Fears that Newman cover-up could impact Jones’s election

Tony Newman refuses to answer any questions from his own Labour councillor colleagues over the conduct of the recent Fairfield council by-election, the candidate selection stitch-up and the dreadful circumstances that created the councillor vacancy.

General Election candidate Sarah Jones (foreground) out campaigning earlier this year with council leader Tony Newman (second right). Labour fears his conduct could jeopardise her prospects

Newman has admitted this week that he knew that Niro Sirisena, one of his promoted councillors, had been involved in “a serious incident” of violence towards a young woman, but the council leader failed to report the matter to the police immediately.

Instead, Newman spent more than 24 hours organising a cover-up to avoid his Labour council suffering any political damage.

“He’s told Private Eye magazine more than he’s told us,” one councillor said this week after attending a rare meeting of the Town Hall Labour group on Wednesday night. Continue reading

Posted in 2019 General Election, Alison Butler, Croydon Central, Paul Scott, Sarah Jones MP, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Dumb Creatura’: bad week for Tories who duck questioning

The subject of ridicule in the national press, criticised for handing over voter details to a cult-like church and now too scared to face questions from Inside Croydon’s virtual hustings: Mario Creatura’s dream of becoming a Conservative MP is turning into a nightmare. WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, reports

Mario Creatura, backed by Tim Pollard, invited SPAC Nation to be part of Tory campaigning

Mario Creatura, the some time “special adviser” to the Prime Minister in Downing Street, appears to share a growing number of unattractive traits with Bullshitter Boris Johnson, not least of which is their reluctance to subject themselves to public scrutiny.

Creatura, the Conservative Party’s candidate in Croydon Central in the General Election on December 12, failed to turn up today for the recording of Inside Croydon’s Under The Flyover Election Special virtual hustings.

All the major parties had representatives put up for interview, with questions submitted from this website’s vast readership. But Creatura was too frit to respond to our invitation.

With less than a fortnight to go until the General Election, things have been looking a bit grim for Creatura’s chances.

Given that this week he has been featured as “Dumb Creatura” in the pages of Private Eye magazine (audited circulation: nearly 500,000 per month), while also seeing YouGov pollsters predicting Croydon Central as a “hold” for Labour’s Sarah Jones, it is little wonder that the overly ambitious Creatura appeared a little crest-fallen at last night’s hustings staged in a chilly church hall in Woodside. Continue reading

Posted in 2019 General Election, Croydon Central, Croydon Council, Croydon Greens, Esther Sutton, Gavin Barwell, Inside Croydon, Mario Creatura, Peter Underwood, Sarah Jones MP, Tony Newman, Under The Flyover | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Gallery in South Norwood offers a bit of Brazil in batik

On a rainy night in Croydon, KEN TOWL heads off to Portland Road for a feel of Latin American sunshine

At the weekend I was taking brunch with members of the self-titled FILTH – Failed In London – Try Hastings – crew and was a little disappointed when one of them commiserated with me for the mere fact of coming from Croydon.

To be fair to the seaside literati, the rest leapt to Croydon’s defence, explaining to this hapless person (who was someone in the arts) that it is fast becoming a hub of culture and creativity, the new Shoreditch, if you will. And the Fairfield Halls at least look like the South Bank, even if they are considerably smaller. Continue reading

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Gardeners at St Peter’s, South Croydon, 2020 meeting dates

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Community Tree Planting, Beddington Park, Dec 7

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Christmas card-making craft workshop, Studio Upstairs, Dec 7

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Transport expert asks RAIB to re-open tram safety investigation

Transport for London has been accused of covering up a second safety report into fatigue among tram drivers – when driver tiredness thought to be one of the prime causes of the 2016 Croydon tram crash, in which seven people died and more than 60 suffered serious injury. It has led to one transport expert to call for the crash investigators to re-open their report to consider this recently discovered evidence.

City Hall officials are still suppressing tram safety reports, three years after the Sandilands crash

Inside Croydon has reported before on a tram drivers’ fatigue review which was carried out in 2017 but which TfL censored and failed to pass on to the then on-going independent rail accident investigations team at the time.

The review, which had been conducted by TfL, rated the fatigue performance of Tram Operations Ltd (the FirstGroup subsidiary running the trams) as “requires improvement”.

TfL only submitted this review to the Rail Accident Investigation Branch after questions asked at the London Assembly forced them to do so. TfL claimed that the failure to pass on the 2017 fatigue review to RAIB was due to an “administrative error”.

Now Private Eye is reporting the existence of a second, earlier report into driver fatigue. Carried out in 2014, the report made a series of recommendations over tram drivers’ work practices. Again, TfL didn’t pass this on to the RAIB.

And once again – conveniently – a large chunk of this report was missing when TfL was required to produce it for the London Assembly. Continue reading

Posted in Caroline Pidgeon, Florence Eshalomi, London Assembly, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Sandilands derailment, TfL, Tramlink, Transport | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Council’s ex-chief Elvery gets sacked from West Sussex job

Nathan Elvery, for eight years one of Croydon’s most senior council officials, has been sacked from his latest job at West Sussex County Council, where he was chief executive.

Plenty to smile about: Nathan Elvery could get a £100,000 pay-off from West Sussex

In 2014, Elvery had been promoted to the role of CEO at Croydon Council by Tony Newman, the Labour leader of the council.

Elvery had been a key player in the Tory administration in Croydon under Mike Fisher, overseeing wide-ranging job cuts – “Efficiency is in our DNA”, Elvery said – and as the council finance director and then deputy CEO he was an influential figure in the decision to demolish Taberner House, the council’s headquarters, and to spend £140million on a glass palace – Fisher’s Folly – to replace it.

But despite being handed the top job by Newman, Elvery left Croydon in 2016 to take up a similar post, and £190,000 annual salary, in Chichester. Continue reading

Posted in Croydon Council, Nathan Elvery | Tagged , | 9 Comments

After £41m+ spend: art centre has no gallery space for art

An arts society formed in the borough 150 years ago faces an uncertain future as it has emerged that after spending more than £41m on refurbishing the Fairfield Halls, in a display of incompetence stunning even by Croydon’s usual standards, the council have failed to provide any gallery space. Our arts correspondent, BELLA BARTOCK, reports

Croydon Council has managed to spend £41million on refurbishing the Fairfield Halls arts centre but now it emerges that the venue has nowhere suitable or dedicated to displaying art.

Re-opened, but without the promised gallery space

That’s the shocking – and cringe-worthy – discovery of the award-winning Croydon Art Society, who are currently staging their 130th annual exhibition in the Clocktower, next to the Town Hall, but whose shows of their members’ works face an uncertain future with nowhere to hang their paintings or display other forms of art and crafts.

Anthony Waldbaum, the chair of the Croydon Art Society, has been told that the Fairfield Halls cannot accommodate the Society’s twice-yearly exhibitions, and with changes to come at the Museum of Croydon and Croydon Clocktower, they will not be able to exhibit their members’ work there from 2020, either.

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Posted in Arnhem Gallery, Art, BH Live, Chris Clark, Community associations, Croydon Art Society, Croydon Council, Fairfield, Fairfield Halls, Jo Negrini, Paula Murray | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Health and Social Care introduction, Cassandra Centre, Dec 1

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Take the challenge with Red January for Mind in Croydon

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Plant A Tree Day, Tollers Estate, Coulsdon, Dec 7

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Warlingham Classic Car and Bike Show, Hamsey Green, Jul 19

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Volunteer Open Day, Dollyper’s Hill, Coulsdon, Nov 30

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Council leader delayed reporting violent incident to police

Tony Newman, and a white ribbon: when made aware of an alleged incident of domestic violence, he failed to report it to the police immediately

Croydon’s council leader Tony Newman has admitted that he failed to report, immediately, allegations of serious violence against a young woman. Instead of going to the police straight away, Newman spent more than 24 hours working on a cover-up of a “serious incident” involving one of his Labour councillors.

Niro Sirisena resigned as a Labour councillor for Fairfield ward in September.

Since then, Newman has refused to explain publicly the circumstances surrounding the abrupt resignation of one of the supposed rising stars of his council administration.

Sirisena had enjoyed a rapid rise in the local Labour Party, having been elected as a councillor for Fairfield ward in 2018, while earlier this year he was employed in the constituency office of Croydon Central MP Sarah Jones.

But the latest edition of Private Eye magazine reports that, “It is alleged that Sirisena, who is in his late 30s, had a violent row with a girlfriend, leaving her ‘battered’.” Continue reading

Posted in Chris Clark, Crime, Croydon Council, Fairfield, Niro Sirisena, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Open day at Studio Upstairs in effort to boost their Big Give

Art is doubling up on charity donations at the Studio Upstairs

Croydon’s arts venue Studio Upstairs is gearing up to double its supporters’ Christmas donations by taking part in the country’s biggest match funding campaign, The Big Give.

Now in its 12th year, The Big Give’s Christmas Challenge begins on December 3 and runs for just seven days. Throughout the week, participating charities will see their supporters’ donations matched (up to £50,000 per organisation), doubling the impact of their gifts.

As part of this campaign, Studio Upstairs in Croydon is having an open studio from noon till 5.30pm next Tuesday, December 3, where anyone can pop in to see the wonderful artwork on display and the studio in action. Continue reading

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Conservative candidates get backing from far-right fringe group

“The fact that Nigel Farage praises the Conservatives’ manifesto for having UKIP policies should ring alarm bells among traditional Conservative voters.

Donald Ekekhomen: has the willing backing of the far-right

“This is not the party it used to be.”

So warned Dominic Grieve QC, the former Attorney General in a Tory government who was squeezed out of the party because after it was taken over by Bullshit Boris Johnson and the so-called European Research Group of hard-right Brexiteers. Grieve was one of 21 Conservative MPs who had the party whip removed from them in September for refusing to support Johnson’s Brexit Bill.

Grieve, who has remained as a Remainer, is standing for election again in Beaconsfield, where he has been MP for 22 years, holding a 24,000-vote majority in 2017, though this time he is standing as an independent with Bullshitter Boris’s Tory Party putting up Joy Morrissey as its “Get Brexit Done” candidate.

But it is not just out in the shires where Tory candidates are actively seeking, and getting, the support of Farage and other far-right figures and racists. Here in Croydon, the Conservative candidate standing against Steve Reed OBE has also actively sought the backing of characters on the fringe of politics who hold some particularly obnoxious views.

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Posted in 2019 General Election, Chris Philp MP, Croydon Central, Croydon North, Croydon South, Donald Ekekhomen, Gavin Barwell, Mario Creatura, Michael Swadling, Steve Reed MP | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ridgeway Winter Wonderland, Sanderstead, Dec 15

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Croydon Art Society annual exhibition, Clocktower, to Dec 7

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Stormzy’s Glastonbury slogans become rallying call for Labour

Stormzy has thrown his support behind Labour and called on people to register to vote to “end austerity, rebuild our communities and take back the means to change our lives for the better”.

Stormzy gave a career-defining performance at Glastonbury, where he coined three pointed political slogans

Stormzy, recently voted the coolest bloke in Croydon*, made his call in a letter to the Grauniad newspaper signed together with several leading music industry figures including the widely respected Akala, Professor Green, Kano and Charlie Sloth.

Stormzy, the multiple award-winning grime artist from South Norwood, made a similar intervention ahead of the 2017 General Election, which in his home town was seen as significantly undermining the sitting Tory MP, Gavin Barwell, and giving extra impetus to help Labour’s Sarah Jones win in Croydon Central. Continue reading

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Sketcher’s images of Croydon landmarks now available online

Roland Nissan’s original art is now available for sale online

An artist who has spent much of the past decade sketching and painting scenes from in and around Croydon has launched an online presence which will make his work more readily accessible to the public.

Roland Nissan lived for nearly 30 years in Croydon before recently moving to East Grinstead. Continue reading

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The Great NHS Heist, Ruskin House film club, Dec 6

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Friends of the Earth Green Beanfeast, Oval Tavern, Dec 10

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Active space launch event, Norbury Park, Jan 11

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College artists help brighten the bridge over the Brighton line

A run-down, forbidding-looking rail bridge has been brightened up by work from some local college students, CHARLES KING writes

Not the most inviting of vistas: the footbridge over the Brighton mainline at Coulsdon before community groups got involved

The footbridge over the Brighton Line between Coulsdon Town railway station and Coulsdon Woods, which was replaced in 2006 when the Coulsdon Bypass was constructed has been a problem to local residents ever since.

Although it is owned by Network Rail, who say that they have a contract with Transport for London to maintain it, including the lighting, all as part of the bypass maintenance, in turn TfL, say that they have subcontracted this work to Croydon Council, who of course deny it.

So when there has been the need for any repairs it has taken months of wrangling before anything gets done. Continue reading

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