Update on Charter for Harringay

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Eddie Finnegan on August 1, 2008 at 19:35

Margaret, with respect! I'm not sure why you feel the need to reprise so often, in so many discussion threads, the biographical details of your world citizenship - as if that negated in some way the value of other people's approaches to living in and engaging with Harringay and Haringey.

Many of us have bits of ourselves, our experience, our relationships, families, commitments ... scattered across Haringey, several London boroughs, British or European regions, or even several continents. So we shouldn't make common cause, in addition to individual effort, to better Harringay in case someone thinks we're about to declare UDI from Haringey???

If you don't need to anchor yourself in Harringay, just use it to park your belongings, etc why bother joining the discussion? Some of us might prefer the Guyanese & British poet Grace Nichols' line: "Wherever I hang my knickers, that's my home." Well, Margaret, I've been hanging mine here in Harringay for 30+ years. Harringay's my developing, or under-developed, country at the moment.

So you arrived in Harringay by accident? Isn't that what happens most people in most places most of the time? Isn't our very existence, and the planet's, the very accidental result of a myriad accidents - few of which we'd have chosen given the chance? So what?

As for the Charter for Harringay, Hugh, Liz and others can fill you in on it much better than I can. I would see it as a work in progress, and a very significant one which, as Hugh reports, seems to be making progress where the power lies. Harnessing group efforts, whether or not expressed as a charter, is not just about the problems of "people just arriving in the area", as you suggest. Probably the best way we can find out about a Harringay Charter is get involved in its genesis and development. But if we don't want to, the HOL Thought Police probably won't stop us at the border.

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Permalink Reply by Margaret Fowler on August 1, 2008 at 21:05

None of you can possibly speak for me in any charter. I speak for myself and my life is mine . I joined this blog to find out what is going on but I can now do that on my own. So goodbye Harringay Online, I'm off on my own wordly adventures and I leave you all to your little bit of the world. Hope it flourishes as you wish.

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Permalink Reply by Liz on August 2, 2008 at 11:08

Just as a footnote to this whole 'world citizen versus neighbourhood citizen' debate:
Rene Dubos, an advisor to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 suggested in 1979 that ecological consciousness should begin at home. He believed that change would be better effected if "natural and social units maintain or recapture their identity, yet interplay with each other through a rich system of communications". I would suggest that as well as ecological, economic and social problems can be viewed in the same way.
His 'catchphrase'? Think globally, act locally

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