Donnachadh
McCarthy was at the SE5 Forum AGM tonight — in AOB he brought up the
fact that ‘Camberwell Orchard’ will be dug up to have a library built on
it. I am sorry, Donnachadh, that I did not back you up in the meeting.
I stood down as Vice Chair though. So now I can say a few things without confusing people by my being a representative of SE5 Forum as well as a person with views…
Also I now hear that Burgess Park actually cost £10,000,000, NOT the mere EIGHT million that so scraped me up the wrong way. I’ve been taking pictures all over the park of the snagging that needs doing by the way. Why do I do this? I ask myself. I don’t have an answer but I cannot help this, I’m NOT just griping out of ignorance, it just annoys me so much that there can be such profligate waste of public money being turned into results that are so meagre against the cost. I used to be a landscaper. I was trained in part by John Brookes, I worked with Dan Pearson and Cleve West. And I was deputy editor of the Society of Garden Designers quarterly magazine. Andin another life I used also to level and lay very large, hectares large, very flat playing fields for a living. And also I worked for a year on the restoration of a 1000 acre estate in Northumberland. And I designed and built and planted over fifty gardens entirely myself and project managed two Gardener’s World Live main show gardens at NEC. And a bit more besides.
AND MORE MONEY IS BEING SPENT NOW that could be put to much more effective use. A not inaccurate guess is around £2,000,000 for ‘the new library’.
It is widely accepted that the current library is not suitable and a much better facility is needed. HOORAY We ALL agree on something at last. Apparently consultation has shown that We all, the majority, are perfectly happy with the notion of a new library being built in front of the courts. I do not believe for a minute that this consultation was done scientifically. It was a done deal. The councillors want to be able to say: ‘we said in our manifesto we’d do this that and the other for Camberwell. And we’re doing it’. That’s why this is happening. It’s got NOTHING to do with what is the best site, the best use of resources, nothing to do with anything other than local party politicking.
One of the mantras of councillors in these parts has always been that ‘we (the council) don’t have any land or buildings in Camberwell so there’s very little we can do to improve things’. This illogical, irrational and factually incorrect statement has been trotted out for decades, literally, by our elected people of all political persuasions. It’s been fed to them by Officers who have problems with fiefdoms or is a reflection of some ‘planning guidebook written in the 1920’s that says something like ‘a town has to have the following physical ingredients and conditions in order for anything successful to happen in planning terms; blah blab blah and, Camberwell does not conform to the grand plan social engineering essentials stereotype so it’s not been dealt with for the last thirty years — or something like that.
Rubbish. There’s LOTS can be done in Camberwell and the council can steer influence guide and dictate a lot of what it wants but the fact is there’s no one there, nor has there been for decades, with a creative mind, the right kind of training, basic street wise nous or entrepreneurial flair and duck and dive sensibility that has ended up generating a vision for Camberwell that extends miopically beyond small scale short term disastrous dabbling around the edges. This has been going on for decades and has left Camberwell as we know it now. Full of betting shops, bad food takeaways and bookies.
So now there is going to be a new build library on the piazza in front of the Magistrates’ court. This will cost £two million and will altogether block out one of the few open spaces left in Camberwell, make a funnel pedestrian route out of an airy open space, cut off the Elmington estate from Camberwell Green, block the courts, and views from and to them, from Camberwell Green.
Think about this:
The developer for the JobCentre site OFFERED to BUILD THE LIBRARY FOR NO COST TO THE TAXPAYER. Southwark told them they weren’t interested. “We’ve got that all sorted” or something like that — BEFORE the ‘library consultation’ had even begun. The developer’s offer was NEVER mentioned during consultation. WAS IT? NO.
The consultation amounted to:
Do you want a library that’s new and shiny and open and airy and lovely? yes or no
Do you like to see green, or yellow, when you visit a library. etc.
WE are going to build the library on the square that’s just the right size for it. This is good isn’t it. Yes.
They are just going to ruin another bit of Camberwell for the next foreseeable future. YET AGAIN.
Democracy.
Bollocks.
I stood down as Vice Chair though. So now I can say a few things without confusing people by my being a representative of SE5 Forum as well as a person with views…
Also I now hear that Burgess Park actually cost £10,000,000, NOT the mere EIGHT million that so scraped me up the wrong way. I’ve been taking pictures all over the park of the snagging that needs doing by the way. Why do I do this? I ask myself. I don’t have an answer but I cannot help this, I’m NOT just griping out of ignorance, it just annoys me so much that there can be such profligate waste of public money being turned into results that are so meagre against the cost. I used to be a landscaper. I was trained in part by John Brookes, I worked with Dan Pearson and Cleve West. And I was deputy editor of the Society of Garden Designers quarterly magazine. Andin another life I used also to level and lay very large, hectares large, very flat playing fields for a living. And also I worked for a year on the restoration of a 1000 acre estate in Northumberland. And I designed and built and planted over fifty gardens entirely myself and project managed two Gardener’s World Live main show gardens at NEC. And a bit more besides.
AND MORE MONEY IS BEING SPENT NOW that could be put to much more effective use. A not inaccurate guess is around £2,000,000 for ‘the new library’.
It is widely accepted that the current library is not suitable and a much better facility is needed. HOORAY We ALL agree on something at last. Apparently consultation has shown that We all, the majority, are perfectly happy with the notion of a new library being built in front of the courts. I do not believe for a minute that this consultation was done scientifically. It was a done deal. The councillors want to be able to say: ‘we said in our manifesto we’d do this that and the other for Camberwell. And we’re doing it’. That’s why this is happening. It’s got NOTHING to do with what is the best site, the best use of resources, nothing to do with anything other than local party politicking.
One of the mantras of councillors in these parts has always been that ‘we (the council) don’t have any land or buildings in Camberwell so there’s very little we can do to improve things’. This illogical, irrational and factually incorrect statement has been trotted out for decades, literally, by our elected people of all political persuasions. It’s been fed to them by Officers who have problems with fiefdoms or is a reflection of some ‘planning guidebook written in the 1920’s that says something like ‘a town has to have the following physical ingredients and conditions in order for anything successful to happen in planning terms; blah blab blah and, Camberwell does not conform to the grand plan social engineering essentials stereotype so it’s not been dealt with for the last thirty years — or something like that.
Rubbish. There’s LOTS can be done in Camberwell and the council can steer influence guide and dictate a lot of what it wants but the fact is there’s no one there, nor has there been for decades, with a creative mind, the right kind of training, basic street wise nous or entrepreneurial flair and duck and dive sensibility that has ended up generating a vision for Camberwell that extends miopically beyond small scale short term disastrous dabbling around the edges. This has been going on for decades and has left Camberwell as we know it now. Full of betting shops, bad food takeaways and bookies.
So now there is going to be a new build library on the piazza in front of the Magistrates’ court. This will cost £two million and will altogether block out one of the few open spaces left in Camberwell, make a funnel pedestrian route out of an airy open space, cut off the Elmington estate from Camberwell Green, block the courts, and views from and to them, from Camberwell Green.
Think about this:
The developer for the JobCentre site OFFERED to BUILD THE LIBRARY FOR NO COST TO THE TAXPAYER. Southwark told them they weren’t interested. “We’ve got that all sorted” or something like that — BEFORE the ‘library consultation’ had even begun. The developer’s offer was NEVER mentioned during consultation. WAS IT? NO.
The consultation amounted to:
Do you want a library that’s new and shiny and open and airy and lovely? yes or no
Do you like to see green, or yellow, when you visit a library. etc.
WE are going to build the library on the square that’s just the right size for it. This is good isn’t it. Yes.
They are just going to ruin another bit of Camberwell for the next foreseeable future. YET AGAIN.
Democracy.
Bollocks.
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