The Dame does not endorse everything this empathetic councillor has to say, but there is much that tugs at heart strings. Emma is right: there are decent Conservative councillors who are ashamed at the callous allocation of resources forced through by Cllr Cockell.
Cllr David Lindsay, was evidently much moved by the stories of terrible deprivation in the northern regions of the Borough
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| Opera Holland Park - like it? You bought it! |
.....so actually the Council isn’t rich at all. It is greedy but also parsimonious; simply not spending where most needed. While preaching self-reliance it chucks money at the near £1m/yr loss-making Opera Holland Park, nearly as much again for the loss-making Leighton House and Linley Samborne museum, arts strategies with accompanying lavish receptions to launch ‘cultural place-making’ and ‘creative clusters’ (which an Arts Council director friend ridicules), and last year, the completion of the frankly disgraceful expense of £23m of Council taxpayers’ money on repaving Exhibition Road. Did South Kensington need regenerating? ‘course not, but no doubt it’s whacked up property prices. The Council is playing Monopoly with people’s lives.
This is the key of course. K&C Council has no idea what regeneration is. Regeneration in their world is pimping unsightly areas to make poverty palatable, tidying up ‘grot spots’, planting odd corners and sticking substandard corporate art and up-lighting on flyovers; all this Disneyfication to attract developers to gentrify the poor bits. And their plan for actual people, for the poor for whom they have statutory duties? Move them to Peterborough [click to read].
This can’t last. Fortune favours the bold. The ‘Royal’ borough is blessed with old-fashioned Tories who, despite their dodgy politics, despise the blinkered and self-servative faction on the Council. It could be that they topple the current balance, or if they don’t UKIP may get a foothold. There are nine hard-working Labour Councillors who are watching their every move. And of course our wonderful residents, loyal and supportive, waiting and working for a better chance at life.....
'Self-servatives' or UKIP? What a terrible prospect!
ReplyDeleteWake up Zombies, there's work to be done.
How about Liebour....the party that left our economy f**cked and dumped into wars we could never win
ReplyDeleteHelp the poor bits!
ReplyDeleteWe need to get real. The local UKIP are sweet – but complete nutters. We have enough nutters on the Council already – in all the parties. And bless ‘em, the Tories are now doing something for the poor, albeit for their own long term ends. Let’s not forget, we have needed a secondary school in the north for well over 20 years; so the Tories built one in Chelsea instead, for the residents of Fulham. Then they lavished cash on Holland Park School and turned it into an Academy. What will happen next is that Holland Park School will become the Oratory of Kensington. Nice but impoverished children, like the young Pooter, will never again have to go to retired servicemen's cheap and nasty DoTheBoysHalls in the home counties. The poor pupils will be pushed out of HPS and up to the Aldridge Academy – but at least the dog toilet and addicts’ pleasure grounds at Lancaster West will become a nice new park for the residents. The dope smokers and saddos who oppose this development are over-whelmed by local parents who can’t wait for this new school – and they will thank both Labour and the Tories for it.
ReplyDeleteUKIP is changing...the candidates are of a vastly different quality than hitherto. Look at Diane James at Eastleigh....she made a total fool of Clarke. The old boy looked terrified.
ReplyDeleteUKIP have traction
It is frankly alarming to see K&C Conservatives fleeing to UKIP.
ReplyDeleteWe have a wonderfully diverse community of residents and very little outward racism - have you forgotten what UKIP are about, you fools?
Whatever the issue, comments invariably degenerate into Tory infighting. The issue is RBKC's disgraceful treatment of the poor and its remarkable expertise in hiding the reality.
ReplyDelete