“Planning Alerts” takes on The Royal Mail – but needs our help.

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Stephan Schulte

Logo Planning Alerts (www.planningalerts.com) is one of those focused internet services that really fills a great function.  You simply register your post code and they send you an email with information about any Planning Application in your immediate area.  I've been signed on for some time and it allows me to keep abreast of what's going on in my immediate area.

Unfortunately this neat service is now under threat of legal action from the Royal Mail:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7700621.stm

They have circulated a message to their users which states: We are left with the choice of paying the Royal Mail up to £4,000 a year for access to the postcode database and either running a much less accurate and useful service or shutting PlanningAlerts down altogether.

They have requested those who use their service to take one or more of the following actions.  (I have already signed the petition and hope that by circulating this to the readers of the Community Bulletin Board (Emily Thornberry-MP, Paul Convery, Rupert Perry and Lisa Spall – our Councillors, and other local notables), I can ask for your support on this issue as well.

Of course individuals can help as well and I would suggest considering the following:

— Write to your MP —

Tom Watson MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling on the Royal Mail to allow non-profit organisations to use the postcode database for free. Please write to your MP asking them to sign this Early Day Motion (number EDM 2000) and protest at the actions of The Royal Mail.

You can write to your MP here: http://marples.writetothem.com/

— Sign the petition —

Nearly 1,200 people have so far signed a petition on the Prime Minister's website, please add your name: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nfppostcodes/

Planning Alerts is a great, and very useful service – check it out – and join yourself.

Posted in Planning, Licensing and Regulation | 1 Comment

Local art exhibtion on Kings Cross in transition – ‘Remember Me’

Posted on October 9, 2009 by William Perrin

Coal and FishAnne Howeson a local artist has done some fascinating work on the huge transition Kings Cross is going thorugh right now.  Her show, 'Remember Me'  is on until Sunday 18th October at the Guardian Kings Place.

Anne sent the following:

'Exhibition of drawings: Remember Me – King’s Cross in Transition – At the Guardian Newspaper Kings Place from 29/09/09 to 18/10/09

For some time, I have been working on a series of drawings which document the neighbourhood of King’s Cross as it goes through transition. I’ve lived off Copenhagen Street, near King’s Cross, for years, often using it as a starting point for work. The dilapidated shop fronts of the Caledonian road were some of the earliest work, and the prostitutes – as seen in Neil Jordan’s film Mona Lisa – who used to stand in Goods Way. I love the mix of communities and cultures.

The drawings I’m making now aren’t so much a representational document, as an attempt to remember the past as it connects with the present and future. Many of the buildings have an untouched charm, evoking the early Victorian Industrial Age. You can almost feel the presence of the literary figures who used to live here: Blake, Dickens, Wollstonecraft and Godwin. However, over the next ten years this sense of the past will merge into 21st century Kings Cross/St Pancras, creating something quite different. As a resident, I feel displaced, but at the same time excited, by the implications of this architectural transformation, and want to record the blending of the old and new worlds as the metamorphosis takes place.'

Posted in Arts and Entertainment | 1 Comment

Bad parking by Vaultex in Kings Cross

Posted on October 7, 2009 by William Perrin

Oct 2009 signage 004Parking is always tricky in Kings Cross and people who live in the area often have to come up with imaginative solutions. Most people who work here use the excellent public transport.

The large Vaultex cash handling facility on the Caledonian Road has its own substantial yard where the armoured cars come and go.  And there is no excuse for allowing its staff to park like this, even if it is within the company curtilage. 

But this isn't the first time that Vaultex has irritated residents.  At the end of last year, Lisa Tang noticed that several big stainless steel planters had appeared on the pavement.  We learned in the comments on that post from Cllr Convery that the Bank of England had designated the cash handling centre as some sort of security priority and the planters were in fact anti vehicle devices.  No one in the area had been told they were living next door to kind of target.

This is a profitable business in a trade that, these days is a bit inconguous in Kings Cross – it would be nice to see Vaultex making some sort of community contribution – perhaps to local environmental initiatives or local childrens charities like CYP and Sparkplug.  Maybe they do, but just keep it quiet.

Posted in Anti Social Behaviour, Crime etc | 8 Comments

King’s Place Goes Before West Area Planning Committee for Variance

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Stephan Schulte

 

Outside_area

As those of you who follow the reports of the Bulletin Board will remember, King’s Place (90 York Way) has filed an application for Variation of condition 6 (hours of operation) pursuant to planning permission P032145 to allow the A3/A4 uses to operate from 08.00 to midnight on any day.  For more background on what this is all about please click here for the orignal posting.

This matter mainly affects those folks who live around Battlebridge Basin and has generated concern and prompted a number of letters of objection due to potential use of the outside space surrounding the complex.  The matter will now be decided at the West Area Planning Sub-Committee due to meet 12 October, so interested parties should plan to attend.  For further information, you can download the Officer’s Report, which recommends Approval of this Application, but with Conditions – Download Officers_report_to_West_Area_Planning_Committee

The meeting will take place at 7:30 at the Islington Town Hall on Upper Street on 12 Oct.

Posted in Planning, Licensing and Regulation | Leave a comment

Find out what is going on in Kings Cross railways lands redevelopment – meeting Monday evening

Posted on October 4, 2009 by William Perrin

German_Gymnasium_London A very useful meeting on Monday evening (today if you are reading this in the email out) for anyone who lives in the Kings Cross area – the Kings Cross Development forum is a good place to keep in touch with the major developments in rebuilding the area. 

On Monday evening Robert Evans from Argent will update and take questions on what is happening with the huge building site behind the station, stretching back up York Way.  How have the financial travails affected the build out, will it ever be finished, what's next etc.  The meeting will also decide whether the Forum continues. 

Where? German Gym. When 7pm – till 9pm at latest. Monday October 5.

Find out more on this very handy website, message from the KXDF Chair Geoffrey Roper follows:

>

Things are happening at Kings Cross Central. Not quite the programme expected. But still going. Should the Kings Cross Development Forum still keep going?  If you think it should, be there on Monday October 5th and bring your friends. If you can't come that evening, make sure your organisation is represented then. To stay away is to vote against continuing the Forum.

Robert Evans, Director of Agent (Kings Cross) Ltd will be there to speak on what is actually happening on the Kings Cross site and what will be. Against a very changed business background this is going to be an interesting transition and will give further opportunities for community input.

Argent are hosting us in the Ravenstein Board Room of the German Gym. Have a look at the model of the Kings Cross Central site before coming to the board room where tea and coffee will be available on arrival.

Let's have a positive discussion and elect a co-ordinating group to take us forward. Otherwise the Forum will wither.

Geoffrey Roper
Chair

Where? German Gym. When 7pm – till 9pm at latest. Monday October 5.

Posted in Planning, Licensing and Regulation | Leave a comment

Food for body and soul

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Sophie Talbot
PPP1 by Simon Dale for remotegoat
Pint, Plate Performance at Central Station, King's Cross – all for £7? Surely not.

Three Person'd God, a monologue written by Craig Jordan Baker and performed by Sophie Talbot kicked off the evening. It was a philosophical examination of a woman, an actress, playing three roles – an activist, a barren woman (her label, not mine) and an actress – which increasingly bleed into one another so that she (and we) are left increasingly uncertain as to who the real person is, where one role stops and another begins: which is reality, which is performance. Set in an unnamed dystopia, it also raises questions of state versus individual and the struggle of the human spirit in the face of sweeping state tyranny. Performed with passion and fluency, Sophie Talbot's portrayal of the woman came alive most in the third section as she shifted from the stage to the wings of the audience and delivered her third role in which all roles blurred into one, evoking a powerful sense of personal dislocation and isolation.

PPP2 Next up was Sally Beaumont with her piece The Other Side of Everything which, as with Craig Jordan Baker's short play, delighted in and revered the richness of language. Introduced by Sally Beaumont performing as the writer, the play mused upon language and communication, with particular focus on the inadequacy of language within relationships, in this case a young couple who were then brought to life with gusto by Helen Jessica Liggat and Matthew Betteridge, immediately injecting humour and energy into what was essentially a relatively prosaic exchange that most couples in the audience seemed to recognise. It was a deft depiction of the divide between (in this case) genders and more widely, humans. Language can be as much a barrier as a tool for understanding. 

Neither play offered a traditional narrative structure or conclusion, though this was deliberate rather than the result of fudgy writing or direction. Sometimes, though, you can be too esoteric at the expense of narrative, too wedded to the search for assonance and rhyme, or reclaiming oft-neglected words; it can become to laboured, too self-conscious, weighing the writing down rather than letting it take flight. This wasn't the case here, but there was the odd moment I felt it was in danger of reaching that tipping point.

PPP3 An elderly gentleman next to me confided that it wasn't his cup of tea, though he went on to say that he had thought it was drag act night at Central Station. I took his point, however, which was, as he explained, that he wanted something a bit more immediate, less intellectual. Unlike a previous incarnation of the evening I have seen from this company, Tuesday night was more experimental, less easy entertainment that the outright comedy I had seen before. His point was that in a pub atmosphere, a little background noise from surrounding venues now and then rearing its head, belly-laugh comedy is a more natural fit. I think there's room for both.

So the evening gave food for thought and then some rousing traditional celtic folk music from The Northern Celts to round off the night.

I didn't sample the actual food, as I had a dodgy tum (which didn't stop me sampling the pint, which I can report was very satisfactory), but judging from the empty plates around me it seemed to go down well. £7 for a pint, a plate and an evening of entertainment – hard to beat.

The writers are part of The Lucky Dogs playwrights' collective.
Posted in Arts and Entertainment | Leave a comment

Kings Cross lumberjacks ok?

Posted on October 1, 2009 by William Perrin

Tree hit by vehicle wharfdale Rd

Another day, another treee gets wiped out in Kings Cross. I lived on Wharfdale Road in 1995-96 when it was a grim place.   Work by residents often led by John Ashwell has masively improved this busy road, with tree planting and road narrowing.  Now one of the established trees has been wiped out.

Cllr Convery has copied me in on the following correspondence with council officers:

Officer: A vehicle has struck a semi-mature tree growing on Wharfedale Rd N1, at the junction with Northdown St.

The roots were too badly damaged to save the tree, so we have felled it and will add the location to this winter’s tree planting list.

Cllr: This tree was not accidentally "struck" by a vehicle at all. It's been pushed over by some idiot in a large van who probably over-shot when realising that he was about to enter a one-way street the wrong way.
 
This tree was not exactly a sapling. As you say, it was semi-mature. John Ashwell and others on Wharfedale Road will be rightly furious because I recollect this was one of the trees planted using money they raised.
 
Please can you assure me that any replacement tree will be of the same size and maturity?

UPDATE

Response from officer

Dear Cllr Convery,

Thanks for your update on this matter, and thanks to Patrick for
bringing the whole matter to all our attention.

I am very grateful for the information you were able to add, do you have
any details on the vehicle that pushed the tree over?

All too often vehicle strikes cause exactly this kind of damage,
knocking trees over and then simply driving away before anyone has time
to record the information, but it really is quite appalling to hear that
someone has actually hit the tree, pushed the tree over and then driven
away!

That certainly seems to go beyond merely careless in my view.

This is particularly upsetting given the fact that the local community
has made such contributions and significant efforts in the planting of
trees in the area.

I will contact the police with any further details that anyone can
provide and ask them for help in tracking down the party responsible.
This also constitutes criminal damage.

The treeservice will always pursue those responsible for damaging our
trees whether deliberately or through a lack of care, and where possible
the costs of tree removal and replacement will be borne by those
responsible.

As [colleague] noted, this tree will be replaced during this Winter, though
the replacement tree will take some time to reach the size of the one
that was lost.

We will of course plant the largest tree we can physically fit in this
location, but unfortunately planting a semi mature tree in the normal
street environment is not possible.

The treeservice are currently locating positions for new trees, and tree
pits are being dug in preparation for planting later this year.

We will also look for other suitable locations in the area, including on
Wharfdale Road and Northdown Street.

The planting season runs from November to March, and we'll be planting
more trees in Islington streets than ever before, continuing to increase
the total number of street trees for the seventh consecutive year.

It's a real shame that this tree has been lost through such
irresponsible and dangerous behaviour; I encourage anyone with any more
details on this matter to please let me know,

Posted in Anti Social Behaviour, Crime etc | 2 Comments

Tiber Gardens open space – chance to put your views in writing too

Posted on September 29, 2009 by William Perrin

Tibergardensjpg

Tiber Gardens has the potential to be a lovely spot once more next to the canal.  You can sit on a bench there in the sun and watch desperate Guardian journalists in the office building opposite scrabble frantically to sell advertising or observe the high speed spinning on the spot of their columnists (which should be harnessed as an alternative power source).  Until the sun goes behind their huge building of course, when it gets dark and chilly (especially in winter when low in the sky).

If you couldn't make it to the consultation day on the future of Tiber Gardens we advertised last week you can send some views in writing.  The Council's PR firm has supplied one of those hideous forms they specialise in.  Which I am not going to post here.  Instead I suggest writing an email to

kirsten.hulstein@localdialogue.com

and, if you feel inclined answer the following questions:

Islington Greenspace has acquired the open space from Homes for Islington and our aim is to
create an open and accessible space.

Are you a…?
Tiber Gardens resident
Canal user
Other (please state)

Can you name a good/bad example of a public space?

Why is this a good/bad example?

What would make you use this space more?

What kinds of things would you like to see in the space?
Tables and benches
Allotments
Flowerbeds
A water feature
Other (please state)

Do you think that improvements to Tiber Gardens green space would be a good thing for the local community?

Do you have any further comments

Posted in Wildlife and Nature | 1 Comment