RBKC THREATENS TO 'MODERNISE' PORTOBELLO & GOLBORNE MARKETS INTO OBLIVION: FIGHT IT!

 

     Dear Dame

Welcome to streamlined RKBC 2023. Without public consultation, RBKC intends to condemn Portobello and Golbourne Markets to oblivion. Think the once thriving Covent Garden Market; now culturally dead; fit only for Dior and Jo Malone stores.

Before Covid, RBKC’s heroic Cllr Cem Kemahli tried in vain to “sell” his brilliant market modernisation plans to stupid, local communities. He was naturally irritated by peasants' awkward questions and stubbornness. Poor Cem withdrew. The fragrant Cllr Catherine Faulks took on his burden. She too was foiled. The Dame’s loyal readers may remember that her plans to replace licensed market traders with restaurant tables and chairs, fell at the first - legal - hurdle. 

No matter. RBKC now has a new plan. Portobello and Golbourne will be “modernised” without the distraction of public engagement! In six weeks time, by late January with Christmas intervening, RBKC will have formally adopted an unpublished, market development policy! A group of designers will compete for a £3 million preliminary contract to repair and renew basic market infrastructure; neglected by RBKC for the last 50 years! What genius?

There’s a parallel plan to “consult” local businesses to vote for a BIDS development; as has been adopted to upgrade Kings Road and Knightsbridge. RBKC has yet to explain whether 250 licensed market businesses will have 250 votes; or just one!  

Yesterday, a handful of locals were invited to a meeting. No RBKC Councillors attended; just 4 officers. They confirmed that once the unpublished policy is agreed by RBKC and designers selected, consultations will follow and work will start within a year! Job done. Brilliant!

So who will benefit? Answer: Cllrs Kemahli and Fragrant plus a handful of large, commercial property owners. Rents will immediately quadruple and the untidy street markets will disappear. Portobello will become another Westbourne “Grave" - a place of eye watering rents; where retailers go to die. Cllr Kemahli will be widely praised and no doubt ultimately become Leader of the Council. More of the poor will disappear. A win/win.

Residents foolish enough not to appreciate RBKC’s plan, please immediately write to their Councillors and neighbours - particularly journalists. Please copy in <governance@rbkc.gov.uk>.

       If we are to save the Markets, there’s no time to lose!

        

MORE PATRONISING PR LITTER

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And here's yet another example of what happens when the million quid a year PR dept headed by Nick Price-Thompson, the  £135,000 a year PR boss tries to justify its existence....it starts to get involved in areas that are not the council's business. 

No one reads the Council publications. They become instant litter yet Price-Thompson, a one local newspaper hack, persists in churning them out.

Running an in-house PR department is a waste of money. 

Any reasonable external agency would do a more productive job at a fraction of the current budget....and if they failed you could fire them. Firing Mr Price-Thompson would be a very pricey business!

RBKC EMPLOYS A STORYTELLER!!!!!!!!

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The £ 1 million a year PR department has recruited a diversity expert charged with 'storytelling'! 

Meet Krystle Downie. Krystle glories in multiple titles of  'Diversity Ambassador and Niche Marketer and Storyteller' at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Elizabeth Campbell, the feeble leader of the Council has allowed our council tax to be wasted on a multitude of weird and wasteful 'initiatives':this latest is an insult to hard-pressed residents already struggling with a cost of living pandemic.

The appointment of a 'storyteller' is just the latest insult this useless woman has thrown at us council taxpayers.

SMALL SUPPORT FOR SMALL BUSINESS.

Dear Dame,

Small businesses are being smashed against the rocks of massive Council Business Tax. Next year they will soar again forcing many shops etc to go to the wall. (I call it Business Tax because that is just what it is)

A considerable chunk of Business Tax goes straight back to the Council to be wasted on idiotic 'support schemes'

Felicity Buchan pretends to have an interest in supporting our local businesses: her wishy-washy way of doing so is to tell us to shop locally!

What she needs to do is explain why after years in power Tory governments have done nothing to radically overhaul a punitive system of taxing entrepreneurs. 

Even worse, she accepts a further upward hike in Business Tax next year when we are in the midst of a massive recession....

Labour says it will say will overhaul Business Tax and make them fairer: it would seem that Labour might be the right partner for small businesses- not the Tories. They seem only interested in Big Business or supporting Baroness Mone and her multi-million pound self enrichment schemes.

Buchan used to work for a massive US investment bank so one can guess where her loyalties lie and it's not with us small business folk.

Buchan talks the talk but never walks the walk.

Regards,

A struggling shopkeeper.

MOANING TO RNLI

Employers on the Kent coast who allow RNLI volunteers time off are beginning to resent giving several hours every few days to volunteering employees.

One employer said, "we give this time off as a civic duty but never did we expect employees to be called with regularity to escort in boatloads of refugees: it was not what we and other companies signed up to. We are being taken advantage of by RNLI and the government. The MoD should be providing an escort service not RNLI"

A READER SUPPORTS MISARA...

 Dear Dame, 

I was struck by your recent article about Milner Street Residents' Association which mentioned the "menace of heat pumps." 

The Green Lobby tends to be very dogmatic about heat pumps. Where they are concerned, heat pumps are the only solution.   

The truth is they are very expensive to buy, homes require retrofitting which means completely recking them, and are pricey to run. I also suspect that they are not as effective as gas at heating people's homes. Environmentalists say that the disruption having them installed is "only temporary." I suspect that many of these people are middle class "greenies" with plenty of money, who do not appreciate their existing homes, or are anti-materialistic.   One needs quite a bit of garden space, or space outside, to instal a heat pump. 

In a block of flats where people have individual heating systems, I think the logistics of everyone having a heat pump installed would be very difficult to accomplish. Every flat in a block of flats would have to have a heat pump installed at the same time, with all of the retrofitting modifications required (so that optimal heat is enjoyed by all residents) taking place at the same time, in every one's flat in order to insulate the entire building satisfactorily.  It would be very difficult to get everyone in a block of flats "to play ball" in the way that proponents of heat pumps expect at the same time. 

Some suggest that communal heat pumps might be a solution for green heating in a block of flats. Can you imagine a social landlord, for example the former Kensington and Chelsea TMO, or its successor the Council of RBK&C, managing to install a communal heat pump efficiently and safely, ensuring that all tenanted homes are retrofitted in concert with the installation of thye communal heat pump?  It is debatable if a social landlord fitting a communal heat pump could legally require a leaseholder in a block of flats to carry out retrofitting modifications to their home at the same time that a heat pump is brought in to operation. In short, many leaseholders in the Royal Borough are hard pressed for money and find it difficult to pay mortgages and service charges in current circumstances. 

Hydrogen gas heating systems are probably a better option for people in non-high rise blocks of flats. The Scottish Government acknowledges that much of the housing stock in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen are traditional "tenements;" Georgian and Victorian buildings.  As a trial, the Scottish Government has provided three hundred properties in Fife with hydrogen boilers and hydrogen gas is supplied to these properties through the gas main. The results are being evaluated.  

The manufacture of 100% carbon free hydrogen is progressing very nicely. A firm in Liverpool makes chlorine from brine (of all the things). They have found that the by product of this process is a liquid which if treated by electrolysis creates a totally green, carbon neutral, hydrogen gas. Other green hydrogen technologies are being worked on.  Hydrogen gas can be run through the existing gas pipe network because the former Town Gas which ran through the distribution network was a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane.

When I replace my existing boiler, I shall buy a hydrogen ready one, which will work on natural gas, but can easily converted to run on hydrogen when the supply is changed.  

MILNER STREET AREA RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION ISSUES FIGHTING NEWSLETTER

Monstrous tower dwarfing neighbours
 

This highly active RA leads the charge against unwanted developments in the area including this neighbour defiling monster planned for Sloane Avenue.

THE NEWSLETTER demonstrates the hugely important work MISARA does: if you live in the area then do join.

MISARA also alerts us to the growing menace of air source heat pumps. 

It claims these are just not suitable in a densely populated urban area where the houses (as in RBK&C) have not been purpose-built to accommodate them. 

Air source heat pumps require insulated walls and roof, double glazing, underfloor heating, new radiators (two and a half times normal size), a new (larger) ASHP-compatible water cylinder, and possibly new pipes. 

This would require substantial capital expenditure for building works and is unlikely to make financial sense. 

It may be true “air source heat pumps are significantly cheaper to operate than direct electric heating” as the RBK&C Household Guide to Greening says but this ignores both the up-front capital expenditure and the fact that (at the time of writing) electricity is, per kWh, more than three times as expensive as gas!   

THE VILE BULLYING OF AN ELDERLY LADY

A question anyone would ask...where do you come from dressed like that...especially at Buck House

The Dame and her zipped lips

The Dame was at a 'function' last night.

She met up with a Brit with Indian heritage. 

After chatting about mutual friends the old Dame asked S**** about his family origins.

He told a fascinating tale of his family originating from Rajasthan before moving to Kenya and then being violently expelled by the hideously racist Idi Amin.

In the future, the Dame won't be asking anyone about their family origins in case it causes a traumatic offence.

The Dame has met many members of the aristocracy(including Lordly Moylan)

She has never met Lady Hussey. If she is like other members of the Waldegrave family she would be someone fascinated by people and where they come from.

The 'offendee' is a total idiot.

A reader makes this persuasive comment..

 

If Lady Hussey is such a dreadful racist, just what did she think she was doing striking up a conversation with three Black women in a group, on their own, at a social function? It seems to me that she was being inclusive; not exclusive. But alas, the Race Commissars think differently. 



Lady Hussey's use of language was clumsy and cackhanded but not racist. When one is told that someone is British that is a statement of fact. I think people who embrace others of different cultures are genuinely interested in acknowledging differences because people who are different are often interesting. Difference is legitimate!  

If you want to look at racism, in all its vileness, look no further than the Leader of the Labour Group on the Council of Kensington and Chelsea. Drawing a picture of a Black person being hanged and thinking that she is suitable to represent Kensington for the Labour Party in parliament is very worrying.