May 11, 2019

European Parliament Elections postal ballot form – a choice between twenty one parties/independents.

I used to like the Labour Party for their compassion and focus on ordinary peoples’ needs reflected in their welfare policies. I grew up in a council flat and house; use(d) the NHS; and completed a massively subsidised Open University degree while on welfare benefits without which I wouldn’t have got back into work after being injured.

However I have also liked the Tory Party at times for their focus on individual responsibility; protection of the citizen from too much state interference, and the recognition that the (heavily regulated) market works better in practice than socialism.

But now? The Tories appear to me as a disorganised, uncaring/cruel bunch of toffs out for their own gain, while labour seems to be too driven by an internationalist ideology that has forgotten its historical focus and core values. So who do you think I voted for?

by Tags: , , Leave a comment

May 3, 2019

Penge High Street taken from the Moon and Stars (old Odeon Cinema) and looking toward the Crooked Billet and Almshouses.

I think every single shop and building has changed use since I last went shopping in Penge High Street.

The Police Station is now residential accommodation. Dales and Sherricks menswear are long gone as are Woolworth (now Poundland), the Co-Op (now Salisbury’s). Kennedy’s, Stockwells, Burtons, Art Nash, Kingstons, Olby’s, Edgingtons are all gone …. in fact it’s easier to name what hasn’t changed: The Pawleyne Arms. That’s the only building I could see that hasn’t changed use.

I’m not moaning about change; in fact it’s only though developments with things like the tram that enable me to make the trip without driving. But when you go somewhere that you’ve not been to in a long time the changes hit you in a way that belies their incremental nature.

by Tags: , Leave a comment

April 29, 2019

Penge’s Free Watermen and Lightermen’s Almshouses

I’m 61 years old and today was the first time I have ever visited these Almshouses, but I must have walked past them thousands of times. They are small but magnificent.

They were all closed when I was young, with corrugated iron fencing around their perimeter hiding what’s inside. (Yet the bumph I have read today says that the last alms residents moved out in 1973). Of course they are all now privately owned rather than for the benefit of the “Aged and Decayed Members of the Watermen’s and Lightermen’s Company and their Widows”.

by Tags: , Leave a comment