kcwKENSINGTON CHELSEA & WESTMINSTER today LONDON NEWS, GLOBAL VIEWS ISSUE 0063 JULY 2017 FREE (EXCEPT WHERE SOLD) NEVER AGAIN 14.06.17 GRENFELL TOWER NEWS POLITICS BUSINESS & FINANCE EDUCATION HEALTH EVENTS DINING OUT ARTS AND CULTURE LITERATURE MOTORING SPORT 2 July 2017 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Contents & Offices Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today kcwKENSINGTON CHELSEA & WESTMINSTER today Contents LONDON NEWS, GLOBAL VIEWS 80-100 Gwynne Road, London, ISSUE 0062 JUNE 2017 FREE (EXCEPT WHERE SOLD) SW11 3UW Photograph courtesy and © Steve and Jem Copley courtesy and © Steve Photograph Tel: 020 7738 2348 E-mail: [email protected] Website: 3 News www.kcwtoday.co.uk Advertisement enquiries: [email protected] 10 Opinion & Comment Subscriptions: RACING TOWARDS SUMMER [email protected] BUSINESS & FINANCE NEWS EDUCATION HEALTH EVENTS TRAVEL & LIFESTYLE SPORTS MOTORING Publishers: DINING OUT ARTS & CULTURE LITERATURE Business & Finance Kensington & Chelsea Today Limited 12 18 Feature 20 Statue & Blue Plaque Editor-in-Chief: Kate Hawthorne Art Director & Director: Tim Epps Acting Editor: Dr Emma Trehane 21 Astronomy Head of Business Development: Dr Emma Trehane Business Development: Caroline Daggett, Education Antoinette Kovatchka, 22 Architecture: Emma Flynn Art & Culture Editors: Don Grant, Marian Maitland 26 Literature Astronomy: Scott Beadle FRAS Ballet/Dance: Andrew Ward Bridge: Andrew Robson 27 Poetry Business Stephanie Hawthorne, Douglas Shanks, Slim Chess: Barry Martin 28 Dining Out Contributing Editors: Marius Brill, Peter Burden, Derek Wyatt Travel & Lifestyle Music: James Douglas 30 Crossword: Wolfe: Dining Out: Edward Burns, Max Feldman, 35 Events Antonia Williams Editorial: Max Feldman, Owen Fulda, Anna Kretschmer, Fahad Redha, 45 Arts & Culture Antonia Williams Events:, Fahad Redha Travel & Lifestyle : Ione Bingley, Max Feldman, 54 Health Owen Fulda, Lynne McGowan Antonia Williams Feldman Reviews: Max Feldman 57 Motoring I wish I had written that: Dudley Sutton Motoring: Don Grant, David Hughes Sport News, Online Editor 60 & Arts Correspondent: Max Feldman Picture Editor: Max Feldman 62 Crossword, Classified & Public Notice Poetry & Literary Editor: Emma Trehane MA Ph.D Political Editor: Derek Wyatt Sport: Owen Fulda 63 Chess & Bridge Sub-Editor: Leila Kooros 020 7738 2348 July 2017 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 3 News online: www.KCWToday.co.uk continued long after, very few actual Kensington does represent a particularly resident survivors made the news feed. extreme delineation. When I briefly lived MARIUS BRILL’S Neighbours, representatives of all sorts, in New York in the 80s 96th St on the commentators, politicians, everybody East Side was known as the DMZ, the happy to see the ‘big picture’: the failures Demilitarised Zone, where the luxurious MEMEING OF LIFE of government, the Council, building upper east side tower blocks suddenly experts. The poet Ben Okri immediately stopped and the tenements and projects Meme: An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another... penned a beautiful eulogy which starts: of Spanish Harlem began. The contrast was sharp and obvious. For decades, “If you want to see how the poor die, in Kensington, the zone between the come see Grenfell Tower. wealthy south and the poor north was KENSINGTONSee the tower, and let a world-changing an exciting cross-over area stretching dream flower. from Notting Hill Gate to the Westway. Gentrifying young bankers looking Hewitt Nick © Photograph Residents of the area call it the for a San Francisco Barrio experience crematorium. proliferated the area once the domain It has revealed the undercurrents of our of poverty-exploiting slum landlords age. Peter Rachman and later Nicholas van The poor who thought voting for the rich Hoogstraten. But the money won and would save them.” slowly the less well off in the borough got bought out, moved away and The clarity of the symbolism was so squeezed north of the Westway or, in the great, it seems, few seemed to be able case of Latimer Road, council estates. to put the big picture down and see the Kensington’s DMZ is just a street wide little pictures. Clearly some media outlets in many areas now. preferred to stay away from the personal All this is true. And the tragedy of stories of victims because so many wore Grenfell Tower was no doubt affected hijabs and were everything they see as by these terrible inequalities. But there wrong with the country, others may have is a danger in memes, and symbols, and been disappointed by some survivors’ ideologies, that the individuals get lost. lack of articulacy, English not being a Sometimes it seems the irony is too great first language. But the meme of the poor and we forget the actual cost. There is a being burned by the wealthy was just too problem in staring so hard at the message overwhelming. that you fail to see the messenger, dirty, This country does have a terrible worn out, hard-pressed, hungry, yearning chasm between haves and have nots and to breathe free. few weeks ago if you said out their incumbent Brexit supporting “Kensington” what came to mind Conservative MP with perhaps one of might be leafy garden squares the narrowest margins imaginable. Just with elegant colonnaded terraced houses, 20 votes. I got a call from a jubilant BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT A Labour supporter asking if Kensington estate agents displaying extra-wide cards to accommodate all the noughts, had ever been Labour? I had to point paper-thin housewives, crocodiles of out that Kensington as a constituency SUMMER INTERNSHIP absurdly uniformed prep school kids, has only existed for seven years and since Middle Eastern princelets gunning gold the 70s the area has been ceaselessly (PAID COMMISSION) Lamborghinis, or maybe Notting Hill, carved up into different shapes to try Hugh Grant, Portobello Market, The to maximise the, generally, left-wing Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today is one poverty in the north of the borough and Record and Tape Exchange or resident of the leading monthly newspapers in London. bays packed with automotive real-estate the tax wary right-wing south. worth more than most streets, houses Then one warm summer evening, a We are offering a 3 month internship to a Business and cars, anywhere in the country. fire broke out in a tower block in one Development Graduate looking to build their portfolio In one week all that changed. of the country’s poorest social housing over the summer months; start July 2017. This is a unique estates which happens to be in one of Now Kensington itself has become opportunity to work closely with a highly qualified and an international meme. For decades its richest areas. The fire quickly spread it’s been a national symbol for all that upwards fed by the flammable cladding dynamic team. The role is designed to prepare the right is excessive in house pricing and the that had been attached to the block for candidate for a career in Journalism and an opportunity poverty in the borough treated as an mostly cosmetic reasons making the to get hands-on experience with sales and marketing, drama of the inferno intensely dramatic anomaly; “Aren’t they lucky living in build client relationships and develop writing skills. such a lovely borough near all those for those outside and filling the more sweet smelling rich people?” But now, fireproof parts of the block with deadly An extension may be offered based on performance. with the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, the fumes. Send CV and letter to: blackened towerblock standing starkly The apparent symbolism was too against a bright sea of low-rise des-res, evident to miss. The poor dying because Dr Emma Trehane the rich who surround them don’t want the borough is becoming a byword for Acting Editor and Director of Business Development a, quite literal, flashpoint in the conflict to look at the ugly face of social housing. between rich and poor; the tinderbox A constituency politically divided. KCW TODAY, 80-100 GWYNNE ROAD, of the economic divisions in the West. Certainly these issues had some role This borough has become the focus of in the tragedy but in a world where LONDON, SW11 3UW our extreme political tides; between the deeper meaning is becoming increasingly T: 020 7738 2348 M: 0771 591 0665 purveyors of globalised austerity and fractured by social networking and wall E: [email protected] advocates for liberal social welfare. to wall distraction, the need to impose a Just six days before the fire, the meaning on the Grenfell Tower tragedy WWW.KCWTODAY.CO.UK constituency that had voted over 70% to has seemed irresistible Remain in the Brexit Referendum kicked In the 24-hour news coverage that 4 July 2017 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk News Photograph © Chelsea ArtsClub Chelsea © Photograph for the £9bn flagship development project south of the river. Mr. Khan Battersea urged Wandsworth planning committee to reconsider. affordable homes Affordable homes currently built in London are provided under a Section 106 Agreements: a legal accord between local authorities and developers, containing a planning obligation to attersea Power Station enable restrictions on the use of the land Development Company has or the operation of the development or announced their intentions to to make contributions toward the local Breduce 250 affordable homes from infrastructure and facilities. previous plans, undergoing a 40% Wandsworth’s planning committee reduction in numbers of affordable flats chairman, Richard Field said: “The available. committee had a very difficult choice Originally, 636 homes were reserved between accepting a potentially lower for first time-buyers and renters unable number of affordable homes, or refusing to afford the 4,239 luxury homes on the the application and risk losing all of power station site, which promised local them.” residents a 40% discount on the average This development also directly funds market rent.