Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Is the Crouchendification of Harringay a good thing?
The new Green Lanes bars and cafes opening between Pemberton Road and Effingham Road are beginning to show a clear trend...
New trendy Polish restaurant about to open next to Yasar Halim
Brouhaha doing great guns next door
Passion Cafe with a great new Chef (old Carpet Shop)
New American style Bar and Burger place on the corner (old Obergine) about to open
The inimitable 'Blend' cafe further up
Jam in a Jar bar, food and music venue - now well established
and probably others I've missed...
Next it'll be a delicatessen and a Waitrose....
No complaints provided we don't replace the Mediterranean buzz of Green Lanes with a scene that aspires to Crouch End (& priced accordingly)!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Interesting points, Straw Cat, which I nearly overlooked as you added them several pages "back" in the thread. I will carefully reread the handbook, think again about the "prescriptions" given, and get back to you.
In the meantime, you might want to consider whether the Wards Corner Campaign did actually "lose". After all, they won the first round, and the Grainger development has been held up for years. And they got some significant changes - including an undertaking to retain the market.
Unfortunately, this is a promise which the Kober Kabal wants to renege on. And I gather that they're also planning to renege on the promise to include social housing (i.e. really "affordable") in a redeveloped Apex House.
As time has passed, we can now see that the Wards Corner Coalition were correct in several key aspects! Parts of the buildings have been refurbished and seem to be commercially successful. Grainger have not assembled the land and may not even intend to. And of course the whole economics of London land and property are rapidly changing.
At the same time it becomes more and more obvious that Claire Kober and her chums have a strange version of the King Midas touch. Everything they fumble with does indeed turn to gold - but only for property developers, large companies, and Tory Party donors like Lord Harris. Never, it seems, for the ordinary residents of Haringey.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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Careful what you wish for, Alan - if your constant sniping brings them down, they'll be replaced by a set of right-wing fumblers - ten times worse.
Let's keep the fumblers we've got and find effective ways of preventing them making the huge mistakes government seem drawn to.
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I'm not sniping, Chris. I'm calmly and factually telling what for you are clearly some inconvenient truths. Haven't you yet realised that we already have a bunch of right-wing fumblers "leading" the Council?
If not right-wing out of conviction, then why do you think some of them are "making the huge mistakes government seems drawn to" ?
A charitable explanation might be, in some cases at least, that it's ignorance coupled with well-intentioned innocence. Which may apply to a few of the more gullible councillors but hardly to Kober and her chums.
Until recently, principle-free, burning personal ambition has been my own best guess about what makes them tick. Although I've begun to wonder whether a few are actually conviction politicians. People who sincerely believe the right-wing stuff they come out with. Have you read the Dear Leader's unctuous fawning praise of "education experts the Harris Federation" in the August 2014 edition of Haringey Pravda? (© Clive Carter).
Anyway, what are you afraid of? People who support Tory policies who stand openly for election as Tories?
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These are not facts, Alan, it's a bit of an insult to the highly influential 'inconvenient truths' approach, which was built extensively on facts.
You seem to be confusing knowledge with belief.
We've discussed this before. Constant name-calling and personal attacks reduce credibility enormously. It doesn't help to advance opinions as facts.
Tempting though - do you think the political strategy followed by the Lib Dems of rubbishing the Council has harmed the borough?
Could it be that years of mud slinging have worked, that people on this forum at least now take it for granted that there must be a large grain of truth because of the many mentions of the 'failing council', jeering by you and the Lib Dems seizing on it?
I'm sorry that a person as talented and worthy of respect as you stoops to such underhand and, frankly, childish tactics when you could be doing so much more to advance your egalitarian, libertarian point of view.
There are more chances than ever to start something that would be an example of the tide you want turning - they encompass the internet so you wouldn't need to even stand up to accomplish them.
You know it makes sense! Things can only get better!
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[Hangs head]. I confess. You've got me bang to rights, guv.
All those photos of rubbish in the cleanest streets in the galaxy? All my photoshopping.
Yellow parking lines wrongly painted? I went round at night with a tin of paint.
Those HMO landlords with fake utility bills? I faked them.
The rubbish and graffiti at the Civic Centre when Zena and I got married. Everyone in the wedding party carried secret spray cans and bags of litter. I even left fake plastic dog turds.
Reneging on promises about keeping the market at Wards corner? Or selling Apex House without social housing. How could anyone but a jeering ex-councillor suspect our Dear Beloved Leader and her wise cabinet?
As you realised I even had thousands of fake copies of Haringey Pravda printed & posted online with absurd comments on the Harris freeschool.
And can I have the spoof KoberTory Manifesto taken into account which I published on this website as an April Fool joke. (Though even you will have to admit that it bears some resemblance to the real thing.)
Chris, your inexhaustible bright sunshine optimism make Pollyanna seem as depressed and hopeless as Marvin the paranoid android.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Alan, I will not quickly confuse you as being a blinkered tribalist or an incorrigible apologist. Keep up the good work! ;-)
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Permalink Reply by Philip on
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Great stuff Alan, almost worth insulting you for. It reminds me of all those apologists who get upset when people attack Ed Miliband over his non existent manifesto as 'doing the Tories dirty work for them'
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That's right. I just want it to be a bit of a nicer environment to live in. Most of what i listed is just antisocial behaviour. If 'gentrification' means less antisocial behaviour then that can't be a bad thing. I don't want anyone to move out, be pushed out etc.
Apart from maybe a few unscrupulous landlords. I think that might be where the problem lies.
Not with so called 'yuppies'.
The new Brouhaha Bar might be seen by some as an example of 'gentrification' but it's run and owned by Paresh and Dipesh, who are local lads not incoming yuppies.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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Do you really think tenants don't want a nicer environment, Billy? And houseowners never dump trash? That is extreme stereotyping and you win the prize for today.
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And yet the poorer areas are the trashier areas. If you reject Billy's stereotypes, how do you explain the difference?
Perhaps:
(1) poorer people may want a nicer environment but have less resources to affect that (eg less likely to have a car to take stuff to a tip, more people per house produce more rubbish)
(2) more landlords in poor areas who dump mattresses etc on a house change
(3) more short term tenants have less incentive to still keep pushing for improvements even after years of failure
(4) non-residents dump stuff because they think (rightly) fewer people will be bothered/have time/have resources to confront them
(5) a higher proportion of what is euphemistically called disorganised or chaotic people
So there are real structural reasons why poor areas are scummier more than rich ones. And until they are addressed and fixed, you are going to have people welcome gentrification as the lesser of two evils.
The best option, provide the social infrastructure to keep poor areas decent, just doesn't seem to be on the table. IMO that's what we should be outraged about.
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yes this is a handy list, I was just stunned at the suggestion that tenants dont want to live in nice places, the inference that they are all dissolute.
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Helpfully, LSquared, you bring the discussion away from stereotyping people or groups - implicit or otherwise - and pose some questions/suggesting possible answers. Or at least pointers to potential solutions.
Though I suggest that your list is still focusing too much on the people rather than what you call the "real structural reasons". The latter will include properties becoming rundown because the owners of buildings don't have the money, or aren't prepared to spend their money - or take loans - to repair, maintain and improve their property.
For example, when people are spending half their income on rent and/or servicing their mortgage debt, there won't be a lot left over.
An example I came across as a councillor was when tenants were encouraged to buy their homes to "get on the property ladder". Only to discover later that a house isn't simply an asset. As an old proverb says, it's also "a thief".
All this even before we see deliberate policies of letting some neighbourhoods become rundown as a prelude to their "regeneration" - i.e. demolition and rebuilding to replace the existing residents with shiny new people in shiny new buildings.
Incidentally, how many people notice the widespread, unchallenged use of the metaphor "property ladder"? As if there was something inevitable, achievable and perhaps even virtuous about everyone being able to move from cheap housing at the "bottom" to more expensive and luxurious homes at the "top".
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