Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

SOMEONE may have thought they were helping Haringey Council by creating a Twitter account that is an attempt at parody of a noted Council critic, Tottenham's Mr. Martin Ball.

According to this article in the Tottenham & Wood Green Independent, the Council have denied that anyone within the Authority has set up the account and Mr. Ball has said whoever set it up should "get a life".

Mr. Ball is unaligned politically.

It's said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

All that "MoanyMartin_N17" has achieved is to direct more attention to the real Mr. Martin Ball, who tweets under the moniker, @martinballN17.

Under a more generous and enlightened administration, Mr. Ball will be presented with a letter of grateful thanks by the Local Authority for the amount of work he has done in and for the community.

CDC
Haringey Councillor
Liberal Democrat Party

Tags for Forum Posts: Martin Ball, Twitter, parody, spoof, troll

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Looking at what was posted in the Cafe Lemon thread last week about business rates and waste collection you can see why Martin finds rich pickings on the high street. If a business is paying £345 a month specifically for putting out waste then they're going to feel pretty bloody entitled to do it. This benefits Veolia as it makes collection more expensive so they won't want to change it. Really though Martin should be able to sit inside at night more often if the waste expense was bundled up into the business rates.

Bit confused by your post John. Commercial waste collection is a business. A commercial premises can pick any waste collection service who wants their business. You can see rival companies doing the rounds.

I didn't realise this. It explains why we get so many non-liveried rubbish trucks rat running on the ladder. I'm flabbergasted that anyone thinks the outcomes could be anything other than what they are, late night dumping of rubbish on the High Street by residents above shops and the shops themselves.

Part of the problem are the kind of contracts for commercial waste. The first one is where you buy a service where they visit your premises X times a month. The big retailers tend to use this one (Sainsbury for example) as they take what you have in your big paladin bins. The second kind of contract is where you buy branded commercial waste bags, so you pay in advance for a supply. This is aimed at smaller businesses. The temptation is to hang on to your paid bags and dump anywhere or dump when the paid bags have run out and you don't want to buy any more.

Unless the waste can be identified as coming from a particular commercial premises the local authority have no option but to pick it up just to get it off the street. So we, as residential council tax payers, subsidise commercial waste dumpers. It's one of the reasons that the domestic contract costs more than it really should and one of the main reasons my blood boils when I see dumped waste that is obviously from a commercial premises. I'm sodding paying for it to be cleared away!

So Martin is right to highlight this problem on Twitter, using the app for reporting dumping is just giving money to Veolia.

I think the newly formed GLSG could look into a cooperative for the businesses on Green Lanes.

But Veolia have to pick it up when it's reported, be it by Twitter, letter, phone call or app, so I can't see how it saves money. If it's in a bag branded by a company than Veolia/Haringey they can certainly chase the company for not picking it up but I don't think that's the problem. It's more about sneaking it into black sacks and leaving it out as household waste.
A traders coop is an interesting idea but the investment in vehicles and buying in to the North London Waste Authority contract for disposal and recycling would be huge.

They wouldn't have to buy the equipment, they could just have a central contract with the NLWA. The main point would be that they could be contracted to keep Green Lanes clean rather than collect pink bags from outside 10 shops every other day.

Not sure how that would work John. Green Lanes would need to be taken out of the Veolia contract for street cleaning and then separately put up for tender, as the local authority own and have responsibility for the public highway, not the shop owners. Then the shop owners would need to pay a levy for the street cleaning as well as those living above the shops as a proportion of their council tax goes towards the cost of the street cleaning contract with Veolia. It would be a bit of a problem about whose responsibility to would be to keep the streets clean at the junction of the Ladder rung roads and Green Lanes as GL would be in one contract and the Ladder rung roads in another.

SWIFT's 'ON POETRY: A PARODY'

"So nat'ralists observe: a flea

Has smaller fleas that on him prey,

And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em

And so proceed ad infinitum

Till Hol siphonoptera stalks the night,

This pulex irritans para-site

Which more than most's already gotten 'em

From all the flea markets of Totten'am -"

Dean Kober, did you really write this shite?

A pedant with a flea in his ear reminds me that Hol belongs to the Infraclass of Neoptera, but to the Order of Siphonaptera - Gk. a/ptera or wingless. Thanks, Pedant - now go back to your real specialisms, the tapeworm and dungbeetle.

I'm posting this on behalf of Jessica Vos:

Last year, in the summer, I organised the Tottenham Green Market for six weeks on the green with my friend Adam Layton. From the onset there was a very vocal group of people who opposed the market, and in particular, my involvement. Martin Ball was part of this group which further consisted of a few ex councillors, a few Labour members, an ex Harringay Market stallholder and a few other Tottenham residents. The reason for this opposition was that they believed I'd been favourited by Haringey Council and received a huge sum of money to run this market.
They were very vocally against the market and me personally (not Mr. Layton!) on social media, they submitted FOI's and all of this negativity lead to the council discontinuing their relationship with me.
Whilst Mr. Ball does a great job in some people's eyes, I would have appreciated it if any one of those members of the opposition would've written to me and asked if I indeed received over ten thousand pounds from the council, as mentioned in their FOIs. I could've then shown them proof that I paid for the market myself, except for £1000 in leaflets which the council paid for. Everything else, adding up to around £8000, was paid for by myself.
I invested in what turned out to be a successful market with lots of potential to go year round, on the green. But it came to an abrupt halt, because some people spread rumours about me and others believed them. Therefore I made a significant loss and had to close my business six months later.
I have nothing against Mr. Ball, however if he truly believes he is fighting in the right corner, a bit of fact checking wouldn't hurt, because in my case, he helped ruin my dreams.
It's upsetting to see him trying to do the same to other independent businesses in Tottenham. Whilst I understand the frustration about some businesses getting more help from the council then others, as a new business owner you don't realise that until you are actually there, running your business. You are giddy with happiness that your dreams are coming true. Most people, like me, have a passion they want to share, and they hope others like it. If you just start out and the council wants to help out, why not? Where I come from it's an honour if you're approached by the council to work with/for them.
I feel that some are being punished too harshly, simply for their involvement and help from Haringey Council.

I'm mildly surprised that, after all the breathless blow-by-blow comments on Moany Martin over the past six days and five pages, nobody has yet uttered even a murmur of empathy, sympathy, agreement or mild demurral about Jessica Vos's take on the real Martin. Four hours is usually an eternity for the Hol commentariat, so you'd think some brave soul might have made a rejoinder by now. Jessica had a very popular following both on here and on the North and South Ladder, providing many with a great worship substitute of a Sunday, once upon a time. Ate bread's soon forgot. Whatever happened?

OAE is posting this on behalf of Eddie Finnegan

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