Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Lydia taking the leap--I'm a Tory now!
Hello Harringay,
A few weeks ago a good friend in the Conservatives asked me to run under their banner in the local elections and I didn't laugh right in his face.
My original excursion into politics was in 2001, when I joined the Conservatives because I was so angry about the Victoria Climbie thing but then I left them in 2005 because:
a) I got fed up of politics and
b) I got fed up of the Conservatives (mind you I was just as fed up of the other lot).
When, a few weeks ago, I was invited back to the treadmill, I wasn't any better disposed to the political life but there is so much sh*t going on in this borough that I decided I couldn't ignore it any more. I don't fit that well into a Party mold but seeing as the Conservatives are the only group really serious about opposition in this borough and seeing as I am an Angry Old Woman, I decided that *someone* has to do something. Don't talk to me about the LibDems. The place for nodding dogs is in the back of the car, not in the Council chamber.
*If you want to follow me on Twitter, the address is <@LoveHarringay>
*If you want to get in touch with me by phone, leave a message with Tottenham Conservatives on 020 8374 6305. I'll get back to you. Or email loveharringay@gmail.com.
*If you want to discuss political theory, ring the LSE.
And from now on, you can be as suspicious as you want about anything I say.
btw:
I and my two running-mates, Sean Rivers and Massimo Rossini (NB--Rivers, Rivlin & Rossini make The Three Rs, which all good Conservatives support) will be putting out a leaflet soon.
The local party have agreed to let us write up our own stuff, so we are actually going to be working hard on it, ourselves. At least take a look when it lands on your doormat.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Lydia R on
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"all the real Tories have already snuck into the Labour and LibDem parties to get elected."
Alan, Aristotelean logic makes sense only when the language makes sense.
All men are mortal // Socrates is a man // Therefore: Socrates is mortal.
is completely reasonable, however:
All Glubs are Bubblehatches // Dunploppin' is a Glub // Therefore: Dunploppin' is a Bubblehatch
is meaningless even though it appears to be telling you something.
This is exactly what you are doing when you go into one of your Tory=bad rants.
All evil is Tory // the Council is evil // therefore: the Council is Tory
Looks like it makes sense but is in fact about as intellectually significant as the Bubblehatches.
I am afraid politicians of every sort very often resort to this trickery to bamboozle voters into accepting their arguments but one hopes that at the very least they are doing it deliberately. What bothers me is that you seem to have this formula so deeply etched in your mind that you actually believe it. -
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Hello Matt,
Sorry about not replying sooner, I have just got back home. Because I reckon you have waited long enough I am sending this out quickly and my message--for lack of 'sharpen-up' time-- will probably be a bit longer than it could be.
I don't recall you writing in to this thread before. I haven't exactly burst on to the scene. If you look at my posting history you will see that I have contributed to HoL pretty consistently over the past 10 years or so and attended various social events--this despite the fact that the answer to your second question is "no". I realise that this will be a demerit in the eyes of some people. However I am vain enough to hope that what you see of my calibre might make up for any deficiencies in the residency department.
Now on to the property bubble. I don't think it is a bubble actually - inasmuch as bubbles are very obviously ephemeral. If you happen to live in a desirable area then the prices will rise depending on how many people are prepared to pay those prices. Harringay is a very desirable cosmopolitan area, well served with public transport and well-planned schools. The only way prices will start to go down is if the Council muck it about in some way, which they appear to be having a go at. Have you seen the thread about making Wightman one-way as part of a gyratory system? It is odd how consistently Haringey Council and the word "grace" cannot be meaningfully put together in the same sentence. They have ever lacked a sense of grace. Look at poor, raped Wood Green. Look at Wards Corner. Look at that vile carbuncle of a civic centre which they are now so keen to sell off (along with a lot of other places, like Woodside House) to be turned into multi-storey people-stacks. Sorry. Getting carried away. Anyway, back to Harringay, which is still charming, graceful (yes, even the mucky bits) and full of life. Naturally people will want to live in Harringay. Therefore, equally naturally, the prices will keep going up.
Harringay Arena! That was supposed to have been a wonderful place. As the delightful Sharon has remarked, I keep referring to horse riding but since I have a keen interest in that sport, of course the references would crop up. I know that a lot of horse shows were held there and of course dog races. It was an asset to Haringey to have a show stadium like that but now, as with many Haringey assets (SWEAR ALERT --and sorry about the indelicacy but there isn't any other proper expression) it has been pissed away by irresponsible governance. Now what we have is a Sainsburys. I have no doubt that everyone who has been caught in a one-hour jam to get out of the car park has whiled away the time offering hymns of gratitude to the Planning department.
To go back to the horses for a quick sentence or two: I am obviously not a signed-up Green but I have to point out that any horse rider is automatically and by default an environmentalist. Apart from that, I am also very partial to a nice bit of architecture. Sometimes when I see the desecration that goes on round here, tears come to my eyes.
Drinking with the Telegraph. Coffee. Definitely.
Last of all: confusing local health service provision. Now there's a question. Where in London is health service provision NOT confusing or difficult to access? Is there a specific example you want to give me that doesn't happen anywhere else? Boy-oh-boy I have heard tales of, and have myself seen examples of NHS horror stories that would grow hair on a football. However, there are good stories too, let's not be negative.
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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I have contributed to HoL pretty consistently over the past 10 years or so
I distinctly recall HOL's 5th birthday. A bit secretive of Hugh to have kept the 10th to himself.
Have you seen the thread about making Wightman one-way as part of a gyratory system?
Sorry Lydia, we hid that one from Matt.
Matt, I believe you asked about that 'R': one of the 3 Rs - Rivlin, I think.
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Yes, sorry I forgot to mention my family name. Rivlin.
As for the Wightman, I have now been told it was an April Fool's joke.
Unfortunately it was only too horribly believable.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Sadly my own April Fool's joke was not so believable.
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Permalink Reply by BBL on
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From an earlier post
"As for the "aitch" v "haitch". I have to admit to feeling hideously embarrassed when someone says "haitch". That was considered a dreadfully illiterate fox pass when I was growing up".
But where do you stand on the aitch v haitch OAE? Would you leave Ms Rivlin feeling embarrassed?
As a woman from West of the Bann - I don't think she could bear it with all the haitchs I drop.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Ah, good old "Aitch Anxiety".
Nearly as silly as the objections to the Beatles' "Yeah, yeah, yeah".
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. Formerly a member of the Council Scrutiny Panel on aitch shortages and surplus of yeahs.)
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Hi BBL, I missed this yesterday and also Lydia's original need to scratch her haitchless itch. Well of course I'm a solid HAITCH-BLOCK man meself! In fact I wouldn't be surprised to hear that you are a Hirvinestown rather than an Irvinestown woman! But I wonder when you say that you "drop" haitches, did you mean that you "drop them in" and keep them rather than drop them out? In any case, I doubt whether my haitch-rich prounciation is my only characteristic likely to hideously embarrass the lovely Lydia. [She's just forced me to split my infinitive, almost as painful as a split lip.] She seems, behind much bluster, to be a sensitive soul. How she lives in 'Arringay I'll never know, though I suppose a cross-border move to 'Acne would be even more of an itch.
You're right about West of the Bann being a safe habitat for the snobbery-endangeered haitch. In the Wee North, of course, we might be inclined to trace the fault-line between Protestant aitchers and Catholic haitchers. But I see my 'Oxford Concise Ulster Dictionary (The fullest survey of Ulster dialect ever published)' under 'Hh' is more nuanced: "H [haitch] Roman Catholic: the letter H [also pronounced in this way by many Protestants in the West of Ulster, but usually regarded as a shibboleth of Roman Catholic speech]."
Weren't we the right ignoramuses, amadáns and bog(wo)men not even to know that we were all sunk together in our dreadful illiteracy, hideous embarrassments to any civilised Briton we might meet walking the public road?
Of course the old shibboleth, or rather sibboleth, haitch might make us marked (wo)men if we ever crossed at Ban(n)bridge, Portadown or Roddy McCorley's Bridge of Toome. A few years earlier, according to the Book of Judges, the shoe was on the other foot for the dreadfully illiterate Ephraimites didn't have the sh-phoneme in their language when they tried to escape across the Jordan from the conquering Gileadites. The smart lads of Gilead, to check which foot they dug with, held up a corn husk and asked, "What's that?" "A sibboleth," chorused the gormless goms of Ephraim - so 42,000 of them were slaughtered there by the fords of the Jordan.
So, BBL, we got off fairly lightly with our haitches - but imagine if we'd run into those highly civilised Lydiadites by Bann water!
We were in the best of good company, for Seamus Heaney from Bellaghy by the Banks of the Bann was a diehard haitch-man too. And there were other shibboleths he didn't mind tripping across:
"Vowels and ideas bandied free
As the seed-pods (?shibboleths) blowing off our sycamores.
I tried to write about the sycamores
And innovated a South Derry rhyme
with hushed and lulled full chimes for pushed and pulled.
Those hob-nailed boots from beyond the mountain
Were walking, by God, all over the fine
Lawns of elocution." from 'Singing School'
And to think that Faber & Faber allowed this dreadfully illiterate hobbledehoy to stumble all over the alliteration of Beowulf just a few years later - is nothing sacred?
More power to your late elbow, a Shéamuis, and your hob-nailed Bellaghy boots!
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I think you got the wrong end of the stick, OAE. Actually when people insert rogue aspirated consonants into their general speech, I regard it as a linguistic tic or dialect and it doesn’t bother me any more than any other accent. What I was actually referring to was the habit some people have of pronouncing the letter "Aitch" as "Haitch" when they are spelling things out. I think it must have got categorised in my mind as a deliberate mispronunciation of a name--just rude.
Of course, I do not really believe that the letter H worries too much about it.
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