Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Substantial Reshaping of Brixton

editor said:
Yes, that's right. People like me with internet access. Or people who use the library. Or people who are interested in having a say in the planning process but don't fancy attending meetings. Or people who feel uncomfortable expressing themselves in public meetings.

I'd imagine that's potentially quite a lot of people.

So what's wrong with reaching out to people who, unlike you, don't have the luxury of spare time to attend council meetings?

An interactive web forum would give people with demanding jobs, kids to bring up, shift workers etc etc an opportunity to get involved at a time that suits them for a comparatively small cost to the public.

And that's a good thing, surely?
Click to expand...

A good idea but the thing is that if the Council set up a website it would not solve the problem of people being misinformed and misled.

I can see the Council putting in pictures of how great the "reshaping of Brixton " would be but not giving a full critical appraisal.Then asking people to click a box to support it.The Council would say that loads of resident supported the Strategy.It would be no different from the way the Council try to use the Brixton Forums.

However I think the internet is useful.A lot of the info i get on local issues is from here rather than the Councils official website.Though thats useful for reports.
 
In light of comments by ed and others regarding online consultation:

If nearly half of the population is supposedly online, and not even anything near that attends meetings, I think it figures that online consultations/votes, using a well-formatted consultation structure (a virtual version perhaps of some of the many types that exist e.g. charrettes) could be extremely beneficial in additional to usual mechanisms.

From the meeting of the Executive in September it was minuted that
"(42) That Ward Councillors, partners, local Forums and Area
Committees are involved in designing and supervising the separate
consultation processes for Clapham and Brixton."

I think many of the people involved with these groups are already online, for a start. How many more could be identified and involved, and how? The Apt Self Help residents group have been discussing the possibility of starting up a wireless broadband network in Central Brixton in the future which would save users money, and invite them to participate in regeneration using the network. An idealistic long-shot or an independent and visionary approach to 'participatory democracy'.

A quick alternative would be a well-promoted website. . .

Look forward to the separate thread on charrettes, etc. from Gramski
and more about the ways in which larger sections of local people can get physically involved as well.
 
i was impressed by the community cable tv stations in the states. govt funded and there are thousands of them.

i watched candidates for local school governors giving their speeches and stories about police activity in the area, cameras going into the 'projects' to show the state of them, the good, the bad etc.. iirc, some shows had phone-ins, they gave out contact details and showed the faces of the people you should be speaking to about local issues.

just about everyone has a tv.
 
In terms of the whole community, only an elite minority use email/the internet to discuss local governmental/political issues. The majority don't, especially in an area with a lot of poverty and people from a hugely diverse range of ethnic backgrounds, like Lambeth.

So all that happens is mostly white, fairly well off, professional, middle class voices get heard and the rest don't. And lazy, dishonest politicans falsely claim they have consulted the public when in fact they have only heard from a small, privileged minority.
 
miss minnie said:
i was impressed by the community cable tv stations in the states. govt funded and there are thousands of them.

i watched candidates for local school governors giving their speeches and stories about police activity in the area, cameras going into the 'projects' to show the state of them, the good, the bad etc.. iirc, some shows had phone-ins, they gave out contact details and showed the faces of the people you should be speaking to about local issues.

just about everyone has a tv.
Click to expand...
A local community tv station would be good. I would have liked them to be broadcasting the amazing scenes in the Assembly rooms the other day when hundreds of angry parents had their say on the schooling fiasco. That would have made good local telly.
 
IntoStella said:
In terms of the whole community, only an elite minority use email/the internet to discuss local governmental/political issues.
Click to expand...

This is nonsense. Tenants are very well organised by email and lobby effectively by using it.

A website will be a part, not the whole and not absent, of consultation on the 'reshaping of brixton' (as this thread titles it). It may not be what editor thinks it should be but it will try to be another way of accessing the information and expressing views.
 
IntoStella said:
In terms of the whole community, only an elite minority use email/the internet to discuss local governmental/political issues. The majority don't, especially in an area with a lot of poverty and people from a hugely diverse range of ethnic backgrounds, like Lambeth.

So all that happens is mostly white, fairly well off, professional, middle class voices get heard and the rest don't. And lazy, dishonest politicans falsely claim they have consulted the public when in fact they have only heard from a small, privileged minority.
Click to expand...


Whilst I personally really like finding out about local stuff online, finding it virtually impossible to get to meetings at the moment, I think what IS says is very true, Its beginning to dawn on me (slowley) just how unrepresentative something like this is (sadly) of all the locality.
 
i was chatting to someone who lives in a st mungo's hostel whilst waiting for re-housing. he told me that he spends most of his time using their free broadband. he'll be chuffed to know that he's part of the elite. :D
 
miss minnie said:
i was chatting to someone who lives in a st mungo's hostel whilst waiting for re-housing. he told me that he spends most of his time using their free broadband. he'll be chuffed to know that he's part of the elite. :D
Click to expand...

Yup - I think its quite a leveller: from your anarchist to your bon-bourgeouis . . . it scans
 
miss minnie said:
i was chatting to someone who lives in a st mungo's hostel whilst waiting for re-housing. he told me that he spends most of his time using their free broadband. he'll be chuffed to know that he's part of the elite. :D
Click to expand...
And how many other people in his position do you think have broadband access?
 
IntoStella said:
amazing scenes in the Assembly rooms the other day when hundreds of angry parents had their say on the schooling fiasco.
Click to expand...
I was at the schools meeting too:

Angry mother: "Why d'you want to dump my kids next to a rubbish dump?"*

Cllr Bottrall: "... need to build new Council offices... can't find £10 million for a Brixton secondary school.... have found £52 million for Council offices... ahem... ahem... consultation... nothing set in concrete... let's be positive... blah... blah... blah...

Very Angry mother: "What the hell does that mean? Do you or don't you want to stick my children next to a rubbish dump?"

Cllr Bottrall: "Consultation... Shakespeare Road... new Council offices... explore all the options.... stakeholders.... let's be positive.... blah... blah... blah..."

300 Angry Mothers: "Answer the question!"

Cllr Bottrall: "Consultation.... urgent need for new council offices.... look to the future.... be flexible... let's be positive.... all one big happy family...."

* The proposed Shakespeare Road site for a secondary school is next to where the stinking Lambeth rubbish trucks are parked. MOst of the other Council owned sites have been sold for 'private luxury apartments' which is why they want to stick brixton kids next to the refuse lorries.
 
OldSlapper said:
* The proposed Shakespeare Road site for a secondary school is next to where the stinking Lambeth rubbish trucks are parked. MOst of the other Council owned sites have been sold for 'private luxury apartments' which is why they want to stick brixton kids next to the refuse lorries.
Click to expand...

Oi! I live next to there and I can confirm that it doesn't smell in the slightest. The only thing is the 24 hour noise and there is a speed bump right outside my bedroom window and those trucks don't half make a noise going over them.

Having said that I don't want a school there either. God forbid.
 
PacificOcean said:
Oi! I live next to there and I can confirm that it doesn't smell in the slightest. The only thing is the 24 hour noise and there is a speed bump right outside my bedroom window and those trucks don't half make a noise going over them.

Having said that I don't want a school there either. God forbid.
Click to expand...
Not in your back yard ;)

You've said before that you envisage a horror story of knife wielding teenage maniacs but I don't really know where you get the idea from that it will be like that. It all sounds far more like a Daily Mail scaremongering extravanganza than reality. When I've lived near -- and for three years next to -- Lambeth schools in the past, I've not noticed that residents in the immediate vicinity had any reason to barricade themselves in. It's not a very helpful attitude towards our borough's kids to brand them all as dangerous criminals or antisocial little bastards.
 
IntoStella said:
Not in your back yard ;)

You've said before that you envisage a horror story of knife wielding teenage maniacs but I don't really know where you get the idea from that it will be like that. It all sounds far more like a Daily Mail scaremongering extravanganza than reality. When I've lived near -- and for three years next to -- Lambeth schools in the past, I've not noticed that residents in the immediate vicinity had any reason to barricade themselves in. It's not a very helpful attitude towards our borough's kids to brand them all as dangerous criminals or antisocial little bastards.
Click to expand...

Point taken. Total NIMBY. :)
 
PacificOcean said:
Point taken. Total NIMBY. :)
Click to expand...
Hey! You're not supposed to agree! :mad: Seriously, I very much take your previous point about peace and quiet but on the whole you will probably get more of that with a school than with an endless procession of rubbish trucks at all hours. :)
 
OldSlapper said:
I was at the schools meeting too:

Angry mother: "Why d'you want to dump my kids next to a rubbish dump?"*

Cllr Bottrall: "... need to build new Council offices... can't find £10 million for a Brixton secondary school.... have found £52 million for Council offices... ahem... ahem... consultation... nothing set in concrete... let's be positive... blah... blah... blah...

Very Angry mother: "What the hell does that mean? Do you or don't you want to stick my children next to a rubbish dump?"

Cllr Bottrall: "Consultation... Shakespeare Road... new Council offices... explore all the options.... stakeholders.... let's be positive.... blah... blah... blah..."

300 Angry Mothers: "Answer the question!"

Cllr Bottrall: "Consultation.... urgent need for new council offices.... look to the future.... be flexible... let's be positive.... all one big happy family...."

* The proposed Shakespeare Road site for a secondary school is next to where the stinking Lambeth rubbish trucks are parked. MOst of the other Council owned sites have been sold for 'private luxury apartments' which is why they want to stick brixton kids next to the refuse lorries.
Click to expand...

Whoever you are, you have my support. :)
 
OldSlapper would be a great name for a cloudy real ale, as served in a less than salubrious hostelry. Sainsbury's do a naff claret called Old Git which would be a nice alternative.
 
I've had two or three letters of the week in SLP. Never got a pen. But I don't mind.

I'm just so easy to get on with you see. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

editor
Police facial recognition operation in Brixton
2 3
Replies
87
Views
11K
Gramsci
Gramsci
E
Clean Up Brixton
Replies
23
Views
742
Mr Joyful
M
CH1
Brixton/Lambeth GP surgeries - who owns who?
Replies
0
Views
762
CH1
CH1
editor
Pope's Road, Brixton: the former railway station building/Brixton Furniture Stores discussion
Replies
21
Views
3K
editor
editor
editor
Dry cleaning and zip repair in Brixton?
Replies
9
Views
2K
story
story
Back
Top Bottom