No Room at Camden Council’s Inn December 1, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Politics , 2 commentsThe grandeur of the new St Panacras station sits side by side with one of the most deprived areas of London, Somers Town. Walk away from champagne and Eurostar, and its not hard to find people in very difficult circumstances. The drug dealers and hookers have mostly been moved on to other areas, but the vulnerable are still there if you look.
Every year, my friend Dom spends his Christmas working for Crisis Open Christmas, a charity which provides for the homeless and inadequately housed at Christmas time. It’s a rewarding and useful way to spend the week, giving him a lot of personal satisfaction while doing some good that’s much more in keeping with the Christmas spirit than the normal rounds of presents and parties.
Crisis operate these centres all around London, and this year, the Wellcome Trust offered a building on Euston Rd. That sounds ideal, given that a short walk around Eversholt St or St Pancras church will dispel any notions that homelessness has disappeared from Camden.
Why then, when Crisis asked Camden council for their support, did Camden turn them down? They weren’t asking much, because Crisis and it’s volunteers will do all the work, and even clean up afterwards and take people back to where they came from. But Camden Council are not prepared to support this.
I asked one of our local ward councillors about it. I know he’s concerned about housing in this area, and he’d heard nothing of it. A little further digging in the council, and I find myself in possession of an extraordinary and spinechilling document - a Council briefing paper prepared by the Acting Assistant Director (Needs and Access), Karen Swift.
It seems that Camden Council have a low opinion of Crisis, based on a fairly outdated understanding of the service they offer. These days, homelessness isn’t just about rough sleepers, but about those who have no secure housing, who move from sofa to friend’s floor, and those who, although offered a place in a hostel cannot take it up. Often these people have enormous mental health issues and aren’t easily brought into the system. Crisis is at least as aware of that as Camden Council. Crisis Open Christmas helps them to get the help they need, in a way that works with how they are, rather than through ‘targets’ and ‘tasking’ which may have little relevance to chaotic lives.
Don’t get me wrong. My experience of living in a council-owned flat and being involved with the District Management Committee for Housing in Somers Town has given me a high opinion of many of those involved in housing services in Camden, but the Council has got it wrong here.
Sadly, I suspect the nub of the reason for Camden Council’s rejection is in their statement that the Kings Cross area is ’sensitive’ due to recently reopened St Pancras, and that there is an unspecified but small rise in ’street activity’. Does this just mean that the Council is worried about all those unsightly homeless people who are out of Camden’s ‘control’ showing up near the posh new station?
It’s not clear where responsibility for this decision lies, but I can only ask the Council to change their mind. Every year, Crisis do excellent work with some of the most vulnerable in our society. If Christmas means anything, we must support them.
Kerblog, drawing Beirut June 1, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging, Politics , add a commentI first came across Kerblog during the war in Lebanon last summer. His succinct, poignant drawings seemed to say more about those sad events than the reams of newsprint. Put him on your rss feed.
And today, I am worried that he is waiting for the bombs again.
Technorati Tags: beirut, kerblog
Leave the Jet Planes August 27, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment, Green in the City, Politics, Travel , add a commentThe trip to Pisa last week brought me face to face with the new security restrictions at airports and, for the first time, I find myself seriously reluctant to fly. Guilt has been mounting because of the impact flying has on the environment but travel, and my love of Greece and Italy, have always won.
Its certainly not fear of terrorism that’s done it, but the sheer misery of flying now. Rather than checking in online, and arriving at the airport less than an hour before the flight leaves, then waltzing off at the other end to bypass the luggage queues and get the first taxi off the rank, on Friday night, I queued for forty five minutes behind people with tiny bags to get to one of three security checkpoints open out of the six available. I watched people being told to throw away cosmetics, and a little four year old girl being frisked. The flight was about an hour late. On the way back, it was a similar story. Although Pisa airport were allowing normal amounts of hand luggage, they were not allowing liquids of any form through. That flight was just under two hours late.
The DTO, with their over-zealous regulations, and BAA with their obvious lack of contingency planning have done what fear of climate change has failed to do, and, I suspect, destroyed the short break market. All the airline investment in online checkin and enough handbaggage to go away for the weekend have come to nothing. The many people who take two or three weekends away a year may not be kicking up a fuss or cancelling their flights, but I bet they’re not booking them either.
Anecdotal evidence suggests business travellers are also reconsidering, and rethinking the practicality of trains for 4-6 hour trips, rather than just the very short ones. If flights are consistently delayed, and you need to be at the airport two hours before departure rather than one, Amsterdam is suddenly closer by train than by plane.
Longer holidays are probably not affected. If you were already going to check luggage in, and going for a couple of weeks, then an extra hour or two doesn’t matter so much. I suspect long-haul across the Atlantic, where you’re still not allowed to take a bottle of water even if it was bought airside, will become less popular for families.
The Green in me is pleased - air travel needs to be curtailed and if fear of climate change wasn’t enough to stop me then it wasn’t stopping many people. I will miss it though.
Technorati Tags: BAA, airport security, environment
Another Labour loans scandal brewing August 25, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a commentWhen opposition and government merge into one, and the mainstream media seem reluctant to challenge established power, a blogger like Guido Fawkes can be essential to keeping the government honest. I doubt our political opinions coincide, but he’s been ahead of the papers on the loans for peerages scandal and others, so he’s worth reading.
And if this is true, I and many other Green customers of smile, and the Cooperative Bank should be worried. Unity Trust Bank is a small bank, owned by the Cooperative Bank and trades unions, catering to the needs of charities, unions, credit unions and similar organisations, including at least one prominent environmental charity to which I regularly donate.
According to Fawkes, this tiny bank has lent rather more than 10% of its capital to the Labour Party - a loan which, in purely commercial terms, must be risky at best.
When I signed up with smile (part of the Cooperative Bank), it was because of its ethical policy and insistence on ensuring that its commercial customers were not up to anything I’d consider dubious, such as arms manufacture. I suppose if I’d thought about it, I’d have realised that the Labour Party was likely to bank with them, but I certainly wouldn’t expect a subsidiary of that ethical bank to be lending such large amounts of money to the Party given its financial state and the controversy surrounding its loans programme.
Technorati Tags: Cooperative Bank, Labour, Loans
Carnival of the Green #40 August 13, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment, Green in the City, Politics , 9 comments
Welcome to the Carnival of the Green on Camden Kiwi. This week, we have a pot-pourri of green ideas, issues and news from using solar energy in Alaska, to greywater in London and wind farms in the Western Isles as well as commentary on the environmental consequences of the war in Lebanon and attempts by climate change deniers to get their message across
The Carnival of the Green was created by City Hippy and Triple Pundit as a weekly round up of the green blogosphere. Last week, the Carnival was hosted by City Hippy, and next week it will be with FrugalForLife.
I wish the London and Camden authorities would take up some of the ideas used in Chicago John presents in Urban Greening posted at A DC Birding Blog. As I also live in the London / South East drought zone, I was very interested to see Tracy’s ideas at Eco Street
for ways of easily reusing your greywater. Most people I know have
water butts, but there has been so little rain this summer that these
are mostly empty now, so using bath and other waste water makes a lot
of sense.
Nick Aster looks at the bizare PR antics
of DCI group who pretend to be amateur videographers making fun of Al
Gore but actually come across as fools. The video Nick’s refering to
(and has a link for) is very poorly done, and the YouTube rating of 1
star after 2722 votes (2723 after I’d put in mine) says it all.
Riversider presents Preston Riverworks - A Guide to the Pro-Ribble Response posted at Save The Ribble!.
The Disillusioned Kid talks about the environmental consequences of the Israeli assault on lebanon
Greener Magazine follows up
on its previous examination of problems with the Alyeska Pipeline and
British Petroleum’s failure to adequately maintain their feeder lines.
Deirdre Helfferich at the Ester Republic is looking at ways of going solar, and in this post talks about providing natural lighting with a brief comparison of two natural lighting systems - the tubular skylight and the hybrid solar light. If people, in Ester, Alaska, can go solar, there’s no excuse for the rest of us.
In another Alaskan post, the Harbour Master at the Port of Valdez has some advice for recreational boaters, saying that clean boating practices will ensure favorite areas remain pristine and unspoiled for future trips.
Sally Kneidel, PhD, biologist and co-author of Veggie Revolution, writes about marine mammals encountered on a recent trip to Washington state and British Columbia. This is the first of several upcoming posts about Pacific coastal and marine wildlife and conservation issues.
City Hippy’s Edinburgh Editor, Katherine, brings us news of the positive effects of a wind farm up on an island off the West coast of Scotland. And if you can’t have a wind farm, Avant News presents a fabulous post showing how livestock and pets can be harnessed as an important new energy resource,
complete with pictures.
Joe Kissell presents Geodesic Domes: Interesting Thing of the Day posted at Interesting Thing of the Day, and explains the history and geometry of these structures.
Don Bosch over at The Evangelical Ecologist has some green thoughts on Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan in a post titled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
Armageddon is real August 9, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a commentWell, maybe.
Have a look at this, and tell me whether you want to laugh or cry. The Comedy Central show takes the mick out of the ‘End of Days’ types, but what’s frightening is just how many of these mainstream American news shows seem to take this stuff seriously.
A blog from Lebanon August 7, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a comment
Mazen Kerbaj is a musician / artist / poet in Beirut. Go and look - he says it all.
No Israel, the world does not back your Lebanon offensive July 27, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , 1 comment so farIsrael seems to have taken the outcome of the summit in Rome as a sign of support.
They are wrong. No matter how much sympathy I may have for their difficult position in the Middle East, bombing little children and innocent civilians is very very evil. Every soldier who fires a gun or aims a bomb which hits a child has done an evil thing. Those who order them to do so, those who supply the weapons they use and those who aid and abet them are the same.
If our leaders have given that message, then they most certainly do not speak for me. Or, for that matter, for Saga Lout and as people respond to this, it will perhaps become obvious that they don’t speak for many. By the way, I’ve no idea, after I post this entry, what other people will say about the article.
Perspectives on Lebanon July 22, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a commentI suppose its to be expected, but it’s clear that the US is letting Israel have a free hand to do whatever it wants to do to Lebanon, including rearming them, as this report in the NY Times discusses. The BBC picks this up very briefly, and I can’t find any mention of it on Al Jazeera yet.
Coverage of today’s raids, including the taking of Maroun al-Ras and the bombing of TV stations, varies somewhat between these three well-respected new sites.
The BBC emphasises the humanitarian crisis , and talks about the numbers killed on both sides.
The NY Times talks more about the plans to send Condoleeza Rice, and is only precise about Israeli casualties, with ‘numbers’ of Hezbollah and Lebanese killed or injured. It’s the only one to suggest that Lebanese Christians whose TV station was destroyed by Israeli bombers actually blame Hezbollah
Al-Jazeera has its journalists further into southern Lebanon than the other two, and reports more precisely on the effects on both sides. It also has more information on the US position than the BBC, and the US position is a vital element of this.
It seems that if you want a better understanding of what is going on in Lebanon, and the geopolitical forces around it, it’s worth reading all these sources. There are differences, but more of emphasis and perspective than outright bias. Al Jazeera clearly has an advantage in its ability to get its journalists right into the frontline, in a way that would perhaps be harder for the BBC and certainly for the NY Times. The NY Times is writing for an American audience, and it may have a better ability to get into the corridors of power there. The BBC seems a little off base with this, perhaps writing for a home audience that is as concerned about the British evacuation as the war itself.
Back to Greece June 23, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a commentBy the time you read this, through the miracle of wordpress scheduled postings, I expect to be sitting in a taverna by the sea, with a carafe of wine at my side. My favourite client is sending me off to Athens to talk to a supplier, so I’m staying for the weekend to explore the Argolid.
Mycenae, with the tombs of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, the great theatre at Epidaurus, passing through Corinth and staying at Nafplion.
I remember the first time I went to Greece. It was another work trip, and I’d visited four islands in as many days, in a cold, blustery March. I arrived, exhausted and hungry, to discover that I’d been booked into a grotty hotel in the red light district, where the 
restaurant closed at the ridiculous (and very un-Greek) hour of 9pm. I got a couple of chocolate bars from a vending machine and went up to the room. The wiring looked dodgy, and the bathroom had definitely seen better days.
I opened the curtains, looked out to the building next door and then up. And there, lit in splendour, was the Acropolis. Pure magic.
