Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Hell that is Wood Green
Yesterday, I had the misfortune to find myself in the shopping mall. Walking out the big automatic doors and into the crowd of Star Wars pub extras who were smoking, spitting and squabbling on the footpath I witnessed what for me sums up the whole carbuncle on the arse of Haringey that is Wood Green High Road. One of the characters stormed through the crowd with his status dog in tow. I was reflecting on the fact that ‘status’ dogs don't seem to work (as the people who have them only ever seem to be what everyone else in society would consider low status). Everything suddenly went quiet except the ever present sirens. The status dog had stopped and released its copious bowels all over the footpath. It was like turning on the light in an HMO; the cockroaches screamed and scattered. The dog owner laughed and walked on. It was probably one of the most disgusting things I have seen or smelt in London. Eventually the crowd returned and watched the next horde trample the mess up and down the road. There was no-one to turn to, no-one to clean up and more importantly no-one with the authority to challenge and/or shoot the dog owner. Things just returned to normal.
The whole experience made me think how the council, local police and traders believe that we're all animals if they are happy for us to have to deal with this every time we go to the High Road. It's easy enough for me to hop on a bus and head off to Crouch End or Islington or even Enfield to shop but if you're older or disabled and have trouble getting around or not enough money for the bus it must be pretty grim to face it every day. Imagine how the standard little old lady dreads heading out into the crowds, litter, phlegm, smoke and anti-social behaviour of Wood Green every morning to get the milk.
Short of manning water cannons at each end of the High Road and employing some mercenaries with batons to control the crowds, I don’t know what can be done. Are there any clever ‘nudges’ or interventions that could improve Wood Green? Is it a matter of tarting the place up and hoping that the crowds respect their new surroundings? Is it signage to remind, and in many instances educate, people that spitting, littering and barging into other people is just not the done thing? Or do we just give up, bulldoze the lot and install a waterhole in the middle and let the law of the jungle and the status dog owners prevail?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by L F T Snowflake on
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Great article, love the Star Wars check in - SOOOO TRUE!
You've kicked me into life. There has been a posting I have been meaning to do about Wood Green for months now. Just writing it now.
Cheers!
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Permalink Reply by Anette on
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Great post Osbawn, could not agree more. Wood Green is a proper sh**hole. Best avoided. Or bulldozed.
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Permalink Reply by Dominic on
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Completely agree with the majority of people that bulldozing is the best approach, although I think the people are probably the real problem... I'd take Crouch End, Muswell Hill or Highgate any day of the week.
As it is we end up exiled to Bluewater or Lakeside, eating out in Highgate, Crouch End, etc. and then we can't park when we get back home because of our street being the car park for Gokyuzu... (which could be worse, tbh, because Gokyuzu is a pretty decent restaurant)
Gentrification can't come quick enough. I won't be happy until over half the people walking down Green Lanes are wearing carrot jeans and scarves.
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To clarify; Noels Park is lovely, the only area I'd bulldoze is the high street. If that's any consolation? :)
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Indeed Laura. Go back a few years and you'll find posts and blogs (often by me) railing against litter, dog poo and dumping which was much worse here a few years ago. When I bought around here in 1998, I was met with such incredulity that I'd want to live somewhere so...so...(insert derogatory word or phrase). It's very important to fight your corner. Once upon a time, Harringay was described in such appalling terms on the COUNCIL website in 2009 that there was a demand to get it changed to one that didn't juxtapose ethnic diversity with violent crime and economic decline.
"Green Lanes, a very deprived area of Haringey, has in recent years experienced economic decline and some violent crime related to the drugs trade. It has a high number of Greek, Turkish and Kurdish immigrants and more recently an increasing number of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian residents. The main road of Green Lanes is an important centre for economic activity with mainly Greek and Turkish traders."
Places and our perceptions of them do change. Most of those folk complaining are stubbornly complaining about two things. The first is Shopping City which is there to stay - I can't see any money for a re-development to turn it into anything less 60s looking in the current climate, and maybe like other brutalist municipal architecture the generation after us will see it in a less negative light. After all, our parents' generation couldn't wait to pull down Victorian buildings which everyone swoons over now (despite some of them being hideous). It's my understanding that The Mall is a good employer and those shops provide work for a lot of people in an area where unemployment is high.
The other thing is more disturbing. The people there. Really? Have a good long look at where wanting to remove people that you don't like out of sight leads. It never ends well.
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Permalink Reply by Takaokagiejin on
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But it's ok to complain about the people in Crouch End?
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Nope. I said earlier I wasn't going to go down that road. All places have their merits and their drawbacks. I jest about buggies and dress sense (although not about Monkey Nuts-ditto Giraffe anywhere). I really, really couldn't care less about either having been a pram wielder myself and I'm probably not someone with the best dress sense.
But the way people in Wood Green are being spoken about on this thread is not a joke. Talk of water cannon and batons given what happened there is 2011 is not really very funny at all. Nor is bulldozing people's homes. Way too much of that going on in London as it is. And those people are not being given a chance to come back. I'm guessing if the homes of people in Wood Green were bulldozed and those people driven out, there are few of the complainers on this thread that would care. But I would. And I think you would too.
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TBD. I don't own the site. Ning does. I admin it. But I'm not doing that now. I am joining the debate. Is it really necessary to refer to people in such unpleasant tones? Or to dismiss objections to that tone as "political correctness"? I know quite a few people who live in Wood Green. This thread has upset them. They have contacted me to tell me so. They find the language and suggestions so objectionable that they can't even bring themselves to join the "discussion". So I'm standing up for them and also for Wood Green itself which I can see the value of even if you can't.
Reminds me of when you lost it over a joke about the BNP which you continue to reference. One person's thoughtless quip is another's person's offended sensibilities. I was in that room and I wasn't offended. It was a bad joke not intended to wound.
These comments about "shitheads" (which personally I don't see in great numbers and I am in Wood Green several times a week) are not bad jokes. And the people reading them in Wood Green don't think so either. Since this is a PUBLIC forum as you are at pains to point out, believe me they are reading them. And judging the people writing them.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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To be picky: the use of water cannon is not authorised on mainland Britain. Some police chiefs have suggested they should be but an Act of Parliament would be needed.
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