Out and about...

Today was a day of helping visitors, trying to find elusive colleagues, battling with technology, catching up with friends and latterly pounding the pavements with the east wind and dying rays of the sun swirling around me. This evening covered the "heart" (no irony intended) of East Greenwich, from Christchurch down to Tunnel Avenue.

My most significant experience of the evening was popping into a local hostelry for some quick refreshment on the way to some more leafleting, to realise that the chap stood next to me at the bar was none other than Cllr. Quibell, one of Labour's remaining incumbent candidates for the Peninsula (Council leader Chris Roberts having retreated to Glyndon in Woolwich for fear of losing his seat) and I suppose what you might call my rival. Without being so rude as to give away the substance of the conversation, it's just made me all the more glad that I'm able to get out and put myself forward as somebody who really wants to see a change of culture and attitude in the borough. Most of the time I feel it's privilege enough to be able to hold the council to account, try and make some changes, stand for election and be counted. But when I witness how complacent the people who hold the real power are, it really does stir that little animal inside me that just wants to get up, get out and start making their lives as difficult as possible - if only so that they'll get up and start working for us all and make things just that bit better.

My map gets used! And some other election-y stuff

Nice to see that my efforts are contributing to local endeavour: Andrew Gambier's handy map of who's who in the impending Peninsula elections uses the boundaries I drew a while back for my blog to show the area I aim to represent.

In other news, scaffolding appears on East Greenwich Library just in time for the election season to kick off, despite the (unwritten) claim from Cllr. Fahy that work would be under way two months ago. To be honest I'm just glad the work's finally getting started, though the news that Greenwich Community College will be closing down its part of library is yet another blow to the future of the building. I imagine that unless a significant change in the balance of power occurs in the next couple of months, the library will continue to struggle on until the future of the Heart of East Greenwich project becomes clearer. If I had my way of course... but then words can't make up for actions, can they?

This evening was spent leaflet-/canvassing in the SE3 part of Charlton's ward, where the Conservative team have been listening to and tackling various local concerns - some new, some old - from students using the back gate at BBCS to how late the rugby club parties in the wee hours. The view on the doorstep is always a good weathervane of how people feel generally, and this evening was no exception - now that national coverage of the election is underway, people are generally better informed of the parties' policies at a national level, and this tends to either shape their opinion of local politics, or eclipses it. It means that all the graft we've put in so far can be amplified a thousandfol or dashed to pieces by a well-placed or misjudged comment from either of the two main parties at a national level. At the moment, I've noticed an increase in undecided voters, a slight decrease in those who say they don't vote (I'm afraid I tired of trying to explain the significance of spoiling a ballot many doorsteps ago, but believe me I was quite a fan of registering my disaffection with witty and/or profane comments on my slip back in my more youthful days) and am still waiting to see the election signs appear in the front room windows...

There's a full week of canvassing and leafleting ahead (and fitting in a splendiferous uni assignment somewhere in the middle). I'm looking forward to finding out what the people of Greenwich make of us, and whether our work of the last few years (qv. GCs's website, our blogs and the local commentariat) will permit them to reward us with the opportunity to inject some energy into the council's work and really crack on with transforming the Borough's offer.

When pictures tell so many words...

A little over a year ago, the Greenwich Phantom ran a piece on the uncertain future of East Greenwich library. The Heart of East Greenwich project was struggling ahead, placing the future of the listed building in doubt.

With the Heart of East Greenwich project stalled, I wondered what had become of our library. Last week I met with Terry Wheeler from the Friends of East Greenwich library to find out what had changed in a year. The pictures below describe the library's general condition better than I can:

Terry said that a lot of the leaking was put down to the lead being stolen from the roof - he didn't know if the council had replaced it - and poor drain maintenance under the building that had caused the floors to become saturated and rotted the parquet floors. These have been removed and the library has been recarpeted, but a lot of water still seems to be getting in.

Parts of the building are derelict, including a flat above the front of the library that has been condemned. The physical library itself occupies about 1/4 of the building space, another 1/3 or so appears to be used by Greenwich Community College, while the remainder is derelict. It also has a basement area, though if the ground floor suffers from water seepage, then goodness knows what the areas below ground are like! The boiler has also been broken in the library for more than a week - perhaps by now it's been fixed?

It's a crying shame. I think this is a sad example of a place being neglected in anticipation of a new replacement library, but since that's all stalled now, they're basically stuck with a building that's got into such a poor state of repair that it's going to take a lot of investment to put it right. They've also put it into a spiral whereby the opening hours reduce, the book selection shrinks, so fewer people visit, so they can't justify keeping it open, so they reduce the opening hours... and so on.

Terry said the council had estimated putting the library back into good repair at £2.3 million. It's going to need a lot of work, but I think if you put the flat back into action and thought cleverly about the use of space, it would not just be of service to the community, but begin to start paying for itself - particularly as Terry tells me the new "heart of East Greenwich library" isn't even phase one of the development, it's going to be somewhere along phase two or three. I must confess that I have my doubts as to whether it will ever happen, and even if it does, surely Carnegie's donation to the borough should stay open for the enjoyment of the borough?

More details to follow.

Leaders, or managers?

This evening's class at uni focused on leadership and management, the different types, whether the two terms were distinct, and how. Models of leadership, how leaders excercise authority, different schools of thought on leaders and managers perform their roles.

One model that stuck in my mind was apparently quite an outmoded one, that of Burns' and Bass' transactional and transformational management. In the first, managers believe that employees are self-interested and basically come to work for their week's wages and the only motivating factor is management's big stick. Reward is derived through getting paid. The second is a more enlightened view that managers lead by example and motivate their staff to greater productivity using a range of reward techniques.

No doubt the second one has more relevance in an HR context, and a modern working environment, but I couldn't help thinking about the kinds of models of management that are practiced in the developing world... I wonder if HR even exists there? And if it does, what sort of improvement of conditions are seen as rewards?

Then there's Kurt Lewin's autocratic, laissez faire and democratic leaders. That got me thinking about politicians and which qualities are more desirable in the political world and which are more desirable in the business world. It also helped me evaluate where I hold strengths (getting stuff done, I concluded) and where I probably need to be mindful of improvement (taking time to get others' opinions, worry more about what people think, eg). The main difficulty is giving yourself an honest assessment - I'm sure my own perception of myself isn't quite what others would think.

So many different models and schools to take on... I need to really sit down and remember some of these! Talking about them here while it's fresh in my mind helps though.

In other news, Saturday yielded a productive run round the Tunnel Avenue/Woolwich Road/Blackwall Lane triangle, the heart of which is looking like it needs some love at the moment (or at least the gasworking holes to be filled in). It's deceptive how large the area in that small looking triangle is - if and when work is (started &) completed on the "Heart of East Greenwich" project, I'd imagine it will be of real benefit to the people living there. In the meantime, wasteland rules - although if I had a say, I'd like to see the site made safe and at least used for something in the meantime - open space, allotments, car park space, whatever. I'm sure there are pros and cons to each land use, and probably reasons why it can't be done overnight, but I don't accept that the cost of putting the land to some use would be unjustified - it would even take some of the bitter taste out of the developers' name for the site.


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