onionbagblog

Another miserable Monday evening, another @lambeth_council cabinet meeting. I really should change the strap line for m’blog to: ‘Attending council meetings so that *proper* local media don’t have to.’ Or even ‘so that certain opposition parties in the Rotten Borough don’t have to.’

Blimey.

Battling for your attention on the agenda for Monday evening was the land match for Myatts Field North PFI (land swap with local NHS,) primary school expansion (all rather positive) and the Lambeth Sustainability Action Plan (chasing the Green vote.)

The Green agenda has got legs, especially so with only fourteen weeks until polling day. To be fair, @lambeth_council does recycling rather well, as I tweeted (oh yes) during cabinet.

Comedy however is not the strong point of @cllrstevereed.

But anyway…

The main business of the evening was the setting of housing rent for council tenants for the coming year. Talk about a political hot potato. Rent rises are the Spud U Like of Lambeth. Housing will ultimately decide which political party (or even parties – *get you*) will govern in Lambeth as from 7th May.

Our friends in the current Labour administration are all too aware of this. A 5% rent rise was recommended, only to be rather hurriedly downsized to a more voter friendly 3.1%, just as the polling registration cards are starting to come through the letterboxes. Strange, that.

The poor old LibDem opposition didn’t know what to make of the good news story. Maybe the good Councillor Lumsden did, it’s just that I didn’t really know what to make of what he was trying to make of the motion.

You’ve lowered rent rises! You scoundrels!

Yep, it’s a positive story, albeit a cynical one. I couldn’t but help look back to my calendar twelve months previous when the 14% rent rise went through, with a full year still left to run for the Labour party to be in power.

And so a reduction in rent money coming into the council coffers, and something has to give. Repairs? Ah, I see. That was the point that the good Councillor Lumsden was trying to make. The LibDems claimed that repairs wouldn’t be carried out on the crumbling council stock until sometime next summer. The accusation was that this was a temporary housing budget, bulldozed through, just in time for the election.

You don’t say!

Come early summer, and the good Councillor Lumsden and his Love Me I’m a Liberal Lot are rather concerned that they will inherit the £1.2m housing deficit that we have Labour to thank for.

I don’t think that Keith Hill, the outgoing Labour MP for Streatham will be too happy with his local Lambeth Labour colleagues either. In a direct parallel to Obama @ChukaUmunna getting rather peeved at how the local Labour party are damaging his chances come polling day, Keith Hill will be left to clear up the housing mess in a couple of months time.

Having trousered the old boys job of the head of Lambeth Living (pimped out council stock,) the Right Honourable Member for Streatham will now be left with a reduction in rent, and growing budgets to be met. Warnings of up to seventy job losses from the frontline of Lambeth Living staff have already been made.

I can’t but help think that Lambeth Living would do better in waving bye bye to the private consultants that currently take home £700 per HOUR. An invoice was produced at cabinet from a housing campaigner. The obscene amount was up for debate, but £700 per hour or per day (it was actually per hour) would surely make dear old Olive Morris light the touch paper from the beyond grave, to end the farce of the privatisation of housing in the Rotten Borough.

And what of the empty properties in Lambeth? A recent FOI request revealed that out of all the empty properties in the whole of London, one in five are within Lambeth. You can’t make a profit with your reduced rent rise on an empty property. Councillor Lib Peck, Cabinet Member for Housing and Regeneration, didn’t make any reference to the empty stock during her cabinet speech; likewise it wasn’t mentioned in the latest issue of Lambeth Life.

And that really was about yer lot. I appreciated a good catch up offline with the good @CllrMarkBennett come close of business. We talked about swimming, the Streatham Hub project and my white Y-fronts at Brixton Rec.

Blimey.

The good Councillor was brave and honest enough to state that he agreed with @ChukaUmunna’s analysis of the “unsatisfactory” handling of leisure in Lambeth. He confirmed that he should be at the meeting to discuss the way ahead for the Hub this Wednesday. So should you if you have any interest in swimming, ice-skating or even, um, supermarket shopping in SW16.

The Labour cabinet then gave the nod to @CllrMarkBennett to “attend business in room 101.”

Seriously.

What on earth do our elected representatives keep up there? A brand new Clap’ham pool? A state of the art Streatham Ice Rink? Or maybe just a stronger 3G signal than the one I was struggling with for two hours at cabinet?

It’s the final cabinet meeting for this administration next month. We’ll miss them when they’re gone. Won’t we?

As an after thought to Sunday afternoon spent at Speaker’s Corner with @billybragg, I think the piece of @audioboo below deserves its own separate post.

Bill was all done with the prose ‘n politics thing, and so I sat down with some pals for some coffee and reflection. Some crazed Christian freak tried to gatecrash the cappuccino action, spurting our bile and hated.

At the core of her argument was the gathering of Muslims nearby at Marble Arch. Their very presence was clearly a very real, physical and painful threat to her. I thought they were rather colourful and added to the Hyde Park vibe.

“They are all killers!” she insisted. “They want to blow you up!”

Blimey.

We tried to reason, and asked her how one God could be so righteous, whilst the other seems to make even John Terry appear Saintly.

The bigotry was unabated, and so I started to fight fire with fire, explaining how Christianity has been the cause of death and suffering in our very recent history.

The lady wasn’t for turning. I was. We walked away and got the coffees in.

A short while later, and a young chap from the gathering of Muslims came over for a chat. He wasn’t breathing fire over our coffees, and wasn’t here to steal our babies.

In fact he was awfully polite, and asked us if he could hand over a flyer. He most certainly could, and possibly more as well. I asked our friend if he would care to sit down and kindly allow me to record his thoughts.

Five minutes later, and my agnostic attitude hadn’t disappeared, but it was far more sympathetic. This was the acceptable face of religion. Someone who is simply looking for a better way of living his life, and one that is inclusive as well.

Apologies were made for a “lack of articulacy,” although to be honest mate, every word you spoke resonated with us as we sat back and enjoyed our coffees.

So there you have it: Hyde Park on a Sunday needn’t be full of twisted old bints that want to burn sinners who don’t blow their noses. There’s room for everyone. It takes every kinda people, and all that.

*Not Bill, obviously…

Another Sunday, another cold afternoon spent at Speaker’s Corner in the fine company of @billybragg. I’m quite getting use to this routine of taking the fight against RBS bonuses to the mean streets of W1R. With an election looming, hopefully the mixing of pop prose ‘n politics won’t have to run all the way through to the summer months.

Billy boarded his trusty stepladder, apologising for the coldness that has been a character of this campaign; cold in climate, but with a warm heart as the central message. Sure, we’re trying to overturn the million pound plus RBS bonuses paid out of the taxpayer’s purse, but at the core of nobonus4rbs.co.uk is the central message of a fair and equal society.

Having admitted some seven days ago that Speaker’s Corner caused more nerves than anything he ever gets up to in the day job, Billy announced at the start of the week that he would return to Tyburn for a second Sunday to carry on with the campaign impetus.

A crowd of a couple of hundred gathered for the first week. With the election clock already in countdown mode, momentum is all important here. It’s all fine and dandy to have 25,000 plus supporters online, but activism needs a direct focus.

The troops were rallied, and plans were put in place to meet up with friends old and new. I arrived at Speaker’s Corner solo, having messed up the rendez vous with @richardgallon, @AnnaJCowen and @alien8. Whoops. Never try and squeeze in a cheeky swim before you try and overthrow capitalism.

A slight panic as the 1pm meeting time passed, and the crowd at Speaker’s Corner looked about as passionate as a banker forced to shop at Primark. Billy is a charmer, and did the meet ‘n greet thing. The press pack had a field day when a young girl got out her home made nobonus4rbs placard.

The Left may be late (blame the TfL’s Public Private Partnership) but we get there eventually. Even @richardgallon, @AnnaJCowen and @alien8, who all arrived just before Billy started his speech, along with a crowd considerably larger than last week.

The nobonus4rbs message has moved on at a pace in the past seven days. As planned, Billy didn’t pay his taxes ahead of the midnight deadline last Sunday. His speech confirmed that Lord Myners, the Financial Services Secretary to the Treasury, has written to Billy to explain the government position.

This position seems to be one of rewarding greed and allowing the free market to run riot, despite the meltdown of the banking sector twelve months ago.

Not paying your taxes may seem like a naughty schoolboy prank, sticking up two fingers to authority and getting one over on The Man. But it’s not about rebellion. You get a real sense that it pains Billy Bragg not to contribute to the economy.

At the root of any tax system should be the fair and equal redistribution of wealth. But why should we put money into the pot, just to pay out excessive banking bonuses?

Billy spoke of the “L’Oreal effect” that RBS uses in defence of its crass payout: ‘because we’re worth it.’ There’s no beef here in bailing out the bank – restoring confidence in the banking system benefits the whole economy. Likewise it is the taxpayers that will eventually be rewarded, should RBS ever become solvent once again.

The issue at stake is how a publicly owned bank can plead poverty, and then start writing out bonus cheques once the economy starts to show the first sign of recovery. It’s business as usual, with million pound plus payouts back on the agenda.

This was a more relaxed crowd than last week, yet still as passionate about the issue of inequality that governs us. Taking the fight to the street is something that is not exactly new for the Left. The disguising of a rampant free market economy under Nu Labour has left us all feeling a little ring rusty though.

For a man that came to symbolise the public face of fighting for a fairer society during the ’80s, Billy seemed alarmed that we appear to be back to where we started under Thatcherism.

His speech soon hit form, with even the odd joke added for the Hyde Park supporters. But banking is no laughing matter. This is an issue that deserves to be at the centre of the general election campaign when the battle busses are boarded over the next couple of months. Who is more corrupt – the MP fiddling their expenses, or the banker profiting out of the public purse?

Half an hour after the songwriter took to his stepladder, I regrouped with @richardgallon, @AnnaJCowen and @alien8. A bonkers Bible bashing bigot door stepped us, much in the same way that I door stepped Billy Bragg. The bard’s response was somewhat more considered (and appreciated) than the one I gave to the bonkers Bible bashing bigot.

Just like the settling of the nerves from the man on top of the stepladder, I felt a lot more relaxed about talking to the one person who has played a major role is helping me find my own way politically over the past twenty five years.

But what next for Billy Bragg and nobonus4rbs? Well… have stepladder, will travel. Billy Bragg is off to Edinburgh next weekend, to continue to raise awareness for nobinus4rbs, right on the doorstep of the publicly owned institution.

The campaign continues online, but it is the very real presences of taxpayers taking issue with these obscene payouts that will keep RBS on the agenda as we approach the ballot box over the coming months.

And so a week off from Speaker’s Corner next Sunday. It’s a mighty long way down rock ‘n roll from Hyde Park Corner to Auld Reekie. So long, that I think I’ll be staying in London for the weekend.

But blimey – Billy Bragg, still walking and talking it in 2010 like he did some twenty-five years ago. Cheers for the inspiration, the direction and the bumbling podcast.

*full Billy Bragg speech from Speaker’s Corner, 7th February, can be downloaded here – many thanks @audioboo and of course, @billybragg*

Another day, another leisure story coming out of the Rotten Borough. Are you getting bored of these yet? Only another three months to go until polling day…

Speaking of which – pity poor old @ChukaUmunna, the Labour parliamentary candidate for St Reatham. Chuka is replacing the Blair arsewipe Keith Hill.

Having trousered an old boys network nice little earner with his new position on the board of Lambeth Living (pimped out Council housing stock,) Keith Hill was hopeful of handing over his healthy majority to the new Chuka on the block. At least that was the plan.

With an overall majority of 7,466 back in the 2005 general election, the current poster boy of Nu Labour should be sitting on a safe local seat. Ah, but events dear boy, events. Or to be more specific, local events.

With May 6th set in stone as the date for the local elections, it looks like yer man Chuka could also be asking the good people of SW16 to fast track him to Westminster on the very same day.

But wait! What’s this? There’s been a spot of local bother with the Labour party in Lambeth. You may have read about it over here, here and here (you get the idea…)

Lambeth Labour has let down the electorate in St Reatham by closing down the leisure centre. It’s all very well asking people to put their faith in the ‘Barack Obama for Britain‘ (stop sniggering) but when Barack Chuka is aligned to the very same party that has shut St Reatham leisure centre, then poor old Chuka could become a cropper.

Yeah yeah, just the usual ramblings of a loose cannon leftie that has lost all faith in the right wing administration in La La Lambeth Land. Same old same.

Um, nope; actually not:

“The current situation regarding leisure provision here is clearly unsatisfactory.”

Cripes. It comes to something when the parliamentary candidate has to apologise for the political apathy of his own local party on the ground. I bet those St Reatham Labour Party whist drive evenings are a laugh a minute.

“The fact is that the Council administration has not invested enough in the pool for a long time, and they should all be big enough to admit as much.”

Blimey. This is the point I tried to put across to Labour Councillor Nigel Haselden during our recent podcast. Although the good Councillor was charming company, he certainly wasn’t “big enough to admit as much.”

In fact he tried to spin out the “success story” of leisure in Lambeth, and was even “alarmed” at my observations that Labour has lost control of leisure in the Rotten Borough to the private sector.

Best ‘ave a word with Barack Chuka…

Having pulled at the heartstrings by spurting out some twaddle about how important St Reatham leisure centre has been to him as a local, Chuka then advises the electorate where to go swimming instead (clue: it’s not in Lambeth but over in the Borough of Bromley. B****y Bromley!)

The timing of the latest press release from Chuka is to coincide with the public meeting called to discuss the failure of the St Reatham Hub project. We can’t even do meetings on time in Lambeth – the original date of 3rd February was put back seven days so that Lambeth Council “will be able to be clearer about its position.”

We’ve waited seven years for the Hub, what’s another seven days between friends? The meeting will now take place on Wednesday 10 February, 7pm at Hideaway. Here’s hoping Lambeth Council leader @cllrstevereed shows up to answer to the “unsatisfactory” claims made by the man who defeated him to land the St Reatham parliamentary candidacy.

Time to return to an old theme around my little patch of South London. Regular readers may remember the outlandish case of the local landlord who takes a laissez faire approach to planning permission. It seems however that @lambeth_council has completely forgotten all about Mukesh Andani.

Mr Andani waved two fingers in the air to local authority planning permission, and then added an extra storey to his rented property on the corner of Clap’ham Road and Crewdson Road. Our friends at Lambeth Council clocked the error, probably on account of Mr Andani having past form on forgetting to apply for planning permission at Stockwell Green.

A £10,000 fine was imposed, and the threat of a six-month jail sentence loomed. Mr Andani was instructed to remove the part of his property that was built without planning permission. And so six months in the clink, or the restoration of the Clap’ham Road / Crewdson Road corner, back in line with the conservation status that other residents so rightfully respect.

Six months is a useful time frame to focus upon here. It was this exact same time span when the story was first reported. Three months later, and Mr Andani erected some scaffolding on the property.

I trust this isn’t a ruse to confuse those oh so clever people at Lambeth Council, I jested at the time. Three months later and the scaffolding remains, as does the top floor of the flat. The army of builders are as absent as the missing planning permission.

Someone is carefully monitoring the situation. I know this because ‘Mukesh Andani‘ has been the top search on m’blog for the past three months. I don’t think it is the award winning Lambeth Council Planning Applications department though.

Ah yes – the award winning Lambeth Council Planning Applications department:

It’s official. Lambeth Council’s planning department is tops for turning applications around in record time. Councillor Lib Peck, Lambeth Council cabinet member for housing and regeneration said: “This is fantastic news.

The fact that the service has turned around from a once failing service into one that is a top performer, is testament to the hard work and dedication of planning officers and the good work of the planning committee”.

I’m sure Mukesh Andani shares the same enthusiasm for the Lambeth Council planning department as the good Councillor Lib Peck. A three-month scaffolding bill must be the better option when compared to a six-month jail sentence.

The real losers here are the local people of SW8. The scaffolding is more of an eyesore than the extra storey. It’s now started to come loose, making the Clap’ham Road conservation area appear rather shabby.

And so in the interest of the user(s) searching m’blog for ‘Mukesh Andani,’ I shall continue to monitor the Clap’ham Road / Crewdson Road corner at regular intervals. Three months from now, and Mr Andani may even be waving two fingers in the air at a brand new administration in the Rotten Borough.

Day 16 of the Privatisation of Leisure in the Rotten Borough, and are the new arrangements at Brixton Rec starting to bed down?

Are they b*****ks.

Swim London members were given assurances at the Users Forum to announce the closure of Clap’ham Pool that all GLL membership cards would be transferable. Simply swipe your card at Brixton, and Bob’s yer uncle.

But I haven’t got an uncle called Bob. I haven’t even got an Aunty called Robert, either.

If the 7 – 9am only swimming in SW9 wasn’t bad enough, we now have to suffer the daily embarrassment of being branded a Clap’ham refugee. I arrive bright and early (very early) in Brixton, full of anticipation of my barcode card being swiped.

“Could you try again, please, Sir?”

“Oh, let’s swipe it a little slower.”

“One more time, please, Sir. Sir? Sir…?“

The Brixton Rec smiling receptionists are doing their best under very trying circumstances. The closure both of Clap’ham and St Reatham pools by Labour led Lambeth Council, has led to all Lambeth swimmers now competing for a slot in the two hour time frame in SW9 each morning.

But how b***y difficult can it be to update the GLL records, and update my card, as promised at the Clap’ham Users Closure Forum? That’s the whole point of a Swim LONDON membership, surly? Your card is transferable across all GLL sites. I was certainly led to believe this when I was stung with the hidden costs during the generic online signing up process.

Tuesday morning saw a new twist to the farce of the early morning leisure failure. Three receptionists smiling away, and not a single customer. Cripes – a quick swipe or three and I should be in the pool before chucking out time at 9am.

But nope – I was asked instead to use the fast checkout machine at the side of the reception. I’ve every sympathy for the lovely GLL smiling ladies – the self-service machine is similar to the scab labour sets ups that are on the increase in supermarkets.

My Swim London card has yet to work on a single day since the Privatisation of Leisure by Lambeth Council, and so I was weary of the new approach.

“Don’t worry, Sir. It will be fine.”

And so I swiped, swiped, and swiped again. If at first you don’t succeed, bugger off back to bed and admit defeat. The free market has won, and you might as well turn into a lard arse, rather than try and use your local leisure facilities.

I continued of course, and asked once again for my details to be updated.

“How do we know who you are?”

I would have thought that you have got enough data on me already, seeing as though the direct debit still comes out of my bank account each month.

“Could Sir please try and resolve this membership issue at our Member’s Office?”

“Sure, what time does the office open?”

“9:30.”

Chucking out time at Brixton Rec is 9am. Swimming in a sea of fools.

And so Sunny Stockwell has a s*** hot old skool punk rock boozer right on my doorstep – why has it taken me fifteen years to discover the gloriously anarchic debauchery that takes place at The Governor, SW9? All on a Sunday night as well.

Blimey.

The inaugural Acoustic Insurgency evening was a fundraiser for an Afghan girl caught up in a bombing incident last year. A decent cause and all that, but it was the draw of Attila the Stockbroker that led me to miss the Antiques Roadshow on Sunday.

As I braved a bitterly cold, but beautifully full moon lit Sunday evening, I strolled down the Stockwell Road and actually missed my turn off. I ended up at Stockwell Skate Park, and with a quick check on the iPhone, I retreated back away from the Brixton side of the tracks.

I didn’t know The Grosvenor actually existed. Inconspicuous from the outside, inside the old boozer was like stepping back in time twenty years to the rebel raising drinking dens that I use to frequent in the Fair City.

A geezer with an original (and somewhat repugnant) Clash T-shirt propped up the bar. Jamaican ska was on the sound system and a bloke wearing a Brixton Cycles cap gave me the wink as I wandered in.

Chapeau!

With the business of booze attended to, I strayed into the back room bar, which was hosting the bands for the evening. A fiver on the door and a no nonsense cross on my palm with a big fat green marker pen. The door policy was basically if you’re paying, yer in.

The scene within reminded me of all that I loved about the long lost glory years of Selectadisc. A pamphlet stall (something that you won’t see at a Killers gig) displayed political call to arms for a variety of causes. There wasn’t any literature from that nice Dave Cameron, and I struggled to see the relevance of the anti-Poll Tax leaflet. Good effort though.

A bloke was playing slide banjo on stage, with the lead singer asking in an East End drawl:

“Why are some people complete and utter c***s?”

I couldn’t have timed my arrival any better.

I later found out that this was the fading embers of the set from Steve White and the Protest Family, an E10 punk / folk four piece with a passion for all things Leyton Orient. The final song somehow managed to paint Brisbane Road as a superior place to watch football over the likes of Stamford Bridge, White Hart Lane and the Boleyn.

I caught my breath, surveyed the Sunday night carnage and hoped that I had entered into an alternative reality. The momentum of the Poll Tax riots back in ‘89 had been realised; the Tories had been toppled and BIG government was shown up for the sham that we all know it is. John Major was a mistake that never happened, and grass roots local democracy was now firmly established. Nu Labour was just a weak sperm count in Peter Mandleson’s pin prick of a member that had somehow failed to be ejaculated.

£3.30 for a pint of Guinness at the bar washed away all notions of the Glorious Revolution. No worries – look, here’s a mad as a wet hen ranting Brixton poet, rapping out his Tell It Like It Is observations from Coldharbour Lane, with the accompaniment of s bongo man and a cello.

Cripes.

Jack Blackburn was actually b****y brilliant. Six, seven minute long rants, all word perfect and paced with a timing that betrayed my own previous sense of the slightly warped SW9 timeline. The street observations were spot on, mixing Ancient Greek mythology with tales of drugs and seediness in SW9. That’s something that you won’t be reading about in Lambeth Life.

And then we came to the main draw of the evening. Nope, not the draw for the raffle, but the draw of Attila the Stockbroker, the legendary old skool one man ranting punk rock poet. Back in the day and an Attila gig for me was like a Friday night out at the pub. We must have seen yer man perform in pretty much every back street boozer across the Midlands.

London dates became less frequent, as well as being pushed out further into the suburbs. How glorious then to see Attila take to the stage, LIVE! in Sunny Stockwell, and performing in a boozer that was next door to where his Old Man once lived.

A bit of comedy strumming on the mandola, and then the set soon changed for Attila. Having lost his step-Dad over the New Year, and with family commitments spent caring for his Mum after her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, the political became the personal, as Attila read out some new poetry with a more reflective angle.

The ranting, boozing and profanities came to a close. The old school punks put down there pint glasses as silence descended over The Grosvenor. It was emotional stuff, and Attila did well to complete his set, even competing with a fire alarm at one stage.

Captain Hotknives displayed no such emotion, opening with a song called I Hate Babies. A one man strumming mouthpiece with a surrealist sense of humour, Mr Hotknives was the ideal act to end the evening.

Songs about racist animals and penguin porn followed. The ideas accelerated as the strumming intensified. This is one weird cool cat that has an imagination that suggests he isn’t spending his Sunday evenings watching The Antiques Roadshow for inspiration.

The raffle at the end was a bit of a flop. But then there’s little you can do to radicalise the drawing of pink coloured tickets out of a Tupperware container. Hey hoe – let’s go.

And so I left The Grosvenor with the full moon illuminating Sunny Stockwell and a huge grin across my face as Super Socialist Sunday came to a close. The proud activism around these parts is alive and well. There’s a fighting spirit around Stockwell that although seems hidden away, is still out there, and still kicking against the idiots that make decisions on our behalf.

Acoustic Insurgency takes place on the last Sunday of every month, which by my basic back of a beer mat calculations, leaves us with three more anarchic SW9 nights before real change can be put in place at the ballot box.