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Greenwich Time newspaper

Articles written about Greenwich Time - the controversial newspaper that was produced by Greenwich Council. With weekly newspapers by councils prohibited by the Government, it's fate was set to be decided in court but the council agreed to stop production. Greenwich Time newspaper finally ceased production in June 2016.

Council moves flagposts to claim park target success

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GREENWICH COUNCIL has claimed victory in its long-held target of achieving twelve Green Flag Awarded parks by 2012. But did the council really meet its ambition for 2012, or did it shift the flagposts after failing to get awards it hoped for? Greenwich.co.uk investigates their claims…

Even more parks and green spaces in the Royal Borough of Greenwich have been awarded prestigious Green Flags this year.

The council boasted across two pages of last week’s Greenwich Time newspaper (above) that “thirteen parks and open spaces are flying the Green Flag.”

“We are delighted to surpass our target of twelve welcoming green spaces throughout the Royal borough,” said Councillor Maureen O’Mara.

Terry Powley, chair of the Greenwich Parks Forum, said: “The Forum is delighted that the ambitious target of 12 green flags by 2012 has not just been achieved but over-reached.”

But whilst the rising tally of Green Flags in the borough is good news for the council and residents alike, did the council really “surpass” the target it set itself of twelve Green Flag Parks by 2012, or did it simply change the way it measured its target after failing to get the Green Flags it planned to achieve?

Green Flags and Green Pennants

The Green Flag Awards are a nationwide scheme designed to recognise  high quality parks and green spaces in the UK. Greenwich Council set itself a target of reaching twelve Green Flag awarded parks by 2012.

The Green Pennant award – renamed this year as the Green Flag Community Award – is a different award given to community-run green spaces and has never before been included as part of the council’s target for twelve Green Flags by 2012.

When announcing its Green Flag awards in the past, the council has only counted the Green Flag Award parks in its headline figure and has never included the community-managed Green Pennant-winning parks.

What the council used to say

“Six [parks] in Greenwich have been recognised,” proclaimed the council in 2010. “Greenwich is now half-way towards its target of securing the Green Flag award for 12 of its parks by 2012.”

The two green spaces awarded the Green Pennant that year – Slade Ponds and Twinkle Park – were not included in the headline figure or the council’s stated target for 2012.

“Greenwich parks secure eight Green Flags,” was the council’s proud  in the summer of 2011.

“The achievement ensures that Greenwich is two thirds of the way to meeting its target of securing the Green Flag award for 12 of its parks by 2012,” the press release added.

Again, the two Green Pennant awarded open spaces were not included in their headline figure or their target for 2012.

So with the council “two thirds of the way to meeting its target”, how would it make the leap to twelve for this year?

New candidate parks for Green Flags identified

A report by council officers last year identified the four new candidate parks, and the work required in them, to “reach Green Flag standard as part of the Council’s commitment to secure twelve Green Flag parks by 2012”

Revamps would be required in Horn Park, Fairy Hill Park, Maryon Park and Eaglesfield Park to meet the requirements of the Green Flag Award, the report noted.

But while Horn Park and Fairy Hill Park did successfully get the nod from Green Flag inspectors this year, Maryon Park and Eaglesfield Park were not awarded, despite the Cabinet agreeing to spend £169,400 and £53,800 on them respectively to meet the target.

The failure to get Green Flag Awards for Maryon Park and Eaglesfield Park leaves the council’s Green Flag Award tally standing only at ten – two BELOW the their stated target of twelve.

Turning failure into victory

So how did the council manage to “surpass” its target while simultaneously failing to reach it? The answer is that they counted their total number of Green Flags differently.

This year, for the first time, Greenwich Council included the sites given the Community Award, now up to three, in the headline figure to allow them to claim that they have THIRTEEN Green Flag sites.

So despite two of the parks that were identified by the council’s own officers as new candidate sites for Green Flags failing to get them, and the tally being two less then had been promised, the council’s redefined target allows them to claim they surpassed an ambition they actually failed to reach.

Councillor Spencer Drury, leader of the Conservatives on Greenwich Council, commented:

“The Council’s confused and misleading planning for parks is laid bare in this deceitful claim to have gained 13 Green Flag sites when in fact there are only 10 reaching the proper criteria.

“The fact Greenwich Time is once again pushing out this propaganda reinforces our calls for this Council newsletter to be abolished.”

Greenwich Council had not responded to requests for a comment by the time of publication.

Green Flag Award 2012-13 winners:

1. Avery Hill Park

2. Eltham Park South

3. Horn Park

4. East Greenwich Pleasaunce

5. Blackheath (jointly held with Lewisham)

6. Sutcliffe Park

7. Fairy Hill Park

8. Charlton Park

9. The Tarn

10. Well Hall Pleasaunce

Green Flag Community Award, formerly known as the Green Pennant, winners:

1. Twinkle Park

2. Slade Ponds

3. Plumstead Common Nature Reserve

Drury refers Greenwich Time to District Auditor

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COUNCILLOR Spencer Drury has referred the council’s newspaper, Greenwich Time, to the District Auditor.

Drury, leader of Greenwich Conservatives, sent his letter to the auditor after the council decided to keep on publishing the weekly newspaper despite a new Code of Conduct from the government stating councils shouldn’t publish their own newsletters more than four times a year.

Two weeks ago, the councillor had his attempt to refer the decision back to the council for re-examination blocked by a scrutinee committee.

His letter to the District Auditor, whose job is to make sure that local government finance is run as it should be according to law, outlines the ways he believes the decision to carry on publishing breaches the new Code of Conduct.

“I do not believe that GT [Greenwich Time] represents value for money for the people of Greenwich and I consider it to be a huge waste of money,” writes Cllr Drury.

Click here to read the letter in full or see it below:

See also: 853 – Greenwich Time: Tories make formal complaint

Greenwich Conservatives fail to stop Time

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Greenwich Council’s weekly newspaper, Greenwich Time, will continue after moves by local Conservatives to have its future reconsidered were rejected.

The Tories used their powers to ‘call-in’ the council’s decision to carry on publishing the newspaper but the three-member Overview & Scrutiny Call-In Sub-Committee voted last night not to refer the decision back to cabinet.

The decision to press on with Greenwich Time comes despite doubt being cast on the council’s claim that it saves up to £2 million each year by printing the paper each week.

Conservative opposition leader Spencer Drury told the committee meeting at the town hall in Woolwich that neighbouring Bexley only spent £15,000 annually on placing public notices in a local newspaper.

He was challenging a decision by the council’s cabinet to continue publishing GT weekly, defying a government code designed to restrict local authority publications.

It was also revealed at the meeting that a community publisher is threatening to bring a case against the council for alleged damage to its business.

Greenwich Council has long said that it saves money by using Greenwich Time to publish the notices – which detail planning applications and other formal matters – instead of paying a local newspaper to run them.

A report presented to the council cabinet in July said the council was saving £2.3 million a year by publishing the notices in Greenwich Time – but Cllr Drury said Bexley’s deal with the News Shopper proved the council’s cabinet had “given little consideration to doing anything different”.

“If Greenwich could get a similar deal with News Shopper and let us assume the Mercury, the same could be done for £30,000 for two years. This seems very different to the one to two million pounds randomly inserted in the report,” he said.

But council chief executive Mary Ney said the council’s estimates had been checked, and a comparison with Bexley was invalid because that borough issued far fewer public notices.

“Our volume of council advertising is quite considerable, and doesn’t bear any relation to Bexley, which hasn’t got a regeneration agenda, and doesn’t produce the same volume of housing applications, or licensing applications because of the different entertainment and tourism offers of the boroughs,” she said. “They’re at a very different level of activity.”

Council leader Chris Roberts was on leave and did not attend the meeting, and nor did any members of the cabinet who took the decision, despite being invited, leaving council officers to explain the authority’s position.

The publisher and editor of of Eltham-based community magazine SE Nine said they would be making a detailed complaint to the district auditor about Greenwich Time, “seeking financial redress for the damage to our business” since the code was introduced on 31 March.

In a statement handed to the panel, Mark Wall and John Webb accused the council of unfairly competing against their monthly, and of having an “in-house bunker mentality sponsored by the existence of Greenwich Time”.

Assistant chief executive Katrina Delaney, whose communications portfolio includes GT, admitted to there being “one or two issues” with SE Nine but said she was satisfied GT’s sales team had not set out to poach the monthly’s advertisers.

Ms Delaney said when the council had discussed working with existing newspaper operators, they freely admitted to not delivering to parts of the borough that did not fit in with their desired target audience.

“One of them told me that essentially, they were looking for people who don’t live in the inner cities and who were Land of Leather buyers,” she said.

“The Mercury sold ads for GT for six or seven months, but pulled out of the deal because it was too labour-intensive to chase advertising in Greenwich,” she said, claiming newspaper groups were less interested in the kinds of small businesses who promote themselves in GT.

“The News Shopper in Bexley carries the same car ads as in Greenwich,” she added.

“I’m not convinced the ads in Greenwich Time would appear anywhere else.”

Locally-based journalist and 853 blogger Darryl Chamberlain also addressed the meeting, claiming that recent coverage in Greenwich Time of the aftermath of Woolwich’s riot was not “objective and even-handed”, as demanded by the government in its code.

He cited an opinion column from leader Chris Roberts criticising media coverage of the riots. “If he wants to rant about the media, he could always start a blog,” he said, adding that it appeared checks and balances designed to ensure Greenwich Time was unbiased were failing.

But Ms Delaney said readers knew what to expect from a council publication.

“The paper covers the council’s view,” she continued.

“If you get a Marks & Spencer card, you’ll get Marks & Spencer’s magazine and it’ll cover Marks & Spencer’s view. The same with the gas board or BT or whoever. I think people understand it represents the views of the organisation.

“Greenwich Time represents the views that come from the decision makers at Greenwich Council.”

The three-member panel split on party lines over the issue, with Conservative Eileen Glover (Eltham South) backing the call for the cabinet to reconsider the decision.

“When other people question our decisions, there should be evidence that we’ve gone out and based the decisions we do make on firm evidence,” she said.

“We should contact other councils who have changed their distribution – ask them how they’re doing, and if they’ve got a better idea that’s more cost-effective, then we should be doing that.”

But Allan MacCarthy (Labour, Charlton) said the cabinet “must be at liberty to do what it considers to be appropriate”, and said there was no evidence that GT had affected the local advertising market.

Chairman Mick Hayes (Labour, Eltham West) said that it seemed to him that most people had already made their minds up about GT and “I’m not sure any evidence would sway people one way or the other”.

He said GT should be judged on its “effectiveness”, and no other paper could reach the number of households it did.

“Is it effective in doing what we as a local council should be doing, and telling people what’s going on in planning, licensing, and lettings? My understanding is that it has been proven to be effective. Have other means been proven to be effective? I’m not so sure they have.”

The panel decided by two votes to one to let the cabinet’s decision stand.

Updated

A Greenwich Council spokesperson said “The Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Panel voted to note the decision of the Cabinet taken on 19 July 2011, with regard to the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity and take no further action.

“Greenwich Council will continue to publish GT on a weekly basis in order to keep residents informed about local services, to advertise statutory notices such as planning applications and to promote social housing available through our Choise Based Lettings scheme.”

Greenwich Council not closing ‘Time’

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GREENWICH Council has decided to keep publishing its weekly newspaper, Greenwich Time.

The controversial paper was expected to get the axe after the Government drew up new guidelines on council publicity which say councils shouldn’t put out publications more than four times a year.

But as Greenwich.co.uk reported last week, council officers produced a report recommending that the council continues to publish the newspaper fifty times a year.

That recommendation was accepted by a meeting of the Cabinet last night at the Town Hall in Woolwich.

For full details of the meeting, where Council Leader Chris Roberts said the case for maintaining Greenwich Time was “overwhelming”, visit 853 blog for Darryl’s in-depth report.

Pickles calls time on Greenwich Council’s weekly newspaper

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Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has announced proposals to clamp down on “town hall pravdas” and singled out Greenwich Council’s weekly newspaper, Greenwich Time, as “one of the most blatant examples”.

New guidelines put forward by the government would restrict councils to publishing their own free-sheets no more than four times a year.

Speaking exclusively to Greenwich.co.uk, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said:

“Councils should be focusing resources on frontline services, not running one-sided Town Hall papers that threaten the genuine local press. ‘Greenwich Time’ is one of the most blatant examples of this practice that I’ve seen, and demonstrates why tightening the rules is so necessary.”

The new rules, which are subject to consultation, would also impose stricter controls over the content that councils can publish. Local authority publications should only include “information for the public about the business, services and amenities of the council or other local service providers”, according to the proposed code of practice.

Greenwich Council’s controversial newspaper was the subject of a debate at the last full meeting of the council when local Conservatives put forward a motion calling it for to be axed.

Leader of Greenwich Conservatives, Cllr Spencer Drury, welcomed the government’s announcement. He added:

“Greenwich Time undermines local business and publishes what I would describe as propaganda masquerading as news.  I hope that this will encourage our existing local newspapers to revive their news reporting function and to start investigating the failures of Greenwich Council in a more systematic manner.”

Council Leader, Cllr Chris Roberts, defended Greenwich Time at the last full council meeting. He said that the paper, which is delivered to homes across the borough, was “very close to being self financing” and allowed the council “to deliver statutory notices almost at no cost”.

I was airbrushed out of Greenwich Time, claims councillor

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A Conservative councillor has told a council meeting that she was airbrushed out of an edition of the controversial weekly council newspaper, Greenwich Time.

The claim was made by councillor Eileen Glover during a debate at Wednesday night’s full meeting of the council at Woolwich Town Hall.

The councillor for the Eltham South ward told the meeting that she had ensured she was in all the photos taken by Greenwich Time at an event in her ward attended by the Council Leader but by the time it went to print, she had been “airbrushed out”.

She was only able to make an appearance in a later edition by changing her hair so that she was unrecognisable to the Leader of the Council, she said.

The debate over Greenwich Time was prompted after Greenwich Conservatives put forward a motion calling for weekly production of the newspaper to be ended.

Cllr Nigel Fletcher (Conservative, Eltham North) questioned whether the newspaper offered value for money and asked if it could really be considered a “front line service”. He expressed his doubts over the impartiality of the publication before mocking the content in this week’s edition.

“Is it really a core function of this council to provide, for example, a review of Toy Story 3? Do we really have a duty to inform our residents … that Prince’s new album is his most ‘soulless yet’?”, he asked. He said ending the weekly printing of Greenwich Time would be an “easy cut”.

Cllr Maureen O’Mara (Labour, Greenwich West) commented that Greenwich Time’s council property pages were “very important” to residents who wanted to move, describing it as providing an “essential service” for those that couldn’t or wouldn’t get the  information online.

Cllr Dermot Poston (Conservative, Eltham North) told colleagues that he regarded it as a “political newspaper” and that he “bitterly resents” it. He said the ruling party have “lost any sense of fairness and democracy”.

Cllr Matt Clare (Conservative, Eltham South) used his maiden speech at a full council meeting to say how he would frequently see “No Greenwich Time” notices whilst going door to door during the election campaign. He asked why only Greenwich and Tower Hamlets were delivering newspapers on a weekly basis if it had “such demonstrable benefits”.

Cllr John Fahy (Labour, Woolwich Riverside) reminded fellow councillors that the Conservatives “fought the election on the arguments of Greenwich Time and lost”. He criticised local freesheet, the News Shopper, for printing “10 pages of stories in Lewisham and beyond, and perhaps 2 or 3 stories about the community in Greenwich”.  He said that in raising the issue, it was “payback time” for the opposition because during the election, the “News Shopper was the extension of Conservative news”.

West Greenwich councillor, David Grant (Labour) also suggested that he had been “airbrushed out” of a Greenwich Time photo but said that because of the cabinet system of the council, it was inevitable most of the coverage would be on the executive although he said would like to see more backbenchers featured.

The Leader of the Council, Cllr Chris Roberts (Labour, Glyndon), said that in strict terms, Greenwich Time is “not a political newspaper” and nor could it be according to the law. In fact, council lawyers check it line by line before it goes to print, he revealed.

Cllr Roberts said the paper was “very close to being self financing” and that the cost of producing it had fallen from 22p per copy to just 3.5p per copy. “We are already making significant savings which run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds”, he added.

He said it was “absolutely right that we should prioritise our spending” but printing Greenwich Time meant the Council was “able to deliver statutory notices almost at no cost”.

The Conservative motion was defeated.

Andrew Gilligan: Local News – The “Greenwich Time” Way

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THE DAY that Greenwich Council’s propaganda newspaper, Greenwich Time, announced the BRILLIANT news that this is to become a royal borough, it seemed only right to put a picture of the monarch on the front page.

No, silly, not that absurd interloper, the Queen. She was rightly relegated to page 3. Page 1 was reserved for the traditional anvil-jawed photo of our very own age-old symbol of pomp and majesty, council leader Chris Roberts. “Residents, businesses and the millions of visitors to Greenwich will share in our delight at this wonderful news,” said King Chris (note the use of the royal we.) That issue was billed as a “souvenir edition.” But for Mr Roberts, every edition of Greenwich Time is a souvenir!

Inspired by a discussion this week on greenwich.co.uk, I went through some recent back numbers of South London’s very own Court Circular, to see just how many times Mr Roberts and his Labour chums have been puffing themselves at our expense. And the results from the international jury are now in.

Total number of mentions of Labour politicians: 98.
Total number of mentions of non-Labour politicians: 0.
Total number of pictures of Labour politicians: 29.
Total number of pictures of non-Labour politicians: 0.

Mr Roberts, by the way, features on the front page in 8 out of the 12 issues I examined, often with a picture. And when, by some terrible oversight, he is left out of the front-page story, he nearly always gets a column and picture inside (“I was surprised to be told today that I will receive an award as the Greenest Leader in South London…”)

Other very special Greenwich Time stars include Greenwich West’s own Maureen O’Mara – who must, on this tally, be a bit worried about holding her seat – and John Fahy, never pictured without a shovel in his hand. And we mustn’t forget Nick Raynsford MP. He might be hard to find on the streets of Greenwich, but he makes up for it in Greenwich Time. Lib Dems? Tories? Greens? You what?

There isn’t space here for a full list of all the Pravda-esque inanities of “the newspaper campaigning for a greater Greenwich,” but the one that made me laugh the loudest was the fearless scrutiny by one Nick Day of the council’s response to this winter’s snow.

“The extended spell of severe weather must have been testing the council’s resources to breaking point,” wrote Mr Day. “I’ve been frankly amazed at the impressive response…I’ve often been quick to hold the council to account, so I must be equally quick to praise the grit (sorry!) and determination that officers and workers have been applying to their immense task.”

You certainly should be sorry, Nick. Actually, I seem to remember that there was relatively little snow in south-east London by comparison with the rest of the country, and what there was was not cleared conspicuously effectively in Greenwich.

Some stories have been so good that Greenwich Time did them twice – like the one on falling bus crime and burglary figures, front-paged on both the 5th and 19th January (“Making you much SAFER”) and based on a possibly dodgy comparison. The shortage of space created by the repetition of such stories was no doubt why other news – like the excoriation of Greenwich’s social services as “shocking,” “arrogant” and “very poor” by a High Court judge – never made it into Greenwich Time.

My tally of councillor and MP mentions, by the way, covers less than three months’ worth of Greenwich Time, between 5 Jan and 23 March. Some vestigial respect for democratic decencies (or more likely the fear of court action for breaking electoral law) has kept the politicians out of the paper over the last month.

But, even during the election campaign, Greenwich Time has found a sneaky way to push the Labour message. The front page of the April 13 edition (“Spring in our step… Local businesses crack on despite the credit crunch”) told everyone that the “green shoots” of recovery were back: “Confidence [in Greenwich businesses] is growing by the day… There is a realisation that they have survived the abyss… Some businesses have sadly disappeared, but far fewer than may have been feared,” wrote the chair of the local chamber of commerce.

In the 1950s, as part of some dastardly imperial plot against the French, civil servants of the Colonial Office successfully persuaded the people of the Pacific island of Tanna to worship Prince Philip as a god. Portraits of the deity still hang in many a grass hut. Mr Roberts is clearly trying the same trick with what he believes to be the simple, credulous people of Greenwich. In me and others, the sheer clumsiness of the operation has had the opposite effect – making me automatically mistrust everything the council does, even if it is worthwhile.

The Tories are promising, if elected to the council, to close down Greenwich Time, which sounds like a good idea. This ridiculous apology for a newspaper has become the prime symbol of a council that treats its citizens like idiots.

Greenwich Council Meeting 27/01/10: Greenwich Time, Council Tax & Royal Borough Status

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Greenwich Council’s newspaper Greenwich Time was branded “appalling” and “blatant propaganda” by opposition councillors at Wednesday night’s full council meeting.

The weekly was criticised in a Westminster debate earlier this month, with it and other council publications coming in for attacks from politicians and publishers of local newspapers, who claim it damages free speech and is hurting their business.

Conservative councillor Dermot Poston called it “an appalling piece of paper”, adding it was “a shocking indictment” of the council.

“Ask anyone in this borough who reads it – not that anyone does – and they’ll tell you,” the Eltham North member said.

Brian Woodcraft (Lib Dem, Middle Park & Sutcliffe) said the paper, which was relaunched as a weekly in 2008, was “blatant propaganda”.

“It contains a full week’s TV listings, which is totally inappropriate for a local authority newspaper,” he continued, questioning the cost of employing distributors to deliver it weekly, when previously it had been delivered fortnightly alongside the established local freesheets, the Mercury and the News Shopper.

However, council leader Chris Roberts (Labour, Peninsula) said it was more cost-effective to publish Greenwich Time once a week.

“It’s cheaper weekly than fortnightly, and I’m happy to provide figures to any member who asks for them,” he told the meeting.

He said the decision was made to distribute Greenwich Time separately because the council had received “too many complaints” that the newspaper was not being delivered, and residents were missing out on important items of public consultation.

“Neither the Mercury nor the News Shopper reach the whole borough,” he added.

Addressing charges that the newspaper was propaganda, Cllr Roberts said: “Hammersmith and Fulham Council has its council tax plastered on its lamp posts – well beyond anything that goes on in this borough.”

Referrring to criticism from News Shopper editor Richard Firth – who called the newspaper “a self-serving propaganda sheet” – Cllr Roberts called for an “honest debate” on the issue, reeling off a list of local newspapers published by newspaper group Archant, including The Docklands, a version of which appears in Greenwich as The Peninsula.

“I don’t think the views of the Archant publishing house somehow go unreported,” he said.

However, the News Shopper is published by Archant’s rival Newsquest, part of US newspaper giant Gannett.

Nigel Fletcher (Conservative, Eltham North), complained that Greenwich Time routinely ignored opposition councillors’ views, even on non-controversial matters such as Greenwich becoming a royal borough.

“Our views were represented in three of our local media; the Mercury, the News Shopper, and greenwich.co.uk; but the one local newspaper which neglected us was Greenwich Time.

“It was slightly absurd that a photograph of the leader of the council should have been on the front of Greenwich Time and not one of the Queen.”

He said it “fully vindicated” his party’s pledge to scrap the paper if it took power at May’s elections.

Councillors vote for council tax freeze

Greenwich council taxpayers are set for a freeze in their bills after councillors voted through this year’s budget proposals.

Council leader Chris Roberts said he had “no desire to slash and burn” public services, citing investment in transport, anti-crime measures, housing and children’s centres, adding the cashflow plan was strong enough to deal with any government cuts after the general election.

“Whatever is thrown at us by central government over the next few years, the people of Greenwich will expect us to be prepared,” he said.

“It is a budget which protects our essential services, and does not mortgage our futures.”

With an eye to the council’s own election in May, he said his Labour group had provided “stable and secure financial management for more than a decade”.

Conservative leader Spencer Drury said freezing the budget seemed “the right thing to do”.

But the Eltham North councillor questioned a sum of £3.7 million which was counted as cash to be held in reserve, but he said looked as if it had actually been allocated to services including continuing weekly black bin collections and covering extra costs in social care.

“These things are essentials,” he said, “not things we have any choice over”.

If that sum of money really was available, he said, then it should be returned to council tax payers “who are suffering too”.

Cllr Roberts said he wanted to keep the extra sum of money aside in case the relevant departments needed extra cash for those services.

Council tax bills will not be finalised until after February 10, when London Mayor Boris Johnson’s budget will be settled. He is also planning to freeze his part of the bill.

Royal borough status welcomed by all sides

Greenwich Council could buy a sailing ship to commemorate becoming a royal borough in 2012, Conservative culture spokesman Nigel Fletcher told the meeting.

Councillors from all parties welcomed the announcement, which was made earlier this month.

One idea, he said, would be to purchase a sailing ship to commemorate The Great Harry, a warship built at Woolwich for Henry VIII.

Cllr Fletcher said it was worth noting that royal connections were spread across the borough, and a ship would recognise Woolwich’s contribution.

“It’s an idea that could have a range of benefits, particularly for our youth,” he said.

“There is a challenge to us to answer what becoming a royal borough means in real terms.

“It’s up to us to use this to secure real benefits across the borough. There should be a Jubilee legacy to go with an Olympic legacy.”

Greenwich will be the first royal borough with a “significantly diverse” population when it is awarded the honour in 2012, council leader Chris Roberts said.

“I have always felt the royal element of the borough has been underplayed,” he said.

“Even those who declare themselves to be not tremendous royalists say how proud they are. It’s an incredible honour.”

Cllr Roberts said discussions would start soon on just what the honour, awarded to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, would actually mean for the council, from possible changes to the council’s coat of arms to putting the new borough names on street signs.

“There will be protocols to follow – I’ve been up to my eyeballs in them – but it will be up to us what to do, in consultation with civil servants and Buckingham Palace,” he continued.

“I never thought I’d quote Margaret Thatcher, but ‘rejoice, rejoice, rejoice’.”

Long-serving Conservative Dermot Poston also spoke of his pride in seeing Greenwich’s diverse population honoured, adding that in 1968, the borough had been turned down for the honour by then-prime minister Harold Wilson.

Councillor and historian Mary Mills (Labour, Peninsula) said Greenwich and Woolwich’s royal connections had contributed to many of the borough’s industries, adding that the honour recognised “all sorts of ordinary people going way back”.

Chris Roberts added that he had been touched by letters from people about the honour, adding: “My personal favourite is from a lady who wrote, ‘I’m just waiting for the first journalist to knock it.'”

The “bogus claims” of Olympic protestors and the “cult of personality” at Greenwich Time – Nick Raynsford Interview pt 2

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As I walk into Nick Raynsford’s Westminster office, he begins  to tell me about a meeting that he has just had at Greenwich Park.

He talks at length about the benefits he believes the equestrian events will bring from a “new feature” in the children’s playground to a “restructuring” of the Blackheath gate. He also talks about the wider economic development that he believes the games will bring to the town.

But while he is obviously enthusiastic about holding the Equestrian events here in Greenwich, it is striking how dismissive he is of those who oppose them:

“The problem with the NOGOE campaign is that they have not been prepared to listen to any evidence at all. They have their own preset view that this is going to be a disaster. They don’t want it, they don’t like it and they won’t listen to any evidence. That I’m afraid discredits them in the eyes of most rational people and observers”

Raynsford believes that opponents of the events have deliberately been spreading false information about it:

“I have to say that those people who have been campaigning against it have used in my view some extremely bogus claims and made some very dishonest statements that have actually caused alarm and concern to people who genuinely love the park

“And these claims are completely groundless. The claims that trees were going to be cut down in large numbers, that the ground would be destroyed and all churned up and giving the impression that this is some sort of Grand National type event when it is literally seventy horses, on one day, doing one circuit, and that’s it.”

Raynsford also believes that Olympic organisers failed to communicate their plans to the public until recently. He says that LOCOG “let their eye off the ball” in the early stages and “were not as responsive as they should have been” to objectors.

But despite this, he still believes that there is strong enthusiasm for the Olympics in the town:

“The overwhelming majority of young people in the area are wholly supportive, and the interesting thing about this is that there is quite a split between those who have been most vocal against the Olympics who tend to be older, and those under 55, who are in my experience overwhelmingly supportive.”

Yet while he believes that the “overwhelming majority” of young people are “wholly supportive” he is dismissive of a recent survey carried out by Conservative Assembly member Gareth Bacon showing significant opposition to the equestrian events:

“That was completely unscientific and politically motivated and frankly I do not regard it as serious and it is trying to use this for political purposes and I think that is very unprincipled. I think the right approach here has to be to engage seriously with LOCOG and the Royal Parks Agency, which are the two agencies best able to judge how this can be managed and then to listen to their views.”

Throughout our conversation I am struck by the relative weight he places on the views of officers, experts and agencies against those of politicians and campaigners.

I wonder whether this is a result of his extensive work outside parliament in the private sector.  Does this work interfere with his main role as a constituency MP?

“I think that parliament would be a very much weaker place if MPs didn’t have outside interests. My interests are all in the area I have worked throughout my professional life, so it’s housing, it’s construction, regeneration, that sort of area where I have quite a lot of expertise. I ran a consultancy before I was elected so this is not doing something new and it’s certainly not cashing in on ministerial experience which is one of the other allegations that is made. It’s simply pursuing expertise that I have had as a result of my professional career which I think makes me a better MP to comment on what is happening here at Westminster. So in debates on regeneration housing and construction I can usually give a pretty informed view and without sounding too immodest it does usually command a certain amount of respect rather than just partisan responses.”

I ask him how many days a week he spends in Greenwich. He says that he spends “at least one” to which he adds

“I tend to work around a 70-80 hour week and I’m quite confident if anyone looked at the hours I spend they would see that I spend at least 55 hours a week on parliamentary or constituency business, so the outside work is not interfering with that.”

There is little doubt that Raynsford is closely involved in local politics and on the morning of our interview I spot him on page three of the council’s newspaper Greenwich Time.

In the picture, he is standing alongside Labour Councillor Peter Brooks, celebrating the acceptance of Oyster Cards on Thames Clippers.

I ask him how he can justify appearing in a publication that many people believe is just “electioneering on the rates”

“I think it is important that the council does have a mechanism to communicate but I think it does have to be very careful how it uses that. I took with a pinch of salt some of the criticisms that were voiced about this being party propaganda because it came to a head when the Evening Standard was running an absolutely vitriolic campaign against Ken Livingstone and I think that what is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander”

Yet in my copy of Greenwich Time I also find reams of advertising for local businesses, a feature on Leona Lewis and even a TV guide. Isn’t this deliberately designed to weaken independent newspapers in the area?

“I think there is a general problem for local newspapers across the country irrespective of whether there are aggressive local council newspapers as well, so I don’t think it is entirely fair to say that the problems facing the News Shopper and the Mercury are simply the fault of Greenwich Time. I think it is a wider problem. I do think we have to have diversity and I’m a strong believer in keeping viable local newspapers and I would certainly not want to see Greenwich Time replacing them as the only voice locally.”

But what about all the non-council related content in Greenwich Time? How can the council justify that?

“I don’t know enough about, I haven’t spoken to Peter Cordwell the editor about his reasons for doing that. My prime concern is that this should be a means of communication between the council and local people.”

But if it is just about communicating with constituents, why have  there been so many front page pictures of Council leader Chris Roberts in recent months?

“I am not myself a great believer in the cult of personality and you will not see many photos of me in Greenwich Time” he replies rather uneasily. “I don’t seek publicity in that form.”

Read part three of the interview tomorrow and find out why Nick Raynsford thinks Ken Livingstone should not stand for London Mayor in 2012.

Missed part one of the interview? Read it here

Andrew Gilligan: Taxing Times

By

AM I SE10’s Max Mosley? Just to make clear, I do not live in a basement being whipped by whores – but I am surely the only person in the entire London Borough of Greenwich who actively seeks out our dear council’s ludicrous parody newspaper, Greenwich Time.

Most of us, of course, have as much choice about receiving this publication as we have about paying for it – it is thrust through our doors whether we want it or not, just as the money it costs is taken from us through the council tax. But my street isn’t assured of a reliable supply (it’s pretty rough down Hyde Vale, where even the milkmen fear to tread) – so most weeks, with a sick feeling of guilt, shame yet also secret, forbidden pleasure, I make the trip to West Greenwich library.

Furtively, hating myself, I enter the building, blow the dust off that week’s thick, virgin pile of Greenwich Times and – trying to ignore the staff’s incredulity and contempt at my actions – slip a copy, perhaps two, into a brown paper bag. I tell myself it doesn’t do any real harm – surely everyone involved must be over 18 – but that ignores the terrible price paid by all those vulnerable young trees, whose innocence has been quite literally pulped to print this ghastly perversion of natural, healthy journalism.

I get it to find out what the council wants us to believe it is doing – from which, through a simple formula (assuming exactly the opposite), you can usually work out what it is actually doing. It looks like a real newspaper. Quite intentionally, I’m sure, there’s no mention that it’s an official municipal propaganda sheet on the front cover. There are even bylines. Someone called “Peter Cordwell” seems to write most of the stories – surely this must be a pseudonym? Would anyone with any professional pride at all want to be associated with this stuff?

Because the front-page news story on the latest edition is just about the closest you can come to taxpayer-funded political propaganda without actually putting “Vote Labour” as the headline. “It’s not just freezing outside!” starts ‘Cordwell’ (who has a regrettable weakness for the exclamation mark – another sign that he cannot be a real person.) “Council leader Chris Roberts intends to bring the chill into the council chamber next month when he proposes to freeze the council tax.”

Goodness me – as recently as last October, Greenwich was one of 16 London councils which rejected a council-tax freeze proposed by the shadow chancellor, George Osborne. Could there possibly be an election coming up?

Anyway, back to Greenwich Time: “Chris told GT: ‘For the past ten years Greenwich has established a record which is all but unparalleled across London for rigorous and efficient management of its budgets. While continuing to levy what is almost the lowest cumulative Council Tax increase in London, we have seen Greenwich go from having the second-highest Council Tax in London to being 22nd of 32 boroughs.'”

Both these latter claims are in fact misleading, since they relate to council tax in the current financial year, 2008/9 – not next year, when the freeze Greenwich Time trumpets comes into effect. We don’t actually know how Greenwich will compare to other London councils next year yet, because not all have yet announced their 2009/10 council tax levels. It seems likely that many other boroughs will also freeze, or even reduce, their council tax, which might make Greenwich one of the more expensive authorities again.

And as for that “all but unparalleled” efficiency, the truth – which Greenwich Time somehow forgets to mention – is that our current council tax is in fact the fourth highest in inner London, the class of councils in which we are included, and almost precisely the average for London as a whole.

It’s true that the level of any authority’s council tax depends on factors other than its own efficiency – such as Government grants. But since the level of the council tax is the ground on which Greenwich Time has chosen to blow its PR bugles, a more accurate claim would therefore be that the council tax shows our efficiency is, at best, average.

No doubt the purpose of all this, and all the other Greenwich Time bullshit, is to persuade us to love the council, and to re-elect the wise and beneficient leader who features so constantly in its pages. But I feel increasingly sure that it is having precisely the opposite effect.

I never used to have all that many quarrels with the people who run Greenwich. I’ve even voted for some of them. It isn’t one of the more outrageously useless authorities – it was quite good over Greenwich Market, for instance.

But I, and other people I know, feel insulted by the sheer stupidity and relentlessness of Greenwich Time – now published, incredibly, every single week. We feel angry at the simply improper way that our money is being used to promote politically-motivated distortions. And with non-council related feature material alongside all the Town Hall happy-news, I feel concerned that the clear intention is to undermine independent local newspapers which can paint the full picture.

They no longer have a state-controlled press in East Germany, Poland or the Czech Republic. But below the radar, and in keeping with our new status as a country where freedom is being nibbled away, we are getting one in Britain.