Five Aside Football Pitches in Finsbury Park

markwhitehead

From Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green:


"On the Finsbury Park issue - not entirely au fait with the facts - but nervous about 'commercial company' - would prefer a social enterprise or not for profit group - no objection in principle to those who are better at running such things taking it on as opposed to Haringey. Just don't like the profit principle for what is public land."

rainbow_carnage

I've played basketball on those courts exactly once in eight years, so it's not like I'm going to miss them, but the idea that we need more football pitches is absurd. If you want to play football, all you need is an empty field and four jumpers. There's plenty of open space in the park that goes unused most of the time. If you want to play basketball, you need a hard surface and a basket. You can't make do with another space that's not specifically designed for the sport. Maybe the reason it's a minority sport is that there aren't enough basketball courts in the city. It's the perfect city sport. It requires a lot less space than football, you can play it on your own, in almost any weather. If you want to get rid of an American sport, I vote for baseball. The baseball (softball?) field is hardly ever in use. They play, what, one game a week?

ADGS

This reminds me - Alex, I'm now a quarter of the way through Ground Control and so far I think it's making its point very well. And the prose may not be especially powerful, but 'badly written' is unfair.

Alex

ADGS, some specific howlers jumped out and made the book seem sloppily written and/or badly edited - examples below. But typos and inaccuracies aside, I thought the attempt to convey a sense of Britain today via colour and anecdotes from particular places was a bit hamfisted and repetitive, and compared poorly to London Orbital, where Iain Sinclair already made many of the points Minton wants to make more subtly and effectively. And aside from the place-specific anecdotes, the policy argument contains too many platitudes and unsourced assertions for my taste. The author seems obsessed with Denmark, repeating a dozen times that Denmark is the happiest country in the world and with far superior mental health to the UK. Oddly she doesn't comment on Denmark's suicide rate being twice as high as Britain's ([see Annex 3](http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life_style/mental/green_paper/mental_gp_en.pdf)). To be fair, I thought the analysis of New Labour's policy failures on crime, ASBOs and social housing in the second half of the book is spot-on, and better argued than the stuff on private control of public spaces at the front of the book. "Historically, the East End of London has always been the poorest part of the capital, **but,** the docks were a commercial hub." (p10) "...much of the capital was owned by a **small of group** of private landlords..." (p19) "Changing trends in behaviour... are witnessing changes" (p166) Discussion of NEETs on p157: the author wrongly explains the acronym as 'Not Engaged in Education or Training' and wrongly states that NEETs are not included in official unemployment figures (most are included, as [Table 3 of the official release](http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000849/SFR12_2009v2.pdf) makes clear.

ADGS

I love London Orbital dearly, but that - or even Sinclair's very good LRB article about the destructive effect of Olympic-led 'regeneration' - has a very powerful and dense style which is always going to limit his readership. Minton's much more accessible (and portable), so I think there's room for both.

I did notice a missing 'autonomous' when she explained what Quango meant, but none of those others jumped out at me, which may just be because the last book I read was even worse, particularly with its tendency to repeat 'paradox' when that wasn't even the right word.

The example of Denmark is a problematic one, but she's not the first to use it - it seems to be a fairly common goal state for the Left, and it's not one with which I have a problem as against eg the occasional praise one comes across from some theorists for that mental Asian monarchy which has prioritised 'gross national happiness' over product - but sounds like a giant gated community.

Alex

The official consultation is now live on the [council's website](http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/community_and_leisure/greenspaces/parks_and_open_spaces_parks_facilities/finsburypark/footballconsultation.htm), though oddly the link from [here](http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/council/haveyoursay/currentconsultations.htm) seems to be broken. Be sure to have your say so that the council can ignore it, as is traditional. Meanwhile, HarringayOnline has an even longer thread than this one discussing the pros and cons. Everyone there is jolly cross about a private company running it except CoachNeil of the baseball and softball club, who may or may not be American.

graeme

Thanks for that link Alex.

edit: do you have a link to the HarringayOnline thread? Can't find it on their site (it's a right old spaghetti junction)

edit 2 for irony of holding consultation open day on the area they're about to bulldoze...:
<blockquote>
There will be a Consultation Open Day at Finsbury Park so come along have your say and take part in free sport activities on Saturday 26 June 2010, 10am – 2pm.

Situated on the tarmac area near Hornsey Gate Entrance on Endymion Road, N4.
</blockquote>

Ali

Seems like there is no information on the operating hours but one assumes that it will be open quite late to make it pay. Glad I don’t live near to it because it will be quite noisy with all the shouting and grunting that goes on with 5 a side. I am a bit amazed to see that they can get ten pitches a pavilion and car parking for 83 cars on that bit of tarmac. Obviously expecting people from outside the area to drive there, doesn’t really cover the issue of how people will, get there from the tube, which bit of the park will be open in the dark etc. Apparently the current users ie disabled cycling, basket ball, model cars etc will be relocated to the slab down near to the Skateboard rink. There is a consolation document which you can down load from the link which I am going to send back as it asks questions about what else people would like to see in the park

ADGS

The park was open right through the night until fairly recently, I used to cut back across it if I got one of the night buses that turfs out at Manor House.

Alex

Graeme, the HarringayOnline thread is [here](http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/fiveaside-plans-for-finsbury), though I believe you need to be logged in to read it.

dorothy

Like the idea of a consolation document. There should be more of those.

graeme

Plan to build pitches on the volleyball courts appears to have been shelved:

<a href="http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/community_and_leisure/greenspaces/parks_and_open_spaces_parks_facilities/finsburypark/footballconsultation.htm">main page</a>

<A href="http://www.scribd.com/full/39719454?access_key=key-2fwjgpo5eqeqjemw33rw">Part 1</a>

<a href="http://www.scribd.com/full/39719480?access_key=key-2gvic2oogz7flvllnim6">Part 2</a>
(online pdfs)