Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Why is Crouch End high street so much cleaner than Green Lanes?
I recently noted that people queue for buses in Crouch End but not Green Lanes and wondered why.
On my most recent excursion I noticed how markedly cleaner Crouch End is on a Saturday morning compared to Green Lanes and again wondered why?
Both are very busy on a Saturday morning (Crouch End arguably more so). Both have lots of cafes and restaurants. Both have bus stops.
But Green Lanes is littered with rubbish.
Why is it so?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Many years ago I signed up to the Community Volunteer programme (some of you will have been here long enough to know I used to do a little blog on here about my adventures). We met frequently and spoke to staff from enforcement and cleaning. One comment that stuck with me from a street sweeper was that the people in the west (specifically Muswell Hill) reported EVERYTHING - "If there's so much as a discarded cigarette packet on the street, they phone us up"
As Community Volunteers, we were asked to report anything that needed cleaning, repairing or removing on a daily basis. We had a few benefits like trips to the recycling centre (woo hoo), a free tea towel (even better!), notebooks and pencils but mainly it was about having pride in the square metre outside our house and keeping it clean and cared for. There were volunteers from across the borough.
Budget cuts, and a change of emphasis towards crime which the volunteers opposed, meant that the scheme was eventually wound up. As far as I know it was never reinstated.
I often wrote on my blog about the reasons for increased littering, the various campaigns of the past, the frankly weird opinions about littering (keeps street sweepers in word apparently) and fly tipping ("they just drive around and pick up what they see, don't they?" - Er, no) and what Alan dubbed "the third system" which was the use of the streets to get rid of unwanted goods for free rather than pay - HMO landlords who don't want to pay for removing mattresses and furniture will leave it out, those without cars who can't drive to the dump. Over the years, interest wavered in our local representatives from very active to positively supine in the face of this problem (often the good ones got promoted and then things reverted).
We talked about getting local estate agents involved with helping people understand how to get rid of bags of rubbish (having lived abroad I recall one of the most perplexing things as a newcomer was understanding how the bins work because everyone seems to think that you somehow just know). We talked about getting traders to be more proactive.
We acknowledged that overcrowding in houses meant a lot of rubbish is generated, and that illegal dwellings often don't have facilities at all so rubbish is dumped by rubbish bins (at least the "good' ones put it by the bins).
Sometimes, rubbish is removed from people's bins so that bin foragers can go through it ("You'd be amazed what people throw away" said one forager who told me that he often got enough stuff to do a car boot sale. Yes I stood with him until he cleared up).
We speculated that an ethnological study of the reasons why people fly tip and dump would be fascinating: misinformation, misconceptions and sometimes just plain selfishness ("Why should I"?)
However, much as its satisfying to blame others and absolve ourselves because we don't personally do these things, I still think it has to start at our own front doors. When was the last time you reported a mess on the street? Requested a street clean? Made a complaint to your councillor? Yes, it can be demoralising when you do this and the problem keeps happening but in a time of budget cuts and priorities, if you make no noise, the assumption will be either that there is no problem or that people will live with it and the squeakier wheels will get the attention.
Download the Love Clean Streets app and get reporting. Even though I no longer write about these things online, I report things nearly every day and they do get cleaned up pretty quickly. Speculation is fun, but action is better.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Thanks Liz.
Lack of involvement (and the need for more) is significant.
I served on the Planning Committee for four years. At one meeting, one of the Eastern Bloc Councillors expressed to me surprise that a particular (huge) Planning Application in the East had attracted not a single Objection. The Councillor suggested that that was typical for Tottenham. Developers and Planning staff pretty much know the envelope can be pushed further in the East.
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Permalink Reply by Amnon Cohen on
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I suspect that the Council allocate far more resources to keeping Crouch End clean than Green Lanes.
The Green Lanes wards have always been Labour, and the Labour Council treats its working class residents as hostages who have nowhere else to go. On the other hand Crouch End has had lib dem and Labour Councillors in the past. And many Labour Councillors live in these posh areas.
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the Labour Council treats its working class residents as hostages who have nowhere else to go.
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As a last resort, any resident could leave Haringey, but the hostage analogy is true more broadly:
In respect of Council Tax, all residents are treated as hostages.
If an eligible resident fails to pay this (regressive) tax, then Haringey will quickly come down on them like a ton of bricks.
If there exists an unspoken governance covenant, then it behoves the council to spend the money prudently and to reduce waste, mistakes and corruption.
However, the council does not always hold up their side of the deal. Due to the inability in too many areas to get the basics right, the Cabinet seems now to be focused on Bread & Circuses.
i.e. the coming year of Culture.
It's an area that promises personal publicity, photo-opportunities; the leadership can spend as they see fit and it serves as a useful distraction for the cabinet and resident-hostages alike.
The hackneyed political cliché used by the Cabinet Member for Culture is that "we continue to put our residents first in Haringey".
Do any Borough Councils boast they put their hostages second?
Does the claim of putting residents (hostages) first, not rank as one of the most empty phrases in the PR political lexicon?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Amnon why do you - and many others - "suspect" . Why construct suspicions. assumptions, guesswork, feelings, beliefs, that something is the case?
There are allocated budgets; numbered and totalled factual amounts of cash. Wouldn't that or other pieces of evidence be good places to start?
You'll have noticed that the heading to this thread doesn't ask a question or propose a hypothesis.
It makes an unevidenced assertion about two different streets.Can I please ask if you've ever joined a local political party and taken part in its meetings and campaigns. I ask this because of your cynical comment that:
The Green Lanes wards have always been Labour, and the Labour Council treats its working class residents as hostages who have nowhere else to go.Forgive me also being a bit over the top, but it's only a fraction of the exaggeration you've written. You are in the wrong century, Amnon. Surely you've heard of some of the physical changes in Tottenham as well as the new parties giving Labour a wink and a chuckle as they scoot.by, either in the Green Lanes. or perhaps on the Far Right.
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Permalink Reply by Julixe on
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That's an interesting observation. Even if you cross over into Crouch End area from Harringay rail station, the difference is immediately noticeable. One logic may be that we do have a lot of movement in terms of tenants living briefly on Green Lanes - this usually means that there's lesser investment in the general appearance of the area in comparison to Crouch End which has a higher proportion of home owners?
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Dear Julixe please, take a short sequence of thought-through photos illustrating what you wish to show. Then ask yourself do the photos accurately and fairly illustrate the facts. if so, we'll be on the same page. With some facts visible on the HOL page. What facts are evident? More or less litter? Dumping? Ugliness?
There's one advantage of new councillors in May. Choose people who go out, walk, look and take photos. Not all elected councillors actually go out and look. I currently hear there are at least two two councillors who it seems don't go out and walk their wards.
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Permalink Reply by Ozbawn on
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To reduce general littering, adding more bins to Green Lanes would help, especially if they are larger and with bigger access holes.
For the flats above the shops, having larger and more attractive bins would improve the aesthetics. Those cheap plastic grit box type bins currently in use are a complete failure.
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I live on the Ladder and work in Muswell Hill and I'm constantly surprised and perturbed by the difference between the cleanliness of the streets. When I walk down my Ladder road there is a piece of discarded rubbish maybe every 10 steps or so, and it usually sits there for a week or more before it's picked up. It's depressing and demoralising how little regard people seem to have for their area. Footfall is definitely an issue: there's much, much more footfall on the Ladder than in Muswell Hill, but the difference is stark: constant discarded rubbish, as opposed to no discarded rubbish at all. But it would be naive, I think, to not make a demographic link. The people who live in, and visit Crouch End and Muswell Hill are clearly less likely to discard waste than people who live in and visit the Ladder and Green Lanes. Gentrification seems to be a dirty word nowadays, but the more gentrified areas definitely seem to be nicer places to live. Ultimately, though, this has been a feature of London life for hundreds of years, and I can't see a solution arriving any time soon. Maybe the armies AI powered litter-picker-upper-robots that those billionaires seem to think is going to turn our lives into a utopia any day soon...
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Have you reported the littering / dumped rubbish in your street, Rory?
I appreciate that people at work elsewhere don't easily find time for taking photos of rubbish every 10 steps. But in my experience that seems excessive and suggests some homes or businesses with a particular and serious problem.By the way, I don't need your address, but just the name of your Ladder road will let me walk it.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Or, instead of waiting for robots, we could all make sure that we take the two required minutes to report any rubbish dumps using the Love Clean Streets app (with a typical response within 24 hours) and pick up any stray bits of rubbish from outside our own houses and dump it in our bins.
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Or, instead of resigning to an endless cycling of reporting and costly collection, the council might put effort put into detecting and punishing those who litter in the first place.
The root cause may be poor parenting. But why should the rest of society have to continue to pick up the tab for those who carelessly or deliberately litter?
Other societies, like Japan, just do not litter. Their pavements are almost clean enough to eat a meal off. Why is there such tolerance in Haringey for litterers? (yes, it's wider than this Borough). Why is there such tolerance for a dirty environment in the Borough of Culture?
Let's get the basics right first!
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