Evening Standard: "Tory Brian Coleman wants to block Saracens stadium move"

Link to Evening Standard

"Brian Coleman opposes a move by Saracens to Barnet's Copthall stadium after his council agreed the club could take over for a peppercorn rent. And in a rallying cry to residents who are also against the scheme, he advised them to 'stick with it and lobby hard'."

Barnet Times: " Two leading Barnet Tory politicians oppose Saracens Copthall plans"

Link to Barnet Times

"Last night around 300 residents, many against the proposals by the Premiership club, packed out Copthall School's hall for a meeting, chaired by Hendon MP Matthew Offord to gauge public opinion.

"The plans were set to go before a planning committee in June, but Councillor Coleman, who is in charge of transport and the environment in the borough, said he had been told here were problems and vowed: 'I will not put in a controlled parking zone'."

Edgelands: "Wilderness that is much closer than you think"

BBC iPlayer, week of 15 April 2011

Author: Michael Symmons Roberts, Paul Farley

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780224089029

Published: 17 February 2011

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd

"Edgelands explores a wilderness that is much closer than you think: a debatable zone, neither the city nor the countryside, but a place in-between - so familiar it is never seen for looking. Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, ignored, the edgelands have become the great wild places on our doorsteps, places so difficult to acknowledge they barely exist.

"Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as 'wild', and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own. Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts - both well-known poets - have lived and worked and known these places all their lives, and in Edgelands their journeying prose fuses, in the anonymous tradition, to allow this in-between world to speak up for itself.

"They write about mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites in the same way the Romantic writers forged a way of looking at an overlooked - but now familiar - landscape of hills and lakes and rivers. England, the first country to industrialise, now offers the world's most mature post-industrial terrain, and is still in a state of flux: Edgelands takes the reader on a journey through its forgotten spaces, so that we can marvel at this richly mysterious, cheek-by-jowl region in our midst."

Friends of the Earth: Reducing waste, and boosting recycling and reuse

And the web site.

Barnet Times: "Mill Hill East redevelopment plans given go-ahead by Barnet Council"

Link to web site

"Barnet Council could be set to benefit from millions of pounds of section 106 cash to improve roads and other amenities.

"Residents are now being evicted from the Inglis Barracks site near Mill Hill East Tube station in preparation for the new scheme."

Barnet Times: "Mill Hill residents set up rival group to support Saracens' Copthall plans"

Link to 'Barnet Times'

"A RESIDENTS’ group has been set up to support plans from Saracens rugby club to make their home at a stadium in Mill Hill.

"Residents for Regeneration (RfR) has come together as a reaction to a group against the plans calling itself the Copthall Community Initiative (CCI)."

Haringey residents wonder why they will get Barnet's dustcarts

Link above to 'Pinkham Way Alliance' web site
and here to North London Waste Authority information.

Barnet Times: "Saracens get 99-year lease for Mill Hill stadium from Barnet Council"

Link to Barnet Times

"THE first phase of Saracens’ proposed takeover of Copthall Stadium has been completed with the granting of a 99-year lease for the site.

"The plans will come before Barnet Council’s planning committee for consideration this summer."

The Independent: "Making London bigger, better, and more important"

Link to The Independent

"If London is so productive, then why don't more people live there? Greater London's population has grown only modestly more than the national average since 1981, about 14 per cent. 

"For many people, high prices prevent living in London. House prices in London are more than 50 per cent higher than the national average.

"... Cities can add housing by building up or by building out. Both avenues are restricted in Greater London. Environmentalism, as expressed by the city's green belt, limits the development of new homes on the urban edge. Preservationism, as expressed by myriad restrictions on rebuilding the urban core at higher densities, limits the development of more central residential towers."

Daily Telegraph: "Householders will be able to heat their homes for free"

Link above to Daily Telegraph

"Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, expected at least 25,000 households to take up the scheme in the first year, with millions of air source heat pumps and other technologies installed over the next 20 years.

"Environmentalists and consumer groups ... wanted to make it easier for consumers to take up the scheme, to encourage more green technologies, rather than incinerating waste or wood, which can cause emissions and discourage recycling."

New web site monitoring council expenditure - "Mr Mustard"

Link above to Mr Mustard

"You are a bunch of incompetent dunderheads, not fit to run a party in a brewery, spending other people's money like drunken sailors, running scared of democracy, and about to waste £50,000+."

The Guardian: "Fed up with 'Legoland' estates? Then reject plans, says housing minister"

Link to The Guardian

"Previous housing ministers have railed against uniform design, largely driven by developers' lower costs. Ministers hope that the concept of neighbourhood plans, designed and voted on by communities themselves, might drive architects out of their complacency.

"Planning and Decentralisation minister, Greg Clark, joins Housing Minister Grant Shapps in condemning British household architecture, saying 'banal, identikit housing schemes have given development a bad name'."

BBC London: "Saracens submit plans to revamp Copthall Stadium"

Link to BBC London

"A public consultation has been running since November and will continue while the planning application is being processed.

"Saracens, who currently play at Watford FC's Vicarage Road, will use the stadium for rugby from September until May."

London Campaign for Clear Air

Link to The Guardian

"His frustrations with the Labour government over its failure to act has been compounded by the Tory-led coalition. He believes it attempted to 'mislead' the European Commission in September, on the scale of breaches on dangerous particles, known as PM10s."

Leading blogger states: "Praise be Pickles: Pity about your party activists"

Link to David Hencke web site

"Citizen journalists have as much right as anyone to attend and to share their views, and council ‘monitoring officers’ shouldn’t hide behind bogus concerns about ‘data protection’ or ‘human rights’."

Will Barnet Council now allow meetings to be recorded?

Link to the web site

"Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles said today:

"Local Government Minister Bob Neill has written to all councils, urging greater openness and calling on them to adopt a modern day approach, so that credible community or 'hyper-local' bloggers and online broadcasters get the same routine access to council meetings as the traditional accredited media have.

"The letter sent today reminds councils that local authority meetings are already open to the general public, which raises concerns about why in some cases bloggers and press have been barred."

New, Green Jobs at Mill Hill East?

The Economist: "The Little Society"

Link to The Economist

"The lowest tier of government in London is its 32 borough councils, serving an average population of around 250,000. But activists are hoping to set up new representative bodies, at a much more local level."

Barnet Times: "Residents in Mill Hill call meeting for showdown with Saracens over Copthall stadium plans"

Link to Barnet Times

"Dozens of people living around the stadium in Mill Hill are expected to attend the two-hour forum on 15 February, aimed at talking through a range of issues."

"The Spectator" comments on Barnet Council

Link to 'The Spectator'

"Barnet, which revealed last week that it was thinking of doing away with school crossing patrols ..., voted last year to increase its leader’s allowance by 55 per cent, to £54,000."

Trains beyond Mill Hill East: Mill Hill (The Hale) station, next to the present-day Thameslink station (before short-sighted planners closed it)

Link to larger original

Rabbit Hutches - maybe not in London?

Mayor Boris Johnson has ordered housebuilders to stop erecting rabbit hutches. Housing minister Grant Shapps has told them to carry on.

Is a delicious row about to break out between the Mayor and the minister? Sadly not: what Boris says goes in London and what Shapps says counts for naught, said a spokeswoman for the Mayor.

The minimum space standards being introduced in London next April mean that new homes in the capital may well be 20% to 40% larger than any new boxes stuck up in the minister's constituency of Welwyn Hatfield. Serves him right if the voters complain.

Courtesy of Brent Cross Coalition. Extracted from here.

Localism Bill announced by Coalition

Department of Communities Press Release

Mill Hill East Area Action Plan - buy the book!

Mill Hill East report goes to Cabinet

Report to Barnet Cabinet 29 November, here.

"The two largest land owners are Vinci St Modwen (VSM – approximately 66%) and Annington Properties Limited (approximately 19.2%). The Ministry of Defence has a freehold reversionary interest in VSM’s land, but they have been fully included in the discussions.

"...the need to deliver a new east-west strategic highways route from Frith Lane to Bittacy Hill, taking pressure of the local roundabouts and key junctions, would be frustrated by multiple land ownerships and development delivery timescales."

BBC: "Saracens set out Copthall Stadium plans"

Link to BBC Sport news item

"Saracens have revealed they are in discussions with Barnet Borough Council about making Copthall Stadium in north London the club's new home."

Item supplied by Colindale Renewal web site.

Reminder of the Developers' Web Site (VSM Estates Limited and Annington Property Limited - the "Inglis Consortium")

Reponse to the CBT Transport Story in 'The Guardian'

Click on image.

"The Buchanan report springs to mind on reading the Campaign for Better Transport's study, which roundly and rightly praises those cities that have laid on abundant and cheap public transport as a rather less drastic approach to taming the car. Ever since 1960, attempts have been made to try and keep this machine under control.

"Libertarian bores will insist this is due to some patrician hatred of mass mobility, but the CBT's report reminds us that what we could call "transport poverty" is something that afflicts the old, the unemployed, and the ill; and that the most effective means of dealing with traffic-choked cities is through public transport, rather than moralising."

(Thanks to the Brent Cross Coalition for this.)

Better Public Transport article (The Guardian)

Award-winning bus services, a European-style embrace of the tram, and a bias against out-of-town shopping centres were cited as powerful incentives for residents of Nottingham to leave their cars at home, according to a report by the 'Campaign for Better Transport'.

By contrast, Milton Keynes, trumpeted as the epitome of modern urban dwelling in the 1980s, is criticised for a reliance on the motor vehicle to get people from A to B.

A 'Royal Commission on London' is suggested