Exclusion of Dog and Bull throws more light on market mess

Posted on January 13, 2017 by insidecroydon

That’s the problem when you hold public meetings – the public might actually express some opinions. WALTER CRONXITE on how poorly presented plans for Surrey Street appear to be unravelling already

Less than 48 hours after senior councillor Mark Watson had (sort of) outlined his own vision for the future of Croydon’s 750-year-old street market, a (sort of) public meeting staged in Surrey Street was told that the council’s “reconfiguration” road works, part of a £1million regeneration spend, might not start by the end of February as Watson had suggested, because architects and engineers have not yet worked out how to get the job done.

Even one of Surrey Street's biggest businesses, the Dog and Bull pub, was excluded from the latest Surrey Street meeting

Even one of the market’s biggest businesses, the Dog and Bull pub, was excluded from the latest Surrey Street meeting

The meeting also revealed that there was no firm plan in place for how the market might continue to trade while the road works were taking place, and stall-holders at the meeting contradicted Watson’s assertion that none of them wanted the opportunity to trade on Sundays. Because, as this website has reported before, they do.

Watson’s non-consultation consultation even extends to one of the biggest businesses on Surrey Street: the Dog and Bull pub, where staff have told Inside Croydon that the management had only short notice of the meeting.

Watson, part of the cliquey quartet of Croydon councillors who control the Labour group at the Town Hall, appears to have a gentrification agenda to turn Surrey Street from its traditional “pound-a-bowl” fruit and veg market into something where “pound-a-croissant” from artisan bakers is more acceptable.

Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Croydon Council, Mark Watson, Planning, Pubs, Rise Gallery, Surrey Street | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

£50m DisConnected Croydon and the real cost for business

Posted on January 13, 2017 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: The council’s chief executive Jo Negrini has gushed in her shameless self-publicity how £50million spent on the “gateways” to the borough have transformed the areas, and that is now the received “wisdom” from the borough’s political leadership. But Inside Croydon’s loyal reader* disagrees strongly

Around £500,000 is being spent giving a "makeover" to the tired shop fronts on South End. Many of the properties are owned by the multi-million-pound Whitgift Foundation

Around £500,000 was spent giving a “makeover” to the tired shop fronts on South End

I have had first-hand experience of the public realm “improvements” in both South Croydon and Lower Addiscombe Road. My wife opened a business on Lower Addiscombe Road just before the pavement works began and the large national company I work for also opened a new outlet in South Croydon just before the works began there.

While the new pavements may be aesthetically pleasing, the works overran, the contractors blocked entrances to the shops and as the works dragged on for months, they made it nigh-on impossible for the less mobile, or those with prams or push chairs to access sections of the road.

Parking bays were taken out of action as storage space for plant and materials for the duration of the works. If any of the public overstayed in one of the few available bays by as much as three minutes, they were ticketed and fined. Continue reading →

Posted in Addiscombe West, Business, Connected Croydon, Croydon Council, Fairfield, Jo Negrini, Mark Watson, Restaurants | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Snow joke: Gridlocked roads show need for more grit

Posted on January 13, 2017 by insidecroydon

STEVEN DOWNES on the entirely predictable panic over a bit of winter weather

Oh dear. Heavens knows how we would manage with really severe snowfalls and winter weather were we in Cologne or Katowicz. But we’re in Croydon, so yesterday evening, after barely half an hour’s sprinkling of snow, reports were coming in that traffic in the town centre had ground to a halt.

A Croydon tram navigates the slush last night - but delayed by inconsiderate drivers blocking junctions

A Croydon tram navigates the slush last night – but delayed by inconsiderate drivers blocking junctions

And so the blame game began. “Who will Tony Newman blame?” was one question posed via social media. Someone else asked: “Why hasn’t the council gritted the roads properly? It’s all so predictable.”

As indeed it is.

Even the council’s excuses about the lateness of its gritting operation were familiar from the last time the council failed to have the borough’s major thoroughfares gritted in advance of the arrival of snow and ice. Continue reading →

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

Council plans for ‘tatty’ Surrey Street market fail to impress

Posted on January 12, 2017 by insidecroydon

It was a long night at Tuesday’s council scrutiny meeting, but the wait for the “big reveal” of the £1million plans for the borough’s cherished market was a bit of a waste of time, as WALTER CRONXITE reports

Residents living on or near Surrey Street have been deliberately excluded from a nine-month consultation on the future of Croydon’s 750-year-old street market, according to answers provided at a Town Hall meeting this week.

Surrey Streeet market 'looks a bit tatty', according to Labour councillor Mark Watson

Surrey Street market ‘looks a bit tatty’, according to Labour councillor Mark Watson

Mark Watson, the Croydon councillor who is supposedly in charge of the borough’s economy and jobs, told Tuesday night’s cross-party scrutiny committee that he feels the street market “looks a bit tatty”. He also said that previous consultation meetings on Surrey Street market had been intended only for shop-owners and stall-holders.

Watson indicated that the latest council meeting, to be held at the Croydon Conference Centre tonight, had been intended solely for Surrey Street businesses, rather than residents, too. Helen Pollard, the Tory councillor for Fairfield ward, which includes Surrey Street, said that even she had not been invited to the meeting.

With a six-week programme of works, costing the thick end of £1million, due to begin next month, Watson’s admission seemed to confirm what many residents have long complained about – that they have no say in the process.

“At what point were residents going to be consulted?” Pollard asked, not unreasonably. Continue reading →

Posted in Carole Bonner, Croydon Council, Fairfield, Helen Pollard, Joy Prince, Mark Watson, Planning, Sean Fitzsimons, Surrey Street | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Watson: There’s nothing council can do over £1.4bn Westfield

Posted on January 12, 2017 by insidecroydon

WALTER CRONXITE, who watches council meetings so that you don’t have to, on the latest Town Hall scrutiny committee meeting

The council has no “leverage” to encourage Westfield and Hammerson to speed up the delivery of their £1.4billion redevelopment of the Whitgift shopping centre, and more than five years after the Croydon riots ripped the town centre apart, the senior cabinet member in charge of the local economy has no plans for the site of Reeves Corner which was destroyed in that infamous night’s conflagration – beyond growing mushrooms from coffee grinds.

Mark Watson: keeping a check on cold callers

Mark Watson: no powers over Westfield, no plan for Reeves Corner

Those were two of the damning admissions from Mark Watson during an 90-minute-long grilling at Tuesday night’s scrutiny meeting on the Labour council’s plans for jobs and the local economy.

Watson is part of the four-councillor clique of Progress-supporters which dominates the Labour council and which since taking charge of the Town Hall in 2014 has tended to opt for “continuity” of many of the previous Tory administration’s policies and senior council appointments.

In  a presentation which seemed under-prepared, light on detail, was often bumbling and more than once included provably untrue assertions, Watson could not answer the key question from one of his party colleagues, Joy Prince, when asked “what leverage the council has to prevent more Westfield slippage?”

Continue reading →

Posted in "Hammersfield", Addiscombe West, Business, Croydon Council, Joy Prince, Mark Watson, Planning, Sean Fitzsimons, Whitgift Centre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

NHS Mayday: south London hospitals among 20 on Black Alert

Posted on January 12, 2017 by insidecroydon

The largest NHS hospitals in Croydon and Sutton have this week had to resort to providing medical care for adults on children’s wards, amid the gathering crisis in England’s healthcare system.

But where do you go for financial intensive care?

Where do you go for financial intensive care?

The Epsom and St Helier Trust, which manages the St Helier Hospital in Sutton, is cited in a report in today’s Guardian newspaper which states that more than 20 hospitals in England have declared a “black alert” after becoming so overcrowded that they could no longer guarantee patient safety and provide their full range of services.

And at Croydon’s Mayday Hospital, adult patients are being treated in a children’s ward as a way of keeping up with the growing patient demand amid reduced resources.

The hospital – known by some as Croydon University Hospital – has said the “temporary” switch has allowed it to have access to 12 extra beds on the ward.

“Like all hospitals, we are currently extremely busy. We have opened extra surgical beds on one of our children’s wards to care for our younger patients,” a spokesman told the Croydon Guardian.

“This has allowed us to temporarily switch what would routinely be used a children’s surgical ward to treat only adult patients before and after their operations.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon NHS Trust, Foxley Lane, Health, Mayday Hospital, St Helier Hospital | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

New delay in council boundary review is bad news for Tories

Posted on January 11, 2017 by insidecroydon

WALTER CRONXITE reports on how the slow process of drawing up the political map of the borough is causing anxiety among Croydon’s blue-rinse set

Maybe they thought that, after the Christmas and New Year break, no one would be paying too close attention, but quietly on their website, the Local Government Boundary Commission for England’s timetable to redraw Croydon’s ward boundaries has slipped again.

How will the map of Croydon look when the 24 wards are overhauled?

How will the map of Croydon look when the 24 wards are overhauled?

This latest delay could cause consternation among some local political parties’ officials, who now will have even less time to run their selection processes for candidates to stand in the next Town Hall elections, which are coming up in May 2018.

The Commission’s web page for the Croydon review was altered over the new year and now states that it will publish its initial proposals for wards to elect 70 Croydon councillors on March 14 – a month later than previously planned.

A spokesman told Inside Croydon that the Commission had “given itself additional time to analyse, assess and interpret” the “high-quality proposals” it had received during the last phase of consultation.

The process was already running as late as a Southern train on a non-strike day, after the Commissioners felt that they needed time out to consider carefully Croydon Tories’ (half-baked) proposal to reduce the number of borough councillors to 60. The Croydon review was already the last to begin among London borough reviews ahead of the 2018 local elections. Continue reading →

Posted in 2018 council elections, Croydon Council, Tim Pollard, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

You’ve bin done: is council paying over the odds for solar bins?

Posted on January 11, 2017 by insidecroydon

It’s looking like Croydon’s Council Tax-payers are paying over the odds – again – for a set of rubbish bins, showing once more that the borough’s procurement practices don’t seem to  work very well for the borough.

A bin outside Norwood Junction Station this morning, which had not been emptied since last week

A bin outside Norwood Junction Station this morning, which had not been emptied since last week

Stuart Collins, the Labour council’s cabinet member “for clean and green Croydon”, announced in November a trial of eight “Big Belly” bins, which are solar-powered, using the energy generated to compact the rubbish inside them to improve their waste capacity, and which even send an email the contractors when they are full.

Inside Croydon understands that the council is considering using more than 30 of the bins across the borough, and that Collins has been told by council officials that the bins cost £5,000 each to buy.

Of course, by leasing the equipment, the council won’t be paying the full purchase price, although the rental agreement will reflect the value of the kit.

But Inside Croydon has found that in the United States, where the Big Belly bins have been in use for several years, the bins are being sold for around $3,800 – which even with the pound sterling tumbling post-Brexit, is still nearly 2,000 quid per bin cheaper than Collins has been told by his officials that they cost. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Refuse collection, Stuart Collins, Veolia | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Councillor has had 300 books taken from book ‘exchange’

Posted on January 11, 2017 by insidecroydon

A senior Croydon councillor told a Town Hall meeting last night that he had donated 300 books to a book “exchange” in Surrey Street, and that they had all been taken and never replaced or exchanged.

Lots of empty shelves on the Surrey Street Book Exchange

Lots of empty shelves on the Surrey Street Book Exchange

“I’m hoping that some might be returned once they have been read,” Mark Watson, the cabinet member for economy and jobs, told a meeting of the council’s scrutiny committee. Watson may have been making an attempt at humour when he said this.

The book “exchange”, established by the Rise Gallery last autumn, is one of those warm, fluffy ideas so beloved of some sections of the Croydon Establishment, but which normally has at least one glaringly obvious flaw. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Mark Watson, Rise Gallery, Surrey Street | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

CODA find the right stage to give Croydon enough Rope

Posted on January 11, 2017 by insidecroydon
coda-rope-lucy-pearce-chris-ranaldi-tom-mcgowan-owen-moore

The slightly menacing-looking CODA cast for its latest production – Rope: Lucy Pearce, Chris Ranaldi, Tom McGowan and Owen Moore

For CODA, the play must go on, even if all the larger theatrical venues in Croydon and Sutton have been shut, and especially if the trains aren’t running.

CODA, the Croydon Operatic and Dramatic Association, has been around since 1943, and they are determined to keep bringing quality drama and musicals to the people of Croydon, despite the closures of Fairfield Halls, the Charles Cryer and the Secombe Centre in the past year.

CODA has already established its annual summer show in the open air at the bandstand in Wandle Park (this year it will be some Gilbert and Sullivan with Pirates of Penzance), and they will be performing in Stanley Halls later in the year, too.

But for their first production of 2017, Patrick Hamilton’s thriller, Rope, they will be using the Royal Russell School’s Performing Arts Centre. The play opens on February 15 and runs to February 18, with evening performances at 7.30pm and a Saturday matinee at 2.45pm. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, CODA, Theatre | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Page Turners to tackle Hardy classic at their February meet

Posted on January 11, 2017 by insidecroydon
Yes. We know that it's the poster from the 1967 movie. But it has Julie Christie on it

Yes. We know that it’s the poster from the 1967 movie. But it has Julie Christie and Terry Stamp on it

The Page Turners, now touting itself as South Norwood’s friendliest book group, will be looking at Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd at its February meeting.

At just over a year old, the group has read authors as diverse as Brit Bennett, local writer Gulshan Al Amin, Kate Atkinson, Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming and Patrick Gale. Fresh ideas are always welcome, too.

“There’s no fixed pattern to the book choices – we just meet on the first Thursday of the month, chat about what we’ve just read and decide what to read for next time,” says Guy Clapperton, who has recently put the group’s website together.

“We just want to get into the habit of reading more widely and having a natter about it afterwards.”

Continue reading →

Posted in South Norwood | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Rail strikes are the symptom, not the cause, of the problem

Posted on January 10, 2017 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: Like thousands of other local commuters, CATHERINE SHELLEY has been affected by the long-running rail dispute. She says that the real problem lies with Southern Rail’s mismanagement, aided by the Tory Government

On a weekday evening at Victoria Station shortly before Christmas, and not for the first time, a series of trains was cancelled, one after the other. A young mum on the platform, who was going to be delayed collecting her young son went into meltdown with the panic and frustration of the situation.

Commuters crowd the platforms at East Croydon during the last day of strike action. The operator is more interested in increased profits than passengers' safety

Commuters crowd the platforms at East Croydon

Other passengers got angry too and surrounded a pair of female southern rail staff. The staff were also upset as they, too, were trying to get to Clapham Junction for their next shift, just as frustrated as the rest of the crowds on the platform.

The Tannoy announced that the cancellations were caused by drivers not being available, giving the impression that they were having a break or hadn’t turned up for work. In fact, the drivers were all stuck on other trains, trying to get back to Victoria after untold other delays and breakdowns earlier in the day.

If you travel on Southern Rail services, you will recognise this situation and all too often the frontline staff of the train companies get the blame and end up being abused by frustrated and angry commuters. Yet they are trapped in this mess just as much as any passenger, trying their best to make an impossible situation work.

Staff and passengers are in this together.

The daily disruption to services on non-strike days is evidence that the strikes are not the real issue. The management’s approach of criticising staff for not working overtime and continually blaming the drivers for not being available when that is often beyond their control is no way to address the problems of Southern Rail.

Continue reading →

Posted in Catherine Shelley, Commuting, Croydon Greens, East Croydon, Transport | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Croydon’s Nimby housing minister’s targets just got tougher

Posted on January 10, 2017 by insidecroydon

Tory MP Gavin Barwell has been caught out again, saying one thing to his constituents while doing the exact opposite when it comes to furthering his politcal career, as WALTER CRONXITE reports

Gavin Barwell, the Croydon Central MP who has been promoted to the role of housing minister in Theresa Maybe’s Tory government, is going to struggle to meet the ambitious house-building targets he has set for himself if local councils – like Croydon – keep putting the kybosh on house building.

A golf driving range in Gavin Barwell's constituency could have the housing minister feeling well below par

The golf range in Gavin Barwell’s constituency has put the housing minister in deep rough

The latest scheme to be blocked is a proposal for 129 homes on the site of a golf range. The council’s planning department has hit the proposal a long way into the out-of-bounds, its decision coming less than a year after Barwell was busy running a petition to oppose the scheme.

The application to build a mix of houses and flats on the site of the World of Golf on Long Lane in Ashburton, which was also opposed by local Labour ward councillors, has been dismissed without the matter even going before the planning committee.

Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Rendle, Ashburton, Croydon Central, Croydon Council, Environment, Gavin Barwell, Housing, Maddie Henson, Planning | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Watson and mystery of market plans for £1m of public dough

Posted on January 9, 2017 by insidecroydon

Croydon Council today abandoned any pretence that it does not have a gentrifying agenda for the regeneration of the borough when it issued an advertisement, dressed up as a press release, on behalf of … an artisan baker.

Artisan bread: the council's gentrifying agenda is all about dough

Artisan bread: the council’s gentrifying agenda is all about dough

The council’s press office, which often struggles to provide news and information to promote genuine council-funded services, somehow managed to find the time and staff to draft a 500-word piece of gushing publicity for “Julian’s Artisan Bakery”, a business which has been trading on Surrey Street market on Sundays for just three months.

Julian (he doesn’t have a surname, according to the council’s press office, but he does sell croissants for £1 a time) is apparently signal of the success of Surrey Street’s Sunday market, which is the brainchild of Mark Watson, a member of the Progress clique which controls the Labour group at the Town Hall.

“Sunday in Surrey Street has become a social hub of good street food, music, and handmade crafts, and people are buzzing about it,” gushed Watson according to today’s press release from the council, paid for by Council Tax-payers.

Yet yesterday’s “buzzing” “social hub” Sunday market in Surrey Street comprised the grand total of: three stalls. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Mark Watson, Surrey Street | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Scandal of council-funded Boxpark paying £6.50 per hour

Posted on January 9, 2017 by insidecroydon

Boxpark, the food and booze outlet set up next to East Croydon Station thanks to £3.5million of loans and grants from Croydon Council, is now recruiting for an events and digital marketing “intern” and offering less than two-thirds of the London Living Wage as the salary.

Tony Newman shows off just how much public money he's loaned to Boxpark to give it a commercial advantage over existing Croydon businesses

Tony Newman, right, shows off how much public money he’s loaned to Boozepark. He and Croydon Council have failed to ensure that Boozepark pay the London Living Wage

Croydon Council is registered as a London Living Wage employer, and since Tony Newman’s Labour group took charge of the Town Hall in 2014 they have claimed that they will endeavour to ensure that all council suppliers and contractors are signed up as Living Wage employers.

Yet no one at Croydon Council bothered to check whether Boozepark or any of the 40-or-so food and drink outlets which operate from the venue are registered with the Living Wage Foundation, despite the hefty amount of public money thrown at the venture to get it started.

Inside Croydon reported six weeks ago that Boxpark had so far failed to register as a Living Wage employer. According to the Living Wage Foundation, the process of registering is quick and simple. Other, similar food and drink operations, such as Borough Market near London Bridge, for example, are registered as Living Wage employers.

Continue reading →

Posted in Boxpark, Business, Croydon Council, Jo Negrini, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

MP Philp’s latest business venture folds due to lack of funds

Posted on January 8, 2017 by insidecroydon

As WALTER CRONXITE reports, the entrepreneurial Tory MP for Croydon South’s “Next Big Thing” has turned out to be anything but, and has certainly not set a good example for teenagers keen to get into business

A company set up in 2014 by Chris Philp, the millionaire Conservative MP for Croydon South, is being wound-up after having failed to find other organisations to pay for its scheme of staging Dragons’ Den-like competitions for teenaged school pupils.

Chris Philp: r'unhelpful' according to his Tory bosses in No10

Chris Philp: seems to need lessons on how to run a successful business

Philp was first elected to parliament in May 2015 and now is a member of the Treasury Select Committee. He has often emphasised his business expertise and his pre-politics career as an entrepreneur, although some companies he has formed and run have, after he has left the business, subsequently collapsed, owing tens of thousands of pounds.

That’s not the case for the Community Interest Company Philp formed with three other directors in 2014, although what they immodestly called the Next Big Thing has turned out to be Anything But The Next Big Thing.

Moves to have the company records struck off began last month, after the business reported a loss of £125 in its latest annual report.

Philp’s own website still boasts of his role in the Next Big Thing. “In 2009, I founded Next Big Thing (see http://www.nextbigthinguk.com) which operates under the auspices of the Progress Foundation, a registered charity,” it states.

“NBT gets youngsters from inner city backgrounds interested in setting up businesses, building their confidence and showing them that by hard work and creativity, they can succeed no matter how hard their start in life has been. Often their only alternatives are unemployment, poverty or crime. NBT aims to show that there is another way.”

Or not, if Next Big Thing is anything to go by. Continue reading →

Posted in Chris Philp MP, Croydon South | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Winter Tales free guided walk of Coulsdon Common, Jan 15

Posted on January 8, 2017 by insidecroydon

winter-tales-1 Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, Coulsdon, Croydon parks, Environment, Walks | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Digging up the facts about London’s lost rivers, Jan 19

Posted on January 8, 2017 by insidecroydon

The Wandle is not the only “lost” river of south London, as the first history talk of the new year for the Norwood Society will demonstrate, when Jon Newman, author of the recently published River Effra, South London’s secret spine, is the guest speaker.

river-effra-cover

The Effra is generally accepted as rising somewhere in the hills near Crystal Palace and flowed, or flows, northwards towards the Thames through Dulwich, Brixton and The Oval.

It has, of course, long since been pushed underground in culverts, but any bucolic notions of an idyllic Surrey spring are dismissed in Newman’s book, which is frank about the raw sewage which flowed in the Effra and prompted Victorian local authorities to cover over what had become an open sewer.

As one reveiw of Newman’s book states, “What he does do is shine a light on the development of Brixton, London’s sewage system and the refusal of ‘lost’ rivers to go away.”

Newman’s talk for the Norwood Society is from 7.30pm on January 19 at the Upper Norwood Library, 39 Westow Hill, SE19 1TJ. Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Environment, History, Norwood Society | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Philp and Pelling go head-to-head in Brexit debate, Jan 12

Posted on January 8, 2017 by insidecroydon

The Brexit debate comes to Croydon this week, when two of the borough’s politicians go head-to-head.

brexit-genericChris Philp, the MP for Croydon South – who himself backed Remain at last year’s referendum, although his father has recently been a candidate for UKIP in local elections in south London – will speak against the motion “The Government’s Brexit strategy will damage London”.

The motion will be proposed by the former MP and London Assembly Member, now Labour councillor for Waddon, Andrew Pelling.

It is not clear whether an amendment to the motion – that “The Government doesn’t actually have a Brexit strategy” – can be moved from the floor.

Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Pelling, Chris Philp MP, Coulsdon, Croydon South | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Soroptimists’ Mankind Initiative, Selsdon, Jan 26

Posted on January 8, 2017 by insidecroydon

mankind-initiative-poster-2017 Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, Community associations | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Croydon Dyslexia Association offers literacy workshops

Posted on January 8, 2017 by insidecroydon

dyslexia-1 Continue reading →

Posted in Education | Tagged | Leave a comment

Barwell and Philp ‘playing politics’ over Southern Rail chaos

Posted on January 7, 2017 by insidecroydon

Croydon’s Tory MPs Chris Philp and Gavin Barwell have been accused by a fellow south London Conservative MP of “playing politics” with people’s lives over the mismanagement of Southern Rail.

Bob Neill: called out Grayling for the devious toad that he is

Bob Neill: commuter interests more important than petty politics. Perhaps he can have a word with Barwell and Philp?

Philp and Barwell have also been criticised for using the latest above-inflation hike in rail fares – as approved by the Conservative Government – as a devious excuse for “data scraping”, and collecting email addresses from residents who want to claim refunds for poor service on the commuter railway line, operated by Govia Thameslink on behalf of the Department for Transport.

Bob Neill, the Tory MP for Bromley, is among a number of politicians from various parties who are backing calls from Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London, for control of commuter railway routes to be handed over to Transport for London. Continue reading →

Posted in Chris Philp MP, Commuting, Croydon Central, Croydon South, Gavin Barwell, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Sean Fitzsimons, TfL, Transport | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Holmesdale Fanatics issue plea to save the soul of the club

Posted on January 7, 2017 by insidecroydon

Their club might be in a fight for its Premier League survival, but devoted Crystal Palace fans have bigger concerns, issuing an impassioned statement this week against the commercialisation of Selhurst Park which “has ripped the soul from the club”.

Fighting for their club's soul: the Holmesdale Fanatics

Fighting for their club’s soul: the Holmesdale Fanatics

The statement, from the Holmesdale Fanatics, rejects aspects of an Americanisation of the club’s match presentation.

“Our culture is being sold out in the process,” they state.

In December 2015, American investors Josh Harris and David Blitzer bought an 18per cent share of the club with a £50million investment. Harris is also the principal owner of the New Jersey Devils ice hockey franchise and NBA team the Philadelphia 76ers, where Blitzer also holds an interest.

At Selhurst Park, the Fanatics have been an essential part of creating a typically old-school football atmosphere, regarded as one of the best among all Premier League clubs, and one which has helped to provide the home side with a genuine advantage in tight games. But they see their years of dedication being undermined by the club “being blinded by the bright lights of the Premier League”.

The Fanatics identify, “NFL-esque light shows, Selhurst referred to as a ‘Stadium Bowl’, T-shirts thrown to away fans, their anthems played in the concourse to create a ‘welcoming environment’.

“This is everything our club should stand against and all contributes to alienating our fanbase and turns supporters into passive customers,” they state.

Continue reading →

Posted in Crystal Palace FC, Football, Sport | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Keeping the conversation flowing over the source of a river

Posted on January 7, 2017 by insidecroydon
Pith helmet at the ready, David Gill is off in search of the source of Croydon's river, and is looking beyond Wandle Park

Pith helmet at the ready, David Gill is in search of the source of Croydon’s river, and is looking beyond Wandle Park

CROYDON COMMENTARY: Locating the source of the River Wandle ought to be reasonably straightforward, though DAVID GILL says that his latest project has raised a few eyebrows

The conversation usually starts something like this:

“So David, have got this right? Someone is paying you to find the source of the River Wandle?”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“OK, there are some silly people out there. Let me tell them that the Wandle starts in Waddon Ponds – simple and easy!”

“You are sort of right… but it does not end there.” Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon parks, Education, Environment, History, Kenley, Purley, Waddon, Wandle Park | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Fire Brigade stages open day without mentioning £11m tower

Posted on January 6, 2017 by insidecroydon

Sshhh! Don’t tell everyone, but there’s another public consultation meeting arranged in Croydon where there’s been very little notice given, and no mention in official publicity of probably the most significant proposal affecting the area.

croydon-fire-open-dayThe London Fire Brigade has given just a week’s notice of an “open day” lasting just three hours at Croydon Fire Station to consult on the London Safety Plan.

Nowhere is it mentioned in the publicity for the open day that the 73-page plan includes proposals to build a six-storey smoke training tower at the fire station in Waddon, which the fire service intends to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The cynically inclined might suggest that the short notice of the one-off “open day” for a consultation is intended to make it as difficult as possible for as many people as possible to have any say in the matter whatsoever. Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Pelling, Fiona Twycross, London Fire Brigade, London-wide issues, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments