Of all the videos I made about the London Borough of Barnet, the collaboration with Mark Amies, called The Fall of Edgware, has recieved by far the most hits. It was made in June 2020 and around 10,000 people have viewed it and it has had more comments than any other video in my collection. It was triggered by a conversation between myself and Mark about the awful state of The Railway Hotel pub. Mark was a Labour supporter at the time and had conversations with Anne Clarke and other Labour figures. Barnet Blogger Mrs Angry, a Labour and Sir Keir Starmer loyalist also weighed in. Promises were extracted that if Labour ever got into power in Barnet "Things would be different" and the hotel would be saved. When Labour won the council, three years ago, a promise was made of a compuslory purchase order. And then.... Guess what? Well Mark Amies emailed me a new video this morning.
As Mark and Mrs Angry have found to their cost, you can't believe a word that the Barnet Labour administration tell you. It is 100% clear that like their Tory predecessors, the Barnet Tories, they would rather the place burned down and they could put a faceless, horrible tower on the site.
The biggest joke in Barnet is that Labour has championed The London Festival of Architecture. This is a complete joke. Both Labour and Tory administrations have seen the wanton destruction of many important and architecurally important buildings, and seen them replaced with awful, ugly blocks that are destroying the nature of the Borough. It seems ineveitable and just a matter of time before The Railway joins the Newspaper Archive in Hendon, many RAF buildings in Colindale, etc. Hendons oldest building, the former Church Farmhouse Museum is up for sale, meaning it will never return to it's former glory as a museum.
I cannot hide my disdain for the Barnet Labour politicians who completely mislead us. I believe that the Barnet Tories are even worse, but at least they don't tell porkies, they make it clear they have total contempt and disdain for us mere plebs. Labour pretend they don't, but the evidence shows that all they care about are rich developers who line the council pockets.
There is nothing that would make me more happy than for Barnet Labour to make me eat my words and start behaving like what I believed a Labour party in Barnet should behave like. I was a member of Labour from 1979 until 2009, until I realised that the party was a very different beast to what I'd believed. In a converstaion, Andrew Dismore admitted that when he was elected in 1997, he knew that there was no prospect of saving Edgware General hospital, contrary to what he'd told us all in a rally at Montrose Park in 1995. His predecessor John Gorst had voted against his own parties plans to close it. Dismore never did. I am sorry if this upsets some people, but I can only speak the truth.
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