The cost of building our local leisure centre had ballooned to more than £30 million when it was opened in 2000, eye-wateringly expensive to our London borough, one of the poorest in the UK. Four years later the centre had closed because of serious building defects. A law suit, several years, and another £13 million later, it reopened. It’s big and bright, but has left a nasty taste in the mouth of the locals. There is time to ruminate on this, in our age of austerity, as I wait for the kids to emerge from the Kafkaesque changing rooms. [

continue reading Leisure Centre, London

Parking wardens working for London’s local authorities routinely issue tickets against authority-owned vehicles. When this happens, the authority takes itself to court to argue that it shouldn’t have to pay fines to itself. Sometimes, they ask the courts to award themselves legal costs from their own pockets. This according to Barrie Segal, who published a book in 2007 on London’s insane parking enforcement called The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness and Traffic Warden Hell.

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continue reading London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court

Also, Hackney improvements today coincide with opening of 3 academies – ie. schools not run by the local authority, an authority that hosted the first school in Britain closed under special measures. With the loss of [

continue reading another reason to be SMUG-16

It’s simple enough, just ask the school to say how many children over the years have registered from the same flats and houses in Grazebrook, Barbauld, Carysfort, Burmah or Springdale roads and then the address is changed before their child makes October of year 7. Then magicly they have ‘moved’ to ‘just off’ Cazenove, Brook or Allerton roads. No science would be involved and it is the most open secret imaginable with flats rented for that very purpose year, after year, after year and the whole thing giggled [

continue reading Ed Balls’s insane education policies make school gate cheats of us all – Telegraph

IMPOSE

SWINE FLU

BAN

via HACKNEY GAZETTE.

via Yfrog – vj9 – Uploaded by marcusfairs.”

It seems this year Winston Road was being advertised on twitter as the place to be – I gave up hosting after 20 years when mums from other parts of Hackney started complaining that we didn’t serve the parents any wine. Although they walked round to us it never occurred to them to offer anything back!

via Haggerston Baths restoration | News | Architects Journal.

The Empire, a former music hall turned TV studio and bingo hall that reopened as a theatre in 2004 after a three-year, multi-million pound refit, will close its main performance hall after the annual pantomime wraps in January, and won’t re-open until the 2010 panto. New chief executive Clarie Middleton, only in the job for a month, ominously called the closure a “period of reflection”, and despite the venue remaining open for youth and [

continue reading Hackney Empire To Close

“I do frequently encounter people who live in Hackney, though. You can tell who they are because Hackney is all they ever talk about. They climb off their bicycle (painted in anti-theft paint), curse all car drivers, curse centralised government, curse Margaret Thatcher (even 20 years on), roll a cigarette, flick a crumb of spelt from their raggy jumper, and then they say something about Hackney.”

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(Via Times ONLINE : .)