Kings Cross Local Environment

Kings Cross in the 1950s and 1960s - archive film

Some marvellous black and white footage of Kings Cross station and surrounding streets in the 1950s and early 1960s from www.britishrailways.tv  some seems to have been shot from the top deck of a bus and the tower of St Pancras.  Shows York Way with two way traffic, Caledonia Street, Railway Street, the shanty town of buildings where the 1970s canopy now is, freight in the old railway lands, lots of filthy steam trains, including the A4s Wild Swan and Mallard.  An absolute gem.

britishrailways.tv

How can we bring these works to King's Cross?

 I just had an email from Josie O'Rourke. She discovered the reclusive artist, Bob Farquar (pictured), down in East Sussex and has recently exhibited his work down there. He's an ex-offender who spent a while on the run here in King's Cross. He painted a series on our local sex workers which by all reports are fantastic paintings and an important document of our local history, recently covered in The Guardian.

Josie is keen to find a way of exhibiting his works here. Can anyone help? Contact me and I'll put you in touch with her.

Another young tree on York Way bites the dust - outside Lincoln Lounge

Stuart sent in this picture.  Note that this is a well protected tree in a cage - someone had to go to real effort to snap this off.  So sad when this happens.  The stronger cages were installed through resident-led action. 

Any chance the CCTV was pointing in this direction?

Mobile phone mast proposed - Twyford Street, next to Cally Pool

Vodafone has applied for planning permission for a large 15 metre high mast and cabinets on Twyford Street adjacent to the Cally Pool.  You can see the application and respond online and/or write to the case officer Paul Conboy via [email protected] The application number P101397 is open for comment until 4 August.  The mast is likely to serve Barnsbury, the Bemerton, Delhi-Outram area and probably the Guardian/canal area.  In appearance, the mast and its power cabinets would resemble the ugly pavement-blocking T-Mobile mast on the York Way pavement near the (former) Cross Kings pub (cabinets in picture).

You can't have mobile phones without antenna on masts to send a signal to and from them.  As the broader Kings Cross area has become more popular and more people come and go so more mobile antenna are needed.  The issue for me is how the neighbourhood plans to accomodate these huge, power hungry, ugly installations.  We can either shoehorn them in willy-nilly one network at a time as with this application or we can have a plan to locate them in the right place agreed between the Council, the phone operators and the neighbourhood.  In this case it coudl well make more sense for new antennae to join the existing large installation on the roof of Orkney House.

The onus is on the council officers to initiate a discussion with the phone operators, who will normally respond in a joined up approach. Last time this came up Councillor Convery wrote to operators (see comments here) and urged council officers to get engaged - will be interesting to know if officers did anything and whether this latest application is as a result of that.

Comments welcome, but not please on the vexed issue of health and mobile masts - there are plenty of other places on the internet you can discuss that.

Public health threatened

 King's Cross is home to many celebrities, one of whom is Professor Phil James. Phil did his medical training at our local hospital, UCH. He lives in King's Cross and is President of the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO), an independent not-for-profit organisation. 

The IASO links over 50 regional and national associations with over 10,000 members in scientific, medical and research organisations. It is an umbrella organisation for 52 national obesity associations representing 56 countries. 

Last Thursday saw Phil explaining the ramifications of new UK Government policy towards public health, particularly relating to the Government's intention to abolish the Food Standards Agency and to work closely with large food companies to stop the 'prescriptive' approach to school dinners taken in recent years.

The Government is not keen on the Jamie Oliver led introduction of healthy low fat, low salt food into schools. They would rather schools stayed out of the decisions that they believe only parents should make about what children eat. I visited Copenhagen Primary School at lunchtime recently and witnessed this prescriptive approach in action. Kids happily tucking into appetising healthy food - not a turkey twizzler in sight.

As John Snow interviewed Phil it became clear that this is just the start of what maybe a full scale attack on public health. Phil said, 

"We are threatened with the reversal of the trend towards better public health"

You can see the full piece by clicking on this link and sliding across to 9.07 minutes in. Phil's interview starts at 13 minutes in.

Payphones on the Caledonian Road

Payphones are the sort of thing you don't notice these days until you need one in an emergency and then find that they are not working or have all been taken away.  We also have to remember that there are still many people who can't afford or get to grips with a home phone or a mobile.

A new Kings Cross resident Stuart Oswald has written a rather lovely article on the payphones on the Cally Road over on his blog including pictures and a map.  Stuart has a real passion for phone boxes and it's great to see someone keeping an eye on them.  He is always looking out for payphone information from all over the world - so if you pick this up mail him on [email protected]

TBCG - further views needed

Thornhill Bridge Community Gardeners have a cause for celebration. Following our recent funding application, we have been awarded £100,000 by the Big Lottery Community Spaces Fund to develop LBI's Greenspace off Caledonian Road (west side). TBCG need further comments as part of ongoing community consultation on the design of the woodland garden project. Please look at the proposed designs below by Islington based lead architect Johanna Gibbons and complete the online consultation form or comment on this post. We have already appointed locally based engineers Conisbee, quantity surveyors EC Harris and soil surveyors Tim O'Hare Associates. Tendering will begin in August and the design process will run until the end of July 2010 so please send comments now.

Download 504_SK_04_Proposed Plan copy

Download 504_Design Statement

Consultation Form

Previous post on TBCG consultation

Link

 

The hire bikes are coming

It's hard to miss the lickably-shiny new bicycle docking stations that have sprung up, in anticipation of the actual bikes, due on 30 July for the Transport for London, ahem, Barclays, cycle hire scheme. Or maybe it is hard to miss the docking stations around King's Cross, there doesn't seem to be many. The scheme, covering central London, aims to put 6,000 hire bikes on the road, free for the first half hour after paying a one day, one week or one year access fee. TfL haven't yet released a map of the docking stations, but thanks to lovely citizen bloggers/FoI junkies, here's a map. I've listed the stations for King's Cross (Have I missed any? And do these ones exist?):

• St Chad's Street (Gray's Inn Road end), WC1
• Calshot Street (Pentonville Road end), N1
• Ampton Street (Gray's Inn Road end), WC1
• King's Cross Road (near Great Percy Street), WC1
• Belgrove Street (Euston Road end), WC1 (This looks like the closest one to King's Cross station)
• Rodney Street (Pentonville Road end), N1

So, who is going to use these bikes the most — locals, commuters, tourists? Will it unleash several thousand inexperienced cyclists onto the streets of London, all maniacally trying to get somewhere in under thirty minutes? I've used the bikes' counterparts in Paris, so it'll be karma for me in the form of tourists wobbling on the opposite side of the road to which they're accustomed. One frustration in Paris was finding full docking stations when arriving at my destination (and then having to ride a couple of blocks away in search of a station to offload the bike). TfL may need to resort to using lorries to shuffle the bikes around, as has happened in France.

This undoubtedly pricey scheme carries a lot of risk and concern: vandalism, theft, safety (especially for novice cyclists), but the aim is a big noble one: converting a whole tranche of people to a cheap, sustainable, healthy and social form of transport. Maybe even coax a few people out of the tube. That in itself would be a good thing.

Clare Hill

Islington Council's newspaper

Islington Council publishes a newspaper 'Islington Now'.  An FOI request from one L Barnett on 'What do they know' yields some fascinating information.

Islington Now is produced ten times a year with 97,000 copies distributed.  £273,000 was spent on the paper in 2008-2008 with £251,000 budgeted for 2009-2010 As far as i can make our from the FOI request, the paper raised only £14,000 from external advertising, with another £135,000-odd apparently being raised in an internal money-go-round where the council charges it's own divisions to advertise in its own paper.  The council employs a full time staff member to produce the paper at a full cost of £46,000 per annum.

The following phrases occur in Islington Now's editorial policy:

'Articles also need to reflect the council’s key messages, and the magazine has sections that enable us to do this...'Messages should be positive but realistic – we have to be honest with readers and invite them to engage in dialogue with us.We avoid council speak so the magazine is not perceived as propaganda '

Catherine West the new Council Leader has said that 'there will be a few changes to this magazine'.  Will be interesting to see what happens - would be nice to see the council reaching out more to local websites such as this - i have never once had Islington Council's press people contact me or comment in the comments - have a go now folks....

New food growing space on Regents Canal

Thornhill Bridge Community Gardeners (TBCG) have successfully fundraised and constructed a new food growing space along the Regents Canal on top of the Islington Tunnel; this is part of the Greener Islington and healthy communities’ initiative involving allotments and community food growing - Edible Islington

We commissioned BTCV volunteers to put in some raised beds and carry out the necessary ground works, then added food growing containers, composter, seeds, plants, and a water harvesting system.

TBCG members are managing the site and growing the food communally and have just shared out the first harvest.