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Philp bottles it and exits ‘cesspit’ Facebook group in a hurry
Croydon Mayor Jason Perry and policing minister Chris Philp were in full-scale retreat after the London elections, hurriedly trying to distance themselves from the ‘absolute cesspit of vile racism and hate speech’ that they had helped to foster on social media to try to help the Nasty Party’s mayoral candidate, Susan Hall.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Caught out: how will Perry and Philp stir up racist hate and anti-ULEZ vandalism now?
Within a matter of hours of Sadiq Khan being declared the winner of London’s Mayoral election on Saturday, Croydon Conservatives were battening down the hatches and shutting up shop on the secretive Facebook group they had established that sought to make political capital out of racism and anti-ULEZ fervour in outer London.
It was September last year when Inside Croydon exposed the private group Croydon Say No To ULEZ Expansion, which published posts both celebrating and apparently condoning vandalism of cameras installed for London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. Continue reading
Posted in 2024 London elections, Chris Philp MP, Crime, Croydon South, Environment, London-wide issues, Mayor Jason Perry, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, TfL, Transport, ULEZ, ULEZ expansion
Tagged 2024 London elections, Chris Philp MP, Conservative, Croydon, Croydon Conservatives, Croydon Council, Croydon say no to ULEZ expansion, Greenpeace, London, London Borough of Croydon, London Elections, London elections 2024, Mayor Jason Perry, Mayor Sadiq Khan, Tory, ULEZ, ULEZ expansion
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Rams storm to promotion to the delight of co-owner Stormzy
NON-LEAGUE NEWS: AFC Croydon Athletic have won promotion from the eighth tier of English football with a thrilling, and very tense, 2-1 play-off final win at Knaphill last night.
Nervous 90 minutes: Rams fans at the start of last night’s crucial play-off final at Knaphill. Somewhere in the crowd was Stomzy and Maya Jama
The game was watched by the club’s new-ish co-owner, rapper Stormzy, accompanied by his girlfriend Maya Jama, who both joined in the post-match celebrations.
The Rams scored wither side of half-time against their Combined Counties Premier Division South rivals. Brandon Pierrick scored the opener when he brought down Cian McCarthy’s cross, fought off two challenges and fired in. Continue reading
Trinity sixth former Karpal is more than pulling her own weight
Deadlift reckoning: Trinity School’s Hannah Karpal broke the British junior record with one of her lifts at the national championships last month
Hannah Karpal, a Trinity School sixth former, broke a national record as she finished second in the British junior powerlifting championships staged at Solihull last month.
The performance has seen her called up to the Great Britain squad, with the possibility of being selected for the world championships and European championships later this year.
Karpal’s lifts included a the record-breaking 24-stone deadlift – almost three times her own body weight. Across all three lifts – deadlift, squat and bench press – Karpal lifted 323kilogrammes (710ib) in total. Continue reading
Posted in Schools, Sport, Trinity School
Tagged British Powerlifting Championships, Hannah Karpal, Trinity School
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Don’t divert from the diversion, drivers on M25 are warned
Don’t divert from the diversion, or risk having to pay the £12.50 ULEZ charge – or worse.
Follow the diversions: the M25 is to close between J9 and J10 from Friday night
That’s the warning to motorists who might be affected by this weekend’s planned closure of the M25 between Junctions 9 at Leatherhead and 10 at Cobham.
This weekend will see the second of five planned closures of the M25 on sections connecting with Junction 10 as part of a £317million project.
The RAC has advised drivers not to rely on SatNavs in case they direct them on to roads where ULEZ is enforced. Continue reading
Posted in Transport, ULEZ
Tagged Cobham, Croydon say no to ULEZ expansion, Junction 10, Junction 9, Leatherhead, M25, National Highways
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Surrey Street Market murder: suspect arrested at Gatwick
The Metropolitan Police have made two more arrests in connection with the murder of Rijkaard Siafa, who was attacked in Surrey Street Market last month by a group of men armed with machetes or large kinives.
Murder case: two men are to appear at the Central Criminal Court today charged with the murder of Rijkaard Siafa on Surrey Street on April 12
Rammon Mali, 32, of Valley Road, Kenley, was arrested on Sunday at Gatwick Airport, according to the Met after “having returned to the UK from Senegal”.
Mali was charged with murder and is due to appear at the Old Bailey today.
The police say that a 51-year-old woman was also arrested on Monday on “suspicion of perverting the course of justice”. She has been bailed until late July. Continue reading
Spring Market, The Surprise Inn, Upper Shirley Rd, May 11
Posted in Activities, Pubs, Shirley North, Shirley South
Tagged Shirley, The Surprise Inn
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Borough’s director of public health quits her council job
Rachel Flowers, the director of public health at the cash-strapped council who helped guide the borough through the covid pandemic, is leaving her job.
Time to move on: Rachel Flowers has been Croydon’s director of public health since 2016
Her boss, Katherine Kerswell, the council chief executive, made the announcement almost as an after-thought in her little weekly emailed homily sent to Croydon staff just before the weekend.
“In staffing news,” Kerswell wrote, “I want to let you know that Rachel Flowers, our director of public health, will be leaving Croydon.
“Rachel has been at the council for eight years and during that time has championed many important causes. She has worked to tackle health inequality in the borough as part of her role, built strong relationships with our NHS colleagues, and has been an important ally to many of our staff networks, giving her time, energy, and voice to raise awareness and help us become a more inclusive workplace and employer. Continue reading
BRIT in deal to secure free schooling for talented arts pupils
PRS for Music, a world-leading music collective management organisation, is partnering with The BRIT School’s renowned music department to inspire – and fund – the next generation of artists.
Musical youth: Young Athena is another former pupil of the BRIT School, and now a PRS ambassador
The partnership will enable The BRIT School to remain free to all performing and creative arts pupils, as the two organisations work together to develop and nurture the talented individuals who enrol at the school.
PRS for Music represents the rights of more than 175,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers around the globe.
The collaboration continues this week with PRS for Music supporting Chroma, two nights of original music created by The BRIT School’s Year 12 music students, to be performed at Stanley Halls in South Norwood. Continue reading
Posted in Art, BRIT School, Music, Schools, Stanley Halls
Tagged Music, PRS for Music, Selhurst, Stanley Halls, The BRIT School
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BME Forum joins £500,000 3-year project with cancer charity
Using more than half a million pounds, Macmillan Cancer Support has joined with Croydon BME Forum to form a three-year partnership to address health inequalities.
Centre of activity: the Wellness Centre, run by Croydon’s BME Forum, will be a focus for work on health inequalities
The project is in response to the poorer cancer experiences and outcomes that people from black and minority ethnic communities continue to experience.
The British Journal of Cancer found that black women have significantly poorer breast cancer survival rates than white women. Other research shows that black men are two to three times more likely to develop prostate cancer than their white counterparts, have an increased risk of developing prostate cancer at a younger age and that death rates are twice as high.
The “Can You C Me” partnership team will build community networks across Croydon, Kingston, Merton, Richmond, Sutton and Wandsworth to tackle barriers to health equality at grassroots level. Continue reading
Play-off win sets up the biggest match in Athletic’s history
NON-LEAGUE NEWS by ANDREW SINCLAIR
Croydon Athletic tonight face the most important match in the phoenix club’s brief history, following the previously most important game which they won in Jersey on Saturday.
Jermaine McGlashan’s side will travel to Knaphill for the Combined Counties Premier Division South play-off final, with a place in the eighth tier of English football the prize for the winners.
Athletic’s end-of-season surge of good form saw them win their play-off semi-final 2-1 on Saturday in front of 1,000 fans at Jersey Bulls, the Channel Islands club which had finished runners-up in the division in the regular season
Rams’ fifth-place league finish is their best since reforming in 2012, and came at the end of a season of change for the Thornton Heath-based outfit, after Wilfried Zaha, Stormzy and Danny Young took over. Continue reading
Posted in AFC Croydon Athletic, AFC Whyteleafe, Andrew Sinclair, Balham FC, Croydon FC, Football, South Norwood, Sport, Thornton Heath, Wilfried Zaha
Tagged AFC Croydon Athletic, Antonio Gonnella, Croydon FC, Jermaine McGlashan, Liam Giles, South Norwood, Stormzy, Thornton Heath, Wilfried Zaha
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The shifts below the waterline that require action from all sides
ANDREW FISHER takes a look behind the numbers from Thursday’s election and finds lessons for Labour as well as the Tories
For all the “excitement” of Thursday’s elections, nothing much changed for Croydon.
Labour’s Sadiq Khan remains London Mayor, Conservative Neil Garratt remains our London Assembly member and the Conservatives and Labour each held on to the council seat they were defending in the local byelections.
But this apparent consistency hides some shifts below the waterline that will be analysed by all parties as we head towards the General Election that Rishi Sunak has promised “in the second half of this year”.
Across the country, the Conservatives did abysmally – losing nearly 500 council seats, almost half of those that they were defending. They also lost the West Midlands mayoral contest and Sunak even now has a Labour mayor in his own North Yorkshire backyard. Continue reading
Posted in 2024 London elections, Andrew Fisher, Ben Taylor, Chris Philp MP, Croydon East, Croydon South, London Assembly, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Natasha Irons, Neil Garratt, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall
Tagged 2024 London elections, Andrew Fisher, Chris Philp MP, Conservative, Croydon, Croydon and Sutton, Croydon and Sutton (London Assembly constituency), Croydon East, Croydon South, Labour, Liberal Democrats, London, London Assembly, London Elections, London elections 2024, Mayor, Mayor Sadiq Khan, Neil Garratt, South Norwood, Susan Hall, Tory
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Five Guys opens second Croydon restaurant at Valley Park
Coming to a retail park near you: Five Guys have opened at Valley Park today
The Five Guys burger chain has today opened its second restaurant in Croydon, at Croydon Valley Leisure Park.
American-based business Five Guys launched in Britain in 2013 in Covent Garden. They already have a restaurant in Croydon town centre, on Croydon High Street. Continue reading
Banstead Rotary Village Fair, Banstead High Street, July 6
Posted in Activities, Outside Croydon, Surrey
Tagged Banstead, Banstead Rotary, Surrey
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In Croydon, Labour’s toxic track record makes it ‘no Khan-do’
After another two-day election count and too many coffees, political editor WALTER CRONXITE sifts through the detritus of Croydon and Sutton’s part in the 2024 London elections
Having a Mayor…: Sorry to keep you all waiting
Not for the first time, Croydon kept London waiting.
It was getting on for 9 o’clock at the ExCel Centre last night when the telling teams from Croydon and Sutton councils finally finished counting up the votes from the third of the three ballot papers cast on Thursday, for the London-wide Assembly Members. Only once this was done could ours be added to all those from the rest of the capital, fed into the City Hall computer and under the Modified d’Hondt proportional representation system (don’t ask; you don’t ever want to know…) the final 11 representatives declared…
Before we move on to the outcome of all those votes, the tardiness of the count conducted by Croydon and Sutton does need to be noted. Two years ago, in Croydon, remember (how could you forget?), under the management of Returning Officer Katherine Kerswell, the borough’s local election count was continuing into the Sunday, the three days after the polls had closed. So of those who had to endure the torture have been getting treatment for PTSD ever since…
Some feared we might be heading that way again this weekend. But this time, everyone else from across London had to hang around and wait for Croydon’s tail-end Charlies and Charlottes to finish their workings-out. Continue reading
Posted in 2024 London elections, Elly Baker, Hina Bokhari, Katherine Kerswell, Ken Livingstone, London Assembly, London-wide issues, Maddie Henson, Mayor of London, Neil Garratt, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall, Sutton Council, ULEZ, ULEZ expansion, Zoe Garbett
Tagged Conservative, Croydon, Green Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats, London, London Assembly, London Borough of Croydon, Maddie Henson, Mayor, Mayor Sadiq Khan, Neil Garratt, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall, The Green Party, Tory
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Croydon’s Lifeboat parades that answered a Mayday appeal
Big day out: Croydon’s Lifeboat Day parade in 1908. A regular, if not annual event, it raised precious money for an enduring cause
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Newspaper archive reports going back more than a century reveal a regular Croydon town centre fund-raiser: the Lifeboat Day procession, as DAVID MORGAN takes us back in time…
The RNLI, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2024.
The organisation is rightly proud that their volunteers have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. From their 238 lifeboat stations around the coast of Great Britain and Ireland, they operate a 24-hour search and rescue service. To this day, they rely on voluntary subscriptions to keep their boats and lifeguards functioning.
A trawl through the newspaper archives has revealed that, despite being some distance from the sea, Croydon has had a very close association with the charity over many years. Continue reading
Posted in David Morgan, History
Tagged Croydon, David Morgan, Frederick Edridge, Queen Victoria, RNLI, Royal National Lifeboat Institution
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Mirror of Life Exhibition, Croydon Art Space, from May 18
Posted in Activities, Art, Croydon Art Space
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Grumbled recriminations but little is changed at the Town Hall
Fuelled by a double espresso and a Count Binface discounted croissant, political editor WALTER CRONXITE reports from ExCel on the outcome of a couple of Croydon sideshows
As news seeped out from ExCel last night of the two Croydon sideshows to the London elections, one experienced observer of south London politics observed: “If Labour can’t win in Park Hill when they have a 20-point lead in the national polls, there’s no way Ben Taylor will win Croydon South for them in a General Election.”
“Congo” Chris Philp, it would seem, may have a few more years yet as an MP and go-to media punch-bag. Grauniad political sketchwriter John Crace, at least, will be delighted. Continue reading
Posted in 2024 London elections, Andrew Price, Jade Appleton, Jess Hammersley-Rich, Mike Bonello, Park Hill and Whitgift, Tony Newman, Woodside
Tagged 2024 London elections, Andrew Pelling, Andrew Price, Conservative, Croydon, Croydon Council, Croydon East, Green Party, Jade Appleton, Jess Hammersley-Rich, Labour, Liberal Democrats, London, London Elections, London elections 2024, Melanie Felten, Mike Bonello, Park Hill and Whitgift, Tony Newman, Tory, Vote rigging, Woodside
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Gray day for Labour as they lose Sutton council seat to Tories
ROSE HILL reports from the count at the ExCel Centre on another sign that Labour’s London juggernaut might just have a puncture…
Tory election winner: Catherine Gray, a Sutton councillor again (the Sutton bit of the backdrop is way down low…)
After a two-year absence, Catherine Gray is back on Sutton Council, the Conservative winning the St Helier West seat from Labour in Thursday’s by-election by just six votes. This, too, was an election in which ULEZ was to play a significant, though ultimately not decisive, part.
The declaration came last night at the ExCel Centre in east London, where Sutton and Croydon’s London election votes are to be counted today. The council by-election counts (there were two conducted for Croydon Council, too) were delayed until after all the London election ballots had been properly validated – and Croydon and Sutton were among the slowest to complete that process.
The St Helier West ward by-election ought to cause huge repercussions in the local Sutton Labour Party, and at the party’s regional headquarters, too, and could be a troubling indicator for Sadiq Khan supporters who already had the “jitters” over the possibility that anti-ULEZ sentiment might see him lose the mayoralty to Harrow hairdresser Susan Hall. Continue reading
Thames Lighters, history talk, Honeywood Museum, Jul 25
Posted in Activities, History, Honeywood Museum
Tagged Carshalton, Friends of Honeywood Museum, History, Honeywood Museum, River Thames, Thames
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With 48% turn out in outer London, Khan’s team gets the jitters
Our political editor, WALTER CRONXITE, on Labour’s post-polling nervousness and confirmation that in Croydon council by-elections, things are never done as quickly as you might hope
Have you ever met a poor bookmaker?
No, me neither, which is why when rumours started to swirl this afternoon that Harrow hairdresser Susan Hall, the Tories’ fringe candidate, was about to be elected as the next Mayor of London, anyone who believed such nonsense will have also thought that they could have made a killing with her still offered at 6-1 by some bookies.
Going to the dogs?: Sadiq Khan, bidding for a third term as London Mayor, voting with his wife, Saadiya Khan, near their Wandsworth home yesterday
Winning six times your stake money is great for punters, but the odds reflect what the bookmakers really think of Tory Hall’s chances of beating Labour’s Sadiq Khan. They know what they are doing. The bookies are always happy to take money from mug punters…
Opinion polls had been giving Khan huge leads, although earlier this week that (theoretical) advantage had been whittled down to 10% – still a comfortable enough margin, you’d think.
The Tory campaign had a simple strategy (“It had to be simple,” according to one Conservative activist, “otherwise Susan would have struggled to understand it”), and that was: throw enough mud and some of it will stick. Continue reading
Posted in 2024 London elections, Andrew Price, Jess Hammersley-Rich, Katherine Kerswell, London Assembly, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Park Hill and Whitgift, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall, ULEZ, ULEZ expansion, Woodside
Tagged Andrew Price, Conservative, Croydon, ExCel Centre, Green Party, Harrow hairdresser, Jess Hammersley-Rich, Katherine Kerswell, Labour, Liberal Democrats, London, London Assembly, London Borough of Croydon, Mayor, Mayor of London, Mayor Sadiq Khan, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall, Tory
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Old soldiers enjoy their rugby stroll around Hamsey Green
Grandstand view: Chelsea Pensioners were at Warlingham on Saturday for the venue’s first walking rugby festival, which included a team from the Royal Hospital
We’ve had walking football. There’s walking cricket, too (if it ever stops raining).
Now, up at Warlingham rugby club and at Old Whits, they are playing walking rugby, and a visit at the weekend from some old soldiers from the Royal Hospital at Chelsea added a bit of scarlet class to what’s thought to have been the first walking rugby festival.
The premise of walking rugby is: if you can walk, you can play. Continue reading
Builders brand Gove’s latest CPO reforms as ‘desperation’
Our housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES, on how a ‘very un-Conservative’ policy shift has probably come too late to save Croydon town centre
Ready for the bulldozers?: Croydon Council now has CPO powers that would allow it to buy the Whitgift Centre on the ‘cheap’
New powers handed to local authorities by the Conservative Government could, just, open the way for Croydon Council to reverse the continuing decline of the town centre by CPO-ing parts of the Whitgift Centre in order to turn much of the site into much-needed social housing.
If only Croydon had a couple of hundred million quid spare to conduct such a transformational scheme…
According to a report in the trade press, even the Tories’ multi-millionaire mates in the property development industry have turned on the lame-duck Government, accusing Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities of “desperation” in trying to find ways to turn round their “poor track record in delivering affordable homes”.
Gove’s DLUHC this week handed local councils new powers to buy land for development using compulsory purchase orders without paying inflated “hope value” costs – a notional uplift in price which has added millions to the bottom lines of land owners and property speculators for decades, mostly paid for by public money. Continue reading
Posted in "Hammersfield", Business, CPO, Croydon Council, Housing, London-wide issues, Planning, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, Whitgift Centre, Whitgift Foundation
Tagged Conservative, Croydon, Croydon Council, Hammersfield, Hammerson, London Borough of Croydon, Westfield, Whitgift Centre, Whitgift Foundation
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Thornton Heath father and daughter firm make business finals
A Croydon damp-proofing firm run by a father and daughter team is in the running for top honours at next week’s Celebrating Small Business Awards.
Business winners: the London businesses going forward to the final in Blackpool, including Croydon-based London Property Preservation
London Property Preservation Ltd, run by office manager Denise Nicholls and her dad, managing director James Nicholls, from offices in Thornton Heath, has been named the London heat winners in the Family Business category of the awards organised by the Federation of Small Businesses, and they are off to Blackpool’s Winter Gardens for the grand final on May 9.
With a background of 35 years in the industry, London Property Preservation’s damp-proofing company was founded in 2009. The FSB awards citation describes them by saying, “Their core values revolve around family, effective communication and prioritising customer satisfaction.
“Through price check promises and innovative initiatives, they strive to ensure that every home remains protected against dampness.” Continue reading
From Croydon to Peckham, activists stand by asylum seekers
The civil disobedience action aimed at frustrating, delaying or even stopping altogether the removal of asylum seekers from their accommodation in south London on to other locations, including deportation to Rwanda, has shifted from Croydon’s Lunar House to Peckham today.
Bus busted: the delays to the coach at a refugee hostel in Peckham saw it eventually leave empty
There, a stand-off had developed by lunchtime when a coach sent to collect asylum seekers and take them to the Bibby Stockholm barge was surrounded by activists. Hundreds of protesters were at the scene, some placing hire bikes under the coach to blockade it.
The Bibby Stockholm, moored at Portland in Dorset, is the Conservative Government’s other controversial “off-shoring” non-solution to an immigration problem of the Home Office’s own making.
The move of refugees to the barge or on to aeroplanes bound for Rwanda is widely seen as PM Rishi Sunak abusing the work of the Home Office’s immigration service, backed up by the already stretched Met Police, as a pre-election stunt for his party’s political benefit.
Men staying at the Peckham hotel said they fear the conditions that would await them on the Bibby Stockholm, which has had to be evacuated when contaminated with the deadly Legionnaires’ disease, and where an Albanian, Leonard Farruku, died last year in a suspected suicide. Continue reading
