On Sunday evening, this photograph was taken of a single-wheel self-balancing scooter being used. As you can see, this was not in some trendy Californian hi-tech campus, but rather outside Mario’s Shake Shack.
It’s no doubt unrelated, but last week Wansteadium tweeted the following:
Spotted: young man in Wanstead Tesco with a pipe.
— Wansteadium (@Wansteadium) August 27, 2014
These nuggets are offered without comment.
Last week we invited anyone who understood the debate about potential quadrupling of housing density in Wanstead to clarify what was going on. Wansteadium readers Reny Morsh writes:
Sorry for the delay of the comment for your article on the high density plan explanation. Maybe I can shed some light on this. I hope I’m correct here but the newspaper article sounds distinctly like a discussion of the Greater London Authorities further amendments to the London Plan (FALP) rather than a planning application per se.
The FALP sets the revised Mayor’s housing targets for London boroughs, these are is aimed at dramatically increasing residential growth around town centres and transport hubs. Not in itself necessarily a problem you might think (or maybe you would) until you realise that the baseline data is effectively a list of London’s town centres compiled by borough, and which were drawn up to identify local shopping areas and to help identify their health and promote policies relevant to this, not housing targets.
In many cases the boundaries of town centres are tightly drawn around small compact and often small historic town or village centres. There are some blatent anomalies in the list including Leadenhall Market an entirely listed Victorian shopping centre in the City of London and arguably small local high streets such as Wanstead and South Woodford which offer little opportunity for significant housing growth. Areas such as Carshalton have also been identified. Many of the bigger areas identified could arguably cope with growth in the vicinity of the retail centres but not necessarily actually within the identified centre which is what the policy focuses on.
Of course this does not mean that this level of growth will be delivered in these places – they are targets, and other policy considerations such as conservation areas, metropolitan open land etc. still apply. Nevertheless if local authorities fail to meet these targets they will no doubt be targeted by the GLA who may call in housing applications for determination by the Mayor.
The FALP is currently out to examiniation by the Inspectorate and hopefully its shortcomings will be identified, however you can never rely on this and councils should be looking closely at this and should be providing a robust response. The London Plan is actually due for a major review pretty shortly so the current amendments seem particularly short-sighted and based on faulty information. Yes London does have housing problems but there are better ways of identifying where housing can be accommodated than a list developed for a different purpose.
Here’s a link for anybody who is brave enough to delve deeply into this.
Best regards,
Reny
Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo: “If you live in Wanstead you will recognise this lovely old building on Church Path. I have photographed it before, it’s I & K Brown one of Wanstead’s garages. I was taking a fresh look at it because it’s most likely to be knocked down and replaced with houses. The price of progress I suppose, I’m pleased with the picture anyway.”
The Wanstead Kinema is returning NEXT WEEK to kick off the second Wanstead Fringe which starts on Saturday 6 September. And with a new venue, it may have found its spiritual home – it’s going to take place in the gardens of Christ Church on the High Street. Tree-covered, sheltered, slap bang in the middle of Wanstead… what more could an open air cinema want?
The film will be the brilliant LEGO MOVIE, and will be the first big event of the week-long Fringe. More than 25 events will take place at locations across Wanstead – the full programme is now available online at the Wanstead Fringe website, pictured, where tickets for many of the events can also be bought. Printed copies will be widely available over the next few days.
The Fringe includes music, drama, comedy (featuring Arthur Smith), photography, talks, wine-tasting, food events, more music, craft workshops – and several different kinds of talks. It’s much bigger than last year’s Fringe, and once again is taking place with the financial support of Petty Son and Prestwich.
With a weather forecast which is looking good for next week, the Kinema should again be a magically atmospheric event. You are advised to book early though since places are limited. Prices are £5 for adults and £2 for under-16s (part of this is for membership of the Wanstead Kinema film club). You can book tickets at this page.
And here’s a taster of the film…
After a summer with barely a single reported sighting of hedgehogs in Wanstead, this tweet is welcome news indeed.
Just spotted this little guy in Wanstead park #hedgehog #wansteadpark pic.twitter.com/Ei8S4llmx6
— Nicola MacCarthy (@nicolamaccarthy) August 23, 2014
Wansteadium is delighted to announce it now has more than 1,000 e-mail subscribers – people who receive a daily newsletter from us whenever we publish new items on this blog. For us this feels like a bit of a milestone, and we’re grateful for everyone who has signed up and continues to read the site.
Actually, there are at the time of writing 1,056 subscribers.
Expect further improvements to the newsletter in the coming weeks, including a digest of forthcoming events from the Wanstead Social Calendar (as so ably managed by her excellency Stephanie Pettigrew, Wanstead’s social secretary), and new items from Wanstead Talk.
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