Lewisham Council pushes through library closures
Labour-run Lewisham Council today confirmed the closure of five of its libraries blaming “ideological cuts” imposed by the coalition government.
Mayor Sir Steve Bullock was heckled by protestors as he announced the closures, against what was described as “unanimous opposition” from local residents.
Blackheath Village Library, Sydenham Library, Crofton Park Library, New Cross Library and Grove Park Library will all close their doors from the 28th May this year.
The libraries already operate limited opening hours and the council claim that they can no longer afford to maintain or modernise the buildings.
Closing them will save the Council just under £1 million. Lewisham need to cut £60 million from their budget over the next three years.
Other cuts agreed today include the closure of the Amersham Early Years Centre by August this year and cuts to a wide range of voluntary projects.
However, Lewisham claim to have been “inundated” with calls from residents and voluntary organisations wanting to help re-open council buildings for community use. A council consultation found that 10% of respondents were willing to volunteer to run library services.
Rents and charges for council services will also increase with school meals rising from £1.40 to £2.00 over the next few years and the price of some yearly parking permits rising from £100 to £200.
Maximum charges on adult social care will rise to £500 a week by next year, an increase of 72%. Director of the Lewisham Disability Coalition Carol Mew told councillors that disabled people were being made to suffer disproportionately from the cuts:
If you charge poor people for services like getting them out of bed and getting them washed then it is completely different to saying we’re going to increase charges for people to use leisure services or parking, but it is being treated in the same way. Any increase in charges will have a dramatic effect.
Mayor Bullock said he would ask officers to look again at the impact on disabled people.
Lewisham’s programme of cuts have met with widespread resistance from locals including numerous petitions and a recent sit-in protest at New Cross Library.
Last November rioting broke out outside the town hall causing Lewisham Council to hold today’s meeting during work hours.
Protestors today accused the council of “doing the Tories’ dirty work for them” and heckled councillors to “stand up for yourselves.”
In return Labour councillors repeatedly tried to pin the blame for the cuts on the coalition government with Councillor Paul Maslin telling residents that they were “under attack” from the “machismo and bravado” of Secretary of State for Local Government Eric Pickles.
Photograph of New Cross Library by Paul at SE13URE
17 Feb 2011
Useful phrases that mean you'll never lose an argument again
You know that feeling you get when you’re disagreeing with someone and they just refuse to see the righteousness of your position? I believe it’s called mounting fury. Well fure no more, because here are five phrases which admit no retort. Use them judiciously, and bask in the glory of rhetorical invincibility!
“That’s a false dichotomy”
This is a particular favourite of mine. It’s not so much that the person with whom you’re arguing won’t know what it means – they’ll probably have a vague idea. It’s just that to argue that the issue at hand is a “true dichotomy” is a task of such futile time consumption that they’d rather kill themselves than undertake it.
“We’re just coming at this from different angles”
This is a more subtle approach, and can be employed usefully when you suspect that you may be losing the argument a little bit. It’s a sly way of allowing yourself to claim that actually you agree entirely with what the other person was saying, and you have done all along. So what’s all the fuss about?
“You’re being reductive”
An aggressive tactic, but it scores points for that fact that neither you nor your opponent will be exactly sure what it means. This will create the necessary confusion in which to claim a draw.
“I think it’s a very fluid situation”
You can’t use this very often but it can be useful if the argument is about something happening right now. It’s a great way of suggesting that hell, you both might be wrong mightn’t you? I mean who knows what tomorrow will bring? So let’s have a pint and forget all about it.
“Now we’re just arguing about semantics”
The nuclear option, rendering all further discussion about any conceivable topic completely pointless. The genius of this phrase is that it can be employed in any situation with devastating effect. The downside is that it tends to lead to prolonged periods of existential introspection about whether anything means anything anyway. Use with caution.
17 Feb 2011
London agenda for Thursday 17 February
1. Watch the camp, post Second World War musical London Town [Le Cool]
2. Turn on the dark with Daken [Run Riot]
3. Hear some galloping, amphetamine rhythms at Ringo Deathstar and Tripwires at the Lex [London Gigs]
4. Admire the Royal Courts of Justice [Tired of London]
5. Watch stand up poetry for those who don’t like poetry at Bang says the Gun [Jon Davis]
6. Catch some art with Cory Arcangel who created an installation featuring 14 bowling video games ranging from the 1970s to the 2000s, with an immersive sound collage that mixes the abstract static of Atari, with Nintendo bleep [Flavorpill]
17 Feb 2011
Lambeth Council leader broke standards rules
Lambeth Council’s leader has escaped punishment after being found guilty of breaking standards rules by using his blog to attack a Labour councillor who defected to the Tories.
Steve Reed used his personal site to lay into Betty Evans-Jacas, who switched sides in October 2009, making allegations involving her finances.
Lambeth’s standards committee ruled that Reed was found to have breached the council’s code of conduct for disclosing the personal financial affairs of Evans-Jacas, who was behind on her council tax when the Labour leader made his claims.
But he escaped sanction because he had written a personal letter of apology to his former colleague, who is no longer a councillor.
The committee also dismissed charges that Reed had failed to treat Evans-Jacas with respect, adding his views on her “were reasonably held opinion”.
Lambeth councillors should be reminded to take more care when using social networking tools, the committee added.
They may need some reminding, though, in a borough where bitter attacks between political rivals are commonplace.
Last year it was ruled Labour councillor Ed Davie should receive training in using new media for suggesting council critic and former Stockwell blogger Jason Cobb, who now lives in Essex, was moving to “a whites-only Olde English village” in a comment on Cobb’s blog.
Last week, Reed was involved in a public row with one of his fellow Labour councillors over cutbacks. As revealed by The Scoop, Kingsley Abrams faces a party disciplinary hearing next week following the clash with the leader and other senior members.
16 Feb 2011
Woolwich set for Crossrail station after all
Crossrail is finally due to get a stop at Woolwich after developers reached a last-minute deal with the government and Transport for London to start initial construction work.
Berkeley Homes will pay the cost of building the shell for the £100m station, which its backers hope will transform one of London’s most run-down districts.
Even though Crossrail was always due to run underneath Woolwich on its way to Abbey Wood, the government has always been reluctant to provide public funding for a station there.
While Berkeley signed an initial agreement four years ago to build the station, last-minute wrangles have held up the final deal, with the firm’s chief executive taking to the Financial Times last month to try to knock heads together.
The company isn’t funding the station out of the goodness of its own heart – it’s developing the old Royal Arsenal site into a residential and business area, with over 1,200 homes already built.
The money still needs to be raised to fit out the station – a job that will fall to Greenwich Council. But without Berkeley building the “box”, that element of the work would have been impossible without massive disruption.
Both Berkeley and Greenwich are desperate to see the station built. The demand’s there – Woolwich’s Docklands Light Railway extension, which opened a year ago, is already seeing twice the anticipated number of passengers.
The council hopes both the Arsenal development and a scheme involving building a giant Tesco in the town centre will finally turn Woolwich’s fortunes around.
Crossrail chief executive Rob Holden said work on the station site would get under way “shortly”.
16 Feb 2011
Hard by Stalley
Bearded Ohio hip-hopper Stalley has made his new album, ‘Lincoln Way Nights (Intelligent Trunk Music)’, available for free via his Bandcamp page. Produced by Rashad Thomas, the record was originally pencilled in for an October 2010 release. It’s a hit and miss affair (he could have done with shaving three or four tracks off the sixteen), but there are enough highlights to maintain interest, including today’s MPFree, ‘Hard’.
16 Feb 2011
London agenda for Wednesday 16 February
1. Hear ex-Curve guitarist Debbie Smith’s new band Blindness [London Gigs]
2. Never get three hours of our life back after watching the execrable Showgirls [Le Cool]
3. See the Masonic Temple at the Great Eastern Hotel [Tired of London]
4. Folk off with Kerry Leatham [Run Riot]
5. Venture inside Shoreditch House for a Literary Death Match [Jon Davis]
6. See the opening of British Art Snow 7 [Lauren Down]
16 Feb 2011
The King's Speech
Starring: Colin Firth, Helena Bonham-Carter, Geoffrey Rush
Directed by: Tom Hooper
Welcome to the throwback film of the century. You already know the story thanks to the BAFTA-soaked hype parade (and the ubiquitous trailers), and you’re vaguely familiar with the history, World War II and all that (though you won’t be too much the wiser by the end of this movie). On top of this, before even a single frame is set on the screen, prepare to be shunted into a retrogressive state of thinking: that the ruling of a pillaged Empire is something to take great patriotic pride in.
We’re thrown in right before our boy Albert/King George VI is about to give one of his silence-filled speeches, just after the film’s opened with a little heads up on where we are, 1925 England to be exact, the closing speech of the Empire Exhibition. Cue all the trendy framing a voguish director can muster of our reluctant King (later assuming the name George VI when taking the throne) with requisite plain spaces of nothing with our principal character poised at the edge of it, or maybe just the corner of his hat and an eye. Very modern and unimaginative but efficient, much like the film itself.
So Prince Albert (Colin Firth) has a stutter. Not good for a man who regularly has to stand in front of thousands and speak, nor accommodating in a time when the wireless has expanded the reach of said person’ stammer, thus multiplying his failings Commonwealth-wide. So his dutiful wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham-Carter), gets him help. They’ve been through the struggle of correcting his speech with incapable doctors and therapists, until Elizabeth decides to seek out the man who will change all that. The result is a misfiring, very British stiff upper lip comedy of manners at the outset when we first meet loveable rogue Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). She calls for him, standing in his reception. He answers her from the shitter. It’s all very amusing.
Then there’s a montage of elocution lessons where he makes progress in the confines of Logue’s office but still can’t hack the pressure when it comes to it. Oh and he’s got a mean Daddy who doesn’t help. The story runs smoothly most of the time, kind of chugging along like a well-oiled BBC costume drama, the sort director Tom Hooper has been known for (along with some Byker Grove and EastEnders).
That’s not to say that some of the cinematography isn’t decent. But Hooper’s film, at its core, seems strangely confused over quite a simple story, purposefully evading any complexities to strike its broad brush at the canvas of World politics, finding it acceptable enough to merely shove in a few cameo appearances from Churchill, Baldwin and Chamberlain, occasionally name dropping Hitler and Stalin. David Seidler’s script tries its hardest to humanise the King, to make him appealing to the common man with his common problems (a victim of child abuse, how can that miss?) but the tear-jerkers are ticked off one-by-one in supposedly heart rending conversations with Lionel like a film version of a Wikipedia page.
Rather hypocritically it makes the point that the King will never know anything of the ‘common man’, yet Seidler goes out of his way to pave that one-way street, as we the audience/the people are given the dubious honour of trying to understand what it’s like to be royalty (Oh so very trying) when the same effort isn’t done from their end. The ruddy swines. It’s the film equivalent of a book that reads “blah blah blah blah b-b-b-b-b-blah” and a sadly condescending experience at that, where magical Disney music plays when a ‘normal’ person has an encounter with the King and Queen. It’s artificial and generally a bit doughy: a forced quaint kind of humour and over-exerted in its attempt at quirkiness.
Churchill (Timothy Spall) especially is played up with unnecessary fervour, too knowing of his potentially important role as if to say: “Yeah, I’ve got a winner here and I’m gonna milk the bastard for all its worth”, taking the part by the throat and throttling it. The same goes for the majority of the performances; Bonham-Carter acts too hard, Firth is almost irritatingly histrionic. Something should be said for Rush though, who carries off his part with dignity and is the only member of the ensemble who makes the thing watchable.
What’s most confusing about The King’s Speech is that it both argues for the importance of a King at a time of crisis, then at the same time passes him off in the main as a complete non-entity and just a speech giver. So which is it?
By the end, and by the time King G VI has to step to the mic, it’s a ruddy relief that he spits out the words, not so much because we’re with him on his dastardly journey, but that the film is nearly over. Amidst this, (of all things!) is the perpetuation of the myth that the people need the Monarch with the silver screen affair ending like a flood of hot turds run into the eyeballs. Hyperbole perhaps. But maybe that’s why it even earned the Queen’s approval. I’ll calm down now.
Alternatively: watch The Madness of King George.
15 Feb 2011
Thames Cable Car delayed following crash fears
Plans for a cable car across the Thames have been put on hold after campaigners pointed out that it would cross the “crash zone” around London City Airport
Neither Greenwich, Newham nor the Mayor of London had previously spotted the significance of the crash zone before recommending it for approval.
But in recent weeks campaigners have repeatedly highlighted the issue forcing the Mayor to today ask Newham and Greenwich to withdraw their application:
A spokesperson for Boris Johnson told The Scoop:
The Mayor has received letters suggesting that further safety analysis of the cable car application be carried out in relation to the expansion of City Airport. To be certain these concerns are addressed he has asked the boroughs to withdraw their referrals while TfL commission a national air traffic services safety assessment.
TfL expect the assessment to be completed and a decision taken by the beginning of March.
Poplar resident Alan Haughton who first pointed out the safety risk said that the whole scheme had descended into farce:
Boris Johnson’s desire to see a Cable Car across the Thames for 2012 is an Olympic sized mess. The planning application has ignored key safety guidelines and objections.
A spokesperson for Greenwich Council said the crash zone was a matter for Newham Council.
15 Feb 2011
Memory Eternal by Hourglass Sea
It’s fair to say Bradford is not exactly renowned as a hotbed of musical talent (anybody who mentions the word ‘Terrorvision’ will be taken outside and shot). Dean Bentley, a.k.a. Hourglass Sea, is doing his bit to drag the West Yorkshire town out of the shadow of near neighbours Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester. His new Live From The Crematorium EP is a mixture of video game samples (‘Memory Eternal’) and VHS or Beta style guitar licks (‘Live From The Crematorium’), over the sort of 80s/90s electro that wouldn’t sound out of place on the soundtrack of a Paul Verhoeven film from the same era.
15 Feb 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
© 2009-2026 Snipe London.