SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: A Croydon-born composer whose works have been forgotten deserves a revival, writes DAVID MORGAN
The BBC Proms begins next month. Eighty years ago, in the war-torn summer of 1942, among the varied concerts performed at the Royal Albert Hall was a composition by a musician who had worked as one of the assistant organists of Croydon Parish Church, but who by then was serving as an officer in the Army.
Promenade moment: the Prom programme from August 1942
Norman Demuth was originally due to have one of his pieces played in the Proms two years earlier, but that concert, due to be performed in the Queen’s Hall in September 1940, was cancelled because of the intense nightly air raids on London.
But his “Valses graves and gaies” was chosen to be played for a second Prom, this time on Saturday August 8, 1942. Advertised as a world premiere, the symphonic set which Demuth conducted himself was sandwiched between Beethoven’s Symphony No7 and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures At An Exhibition”.
‘Travel misery’ won’t be over in south London any time soon. After a week of disruption on rail and the Tube, with airline strikes still to come, ANDREW FISHER, pictured left, appraises next week’s industrial action on Croydon’s Trams
Having broken the borough’s political duopoly by winning council seats at the Town Hall elections last month, the Liberal Democrats and Greens will have both taken great encouragement from the results of yesterday’s two parliamentary by-elections, where the Tories lost seats in Tiverton and Honiton in Devon and in Wakefield, Yorkshire.
With nearly two-thirds of people in Croydon reporting that their mental health and wellbeing was affected by the covid pandemic, the counselling service located on the High Street in South Croydon, 
A Croydon-based charity that works to reduce youth knife crime has been forced to issue a public statement to distance itself from aggressive fund-raisers who are accused of harassing shoppers and passers-by on high streets across the country – though not in Croydon.
The incident was one of at least four stabbings in Croydon on Tuesday.
Croydon Council, the local authority that just a few weeks ago put up its council rents by 4.1per cent and took away Council Tax Support from 20,000 of the borough’s poorest households, has today announced that it is to hand out £3million to support “residents in greatest need”.
Jason Perry, the £81,000 per year part-time Mayor of Croydon, is giving Axis – the repairs contractors at the centre of the Regina Road council flats scandal – an additional year of work from the council, likely to cost the borough’s tax-payers at least £20million.
This Wednesday, the council cabinet will be asked to rubber-stamp a proposal that the Town Hall adopts the Croydon Residents’ Charter, drawn up by Yaw John Boateng, Les Parry and Kim Wakeley of the Croydon Council tenants and leaseholders panel. 
There’s a degree of trepidation in New Addington over proposals to erect a 5G telecoms mast next to a local primary school.
