Heritage Walks

I was rather disappointed to learn from Cllr Mrs Clark that she is no longer the Borough’s Heritage Champion and that there is no longer any central budget to add to the Aldborough Walk put together by herself and Ron Jeffries a few years back. There is an outstanding item on the Area 3 outstanding item list for a Heritage Walk but it’s been there so long it is in danger of becoming a heritage item in its own right.

Anyway while out walking today we stumbled upon this Heritage Pump located at Woodford Bridge where the River Roding used to pass underneath Chigwell Road before it was canalised when the M11 was built.

This is the inscription which mentions former councillor Peter Lawrence and still present and correct councillor Richard Hoskins who was then Mayor.

We were thinking that we should put together a Heritage Walk ourselves but we are not quite sure what to do with this …..

City Gates Church Collapse

At around 4:30pm yesterday the infrastructure for the City Gates Church in Clements Road, Ilford, collapsed. Nobody was seriously injured.

However the area remains closed while Health & Safety investigate and the site is made safe.

The Clements Road Car park and the surface Town Hall Car park are closed. Buses are being diverted and there is serious congestion – advice is to avoid Ilford Town centre if possible.

The Royal Mail sorting office is closed so post will be delayed.

Council services are being re-located.

For updates see the Council Website.

Also see latest tweets in the right hand side bar.

Climate Week 12-18 March 2012

Apply for a Climate Week Grant today, details below.

click on image to enlarge

B21 have an event that week, our March Coffee Morning on Thursday 15th when we welcome Cllr Paul Canal as our guest speaker. Paul was elected as a Conservative councillor for Bridge ward in 2010 and is an Anthropogenic Global Warming sceptic as well as a keen cyclist and recyclist. So we expect a lively debate, a lot of hot air and some recycled arguments.

We also intend to apply for a grant for phase 1 of our pedal power project and intend to hook Paul up to a generator to boil the kettle for the Tea which should produce some anthropogenic warming on his part as it would normally take 15 proficient cyclists to do that. #challenge

The Kingfisher Pool

If you have arrived here looking for the Kingfisher swimming pool in Kingston upon Thames or you think this might just refer to a replacement swimming pool in Redbridge you are going to be very disappointed. The Nation is broke and we are all having to make sacrifices. That is, unless you want a new airport in the Thames Estuary at £70bn or a new model railway at £60bn.

This is about a pool for Kingfishers – the bird of the feathered variety. You may remember this post earlier outlining how Redbridge Lakes had taken advantage of the FLASH programme and you may have seen a follow up in the Ilford Recorder. So, I’ve ventured round the corner to visit and have a chat with the owner Gordon Bullock.

This is the private sector. No sooner the word and it gets done. Contrast that with the 4½ years it took to get planning permission for the lakes. As you can see from the slide show below a habitat has been set up and also a feeding raft is now floating on what was previously called the silt pit. More photos and commentary on its construction over on the lakes website. It’s very deep so the Kingfishers need a raft to feed. There’s only one hole because Kingfishers are solitary unlike Sand martins which we will come on to later. The viewing hut is in situ and there are plans to put a CCTV camera on top powered by a solar panel. Now we sit and wait. I have seen Kingfishers on the River Roding so we are quite hopeful that we will not have to wait too long.

Further round we come to a steep bank on the other side of which are the neighbours, the Wanstead Rugby Club. This has been cleared back removing all the vegetation so that mutiple holes can be drilled into the bank for Sand martins which do hang around in flocks. As mentioned earlier there are plans for a wild flower meadow and a bug hotel. Gordon is very keen on recycling and composting. However his plans for a wormery are restricted to private sector worms as they are more efficient and work harder.

Back at the club house we meet the Swans and chickens and Gordon tells me how every pitch around the lakes has been designed to allow access for those in wheelchairs, highlighting this regular visitor. However, the lack of a bus route in Roding Lane North is an accessibility concern for the elderly and infirm who do not have their own transport. I explain that the proposed 306 bus route was abandoned back in about 2004 after a public consultaion delivered a 2:1 majority in favour. That’s the public sector for you.

While I was there I took advantage of the café with a mouth-watering bacon roll and a cup of coffee – recommended. Very yummy!

Not a Dunn Deal

There seems to be a lot of cynicism out here on Public Consultations and specifically Redbridge Conversations on the Council’s proposed budgets. One such suggestion is that the council deliberately include contentious items in their initial proposals so that they can take them out when there is a fuss and make it look like they are listening.

Of course we realise that the Coalition government are cutting their grant and that some tough decisions have to be made. You can’t spend what you haven’t got. So, the consultation is out and is currently doing the rounds of Area Committees and on Wednesday 25th we had the pleasure of Cllr Mrs Dunn’s company at Area 3 to answer questions and we were assured that the proposed budget is not a Dunn deal. She is the cabinet member for Highways (which includes waste and recycling – don’t ask!).

The big issue raised was the proposed reduction of the Green Waste kerbside summer (April to October) collection service from weekly to fortnightly. There was a good debate with some interesting points made.

Firstly, there is currently a working party, chaired by Cllr Paul Canal, in progress looking at the whole question of waste and recycling and how we can reduce the costs of this. The council pay £128 for every tonne sent to landfill and £98 for every tonne of recycling. It would seem prudent to wait for the results of this exercise before making any rash decisions on Green waste collection.

Secondly, when the service was introduced it was completely overwhelmed. It is very popular. And when it went from fortnightly to weekly the take-up of the service and tonnage shot up again, as was the case when the general kerbside recycling scheme went from fortnightly to weekly and also when cardboard recycling was introduced. The big question is what was happening to all this green waste before? And the answer is it was being put out in the general waste and going to landfill costing the taxpayer £128 per tonne instead of £98 per tonne. So, we don’t want to go back to that do we? There is a distinct possibility that such a move could be counter-productive and cost us more in the long term. And it also sends out completely the wrong message on waste.

Area Committee 3 voiced their disapproval on this item in the budget as did Area Committee 1 last Monday. Cllr Mrs Dunn did seem to be listening and I am quite hopeful that this will not happen.

Now, my view is that a significant amount of this green waste material really ought to be home composted meaning that it does not enter the council’s waste stream in the first place and therefore doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything. There will still be a need, though, because not all green waste is suitable for home composting. But I’m afraid that if residents don’t want to compost there’s not a lot we can do about it. If you want to give it a try you can get discounted compost bins from here.

What also struck me at the same meeting is this. The cost saving for reducing the Green waste collection service to fortnightly is put at £50,000 - a service that covers the whole borough, 5 working days a week and for 7 months of the year. At the same meeting £15,000 (just under a third of that) was earmaked for hanging baskets in Barkingside and Hainault and a scheme to put bollards at Fullwell Parade was costed at £22,000 (just under half). It seems to me that some council contracts need to be examined more than others because some of them look like a complete rip-off. Perhaps Area 3 should ask the New Fairlop Oak who does their award winning hanging baskets and how much they cost? Or better still, let the contract to Wetherspoons. I’ll bet my boots it’ll be cheaper than whatever the council can come up with.

Redbridge Artist Commission

Dear Redbridge Artists,

Are you creative? Want to build up your portfolio and your profile in the borough? Want to help out your community Arts Festival?

The Redbridge Green Fair is seeking the 2012 REDBRIDGE GREEN FAIR ARTIST to create the ART WORK for our flyer and all this year’s materials.

The Redbridge Green Fair is a major arts festival and the largest community event in the borough. Our last fair in 2009 attracted 14,000 people. Whilst we cannot pay you, you will be credited on all electronic media, our website and the flyers. So if you are interested in raising your profile, this is the opportunity for you!!!

The commission: We are looking for a fresh design that captures the essence of the event. Printed flyers may be printed in black and white depending on our budget, so please bare this in mind. Our usual colours are green and yellow, but this is not written in stone. We are also looking for a logo design that can be used on Facebook and Twitter, and long banners to use as page headers on our own website.

Key themes to consider: A community festival with a strong focus on the environment. Key elements of the fair include: Music, Art Activities, Stalls, Vegetarian Food, Cultural Diversity.

Deadline for submission: ♥♥Tuesday 14 February♥♥, 11:59pm to our email address.

For more information and tips on what we’re looking for: email us on redbridgegreenfair@gmail.com and we’ll give you a call. We can also discuss your expenses which we hope to be able to cover, but they need to be agreed up front.

Date & Venue: Valentines Park, Ilford on Monday 4th June 2012, the Jubilee weekend, but it will not have a Jubilee theme.

We will be in touch later with the paid and voluntary opportunities for Redbridge artists participating in the event. In the meantime keep an eye on our website http://www.rgf.org.uk/ and you can find us on Facebook.

Thank you,
Ros Southern
Chair, Redbridge Green Fair Association

100 Days

Apparently today, Tuesday 24th, marks the point where it is 100 days to go before this year’s Big Event in the Big Smoke – the London Elections. The trouble is that not many, including our Chairman, know what the London Assembly is for or does nor what the role of the London Mayor is let alone the absurdities of the voting system. They might know who he is, (we’ve only had two so far and they have both been male), but not what he is for.

Hopefully we will rectify this by getting some statements from the candidates for the Havering and Redbridge constituency for this blog prior to the Hustings at our AGM on April 4th.

Meanwhile the local Conservatives were out in force in Barkingside last Saturday accompanied by the present incumbent presumably because the polls have turned in Ken’s favour after being 8 points behind last summer.

Locally the Labour Party have been very active for some months on #labourdoorstep but there is a twitter campaign for a hashtag #getoffmydoorstep [that’s the polite version].

I can’t find a website for Their candidate Mandy Richards now has a website and but Haroon Saad the Green Party candidate features on the new Redbridge Greens site. Still no news on the local Liberal Democrat candidate – perhaps hoping to come up on the rails at the last minute in a two-horse race?

Talking of racetracks, here’s a video created by Jim Jepps for the Big Smoke website on road safety: enjoy the soundtrack …

There was a comment recently, which I can’t find now, “that our roads are built for cars not people”. Wrong! Most of London’s road network was built before we had cars, and even the expansion of new estates like Barkingside and Clayhall in the 1930s was when very few people had cars. The problem is that our roads were NOT built for cars and we have had to make the best of it.

A Conservative Conservationist

Two things caught my eye today.

First the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) issued its response to the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s consultation on the Green Deal, highlighting key omissions and inconsistencies in the document.

The Government’s Green Deal aims to reduce carbon emissions cost effectively by revolutionising the energy efficiency of British properties, but has been criticised by the Committee on Climate Change as being unlikely to deliver this objective. The Government’s own impact assessment has also confirmed that the rate of energy efficiency improvement will be less than 25% than is currently being achieved – in other words the proposed policy change will reduce policy effectiveness, not improve it. More …

Subsidising energy supply, but not energy efficiency improvement makes no sense.

Indeed. So I am asking myself why is it that the “greenest government ever” is having such difficulty in actually doing what it said on the tin when we bought it in May 2010? Well, the answer could be in Caroline Lucas’ review of a book by Roger Scruton titled "Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet". Some extracts …

With the Tory leadership distancing itself from the environmental agenda it had courted so keenly before the last election, and the Coalition government dangerously divided over green policies, philosopher Roger Scruton's thoughtful study on environmentalism in the conservative tradition arrives at a timely moment. Acknowledging that the environment is the most urgent political problem of our age – an intellectual step that already takes him beyond most Conservatives – the author, who is both a conservative and a conservationist, seeks to reclaim it from the clutches of the left.

However,

Overflowing with references to history, philosophy, art, cultural theory, literature and law, Green Philosophy is beautifully written and ambitious in its scope. But it is also curiously old-fashioned, unashamedly tribal and deeply contradictory. Scruton himself admits that his approach is "more philosophical than practical" – and many of his lines of inquiry simply take the reader around in circles.

And

Having failed to resolve this ambiguity, [climate change needs global action] the philosopher goes on to rage against the negative consequences of state-imposed bureaucracies, "bad regulation" and of the dominance of NGOs. While he does chide conservatives for failing to address the obvious fact that environmental "stewardship" does not come easily to multinational companies that have "no civic tie to the countries they operate in", he continues to champion the free market as the lesser evil – and lets big business off the hook.

This exposes the contradiction at the heart of conservative approach to the environment: the desire to promote free enterprise and a smaller state imposing minimal regulation, while also seeking to conserve natural heritage. Recent policy disasters such as the proposed reform of the planning system and the selling-off of the forests have shown the Tory-led Government grappling with this conflict.

In this context, it's even more difficult to accept Scruton's claim that "conservatism and environmentalism are natural bedfellows". The truth is that Scruton can't decide how much state action is too much. He agrees that the resources of government are needed to address problems like climate change, oil spills, plastic pollution, and the loss of bio-diversity. He also believes in the "fundamental moral idea" that those responsible for damage should repair it, and supports such progressive measures as carbon taxes and emissions-limiting legislation.

I couldn't agree more, but how he reconciles this kind of large-scale intervention with his beloved small-state conservatism is anyone's guess.

So there you have it. It’s all down to Cognitive Dissonance or as it is sometimes known Doublethink. And I suspect the same conclusion with "Socialist environmentalism" but I can't quite pin down who the socialists are these days ...

Read the whole review here.

Redbridge Council want your House

I do not profess to know everything that’s going on around here. I take the view that if something is important or topical, then someone will draw it to my attention – in this case ex Redbridge councillor and deputy Leader Morris Hickey. As usual there is nothing on the award winning website Redbridge-i but the local press will probably pick up on it later.


This from yesterday’s Telegraph

Elderly homeowners will be encouraged to downsize to smaller properties and allow councils to rent their homes to local families under Coalition plans to ease the nation’s housing crisis. More …

This from Today’s Conservative Home

The Government is urging other councils to follow the example of Conservative-run Redbridge [sic!] with a scheme to encourage the elderly to move to smaller properties and allow the council to rent out their homes. More …

And a comment posted on the above

Our scheme in Redbridge - run by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat partnership - is a new pilot scheme that we're currently testing at the moment. It's targeted at mature home owners who are under-occupying their home and would like to move. Our Housing Service provides advice and support, in partnership with DABD(UK), including a direct offer of sheltered housing where appropriate. The home owner retains ownership of their home which is leased to the council to provide us with additional social housing. The owner receives all of the rent as income, as well as free property management.

Cllr Ian Bond (LibDem Deputy Leader of the Council)

Of course if councils hadn’t sold off most of their council housing and the housing market wasn’t totally screwed in favour of speculators leaving homes empty then just maybe the problem would not be so bad and squatting may not have been such a problem …

Location, Location, Location

One of the features that defines our individual identity is where we live. Sometimes we stretch things a little to make out we live in the posh part of town when we don’t. I spend quite a bit of time correcting addresses on a National Charity’s database because of this. There is a big difference between a locality name and a correct Postal Address.

Anyway, the first council meeting I attended was the Modernisation Committee back in the year 2000 to question them about the make up of Area Committees. I particularly recall the antique furniture in the committee room on the first floor of the Town Hall. Also present were Cllr Ian Bond, Cllr Morris Hickey and Cllr Jim O’Shea.

Later, much later, there was the uproar when a council notice board appeared on the north side of Gants Hill roundabout proclaiming it was in “Barkingside”. Well it was, and still is, in Barkingside ward but the residents were not happy and it had to be changed to Gants Hill ££££££. There is also the long story about how we became to be known as Barkingside 21.

So, on Thursday I receive a request from someone by the name of Daud to give a link to his district map of Redbridge. It’s adverstising I know but it is also actually quite good, although I dare say some will take issue, particularly a certain local activist named Rick [with a silent “P”] who lives in IG8 but has been lumped in with the “riff-raff” in IG5. Nothing like putting boundaries on a map to get a bit of discussion going. What do you readers think? Have you been classified correctly?


click image to take you to the big version

But that’s not all. On Friday I was in Sainsbury’s Barkingside and when I returned to my car laden with beer there was a fridge magnet stuck on the driver’s door. It was an advertisement – no more bits of paper under your windscreen wiper and quite a clever new gimmick I had not seen before. At first I thought it was the Florist in the High Street but it’s not. I checked out the web link and in the “Ilforf area they will deliver to Wood Ford Green, Seven Hill, Grant Hill and Chipwell”. I particularly like Chipwell – it sums up the TOWIEs quite well don’t’cha fink, innit?

click image for the full version

This post is dedicated to the grammar police on the Redbridge-i forum.

Disability Hate Crime

Here’s a topical theme to be having a workshop on right now, given the flack the government has been getting over their plans to "reform" Disability Living Allowance. Even Bouncy Boris is not happy, not to mention the Lords.

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"What is Disability Hate Crime & Harassment" - indeed?

Redbridge Conversation 2012

Yesterday I mentioned "Consultations" and today this popped up in my Inbox. To do your "duty" click on the graphic and it will take you to the relevant page on the award winning Redbridge-i website.