Council Employees Tax Avoidance Schemes
I have been amazed for some years at the enormous salaries trousered by some top council employees. After all, you can’t say that they do a creative job that adds value. Now it appears that many of these employees are paid through companies to avoid tax, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee. The chair of this committee Margaret Hodge is quoted on the BBC as saying.
This is a tax avoidance scheme which is totally wrong. Where you are a public servant it’s not right you should be paid in a way that avoids tax
I agree! If George Osborne is looking for a place to raise money in the budget, he could declare these contracts illegal and raise perhaps a billion or two.
It would appear that my council, Hackney, is one of the worst offenders, with 39 employees being paid this way.
Exploring Hackney Central
Many will think that Hackney Central is some run-down area, that was partially destroyed by the riots last August. But look at these pictures.
The church tower wasn’t even all that was left after it was knocked about by the Luftwaffe, but the remains left after an 18th Century moving of the parish church. More details are here on Wikipedia. I do wonder what would happen, if a parish wanted to rebuild their 16th Century church on a different site now!
The reason for the coffee, was that I had a very good one, in the excellent cafe in the Hackney Empire. The lady in the pleasant museum said that the coffee was also good in the cinema on the other side of the road. Note that the cinema is part of the nationwide and independent Picture Houses group.
After my quick visit to Hackney Central, I took the Overground to Stratford, from where I took the Docklands Light Railway to Canary Wharf for lunch. I could have taken one of any number of buses back home, to the City or the West End.
The New Bus for London as a Tourist Bus
I said in my post yesterday, that the new Bus for London makes a superb place from which to explore London as a tourist. So here’s most of the pictures I took from the bus, running on route 38.
The best place to board the bus is either at the Angel in Islington or at Victoria station. But as there is only one in service at the present, you could have a long wait. but there will be eight by the end of May.
i think it is true to say that the standard buses on route 38, aren’t bad for sightseeing. They’re all less than two years old and like the New Bus for London, they’ve been built by Wrightbus in Northern Ireland.
If you want to see a different side of London, go all the way to Hackney, getting off at Central. You can pick up a train from there to the Olympic Park at Stratford or even explore some of the buildings like the Hackney Empire, which is one of the largest theatres in London.
Cyclists
The area of Hackney where I live is just north of the City and there are a lot of cyclists. Normally, there isn’t a problem, but they will sneak up the inside of say a bus that has stopped at a zebra crossing for me to cross and a couple of times, I have nearly been run over. Although, I’m a recovering sixty-odd-year-old stroke victim, I can just about cope, but there is a lot of complaints in the shops and pubs from pedestrians about cyclists ignoring the rules of the road and the pavement.
All I think we need is that everybody tries to follow what the law lays down.
Perhaps, what annoys me at the moment, is that there is building work opposite, which means there are extra hazards like delivery lorries and skips, where I cross the road. This would be fine, as usually everything is properly placed to cause the minimum of obstruction. The problem though is that so many drivers and motorcyclists use the road as a short cut and weave in and out of the hazards at speeds over the 20 mph limit for the road.
I think it would help if Hackney followed Islington and went for a borough wide 20 mph speed limit.
Credit Unions
THe BBC is plugging credit unions this morning. I am all for that, as I think they are a good alternative to banks for a lot of people with simple financial needs.
but type in “credit union Hackney” into Google and you get this message.
Hackney Credit Union has ceased trading and the branch has closed.
So not a good start!
Type in “find credit union hackney” and you get some assorted credit check and loan adverts.
You do get this page from Hackney Council, which tells you about credit unions. But it doesn’t give the branches in the borough.
So unless you know about credit unions and where one is located, you haven’t really got much help.
If we want to get more people to use credit unions, then they must get control of the Internet. Especially typing “find credit union” should not get a loan shark.
Credit unions are much more successful in the US, but then they are much bigger with probably more branches. Look at the web site of the Credit Union of Southern California. IT certainly doesn’t look to be a small organisation. Where is the Londonwide credit union?
Could it be that the banks have got their friends in Government to effectively ban them?
Three Months Junk Mail
This box contains three months junk mail.
Three Months Junk Mail
It went in the recycling this morning. But why should Hackney Council and my Council Tax pay to dispose of assorted rubbish from fast food shops, catalogue retailers and other junk mailers?
My Local Bus Stop
My local stop is just around the corner and has buses that go everywhere, as this picture shows.
Mildmay Park (Balls Pond Road) Spider Map
Note that the actual spider maps, like this one have more information than their equivalent on the web.
The stop also has a Next Bus Information Number.
Next Bus Information Number
Note in the picture, the local street map.
The stop also has a Next Bus Display.
Next Bus Display
I wonder how long we’ll keep it though, as for many people the text message system will be better.
It is too much to expect all stops to be to this standard, but all important ones should have all the information, travellers might need.
I’m using the system in several ways now.
- I often check before I leave home when the next bus is due, to avoid waiting in the cold, say when I have an early train out of Kings Cross.
- If I’m expecting a visitor, I often ask them to text from say The Angel and then I can be at the appropriate stop to meet them.
- If a suitable bus doesn’t appear imminent, then I might change plan and say walk to Daldston Junction.
The only prediction is that these systems will get better and better. You might for instance text the number with say Euston attached to find the quickest way to get to that station. And I still haven’t brought up the subject of a smart phone. But then who needs one, for this purpose, if you have a smart text messaging system.
Suppose to find your way home in London, all you needed to do was text the stop code like 59415, followed by your post code to 87287. You would then be sent instructions on which bus to catch and where to change to get home.
As children, my friends and myself would wander all over London on Red Rovers. Children probably don’t do that now! But it was great fun. Being able to text to get you to your home, could make it safer.
Tom Hunter and Piero di Cosimo
Tom Hunter is a well-known artist based in Hackney. A friend had invited me to a talk at the National Gallery by Tom to discuss a painting by Piero di Cosimo called A Satyr Mourning a Nymph. Tom had used it as an inspiration for one of a series of large format photographs based on a series of headlines in the Hackney Gazette. There is more about the talk here.
It was all very enlightening and enjoyable. It made me think that why don’t museums and galleries do this sort of talk and discussion more.
The National Gallery had just set up several ranks of folding chairs in front of the Piero di Cosimo painting and admission to the talk was free.
In this case the discussion was quite deep and some new insights into the painting seemed to have come forward. My friend even felt that the nymph was pregnant, which was a view supported by others and according to one of the curators of the gallery had not been proposed before.
In some ways it was slightly surreal for me, as I’d just featured in a headline in the Hackney Gazette. I can’t find it on-line, but it was about my 92 Clubs trip.
Should We Add the Lea Valley Lines to the Overground?
There are effectively three surburban Lea Valley lines.
- Liverpool Street to Enfield
- Liverpool Street to Chingford
- Liverpool Street to Cheshunt via Southbury
Some count the line through Tottenham Hale as another Lea Valley Line, but I prefer to think of that as part of the West Anglia Main Line to Bishops Stortford and Cambridge.
I know the lines quite well and they are not in the best of health with stations that need investment, disabled access and to be incorporated into the Oyster fare network.
You might say it is just like the North London Line of a few years ago!
Except there is one major difference. The trains may be old, but they are in a much better state than the travelling urinals of the old North London Line.
The lines are also not badly connected to both the London Underground and the Overground.
- Seven Sisters and Walthamstow Central are shared stations serving both the Lea Valley Lines and the Victoria line.
- A footpath is planned to connect Walthamstow Central with Walthamstow Queen’s Road on the Overground.
- Hackey Downs used to be connected to Hackey Central on the Overground by means of a path at track level. This interchange could give the Overground a quick way to get to the city as an alternative to walking from Shoreditch High Street on the East London Line.
The more I look at this, the more I like it!
The lines are already built for eight car trains and frequencies approaching ten trains per hour. All they need is punters to fill them and that is where the expertise of the Overground comes in. They certainly have a track record of doing it on the current lines.
Transport for London also have good project management expertise, as they showed at the Dalston Curve, where the project was under budget and early. They also know about making stations disabled-friendly.
So I think we should go for it!
Bye-Bye Virgin
I’ve now been without my landline for a couple of weeks now. Although, I didn’t realise it for some days, as I was away and also because most of my friends phone me on my mobile number.
So on Friday, I did what I should have done when I moved in; I signed up with BT.
Today after a very long phone call, I cancelled Virgin. I did eventually get someone sensible, but as I had to ring on my mobile and I phoned them for perhaps twenty minutes, I suspect it wasn’t cheap.
It did however cost me over seventy pounds to get rid of them.
Hackney council today wrote to me saying that I could get rid of five heavy items a year by just giving them a call. If disposing of Virgin and their useless service were so easy.
Incidentally, all of their cabinets round here have had their doors stolen.
A Typical Virgin Cabinet in Hackney
In my experience, electrical equipment doesn’t like working in exposed conditions.
I shall now be using BT for phone and broadband, Freeview for television and the pub for watching football on Sky.
The Anonymous Widower 