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 james walsh on
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Still hasn't been explained what is wrong with Crouch End. Is it a simple case of jealousy ? That's what it looks like
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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What is happening in Crouch End affects us all, because this place in included in the Borough statistics that help us try to be more objective than in the past. If there were less wealth here, we would all be more equal - that that inequality is wrong, and dangerous, is surely not in doubt in this of all boroughs.
I think we should keep the word Gentrification because it reeks of the class divide and is appropriately sexist and patronising - let it remind us of an another malaise.
We shape the nature and character of an area by getting involved locally - this website is part of what makes Harringay what it is and each post carves another notch. The scope for change is immense - look at the democratic revolution taking place in Frome, Somerset.
Don't let Harringay become like anywhere else, let it become more Harringay
The brilliant geniuses we are all surrounded by have more than enough of a reserve of originality to forge a unique path here - just look at the range of responses to some of the memes picked apart here to see why, alone, we just can't encompass the way we can together. The thing to resist is apathy - whereas involvement in political parties has shrunk, people are more political than ever - help us reinvent how.
I'm helping organise a Green Fair on Tottenham Green on Saturday September 6th. I'm trying to think of what traditions I can help start - any suggestions gratefully received. If you were holding a Green Fair in Harringay, what traditions would you start here? Morris dancing? An MP3 Experiment?
Put another way - it's in all our interests to make where we live 'cool'.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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My newest tradition this week is picking-apart memes. This builds on the previous long-standing tradition which determines how different people break open their meme before peeling and separating the fragments to enable them to get at the tasty parts.
Apparently people tend to do this differently according to factors such as gender; age; sexual orientation; social class; body/mass index; and whether they favour digital downloads over vinyl. Some groups cut the meme neatly in two and scoop out the central meanings. Others boil each meme in a heated debate until it naturally splits into easily intelligible segments.
The old tradition of hitting the meme violently seems to have died out. This may be just as well since there was always disagreement on whether to smash it from the big-end or the little end.
Don't forget to add the Tottenham Unfair to your Autumn diary dates
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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It's a delight to watch all the white gentrifiers who just want a "nicer neighbourhood" being dragged out from beneath their slimy racist stones to weigh in with their tuppence-worth. Klair Kober and her social cleansing council will be delighted too.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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" white gentrifiers " is racist in itself.
You've just disqualified yourself from having any of your posts taken seriously.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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Chris. That's a bit tight. Personally I am all for a nicer neighbourhood, which is why I choose to demonstrate my commitment by getting involved- like several of my black, white and Asian friends. Suddenly because I am prepared to stand up for what I believe, and I do not mean in some self-aggrandising political manner, I and others like me are suddenly bigots/KKK sympathisers hiding beneath some slimy stones?
It is good to have a contrary view in any debate, and you can often add that to debates I have seen you post in Chris, but blimey- listen to yourself…
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Meanwhile gentlemen the kilobots are organising ... they, not the crouchenders will be taking over at a future Council HQ near you deciding your lives, your politics, even neighbourhood aspirations ........................................... time for a beer!
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Christopher, are you for real??? You have taken this way too far.
It would be great if Claire Kober was a regular to HoL as a Councillor like Alan Stanton, David Schmitz and Karen Alexander were. I would be intrigued to see her response to this.
I would prefer to see more cllrs on HoL as we only have 3 who regularly contribute and I think it is vital to hear their views on subjects like this (not just Emine, James and Clive).
I have discussed this with the Harringay & St Ann’s councillors by email but that was not any success. Would anyone be interested in encouraging more of our councillors to sign up to HoL and regularly contribute to topics such as these?
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>>I would prefer to see more cllrs on HoL
Hi Jerry - I'd like that too, but would it actually get us what we want? I was disappointed in the zero response I got when asking a Cllr on HoL a series of questions on one specific topic.
It was all info that they would have had to obtain from Officers within the Council so I guess that they couldn't be bothered as I don't live in this ward (I'm in what used to be called Couch End due to the number of therapists here).
What most Cllrs seem to do is forward the questions they receive to the relevant Council Officer. They then repeat what they have been told and probably can't avoid putting their 'spin' on it. Or, worse, they deliver one edited answer from one department and we do not take into account another department's facts as we didn't realise other departments were relevant.
The danger is, we push them further down the road of thinking that their views represent our views - with only ~20% of us voting for any one Cllr, they don't.
Sometimes we have no way of knowing if they have, in fact, consulted anyone or if it's just their personal 'take' on things. Part of our system is that, if we elect people to represent us, they are perfectly within their rights to advance their own personal point of view, even in the face of opposition from those who elected them.
So we give power to unrepresentative reps who are biased. No wonder people look at their decisions and disagree with them! You can't please all of the people all of the time.
There seem to be lots of people who think that the Cllrs run the Council - IMO they don't. What the Cllrs are supposed to do is set policy, the 3800 or so Officers who work for the Council are supposed to implement this policy. The trouble is, there are so many other non-Haringey policies to be taken account of, that there are very few actual policies that Cllrs can decide on. Planning for instance - are there any planning rules exclusive to Harringay or even the wider borough? Contracts - how many Cllrs have anything useful to add to the process? The devil is in the detail and it's too touchy for them to get stuck into because of the many possible conflicts on interest they'd be exposed to. Where Cllrs have gone to prison it has often been over dodgy contracts.
So I think it would be better if we press for officers to post here directly. What matter-of-fact question we could ask could not be better answered by a Council Officer? They are often longer-term employees and often part of a team that have been dealing with these issues for a very long time, so have a wider and deeper view than a newbie Cllr. Let's get straight to the source.
Officers might very well say they don't want to do this - they don't have time. One thing that has changed is that Officers are much more outward-facing than they have ever been. You can basically phone the Council and ask for any of the facts you might reasonably want to know. Or do it by email - how many email replies by Officers to individual residents are of general interest?
Bet that if they had a presence on HoL they'd see the need to publish FAQs and draw up lists etc that would serve to better educate us as to how the Council works and what their constraints are.
This would save the Council money - it's more efficient to publish an answer to a question than to have to answer the same question personally each and every time and that saving could easily exceed the cost in Officer time in responding to HoL posts. It would also equip some of the kind people who often post here with the means to answer questions, saving the Officers from replying. That's real democracy.
Then we'd be able to ask better questions...
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Chris, it's a bit of a slog but the constitution of Haringey sets out who makes decisions on what and how they do it.
http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/council/how_the_council_works/cons...
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