Monday 29 April 2019

Picture: Isiah

This is a doodle I did during a pub quiz last night at the Artillery Arms. Some people said it looked like Jeremy Corbyn, someone else said it resembled our friend Jackie. It took me a minute to get the joke when Tim said it was a picture of Isiah, because "one eye's higher than the other". What compelled me to draw a man with a lopsided look on his face is a mystery. The words around the image are jottings from the questions quizmaster Pete was asking: "middleweight" is an anagram of "the wild midge" and Latvia's national anthem is called 'Bathe In The Blood Of The Fallen', apparently.

Thursday 25 April 2019

Picture: Bonnard study



I was bored on my first visit to the Bonnard exhibition at London's Tate Modern. The composition of his paintings looked as if they had been copied from a magazine design handbook. Maybe the handbooks des

Wednesday 3 April 2019

Column: April 2019

My hometown Liverpool is famous for many things – footballing greatness, pop music, comedy, the Grand National. It’s famous also for having two cathedrals: one is ancient, gothic and Anglican, the other modern(ish), metropolitan and Roman Catholic.

So when I arrived on Golden Lane many years ago to find it had two residents’ associations, nothing seemed odd. There was GLETA, the Golden Lane Tenants’ Association and GLOA, the Golden Lane Owner’s Association.

Back in the 1980s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher offered council tenants the right to buy their rented properties, and many on Golden Lane went for it. The estate thus became a mixture of tenants and owner-leaseholders, hence the two resident associations. It made sense at the time. The issues for the two groups of residents were different. 

But slowly their interests (maintenance, cleaning, privacy) came together and the two associations became one – GLERA, the Golden Lane Estate Residents Association. GLERA’s standing among residents is split. Some see it as a helpful negotiator and mediator in matters with the City Corporation; others see it as a self-important talking shop with its head in the clouds. There’s no joining fee and all new residents gain membership automatically, so there’s not much to lose by tagging along (contact: chair.glera@gmail.com).

A sign that GLERA has found its form as a residents’ champion came recently with the launch of its ‘Community Conversation’ initiative. Crime was the subject for the first meeting and residents got the chance to have frank talks with officials from both the police and the City Corporation about issues such as drug-dealing. Two of our ward councillors also turned up and another from Portsoken to tell us how Middlesex Street residents tackle problems. It was a great start to a new idea that has the potential to work well for all residents, be they tenants or owners.

Residents of Cuthbert-Harrowing House woke up one Friday recently with hope in their hearts and a spring in their step. The ugly colony of six steel container units that have sat outside their homes for what seems like forever were finally to be removed. The makeshift village was a fixture of the repair work that is in progress on the estate. The metal modules acted as offices, toilets and storage sheds for the contractors.

The removal of this implanted eyesore had already been signalled twice earlier with optimistic-sounding letters saying that parking on the estate for Removal Day was banned. Residents hastily re-scheduled deliveries or risked missing them altogether. Nevertheless, this most recent announcement seemed confidently to predict some kind of closure on what has been a testy time.

Friday morning arrived and silence hovered. By midday a heavy-duty crane-lorry and a flatbed transporter were in place. Men in high-vis jackets buzzed around, preparing to lift the burden of congestion that had festered for so long. One hour later they were gone, as was their butch machinery, but the six iron boxes stood exactly where they had the day before, and the day before that.

A week later residents got another letter (number 3) stating that the offending structures – by now satirically nicknamed ‘Cans’, as in Cannes – would disappear the following Tuesday. And when last week they eventually did go, the expected sense of relief and celebration disappeared with them, replaced by the flat feeling that an obnoxious guest had finally gone home.
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You’re never far from a quirk of history in the City of London, and one of the quirkiest is the annual wardmote, a strange ritual – outlined in both Charles Dickens’ ‘Sketches by Boz’ and in the last issue of City Matters by my colleague Ian McPherson – in which voters get to eyeball and question their elected representatives, whose honorific title is ‘councilmen’, regardless of gender.

The Cripplegate Wardmote takes place in a side room of the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall in Monkwell Square (motto: ‘How Would You Like It Cut?’). I was pleased this year to hear that most of the residents present were unhappy about the same things as me (public/private spaces, invisible councillors, the City Corporation’s anachronistic voting rules) and that nearly all of the key issues have been covered more widely in City Matters, and specifically in this column.

The news that I was editorially on the same page as my neighbours allowed me time to explore the BS Hall's impressive meeting room, its polished wood-panelled walls decorated with paintings of barbers and surgeons from the deep past. Surprisingly, one was a woman, a dead ringer for Jane Austen. In one corner of this hallowed chamber is a cabinet displaying Tudor surgical instruments. Among them were Sinus Forceps an Eyelid Retractor and a Tongue Depressor, which had a strangely ironic ring to it, given the purpose of our gathering. I returned to my seat feeling queasy and unable to speak for some time afterwards.

Billy Mann lives in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate. He is a teaching assistant, a City of London Community Builder and blogs at scrapbookbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, edition 095
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Monday 1 April 2019

Diary: March 2019


2 March 2019, London
At Two Temple Place for a Ruskin exhibition.
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They were selling lapel badges for the Ruskin Today society.

3 March 2019, London
There is an article about the Labour Party in the Guardian Weekly that quotes a councillor in Liverpool saying that Momentum is/are just Militant with bus passes. The quote is positioned alongside a cut-out photo of Derek Hatton.

5 March 2019, London
City Matters column, 093
The Golden Baggers AGM always raises the bar in the dull-but-necessary meeting category. The homemade cake on offer is superb (this year a yummy ginger parkin), making it a truly pleasurable way to start planning for the growing season ahead.

The allotment project is now in its ninth year, yet the energy and enthusiasm for progress never flags. The scheme is based around 42 wooden planters (it started as one-tonne builders’ bags, hence the name Baggers), which residents can rent for an annual subscription of £20 ('Friends’ can join for £5).

Membership is open to all residents, experts or beginners, and on the first Sunday of every month they share more scrumptious home baking at their Social Sunday events.

I was especially disappointed this year to learn that one of our Hatfield House residents and veteran Bagger has gone to live in America. He was always very generous in sharing his show-stopping tomatoes, so I never needed to grow any of my own.

Key issues at this year’s AGM were the election of a new Chair and the agreement of a new constitution, the need to attract more ‘Friends’ and to promote the project’s core community values.

We also discussed the failed attempt to save the trees that border the allotment but will soon disappear as part of the development of the former Richard Cloudesley School and suggested locations for this year’s annual outing. Last year’s trip to Turn End house and gardens in Buckinghamshire will be hard to beat. Anyone wanting to join should write to goldenbaggers@gmail.com.

The Golden Baggers is clearly the most successful resident-led project on the estate and its example is proving influential, most obviously in the activities at our refurbished community centre.

The Christmas Day tea party was a riot of festive fun and the recent jumble sale added to the feeling that residents revel in the chance to do things together, preferably with cake included.

Jumble sales are a great chance to hone your people-watching skills. One minute residents will be chatting amicably about family fortunes and local issues; the next they will be cutting a tough deal for that old teapot, holding out for the last 50p.
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Any offers for this fine item?

If anything can take the shine off this neighbourly bliss it is the clumsiness of the council. A number of residents met recently with housing chief Paul Murtagh, who arrived in a foul mood to explain and apologise for the City Corporation's stuttered response to a potentially deadly gas leak at the building site next to Basterfield House.

He’d hoped to make his task easier by fixing the meeting (two months after the event) as a drop-in rather than a full-throated Q&A grilling from the residents most affected. Unfortunately, his plans went awry when some canny individuals promptly rearranged the set-up and started firing their questions. Mr Murtagh looked more and more uncomfortable as the volleys of verbal shots whistled his way.

While admitting that the City Corporation had failed residents and was searching its soul for “lessons learned”, he stuck to the script that the site work met with all existing laws and regulations. He expressed this forcefully, but tripped slightly when it came to evacuation policy and revealed that, unlike almost every large building in the developed world, there are no emergency muster points or marshalling for the Golden Lane Estate.

On the day of the accident back in December, it was residents, acting on advice from the gas board, who cobbled together a plan of action until the emergency services arrived to offer some leadership. Confused residents eventually found a safe point at Prior Weston School, shaken and feeling sick.

Mr Murtagh told the meeting that the City Corporation's advice when faced with an emergency is to sit tight, keep calm and carry on until help arrives. Yes, even if, as has happened before, an unexploded wartime bomb is uncovered! It later emerged that the City Corporation is reviewing how it handles “events such as this one”, but is unable to share or publicise the findings.

The Square Mile's emergency plan to swerve Brexit appears to have paid off with a hush-hush deal in Paris last month to make sure all the City's hedge funds and derivative thingies do not turn to dust at midnight on March 29.

The best revelation about this mysterious caper would be proof of my suspicion that the audacious plot was hatched not at the Bank of England but here on Golden Lane with the help of Bayer House resident and YouTube sensation Elly Space, whose infectious Europop anthem 'Cancel Brexit’ is powerful enough to turn the tide of history. If you’re still in doubt, go to https://youtu.be/mf4mqPGwtN4 and turn the volume up to 11.

Billy Mann lives in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate. He is a teaching assistant, a City of London Community Builder and blogs at scrapbookbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com.

7 March 2919, London
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8 March 2019, London
Memory after the death of girl-about-London-clubland Magenta De Vine

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10 March 2019, London There is a big long-read article in the Guardian about Aldi, the two Albrecht brothers, Theo and Karl, their mission, their progress and their business style. At times, the article seems to imply that the brothers saw a genuine social purpose in finding a way to the lowest price for the shopper, as if their purpose was to reduce the amount of money people spent on food [shit waiting to happen] in order that they may spend it on better things. In other words, that providing one of life’s essentials – food – should not drain on people's lives or present a struggle.

12 March 2018, London

Beautifully ambiguous. There are two stories. The child genius is a compelling narrative, but behind the success of Jimmy, the 5-year-old poet-who-doesn't-know-it, is the failure of his teacher Lisa, who is a lousy mother, wife, night-school poet and, it turns out, kidnapper. There is an unstated redemption for Lisa. She succeeded in teaching Jimmy to say “I have a poem” whenever one popped into his head, and by the end of the film it's unlikely he will ever forget to say it, even if it's only to himself. (Er, she taught him about point of view, too, by crawling around on the floor - Ed)

14 March 2018, London
Headline: "EU on no-deal Brexit motion: 'like Titanic voting for iceberg to move'"

Leader in The Economist
<< When historians come to write the tale of Britain’s attempts to leave the European Union, this week may be seen as the moment the country finally grasped the mess it was in.

In the campaign, Leavers had promised voters that Brexit would be easy because Britain “holds all the cards”. This week Parliament was so scornful of the exit deal that Theresa May had spent two years negotiating and renegotiating in Brussels that MPs threw it out for a second time, by 149 votes—the fourth-biggest government defeat in modern parliamentary history.

The next day MPs rejected what had once been her back-up plan of simply walking out without a deal. The prime minister has lost control. On Wednesday four cabinet ministers failed to back her in a crucial vote. Both main parties, long divided over Brexit, are seeing their factions splintering into ever-angrier sub-factions. And all this just two weeks before exit day.

Even by the chaotic standards of the three years since the referendum, the country is lost (see article). Mrs May boasted this week of “send[ing] a message to the whole world about the sort of country the United Kingdom will be”. She is not wrong: it is a laughing-stock. An unflappable place supposedly built on compromise and a stiff upper lip is consumed by accusations of treachery and betrayal. Yet the demolition of her plan offers Britain a chance to rethink its misguided approach to leaving the eu. Mrs May has made the worst of a bad job. This week’s chaos gives the country a shot at coming up with something better.

The immediate consequence of the rebellion in Westminster is that Brexit must be delayed. As we went to press, Parliament was to vote for an extension of the March 29th deadline. For its own sake the EU should agree. A no-deal Brexit would hurt Britain grievously, but it would also hurt the EU — and Ireland as grievously as Britain.

Mrs May’s plan is to hold yet another vote on her deal and to cudgel Brexiteers into supporting it by threatening them with a long extension that she says risks the cancellation of Brexit altogether. At the same time she will twist the arms of moderates by pointing out that a no-deal Brexit could still happen, because avoiding it depends on the agreement of the EU, which is losing patience.

It is a desperate tactic from a prime minister who has lost her authority. It forces MPs to choose between options they find wretched when they are convinced that better alternatives are available. Even if it succeeds, it would deprive Britain of the stable, truly consenting majority that would serve as the foundation for the daunting series of votes needed to enact Brexit and for the even harder talks on the future relationship with the EU.

To overcome the impasse created by today’s divisions, Britain needs a long extension. The question is how to use it to forge that stable, consenting majority in Parliament and the country.

An increasingly popular answer is: get rid of Mrs May. The prime minister’s deal has flopped and her authority is shot. A growing number of Tories believe that a new leader with a new mandate could break the logjam. Yet there is a high risk that Conservative Party members would install a replacement who takes the country towards an ultra-hard Brexit.

What’s more, replacing Mrs May would do little to solve the riddle of how to put together a deal. The parties are fundamentally split. To believe that a new tenant in Downing Street could put them back together again and engineer a majority is to believe the Brexiteers’ fantasy that theirs is a brilliant project that is merely being badly executed.

Calls for a general election are equally misguided. The country is as divided as the parties. Britain could go through its fourth poll in as many years only to end up where it started. Tory mps might fall into line if they had been elected on a manifesto promising to enact the deal. But would the Conservatives really go into an election based on Mrs May’s scheme, which has twice been given a drubbing by MPs and was described this week even by one supportive Tory mp as “the best turd that we have”? It does not have the ring of a successful campaign.

To break the logjam, Mrs May needs to do two things. The first is to consult Parliament, in a series of indicative votes that will reveal what form of Brexit can command a majority. The second is to call a referendum to make that choice legitimate. Today every faction sticks to its red lines, claiming to be speaking for the people. Only this combination can put those arguments to rest.

Take these steps in turn. Despite the gridlock, the outlines of a parliamentary compromise are visible. Labour wants permanent membership of the eu’s customs union, which is a bit closer to the eu than Mrs May’s deal. Alternatively, MPs may favour a Norway-style set-up—which this newspaper has argued for and would keep Britain in the single market. The eu is open to both. Only if Mrs May cannot establish a consensus should she return to her own much-criticised plan.

Getting votes for these or any other approach would require thinking beyond party lines. That does not come naturally in Britain’s adversarial, majoritarian policies. But the whipping system is breaking down. Party structures are fraying. Breakaway groups and parties-within-parties are forming on both sides of the Commons, and across it. Offering MPs free votes could foster cross-party support for a new approach.

The second step is a confirmatory referendum. Brexit requires Britain to trade off going its own way with maintaining profitable ties with the eu. Any new Brexit plan that Parliament concocts will inevitably demand compromises that disappoint many, perhaps most, voters. Mrs May and other critics argue that holding another referendum would be undemocratic (never mind that Mrs May is prepared to ask MPs to vote on her deal a third or even fourth time). But the original referendum campaign utterly failed to capture the complexities of Brexit. The truly undemocratic course would be to deny voters the chance to vouch that, yes, they are content with how it has turned out.

And so any deal that Parliament approves must be put to the public for a final say. It will be decried by hardline Brexiteers as treasonous and by hardline Remainers as an act of self-harm. Forget them. It is for the public to decide whether they are in favour of the new relationship with the EU — or whether, on reflection, they would rather stick with the one they already have.>>

18 March 2018, London
‘To rush through May’s deal would be like cutting corners when building the foundations of a house because you want to move in quickly.’
Matthew D'Ancona, the Guardian

19 March 2019, London
europe-map-art

20 March 2019, London
At the Guardian Archives, one set of Don McPhee negatives I just catalogued is labelled “Bolton Gays”, which sounds like the title of an earthy TV comedy drama. I dared not look at the pictures on the light-box. Other sets of negatives I have filed recently include those labelled “Pigeon Exhibition at Leeds”, “Cars Crushed in Liverpool”, “Bridge Made Of Willow at Marsden” and “Christmas Pudding Factory near Derby”.

21 March 20199, London
‘It requests permission to carry on playing a game that she has lost.’
Guardian editorial on PM's begging letter to EU

22 March 2019, London
‘The French EU minister, Nathalie Loiseau, has called her new cat Brexit. “He wakes me up every morning meowing to death because he wants to go out,” she says. “And then when I open the door he stays put, undecided, and then glares at me when I put him out.”’
Gary Younge, the Guardian

23 March 2019, London
At the ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ march.
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And just in case you wanted some kind of evidence...
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24 March 2019, London
Jane was one of the 500 voices in The Public Domain event at the Barbican today.
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And Lucy was her conductor...
public-domain-lso-barbican-lucy-griffiths
27 March 2019, London
To the Hackney CVS Annual Awards because I had nominated Headway for the 'Best Community Voice’ award, or something. Rosy was flabbergasted but nevertheless delighted to collect the award in a ceremony that was so inspiring for the number of stories of community success it delivered.
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28 March 2019, London
At an anatomy workshop with clay in the studio in which Will presented his model of Callum to the man himself.

28 March 2019, London

I spotted one of the local market-stall women at this. Then I remembered that the play starred a heartthrob actor from TV's Peaky Blinders and realised why this was not such an unlikely sighting after all.

29 March 2019, London

30 March 2018, London
‘There will be a meeting of EU heads of government on 10 April: it’s probably best not to assume their patience with Britain’s ongoing nervous breakdown will be infinite’.
Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian

30 March 2019, London
Joined a Headway public-engagement thing last night in which Ben interviewed A, P and G for the benefit of a collection of Hackney creatives from somewhere up Kingsland Road near Tesco's. It was a nice way to shamelessly plug Headway's many talented artists and the three Friday enfants did a great job of being themselves, which is an irresistible proposition in itself, especially when G does his Stephen Hawking thing with his Macbook. Hilarious. The guests loved it and we must remember to give the event some quality follow-up if it is to have any lasting impact.