Filed under: Local News
Crossrail have earmarked the Big Table for demolition
Recently a friend told me about a local business and landmark threatened by Crossrail in the neighbourhood l grew up in. “The Big Table” which is on the Great Western Road, immediately to the left of Westbourne Park tube station and almost under the Westway. I have in the past purchased one of their beds and mattresses, and they are one of the very few big purchases l’ve made which I can say were made in London. This is an extreme rarity in this day. Apart from the benefits is has given to the local economy, it is also a local landmark with some history. It was built by the Temperance Society as a tea room, to get local rail men off the gin from the Great Western Rail company!
Having had a look around the premises today, it’s one of the few places l know in London where the retail section and manufacturing are under one roof and it employs up to 10 people. The building itself is very light and airy with a distict grandeur about it so you can well imagine what it must have looked like when it was still being used as tearooms. In the evenings when it has its lights on, it offers many a feeling of security when walking under the Westway to get over to Harrow Road and North Kensington.
So why would Cross rail went to knock it down? It is to make room for a sub-station, we are told. Having had a good look around, l cannot see why both can’t be accommodated on the same site, with the sub-station going in the backyard along the rail line itself. Better still why not further down the line nearer to the point at which the Cross rail tunnel actually begins?
The building has clearly survived other major works around it, for example when the Westway was literally built over it in the late 1960′s, so l simply cannot see why this historic local landmark and business has to be demolished, at a cost of local jobs and heritage.
Click here to sign an online petition and save the Big Table from demolition.
October 3, 2011
Going underground @ Hammersmith Pump Station
Last Friday at the invitation of Thames Water, I went underground to see the how Bazalgette sewer system copes with overflows at its Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) in Hammersmith onto the Thames. It was certainly a sight to go down to the chamber some 70 metres long and 8 metres high and imagine what it must be like when it is completely filled up with rain and having to pump out 24 tonnes of muck a second.
All the CSOs along the Thames collectively pump out 39 cubic metres of untreated sewage into the Thames but the sewers can’t cope any more as London’s population has more than doubled since the famous brick sewers were built after the “great stink” in 1860. Ourr water consumption has also greatly increased, so the present infrastructure has been overwhelmed by our growing city.
The Thames Water solution to this predicament is the Thames Tunnel supported by the Mayor and DEFRA. It’s a giant new sewer some 75 metres under the Thames, 13 miles long and wider then a tube tunnel. It will cope with any storm surges, storing and transfering the waste east where it will be treated.
In November we will have the second stage of the public consultation on the preferred route and works sites, the latter issue having raised some contraversy in some neighbourhoods in London. Let’s hope all the work sites have been moved from green sites like Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea to brown sites nearby, causing a lot less bother to local residents during the works phase.
Other issues raised include the cost of the tunnel. The total project costs are some £3.6 million which will be paid from an additional £50 per household charge. This has not stopped some like Hammersmith & Fulham council objecting and suggesting a shorter tunnel option referred to as the Jacobs Babtie solution, which would be a better fix financially. But this proposal would still leave 19 of the 34 unchecked and not leave enough capacity in the existing sewers to be able to transfer the flows captured by a shorter tunnel to sewage treatment works in East London in any reasonable time scale. The result would be sewage sitting in the shorter tunnel for longer periods, creating the very odour problem for local resident they wanted to avoid. This is particularly so for the residents of Hammersmith & Fulham, where the shorter tunnel would still run along their boundary with the Thames. Whilst full, the tunnel would not be able to cope with flows generated by storms.
So all in all, barring any major revolts in the second stage of public consultation of the preferred route and in particular the location of the works sites, this looks like a welcome and long overdue addition to London’s sewage infrastructure.
September 23, 2011
The House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee are examining proposals on the “Individual Electoral Registration and Electoral Administration”. These proposals make reference to independent academic research showing that the Government’s plans are likely to reduce the number of citizens on the electoral register by about 10 per cent. This is not an insignificant number considering the scale of voter apathy which already exists and the need to enhance the democratic process and governments’ mandate to rule through greater voter participation.
This impact was found inIreland as the result of changes to the system of registration to vote brought about by the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. If these results were mirrored inLondon on the same scale, then in my home borough alone, 15,000 City of Westminster residents could be wiped off the electoral register by these new Conservative and Liberal Democrat proposals.
The proposals require voters to register individually from 2014 and to provide personal information about their date of birth or National Insurance number before registering to vote. Currently the 150,000 voters registered in the City of Westminsterare simply required to register on a household basis by giving their name and address to their local authority. The current system of registration is not only simple, it is also a legal requirement which assigns to it a level of importance much higher then something which households may otherwise treat as just another bit of paperwork which they could do without. The Government’s new proposals would make electoral registration voluntary thus removing the “urgency” to register.
So while all the focus is on the redrawing of the constituency boundaries which ultimately impacts upon MPs, it is the proposals relating to voter registration which have a direct affect on the electorate and arguably much more integral to the democratic process. In other words the boundaries are being redrawn with the stated aim to increase the average size of constituencies, these measures will bring the average size of parliamentary seat down by anything up to 10 per cent. Clearly acting against the stated purpose of the parliamentary boundary changes.
September 20, 2011
Autumn is about to set in and this will mean that many of us will be switching on our heating systems for the first time probably since about April. However, the big difference between now and then is that Londoners will be heating their homes in the face of record energy price hikes. The reason for this is that the big 6 energy companies have all announced average prices rises for this coming winter of up to 18 per cent. This will drive many London households into fuel poverty for the first time when we already have 1 in 4 households there already.
So what can be done? Well better energy efficiency for our homes is a good start, which is why we welcomed the Mayor’s home energy efficiency programme “RE:NEW” designed to make it easier for London householders to improve the energy efficiency of their homes through retrofitting their homes. It started with the lofty target of 200,000 homes to be treated during this Mayoralty. This figure has since been revised down to 55,000 with only 10,678 homes actually having been retrofitted to date. When you consider this in the context of 3.3 million homes in London and the fact that London is the region which gets the least assistance from the energy companies through their energy efficiency drives, then it builds a picture of how far we actually are from helping Londoners keep warm despite nearing the end of this Mayoralty term. So to get through autumn and winter, Londoners will have to take matters into their own hands and insulate their loft, walls and windows themselves which will reap benefits in the form of lower energy bills. This has always been the low-lying fruit option in terms of optimising a household’s energy use and is at least something that we can try and sort out for ourselves. In the meantime, it may also be an idea to hope for a mild winter.
September 16, 2011
Like many before the EDL march in Tower Hamlets, I’d argued for its banning but after last weeks show, l found myself being put in my place by a local Bengali boy, off Brick Lane. He simply said to me ” What EDL march ban? They were still able to come and make their presence felt and insult my families faith”. lndeed he was right given, the static march which did take place involved some 3,000 policemen to marshall and also drew out the anti-fascists out as well. This young boy’s perspective has had me thinking ever since.
Many like myself welcomed the ban by the Secretary of State, Teresa May, however, we did not appreciate the severity of the 30 day ban across several boroughs in East London. the result has been the curtailment of other demos and rallies like the East End Pride march on the 24th September and most importantly the Cable Street commemoration march on the 2nd of October.
So I’ve written to the acting commissioner of the MET, Tim Goodwin stating that the orginal application of the ban under Section 13 of the Public Order Act should have specified the particular class of public procession in the area. This distinction is clearly permitted by statute and would have avoided the “blanket” ban which has ensued. The blanket ban has been denounced by many as a serious attack on civil liberties. Martin Bright in his Spectator blog has put it well when he writes ” the whole point for those of us advocating a ban on the EDL was that there was a specific threat of violence associated with their extremist view. Such a measure suggest the police and government are suspicious of all protests…. And while l accept that these are particular difficult times for the MET in the aftermath of the riots, l can’t accept all street protest should be off limits.”
So not surprisingly, I’ve asked the commissioner to reconsider the MET’s position on this issue by applying for the current order to be revoked or varied so as to bring to an end this unnecessarily far reaching ban. I await his response and trust that both the East End Pride and the Cable Street commemoration march can go ahead without the threat of a banning order hanging over their heads.
September 10, 2011
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