Whitgift School’s Olympic hero Okoye is arrested in Alabama

Posted on February 11, 2019 by insidecroydon

Busted: Lawrence Okoye photographed by Alabama police after his arrest last week

Lawrence Okoye, the former Whitgift School pupil and discus finalist at the  London Olympics who went to the United States to seek his fortune as an American football player, was arrested in Alabama last week on soliciting prostitution charges, placing his sporting career in jeopardy.

Okoye was one of more than a dozen men snared in a police sting operation staged in Birmingham by the Shelby County Drug Enforcement Task Force.

He was released on bail last Thursday.

He has recently moved to Alabama to join the Birmingham Iron, a new franchise, part of the Alliance of American Football, which began its inaugural season yesterday. The Iron won their first game, but Okoye played no part in it. It was reported that he had a groin injury.

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Posted in 2012 Olympics, Athletics, Croydon Harriers, Lawrence Okoye, Rugby Union, Sport, Whitgift School | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Tories give Croydon 50p per person to deal with Brexit

Posted on February 10, 2019 by insidecroydon

Theresa Mayhem’s government has allocated barely 50p per person to Croydon in a hand-out to the council to cope with the impact of a no-deal Brexit.

Tony Newman, the leader of Croydon Council, has described the £210,000 grant to the borough as “pitiful”.

At a recent meeting of London council leaders attended by Newman to discuss the capital’s resilience and readiness for Brexit, contingency planning for matters ranging from food and fuel rationing to civil unrest were discussed.

Britain is set to leave the European Union, with or without an agreement, and with or without proper preparations, in 47 days’ time, on March 29. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Step out to help raise funds for Mayday children’s cancer unit

Posted on February 10, 2019 by insidecroydon

Sunday May 5 is the date set for the first large-scale fundraiser for The Lily Pad Appeal, which is trying to raise £750,000 for a state-of-the-art children’s oncology unit as part of the new Integrated Paediatric Village at Mayday, Croydon University Hospital.

With outdated, restrictive layout and facilities, Croydon’s Acute Paediatric Services are now in urgent need of modernisation to ensure they can deliver high-quality, safe, effective care compliant with regional and national standards and meet the steeply increasing demand.

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Jon Hart and Billy Watman, The Front Room, Apr 5

Posted on February 10, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Croydon BME Forum shopping bus service, starts Mar 11

Posted on February 10, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Banstead Rotary Club charity walk, Epsom Downs, May 5

Posted on February 10, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Bailey to bridge the gap left by Bolger’s departure from Sutton

Posted on February 9, 2019 by insidecroydon

BELLE MONT, our Sutton reporter, on the latest move by the council’s ruling Liberal Democrats

Helen Bailey: lined up for Sutton’s top job

Sutton Council is close to announcing that Helen Bailey is to be appointed as its chief executive.

Sutton has been without a CEO since Niall Bolger jumped ship last October, leaving his £150,000 per year post to take a similar role at Hounslow.

Bailey, 57, has not yet been formally announced to councillors, and the recruitment process is on-going – aided by a firm of private headhunters reputed to be paid a juicy £100,000 fee.

But Bailey is understood to have been interviewed by a panel made up of four LibDem and two Tory councillors, and although she did not achieve unanimous support of her interviewers, she is expected to be announced as the successful applicant in the coming days. Continue reading →

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Housing scheme involves charity which informed Home Office

Posted on February 9, 2019 by insidecroydon

The council has announced that it has managed to house six people under a scheme which should provide 10 homeless people with homes by the end of next month, and another 10 over the course of the following 12 months.

It is doing so working with a charity which was accused of breaking the trust of homeless people for its part in the Conservative government’s “hostile environment” policy against foreign nationals staying in this country.

There are twice as many people sleeping rough in Croydon today than there were in 2014

Croydon Council continues to work on the government-funded scheme with Thames Reach, a homelessness charity that has previously worked closely with the Home Office to repatriate foreign nationals who have come to them for assistance.

Thames Reach’s role in passing on the details of its clients to the immigration service saw civil liberties campaigners accuse the Tory government of having a “border on every street” policy. Continue reading →

Posted in Alison Butler, Charity, Croydon Council, Housing, London-wide issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Friends of South Norwood Country Park AGM and walk, Feb 16

Posted on February 9, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Skipper named in Labour’s five-woman shortlist for Norbury

Posted on February 8, 2019 by insidecroydon

The Norbury and Pollards Hill council by-election will be staged on March 14, but there has already been some manoeuvring over candidate selection by Labour, as WALTER CRONXITE reports

As was entirely predictable, Caragh Skipper, Croydon Labour leader Tony Newman’s favourite losing election candidate, is one of five shortlisted for selection to be the party’s candidate in Norbury and Pollards Hill ward.

Caragh Skipper: Newman’s choice for Norbury

A by-election has been called following the death last month of long-standing Labour councillor Maggie Mansell. Polling day will be March 14, with all candidate nominations to be submitted to Croydon Council’s chief exec (and returning officer) Jo Negrini by next Friday.

Labour’s selection meeting will be held next Thursday evening, on Valentines night. It might not be all love and peace between the hopeful candidates, though.

Having opted to have an all-woman shortlist, as is required to replace a woman councillor, this week’s branch meeting on Thursday decided on an unusually long shortlist to go forward to ward members next week, which seems likely to pitch Blairites against Corbyn supporters, with some candidates receiving support from some unexpected quarters. Continue reading →

Posted in Caragh Skipper, Croydon North, Maggie Mansell, Norbury, Sarah Jones MP, Steve Reed MP, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Jackpot for Thornton Heath campaign as slots arcade rejected

Posted on February 8, 2019 by insidecroydon

Extraordinary scenes in Thornton Heath tonight, where the council has broken the habit of a lifetime and actually listened to residents.

Having a gambling arcade on Thornton Heath High Street would make more cash than a bank

Croydon Council announced today that it has refused permission to an operator of “adult gaming centres” to open a slot machine arcade on Thornton Heath High Street, which was to have been open 24 hours a day and wanted to entice the punters in with a bright yellow-lit doorway.

Luxury Leisure wanted to develop the former HSBC bank. But within one week, a community campaign collected a thousand signatures to oppose the proposal, for a stretch of the district centre that is already blighted by a surfeit of bookmakers’ shops. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Callton Young, Community associations, Karen Jewitt, Pat Clouder, Thornton Heath, Thornton Heath Community Action Team | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Electric cars in slow lane as council offers three power points

Posted on February 8, 2019 by insidecroydon

PAUL LUSHION, our environment correspondent, on a disappointingly feeble effort to offer wide-ranging infrastructure for battery-powered vehicles

Car powering points could take Croydon 50 years to roll out at current rate

The inconsistent commitment from Croydon Council – the backers of Gatwick airport expansion, the funders of an industrial-scale waste incinerator on the borough boundary – to improving the environment and reducing pollution has been brought into question again this week following an announcement of the installation of public charging points for electric vehicles “currently being installed across Croydon”.

What bright spark came up with that “across Croydon” claim?

In total, just eight charging points are to be installed at three locations. All three locations are around a mile’s stroll from the Town Hall. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Environment, Stuart King | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pool plans would make swims less accessible at Crystal Palace

Posted on February 8, 2019 by insidecroydon

Sprinters who want to match Usain Bolt could risk injury if they used the too-short indoor sprint hall proposed by consultants at Crystal Palace

The draft plans for the future of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre being presented as the “final” consultation at the venue tomorrow would, if finally approved by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, make it virtually impossible for the elderly or disabled to access readily the swimming facilities there. They could also mean that there could be no swimming available at all on many weekends for the 7,000 people signed up as users at the centre.

And a new indoor athletics hall would put south London’s budding Usain Bolts on a collision course with… a brick wall, because the training facility proposed is too short to be fit for purpose.

That’s the dire warning from campaigners in the Crystal Palace Sports Partnership, who are also concerned at proposals to demolish the athletics stadium, as well as remove indoor football facilities under the scheme put forward by consultants working for the Greater London Authority. Continue reading →

Posted in Athletics, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Sport, Swimming | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Newman thinks solar planes are answer to Gatwick expansion

Posted on February 8, 2019 by insidecroydon

Tony Newman: an expert on lightweight transit. Apparently

Tony Newman, Croydon Labour’s Great Leader, could be heading for a Nobel Prize.

He might just save the planet, too.

Not previously known for his expertise in physics, climate science, or much else for that matter, Newman appears to have discovered the solution to Global Warming.

For Newman says that solar-powered aeroplanes could be the answer to ever-rising carbon emissions.

At least, we think he was seriously suggesting that Gatwick, London’s second airport, could soon be using environmentally friendly solar-fuelled planes to fly tens of thousands off on their package holidays in the sun. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

South Norwood Clock Tower Market, from Mar 2

Posted on February 8, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Brake denies knowing he was backing anti-Semitic candidate

Posted on February 7, 2019 by insidecroydon

Carshalton and Wallington MP Tom Brake, left, appears distracted while sharing a platform with anti-Semitic candidate Abjol Miah, standing, at an election event in Shadwell last month

EXCLUSIVE: Our Sutton political reporter, CARL SHILTON, on how ignorance is bliss for the Liberal Democrats when it comes to rampant racism

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, was today desperately trying to distance himself from a council by-election candidate who has in the past distributed Ku Klux Klan videos and denied that the Holocaust took place.

Abjol Miah is on the ballot paper today in a by-election in Shadwell ward in Tower Hamlets, where he is listed as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats.

But last night, the LibDems removed Miah as a party member and suspended all campaigning in the by-election, pending an investigation into their erstwhile candidate’s anti-Semitic remarks and social media activity in the past.

The LibDems only acted after the political website, Guido Fawkes, highlighted Miah’s murky political past. Continue reading →

Posted in London-wide issues, Tom Brake MP | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Shirley councillor shows his commitment… in Carshalton

Posted on February 7, 2019 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on the latest straw in the wind that indicates the Tories are planning a snap General Election

Gareth Streeter: dedicated to … his own political careerism

Conservative councillor Gareth “Blubber” Streeter demonstrated his commitment to the people living in his ward in Shirley North again last night, when he sought selection as his party’s parliamentary candidate for… Carshalton and Wallington.

Blubber’s desperation to follow his father, Sir Gary Streeter, into the House of Commons sees him pursue almost any glimmer of a candidacy. Given how well connected Streeter Junior must be within the Tory Party, his somewhat misfiring political career is surely a testament to his charisma and talent.

Streeter’s profile on the Croydon Conservatives’ website claims that he “first moved into the Shirley area” in 1999, though hard facts to back up such a claim of long-term devotion to the area are harder to come by. Continue reading →

Posted in Elliot Colburn, Gareth Streeter, Matthew Maxwell Scott, Paul Scully MP, Sutton Council, Tom Brake MP | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Council dumps disastrous idVerde outsourced parks contract

Posted on February 7, 2019 by insidecroydon

This was not what was meant when ‘taking back control’ was coined as a slogan, but this week in Croydon, our council has moved in to relieve a French firm of its responsibilities in our parks, as KEN LEE reports

Croydon’s 127 parks and open spaces are being tended by council workers this week for the first time in nearly five years, after a disastrous £16million out-sourced maintenance contract was finally dumped.

Lloyd Park is one of 127 open spaces in Croydon that will now be tended by council staff

It means that at least 80 parks maintenance staff have been taken back in-house by the council, though the Labour-run local authority has done little to trumpet this bold triumph for socialist principles. The council waited until last week to get around to a somewhat mealy mouthed press release about the changeover, which made no mention of the 80 council jobs in this reversal of privatisation. It was almost as if the council hierarchy is embarrassed by the outcome.

Which may well be the case. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Carillion, Croydon Council, Croydon parks, Duppas Hill Park, Environment, idVerde, Kingston, Libraries, Lloyd Park, Merton, Stuart Collins, Veolia, Wandle Park | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

St Matthew Passion, All Saints Carshalton, Apr 13

Posted on February 7, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Body blow for council as Body Shop looks to move offices

Posted on February 6, 2019 by insidecroydon

The Body Shop could be about to pack-up and quit Croydon, according to reports tonight.

No amount of ‘state of the art’ office features, such as plants growing out of interior walls, could compensate for the daily misery of rail travel to Croydon

The ethically based cosmetics retailer, founded in Brighton 40 years ago by Anita Roddick, moved hundreds of staff to the refurbished “state of the art” Knollys House, near East Croydon Station, in 2016.

The office block was fitted out at a cost of £1.4million for The Body Shop, who had around 250 employees working across 24,000sq ft spread over four floors in its international head office. Croydon, the council and the company told anyone who might listen at the time of the move, was ideally located for staff and visitors to travel into London, to visit their other offices at Littlehampton, or for international clients and visitors to hot-foot it from Gatwick.

But above all else, Croydon was cheap.

Yet no amount of “living walls” or table top football games in the staff canteen could make up for the daily commute to CR0 for the majority of The Body Shop’s staff, especially when many of them had to contend with what passes for a rail service from Southern.

The Body Shop’s decision to quit Croydon will come as a … ahem… body blow to Croydon Council, and follows the departure of Nestlé, who had been the borough’s biggest employers, the increasing uncertainty over the Westfield redevelopment, and the stalling of the £500million development of offices and flats at nearby Ruskin Square.

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Posted in "Hammersfield", Addiscombe West, Business, Croydon Council, Jo Negrini, Tony Newman, Whitgift Centre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Croydon third-worst for alcohol-related hospital admissions

Posted on February 6, 2019 by insidecroydon

Councils across London are being urged today to provide more funding to treat alcohol abuse, as figures from Public Health England show rising numbers of hospital admissions due to alcohol.

According to PHE figures, 13 per cent of all hospital admissions in England in 2017-2018 were due to alcohol.

Croydon was among the worst three areas in London for alcohol-related hospital admissions, at 6,512. That’s more than 17 a day, every day, throughout 12 months.

Notably, though, Croydon was one of the few areas which did not record a year-on-year increase in alcohol-related admissions in 2017. Continue reading →

Posted in Health, Mayday Hospital, Purley Hospital | Leave a comment

‘Unrealistic’ plans for Crystal Palace face a ‘final’ showdown

Posted on February 6, 2019 by insidecroydon

The latest draft of plans for the future of the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace “falls way short” and is “unrealistic”, according to the campaign group which represents thousands of users of the Olympic legacy sports facilities.

The sports hall and swimming pool building at Crystal Palace which has Grade II*-listed status. Photo: Anthony Spratly

There is a public consultation event at the centre this Saturday, February 9, to be hosted by the Greater London Authority’s consultants.

Symbolic of the consultants’ lack of consideration for the venue and its activities, their chosen date clashes with a major swimming championships being staged at Crystal Palace, causing issues around parking and over-crowding, as well as problems of individuals’ availability due to competitions elsewhere on a Saturday for many centre users.

Campaigners have voiced fears that City Hall already has cost-cutting plans to close down large parts of the sports centre from March 2020. Continue reading →

Posted in Athletics, Community associations, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Football, Sport, Swimming | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Great Croydon 5K walk for Chartwell Cancer Trust, May 5

Posted on February 6, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Winter tree and bird walk, Streatham Common, Feb 21

Posted on February 6, 2019 by insidecroydon

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Gatwick embarrassment for MP Jones as CLP opposes runway

Posted on February 5, 2019 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on a display of democracy in the local Labour Party which proclaims ‘we can’t be afraid of speaking against our council leadership when they are wrong’

The Constituency Labour Party of Sarah Jones, the MP for Croydon Central, has passed a motion opposing airport expansion at Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

Some in Croydon Labour see the expansion of the airport for the real threat that it represents

Which is a bit of an embarrassment for Tony Newman and the Croydon Labour Party, which until last week’s vote of members at Croydon Central CLP were enthusiastic cheerleaders for an extra runway at Gatwick.

And it is particularly embarrassing for MP Jones, who before she was elected to parliament had worked for… Gatwick Airport.

Indeed, since becoming an MP, Jones has continued to make the argument for Gatwick expansion, despite compelling scientific evidence which suggests that it would be a very bad thing for the planet. Such expansion also goes against a decade-long Labour Party policy.

So wedded are Croydon Labour’s leadership to development at all costs, their short-sighted arguments have claimed that all those (promised) extra jobs for Croydon trump any environmental impact and contribution to Global Warming. Continue reading →

Posted in Chris Philp MP, Croydon Central, Croydon Council, Croydon South, Environment, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Sarah Jones MP, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment