Kings Cross Local Environment

Camden returns to Labour control

Results in Camden Council have mirrored those in Islington, it's Labour all over in King's Cross and beyond. In King's Cross ward Abdul Hai and Jonathan Simpson have retained their seats, and Sarah Hayward is the new Labour kid on the block.

The Lib Dem-Tory administration lasted one term.

South of the Borough is a reinforced Labour stronghold, with the lone blue dot in Bloomsbury now in red.

Here's a game of counting coloured pins on the map:

Labour 30
Lib Dem 10
Conservative 10
Green 1

A bad result indeed for the Lib Dems, with a loss of 14 seats, the Conservatives 2. The three missing seats are those of Haverstock ward, which will have a by-election on May 25.

Are we all electioned-out now, sick of numbers and swingometers and ready for some rest over the weekend? Brave new world on Monday. Or not.

Clare Hill

Labour hold in Holborn and St Pancras

Labour's Frank Dobson has again retained his seat in Holborn and St Pancras. He has been in place since 1979. He returns with a slightly increased majority, albeit with a 0.4% swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats. 

A vote of confidence for democracy — an extra 20,000 people voted this time round.

Here's a breakdown of the figures from the BBC:

Name	Party	Votes	%	+/-
Frank Dobson	Labour	25,198	46.1	+1.0
Jo Shaw	Liberal Democrat	15,256	27.9	+1.8
George Lee	Conservative	11,134	20.4	-0.5
Natalie Bennett	Green	1,480	2.7	-4.8
Robert Carlyle	British National Party	779	1.4	+1.4
Max Spencer	UK Independence Party	587	1.1	+1.1
John Chapman	Independent	96	0.2	+0.2
Mikel Susperregi	English Democrats	75	0.1	+0.1
Iain Meek	Independent	44	0.1	+0.1
Majority		9,942	18.2
Turnout		54,649	62.9	+9.7

Clare Hill

Labour regain full control of Islington Council

In a massive reversal Labour has regained total control of Islington Council with a strong majority.  The Council website has a map of the result, although sadly the map makes the result harder to understand by not telling you what the majority is.

A bit of sleep deprived addition though was says that Labour has 35 seats and the Lib Dems 13.  Hopefully some full statistics will be up in the next few days.

The big challenge for any council now will be to manage inevitable spending cuts while still delivering essential services.

My big hope for Kings Cross is that we can get a co-ordinated and targetted resources for youth work and long term commitment to tackle the factors leading to so much tragic crime in recent years. 

Labour hold Caledonian Ward, look set to take full control of Islington Council

Labour have retained control of Caledonian Ward.  The council website says:

At 2.45pm, the Returning Officer announced the results for the Caledonian ward. The following councillors were elected:

Rupert Perry, The Labour Party Candidate, with 2, 540 votes
Paul Edmond Convery, The Labour Party Candidate, with 2,503 votes
Charlynne Mari Chantal Pullen, The Labour Party Candidate, with 2,245 votes

Congratulations and welcome back to Paul and Rupert and welcome to Charlynne.  Labour also look set to take control of the council overall, both on the basis of the results so far and an informal tally by Labour councillors.  If Labour do take control Paul Convery predicted that he might become executive member for planning etc.  Will report further when more detailed results are available.

Labour hold Islington South and Finsbury with increased majority

EmilyThornberry MP has retained her seat in Kings Cross with an increased majority. Congratulations to Emily and her team.  Commiserations also to those who fought hard but did not prevail.

The following table is reproduced from the BBC website:

vote, percent, change

Emily Thornberry	Labour	18,407	42.3	+2.4
Bridget Fox	Liberal Democrat	14,838	34.1	-4.2
Antonia Cox	Conservative	8,449	19.4	+4.6
James Humphreys	Green	710	1.6	-3.1
Rose-Marie McDonald	UK Independence Party	701	1.6	+0.1
John Dodds	English Democrats	301	0.7	+0.7
Richard Deboo	Animals Count	149	0.3	+0.3
Majority		3,569	8.2
Turnout		43,555	64.4	+10.8

Jim Geddes Collection - weekly auction

Two new pieces are now available for auction on ebay from Jim's Collection

Jim Geddes, local King's Cross resident who died in 2009, left an extraordinary body of sculpture, ceramics, paintings, drawings and textiles in the house he lived in for some 30 years - 24 Caledonian Road.  The work was all collected by local resident Bob Stuckey and now will be sold to Jim's fans and friends via auction on ebay every 7 days with bidding starting at £7 per piece and ending around 7pm on Sunday. 

Both works are on display in the window at 24 Caledonian Road beside Peter and Tony's Barbershop. This week's pieces are as follows:

Schizoid Being 1 (drawing)  Melting Female Figure  (sculpture)  By clicking the link above you will go right to the auction page on eBay.

     

For more about Jim's work please go to www.atelier-geddes.org.

If you would like to keep abreast of future auctions, please contact local resident Bob Stuckey who will add you to his mailing list.

How many people look at this local website?

This site reaches around 400 people a day with news and information about Kings Cross. The chart shows daily page views from 2006 to 2010 smoothed using a three month rolling average, which also removes some seasonal variation.

Two posts by Stephan and and Sophie recording a fire on the roof of Kings Place with dramatic photos were the most popular with 1372 views on that day.  The photos were later rerun in the Islington Gazette. There was another peak of 766 views on 12 Feburary 2009 either on a post that day on a licensing application for the Brill restaurant or a post a day or so previously on Billy Bragg playing at Tolpuddle Kings Cross.  A further spike of 780 views on 12 September 2009 when Stephan posted on the fate of the Kings Cross gas holders.

In the year from May 2009-May 2010 the site averaged 283 page views per day with a further 300 people per day receiving email subscriptions via the RSS feed.  The page view average is about the same as in 2008-2009 - 281.  In its first year from June 2006-June 2007 the site averaged 49 page views per day.  Sitemeter records between 1.5 and 1.8 page views per visit suggesting between 156 and 188 unique visitors per day (as i type Sitemeter is misbehaving so i can't get the precise numbers - will update idc).  Overall this is a typical ess-curve growth pattern with a mature site at the top of the curve.

In addition to page views, email subscribers have grown steadily since inception in November 2006 - people get an email from the RSS feed with the updates for every 24 hour period - if there are no updates, there is no email.  This is an automated service run by Feedburner, now owned by Google.   We now have 319 subscribers.

I don't claim to be a great expert on the dark art of web stats so any constructive comments are welcome if you see a mistake or would interpret this differently.

Council elections May 6 2010 - Caledonian Ward, Paul Convery

The council is up for election on Thursday.  It's going to be a close run thing again between Labour and the Lib Dems.  The council makes a huge difference to area - it's important that everyone who can vote does.  I offered the opportunity of a short piece to camera for this site to both major parties today - I give candidates the chance to put their case across rather than trying to grill them.  Paul Convery speaks herefor Labour in Caledonian Ward - there is a Labour Party manifesto for Islington here.  The Lib Dems are getting back to me.  Constructive comments only please - if you want to make party political statements there are plenty of other places on the web for that.

Tesco Kings Cross Caledonian Road opening times for bank holiday

Tesco Kings Cross on the Caledonian Road is open from 0700 to 2200 on Bank HolidayMonday according to their automated phone service (May Bank Holiday 2010 0845 6779821).  You can see the opening hours of the 21 Caledonian Road store online it is open from 0700 to 2200 Monday to Saturday and 1200 to 1800 on Sunday.

If you are trying to find the Kings Cross Tesco Metro store from the station - from the front of Kings Cross station cross York Way at the crossing, turn left up York Way, then first right into Caledonia Street and Tesco is at the end on the left at the junction with Caledonian Road.  Will take about a two minutes.  If you want some excellent Italian delicatessan products walk past Tesco, cross the Caledonian Road carefully and go into KC Continental Stores opposite Tesco at no 26.  Leo there has a superb collection of Italian meats in a shop that is like going back to the 1960s.

In case regular readers are wondering why I have posted this, the site was picking up a lot of searches for Tesco opening times so I thought I would help people out.  I first thought that Tesco would be a bad thing for the area, but i have been pleasantly surprised how it has turned out. 

Nandos Kings Cross - York Way opening times and directions

Nandos Kings Cross is very close to Kings Cross station, just over the road from the main exit at 12-16 York Way N1 9AA (Nandos map).  Come out of the front of the station, turn left up the side of the station and Nandos is there on the other side of the road next to a tanning salon and adult book shop.  Be careful crossing the road, it's busy - use the crossing. 

Nandos is open from 1100am to 1130pm Monday to Saturday and 1130am to 1130pm on Sundays.  They do take away, phone 020 7833 2809.  A Nandos menu is here in pdf format.  There is more to Kings Cross than Nandos, click the graphic at the top of the page to find out more about this fascinating area of London.

In case regular readers are wondering why I have posted this, the site was picking up a lot of searches for Nandos York Way so I thought I would help people out.  In general I welcome restaurants like this close to public transport in largely non residential areas for providing late night footfall.  Good for Kings Cross, not so good for chickens.