onionbagblog

St Martin’s Court, WC2, The Way We See It.

“We’re off to a little alleyway that has some rather grand inhabitants this week. St.Martin’s Court runs between Charing Cross Road and St.Martin’s Lane. The short run manages to pack in two theatres, two pubs and a rather lovely restaurant.

The pubs couldn’t be more different, although I seemed to have passed a rather large amount of my time in both – The Salisbury at the St.Martin’s Lane end is a great, grand old London pub; The Round Table is more of a dirty old chain, but manages to have the feel of a real local.

The two theatres are the Wyndhams and the Noel Coward.”

Brixton Topcats 107, Plymouth 71

I’ve been away from basketball for far too long. Following the demise of the London Towers from a national BBL team to become a pub outfit, my attention switched to the more local level of the Brixton Topcats. Sunday night tip offs at the Rec became part of the routine, soon to be replaced by work commitments filling up the Sunday schedule.

Time to change that. For a blog that started off as a hat tip to South London sport (yep, it really did,) I’m well aware that watching cricket is probably the only return you’ll get from typing ‘sport‘ into the search box - and even then, it’s more like a beer festival tarted up with cricket as the sideshow.

And so early Sunday evening and the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I were Brixton Rec bound. Blimey. The old building has lost none of its character. This was once my South London spiritual home. Ten years of playing football, korfball and circuit training took place each week at the Rec.

A £2m refurbishment (yeah, right) and the soul was all but sucked out of this once proud community facility. My Rec days were done with. But I’ll make an exception to return to watch the Topcats.

Brixton’s basketball team has undertaken something of a transformation itself during our sabbatical. A link up with the nearby South Bank University at The Elephant has seen the coming together of the two clubs.

The students of SE1 get expert ball coaching from the legendary Jimmy Rogers, and in return, the Topcats get a steady feeder system of new players. It’s this commitment to developing local sporting talent that makes Brixton basketball all the more appealing, compared with the hoop egos clashing on and off the court, at the British Basketball League.

Three pounds on the door, a personal friendly greeting from Jimmy Rogers and a choice of courtside seats were ours for the taking. The crowd was made up mainly of family and friends, giving a partisan feel to the occasion.

Plymouth were the visitors for this EBL Division 2 tip off. They’re probably called Plymouth Patriots, or some other Americanised name. I’m not sure, and so I’ll simply stick with Plymouth.

The Topcats looked a mean outfit straight from the tip off. The combination of students and experience worked well as a team. The home point guard was controlling play, and Topcats stretched away with a 20 point lead after the first two quarters.

A rousing team talk from the Plymouth coach at the break (“I can’t f***ing swear because there’s f***ing kids around, but you lot were f***ing s***e,’) seemed to do the job. The visitors even edged ahead by a single point, only to collapse in the fourth quarter, with Topcats taking the game 107 - 71.

And so basketball is thriving down in Brixton. The club has a development scheme in operation, a dedicated coach and a healthy local fan base. All that is missing is a website. Information and fixtures are notoriously difficult to come across. pawprint75 is probably your best bet.

Alley-oop!

Ah, back to another onionbagblog favourite - the continued decline of accountability in local politics, and the poxy little war being fought between the South London Press and Lambeth Life, the propaganda paper published by our friends from @lambeth_council.

*sigh*

There was a time when the local rag ruled the roost. Local politicians courted local journos. It was an alliance as unlikely (and uneasy) as vicars and tarts. I was never quite sure which organisation was playing which particular part.

But then the collective brains within local the local council (cripes) realised that they could cut out the middle man, and put the local paper out of business. Why sweat on the weekly publication date and yet more woe about how Council Tax money is being wasted, when you can window dress the headlines yourself?

Step forward Lambeth Life. The fortnightly ‘information sheet’ (yeah, right…) puts across the Council’s point of view. It’s a one way process with @cllrstevereed, the leader of the Rotten Borough, not even having the dignity to act as a back seat driver. A fancy fortnightly column reminds you what a fine job Lambeth Labour is doing in the Rotten Borough.

The traditional response from the traditional media has been that local authority publications are funded at the expense of the taxpayer. This is a last cry from a dying dinosaur of a publishing model that has yet to embrace the modern interweb.

At the risk of sounding like I’m defending the Rotten Borough, Lambeth Life is self-supported, with paid for ads. Ah, so that’s where the battleground really lies - traditional media such as the South London Press has got its pants in twist, over the transference of their revenue stream to the local authority.

It’s a point that has been picked up by Greenslade (heads up @darryl1974,) who notes that the good ‘ol SLP reckons it has lost a cool half a million since Lambeth Life started adding to the re-cycling problem within the Rotten Borough. With no cover price, and a door-to-door distribution model that the SLP would die for, you can see why Lambeth Life has got the SLP so rattled.

The point was even picked up by ITV’s London News, pitching SLP Editor-in-Chief Hannah Walker up against the leader of Lambeth Council (you can try and watch it over here, but ITV’s online streaming slowness will probably mean that the file is still buffering long after the SLP has gone out of business.)

With traditional media and the local council both exchanging insults like some long lost press barons, the real issue has become rather lost. Who does the electorate turn to for accountability? The media organisation that has a dislike for the democratically elected local council, or the local council’s propaganda paper that treats Lambeth as La La Land?

You could always make a complaint about the political reporting on both sides. But with SLP Editor Hannah Walker recently joining the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee at the Press Complaints Commission, and Lambeth Life offering a reader’s right of reply that is more Points of View than Paxo, you’d be left pretty much stuffed with both publications.

Nope, what’s really killing off the SLP is the modern interweb. The classified section (the heart and soul of any paid for publication) is all now available for free online. Builders, painters and prostitutes (the SLP isn’t afraid to take the moral low ground when it comes to pimping out its pages) - all trades are only a Google or Gumtree search away.

Editorially and the SLP has taken the simple sword of journalistic truth and stabbed itself in the foot. The site fails at every level - re-publishing print stories as brochureware, long after they have been available on the newsstands. There is a complete lack of user interaction and a laughable interpretation of blogs, where content is updated as an after thought, and not as a stimulus.

Adapt or die. Or give the job over to someone who can do justice in sourcing South London stories online. The paper is being burnt on its very own historical hunting ground, with truly wonderful hyperlocal sites such as SE1, the mighty U75 community or even the East Dulwich Forum, all coming up with the real local scoops, day after day.

Likewise @lambeth_council is failing online. The Twitter account is used as a publishing source, and not as a tool to engage. The website navigation is almost as confusing as the policies coming out of the Town Hall, and the failure to take action against an elected official after calling a rival colleague ‘a scab‘ online, all adds up to a non-existent 2.0 strategy.

So where does this all leave the electorate? Sitting somewhere in the dark, unable to trust the SLP with its personal vendetta against @lambeth_council, who in return, is publishing a propaganda sheet, thinly disguised as a council service.

The people of South London deserve better, on both fronts.

Southampton Row, WC1, The Way We See It.

“We might have done a part of this road by accident already this week. Southampton Row runs from Russell Square down as far as Holborn. I’ve long thought that Kingsway went all the way up to the junction of Theobalds Road, but how wrong I was!

It’s a road of such varied architecture it’s quite amazing. Just raise your head and you will see such variety. It contains the Cochrane Theatre and the Central School of Arts.

My favourite place, however, is Falkiner Fine Papers, one of those incredible shops that you would just walk past if you weren’t looking . Inside it’s a treasury of not only paper, but everything you would ever want for bookbinding.

The street is nearly always thronging with locals, students and tourists – a crazy mix.”

Another weekend, another open studios event in Stockwell. The artistic community around my little patch of South London really is one of the hidden secrets of SW8. This weekend it was the turn of the fine artists of the 401 and a half gallery along Wandsworth Road to showcase their varied talents.

I’ve been aware of the 401 since my days of exploration and blogging around Larkhall Park. The old industrial building backs onto the western edge of Larkhall. I could think of no finer artistic inspiration than the beauty of the park for the artists within 401.

The gallery has been functioning as an active workspace since 1971. Designer Michael Haynes set up the workshops, and invited into the spaces the already thriving artist working within SW8. Almost forty years later, and the 401 is still functioning as a creative hub.

I truly value these opportunities to have a poke around our local studios. Although not strictly out of bounds for the rest of the year, the location of the 401 makes the space seem hidden away from the rest of Stockwell.

On Saturday I found nothing but welcoming faces, all keen to talk about their work and help educate the illiterate art lover. It wasn’t just the more traditional oil paintings or watercolours that could be found within; sculpture, silverware, ceramic tiles and fine art were all on show.

I was particularly impressed with Rebecca Campbell’s illustrative paintings, depicting a quaint, English setting, with the parody of characters or figures that are out of context. So much so that I bought up half the gallery (I wish…) I plucked up the courage to ask Rebecca for a brief podcast.

Estate agents will tell you that the sign of any upcoming area is the influx of artists moving in. Yeah, right. Stockwell has been home to the South London art community for far too many boom and bust years to remember. The openness of this loose, association of artists however is something that is unique to area. Art is for sharing and stimulating. Or even blogging.

And so how very amusing - the Clap’ham Leisure Centre quarterly users forum drew in a crowd consisting of six blokes from Greenwich Leisure Limited / @lambeth_council, and um, one lone user / local nutter.

*sigh*

Yep, I felt an a*** as I walked into the empty surrounds of the upstairs room at Clap’ham Manor, and yes, I swear the look I received from the nice man from the Rotten Borough was one of ‘oh no, not him again.’

But if public service providers are going to put themselves up as being accountable, then you need to take the opportunity to hold them to account. Failing that then there’s always the opportunity for some free afternoon tea and biscuits, served up at SW4.

And so how to solve the problem of Clap’ham Leisure Centre? I feel another long *sighhhh* coming up…

The problem per se isn’t the structural building. It just needs some tender loving care. The Brockwell experience down at SE24 proves precisely what can be achieved within an old building, if the heritage is respected and looked after.

The problem isn’t really GLL either. Having taken up the lure of being pimped out by @lambeth_council, GLL is making the best of a one way situation. @lambeth_council gets to lose leisure from its management portfolio, and GLL take a slice of the profit. Eveyone’s happy, apart from the users.

Nope, the problem is with the continued delay of the building of a new leisure centre. As ever, it is the users who are left unsure about the future of swimming in South London.

Having asked for a progress report on the delay of Future Clap’ham (the past always catches up with you…) I’m still none the clearer as to why Clap’ham hasn’t got a shiny new facility, as promised by Labour led Lambeth Council as an election pledge. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. It was rather awkward trying to covertly podcast on the fly, with six blokes eyeballing me as I fiddled around with the iPhone.

I was told however that Clap’ham would close “early in the new year.” I was told the same timescale twelve months ago, and so I wouldn’t pack away those Speedos just yet.

But if this is to be the new timetable for closure, then swimmers in Clap’ham are stuffed. I asked about alternative arrangements. Brixton was rolled out as the answer. The only problem here being that the Rec is also closing throughout January and February, to carry out improvements to the multi-million pound new changing rooms that were put in place less than three years ago.

Ah, how about St Reatham? Yer man from GLL chipped with the news that part of the St Reatham pool is also closed for repair.

Whoops.

There’s always the lovely lido of course, although not during the winter months (and also not on my GLL Swim London membership; I fear I gave the man from @lambeth_council an easy ride this time, breaking in tradition by not asking the question as to why two separate swimming membership schemes are in place in the Rotten Borough. The answer of course lies with politicians and money.)

The rest of the meeting was open, if not a little awkward. I found it rather tricky trying to pace my questions, waiting for @audioboo to upload a piece, keeping on hold my next question before I could start recording once again.

And so from Future Clap’ham, to scuba divers. Blimey. Blink and you’ll miss the answer.

Cleanliness was mentioned, but to be fair, I have found GLL to be rather good at keeping Clap’ham clean. Updates from the previous forum were read out, confirming that points made by other users (there are others?) had indeed been acted upon.

Which is all praise to GLL. It is great that GLL is held to account, and offers up representatives each quarter to more or less get a kicking. Leisure users are a passionate and vocal constituent. Well, apart from Thursday afternoon in Clap’ham. I can’t help thinking that the panel of six was safety in numbers. What were they really expecting from one lone bloke and his bloody @audioboo app?

So yeah, the comedy value of being the Spokesperson for his Swimming Generation is rather amusing. Future Clap’ham and the continual failure of @lambeth_council to implement an election pledge is not so comical.

Michel is a Frenchman living in Stockwell. In this recording, we talk about Michel’s journey from the suburbs of Paris to Stockwell, via Wandsworth. We discuss the benefits of living in a busy, urban environment, as well as sharing a Stockwell secret.