Category: CockneyLand

Another Farce

I ‘m looking forward to that glorious day – sometime next week – when the  press gets back to publishing some real news, and not about the delusion that voting will make a difference.

The real future of britain will be made by what the banks decides to do with the currency.

While those who live outside of  scotland will get no say in it all.

It’s all rather like voting  for members of the City of London
Corporation, which still operates on the ‘City Vote’.

As I keep saying: –

When voting changed the system – Thatcher abolished the GLC.

These are all the experience which have shaped by thinking,
and why I’ve never voted in my life.

Resisting the Olympics – A Resource List.

The 2012 Olympics are currently being built up by an
unprecedented media hype.

Yet there are many major objections as to how the event is being
run,  and just as many campaigners who are working to stop the
long lasting damage which it will create.


Background information and Resources.

This summer an army of occupation will take over the East End of
Cockneyland.

I refer to the army of  10,000 ‘security guards’,   7,000 military,
and the  large  number of extra police which will be in place
during this years Olympic event.

There are also many concerns about the way that this event will
both destroy many locally important ecological sites,
and how it will impact upon the civil rights of those who live in
the East End.

Resisting the Olympics.

The good news is that there are now a growing number of groups
and organisations which are countering the Olympics.

Here are a few links to these networks: –

– Games Monitor  – debunking Olympics myths.

– SAY NO TO LONDON 2012

– The New Lammas Lands Defence Committee

&

– NOGOE (No to Greenwich Olympic Equestrian Events)

Resistance to the Multinational Sponsors.

The other really perturbing aspect of the Olympics is that it is
being sponsored by some of the worlds largest & most
irresponsible multi-nationals.

Rather that list them all:
here is a list of some campaigns which are working against them.

On BP – The UK No Tar Sands Network

On EDF –  Boycott EDF

On RTZ – Partizans (People against Rio Tinto and its Subsidiaries)

On Coca-Cola – No Sweat

On Muckdonalds – McCruelty

&

On Dow Chemical – The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal

The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) have also protested against this Dow sponsorship.

The 2012 Olympic games will be a disaster, and we should support all of these campaigns.


Vancouver 2010

There was also a lot of resistance to the
2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver BC Canada.

There is a lot of information you can find online about just what happened during this event.

These include: –

– No One Is Illegal Vancouver!

&

– Resisting the Olympics Resources

The Last Rotten Borough – Part Two

Despite all of the various occupy protests of late.

I’m still waiting for someone to mount a serious campaign to curb the power(s) of those who run the City of London Corporation.

Here is a quote which says a lot about just why I hate the City of
London Corporation.

‘ Today, voting rights for the City of London’s municipal
authority are granted to its 32,000 businesses in addition to
residents which now number fewer than 12,000. ’

If you really want to see how this works out in practice,
then take a look at the City of London website.

What also gets me is the way in which people may obtain the
Freedom of the City.

Just how one may mount a serious campaign to challenge the
power(s) of the City of London Corporation is still open to
debate,
but challenged it must be.

A True Cockney

I was born ‘in the City of London in the City of London’,
or to be more exact
St Bartholomew’s (known as Barts) Hospital.

This means that I am a true Cockney as I was born within the sound
of Bow Bells.

Though it’s a long time since Barts has had a maternity unit,
and so there must be fewer & fewer cockneys.

My birth certificate reads:  ‘ Born in the City of London in the City of London’.

Thus I am a part of the last forgotten indigenous minority.

If I were able to afford to move back to the City of London,
then I would effectively be disenfranchised by the city vote.

That is why challenging the power(s) of the City of London
Corporation is very much one of my major concerns.

Words.

I’ve been thinking about the use of various words of late.

One of the reasons for doing so is because I spent a couple of days during this month at a language school to the South of Madrid:

I was talking to some of the students about Cockney Rhyming slang,
and aspects of the everyday use of the various languages which one hears within London.

Now I discover that the British Local Government Association
has produced a list of:
200 words and phrases that all public sector bodies should avoid when talking to people about the work they do and the services they provide.

Here is an example of just what is to be found within this list:

– Baseline – starting point

– Customer – people/person

– Outsourced – privatised

– Rationalisation – cut

– Revenue Streams – money.

– Slippage – delay.

– Thinking outside of the box – Why use at all?

It’s refreshing to read that at long last there is an attempt to curtail the use of so many of these detested corporate terms.

Maids, Grooms, Footmen, and Library History.

Putney Library opened to the public in 1899.

The building was the gift of the publisher Sir George
Newnes.

A bust of him was placed in the long corridor to the building
during the 1920s.

When the library first opened it listed its members by their
occupations:

Maids, Grooms, Footmen, Butlers, Draper, Ladies and
Gentlemen.

A practice which has long gone out of use.

These membership records were written upon ledgers,
which were kept within the Librarians Office,
and stored there for many years after they had became
obsolete.

You could made an interesting historical class analysis by
just going through these ledgers.

During World War Two the basement of the building was
used as an ARP ( Air Raid Patrol ) centre.
This space was later used to store items for the
Wandsworth museum.

I worked in Putney Library from 1973 to 1987.

When I first worked in the library it still had its original
wood book cases, and a wonderful grandfather clock in
the hall.

Roy Plomley of ‘Desert Island Discs’ fame would use the
Music Library in his research work for his broadcasts.
He also liked to see old French films, and I would sometimes
bump into him at the National Film Theatre.

Another Putney library user was the Tribune cartoonist
George Gale.

A former Labour minister, Lord Jenkins of Putney, was yet
another library user.

I give the above facts as an example of the joy of Library
history.

We all use & work within public libraries, and very rarely
think about just how they have been used over the years.

Yet just you look at this kind of history, & you will find a
fascinating part of all our social heritage.

In to the Dustbin of History.

The Chapel Street Market branch of Woolworths closed
down last month, and thus another part of my landscape
history disappeared along side of it.

I have a strong memory of being outside of the store while I
was four years old – over 50 years ago.

Places change, buildings come and go.

What used to be slum areas turn in to fashionable parts.

Fashionable areas decay and turn in to slum areas.

It’s the old saying:
‘What comes around goes around’.

What used to be the premises of C & W May ( theatrical
Costumiers ) has changes a lot.

I worked for the company in Covent Garden from 1968 to
1972.

My how things have changed in the area since then!

Continue reading In to the Dustbin of History.

Another Fine Old Cinema Building Destroyed

The building which was the Scala Cinema
on the Stroud Green Rd,
or to be exact:
15 The Parade, Stroud Green Road, Finsbury Park,
is no more.

The Scala was a purpose built cinema which opened in
October 1914,
became New Scala in 1920,
& closed in 1924.

The building was put to many purposes after it closed as a
cinema, such as a clothing factory, etc, etc.

I had know the place since I was a child.

A couple of years ago I managed to get a news story about
the appalling state of the building in to the Islington
Gazette.

Unfortunate nothing ever came of my efforts.

I passed the site 3 days ago,
and was sad to see that it is in the final stages of demolition.

It’s sad to see that such an important historical building
should be lost to us all!

Derelict London – Now the Book.

I have always liked the Derelict London website:
because it shows the City as it really is.

The changing urban landscape.
– places which I used to know that have fallen in to
disrepair.
– places which I’ll never see the insides of again.
&
– buildings which are about to be pulled down.

Just take a look for yourself.

http://www.derelictlondon.com/derelict_london_com.htm

Now there is a Derelict London book.

Continue reading Derelict London – Now the Book.