More on Tidemill

The Council (actually the Cabinet says No!), so does the Mayor of London. (Actually what they say is more complex, I was channeling Little Britain.) The Council says go ahead with the Developer’s current plans, so does the Mayor of London.

Len Duvall, the area’s London Assembly member, reports the Mayor of London’s decision in a press release called “Old Tidemill Garden could be lost for ever“. Crosswhatfields reports the lead up to the Council decision in an article called “Save Tidemill & Reginald House update“.

It would seem that the Cabinet want the houses now, are frightened that the developer will walk, or sue the council, and that grant support for the project will be lost through delay if they voted to instruct the developer to consider the alternate plan, which is designed to provide the same number of houses.

Here’s the alternative plan, which the developers have rejected, and the Council has not reviewed. It saves both the current council houses, and the Garden.

One of the increasingly powerful arguments for keeping the Garden is its role as ‘lung’. Given the amount of building work surrounding the area; its 3.3 thousand metres2 protects people from the shit created by the building works at Deptford Church,the Tidemill site itself, and the coming Creekside development.

 

 

I have been told that the Council believe they are replacing this capability, but if so it would be a departure from previous practice.  A friend writes,

There will NOT be an increase in ‘publicly accessible space’, as claimed by Council officers. The new public realm is said to be 3915sqm, but more than 50% of this (1973sqm) is private courtyards. 20% of the remainder is hard landscaping, leaving only 1565sqm of public green space. The current garden and the lawn on the corner are 3364sqm in total. What is offered is 1799sqm less, which represents a net loss (or deficit) of 53%.

, although see the comment below.

Here is a picture of some of the trees that’ll go, although they’d going both plans.

I wonder what the next steps are.

This is a missed opportunity for the new Labour Group.

ooOOOoo

Other articles on this blog are tagged “tidemill gardens” and I wrote up my notes during the initial planning consultation on my wiki, in an article called “Giffin Street Redevelopment“. …

Big Copyright strikes again

Big Copyright strikes again

This time in the European Parliament. They want upload filters and to tax ISSP’s reuse, but you can do something about it.

Last week a committee of MEPs voted 15 – 10, reported here by one of its members, Julia Reda, the sole Pirate Party MEP, in favour of the EU Copyright Directive’s disastrous Article 13. This misguided measure will introduce upload filters that would change the way that much of the Internet works, from free and creative sharing, to one where anything can be removed without warning, by computers. They also voted in favour of Article 11, which Europeanises a German & Spanish law and places a monetary liability on internet software service providers who use snippets of news articles originally published by for-profit publishers.

This article explains why the measures are wrong, and points to the campaign sites. It was amended on the 5th July after the vote to report the result, which was that the Parliament voted to re-open the discussion in plenary.

Here are the votes, interesting splits. …

Labour Party, making policy

My submission to Labours Democracy Review on making policy.

CLPs should have an inalienable right to initiate policy, as such CLPs should be allowed to submit motions to Conference on policy as they see fit (i.e. not be constrained by the NPF report and processes).

NEC should publish their minutes so that members know what they are doing.

Appropriate CLP motions should be presented to the NEC and their actions recorded, minutes taken and reported to the authoring CLP.

CLPs should be able to submit a motion + rule change to Conference during the same year and CLP/Affiliate proposed rule changes to conference to should be allowed to be debated at the Conference for which it was proposed.

The NPF to be halved in size, meet more regularly, report to conference, and conference to be extended by a day. This is designed to increase the NPF’s accountability to Conference and provide some form of governance over continuous policy making; Conference should remain sovereign. NPF should be commissioning hearings led by a combination of grassroots activists and members and workers/trade unionists with expertise in specific areas. NPF should function in a more transparent way. This transparency to include its web site.

Conference should be a day longer, it would allow the consideration of more topics.

It should be considered to have a first delegate to conference at 500 members, and additional delegates at 750. More money should be sent to the CLPs and/or the Conference delegates should be funded by HQ. (We are debt free you know). [On drawing the graph/chart, I wonder if it would make much difference, it would make it easier, if it could be afforded, to send a gender balanced conference delegation, which is my purpose, but this would only be so for those CLPs with between 500 & 750 members. It should be noted that larger CLPs are not sending their full delegations because of cost. It should be noted that small and remote CLPs are not sending their delegations at all often because of cost. Perhaps elections at conference should be done as postal votes for non-attendees.]

It has been suggested to me that despite my efforts, many of Labour’s new members lack experience of the motion/debate process. More education is required at branch/member level about the motion process (e.g. what motions should incorporate and the change we hope to bring about). …

Electing Labour’s Leader

My submission to the Democracy Review on Electing the Leader.

Required nominations in the case of a vacancy should be set so that the electorate are given a choice. It should be noted that the higher the threshold required within the PLP, the more likely pressure for reselection will be in cases where MPs no longer represent the views of their membership.

On electing our leader, the Leader should be elected by individual ballot, of individual members, affiliate members and registered supporters.

Registered supporters should be asked to renew their commitment annually (and undergo the same checks that are used for people to become members), charged no more than of the order of £5 per year and be able to attend (but not vote during) branch meetings. If Toby Young seeks to become a registered supporter, we should refer it to the Police for fraud.

Freeze dates for all elections for internal office should be decided according to administrative feasibility. i.e. days or weeks, not the 6 months used in the 2016 leadership elections. …

Labour and local government

I have just made my submission to Labour’s Democracy Review on Local Government. It consists of proposals about candidate selection, labour’s governance (Groups and Labour Committees), Direct Mayors and recalling/dismissing Leaders.  The current local government candidate selection process and Labour Group governance rules gives a massive advantage to incumbents vs. challengers. If we are to meet our aspirations of representing the community and its most disadvantaged, we need to do better. I say more below or overleaf … … …

On Labour’s Leadership, Conference & Policy

My CLP had its meeting to determine what it wanted to say to the Labour Party Democracy Review’s phase three. This seeks views on Electing our Leadership, How we Make Policy and The Way We Work. I’ll write up what we said some time soon, once the notes are complete. We agreed some of the ideas from the CLPD’s recommendations. The CLPD original is hosted at Grass Roots Labour’s site, here. …

On the streets

Yesterday, over 100,00 people marched in London calling for a 2nd referendum, I popped in to show my solidarity earlier as I needed to be somewhere else but it looked big. I shouldn’t call it a 2nd referendum, its more a case of asking us if whatever they get, is what we meant and still want?

 …

IUSY 78

IUSY 78

In the seventies I was on the Labour Students National Committee, and attended the International Union of Socialist Youth’s (IUSY) 1978 Summer Camp. I still remember some of the fabulous people and conversations that I had. Were you there too? Do you remember me? … … …