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Where London works

Friday, July 04, 2008

(Click for legibility)

Courtesy of Focus on London, again, plus a little light data mining, a breakdown of employment by borough.

That the City and Westminster lead is not a huge surprise, but I do not think I would have guessed all of Camden (Holborn / Covent Garden), Tower Hamlets (Docklands), Hillingdon (Heathrow), Islington (City borders) , Southwark (South Bank). Sweet home Croydonia comes in at eighth, courtesy of my own ward of Fairfield.

At the other end of the scale, there are just 45,081 jobs in Barking & Dagenham, compared to 561603 in Westminster. However, the ward with the fewest jobs is Fieldway in Croydon - 524. There are 185430 in St James....

Time for one more gratuitous map:

Red - 250000+ employees
Orange - 100,000-250,000
Yellow - 70,000-99,999
Pale yellow - less than 69,999

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Everything you have ever wanted to know about IS claimants in Croydon


(I'm getting carried away with this mapping business now)

Dark red 15.1-20% on income support as of 11/2006
Red - 10.1-15%
Orange - 5.1-10%
Beige - 0-5.0%

New Addington / Fieldway in the east is the new town end of Croydon, and the level of claims does not surprise, but Broad Green & Selhurst is a bit more unexpected.

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An attempt at a London violent crime map


Apologies for the less than intuitive colours, but I have nothing more sophisticated than MS Paint to play with.

Dark green represents total violent incidents of 51-60 per thousand population
Light blue represents total violent incidents of 41-50 per thousand population
Greenish yellow represents total violent incidents of 31-40 per thousand population
Grey represents total violent incidents of 21-30 per thousand population
White represents total violent incidents of 11-20 per thousand population

Figures come from the 2008 Focus on London (p156), hot off the presses. The figure is an aggregate of Met, TfL, Ambulance service and Transport Police figures. The Inner London average is 48.5, and the London average 38.6.

The high Westminster figure is doubtless informed by badly behaved shoppers, tourists etc. Croydon's 33.2 is well below the average, if 33.2 too high.

Any offers to tart up the map will be gratefully received. Should folk find this sort of thing interesting, I might dig up some more data and play with that.

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The Scandinavians and their traffic lights

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Danes have decided to follow the Swedish example and mess about with traffic light iconography. Whereas the Swedes have brought in female stick people at pedestrian crossings because it is sexist etc etc to only have men (they could be flat chested women in trousers, couldn't they?). I am NOT making this up.

Anyway, despite the Danish equality quango "'calling the plan 'strange' and 'a waste of money'", Copenhagen's council is pressing ahead regardless, as this business "was not about equality for the sexes but more about creating debate and a bit of a stir". Doubtless Copenhagen has no crime, education, health etc problems, and its councillors are thus free to ruminate on more abstract issues.

While it would be tempting to fulminate in best 'Disgusted of Croydon' fashion, that would be a tad predictable, so rather I will focus on other Danish traffic light oddities and ponder on British possibilities:

In Odense the lights depict Hans-Christian Anderson and in Fredericia local statue 'the brave country soldier'. And here they are. I imagine readers will work out which is which



First things first, how can either of those images be stripped down to one colour and still be instantly recognisable as who they are and to suggest walking / not walking? Any field reports showing Odense or Fredericia traffic lights will be gratefully received. Always supposing the Danes have cracked the challenge I posed, I am looking forward to having my town's traffic lights depicting David Lean.


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Further portents of the Apocalypse

Friday, May 16, 2008
The great British costermonger, celebrated in verse and prose, is renowned for wit, banter and downright salesmanship.

So, consider, if you will, how disappointing I found this effort, overheard in Surrey St market yesterday:

"Pound a bowl, pound a bowl, pound a bowl, pound a bowl, pound a bowl"

The woman was out of earshot a little after that. However, there was no attempt to name the fruit, extol its quality, taste etc etc, and in this innumerate times one might further note that fruit is being sold by volume, not weight.

The vendor was not in the first flush of youth either, so no excuse there, and plenty of other market traders make a somewhat more impressive pitch.

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Reading the electoral tea leaves for Croydon

Tuesday, May 13, 2008
I have just got hold of the ward data for the London elections, and judging from the Assembly vote, Gavin Barwell ought to walk Croydon Central at the next general election. I make Steve O'Connell's share in the Croydon Central wards 46.6%, to the 25.5% for Labour.

The seat is notionally Labour, given boundary changes, but we won it in 2005. Pelling's share of the vote was 40.8% to Davies's 40.6%. The Lib Dems were squeezed from 13% to 9.2%. UKIP and the Greens fared better, share-wise, than at the general election.

Croydon North looks to be safe for the Wickser - 42% for Labour, down from 54%. The much mocked Jason Hadden should be aiming for 27%, up from our 22% last time.

That Richard Ottaway will retain Croydon South cannot be in doubt.

More of this sort of thing for other marginal seats on request.

Gavin - should you (or any of your people) read this, do something about your gavin4croydon site - it only makes page three of the googling of Gavin Barwell. *Not* good. I cheated and tried Gavin Barwell Croydon Central, and that makes page one. Just.

Update

Further peering at the darjeeling suggests that Carshalton & Wallington would be lost by the Yellow Peril - Brake's 40.3% at the election compares to 31.4% this time, with the Tory candidate securing 39.8% in May, compared to 37.8% in 2005. (Re-worded for clarity)

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Just briefly....

Saturday, May 03, 2008
Now is the time for gloating, pointing and jeering at the Left in general. Intruding on private grief would be more than reasonable too. I know how they felt on that grim day in '97 and equally well know how they feel now.

While waking up to a Tory councillor, a Tory Council, a Tory GLA member, a Tory City Hall, Mayor and MP is pretty sweet, the bit I am *really* looking forward to is the wailing and gnashing off teeth from the likes of Toynbee and Alibhai-Brown over the next few days. One to savour, I think.

Meanwhile, of the five candidates I know or at the very least have bumped into, hearty congrats to Boris (natch), James Cleverly in B&B and Steve O'Connell in Croydon & Sutton, and commiserations to Andy Jennings in Greenwich & Lewisham and Matthew Laban in Haringey & Enfield.

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The franchise exercised

Thursday, May 01, 2008
Well, I've done my bit for democracy and the greater good of the people of London. It being a secret vote, I will not reveal how I voted...

The clerks reckoned that voting had been steady, while the sole teller (for the Blue team) spoke of 'dribs and drabs'. Mind you, I was moved to interrupt a conversation said teller was having with another voter to point out that there was indeed voting in Sutton, what with it being part of the same GLA constituency. Ho hum.

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"Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise”

Wednesday, March 05, 2008
I do not suppose many people are aware of the Beacon scheme run by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Anyway, they are for councils showing a light in the darkness, and they have even had a bunfight to celebrate it last night.

Knowing what the Labour party's initiatives are like, it seemed likely, nay certain, that there would be plenty to mock in the list of winners. And I was right.

Of the 44 winners, six won plaudits for 'tackling climate change'. Yes, really. Step forward City of London, Eastleigh Borough Council, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Middlesbrough Council, Woking Borough Council and Worcestershire County Council. I cannot really be bothered to get into an argument about climate change, but I would have thought that all of these authorities would have better things to do with tax payers money. Perhaps a few years ago it would have been called energy efficiency, since I do not suppose that the schemes involved much more than hectoring staff to turn off office lights.

Reducing health inequalities was popular too - six winners. One might note that the Procrustean option would be popular....

South Gloucestershire Council and Leicester City Council won plaudits for 'Improving the outcomes for Children in Car' (sic). At least that is how it shows up in Firefox.

My own dear borough was a winner too - 'Local Strategic Partnerships and Local Area Agreements'. Explanations on a postcard please.

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Conclusive proof that the Apocalypse is upon us

Sunday, February 24, 2008
There have been any number of false alarms, and I will plead guilty to having raised some of them, but I have stumbled upon definitive and conclusive proof:

It does not appear possible to buy black pudding in Croydon. Not anything especially fancy, nor yet a winner of some concours d'élégance for boudin noir, just common or garden black pudding, for frying, erm, grilling and having as part of the breakfast of an Englishman. But no, it was not to be found in establishments that saw fit to purvey all manner of exotic foodstuffs. The infinitely Better Half, having Northern tendencies, was also sorely disappointed.

Presumably the local merchants deem there to be insufficient demand to make it worth their while to stock suggesting the locals are beyond redemption.

And here's some black pudding just to tighten the thumbscrews on anyone feeling a little peckish:


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Elected judges NOW.

Monday, October 22, 2007
A sad tale from my neck of the woods: a 97 year old man was left blind in one eye following an unprovoked assault on a Croydon tram, the event being captured on CCTV. And what did the assailant get at Croydon Crown Court for GBH? A three year supervision order.

Not happy.

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The Loneliness of the Croydon Lib Dems

Tuesday, October 09, 2007
I just found myself at the web page of the Croydon Lib Dems, where it proudly proclaims on its masthead, "Working for the people of Croydon".

Erm, there are no LD councillors, (one was elected in 2002...) no LD MPs since 1983 (and by election winner Bill Pitt lasted 20 months) , no constituency GLA members and the sole London wide MEP appears to live in Newmania's backyard.

Note that the as yet to achieve office John Cartwright of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (who has been threatened with de-selection for being too sensible, I think, and is a mainstay of Politicalbetting.com and sundry other political discussion sites) does not claim that he is "Working for the people of Croydon".

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Terrorism in Croydon

Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Met has released a breakdown of data for stop and search etc under the Terrorism Act for April to August, and here are the figures for this fine borough:

Type of search

  • Stop & account - 36
  • Stop & search - 591
  • Vehicle or vessel - 7

Age

  • Under 21 - 105
  • 21-40 - 368
  • Over 40 - 150
  • Not recorded - 11

By ethnic appearance

  • White - 321
  • Asian - 148
  • Black - 129
  • Other - 26
  • Not recorded - 10

By gender

  • Female - 37
  • Male - 590
  • Not recorded - 7


There is plenty more, broken down by borough and to sectors of Westminster and Heathrow. Excluding Westminster and Heathrow, the hot spots are Barnet, Enfield, Newham, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets, all with over 1000 stops. Hackney had the fewest, at 186. In the case of the latter, it could be that the self-detonating community think that there's nothing worth blowing up, or the Plod are too scared to venture down Mare Street in the first place.

Now including flippant commentary on borough data by age and gender in the comments....

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Geraint Davies - are you listening?

Thursday, August 09, 2007
To much delight at Croydonian Towers, Andrew Pelling took Croydon Central for the Blue Team at the last election, deposing expenses king Geraint Davies. Not exactly news, admittedly.

However, Davies had a Kunte Kinte moment a while back and decided he was pining for a safe seat the Land of his Fathers and did the chicken run to Wales (note that he was born in that noted Welsh city of Chester), where, quelle surprise, he has got himself selected for a textbook pig with a red rosette constituency, Swansea West. Pelling holds CC by all of 75 votes (including mine...), and courtesy of boundary changes is notionally Labour now, so zero marks to Davies for commitment to his former constituency.

And the newly selected candidate for Labour, one Gerry Ryan, has been quoted thus: "I am a local lad, which I think is important". Source. Ho ho ho....

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To Croydon infinity and beyond

Thursday, May 31, 2007
Malcolm 'I haven't updated my website in months' Wicks, MP of this parish has his mind on much, much higher things - in fact upon space, the final frontier.

In his capacity as Science and Innovation Minister, Wicks has got terribly excited about a document called 'The Global Exploration Strategy: The Framework for Co-ordination', even though the globe is the bit that most pointedly is not being explored. This has been signed up to by NASA, the Russians and a selection of ticks upon the backs of the bigger beasts , including us, and those noted space explorers the Canadians and the Germans, inter alia.

Apparently "this document marks the start of a new era of space exploration".

And how so?

"The British National Space Centre..was fully involved in shaping this document. Following its publication, it is expected that a voluntary, non-binding forum (the International Co-ordination Mechanism) will now be established so that all 14 nations can share their plans for space exploration, and collaborate to strengthen both individual projects and the collective effort".

'Expected', 'non-binding forum'. Not exactly 'Star Trek' is it?

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GLA candidate selected for Croydon & Sutton

Saturday, March 31, 2007
Steve O'Connell, Croydon deputy council leader, was a deserving first round winner. He was by far the most confident speaker, the most authoritative, the most in command of his brief and the most fired up. I have every confidence that he will be an excellent successor to Andrew Pelling, who has stepped down to concentrate on representing these parts in Westminster.

As to the other candidates, Jackie Doyle-Price impressed me once she moved on from a toe-curlingly awful first couple of minutes, when she rather ill-advisedly told us of her love of karaoke and Coronation Street rather than cutting to the chase. Having read the CVs, she was the one I wanted to win prior to hearing the speeches and Q&A sessions. She was passionate in her address, and I think that if she had not made such a hash of things at the start it might not have been a first round knockout by O'Connell, who, admittedly, also had the local advantage . Perhaps wisely the meeting's chairman did not give a vote tally. I know she has applied elsewhere and do hope to see her in Westminster some time soon.

Total turn out was circa 250-300, with blog regular Nick and his wife in attendance, having very kindly furnished me with a lift too, for which thanks.

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Brown rumbled

His wrecking of the pensions system, in the full knowledge of the consequences of his actions, leads in the 'graph, The Times and the Mail (judging from the front pages shown at the Sky site). I cannot see anything at the BBC site, and leave readers to draw their own conclusions. The Daily Star considers to divorce of a fading pop star more important.

This should prove the silver bullet that puts the Kirkcaldy Werewolf out of our misery once and for all, but I would not count on it, alas. And with that, I'm off out to help choose a GLA candidate for Croydon (and Sutton). A full report later.

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Bournemouth is noisier than Croydon

Friday, February 02, 2007
Whoever would have thought it, but a report by a UCL academic (so it must be true) at the behest of a Danish hearing aid company has been checking ambient decibel levels at rush hour in sundry towns and cities in this Great Nation of Ours. Newcastle comes top at 80.4, "equivalent to a loud alarm clock constantly ringing in your ear" and Torquay "a relatively peaceful 60 decibels, the same as listening to a normal conversation". There is probably a poor taste joke about the noise of slow-motion zimmer frame crashes to be had here...

Croydon comes in at 75.2 to Bournemouth's 76, and Brighton's 74.3.

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Curious press releases department

Friday, January 26, 2007
Our friends at Croydon Council do not seem to have got the hang of this media relations business, and 26 days into 2007, the link on the front page to 'council news' still only brings up releases from December. However, a bit of fiddling with the URL takes one to January, and this peerless piece of municipal prose, 'Croydon ready for cold snap'

Always supposing that any of the site's regulars managed to find their way to this announcement, would anyone really expect to get weather updates there? Apart from the weather forecast, there is a somewhat more relevant part to the release where it discusses gritting and the like. I'm sure all fellow Croydonians will feel their chests swell with civic pride when reading this gem: "Croydon’s salt stock levels now stand at 2,100 tonnes, with further reserves to hand should they be required. And up to 500 grit bins around the borough have been replaced and/or topped up".

If the links are not sorted out soon, I think it will be safe to say that I do not have any readers at the Red Lubyanka.

(I am about to switch over to blogger beta, so there will be a brief outage shortly)

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More Livingstone - This time with a Croydon angle

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
I am a regular user of the really rather good local tram system, and have never had any serious complaints about it, although it is pretty horrible at around 4 when it is awash with schoolchildren. Still, public transport the world over suffers the same curse, and doubtless I was regarded as a noisy nuisance as a child too.

Still, on to the plot:

Livingstone speaks - “New information has now come to light. In October last year, HMRI found Tramtrack Croydon Ltd to be in breach of both the Health and Safety at Work Act and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. As a result, Tramtrack Croydon Ltd was served with two Improvement Notices. These are legal notices informing the company that they have broken the law and that in order to avoid prosecution by HMRI, they must meet certain conditions within a set time limit. Tramtrack Croydon Ltd failed to inform TfL, as they are contractually obliged to do, of these notices". Source.

Ever the one to be in favour of upholding contracts, if Tramtrack are in breach then doubtless there will, and should be, consequences. However, guess who thinks it should go just a wee bit further:

"This leaves me no choice but to call for the directors of Tramtrack Croydon Ltd to resign and for the company to sack its entire management team. I would urge the banks and shareholders to hand the company over to Transport for London so it can be safely, efficiently and reliably managed, allowing those who live or work in Croydon to enjoy the service they deserve".

Showing a most selective use of facts, Livingstone notes that two of the three improvement notices issued to tram operators have been issued to Tramtrack Croydon Ltd. Given that are only a handful of tram systems in the UK, this is not that much of a shocker, frankly. A more useful comparison would be with rail operators, and lo and behold there are multiple repeat offenders among the othe rail companies. The Office of Rail Regulation has the details, complete with monetary figures marked against each offence. Given that the figures are variously ten pence and twenty pence, if they are fines I suspect the companies were not that concerned.


That Livingstone might have more on his mind than safety, efficiency and reliability of the network is suggested by the TFL site: " TfL is directed by a management board whose members are chosen for their understanding of transport matters and appointed by Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, who chairs the Board".

Naturally there has never been a health / safety breach by the underground or bus network. Or has there? The HSE has ten pages worth....


Meanwhile his phalanx of press bods are still duplicating press releases, with this (10573) and and this (1578).

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