life.  I find myself in a community which is rotten and inefficient in so many aspects due to lack of rigour in a basic aspect of governance and management in its elected representatives, trustees and senior officials.

My greatest wish for 2013 and beyond is that we build up a group of citizens who are willing to give, say, five years (and no more) to public service standing as candidates in elections; putting themselves forward as trustees on charities and so on. People who hold above all else a real commitment to high quality, critical management, which provides high quality service to the community – the whole community.

I cannot believe that such a group of people would have made such a mess of libraries; or housing; or development of central Croydon in terms of its impact as urban design on the people walking about at street level; planning parking restrictions, or traffic flows; care in the community; licensing of betting and alcohol sales; . The list is endless…

  • My fave posts on Inside Croydon are the ones that reveal council mismanagement, overspending and bad judgement. I find these useful because as a local resident it can be difficult to really figure out what goes on in the “corridors of power”. One of the most revealing I felt was Croydon awards £30m library deal to most expensive bidder.

The cast of How the World Wags, Michael Hall, left, Sarah Block, Owen Moore and David Sanders

Not everything’s deep and heavy on Inside Croydon, and occasional arts coverage is a huge boon to some of the amateur groups in promoting their productions and work, whether it was Surrey Opera‘s work or local pantos.

So Wallander’s not so miserable after seeing Sarah Lund’s jumper, reviewing a comedy group before they took their show to the Edinburgh Festival, was particularly welcome.

  • The biggest story of the year in Croydon has got to have been the decline and closure of Allders, and with his timeline of the store’s decline, your contributing editor Andrew Pelling provided a vital catalogue of the historic problems of Allders, the centre of town and Croydon as a whole.
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