£70M Price tag for Islington Businesses

The Islington Gazette just has a further story on the continuing developments in the Council Sell-Off of a large swathe of their commercial properties.

ISLINGTON Council's £45million portfolio of 222 shops, warehouses and charity offices is set to be sold for almost £70million to property investment company Structadene.

Many leaseholders are still hoping to buy their own premises - even though a number of the 159 traders who had hoped to purchase now need to raise hundreds of thousands more than they were expecting. Structadene has told the council how much it is offering for each property in the portfolio and, in order to buy, leaseholders need to price-match this figure.

As we discussed on our site back in February, the tenant businesses were originally looking to be offered the right to purchase. Now we need to ensure that as much as possible neither the Council is deprived of revenue nor that are our local businesses are adversely affected.

We need to ensure that the Right to Buy for the tenants is as transparent and a fair a process as possible. We also need to check that the Council does not squander the monies it raises, and we will do all we can to find out how this money is 'reinvested' into our Borough!

The Urban Fox

Whilst flicking through the Times today, I read today's column by Matthew Parris. IN part of his article he wrote about a bizarre situation regarding the dumping in the countryside of urban foxes. Surprisingly you can always identify a released urban fox, as it will run towards buildings instead of away from them.

This made me wonder what Islington Council does for fox management. I thought I would start with Islington Council's website and it says this:
The council's pest control section provides information and guidance on deterring foxes from your property, but doesn't provide treatments.

They recommend you contact a charity called the Fox Project. However if you look around on the Council website , you will find their guide to Urban Foxes, although I prefer their filename, PestFox. Apart from some helpful pointers on rubbish disposal, and contacting the Fox Project, the most helpful piece of advice is
- If you suspect foxes are ‘going to ground’ on your property, much can be done to discourage them from using a den by creating noise and disturbance in the vicinity

So basically make some noise or contact the Fox Project, and over in theie website, the advice is:
Some householders do not like foxes in their garden, so The Fox Project operates a specialist fox deterrence and advice service, which is both more effective and more humane than outmoded "pest control".

So it looks like we are stuck with our Urban Foxes in Islington, so let's just make sure she doesn't dont recieve any more votes.

LibDems supporting our Post Offices?

Again Justin Hinchcliffe has spotted another local titbit

From today's Guardian Diary:

Hats off, finally, to the ever-alert Lib Dems, who yesterday protested against post office closures outside the post office at 238 Essex Road, Islington, currently threatened with closure because it and 221 other fine properties across the borough have been put up for sale by Islington's Lib Dem-controlled council. Brilliant.

Only today Bridget Fox (Islington LibDem PPC for Islington South & Finsbury) wrote on her website:

Meanwhile Liberal Democrats will continue to support local residents and fight to save Essex Road Post Office. On Monday Jo Swinson MP supported me as we launched our petition demanding the Post Office keep Essex Road open.

How can the Islington Lib Dems be supporting residents by selling off these properties, or does Bridget not speak with her former Council colleagues?

Crowd cheers as council clampers' van is towed away from a bus lane

Seven hours today the Daily Mail posted a story on its website with this amusing headline. The article then continued:

The locals were jeering and shouting 'go on my son' and there was an interesting exchange between the Islington van driver and the TFL driver.

But things took a bizarre turn when, in revenge for impounding Islington Council's van, a council traffic warden slapped a parking ticket on the Transport for London (TfL) tow truck.

In an even more bizarre turn, the story is no longer on the Daily Mail's website.

It was only a few days ago that the Council claimed their Parking Attendents will apply Common Sense to parking fines....