The Croydon Derby - support your local clubs

This post was sent to Inside Croydon

https://insidecroydon.com/2016/03/10/shall-we-sing-a-song-for-you-derby-days-chorus-of-approval/

I am a Croydon Athletic supporter. Saturday 6th March 2016 was derby day.  I met up with a friend at The Horsehoe pub on Thornton Heath pond to watch Tottenham v Arsenal, and after that game we walked down Silverleigh Road to the Mayfields Stadium to watch AFC Croydon Athletic v Croydon FC.

It was my first ever Croydon derby. A fixture between these two Croydon clubs is a rarity. Not only have these two clubs been in different divisions, but also in different leagues over the past few seasons.

Upon going through the turnstiles, I was immediately surprised by the number of supporters behind the Croydon (Trams) goal, the preferred location for the Croydon Athletic Rams Army. It seemed like a number of occasional attendees had made a special effort for the clash between Rams v Trams. I've been going to Mayfields since the 2006-07 season, and it was about as populated as its ever been behind the goal,

I usually bring a drum with me, which in recent matches has been played by young James who comes with his mum and dad. James was keen to have the drum again.

A quick scan of the terraces and stands indicated that the Trams had not bought many fans with them.

After the first Croydon Athletic attack, James had started the familiar 'Da-Da... Da-Da-Da...Da-Da-Da-Da' drum beat which finishes with the supporters chanting 'Croydon.' As if in auto-response mode, upon hearing the beat, I chanted Croydon with only a handful of others, only to see Mick look over at us and say, "think about it..."

Banter with Croydon keeper, Francis Ameyaw, started early with a rendition of the saxaphone solo from the Pink Panther theme. Well, what do you expect if you turn up to play in dayglo pink!

There ought to be a fierce rivalry between the Rams and the Trams but I have never got a sense that has been the case. Tackles weren't really flying on Saturday. There was one moment, shortly after commencement of the second half, when a couple of players confronted each other - but that happens in every game nowadays.

Croydon FC have hovered around the foot of the Southern Counties East - Premier Division for most of the season, whereas Croydon Athletic have been floating around the top half. If the league table is supposed to reflect the comparative standard of each team then it was wholly accurate with regards to this fixture.

The Rams took the lead in the 11th minute through a cool finish from striker Lee Jansen. In the 28th minute, top scorer Raheem Sterling-Parker was upended by goalkeeper Ameyaw resulting in a penalty. There's only one Raheem Sterling took the penalty himself and calmly slotted it away. Athletic pushed for a third goal but never seemed to get into a high gear. At the other end of the pitch the Rams keeper was largely untroubled.

In the second half, Athletic continued to control the game but found it difficult to add to their lead. I got the sense that the Rams were coasting to the finish line when out of the blue Lauris Chin pulled a goal back after a defensive mishap. Manager Anthony Williams went ballistic and screamed and shouted at the defence. Any complacency which had set in was soon erased and the Rams held on to win 2-1.


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Tags croydon, greenparty

I would make Croydon better by...

Introducing a Croydon Citizenship Test to all new residents to our borough. The purpose of the test would be to highlight all that is culturally stimulating and great in the borough, from Coombe Wood to Croydon Tech City, and from The Alchemist to The Oval Tavern, and everything in between. Questions on elected officials would also be included, including details of the last set of election results. Estate Agents will be obliged to hand the test to all those moving to our borough and anyone that scores below a low pass mark will forfeit their chance of living here.

Shasha Khan only wants the enlightened.

The Croydon Citizen has a page in its paper which asks how you would make Croydon better.

When I submitted my sugesstion the Senior Section Editor replied:

It's a lighter kind of 'Better By' entry which actually makes a serious point - that a lot of people who complain about Croydon actually have very limited knowledge of life here despite living here, and might genuinely feel happier and more positive if they looked around and engaged.  And of course for everyone to follow and participate in local politics (look at voting percentages!) would transform outcomes: once again people complain, yet contribute to the situation by their own inaction.

Local Tech City guy, and influential figure, said on twitter

Jonny Rose‏@98rosjon

OMG @GreenKnight2010's IDEA TO INTRODUCE A CROYDON CITIZENSHIP TEST IS THE BEST THING EVER

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Letter to Croydon South MP

My Christmas message to my MP, Sir Richard Ottaway (Conservative, Croydon South) sent the old fashioned way, in the post last week.

Dear Sir Richard,

This year I really don’t feel like Christmas. I can’t bear the thought of being part if it. But I am socially obliged have grin and bear it, even to pretend I enjoy it, counting the minutes for this hypocritical feast to be over. The reason is that friends have emailed me two recent documents:
1) Feeding Britain: A strategy for zero hunger in England,
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The report of the All-Party. Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom
And:
2) An Evidence Review for the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom. Compiled and written by Andrew Forsey, Secretary to the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom.
Document 2) is a summary of the evidence from which the conclusions and recommendations of document 1) are drawn. The findings in these reports are horrifying. The UK is still one of the richest countries on Earth and yet thousands of people, through no fault of their own and a great many in work, have to undergo the regular humiliation of asking for emergency food in charitable food banks. The reports make absolutely clear that in general the cause is poverty and living conditions caused by poverty. On page 8 of “Feeding Britain” is the statement:
“Let us therefore begin by stating the blindingly obvious. An individual is in danger of going hungry when they do not have enough money to buy enough food as their body requires. There are people in this very position right now in this country.”
When people who are already poor are suddenly deprived of regular income, e.g. though unemployment or other reasons why they have to rely on the benefits system, they have no reserves and they immediately experience acute hardship. The rock-solid evidence collected for these reports shows that delays in benefits processing some by design, some though incompetence and inefficiency, compounded by a capricious and arbitrarily administered sanctions system, are a major contributor to the large scale increase of hunger in this country.
I know that I have been very lucky. Every day of my life (and I am now 65) I have known where my next meal is coming from. But I was not born in this country and reading some of the evidence collected for these reports, I am reminded of what my parents lived though in 1944 – 45 in the Nazi occupied Netherlands: families reduced to having nothing, without heat, light and food in their home; people scavenging through refuse to try to find some thing edible, and so on. About 4.5 million people were affected
But this is the UK in 2014, a rich country, and now literally the same things are now happening here to many people. A number of submissions to the reports outlined how people had become so hungry that they resort, though sheer desperation, to stealing essential goods or scavenging through bins and skips behind food outlets, including parents and children. Others stated that families cannot cook the food they collect from a food bank when they get home because they have no cash to put in the pay as you go utility meters. The number of officially recorded medical primary and secondary diagnoses of malnutrition in England has risen from 3,161 in 2008 -2009 to 5,499 last year.
On page 17 the Report’s summary of evidence states “ (The) data would indicate that the number of people in this country who are at risk of going hungry may be in the region of four million.” I.e. hunger is beginning to affect people here on a similar scale as the early stages of the 1944-45 Dutch famine. The difference is of course that here the hungry are a minority, dispersed amongst the well-fed majority.
How could this possibly have come about? This country has easily enough food and other resources to enable everybody to have an adequate minimum standard of nutrition and generally adequate living conditions. We know from the thousands of volunteers who donate their time to run food banks and the millions of people who make donations to them that the British people are generally caring and compassionate by nature and didn’t want this to happen.
I also know that you and your government have been in power for almost five years and decided to let this situation develop without doing anything about it and callously and irresponsibly refused to collect the data and to compile the statistic on hunger in this country, so that this had to be done through private initiatives. You have adopted policies, as the reports make abundantly clear, which made the situation worse, and for ideological reasons even refused European Union aid to help the hungry.
In the spring of 1945 my country was not so fussy when very low flying RAF bombers– who couldn’t be sure that they would not be shot at - dropped British emergency food aid and saved many thousands of lives. We were just grateful and still are to this day. When I was young I have seen perfectly normal, sane and balanced men and women break down and burst into tears when they had cause to relive memories of those events. This is one of the things hunger can do to people.
There is no objective reason why anybody should go hungry in this country. I really don’t get it. Why do you hate the poor, the vulnerable, those who are badly paid in insecure jobs, those exploited by landlords so that they don’t have enough to live on, those unreasonably persecuted by sanctions and inadequate and delayed benefit payments, the unemployed, those who genuinely cannot work, and all their children? What have they ever done to you? Please explain it to me. Why do you hate these people so much?

Yours sincerely,

Tom Voûte

https://foodpovertyinquiry.files.wordpress.com/…/food-pover…,https://foodpovertyinquiry.files.wordpress.com/…/food-pover…

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Tags croydon, greenparty

What I wish for in Croydon

Croydon Advertiser 30th December 2011

"I hope job losses are kept to a minimum and that , instead of negative virals*, we get positive news items coming from Croydon.

"As a Croydon Athletic season ticket holder, I also hope a new club can be formed that bring back the good old days, a club serving the community that is on a good financial standing. "

*riots and my tram experience

What else I wish for (that didn't get published):

• An excellent result for Gordon Ross in the GLA's, easily saving the deposit and closing in on third place.
• And personally, my push bike remaining well serviced throughout the year. I can go much faster, from A to B, after a service.
  

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Letter to the paper on Dubstep.

Linked to this post.

16.07.10

Dear Editor,

There is a tendency to look for bricks and mortar examples when conveying what is good about Croydon. In your article (Councillor backs town in ‘Kyle’ row), Councillor Steve O’Connell refers to the shops and restaurants. Others would point to Fairfield Halls.

Our senior councillors (no pun intended) are probably not aware of developments in the dance music scene that are attributable to Croydon.

‘Dubstep’ is a new bass driven genre which has taken the world by storm, and its roots are in Croydon. Local artists such as Oliver ‘Skream’ Jones are appearing on the cover of magazines in Europe and USA. This follows a rich history of musicians from our borough producing much-lauded electronic music.

Identifying dubstep as an example of Croydon culture may not be the conventional way to describe this borough, but that does not mean it should be ignored. The next time Councillor O’Connell is at some international municipal conference or on the radio, could he show he's in tune with what's going on in the whole of Croydon.

Yours sincerely

Shasha Khan

Croydon Green Party

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Croydon bashing on the airwaves.

Thank you Dave Pettener (Green Party candidate for Sanderstead) for alerting me to Vanessa Feltz' phone in on BBC London last Friday, where a string of people came on to defend or bash Croydon. This all started when the unfortunate Sgt Deucher - the face of Croydon Police - made comments on Facebook about Croydon's cultural deficiencies and joked that, "Research indicates all of Jeremy Kyle's guests can trace their roots back to the lovely town".

Councillor Steve O'Connell and Andy Worden, the editor of the Croydon Advertiser, phoned in to defend the borough BUT it was astute resident Paul who hit the nail on the head:

"Croydon Councillors are bedblockers".

Paul pointed out that Croydon's image problem - which has even been brought to the attention of the House of Commons by Gavin Barwell MP - is down to its ineffectual councillors that sit in the town hall. He correctly asserted that the, "same names keep coming up over and over again in the council" (due to the archaic electoral system), and all they do is "score points off each other. They don't understand the true potential of Croydon".

Paul can be heard around the 42nd minute
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Tags croydon, greenparty

Press release: Cycles lanes still haven't improved

19.02.10

Press Release:

OVER TWO YEARS HAVE PASSED AND STILL WE WAIT

Green Party parliamentary candidate for Croydon North, Shasha Khan, is again calling for Croydon Council to improve cycle lanes in the borough.

Shasha Khan said:

“It’s been over two years since Councillor Dudley Mead came on a cycle ride with us around the borough. He realised that cycling was good for the environment and people’s health and gave the impression after the ride that he was going to improve cycle routes. However, I am struggling to see any improvements. (1)”

Shasha Khan wrote to Councillor Mike Fisher in July 2007 asking him to join members and supporters of the Croydon Green Party on a cycle ride to show how dangerous it was to be cyclist in the borough. Councillor Fisher declined saying he “hadn’t been on his bike for years” and that “Coun Mead was the best man” to join the cyclists.

Shasha continued, “During the cycle ride, there was one specific junction, St James Park onto Windmill Road, presently, two way for cyclists and one way for cars, that caught Councillor Mead’s attention. He could clearly see the junction was an accident waiting to happen. However, over two years on, nothing has been done. (2)”

After experiencing the junction first hand, Councillor Dudley Mead advised the council officer David Wickens, who accompanied the cyclists on the day, to consult TFL to improve the junction.

Shasha Khan said:

“I am happy to show Councillor Mead the dangers of cycling around Croydon again.

“The Conservatives give the impression that they are ‘green’ but the reality is somewhat different. A cycling Mayor of London doesn’t automatically mean that people in Croydon are also going to get on their bikes. What will lead to an increase in cycle journeys are safe cycle routes but we get instead is ill thought out stunts like “Cycle Fridays” (3), cuts in the cycling budget (4) and apparent good intentions which are not acted upon.”


Ends

Notes:

1) Picture attached to this email from your original piece.
2) You tube link of the junction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLsloDzYZ9g
3)
3) http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=23132
Despite huge amounts of publicity, the Mayor’s “Cycle Fridays” have been an abject failure. There have been far more marshalls and press officers present at Cycle Friday events than people cycling to work for the first time.
4) http://london.gov.uk/view_press_release_a.jsp?releaseid=19796



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Tags croydon, greenparty

Gordon Ross selected for Croydon South

Croydon Advertiser and Croydon Guardian

press release here

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Radioactive waste: two bits of coverage and two responses

Croydon Council have responded to my concerns about radioactive waste from decommissioned nuclear reactors being shipped to the proposed South London Incinerator in the usual manner. Conservative Councillor Phil Thomas' response is somewhat different to his Lib Dem counterpart in Sutton, Councillor Colin Hall, who conceded that radioactive waste was part of the waste stream at the recent Beddington Village Hall meeting. In fact, Councillor Hall could not say for certain that waste from future decommissioned nuclear reactors would not be part of the mix.
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Tags croydon, greenparty

Greens riding high in Croydon

Thanks Rob and David for knocking up this chart which certainly makes for interesting viewing. The chart depicts the percentage gains or losses made in Croydon by the seat winning parties for the London region. In Croydon, the Green Party vote rose by 39%. The BNP vote also rose, but only by 33% (it could have been a lot worse). But the Lib Dems (-24%), Labour (-21%), UKIP (-9%) and the Conservatives (-1%) all experienced a negative sensation. HOORAH!

For me, our positive experience was already materialising at the count - even before the serious number crunching. Thoughtfully, the Green Party's London Coordinator Noel Lynch had the 2004 results in his pocket. After I had managed to collate the results for Croydon, I called them out to Noel who responded by approximating whether they were "up" or "down", taking into consideration the lower turnout. We realised the Green vote was up but then one by one it became apparent, apart from the BNP, that all the other parties had seen their polling fall. The only one we were not sure of was the Tory vote.

THANK YOU FOR VOTING GREEN!

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Euro votes for London region at City Hall

I joined fellow London candidates last night at City Hall for the European Parliamentary Election 2009: London Region Consolidation of votes, allocation of seats and declaration of results. The event just like the title of the event itself could have been organised more efficiently. The TV screens that showed the rolling total as final numbers were being returned by the boroughs was inadequate in size. I reckon some of the front rooms around where I live possess TV screens larger in size. When I did get a chance to view the monitor in between armpits and over shoulders, I noticed we had finished second in a couple of boroughs. From memory, Hackney and Lewisham - possibly more.

From what I was able to note from the screen, below is the (unconfirmed) result from the Croydon jury. Full regional and national results can be seen on the BBC web site.

It is little disappointing that such a fantastic increase in vote share didn't translate to more seats but I guess thats down to the reduction from nine to eight seats in the region AND the rather disproportionate D'Hondt proportional representation system which is used. I heard Caroline Lucas say in an interview that we would have done a lot better if the UK used the same method used in Germany.

CROYDON

BNP 3898 (5%)
Christian 3501 (4%)
Conservative 25608 (32%)
Jury Team 293 (0%)
Lib Dem 7957 (10%)
No 2 EU (1%)
Libertas 380 (0%)
Socialist Labour 547 (1%)
Green 7092 (9%) ---- up from 6%
Labour 14813 (19%)
Socialist GB 138 (0%)
UKIP 10921 (14%)
Yes to Europe 154 (0%)
Ind. Alacantara 51 (0%)
Ind. Cheung 173 (0%)
Ind. Jananayagam 3128 (4%)
Ind. Rahman 93 (0%)
Ind Saad 65 (0%)

Turnout = 34%

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Croydon Save our Schools petition

01.05.09

Press Release:

CROYDON SAVE OUR SCHOOLS PETITION

Croydon Save Our Schools have started a petition (1) calling for a delay in signing of the funding agreements with Harris Federation and Oasis Trust until a review of Croydon Council’s tactics in circumventing opposition to the plans have been investigated.

Commenting on the petition, Shasha Khan said:

“Many campaigners and interested parties feel that Croydon Council has rushed through the Secondary Schools Review without proper consultation. In their eagerness to deliver two new academies in September, the council has sidestepped the concerns of those who will be affected by the changes.

“Moreover, we are now in May and still the statutory process is still ongoing. I am sure even the sponsors would like more opportunities to address the concerns of interested parties and actual time to plan for the new school year, in September. Timetabling, staffing and other administrative issues should not be rushed because ultimately it’s the education of the children that will be affected."

Provided there are 500 signatures or more on the petition, it will be passed to officials who work for the Prime Minister in Downing Street, or sent to the relevant Government department for a response.

Ends


(1) http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/croydonschools/


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Tags croydon, greenparty

Croydon Greens help break world record!

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: 16.03.09

MEMBERS OF CROYDON GREEN PARTY HELP BREAK THE WORLD RECORD FOR THE LARGEST EVER FILM PREMIERE.

Members of Croydon Green Party and other local green groups along with concerned individuals last night (15th March) attended the Peoples Premiere screening (at VUE Purley Way) of The Age of Stupid [1]. They joined cinemagoers in 65 other venues -creating a potential audience capacity of 16,000 - to achieve the world record feat via satellite link up.

Commenting on the film and world record achievement, Croydon Green Party spokesperson Shasha Khan said:

“Some of the audience in ‘Screen 1’ cheered when news came through that we had participated in a world record.

“However, ‘The Age of Stupid’ will be remembered as the film that conveyed the stark reality of what life will be like in 2055 if we don’t act to stop climate change now.”

The film is a docu-drama hybrid and features Oscar nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching actual archive footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance.

Shasha Khan continued:

“Governments around the world have a duty to deliver at the next UN Climate Change conference in December 2009 [2] and the makers of this film hammered this point at the Peoples Première.

“The film is cleverly made using actual news footage and animation sequences to get the climate change message across in an easy to understand manner. I urge everyone to see it.”

Ends

Notes:
[1] - http://www.ageofstupid.net/
[2] - http://en.cop15.dk/

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Tags croydon, greenparty

Jay Ginn on front page of the local paper

web version of the article

A picture of local Green Party member Jay Ginn appears on the front page of the Croydon Guardian this week. I reckon the picture would have been taken at the first demo outside the town hall. The article features the news that Croydon NUT have voted to take strike action and also touches on the incident that occured outside Haling Manor School on Monday, including my take on what happened and why it happened.
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Tags croydon, greenparty

GLA Election campaign vid

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Tags croydon, greenparty