Community Meeting Update - Sept 2011

Pessimistic know it all gets proved wrong.

The latest community meeting has come and gone, and for the most part it was great. One of the best turnouts we’ve had, so no need for me to stomp off in a self righteous sulk. We’ve also had notice that demolition will begin in a couple of weeks so I’ve taken a few pictures to start charting progress. Also giant house spiders have started invading my house, but that’s not really relevant I just wanted to share.

aaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhh . . 

The meeting was very interesting, some new faces and some familiar ones. People are very concerned about the state of the neighbourhood, and I don’t blame them. Emotions were running high, a bit of a cliché for a community meeting, but watching your street become increasingly neglected with what seems like no hope of anything being done to ease the situation can lead to hot heads and frayed tempers.

However we had representatives from the police, Leeds City Council and housing associations so all in all there were nearly 20 people present. Some were a little disruptive, but I fully appreciate that they felt frustrated at how things have been delayed. Though I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s anxieties, and I agree that the community meeting is a good place to raise your issues, share your problems and express your frustration, criminal activity has to be formally reported to the police for it to be tackled. I also appreciate that regular foot patrols reassure residents, but unless the cops actually happen upon someone doing something criminal as they walk by, then they’re mostly just a PR exercise. My eyesight’s pretty shoddy, but even I can see a high visibility vest mooching up the street towards me, and I suspect that your average neighbourhood scrote can do the same.

preparing for demolition

Crime needs to be formally reported, if you’re seeing it and not reporting it you are not helping to resolve it. I also understand that fear of retaliation stops people, but I’ve filmed people nicking metal railings, stood up in court to give evidence, given statements to the police, kept noise diaries, rung the police and gone into the street to challenge antisocial and criminal behaviour; I’m not brave, quite the opposite, but when pushed I can stand up for myself, sort of, and I’ve yet to be threatened with any retaliation.

Residents it seems have also been doing some good stuff, tidying up the streets which are quite frankly looking like shit at the moment. It’s not gone unnoticed and people are very grateful.  Also someone’s dumped some lovely asbestos in one of the bin yards, which has hopefully been removed by now. Also alarmingly enough, there is asbestos in some of the houses that are going to be demolished, so let’s hope the HASMAT suits are broken out for that portion of the demolition.

what the streets near me might have looked like when they were built

It’s also been highlighted that it is unlikely that a developer will want to buy or develop the land, as it’s not been fully cleared and some of the properties will remain. But for me demolition is still the sensible thing to do, derelict property is not acceptable on a large scale as anything other than a short term situation.

Well that’s it for now, I’ve added some images here and on the pictures page, and I’ll keep adding as the demolition progresses, so if you’re interested keep your eyes peeled.

Half of my street is being prepared for demolition

just waiting for the wrecking ball . . .

Lee and Lance

With recent 'youth' activity focusing heavily upon burning, raping and pillaging particularly amongst the greater spotted urban youth I thought I’d reminisce about two entrepreneurial young men who lived near us in London.  

We first encountered this dynamic duo when they were posting homemade leaflets through doors offering their services to clean cars to earn some pocket money. This was long before the days of drive in hand car washes and also before mobile phones were as ubiquitous as they are now in the UK.

What really caught our attention was Lee himself. He had all the patter and the charm of an East end market trader. Confident and a bit cheeky Lee introduced himself to us like he was a used car salesman with 30 years experience of ducking and diving, he also introduced us to his friend whose name we instantly forgot.

Harry Enfield was riding high in the comedy firmament, so these two young fellahs became known as Lee and Lance. They can’t have been more than 12 or 13, and they really looked like 12 year old boys, all skinny arms and legs and sticky out ears. In comparison the girls they were at school with would have seemed like Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. The telly characters of Lee and Lance were a couple of Londoners who had hidden talents and were barstool philosophers as the videos below will show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_O_HrEuhEY

The thing that really tickled us was the contact number on their promotional flyer, it wasn’t even theirs, they’d used a neighbour’s mobile number and hoped he wouldn’t mind – classic risk taking devil may care attitude from Lee and his partner in commerce.

They were instantly commissioned to wash my housemate’s car, a rather lovely 2CV, but were too small to carry the water bucket when it was full so we had to do that for them, but they did a good job and charged a reasonable price. They even waxed the car under the critical eye of its beady eyed owner.

Lee had explained that he wanted some extra money to contribute to his share of a family holiday or a computer game, and that seemed like as good a reason as any so we were happy to offer them odd jobs.

They were nice kids showing a bit of initiative and that deserved to be acknowledged and encouraged. Over the next few years we watched them grow up enough to be able to carry a bucket of water without adult supervision, lose teeth (this happened once whilst washing the 2CV, there was blood and there was panic; tea towels and kitchen roll were brought into play, but they still finished waxing the car – committed and professional to the last) and then they began to diversify into weeding gardens, washing windows and other useful odd jobs as they got older and taller.

Lee and lance were the acceptable face of trick or treating and carol singing, on one occasion after they turned up and mumbled the first chorus of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas”, like every lazy and undeserving carol singer does, though if I remember they also appeared in November which was a little premature, we told them that if they came back much nearer Christmas, sang three carols in full, and with enthusiasm we’d give them a fiver – an amount not to be sniffed at for carol singing in 1994. They did indeed return much nearer Christmas and they sang three carols in full, enthusiastically, if not harmoniously, and they were rewarded fairly as agreed. The shine was slightly taken off when they turned up the next evening in disguise for a repeat performance, we were not fooled and we sent them off with a friendly telling off, it was all good natured and as always we had to admire their initiative.

In comparison to the youthful, and not so youthful, rioters in the news recently I think it’s important to recognise that not all young people are scum, there’s a lot of positive behaviour out there, but it’s not sexy and it doesn’t sell papers or get headlines to report on nice kids doing nice stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrI4--a7oUA