WANTED… Have you seen this person?

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Stephan Schulte

David Kelly Continuing the Bulletin Board's commitment to support our local police, we will periodically be publishing appeals for help from local residents.

Have you seen the person pictured.  Officers from the Islington Wanted Offenders Unit are appealing for information from the public to trace a man wanted for breach of his prison licence.

David Kelly is a white male aged 26 years (Dob 27/04/84).

The Probation Service has revoked his licence as he is alleged to have been involved in further offences.

Members of the public are advised not to approach him.

 If he is seen please call Detective Sergeant Chris Collinson on 020 7421 0157. If you wish to remain anonymous you can call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. In an emergency dial 999.

Posted in Anti Social Behaviour, Crime etc | Leave a comment

Camden returns to Labour control

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Clare Hill

6a00d8345162e169e20133ed5fa20d970b-120wi Results in Camden Council have mirrored those in Islington, it's Labour all over in King's Cross and beyond. In King's Cross ward Abdul Hai and Jonathan Simpson have retained their seats, and Sarah Hayward is the new Labour kid on the block.

The Lib Dem-Tory administration lasted one term.

South of the Borough is a reinforced Labour stronghold, with the lone blue dot in Bloomsbury now in red.

Here's a game of counting coloured pins on the map:

Labour 30
Lib Dem 10
Conservative 10
Green 1

A bad result indeed for the Lib Dems, with a loss of 14 seats, the Conservatives 2. The three missing seats are those of Haverstock ward, which will have a by-election on May 25.

Are we all electioned-out now, sick of numbers and swingometers and ready for some rest over the weekend? Brave new world on Monday. Or not.

Clare Hill

Posted in Current Affairs, Democracy and Elections | Leave a comment

Labour hold in Holborn and St Pancras

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Clare Hill

6a00d8345162e169e20133ed5fa20d970b-120wi Labour's Frank Dobson has again retained his seat in Holborn and St Pancras. He has been in place since 1979. He returns with a slightly increased majority, albeit with a 0.4% swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats. 

A vote of confidence for democracy — an extra 20,000 people voted this time round.

Here's a breakdown of the figures from the BBC:

Name Party Votes % +/-
Frank Dobson Labour 25,198 46.1 +1.0
Jo Shaw Liberal Democrat 15,256 27.9 +1.8
George Lee Conservative 11,134 20.4 -0.5
Natalie Bennett Green 1,480 2.7 -4.8
Robert Carlyle British National Party 779 1.4 +1.4
Max Spencer UK Independence Party 587 1.1 +1.1
John Chapman Independent 96 0.2 +0.2
Mikel Susperregi English Democrats 75 0.1 +0.1
Iain Meek Independent 44 0.1 +0.1
Majority 9,942 18.2
Turnout 54,649 62.9 +9.7

Clare Hill

Posted in Current Affairs, Democracy and Elections | Leave a comment

Labour regain full control of Islington Council

Posted on May 7, 2010 by William Perrin

BallotboxIn a massive reversal Labour has regained total control of Islington Council with a strong majority.  The Council website has a map of the result, although sadly the map makes the result harder to understand by not telling you what the majority is.

A bit of sleep deprived addition though was says that Labour has 35 seats and the Lib Dems 13.  Hopefully some full statistics will be up in the next few days.

The big challenge for any council now will be to manage inevitable spending cuts while still delivering essential services.

My big hope for Kings Cross is that we can get a co-ordinated and targetted resources for youth work and long term commitment to tackle the factors leading to so much tragic crime in recent years. 

Posted in Democracy and Elections | Leave a comment

Labour hold Caledonian Ward, look set to take full control of Islington Council

Posted on May 7, 2010 by William Perrin

BallotboxLabour have retained control of Caledonian Ward.  The council website says:

At 2.45pm, the Returning Officer announced the results for the Caledonian ward. The following councillors were elected:

Rupert Perry, The Labour Party Candidate, with 2, 540 votes
Paul Edmond Convery, The Labour Party Candidate, with 2,503 votes
Charlynne Mari Chantal Pullen, The Labour Party Candidate, with 2,245 votes

Congratulations and welcome back to Paul and Rupert and welcome to Charlynne.  Labour also look set to take control of the council overall, both on the basis of the results so far and an informal tally by Labour councillors.  If Labour do take control Paul Convery predicted that he might become executive member for planning etc.  Will report further when more detailed results are available.

Posted in Democracy and Elections | Leave a comment

Labour hold Islington South and Finsbury with increased majority

Posted on May 7, 2010 by William Perrin

Ballot EmilyThornberry MP has retained her seat in Kings Cross with an increased majority. Congratulations to Emily and her team.  Commiserations also to those who fought hard but did not prevail.

The following table is reproduced from the BBC website:

vote, percent, change

Emily Thornberry Labour 18,407 42.3 +2.4
Bridget Fox Liberal Democrat 14,838 34.1 -4.2
Antonia Cox Conservative 8,449 19.4 +4.6
James Humphreys Green 710 1.6 -3.1
Rose-Marie McDonald UK Independence Party 701 1.6 +0.1
John Dodds English Democrats 301 0.7 +0.7
Richard Deboo Animals Count 149 0.3 +0.3
Majority 3,569 8.2
Turnout 43,555 64.4

+10.8
Posted in Democracy and Elections | Leave a comment

Jim Geddes Collection – weekly auction

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Stephan Schulte

Two new pieces are now available for auction on ebay from Jim's Collection

Jim Geddes, local King's Cross resident who died in 2009, left an extraordinary body of sculpture, ceramics, paintings, drawings and textiles in the house he lived in for some 30 years – 24 Caledonian Road.  The work was all collected by local resident Bob Stuckey and now will be sold to Jim's fans and friends via auction on ebay every 7 days with bidding starting at £7 per piece and ending around 7pm on Sunday. 

Both works are on display in the window at 24 Caledonian Road beside Peter and Tony's Barbershop. This week's pieces are as follows:

Schizoid Being 1 (drawing)  Melting Female Figure  (sculpture)  By clicking the link above you will go right to the auction page on eBay.

Schizoidbeing1      Meltingfemalefigure

For more about Jim's work please go to www.atelier-geddes.org.

If you would like to keep abreast of future auctions, please contact local resident Bob Stuckey who will add you to his mailing list.

Posted in King's Cross People | Leave a comment

How many people look at this local website?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by William Perrin

Kingscrossenvironmentwebstats This site reaches around 400 people a day with news and information about Kings Cross. The chart shows daily page views from 2006 to 2010 smoothed using a three month rolling average, which also removes some seasonal variation.

Two posts by Stephan and and Sophie recording a fire on the roof of Kings Place with dramatic photos were the most popular with 1372 views on that day.  The photos were later rerun in the Islington Gazette. There was another peak of 766 views on 12 Feburary 2009 either on a post that day on a licensing application for the Brill restaurant or a post a day or so previously on Billy Bragg playing at Tolpuddle Kings Cross.  A further spike of 780 views on 12 September 2009 when Stephan posted on the fate of the Kings Cross gas holders.

In the year from May 2009-May 2010 the site averaged 283 page views per day with a further 300 people per day receiving email subscriptions via the RSS feed.  The page view average is about the same as in 2008-2009 – 281.  In its first year from June 2006-June 2007 the site averaged 49 page views per day.  Sitemeter records between 1.5 and 1.8 page views per visit suggesting between 156 and 188 unique visitors per day (as i type Sitemeter is misbehaving so i can't get the precise numbers – will update idc).  Overall this is a typical ess-curve growth pattern with a mature site at the top of the curve.

In addition to page views, email subscribers have grown steadily since inception in November 2006 – people get an email from the RSS feed with the updates for every 24 hour period – if there are no updates, there is no email.  This is an automated service run by Feedburner, now owned by Google.   We now have 319 subscribers.

I don't claim to be a great expert on the dark art of web stats so any constructive comments are welcome if you see a mistake or would interpret this differently.

Posted in Weblogs | Leave a comment