Total: 10 posts
Posts in: Personal
Personal stories of living in Southall and the bigger political picture.
Investigations
Local Democracy
Environment
Commentary
Health
Personal
Computer Says No
How many times have you asked yourself — or heard others ask the same question?
Why does the council never reply to my emails?!
When residents raised concerns about toxic odours from the Southall Gasworks site, they were told to keep reporting. Every call, every email, every logged complaint was encouraged.
“It’s good you’re making so many complaints,” they were told at a meeting with Peter Mason in March 2019.
Volume of reporting, the implication was, would produce …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Children's Centres
Personal
Corruption
The Pied Piper of Ealing
A couple of weeks ago, big kid sang at the Royal Albert Hall in “Ealing Together: Harmony in Diversity,” performing lyrics by Jewish socialist and renowned children’s author Michael Rosen in a new song “Ada in Ealing”, a celebration of a former Ealing resident, and the world’s first computer programmer and a pioneer of mathematical logic, Ada Lovelace.
Tonight he performed in his school’s musical version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a story about …
Local Democracy
Environment
Community
Commentary
Gasworks
Features
Personal
Pollution
Southall Odours
I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have been living there in the new homes they built since 2021.
Still, it’s better than the smell of petrol, which is what we had to put up with day and night for months on end in 2018. Bad enough to wake us up in the night during the long hot summer. …
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Research
Health
Personal
Pollution
COPD
Last week I received confirmation of a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on results of spirometry tests back in August (it took that long for my GP surgery to get the results from the test centre, and only after my own intervention after their repeated failures).
My GP helpfully seemed very keen to blame my twenty-odd year history of smoking.
I first smoked at about age 20. My parents were smokers (wasn’t everyone back then?). I was never a heavy smoker. The …
Local Democracy
Commentary
Ealing Labour
Features
Personal
Corruption
ToryBoy
ToryBoy The Movie is the account of filmmaker John Walsh’s disillusionment with what he saw as the corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of Blair’s Labour government, and his conversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party general election candidate for Middlesbrough in 2010.
Under his own steam and £15,000 of his own money, John found his opponent, Sir Stuart Bell, the serial incumbent Labour MP, invisible and unknown to his local constituents who nevertheless voted him …
Campaigns
Environment
Commentary
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Health
Personal
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Strawberries for Pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Gasworks
Health
Personal
Pollution
High Traffic Neighbourhood
Took me an hour (as opposed to 10 minutes) to drive my lad home from school this afternoon, thanks in part to the High Traffic Neighbourhood (‘Improving access for HGVs’) in Southall ‘Green’.
Like a rat, I tried the side streets and back roads option and found those to be jammed, too, and Scotts Road - although confusingly still two-way throughout - is now No Entry from the eastern end.
I would have abandoned my car and got out and walked/scooted home, but there was …
Local Democracy
Environment
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Health
Personal
Corruption
Trigger Vote for Sharma
In July 2019, I attended a public meeting with Public Health England to discuss air pollution problems created by the development of the old gasworks site.
At this meeting, I asked Public Health England if it is true that people with Asian and African heritage are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene – one of the main causes of the stink coming from the gasworks site.
Do you know what they said?
Yes.
Yes, Asian and African people are genetically more at risk from poisoning …
Environment
Community
Commentary
Gasworks
Berkeley Group
Health
Personal
Ethics
Pollution
The Gaslighting Zone
@Southall_Wside @theCALMzone @bonappetit #StopPoisoningSouthall @SouthallGaswork
You guys are really taking the piss now, aren't you?
@Southall_Wside @theCALMzone @bonappetit @SouthallGaswork .@PHE_London report on the health impact of @Southall_Wside @SouthallGaswork:
@Southall_Wside @theCALMzone @bonappetit @SouthallGaswork @PHE_London Residents' own survey conducted a year ago:
Not sure how @theCALMzone think that #BerkeleyHomes and @Southall_Wside are in any way an …
Campaigns
Local Democracy
Environment
Gasworks
Ealing Labour
Berkeley Group
Features
Health
Personal
Corruption
Pollution
Exposes
Southall under Siege: the Neighbours from Hell
‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.
He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.
‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’
Moving swiftly on.
Oppressive odour
The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.
Carcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail …