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Coldharbour Lane, Brixton - news and updates

Cold Harbour said:
Not the first post I was expecting to do but....yes- huge house fire on E side of Northlands Street. Many fire engines etc. People walked to ambulances so hopefully nobody hurt. One poor guy in bare feet and wrapped in a sheet. Helicopter was there to light the back gardens I think.
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The helicopters became part of my paranoid nightmares last night. Hope you're right and nobody hurt.
 
stethoscope said:
Y'know, we have plenty of posters across urban who have different perspectives and politics than the predominant outlook, yet they're part of the community here and are able to have a proper discussion and respect for others even when disagreement can at times get quite heated.

The Brixton forum in the last couple of years though has really become victim to a handful of posters that aren't even this, but just cheap point score, attack long-time posters, wear down Ed with nasty bile, and derail threads which document a time of massive social and economic change for this part of London. Have some fucking respect for the place some of you.
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If you think that there was a halycon era when everything was sweetness and light then you should waste an afternoon and read some old threads from the Brixton forum.
 
alcopop said:
If you think that there was a halycon era when everything was sweetness and light then you should waste an afternoon and read some old threads from the Brixton forum.
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That wasn't really what I said though. Robust discussion is part of this place (hey, I don't see you lot come over to the P&P forum much because you'd get pulled apart at times), but this shit that a few of you do now isn't even that. It's just tedious trolling of Ed and other long-time posters, and the whole thread usually of an important topic gets utterly derailed.
 
stethoscope said:
That wasn't really what I said though. Robust discussion is part of this place (hey, I don't see you lot come over to the P&P forum much because you'd get pulled apart at times), but this shit that a few of you do now isn't even that. It's just tedious trolling of Ed and other long-time posters, and the whole thread usually of an important topic gets utterly derailed.
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More easy arguments playing to the authority of 'long-time posters' or the supposed brilliance of the thought in whatever the P&P forum is. And then the classic trolling claim.

What I see is a questioning of dubious assertions on the subject of change, gentrification and community - questioning which is met with sneers and smears.
 
Gramsci said:
I was at a meeting about LJ on Thursday.

Said I was concerned the way "consultation" was used.

Specifically the consultation on the Brixton Central Masterplan. Where we are not told about NRs plans. That one officer had told me that we had signed up to this as people agreed that arches be improved.

My point I said was the danger of attending Council consultation events is the way that the Council could interpret results. I wanted clarity about wording of docs. Also the Council to be clear about its preferred options at the outset. Rather than trying to persuade people at consultation events that a certain option would be best whilst appearing to be just trying to get our views.

In LJ case I was concerned about the Adventure playground in LJ and the way that people were "consulted" about this.

My what I thought reasonably put comments did not go down at all well with officers or Cllr present.

The Cllr present actually said the arches in Atlantic road need doing up.

Like you I did not use emotive language. But the airing of concerns like this does not go down well.
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Our councillors and council officers are well aware that their "consultations" are invariably tick-box exercises on their part, engineered to produce the result that the council wants. What they don't like is us indicating that we're aware that it's all a sham.
I'm currently transcribing one and a half hours' worth of conversation with council officers and the councillor I previously mentioned. There are a few howlers, as well as a couple of things that would, I suspect, cause widespread disgust if I published the audio on-line. I'm very tempted to do so, purely on the basis of exposing the leprous scum for what they are.
 
CH1 said:
I think attending consultations is a bit of a Catch 22 situation.

The way consultations are done at the moment, the risk is that you will turn up, voice your opinion, and then in the consultant's write up (and they do normally seem to be conducted by consultancy firms acting on behalf of the council) your contribution is ignored or voided by a gloss in favour of what the council wanted in the first place (usually for financial reasons).

On the other had if you don't attend, there is no way your voice will be heard.
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Or - increasingly - they selectively cite you, divorcing your comment from the original context. here at Cressingham we've seen some of that.
 
leanderman said:
What do you think it means?
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According to my mate Chris (theologian), it means "Let G-d cast the first stone", as we're all supposedly born as sinners (doctrine of Original Sin), and only the Guy with the Beard a) wasn't born, and b) is without sin. That seems like a fairly good free-standing explanation to me, but he also tied it to the surrounding text, too.
 
leanderman said:
More easy arguments playing to the authority of 'long-time posters' or the supposed brilliance of the thought in whatever the P&P forum is. And then the classic trolling claim.

What I see is a questioning of dubious assertions on the subject of change, gentrification and community - questioning which is met with sneers and smears.
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I don't know why you're defending that minority of idiots tbh - they seem utterly incapable of putting some decent opposing arguments about the socio-economic issues related to gentrification and capital, or the change that's happening. That's why they seem to spend most of their time just making sly digs and derailing. Unless there's some sort of guilt by association going on because they're your mates irl or something I really don't know.

FWIW, and it'll possibly sound condescending even though I don't mean it too, I've always thought you a really decent poster, and especially given that you (and rushy too) find yourself on the end of the firing line at times here because of your business interests, I think that says a lot and always felt you both offered a lot of constructive stuff to the place.

I don't know. I'll leave it there. But I think just a handful of posters are really fucking up this forum (not because of opinion difference, but because of attitude) and they'd have been banned over time if they'd tried it elsewhere on urban.
 
bimble said:
So glad you at least tried to bring up the issue of the 'distortion' of consultation data. I'm looking forward to reading the minutes of the meeting even though of course, those will be written by someone who may omit bits by mistake..

The Grove Adventure Playground is so stark an example of this that to be honest I've been scared to fully engage with it because I think I'll just get so angry that all I end up achieving is messing up my own little life for a few months whilst changing nothing at all.
But really glad you at least raised the question of that claim they made that "many people" said they were in favour of bulldozing the playground and replacing it with a block of flats.
Transparency / honesty in how consultation is carried out and then how the results are presented would be a huge help but I suspect the culture of twisting the facts to fit the desired outcome is so deeply engrained that changing it would require some sort of massive overhaul of how things work.
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Consultation isn't about eliciting viewpoints, so honesty and transparency go out the window. Councils attempt to insulate themselves from claims of bias by employing consultants, but as they set the remit and pay the bill, most transactions are only a simulacrum of honesty - at best.
As for selective quotation in minutes, been there, seen that, upset councillors by calling attention to it. :)
 
alcopop said:
If you think that there was a halycon era when everything was sweetness and light then you should waste an afternoon and read some old threads from the Brixton forum.
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Argument was more - for want of a better word - honest back then, even during the period that hatboy was a moderator and took it upon himself to edit posts that he didn't agree with.
 
leanderman said:
More easy arguments playing to the authority of 'long-time posters' or the supposed brilliance of the thought in whatever the P&P forum is. And then the classic trolling claim.

What I see is a questioning of dubious assertions on the subject of change, gentrification and community - questioning which is met with sneers and smears.
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But you would see that, wouldn't you? You're predisposed to.
 
leanderman said:
What I see is a questioning of dubious assertions on the subject of change, gentrification and community - questioning which is met with sneers and smears.
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If there was a golden era I missed it by a long way but anyhow, I'm totally up for the questioning of dubious assertions of all sorts, and I'm really interested in people taking a serious look at those words you list up there (gentrification , community etc) but slanging matches between posters and endless debates about the price of football versus cocktails is completely boring far as I can see.

Anecdata:
I met a lovely old bloke yesterday, whose lived in Brixton on and off since 1958 (born here Jamaican heritage) - he told me a really mixed bunch of 'once upon a time in Brixton' stories, not all positive by a long way - and his response when I asked him how he feels about the changes now was not simple at all, he said he hates the term 'social cleansing' which he's hearing bandied about, and he singled out the NR development of the arches and a few other specific things that he's not happy with at all but also picked out positives.
 
Last edited:
We tried the newish pizza place Mamma Dough today. It was quite good - on a par with Pizzeria Pellone in Herne Hill but slightly different in that the bases are thinner and crispier. It's a little bit more expensive as well - £40 including service for two pizzas, a glass of wine, a (craft) beer and two lattes.
 
Ms T said:
We tried the newish pizza place Mamma Dough today. It was quite good - on a par with Pizzeria Pellone in Herne Hill but slightly different in that the bases are thinner and crispier. It's a little bit more expensive as well - £40 including service for two pizzas, a glass of wine, a (craft) beer and two lattes.
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Yeah I've been there, really good place I thought.
 
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