The Duck House – a comedy of modern politics, Vaudeville Theatre, 20/12/13
Sir Peter Viggers’ Duck House was almost certain to star in a comedy at some point and here it is in the eponymous play by Dan Patterson and Colin Swash. It appears on the Vaudeville stage along with hanging baskets (Margaret Beckett), wisteria (David Cameron), elephant lamps (Michael Gove), a glitter toilet seat (John Reid) and a massage chair (Shahid Malik).
The star of the show is Labour MP, Robert Houston, played enthusiastically and manically by Ben Miller. The story centres on his attempt to jump the Labour ship as the June, 2010, election approaches, hopefully to become a Tory Cabinet Minister under David Cameron. To do this he has, of course, to appear squeaky clean to Tory grandee, Sir Norman Cavendish.
Houston’s desire for a more sophisticated lifestyle compares the cultivation of his ambitions with the pathetically low aesthetic tastes of so much of the expenses saga – a glitter toilet seat – really! And it therefore becomes a beautiful target for farce especially when Sir Norman’s bizarre sexual habits are revealed.
It’s great slapstick stuff and well worth a visit, especially to see how many of today’s news stories appear in the script. We had amusing references to Nigella’s problems as a witness and to the current “recommendation” to raise MP salaries by 11% and the audience did have fun working out how many particular references they got. But how the German tourists sitting in the seats behind us were doing I couldn’t quite imagine.
But the amount of custard pie thrown at Sir Norman smacked a little of desperation. Both the play and the players found it difficult to keep a consistently high volume of laughs. I rather wonder whether this displayed a difficulty between the two authors. That obviously works well on occasions – see Frank Muir and Dennis Norden but the Duck House left me feeling that sometimes we were watching a not completely happy compromise between a subtle political satire and an uproarious Whitehall farce.
At the heart of the saga is the belief, of course, amongst many MPs (and residents of what Washington would call the Beltway – not exactly the metropolitan elite more the M25 Ringway) that they are under-paid and, since they deserve to get paid more, then clearly it is perfectly acceptable to buck the system. Indeed, as the curtain falls, Miller as the hapless Houston, his career falling apart, makes a very explicit plea for some decent objectivity from the audience.
But surely the problem is that most people do not think of £70K being a very low salary. Moreover, there is no evidence that the pay levels are seriously detracting from the numbers wishing to become MPs. And the script did not look at both sides of what is surely a valid debate. As a result, the audience was left feeling that, if anything, MPs as venal and incompetent as those on stage are over-paid and not under-paid.
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere December Newsletter (# 55)
November highlights
1. Thanks again to everyone asking about the streptococcal G poisoning – slow improvement but not brilliant prognosis is all I can say at present. Maybe a knee replacement is called for!
2. I never like to resign. I always think it better to stay in the battle fighting away for one’s corner. But I am afraid that the saga of Battersea Park School (BPS) just became too much! When the Board of Governors are, in effect, ordered to vote for the school to be made a Harris sponsored Academy despite being overwhelmingly opposed in principle and told that they will be replaced by Harris appointed placemen then it is time to stand up, as they say, and be counted. Not, I am afraid, that my resignation in mid-November will be seen as any more than a gesture but given that I think Michael Gove is destroying our educational system, I didn’t have much choice. STOP PRESS since the end of November the Chair of Governors has resigned and the Head, Gale Keller, who has been main man behind the resuscitation of the school over recent years 
has also resigned. There is now an eight month hiatus until Harris take over – this does not look good for the students and all thanks to the Government’s cavalier attitude towards our schools!
3. On the 13th November I attended the unveiling of the John Archer plaque at 55 Brynmaer Gardens, which despite being on the “wrong side” of Battersea Park Road is in fact in a small enclave of Latchmere ward. Here is a picture of the plaque itself, the Mayor, Wendy Speck, my fellow councillor, and me.
John Archer was the first black mayor in the UK (actually not true as there was a little known black mayor of the small Norfolk town of Thetford, but people conveniently forget that one!) and I have covered him before in one of my Did You Know sections. I have never done this before but since November was the centenary of his election by 30 votes to 29 to be Mayor of Battersea I thought it was fair enough to do a repeat – see below.
Oh and by the way here is another picture of me with Hyacinth Stone, a Latchmere resident and constituent who was at the unveiling. Hyacinth lives in Buxton House and in her honour I am goi
ng to do a “Did you know” next month which links Buxton House directly to Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster.
4. The November Planning Applications Committees really was very thin, at least from the point of view of any Latchmere resident and hence unusually I will not even report back from it.
5. The Survey of London’s long awaited volumes on Battersea were produced in November. They are truly massive books and tell you all that there is to tell about the buildings past and present of Battersea. They do not come cheap, indeed the pair sell at £100+ and are clearly meant for libraries, but if you want to find out anything about your street or block then here is the place to start looking. However, I must say it is le
ss good on the council estates than it is on anything else and so Latchmere misses out a bit! I attach one of the illustrations from the book – a watercolour of the Battersea river front by Cecil Hands painted in the early 1930s. Note that the Power Station only had two chimneys and stayed that way until after the War.
6. BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) had the 120th anniversary of the opening of Battersea Town Hall on 15th November. In many ways it was a launch for a big fund raising effort for the Town Hall and its re-furbishment but it was also a launch of a small booklet produced by BAC of the “Great Hundred”, who had contributed to the Town Hall over the 120 years. At the moment the list has about 76 names categorised under headings such as social, architectural, political and artistic. They are looking for another 44 to make the 100 actually 120. There are some odd omissions such as Douglas Jay, Battersea’s MP from 1946-79, but if you think someone you know should be on the list then let me know and I will see if I can get them included.
7. I went to the SERA annual general meeting in Manchester on 23rd November. This green lobby group, of which I am the Treasurer, is concerned with all kinds of green issues but a growing area of concern is the quality of the air we breathe. Did you know, for example, that Putney High Street regularly has the worst air pollution ion the country. Cleaning up our roads is a major aim for SERA.
8. And on the 27th I attended the Civic Awards dinner at the Town Hall, where fellow constituent and resident of Scholey House, Marlene Price was presented with an award. Marlene has been involved with the York Road Estate Residents Association for over 30 years and has been the Chair of the Police Special Neighbourhood Team (SNT) for well over ten years. The photograph shows her being presented the award by Mayor Graham.
9. I had a Strategic Planning & Transportation Committee on 19th November and a Housing Committee on the 21st. I realise that most of you will think these meetings are dull although I usually enjoy them, but I must confess these two were really dull. You would not think it possible, would you, for us to be facing a real housing crisis in this country with a desperate shortage of affordable housing and for the Housing Committee to be dull but it was. Governments have done so much to strip local councils of power and/or money that we seem unable to re-act and I am afraid that this Council actually doesn’t want to act. After saying something like “It is all up to the market” they have nothing to say – pathetic?
10. But on a much more cheery note I went to the GCSE – Success organisation’s Annual General Meeting in York Gardens Library on Saturday 30th. Not heard of them, understandable but they are great. Led by Ella Spencer, they are a group of young professionals and/or post-graduates, who live or work in and around Winstanley and York Road estates, and have set up a “homework club” running out of the library on Saturday mornings. They started with an aim of lifting up the average GCSE grades for local kids. Their main areas of study are English and Maths. Last year GCSE – Success provided over 800 hours of free one:one tuition.
My Programme for December
1. On the 4th December we had the Council Meeting itself followed on 10th by the Planning Applications Committee.
2. I also met the Chief Executive of St. George’s Hospital on the 10th.
3. Unsurprisingly perhaps there are many Christmas events from the Falcon Road and Kambala Estate residents’ Xmas events, from the Big Local Xmas lunch to the BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) show. Needless to say, like for you I hope, December is not a good month for the waist-line.
4. Finally a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to you all or in modern twitter speak MX&HNY2U.
What do you know about John Archer?
John Archer came to Battersea in the late nineteenth century, when he became a friend and ally of John Burns, the charismatic working class leader of the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea. What was unusual about Archer was that he was from Barbados and in 1914 he was elected the first Black Mayor in the UK. He is pictured on the left and appears in the mural on what used to be the Haberdasher’s Arms in Dagnall Street.
Archer, and his Bajan wife, lived and worked in Latchmere ward. He had a photographic studio at 220 Battersea Park Road, where there is today a small plaque of commemoration. The building is not very interesting, being a 1950s infill of a bomb site, but it was well located for Archer’s business as the tram from town terminated at the junction of Albert Bridge and Battersea Park Road and his business clientele could come in on the way back from work.
Archer had humour and charm, which I think shows in the photograph, and is commemorated in a couple of other places in Battersea. There is John Archer Way, the new bridge over the railway, which leads to what used to be John Archer school, before it was demolished 20 odd years back, and Archer House, the ex-Council block in Battersea village.
Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere November Newsletter (# 54)
October highlights
1. First of all a big thank you to all those who sent me good wishes for a speedy recovery from streptococcal G poisoning. I am making reasonable but not exactly speedy progress as some of you will have seen as I struggle around, but now on one and not two crutches!
2. Second an even bigger thank you to all those who responded about the possible closure of the CJ Grant Road exits at an earlier time than currently. I got 40 responses between when I put the message out at about 11.30 am and 5 pm on Day 1. I immediately sent those responses off to the Town Hall and then onto the railway companies. I have heard nothing since – hopefully we have nipped that one in the bud.
3. The Battersea Park School (BPS) saga rolls on. You may remember that I suggested that the Government was intending to make the school into an Academy sponsored by Harris (the carpet people). Well this month the Governors were invited on a trip to see two Harris academies in Merton. I am afraid that I thought that I could hardly manage to stumble around a couple of schools in one day and so I did not go. But nothing definite has happened since then and indeed the Government has sent a relatively “soft letter” about the school’s reactions to the original Ofsted Report – perhaps the rather good GCSE results announced in August have resulted in a couple of second thoughts.
I would still bet on the Government pressing on with their dogmatic policy of moving BPS out of local democratic control and making it a sponsored academy. But given the pressures on the Government and the very public failures of their policies in a couple of recently well-publicised cases, there is just a little chance that they might back down.
4. The 8th October Planning Applications Committees had a number of interesting applications, most particularly for the Prince’s Head and the one-time Chopper or @Battersea pubs/clubs. Both of these pubs have been the centre of considerable local concern over the years but now it seems as though both are going to be re-developed. There have been a number of applications, which have reached an advanced stage of consideration on both sites but finally applications came to Committee and were approved.
The Prince’s Head application was for 19 flats (16 two-bed and 3 three-bed), of which 5 would be of a shared ownership type, and therefore classified as “affordable”. These would be built above commercial lettings on the ground floor. Given the nature of the Falcon Road shopping frontage I am not absolutely certain that the shopping units will work – for a start most of the shops in Falcon Road are on the opposite side of the road. But I guess it rather depends upon the nature of the shopping. If it is one of those Tesco/Sainsbury locals then I am sure that it will be a success – but we will have to see. I know that for some of the residents almost anything would be a plus when compared with the Prince’s Head at its worst!
The Chopper application was similar but slightly larger with 29 flats being built above commercial properties, including a new pub. 6 of these flats would be of a shared ownership style tenure. Hopefully the pub will replace the rather belligerent character of the old pub with a pleasant recreational but modernised pub. Both applications were accepted.
I thought three other applications were particularly interesting. One was for 157 flats and houses to be built round the old Elliott School site just off Putney Hill. I mention it because I know lots of kids from Battersea went to Elliott. I couldn’t help noticing the outraged protests of Putney residents. The sale of the land and the use for private residential housing was to pay for the Council’s costs in building the new Ark Academy to replace Elliott. The point was that these were luxury housing built to low densities and costing, well we will have to wait and see, but my guess is north of £2 million – and the locals were protesting!
Another application for a 7 storey building, providing 12 flats, on a miniscule site opposite the Battersea Dogs’ Home provided an interesting contrast. Seven storeys squeezed in on the space of a tennis court as opposed to spacious large properties, two contrasting sites, one in Battersea and the other In Putney – I hardly need to say more!
But I was surprised that the one application that was refused was for a large (13 storey) commercial and residential development on the Upper Richmond Road near to East Putney station. Surprised because the Council has appeared to allow applications of almost any scale in “town centre” sites but on this occasion the recommendation was for refusal and refuse it we did. Was it because it was in the Council Leader’s own ward and his own constituents were protesting?
5. On Thursday, 17th October, I managed to drag myself around the Caius House (Caius is a latinised word for keys and is actually pronounced KEYS) development just behind Badric Cour![647293_f644bcdc[1]](https://tonybelton.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/647293_f644bcdc1.jpg)
t. Caius House will mean nothing to many of you because the “old” Caius House youth club was demolished in about 2008. (See below for the history of Caius) The new youth club, and the residential properties above, which are paying for the development, are due to be handed over in spring, 2014. I and several other councillors went round the site and although it is difficult to tell from this photograph it is obvious that we are soon going to have a splendid new club right next to York Gardens, the Kambala and the Winstanley. We were told that it will be the largest youth club in the UK. Let’s hope that it is also the best. The top picture is of the new sports hall at the club and the bottom one is of the old building demolished in 2007/8.
6. The 16th October Council meeting did consider the cuts that the Council is going to make in the housing department (and others). Currently the Housing Department is taking the brunt of the cuts, but we will see many more. It is a little difficult to describe all the arguments for those of you who wonder what Council meetings are like look at this link http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/info/200318/decision_making/1606/council_meetings_online_16_october_2013/4. showing a U-Tube stream of the housing cuts debate. If you don’t want to watch it all – which I could well understand then Cllr Hogg’s speech is 12 minutes into the stream and mine is at 21.20 minutes!
7. On Sunday, 27th October, I attended the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Eid Celebration in York Gardens Library, where I was asked to give a speech on peace!. I am hardly an expert but I did to an audience of about 50 Battersea residents. The Ahmadiyya mosque in Putney is the first in London and was built in 1913 and their Merton mosque is the largest in western Europe. Some of the local organisers live on the Winstanley estate.
8. Finally a grudging congratulations to Jane Ellison, our MP, who has just been made Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Public Health). Despite our pretended enmity across the party divide, Jane and I get on quite well and if this appointment is recognition for her work opposing female genital mutilation then it is well deserved even if I hope she loses the job at the next General Election!
My Programme for November
1. Once the clocks go back we are in to the busiest time for councillors, especially in the winter before the next Council Elections – Yes, they are next May and so the rounds of canvassing and leafleting will be starting up soon. I do hope you accept me knocking on your door with patience and humour!
2. On 7th November I have as ever the Planning Applications Committee. On the 19th I have the Strategic Planning and Transport Committee, followed on the 21st by the Housing Committee.
3. The Borough Residents’ Forum, a committee of Council tenants and leaseholders, meets on 13th and I am the Labour Party’s representative on that.
4. The 15th November marks the 120th anniversary of the opening of what was Battersea Town Hall, now Battersea Arts Centre (BAC). BAC is laying on some kind of an event, which I will be attending. I look forward to seeing what exactly they are going to do – fireworks? A theatrical review? An exhibition? I will report back!
5. For my pains I am also the Treasurer of an organisation called SERA, which is a “green lobby” group with the Labour Party. SERA has its annual general meeting in Manchester on 23rd November and so on that Saturday I will be in Manchester.
Do you know anything about Caius House? I guess not.
Caius House is a charity and youth club which has been serving the community of Batt![collegehistory-loganprint_0[1]](https://tonybelton.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/collegehistory-loganprint_01.jpg)
ersea for over a century.
Gonville and Caius (see picture and pronounced Keys) College, Cambridge, is a 14th century foundation created by Edmund Gonville, a Norfolk cleric, and refounded two centuries later by John Caius, a successful and very wealthy student from the college. In 1887 some undergraduates and fellows from the College rented a house in what was then the very poor London industrial suburb of Battersea. They started a College “settlement” where former undergraduates from the College lived and ran a range of clubs for local residents. Shortly afterwards they started a boys club (and later a girls club) and found that it attracted members from the poorest and least educated young people in the area.
By 2008 the Caius House youth club building (located on Holman Road) had served the local the young people of Battersea well for about a century but was badly in need of renovation; however the layout was thought to be totally unsuitable for a modern youth club. The Trustees decided to sell the plot of land to a developer who would build residential accommodation with space for a modern youth club on the first two floors. After consultation with youth members, the community and the Council, the derelict old building was demolished and the process of re-building a modern state of the art youth club began.
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 