Despite a pathetic little campaign by the HEFfers, our Planning Committee voted on Thursday night to press ahead with the much-needed "Little Manhattan", Labour’s flagship development project for the modernisation of shabby Hackney, as soon as the Judicial Review funded by the Open Dalston Marxist Forum has found in our favour. You can see for yourself from the architect's impression below the massive environmental benefits that our proposals will bring to local businesses and peasants.
Apart from the usual ludicrous allegations about Hackney Labour and private development sleaze, the hippies have been whingeing on about "cultural desecration", whatever that is supposed to mean. They keep on about preserving some crumbly old monstrosity called the Dalston Theatre, despite both English Heritage and the Council telling them that it is not worth keeping because the interiors have been largely destroyed. Surely everyone knows that it is not possible to restore an old crumbly theatre building in Hackney whose interiors have fallen into disrepair. Show me an example where such a ridiculous proposal has ever been successfully implemented!
The hippies also harp on about the building’s dingy basement where, apparently, the vocal band The Four Aces ("Tell Me Why", "Three Coins in the Fountain", "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing") played some gigs in the mid-50s. So what? We didn’t keep the Cavern Club in Oxford Street just because Cilla Black sang there, did we? Or was that "Tiles"?
We need to stop all this nostalgic nonsense and get modern. If the Americans took the same attitude as Open Dalston, Manhattan would still be the New Amsterdam settlement, surrounded by wooden palings and under siege from the Lenape Indigenous Peoples of the United States (you’re not catching me out with that politically-correct Red Indian naming business again).
Our plans for attractive landmarks are truly wonderful – the Julian Pipe Memorial Erection and the Herbert Morrison Trades Union History Centre will tower 19 storeys over Dalston and shout out to the world: "This is what voting back in a Labour Council can do for you!" To describe them, as Open Dalston has done, as "an imposition derived from the Council’s desire to maximise density without regard to local conditions and streetscape" is plainly risible. Everyone knows we are more concerned with maximising the books than we are with maximising the density.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Common Sense – “Little Manhattan” To Go Ahead
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I'm Luke Akehurst..... aka. "Luke The Nuke".
7 comments:
I've written to the Council to ask if this will block the light to my window, but I haven't received a reply yet. Could you tell me if this will be the case and if so what I can do about it. Thanks you.
If you move out of your dingy little council flat and purchase one of the luxurious new penthouse suites in Pipe Tower you will get plenty of light, I can assure you.
Obviously, members of the Planning Committee would never accept back-handers.
But I heard that the going rate for councillors to vote this "Blight Dalston" through (or absent themselves from the vote) was a pied-de-terre each, in Spain, to be delivered through a third-party. We shouldn't be suspicious of council members sporting suntans when we return from the summer break, now should we?
Now that's getting a bit personal, because my wife is a member of the committee that voted through these excellent proposals to change Dalston from something looking like the city centre of Mumbai into something looking more like the city centre of Dubai.
You repeat an earlier suggestion that Planning Subcommittee members might each be receiving title to an appartment in a block on the Costa del Sol. Ha, ha, ha. This must be a punishment, not a reward. If you think Linda, Jed and I want to spend a fortnight in the sun with Vincent and Rita, Darren and Sem, Bob and Liz, Sally and Seamus, Ian and Bella, Simon and Rosaline, Jessica and Mat and Dawood and Zulekha... you must be more bonkers than I am!
Our kids want to enjoy the beach this year. So can I take it there will be no problem swapping Linda's two weeks in Costa del Sol for a fortnight in our pad in Competa?
For the record Linda was one of two Labour councillors who voted against the scheme.
Somebody has attempted to post an anonymous comment containing the outrageous suggestion that Councillor Webb might be keen to take a Spanish holiday in the collective company of the male members of the Planning Subcommittee, sans femmes.
Even worse, the anonymous poster has suggested that Ms Webb might enjoy some additional visual stimulation to be provided by some chap called Julian, together with "the cute but naïve Turkish guy who was on Town Hall reception, albeit briefly".
Let me make clear that this is a decent, clean and serious political blogsite that does not engage in sexual muckraking. If you want to publish that sort of thing, I suggest that you try the Andalucian Daily Sport.
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