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Photo fun

Monday, November 30, 2009
This currently adorns the front of the Nestle building in Croydon:


Can't say that Nescafe is my fave instant coffee, but I wouldn't class it as toxic.  

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posted by Croydonian

The Hansard Trawl, featuring misbehaving sheep and leftie hoisted by his own petard

Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Could this be the euphemism of the decade?

"Lynne Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment he has made of the effects of intensive livestock farming on climate change; and if he will make a statement.

Jim Fitzpatrick: DEFRA has commissioned a number of studies, some of which are ongoing, to assess the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from several agricultural commodities throughout their lifecycle.

Who let that duck in....

Sticking with furry creatures and similar, this headline - Sheep: Tagging - made me wonder if ovines are defacing barn doors with 'Ban mint sauce', 'sheep rule' or whatever. Alas not.

And now this from Jeremy Corbyn:

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport what percentage of (a) white and (b) non-white staff of his Department of each (i) grade and (ii) pay band have received the highest performance marking in each reporting year since the inception of Department for Transport (central).

Someone who has spent as long on the wilder shores of the left as Corbyn should be well aware that it is deeply racist etc etc to define ethnicity in terms of normative whiteness. More here...

Odd question o' the day:

Joan Ryan: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport how many road fatalities there have been in each parliamentary constituency in Greater London in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

And the figures are in, and it is Mark Field of the Cities of London and Westminster who would have been sending the most (18) condolences last year, followed by Andrew Dismore of Hendon (11). No other constituency saw double figures. Paul Burstow of Sutton and Cheam can be happy that no-one has died on the roads in his seat in the last five years. Good for the road users there. Down here in sunny Croydon, Central has the worst record over five years (19), and South the best (9). Nice typo here - 'Hoi born and St. Pancras'. I may as well make the traditional reference to Dobson as the member for the two tube stations.

If ever a question deserved the 'disproportionate response' answer it is this one:

Mr. Paice: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what estimate he has made of water consumption on his Department’s office estate in (a) 2005-06 and (b) 2006-07, (i) in total and (ii) per full-time equivalent member of staff.

Mr. Kevan Jones: It will take more time to collate and verify the information required to answer the question. I will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

James Paice, our man in SE Cambs does not appear to be in the pay of the water barons, by the way. Jones was true to his word, and followed up with figures of 86 m3 in 2005-6 and 84 m3 in 2006-7.

Is the feline out of the satchel?:

Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what activities have been undertaken by his Department’s Euro Minister in that capacity. [277178]

Mr. Woolas: A Home Office Minister has not attended any meetings on the Euro since 2007 and there are no plans to do so.

Good job too.

And over in the Lords, who feels a proper charlie now:

Lord Tyler: To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect to reply to the Question for Written Answer tabled by Lord Tyler on 6 May (HL3404) and due for answer by 20 May. [HL4571]

Baroness Crawley: The Question was answered on 1 July 2009.

Lord Pearson may be a little paranoid:

To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Lord West of Spithead on 10 June (WA 151), whether the Security Service has been or is active inside or towards the United Kingdom Independence Party or any of its members.

To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Lord West of Spithead on 10 June (WA 151), whether the security services or the police have collaborated or are collaborating with the European Anti-Fraud Office or any other organ of the European Union in relation to the United Kingdom Independence Party or any of its members. [HL4591]

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Security Service has investigated or is engaged with the United Kingdom Independence Party.

The answer is about as boilerplate as they come:
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead): The established policy of successive Governments is not to comment on questions about Security Service investigations.
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

And as for this - 'The Security Service Act 1989 sets out its functions and prohibits it doing anything in furtherance of the interests of a political party. It does not investigate anyone for being a member of a campaigning organisation' - I do not believe it.

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posted by Croydonian

The (apparently) lost art of spelling

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Seen locally:



Lest anyone is entertaining the possibility of this being a Croydon dialect word, it is not:

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posted by Croydonian

Expensesgate - the Croydon connection

Thursday, June 18, 2009
Having scrolled through all 83 pages of my MP's (the whipless Pelling) 2007-2008 expenses, I have found nothing scandalous, nor even anything vaguely amusing. It all seems to be stationery and mobile phone costs.

I think he overpays for paper and the like, but failing to shop around for the cheapest A4 is hardly a hanging offence.

A root around in the 2006-2007 expenses shows that the Croydon Central and South Conservative Federation had to send him an invoice reminder before he paid up for constituency services - page 39. He seems to specialise in USB stick drives, as he has bought at least three in the last two years. Mind you, so have I.

Elsewhere, I nominate page 76 of the expenses claim for the most idiotic piece of censorship. The model number of the HP scanner he bought is blanked out, although the fees office is happy for us to know that his Belkin USB hub was the economy model.

Moving swiftly on, Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North, Lab) specialises in waiting until he gets a reminder before ponying up for his bills. He also gets us to do pay for his tax returns (p34).

Richard Ottaway of Croydon South has already been monstered in the press, but I'm sniffing around anyway. We have a Dualit toaster at £50 (p3) - *major* bargain, as the signature model is circa £150. He also got us to pay for cutting his grass (p32)- well, the invoice says 'cut grass', so possibly he was buying the stuff. Further, he is not big on texting, and comes nowhere near to using his monthly text message allowance (p31). Rather unexpectedly, his newspaper of choice appears to be The Independent (p90). My favourite is the £490 to 'clear away dangerous tree in the road' (p9) I imagine said tree must have been packing an AK-47, and quite possibly an RPG launcher.

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posted by Croydonian

A little light data crunching of the Croydon euro results

Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The Guardian has been rather helpful in providing an online spreadsheet of results by borough, authority and so on, and having time on my hands and an unnatural interest in matters psephological I have knocked up a pie chart showing the euro results, and then one for 2005 in the three Croydon seats combined:

And Croydon North, South and home sweet Croydon Central:

So, Tory and Lib Dem shares were both down around seven percentage points, but Labour fell off a cliff - down 20 percentage points. UKIP, as expected, did far better than in the general election, with the Greens also substantially outperforming their showing in the GE. Mind you, they only stood in Central. Neither the B*P nor the Christian People's Alliance risked lost deposits in any of the Croydon seats.

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posted by Croydonian

A public health announcement for young Londoners

Thursday, April 23, 2009
Sarah Teather, a Londoner, and believed to still be date-less, has asked the following: "How many people were diagnosed with a sexually-transmitted infection in each London health trust area in each of the last five years".

The figures she got in return were fairly limited, bar for Chlamydia which has figures at primary care trust level for 15/24 year olds. I have assumed that PCT areas are much the same as council areas, so on that basis, steer clear of suitors from Lewisham, Southwark, Lambeth and Greenwich. Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham would appear to the safest, and Ms Teather's home turf of Brent makes a middling showing. It could be that folk from boroughs on the right side of the Thames are more likely to take tests whereas as those out west are not. Croydon is in the top quarter, but it is not my problem as I do not fraternise with those young enough to be my offspring.

Anyway, the figures:



Elsewhere, a French survey has conclusive proof that sex makes liars of more people than politics and angling put together. Especially page 19. As I try to keep this place PG, I will merely note that for one particular practice (which sounds a bit like an Irish airline) the percentage of men who say that they have performed it is little short of double the percentage of women who say that they have received it.

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posted by Croydonian

Croydon - the Venice of South London

Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Or reining it in a bit, a river runs through it.

Anyway a start is about to be made in that we are about to get a river again:

"Exciting plans have been proposed for Croydon's Wandle Park. A grant would contribute towards:
  • restoring the River Wandle, which now runs underground in a concrete pipe;
The rest of the planned uses of the £400,000 grant coming Wandle Park's way are doubtless worthy, but not especially exciting. This comes as part of a sharing out of funds from the Mayor's office applied across London. No idea where the money came from.

Might take a while before anyone will be dubbing these parts La Serenissima. Still, there's a decent enough Italian restaurant nearby called Il Ponte, so maybe it is all coming together.

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posted by Croydonian

Why are there so many badly-named parliamentary constituencies?

Sunday, March 01, 2009
I have been musing on why there are so many dreadfully uninspired names for parliamentary constituencies, and why there seems to be so little consistency in nomenclature - the fun never stops here at Croydonian Towers. While there are horrors scattered all over the map, I am going to focus on London for now.

The boroughs of Harrow and Croydon get an especially raw deal, with those wits at the Boundary Commission unable to come up with anything less pedestrian than East and West and North, Central and South respectively. I would not reckon myself much of an expert on Harrow, but given that Omnia Croydonia In Tres Partes Divisa Est, why not try Thornton Heath, Croydon Town & Shirley and Coulsdon & Purley?

Looking to the west, the borough of Sutton does not have to suffer the indignities of Suttons east and west, but has Sutton & Cheam and Carshalton & Wallington, and to the east Bromley has Beckenham, Orpington and Bromley & Chiselhurst.

Other boroughs manage a half-way house between the Croydon and Sutton approaches, with Islington having Islington North and Islington South & Finsbury. Why not, say, Islington North & Highbury? The people of the east of Brent will be electing an MP for Hampstead & Kilburn next time round, a signal improvement on Brent East.

Further afield, Birmingham has constituency names that show some soul - Selly Oak, Perry Barr and so forth, not Birmingham North East etc, while No Mean City has gone backwards and dumped the likes of Kelvin and Maryhill for dull references to points on the compass. Admittedly there is the issue of MSPs seating for seats with the older names, but even so..

Looking at the other conurbations, Manchester gets decent names, as do Liverpool and Sheffield while Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle and Edinburgh labour along with the more prosaic.

The rest of the Anglosphere paints a mixed picture, with the Americans managing to outdo us for flatfootedness - numbered congressional districts, while Australia goes for snappy one word names in the main, Canada perhaps overdoes it with a blizzard of hyphenation and New Zealand goes in for the North, South business. Dullola. Our Hibernian neighbours have a list system with giant constituencies based on the historic counties and sundry divisions of Dublin. Since no day is complete without a mention of what the French get up to, they appear to use the same vanilla system as the Americans. Fie 0n them.

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posted by Croydonian

If Napoleon had conquered Croydon

Saturday, January 31, 2009
Inspired by The Great Bear, other reworked tube maps and my age old pastime of mentally translating tube station names into other languages while travelling (and because I am sad, empty and worthless etc, obviously) I have had a go at rendering the Croydon tram map into French, and await criticism for poor French grammar, use of the wrong font, lawsuits for copyright infringement and so forth.


I have gone for a mixture of translations that are variously semi-serious, gratuitously silly and those based on the idea that we became part of the Napoleonic system. I have assumed that the name George Street stems from the saint rather than the kings, but confirmation or refutation by anyone with knowledge of local history would be welcome.

I generally decided against rendering town names in French, as Vallée Sinueuse or Vallée de Crocus for Croydon seemed a bit over the top.

No mention of Croydon trams is complete without noting that at one point the name signs at stops were stickered letters, so some wag removed leading and trailing letters from Addiscombe, making it sound a great deal more intriguing.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on Maria Gatland

Wednesday, December 03, 2008
I have never met Mrs Gatland, although I may have been in the same room as her. She represents an adjoining ward to mine, by the way. I have equivocated about writing this, as I try to steer clear of writing about UK issues that are already major news. More here.

Anyway, the first parallel worth drawing is that unlike in a Labour controlled borough on the wrong side of the river, she resigned from her post as soon as her embarrassing past entered into the public domain.

Further, her muscular sympathies with the 'Bold Fenian Men' ended some 35 years ago, she having repented at the time. While I do not think that time automatically wipes the slate, it does not appear that she has done anything that would have Special Branch, the RUC or whatever slavering at the prospect of a prosecution, were it not for the Good Friday Agreement and so forth.

If councillors are selected by the Conservatives in the same way that prospective MPs are, then her most grievous sin this century was in giving a less than a full and frank answer to the boilerplate text of 'have you ever done anything that has the potential to embarrass the Conservative Party'.

Were she asked that she should have given the answer we all now know, and even if she were not, it is more than arguable that she should have volunteered it.

However, judging from the photos of Mrs Gatland, she appears to be no older than in her early sixties, suggesting that she would have been associated with the Provos when she was in her early twenties or younger. Since then she appears to have led a blameless life and furthermore has engaged in good works and I would argue that this entitles her if not to forgiveness than at least to a degree of sympathy.

Moving swiftly on, a little light googling of the whistle blower, one Peter Latham who researches for a group called 'Save Our Schools', throws this up for 2006:

Broad Green - Peter Latham (Communist Party of Britain) 177.

They might not be one and the same. Furthermore, the same individual stood on the PR list for the 2008 GLA elections on the Unity for Peace and Socialism list, this being the CPB under another name. It won less than a tenth of the vote of the Stop the Congestion Charge list.

Given the ambiguous relationship between the British extreme left and Irish Republicanism, one does have to wonder whether the outing of Mrs Gatland - supposedly under sentence of death by the IRA - was motivated by more than concern over education in Croydon.

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posted by Croydonian

Don't these people do their homework?

Friday, September 26, 2008
The local rag has a tale of yet another exciting high-rise development for these parts:

"The tall tower will contain 25,000 square metres of grade A office space and 360 apartments. Residents of all the apartments will have access to balconies or to two winter gardens".

All very blah blah.

But here's the 'why don't I just stick to pounding nails into the floor with my forehead' bit:

"Dubbed Odalisk by its architect, Piers Gough".

For anyone unfamiliar with the word, it is an alternative spelling of odalisque - 'a female slave in a harem'. Definition from the closest dictionary to hand, but confirmed here and here.

And there was I thinking that architects are, of necessity, renaissance men and women of culture and learning.

Why not call it the Brass Tower and be done with it?

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posted by Croydonian

The council 76 times larger than North Yorkshire

Thursday, September 25, 2008
North Yorkshire is England's largest county, at a pretty hefty 3,340 square miles. However, that is just an administrative dot compared to what might be coming to the upper reaches of Greenland if some administrative reforms go through, as North-Greenland Council would be 76 times larger at 254,827 square miles.

Put another way, NGC would be almost three times the size of the UK. Turning up in person to complain about bin collection or collecting a clamped car could be a bit of a pain.

Sticking with local government, I have just received a letter about the council tax, addressed - as God is my witness - to a town called 'Croyon'.

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posted by Croydonian

The, cough, 'bally' Olympics - no escape even here

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
I have succeeded in ignoring the WLOSAF thus far without too much effort, but the wretched 2012 event is now about to impinge on sweet home Croydonia:

"Croydon will be celebrating the moment of the olympic handover with a flag raising ceremony on the 24 August with (sic) at Taberner House....Croydon will be celebrating the Paralympic handover on the 17 September will (sic) a themed sports day as well as events taking place in the borough's schools. More details to follow".

Judging from the page at London Councils, few if any boroughs will be safe from this particular plague.

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posted by Croydonian

Where not to park

Saturday, August 16, 2008
Care of London Councils, which provided the data, and MS Paint, a map of parking fine hot spots in London. Note "6,176,752 penalties were issued in London in 2007/08 for illegal parking, driving in bus lanes [etc etc]".

Red (Westminster and Camden) managed to levy 824,687 and 529,874 parking fines respectively in the year to March

The next tier (yellow) between 150,001 and 300,000 fines each

Tier three (green) 100,001 to 150,000.

Tier four (pale blue) 50,001 to 100,000.

Tier five (dark blue) - City, Sutton and Havering, a derisory 0 to 50,000. Lest folk make haste to park in Sutton, Suttonians live under a reign of terror clamper-wise - it leads London boroughs for that particular form of extortion.

I do not have a car, so this is not really my problem, but it has long been clear that parking fines and so forth have precious little to do with keeping traffic flowing and an awful lot to do with tax farming. My brief rant on the topic is here.

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posted by Croydonian

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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posted by Croydonian

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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posted by Croydonian

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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posted by Croydonian

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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posted by Croydonian

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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posted by Croydonian

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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posted by Croydonian