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 Liz on
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Inspired by your post amongst others to collate all these suggestions into one big Wood Green Buzzfeed style celebration:
30 Awesome Things to Do in Wood Green
Anyone welcome to come on over and add their favourites if they are not on the list. But if you want to moan about dog poo...stay here
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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" If you see a toddler urinating in a shop, don't judge, you have no idea what's happening there, in that family."
FFS, if we can't even complain about parents ignoring their child urinating on a shop floor, at what point exactly do we get to say "this is not ok?"
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I think people's expectations are that the parent of a child who is urinating on a shop floor should attempt to stop the child, tidy up or apologise, and ideally all three.
Does that seem unreasonable to you? If the child did have a condition that made urinating in public more likely, would that have any bearing on the parent's ability to do at least one of those things?
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Permalink Reply by KP on
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Exactly! It's not the child or the parent's fault if they are unable to control themselves but it is certainly the parent's responsibility to clean up afterwards. If they just walk off and leave the mess for someone else to deal with then the public has every right to sneer and judge!
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Permalink Reply by Sharon on
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What did you want the parent to do? What Lammy advocates and whack the kid? Apologies to the Shop staff? What...? serious question.
There are some extreme examples of human behaviour on this thread, maybe you've been unlucky. I've never seen public urinating or dogs crapping in the street in the 30 years I've been popping into wood green. My mate from Highgate loves her weekly trek to W G for a bit of what she calls 'Shrek spotting' I have no idea what she means ;-)
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Permalink Reply by Straw Cat on
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A few years ago a Change Wood Green High Street campaign was started. Wonder what happened to it?
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No, that is a TfL scheme. The Change Wood Green campaign was started by Tamara P of this parish who wrote here (see link) "I am not talking about gentrification here or turning Wood Green into the next Crouch End just about the community coming together and taking ownership of its High Street and the local area and making it a better place for everyone to visit. " Sounds exactly what people on this thread want.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Welcome back, Sacha, to Harringay Online. It's been a couple of years since you used these webpages to test-drive one of your new roles.
Absolutely brilliant. You had us all fooled. Sharp, witty social commentary based on caricature and exaggeration. And now setting yourself the challenge of a completely fresh new woman character to follow in the footsteps of Brüno, Barat, and Ali G .
Will it be a film or a TV series? Will you be filming in Wood Green itself or a set built to look like Wood Green with actors playing the star shit-heads? Could we have walk-on parts for Liz Ixer and Finsbury Park Ranger?
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Permalink Reply by Lydia R on
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Oh, there are so many reasons for the Hell that is Wood Green.
If you venture inside that soulless—and now after just 40 years—crumbling architectural merde de la merde called River Park House, you might catch sight of a photograph of the Victorian library laid waste in 1973 to provide a pit for its shoddy successor. That photograph encapsulates to me all that is wrong with Wood Green. (If you don’t want to go to River Park House, HoL also has a sketch of the building).
The problem with Haringey Council is that it has these brilliant ideas—none of them coherent and all of them ending up without the resources to follow through. So, hey, let’s make a modern shopping city where everyone can get anything. We’re going to be a bright new commercial centre just like Brent Cross! Parking? Adequate feeder roads? Traffic management? Space for large supply vehicles? Public safety? Maintenance? Visual consistency? The fact that Wood Green is in the middle of a Victorian residential development?
—Details, details…we’ll sort that out when we have destroyed all the harmony and the sense of community it engendered and thrown up the sort of squalid rubbish that only the less advantaged locals would want to come and visit.
Yes, of course there are a few notable exceptions—but in spite of, not because of. In the 1970s this community and town had a fist punched through its middle and then had its guts ripped out.Can we blame it for losing control of its bowels?
Lydia Rivlin — so nauseated by vote rigging in the wards, venality in the Council, shenanigans in the Planning Department and disorganisation in the Social Services, that I signed up to fight it all by becoming a Conservative candidate in the May elections. One thing about the Tories—they haven’t been corrupted by power round here.
No-one told me to write this but since I am now an official candidate in the upcoming elections, I am legally obliged to put an imprint under everything I put out in the public domain (as below).
Promoted by Justin Hinchcliffe on behalf of Lydia Rivlin, Massimo Rossini, Sean Rivers and Harringay Conservatives, all at 178 Walpole Road, London, N17 6BW Tel: 020 8374 6305
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Permalink Reply by Pat on
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Do you jump on every thread will your shameless party political announcements, trolling for votes?
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"Do you jump on every thread will your shameless party political announcements..."
That was a personal opinion, Mags, not a party political one.
There are others who post to this site who have political affiliations and even ambitions, about which you do not complain. I would suggest, then, that it appears you also have your own political agenda. May I further suggest that you do not bring that agenda to a reasonable discussion about the social and aesthetic problems of Wood Green's shopping centre?
Lydia Rivlin — so nauseated by vote rigging in the wards, venality in the Council, shenanigans in the Planning Department and disorganisation in the Social Services, that I signed up to fight it all by becoming a Conservative candidate in the May elections.
No-one told me to write this but since I am now an official candidate in the upcoming elections, I am legally obliged to put an imprint under everything I write in the public domain (as below).
Promoted by Justin Hinchcliffe on behalf of Lydia Rivlin, Massimo Rossini, Sean Rivers and Harringay Conservatives, all at 178 Walpole Road, London, N17 6BW
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Lydia, do please tell us about Mags' political ambitions. I'm looking for someone to give my third vote.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. Time off for bad behaviour. I don't have to write lots of stuff in italics but continues on page 167. . . . )
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