I wish I lived in Islington

krappyrubsnif

I live in Haringey, but I'm about 50 yards from the borough boundary with Islington.

I wish I lived in Islington.

Well-managed council. Excellent hyper-local parks. Lots of electric car charging points. Good street tree policy. Sensible Covid restrictions and social distancing policies. Responsive street management (play streets, street festivals). Etc.

Haringey: none of the above. Moribund. Politically correct. Virtue-signalling. Expensive.

Discuss.

LukeG

There's nothing much to argue about - each borough has its advantages and disadvantages - west Haringey is lovely, and so is south tottenham - however the council itself is useless and focused entirely on politics.

They've underachieved with their housing targets (the reason they led the coup against the last council leaders) and have only managed to rename a park in the whole time in power.

Im going to be voting Green or Lib Dems for local councillors until Momentum fack off.

marko

A rotten borough is what you get when there's been no change of political control in the entire existence of the council.

Ali

I remember back at the time of the election there was a stoked up great fear of the first UK Momentum.

I am not sure there has been a complete mess or disaster in services through I think I am probbaly seeing this through the limited optic of rubish collection and car parking permits etc.

I wonder where we would be at if the Landlease deal had gone ahead?

It is not that long ago that the Libdems (who are they?) nearly had control of the council but the decided to sleep with the Cameron Government.

grenners

Makes no difference, Islington or Haringey. They are both run by labour and collect bins and issue parking fines. Does one charge more than the other? Anyway vote Lawrence Fox, the Reclaim Party!

Arkady

If you keep overegging the pudding like that Grenners people will catch on that you're some sort of spoofing performance artist.

grenners

Hmmm. I'm being too genuine? I'm too consistent for that surely.

Arkady

Toooooo consistent. No-one really has all of these clichéd speaking-like-they've-never-heard-the-other-side-of-the-argument opinions all at the same time. At least not after fresher's week. I'm on to you. Sometimes I think you might be Chang.

grenners

I am very much looking forward to.what Fox might add to the debate. I'm sure there will be no Reclaim candidates at local level. Labour, Lib Dem, Green, Con, I do not feel like voting for any of them. I feel its a futile exercise for me to vote.

krappyrubsnif

"The Daily Telegraph reported that the party had received significant backing from former Tory donors, and aims to stand dozens of candidates in the next general election. ...... A Westminster source, quoted in the Telegraph, described it as “Ukip for culture”."

Why would I vote for this?

grenners

A lot of people on here agree Haringey is wasting its time with things like renaming streets. After his attack on the BBC Fox has come back fighting and good on him. This opens up a side to the debate so that other side of the argument can be heard. Listening to opposing views not shutting them down. Its unfortunate to be branded UKIP, Fox was a remainer, and this isn't Brexit. But like UKIP the candidates will in my view let him down unless he's very careful and the Godfrey Blooms appear and say something aweful.....until then Fox who is only 42 not 72 has my support in order to disrupt the narrative. Good luck to him and the BBC. Let battle commence. He's also a voice against the dangers of the freedoms we have lost / will lose due to Covid and the madness of Vaccination Passports etc. Once our liberties are gone getting it back will be a huge battle.

That's my view and I don't expect anyone else to hold it. But someone has to talk about it.

Arkady

The idea that nationalist, socially conservative or libertarian views are somehow underrepresented in UK discourse has always baffled me. It reminds me of the Daily Mail reader insisting that it's impossible to talk about immigration while perusing yet another anti-immigrant headline. The Conservative Party and the majority of the print media have been dominated by these ideologies for time out of mind. Fox isn't saying anything new, he's just saying it in a less articulate and more boorish way. I'm mystified by the appeal.

therattle

Likewise Arkady. I also find that a lot of the people who want to change things like street names are doing so because they are genuinely offensive or celebrate people who were outright racist/sexist/genocidal (often all three), and that people who don't understand why they should be changed (or at least considered) refuse to appreciate why those names and people are so offensive. I know that Internet arguments often end up invoking Hitler and the Nazis, but I don't especially want eg Adolf Hitler Crescent to remain as is but for people to simply be educated as to why he was bad.

Who we memorialise with statues and who we name streets after show what kind of people and attitudes we as a society value. If we have statues of slave owners we are implicitly endorsing slavery. I don't see how this attitude is "woke".

We have lost freedom due to Covid so that people don't die. If lockdown had been implemented two weeks earlier my father-in-law might still be alive. Given that Covid often spreads from asymptomatic carriers I view people who are against lockdown as basically saying that their right to wander the streets, socialise and frequent shops, pubs and restaurants, maskless, is more important than other people's right to live or to avoid the devastating effects of long Covid. To which the only appropriate response in my book, decorum be damned, is a heartfelt fuck you.

In my experience the people who bang on about their freedoms usually give little thought to the feelings or freedoms of others who their actions effect.

grenners

Macron is looking at a national pass to be based not only on a vaccine. And he us supportive of a Europe wide vaccine passport. That terrifies me. A precursor to a European social credit system? Conspiracy? Anyone who suggested such a passport was a conspiracy theorist until recently. I'm avoiding a jab until they force me. There will be no way out if we get into this. It might be too late and we are all coerced into annual vaccines every one of us. If we don't comply we are second rate citizens.

Scruffy

“If we have statues of slave owners we are implicitly endorsing slavery”. Are we really, @therattle ? So if we use a Gill typeface, are we implicitly endorsing incest and paedophilia? If we listen to or perform music by Wagner, are we implicitly endorsing anti-semitism? Surely it’s more the case that if we have statues of slave owners BECAUSE they were slave owners, THEN we’d be making some sort of endorsement? (Gill typeface or not, I wish we could use italics here. Please excuse the caps for emphasis.)

therattle

Hi Scruffy. I take your point but there is a different between consuming art or products which were created by a horrible person (an interesting argument to be had there!) and honouring them with statues and road names. When you honour someone you implicitly endorse their views and actions, don't you? And I reckon that many statues of slave owners are a result of their philanthropy, which was them giving away money extracted from slaves.

grenners

There's no end to this if you open it up. Churchill was a racist etc but he's on the £5 note. The pyramids were built by slaves. Just erase the whole lot then.

kreuzkav

Islington is a great council and always was. They're socialist in the right way. Their libraries are amazing. The range of books, their access via computers to what they have was there from the early 90s. Very little PC posturing but PC in the right way. Cleaner streets. Good housing. Haringey are dysfunctional.

Scruffy

@therattle , I don’t think there’s any difference between honouring someone by recognising their art (or other achievements) and dedicating a statue or building to their name. People are not normally honoured for leading blameless or saintly lives, but for something specific that they’ve achieved or added to our culture. As @Grenners said, there’s no end to it.

LukeG

Well, I think if the Hackney Woodberry Downs development is anything to go by, @Ali then we sorely need the same public private partnership to renew our social housing and create more private homes.

Sure, ideally the Council would have enough cash to develop some housing themselves, but that's just not the case in economically poor Haringey.

Instead the Council is spending hundreds of thousands annexing Homes for Haringey and milking leaseholders in Noel park (see the pods scandal). They still haven't hit their new housing target because they've only just realised that modern house building can't be done without huge investment and regeneration.

As for street renaming it's just not the time.

The facts are plain to see, that's why change in councillors is crucial to change the council leadership before we have another generation of lost opportunity.

Ali

Islington is the second smallest borough in London and the third-smallest district in England so I wonder if that helps Islington when compared to Haringey

libertyhall

Both Hackney and Islington put Haringey to shame. Haringey wastes its energy on virtue signalling and infighting. The Corbynite cabal who cling on to power are living in a past that never existed.

Ali

Is that not Brexit !

LukeG

Brexit is being implemented by the government, not local government.

You can't polish the momentum turd.