LAMBETH LABOUR COUNCILLOR MOVES TO SOUTHWARK (but only for 12 months)…..
A Lambeth Labour councilor has moved into the neighbouring borough of Southwark – but only for 12 months.
An inspection of the register of members interests at Lambeth council shows Herne Hill ward Cllr Jim Dickson is now living in Hollingbourne Road, Herne Hill SE24 which maps show is in the London borough of Southwark.
A note says he will only be moving for 12 months returning to Harwarden / Hawarden Grove SE24 in late August 2016.
Cllr Dickson, who represents Herne Hill ward, has been one focus of much of the anger by Carnegie library Herne Hill supporters over the current closure of the building.
…..AS GHOSTS RETURN TO HAUNT CARNEGIE LIBRARY WITH PARTY TOMORROW
3.30pm, 9th July, 1906, Carnegie Library opens
3.30pm, 9th July, 2016, Carnegie Library users re-stage the opening ceremony and throw a party…
to commemorate a much-loved, hugely successful local service that lasted 110 years, but will have been needlessly closed for exactly 100 days – costing far more in security guards to keep people out than it would cost to keep it open..
Library users will be there in full Edwardian fig to embody the ghosts of the speakers who proudly welcomed ‘the wonderful building, the whole effect of which is very cheerful and pleasant’.
They will include:
* Lady Edith Durning-Lawrence – her sister Jemina (sic) Durning funded the Durning Library in 1889 with a whopping 10,000 guineas (it’s still going strong, recently rescued from being turned into a gym by overwhelming public opposition).
Lady Edith was a great benefactor to health services, and certainly appreciated that a proper library service is a ‘healthy living centre’ in itself. Unlike a gym.
Her husband, Sir Edwin, was one of the first Lambeth library commissioners, who laid down that: “The great extent, the extreme length and even breadth, and the very fantastic shape of the Parish, compel the establishment of District Libraries and Reading Rooms in different localities of the Parish, so that every person shall be within a few minutes’ walk of one of them…Ten …should be established…”
Lambeth is now closing four of them.
* Andrew Carnegie. OK, he wasn’t there in 1906 except in spirit. But he’s the man who stumped up the huge sum of £12,000 to build the Carnegie – at Lambeth’s own request – on the express condition that it be properly funded and run as a library, and not as anything else.
Certainly not a gym.
In his view: “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. “It is a never failing spring in the desert.”
and
“There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the free public library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”
Today, only a ghost can get into the Carnegie Library.
Work has now started inside the building to survey the basement – at unknown expense – and see if it can be excavated to accommodate a fee-charging GLL gym that nobody wants. (Source: Friends of Lambeth Libraries)
A new post on the GWOMP website headed: “If you tell a lie often enough …?” (July 5, 2016) includes the following comments on plans to site a gym in the basement of the Carnegie:
“As this will involve substantial excavation (the current basement area is too small and the ceiling too low) and risks undermining a grade 2 listed building, it will be a long and expensive process.
“Listed building consent has not yet been sought. “No application has been made for planning permission, nor will be until Sept 2016. “No market research has been done to determine demand in this quiet residential suburb for a gym.
“All this, from planning application in Sept 2016 to opening, the council promises, will be completed by Summer 2017! “A maximum of one year, with a maximum of nine months for ALL the building work and refitting.
“ ‘What Carnegie says about our approach to Tory cuts’ is the headline of (Cllr Jim Dickson’s blog post. “”What it says is that Lambeth Labour is happy to use Tory cuts as an excuse to cut services it doesn’t want to provide.
“Lambeth Labour claims to focus spending on vulnerable people, but are gym customers really the most vulnerable in society?
“Many vulnerable people have already been harmed by the closure of libraries by Lambeth Labour. “Some of the most vulnerable are homeless families trapped in temporary accommodation, an expanding group in Lambeth.
“The council has earned well over £100 million by selling off social housing, thereby increasing homelessness, but a recent FOI (Freedom of Information) request revealed that so far not one penny of that money has been spent on new homes.
“The latest council accounts show that by 2014-15 the council had diverted £21.5 million a year from services to commissioning – money once spent on providing services is now spent paying very high salaries to hordes of bureaucrats to sign up contractors and ensure that their “hospitality” freebies are up to scratch.
“Commissioning overspent last year by £563,000 – a larger sum than the latest of many cuts to the libraries budget, and more than the running costs of Carnegie and Minet libraries combined.
“Complex challenges often require innovative thinking” – no doubt, Jim, but combining libraries and gyms was last done more than two thousand years ago in classical Greece, and fell out of use some time around the birth date of Jesus Christ.
“They were open only to a small masculine elite, were concerned as much with fitness of mind as of body, and here’s a tip you might like, Jim – they were staffed by slaves.”
(GWOMP, the Global War On Mendacious Politics, was declared in a small South London flat in April 2016, by an even smaller, yet determined, coalition of the willing.)
NEWS OF OTHER LAMBETH COUNCILLORS
An article on Lambeth Cllr Florence Eshalomi (formerly Nosegbe) in the July / August 2016 of Brixton Blog says: “She also thinks that politicians have to be more honest and admit when they make mistakes and apologise.”
The article on the recently-elected GLA member for Lambeth and Southwark who still retains her seat on Lambeth council also says:
“Eshalomi says people should feel confident they are being listened to, and elected representatives should reflect the make-up of the local community while at the same time representing everyone.”
While on social media Cllr Alex ‘Catman’ Bigham [email protected] on Jun 26 posted on social media in relation to Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey’s support for the ‘Leave’ campaign: “Kate Hoey – resign and call a by-election – Sign the Petition!”
Further reading:
Freedom of Information Request shows library closures costing Lambeth council three times more than it would to keep them open By Jason Cobb Brixton Buzz May 22, 2016
