Don’t mention the wall!: the artwashing hoardings have gone up, and we should all be very jolly grateful for all the hard work that Jason Perry has done. Apparently…
The hard-working volunteers of a local community association have been harshly criticised by their Tory ward councillor for not being as obsequious and fawning as required over the latest artwashing exploits in the town centre.
Tory councillor Michael Neal – an old mucker of part-time Jason Perry, the borough’s Mayor – took offence at the South Croydon Community Association’s questioning of the colourful hoardings that went up around Allders last month. The specially commissioned art is the latest feeble effort by Westfield, after 12 years of delay by the private developers, whose failures to begin their promised £1.4billion regeneration scheme have left much of the town centre in a devastated mess.
“Very negative post from SCCA,” whinged Neal, the councillor for South Croydon ward, who pockets a tidy £24,916.80 per year from the tax-payers so that he can spend time sniping at his own pay-masters.
Mayor in the middle: Michael Neal (£25k per year) with his old mate Jason Perry (£82k) and former IRA gun-runner Maria Gatland, another Tory councillor
“The Mayor has worked tirelessly to ensure Westfield are working on a plan for the town centre.”
“Tirelessly” no less.
“The fact that Alders [sic] has been cleaned and hoarding [sic] have gone up is a small step in the right direction.”
The reality, of course, is somewhat different.
Perry is powerless over Westfield. Last year, he didn’t know that the multi-billion multi-national Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield intended to put back its promised revised “Masterplan” (version No3) by 18 months. And the first that the Croydon Mayor knew that they would not be completing their scheme until 2038 – at the earliest – was when someone pointed it out to him in the Evening Standard.
Such harsh realities are not the sort of thing to trouble Neal’s blissful existence in his little Croydon Tory bubble, which involves repeating the old lie about Westfield’s delays somehow being down to the last Labour administration (plot spoiler: Westfield do as they like, and crap over local communities, regardless of what colour rosette is in charge of the respective town halls).
“The Mayor understands the frustration we all feel about the regeneration of the town centre,” simpered Neal, who has somehow managed to be a Tory councillor in Croydon for 22 years without anyone ever noticing.
“I can assure you that it is his No1 priority..,” Neal went on. Piss-poor Perry is reckoned to have at least six “No1 priorities”. “…Along with fixing the finances of the council.” QED.
Neal’s testy little social media outburst appears to be part of a concerted effort by Conservative councillors in the south of the borough to keep the residents’ associations in line and on-message.
It was largely a campaign led by residents’ associations that brought about the change to the mayoral system (#ABitLessShit, © Inside Croydon 2020), which has saddled the borough with £82,000 per year part-timer Perry.
Now, dissent will not be tolerated: RAs in Purley were warned last year by one of their councillors not to dare to complain about the dodgy deal surrounding the proposals to build a new Purley Pool, after Mayor Perry broke his election promise to re-open the existing leisure centre.
Many of the borough’s supposedly “apolitical” residents’ associations have Tory councillors “embedded” in their affairs, with the elected representatives attending committee meetings where they are able to keep a close check on the people who put them in office, making sure that they don’t try to get too “uppity”. At least one RA to the south of the borough has even made a local Conservative councillor chair of their not-so-“apolitical” association.
Information lite: one of the posters that went up at the time of the hoardings’ artwashing, which pointedly failed to answer the very question it posed
Councillor Neal’s little hissy fit against the recently revived South Croydon Community Association came after their Facebook page admin had the temerity to express disappointment that, yet again, the public was being kept in the dark over what was going on.
“Sadly there’s no information posters on the store telling us what’s actually planned by the developers to bring back life to Allders or indeed the town centre,” was the perfectly reasonable observation that they made.
This, in Neal’s Toryworld, was “a very negative post”.
But maybe some residents are beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors used by Perry’s closest supporters, though. They are certainly tiring of being fobbed off with “jam tomorrow” promises over Westfield.
“The ‘partnership’ with URW has destroyed Croydon,” one resident responded to Neal.
“Still no responses from those responsible for getting into bed with these charlatans regarding the contractual obligations attached to the sale,” they wrote, referring to the deals done between the landowners the Whitgift Foundation and Westfield.
Another wrote: “Seriously? A hoarding for graffiti and tarpaulin in the Whitgift Centre! It’s about time there was some transparency coming from all those involved in this … [Westfield] are just sitting on their acquisitions while Croydon crumbles.”
One resident responded to Councillor Neal by writing, “Typical politician spouting groupspeak and not actually saying anything!
And the reality that the art hoardings are a weak excuse for not actually doing anything, until 2025 at the earliest, was clear to another member of the Facebook group: “Clearly a not inconsiderable sum of money has been spent cleaning the facade and erecting a substantial hoarding [at Allders]. One assumes the hoarding is more than just for keeping squatters out, but what?”
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t dare complain about Purley pool
Read more: Hammer blow for Whitgift Centre with new delay to masterplan
Read more: Millionaire pulls plug on Mayor Perry’s ‘big idea’ for Allders
Read more: What will the ‘new’ Westfield deal really mean for Croydon?
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