Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere October Newsletter (# 65)
September highlights
- I had a Big Local lunch on 11th September – not real business I know,
but it does help to keep in touch. Here is a picture of us in Fish in a Tie in Falcon Road, which by the way, if you have never been there, is just about the nicest, cheapest food of its style that you can get in Battersea. Stephen Holsgrove the head of Thames Christian College is on the left and then Sandra Munoz, me, Senia Dedic, my councillor colleague Wendy Speck, Providence House youth club boss Robert Musgrave and Pennethorne resident Andy Beech. - In my new role as Labour’s Speaker on education I have had several meetings with senior education staff in an attempt to catch up with the current issues. And one in particular came up at the Education and Children’s Services Committee on 17th September and that was the subject of admissions to primary schools. At the moment admissions are based on proximity to the school but also on siblings, that is whether a child already has a brother or sister at the relevant school. In essence the Council is wondering whether the so-called siblings rule should be scrapped and admissions solely based on proximity to the school. The Council is going out to consultation on the matter. What do you think? Do you think that if a child has a brother or sister at a school s/he should have priority in a schools’ admissions policy or should it just be based on proximity to the school. Let me know what you t
hink! - I went to GCSE Success’s Annual General Meeting on 20th September. It was held at York Gardens Library. I do think this is a fascinating voluntary organisation. Set up by a resident of Pennethorne House, Ella Spencer, it is devoted to helping kids on the local estates fulfil their potential at GCSEs and get the best possible exam results. If anyone has a son/daughter who needs volunteer specialist assistance to get through examinations I recommend that you get them to York Gardens Library on a Saturday morning at 10 am!
- On the 25th I went to the Tooting Labour Party’s fund raising dinner, where the guest speaker was Jack Straw. Here is a picture of him giving his after dinner speech. He made a robust defence of the Labour Government’s actions in Iraq, including the current bombing campaign against Isis. I am afraid that I am not convinced and am rather inclined to the view that the west cannot resolve what is clearly a Middle Eastern Civil War. I have seen it compared with Europe’s seventeenth century Thirty Years War between Protestant and Catholic – I rather fear that it is an apt comparison.
- I did not this year go to the Labour Party Conference, which seems not to have been a very exciting occasion! But I rather suspect that the confidence that the Tory Party showed at their conference last week is going to turn out to be misplaced.
- I went on a tour of Wayford Street and Este Road estates on 30th. It was
pretty uneventful but we came across this piece of graffiti on the wall at the junction between Wayford Street and Candahar Road. Take a careful look. It is a picture of a dove of peace, I guess, holding under its left wing a knife, a pistol, a hand grenade and an AK 47. Is it a cry of pain against the barbarities going on in the Middle East? It certainly is very political. - On 17th September the weather was so beautiful that I decided to take the day off and take the train from CJ to Brighton for the day. I came across the Western Pavilion, which I had never seen before. It was built in 1827 by Amon Henry Wilds, an architect who had worked on the famous Pavilion, for a rich client. Below is a picture of it and I am sure many of you can see the similarities between it and the Royal Pavilion. Whilst I was there I also took a picture of the rather sad sight of the West Pier rotting and crumbling into the sea.
My Programme for October.
- I have meetings about the New Covent Garden development on 2nd and 6th
- I am visiting the Holy Ghost primary school in Nightingale Square on 14th.
- There is the now only quarterly Council meeting on 15th October and Planning Applications Committee on 16th.
- I hope to be at the Caius House youth club on the 27th.
Did you see Christ Church in the Guardian on 1st October? 
The picture is by photographer David Levene and is of Christ Church School’s vegetable garden. I don’t know why it found its way into the Guardian’s centre spread but it is a great picture of the children in the garden, which is behind a fence on Fownes Road, squeezed in between the estate and the main railway lines out of Clapham Junction. I was there when the school first took over this spare plot and it is just amazing to see the transformation they have made to what was an overgrown site. Well done, Christ Church.
Western Pavilion, Western Terrace, 
and West Pier
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 