To finance the £100 million Holland Park School rebuild-notable for exceeding the Government's upper limit of £25 million-our very own Pooter, desperate to plonk his ample posterior on the red leather of the Upper House, decided that he needed to finance his Lords gambit by flogging off much valued playing fields at Holland Park School. He did so to finance his egotistical ambitions. It was not even if this vast overspend created one extra space...it did not!
So in one fell swoop recreational land is handed over to greedy developers and future generations of young people are deprived of precious inner city play space, just so dubious 'money men' from rough parts of the world can have a safe bolt hole for their ill-gotten gains.
The Dame likes the Duke of Cambridge so she was delighted to hear he is Patron of a wonderful charity called Fields in Trust
This charity has a great ambition... “to protect outdoor recreational spaces in communities all across the country as a permanent living legacy of these landmark occasions.”
Large urban local authorities have proved most enthusiastic..but not so our Royally Rotten Borough. Under instruction from Pooter-doubtless thinking of what else he can flog...Fitzpatrick of the Propaganda Unit is told to comment......
“our parks managers have decided the borough's parks did not require the additional levels of protection that would come from inclusion in the Fields Challenge".
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| COCKELL SNUBS PRINCE |
Holland Park is in urgent need of protection from the Royal Borough and its leader. It is being threatened on two fronts. Holland Park School has significantly damaged the vistas from the Park, soon to be exacerbated by the high rise luxury flats to be built on the sold-off playing fields. A scheme condemned by English Heritage. To the south a second front of attack on the Park is being opened up with the high rise 'enablement' flats to be developed to pay for the unwanted Design Museum.
ReplyDeleteSo, far from not needing protection, the Council itself is hard at work destroying one of the most precious areas of green space in London.
The Holland Park School episode, and the sale of the school playground for £100 million, is a deeply shameful episode in the corrupt administration of Cockell's Hornton Street.
ReplyDeleteKensington tax payers are still on the hook for this £100 million project, Owl. The land has not been sold yet - tax payers are carrying the project.
ReplyDeleteLets see if the sale goes through. It may not. My mole tells me there are problems.
Its what happens when failed businessmen move into local Government and then try to reinvent themselves as wheelers and dealers
The school playing field site will end up as more fourth and fifth homes for rich foreigners, Occupied for two weeks a year. Just what K&C needs.
ReplyDeleteAnd the site just behind also includes foreigners who are too rich to read the papers or figure out what is going on around them. Just wait for the outcry when they suddenly wake up to the fact that their Park View (recently bought at huge cost of £6 million for two bed flats) has been wiped out by another new development!
This is Puter Mubarak's Statue of Liberty in the Park. His grand scheme to propel him into the House of Lords and sit next to the Duke of Cambridge at the grand opening of the new school in September.
ReplyDeleteAs usual the Dame has highlighted a slight inconvenience for the sycophants of Hornton Street. The Duke is a patron of the "fresh fields" organisation dedicated to preserving our open spaces.
Watch this space.
Lots of other Royals around to cut the ribbon. Andrew lives locally in Kensington Palace - and he will open anything for a bung.
ReplyDeleteScribe's comment is significant. If confirmed, it's remarkable that the land sale has still not gone through. Each week further evidence emerges that even in the Rotten Borough, the local cartel of developers and estate agents can no longer maintain the fiction that residential property prices will rise forever. Dodgy foreigners seeking to stash their cash UK property now find K & C overpriced. They are going elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteForget Andy - very few air miles possible from Ken Palace to Holland Park.
ReplyDeleteBut if Cockell is on form he could transfer some of his Virgin miles that were obtained on his First Class jollies to New York (3), Boston and San Francisco. These jollies were of course paid for by K&C and London Councils. But Pooter kept the miles.
Of course no one will know whats happening if they were to depend on the local rag anyway...despite being called the Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle....it has only Hammersmith and Fulham news!
ReplyDeleteSo the illusion is nothing is happening in Kensington and Chelsea, everyone is jolly and happy with their lot.
Thanks to the hard working darling Dame who probably has more of a following anyway...the truth will always out.