The Blake mural has been painted over by the Council
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The coop of Forest Hill Road is very different- cheerful and helpful staff -
By Chris Haydon · Posted
Would you expose your young people to 'that man'? That is apparently a real question. 'That man' is in fact a retired Oxford Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology who wrote a book setting out to provide a moral reckoning on the vexed subject of Britain's Empire and its history. What might formerly have been a purely academic matter has become highly contentious, and according to one Cambridge academic "serious shit" that needed to be CLOSED DOWN. It's all rather amazing, the stuff of satire or nightmare but not of the real world. Anyway, Lord Biggar accepted an invitation to visit Peckham and speak to and with a small audience that was due to include young Black students ... who in the end didn't come on the day! Having set the whole thing up to facilitate this encounter for them, the outcome was a disappointment. The conversation with Lord Biggar and audience was not: -
Entertaining a visitor from Philippines, she's been here before but I've promised lunch. Somewhere a little different maybe, quirky? -
Surely a very simple: "how much does the council receive from the organisers of the Gala festival for payment for use of Peckham Rye" would smoke out a response. The "commercial sensitivity" could be because the council are giving it away or it could be because Gala don't want others to know how much they are paying - it is really tough to make money from any type of festival these days and Wide Awake in Brockwell, for example, sent out a plea for people to buy tickets via a reduced price "Tell a Friend" special offer because (they said much of it linked to the problems Lambeth were having with the High Court) things were entering "squeaky bum time" and they were struggling to hit their break-even point. It does make me wonder whether expansion is baked-in to the agreements the council has with the organisers for events like Gala as the organisers have to be able to scale the size of the event each year to try to make money. I do also how much of the "revenue" from these events might be swallowed up by the provision of the "free community" event element of them. The comment piece in the Guardian sums it up quite nicely: The heart of this issue seems to be how cash-strapped councils are becoming increasingly beholden to commercial interests to the detriment of the public. A weekend festival that welcomes 50,000 people can expect to raise about £500,000 for local authorities. Councils argue that this money goes back in the public purse, allowing them to continue funding free community events such as Lambeth’s beloved Country Show, though there doesn’t seem to be much transparency over exactly how much cash is raised or where it is allocated. The issue for councils may well be that if people found out how much was actually being raised by these events that the community would say the disruption is not worth it and I do wonder how much of the revenue is being swallowed up by the provision of the "free event" using the same infrastructure. Any time a council doesn't want to share something openly very much suggests that it is because they think constituents won't like the answer.
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