The Battle for Madeira Drive!

Scarcely six months since the 40th anniversary celebrations of the cult film Quadrophenia in September 2019, Brighton's iconic Madeira Drive, possibly one of the most famous stretches of road in England, found itself unceremoniously closed, no warning or public notice, ostensibly to 'provide more space to exercise' under lockdown.

Come June and travel restrictions were lifted but Stewards continued to guard the entrances and exits to all traffic and the traders grew restless, demanding a meeting with the council. Meantime my partner Ollie (mod, biker, cyclist, walker and occasional driver) often cycled down there for a cup of tea and a chat with the cafe owners. He was astonished to be told by one that a council official had come to visit and advised him that the council were planning to make Madeira Drive closure permanent!

We were both shocked. How could the council even dream of doing this and when the city had just been economically crashed for three months?

No more veteren car rallies? No more Mod weekends? No more Brightona and other events?
And what about visitors? What about the disabled? What about the restoration of Madeira Terraces? We are supposed to be a resort town!

We immediately set up a petition here to re-open Madeira Drive and Ollie started a blog here, which he updates daily, detailing every twist and turn in the saga.

Amazing people started approaching us and offering to help spread the word, but it soon became apparent we were up against some dark and determined forces who were not above underhand tactics.

Various articles and letters appeared in the Brighton Argus, Ollie was interviewed for Brighton Argus, BBC Sussex Radio and Latest TV. I made a list of pros and cons below and found there were virtually no pros to keeping Madeira Drive shut!

If you would like to see Madeira Drive open again, please sign our petition here and also fill in the council's newly created consultation here. The matter will go to full council on 23rd July 2020.
Thank you. Let's keep Madeira Drive alive!

Madeira Drive Closure
Pros	Cons
Makes Momentum/The Greens happy	Will cause businesses to close down (souvenir shop already gone)
Provides more pedestrian and cycling space (though in reality, few are using the middle of the road for these purposes)	Restoring Madeira Arches would provide more pedestrian space as would re-open covered walkway, upper footpaths, slopes, staircases and cliff lift.
	Losing money through: ·        Lost revenue from 393 parking spaces ·        Trader’s rent strike ·        Hiring a minimum of 4 x staff for 7 days a week to stop traffic using it. ·        No events and minimal visitors ·        Possibility of being sued by both traders and event hosts.
	Discriminates against disabled, carers, visitors, bikers, scooterists and anyone who is not fit or local enough to drive or walk everywhere. Disabled have been told they have to park in Black Rock car park, a mile away!
	May be used as an excuse NOT to restore Madeira Terraces or preserve unique Green Wall.
	Traffic parking in Kemp Town or Hove instead, affecting residents who cannot park there.
	No coach parking, particularly overnight and supporting local hotels or to take bands/equipment/audience to Concorde II
	No taxi access
	No through traffic, though was never much used for through traffic, but as a destination
	Chicanes already in place to prevent boy racers
	Not most polluting road in Brighton and no emissions studies to evidence pollution.
	Permanent closure mooted without public consultation under the auspices of the (temporary) Coronavirus Act 2020 and without requisite public notice or applying for A TTRO under Road Traffic Act 1984 (currently being legally challenged by two events organisers, we understand).
	Bad cycling accidents by speeding cyclists
	It is naïve to assume that Madeira Drive would be allowed to lie fallow indefinitely. Once businesses are gone, it could easily be sold off to developers and lost to the citizens of Brighton and Hove as an iconic promenade and events destination forever!

The Abortion Stall

Yesterday I was walking through the middle of Brighton when I noticed an array of gory-looking poster display boards ahead. At first I assumed they were slaughterhouse scenes and it was some kind of animal rights stall but as I drew closer I realised it was a display of human foetuses in various stages of abortion around a leaflet table.

'Brave.' I thought. (Brighton is not exactly liberal about subjects like anti-abortion, for all its 'anything goes' ethos).

I noticed several people standing around poised with leaflets at the ready and did my best to dodge them.

One slightly built well-dressed lady in her sixties collared me though.
'It's ok.' I smiled. 'I'm not a fan either,' smugly assuming this would let me off the hook.
Instead her eyes widened and she rounded on me. 'So what are you DOING about it?' she demanded.
'Erm. Nothing. It's none of my business what other women do.'
'Really?' Her eyes flashed at me. 'So if you lived next door to a young child and heard it being abused every night, you would do nothing, would you?'
'Of course not. That's hardly the same thing.' I replied, somewhat stunned.
'Life is life!' she replied emphatically. 'Thousands of babies are being murdered every day. Cut up in the womb alive, their body parts sold, and people like you are doing nothing. Most women don't even know what happens. They are not being given all the choices. The BPAS is supposed to advise them but it's really just an abortion clinic. So is the Marie Stopes'
'Look, bad stuff happens every day. I replied. We can't possibly campaign against all of it. It's just not possible. And ultimately it's none of my business what other women do with their bodies. I just know it wouldn't be right for me,'
'At least take these leaflets and read about what you are walking way from.' she insisted. I took the leaflets and she let me go.

I walked away marvelling at her tactics and whether she really believed they worked. It was tempting to be rude to her, but despite the steeliness of her resolve, I detected a mental fragility as well in her desperation to convert. I wondered what her back story was. Had she had an abortion and then regretted it? Had someone close to her? Had she been denied a grandchild? Had she been a doctor who performed abortions who switched sides or was she simply a staunch Christian?

I didn't read the leaflets but I didn't throw them away. Later on I recycled them in my local Library next to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service leaflets on abortion, by way of offering some balance.  Maybe she had a point. Adoption seems to have become a dirtier word than abortion these days, but it's nevertheless still an option, Perhaps its waning popularity has something to do with the  trend of modern women desperate for fertility treatment claiming they 'couldn't love a baby unless it was genetically mine'.
I really don't understand this at all.
My cat is not genetically mine, but I love him unreservedly!
Personally I have always thought it would be a good idea to have women desperate for a baby and women desperate to get rid of an unwanted baby share the same clinic waiting room and be kept at least an hour waiting for their appointments. A lot of human suffering, cost and heartache might be saved if they all got talking to one another and realised they were all human and all suffering though what they did and didn't want. It used to be commonplace for adoption within families for example where an unmarried woman who 'got into trouble' would hand the baby over to a married sister or aunt who would raise it as her own, but with the mother still in the child's life. Yes, there were forced adoptions as well, but those dark days are long gone. There is no shame in being an unmarried mother nowadays, and plenty of support available, in most cases.

Notwithstanding there actually IS a market in aborted baby parts for stem cells, skin grafts and everything else, so abortion is a worldwide racket, and arguably the biggest reason why pregnant women find it so hard to access independent advice.

Recently I read '40 Years of Murder', the autobiography of one of the forensic giants of the 20th century, Keith Simpson. In the 1950s, a badly decomposed body, dressed in the remnants of a summer dress was brought to his pathology lab. She was identified by the dress fabric and the necklace as the wife of a young BBC executive who had gone missing several months previously in the summer. It was hard at first to ascertain the cause of death, but Professor Simpson eventually found enough soft tissue in the womb area to detect a mass of salt water. Her womb had been perforated by an illegal abortionist. The Police interviewed her employer and it emerged she had had an affair with him, fallen pregnant and he had arranged a private abortion for her. She had died shortly after the procedure and her employer arranged with the abortionist to dump her body in a shallow grave in a nearby forest. Unusually both were brought to trial and were convicted of manslaughter.
While abortion will never be risk free, at least its legalision prevented many more horror stories of this nature.

I suppose the biggest thing which puzzles me about abortion is why we have so much of it in a country with free contraception available to all and no shortage of sex education in schools and on TV.  I could understand it more if we lived in a third world country or a country where contraception was prohibited for religious reasons.

Prevention will always be better than cure though, and in an overpopulated world, our government should start offering tax incentives to remain child-free or at least limit numbers through proper family planning. We also have plenty of kids languishing in children's homes and on the street desperate for families/couples who claim to love children to adopt or foster.

International Tin Foil Hat Day!

In an increasingly crazy world where reality and conspiracy theory are blurring, and even seemingly interchangeable at times and fake news also abounds, sometimes the only sane response is to don a tin foil hat!

I'll be joining the Worried Woke for a civilised but light-hearted silent protest march to mark International Tin Foil Hat Day on Monday 13 May.

It starts at noon from cafe at Hove Lagoon and ends up at Brighton Pier.

Dress code: Silver tin foil hat and top to toe black, white or silver. Dogs also welcome, preferably wearing tin foil hats!

Not all 'progress' is in the human interest. Let's question everything and stop sleepwalking into a world we don't necessarily want.

Facebook page here. www.facebook.com/groups/651056781994759/

McMafia

Tonight we went to see Misha Glenny, the BBC journalist whose book McMafia inspired the TV series.

Strangely enough my partner and I had binge-watched John Le Carre's 'The Night Manager' earlier in the week and as I listened to the soothing English public school tones of Glenny, I briefly wondered if he was actually a Richard Roper on the side, knowing what he knows about organised crime and worldwide rackets. Who better after all?

Disappointingly there was a lot about geopolitics and very little about actual crime, let alone mention of a single death threat. Surely all these criminals did not simply tell Glenny the journalist about their criminal shenanigans, who was only going to tell the world and potentially ruin the scams they had going!

The nearest we got to drama was the mention of a Chinese girl gripping his arm in a nightclub in Dubai and trying to strong ch-arm him into her services. Like all good journalists Glenny said he 'made his excuses' and left.

It was not hugely surprising that London turns out to be the world centre for money laundering. We have all seen those former palaces in Kensington rotting away empty, purchased by foreign powers unknown and we all know that almost every new block going up to ruin London is being advertised off-plan to foreign investors almost exclusively, sometimes to never even be visited by them but act as their gold bars in the sky. Our property market in particular stinks and there is more than simple dysfunction or shortage at play. It was good that largely thanks to McMafia a new 'unexplained wealth order' is coming in. Though this only goes part-way to addressing the fact that the super-rich seem to be repeatedly let off the tax and money-laundering laws the rest of us are zealously held to.

In a world where we clearly all need our wits about us to avoid the scammers and exploiters who await us at every turn, Glenny is a huge weed supporter. However just as a vegan would argue there is no such thing as 'humane slaughter' I would argue there is no such thing as 'harmless dope'. The clue is in the name. No one needs their brain function impaired and their driving reaction times permanently slowed at best, and psychotic mental illness at worst.

No mention of the up and coming cocaine either and how this is leading to multiple murders in the supply chain in its own right - avocado. And how this is all Meghan Markle's fault for making them so popular! And like palm oil, avocado is obviously also decimating the rain forests somehow and needs to be stopped.

Glenny touched on Rockafeller and Carnegie as early adopters of the manipulated market and stranglehold cartel (oil and steel respectively) using private security enforcers but failed to mention that Rockafeller then proceeded to re-organise and monopolise modern medicine to suit his own purposes and wealth to this day, ensuring there was somewhere for all his petroleum by-products to be used for additional profit and that alternative medicines were denigrated, driven out and illegalised wherever possible. Tax-exempt charities and The famous Norman Dodd interview also failed to get a mention revealing that the 1929 Wall Street crash was fabricated. Remarkably Glenny (in view of all he must know) seemed to assume that the current recession was natural and simply caused by the banks going crazy.

Brexit was predictably seen as a negative, despite Glenny admitting that whole new markets in drug and human trafficking had sprung up to service the newly formed EU back in the early 90s. No mention of the one-world government we were heading towards though and all the new problems this would have brought.

The positives of Glenny's investigations and the future of the world were few and far between but I believe there was a large note of hope he completely overlooked. Namely that those who run the world (whether officially or unofficially) are in the minority, so it is up to us, the majority, to keep our ears and eyes open and question EVERYTHING. Don't walk around blithely assuming that everything is either being done in your best interests or that life will somehow work out for you. We have to be participants and not spectators. Drivers, not passengers. In other words - our own best friends - focussing on what we want in life rather than allowing ourselves to be ruled by the fear of what we don't want.

Four Swallows And Two Elephants

Just over a year ago I spotted a short letter in the Brighton Argus requesting information about an 'Arthur Sellman' who wrote as 'Southdown' in The World's Fair magazine.

The name rang a bell as my mother had had a beloved 'Uncle Arthur' who took her out and about as a child and paid for her to have secretarial classes when she left school at 14 so she could better herself. He had indeed acted as a surrogate father to her, her own father having died when she was three. And he wrote for The World's Fair and was related to the Sellmans of Cannock, a family undertaking firm, whose name continues to this day.

Arthur was not my mother's uncle at all in fact, but her cousin, and he had a grown up daughter - Margaret Doreen - who was a teenager when my mother was born, whom my mother Margaret was named after. I had never known Arthur, who died a few months after I was born, but a couple of fairground models of his remained, and were of great novelty to me as a youngster when I visited Margaret Doreen, though I wasn't allowed to touch them.

I telephoned my mother and Arthurs' granddaughters, Jenny and Susan (retired teachers) and told them of the letter and then emailed the enquirer Ned Williams, a Wolverhampton-based writer who specialises in historic publications, both local and entertainment-related. He replied to say how delighted he was to be put in touch with Arthur's only living relations as had had been researching 'Southdown' and reading his old articles for at least ten years but had gleaned only 'crumbs of information' about him until Jenny had been able to fill in a lot of the gaps. The sisters then assembled lots of photos, letters and other information for him and he visited Jennifer in Crawley to meet her and pore over them.

A year later Ned's book Four Swallows and Two Elephants has just come out with a whole chapter devoted to Arthur Sellman, aka 'Southdown' who turns out to have run a marionette show in addition to his journalism under various pen names for The World's Fair from 1914-1970, latterly settling on 'Southdown' and his eventual regular job as a cinema projectionist at The Regent Cinema in Queen's Street Brighton, one of the city's plushest cinemas. In his final years Arthur penned two short books; 'Bioscope Shows and Their Engines' and 'Travelling Shows and Roundabouts' under yet another pseudonym Arthur Fay.

The family surmises that confronted with a certain future in the family undertaking business in Cannock, young Arthur Sellman ran away to the fairground and so began a lifelong love affair with the world of entertainment as he gravitated around the country, eventually ending up in Brighton.

It is so lovely that Arthur has been rescued from obscurity like this and reading the book one realises what a huge and magical world the world of old fairgrounds was. And how reliant on this form of entertainment people were before cinemas came along, which eventually also seduced Arthur, much as he mourned and memorialised the passing of more traditional forms of entertainment and never lost his passion for them. The old fairgrounds were indeed a vanishing world even when Arthur was young,  Though I for one would still pay good money to see a show called 'Mrs Collins' Lions'! It seems there were a whole genre of gutsy widows of a certain age touring extraordinary-titled shows around the country and the fairground world of the early 20th century was a lot more equal opportunities than one might imagine.

Six other significant figures from the world of people's entertainment in the 20th century are also covered in this book and what fascinating figures they are.

Speed Friending and Other Pursuits

It's been a busy time lately.

I have taken over running Hove Writers at Hove Library once a month - which is a joy. It is a completely free and open group so you never quite know who is going to turn up. However we always have an enriching and entertaining couple of hours with a bit of chat, some workshopping and a writing exercise in this stunning library, and some of us troop round to a George Street cafe for a cuppa after.

I've embarked on a stand-up comedy career (I think), which is truly refreshing and a complete contrast to the day job. I also find that I enjoy writing comedy as much as performing and am constantly jotting new lines, ably edited by my comedy-fan partner, who has already appointed himself my manager and agent, though he is receiving a big fat 10% of nothing at the moment! Anyway it's Sarah Millican or bust in the next 12 months apparently, so no pressure!

I'm about to bring 'Speed Friending' to Brighton - a bit like speed dating but to make friends - so less pressured. It's big in the US, in Dublin and with various UK universities to get students interacting with one another so I predict it could become big here too. I suspect I am not the only one developing a thirst for a little more onlife and a little less online!

Finally I am writing a pop psychology book. Phew!

Heritage Heroics

 

It has never been cheap or convenient to save the nation's heritage. That is not the point (though personally I would argue that, contrary to developer's claims, it is almost always cheaper to restore what exists than to demolish it and erect something unworthy in its place with little more than a 50 year life expectancy, as the majority of new builds have. Fewer, if they fall out of fashion before that).

But to get back to the point. Once all the battles are finally fought and won to save a historic gem, it is invariably to the gratitude of the local community that the survivor still stands and they discover a new pride at the piece of local history in their midst. 

Such is the fight ahead to save the oldest commercial building in Brighton in the Laines, Tucked away and forgotten behind a modest and somewhat neglected 18th century building housing a branch of Timpsons, Puget's Cottage, which annexed the late Hannington's Department store represents an architectural 'Miss Havisham', virtually untouched for more than 150 years. It is only now that another attempt is to be made to straighten out the squiggly historic charm of the Laines by bulldozing an additional passage through to aid commerce that it (and Timpsons) have found themselves in the wrecking ball's path. 

And fair enough, neither will ever win any beauty contests when compared to, say, the Brighton Pavilion, but they can certainly enjoy an uncovering of charms and add a unique selling point to the Laines which would be lost if the developers were allowed their somewhat unimaginative and brutal way to make it look like just another shopping street.

But this is not an 'either' 'or'. For no.16 North Street next door could easily accommodate a ground floor 'Hannington Lane', preserving not only its upper floors, but the threatened buildings at 15, and offering a much more gentle and true-to-the-spirit of the Laines alternative. Windows or access into the historic courtyard could be built into the passage and the oldest commercial building put back to commercial (or tourism) use. In fact it would be a much cheaper scheme from the developer's point of view. 

Brighton and Hove City Council planning officers recommended rejection of the demolition permission, yet somehow it went through and is now, thanks to the local Brighton and Hove Historic Commission, being appealed through the Home Secretary. Rather disappointingly, not to mention alarmingly, one local heritage group The Regency Society has spoken in favour of demolition of this listed building as its chairman seems to think allowing the scheme through is 'more important' to Brighton. However it is not an 'either' 'or' as previously stated. It is actually a situation where everyone can have their cake and eat it, so what's stopping them?

On a more positive note, and following my previous blog, Save the Hippo! detailing the history of the building and saga, this week came the wonderful news that the Brighton Hippodrome is almost saved! Almost, as it is now in the hands of what we hope will prove a good and sympathetic owner - the Academy Music Group. This is largely thanks to the heroic efforts of local MP Caroline Lucas, Save the Brighton Hippodrome and Our Brighton Hippodrome Facebook campaigns who worked tirelessly to highlight the building's plight and fund raise. A fantastic example of what people power can achieve! All that remains now is to draft a sustainable business plan for the future and carry on pushing until it opens its doors again. However there is no reason to suppose the Brighton Hippodrome cannot be just as successful as its surviving and thriving sister Hippodromes in Birmingham, Bristol and elsewhere.

And what act could fail to be inspired by performing in a building cheered on by the ghosts of Max Miller, Laurel and Hardy and a whole host of old time stars..?

The Brighton and Hove We Nearly Lost

This is Regency Hove. Along with the whole seafront from Kemp Town to Hove, it was almost razed to the ground and replaced in the 1930s by 'New Brighton' (see bottom picture).

New Brighton was the brainchild of Alderman Sir Herbert Carden, a city councillor who also wanted to demolish this...

seeing the Royal Pavilion as a monstrosity and a decadent Royal folly which had had its day. Shockingly he was not alone among the councillors who willed two of Brighton's strongest USP's to oblivion, with not even the picturesque Town Hall safe from his sights.

Alderman Carden was greatly inspired by Embassy Court, the sole modernist building to sneak onto Brighton and Hove seafront in the early 1930s, a leading example of art deco in its own right, albeit 'in the wrong place' as so many have commented over the years.

Luckily before Alderman Carden's dastardly plans to make the whole of Brighton and Hove look like Embassy Court could bear fruit WWII broke out in 1939 and his master plan had to be shelved whilst the war was fought. As fortune would have it in 1941 he died. 

Shortly after the war ended, a group of Hove citizens, determined that the area should never come under such a threat again, formed The Regency Society, which is still going today. A number of regency buildings are now listed and there are 34 conservation areas within Brighton and Hove though there is still a long way to go to protect all buildings of historical interest.

In his love affair with 'progress'. Alderman Carden also wanted to extend Brighton and Hove as far as Worthing into one super city akin to London.

However Alderman Carden also had a surprising side, for he purchased the entire Downs around Brighton and Hove and later sold them back to the council at cost price to protect them and the water supply of Brighton. Had he not done so, there might be no Devils' Dyke today and the Downs may be considerably more spoiled than they have been. It seems an extraordinary contradiction that he cared so much for the preservation of the surrounding countryside, but sought to take a wrecking ball to the special character of Brighton and Hove, much though he instigated many good things in his forty years with the council, such as the city's municipal tram and telephone systems. But this wasn't the only surprising contradiction in Carden's character. He was an immensely wealthy solicitor and local dignitary born to an old Brightonian family yet was a staunch socialist all his life (which possibly explains his contempt for any building alluding to wealth or decadence). 

Less controversially, Carden campaigned for Brighton to found its own university nearly two decades before it did, though he may not have approved of this being plonked on his beloved Downs! 
Today he is largely commemorated in the long and winding road linking nondescript estates at the back of Brighton known as 'Carden Avenue.'

With thanks to Andy Garth, owner of that magical emporium of Brighton history known as  Brighton and Hove Stuff in Western Road, who inspired this posting with his prints and encyclopaedic knowledge of, and enthusiasm for. Brighton.

Save The King Alfred Leisure Centre!

This is the recently-refurbished 1939 Hove leisure centre that the council want to raze to the ground and redevelop into guess what? A £40m leisure centre, albeit incorporating 400 new houses. They claim this course of action would be 'cheaper' than making the existing leisure centre greener and more economical to run! Is it even theirs to sell to developers? It is a municipal facility which belongs to the tax payers of Brighton and Hove.

Aside from the sheer waste, this is not just any old leisure centre but a nationally important piece of maritime war history.

For this building, originally known as Hove Marina and completed just before the outbreak of WWII in September 1939 was requisitioned by the Admiralty and re-christened HMS King Alfred to become a 'land ship' training centre for over 22,500 officers of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during World War II.

The RNV(S)R had been formed in 1936 for gentlemen who are interested in yachting or similar pursuits and aged between 18 and 39.

Once this intake had been mobilised, the role of HMS King Alfred changed to training new officers of the RNVR. This required a longer course as many members of the RNVR had no experience of either maritime pursuits or the "officer-like qualities" required. Longer courses needed more space so the Admiralty requisitioned two further premises: Mowden School also in Hove and Lancing College. 

Mowden School, taken over in 1940, became known as HMS King Alfred II or HMS King Alfred (M) while Lancing College, taken over in 1941 became HMS King Alfred III or HMS King Alfred (L). The Hove site continued to be referred to as HMS King Alfred or sometimes HMS King Alfred (H).

A training course consisted of ten weeks, the first two weeks at HMS King Alfred II, then six weeks at HMS King Alfred III and the final four weeks at Hove. Upon successful completion of the course, the men emerged as Temporary Acting Probationary Sub-Lieutenants and attended further training at the Royal Navy Training College before being posted operationally.

Training ended in December 1945 and the leisure centre was returned to civilian use in June 1946.

Among the many young officers to pass through its doors were Alec Guiness, Kenneth More, Norris McWhirter, Ludovic Kennedy and Dr Who's, Jon Pertwee, who detailed his wartime experiences in his engaging autobiography 'Moon Boots and Dinner Suits'. It is said the water training tanks are still below the present leisure centre.

I must confess I have a personal stake in this matter for I am a member of the King Alfred Gym and it really could not be better. It is an excellent gym and being council-owned, not as expensive as most, so one of the few affordable sports facilities in Brighton would be lost in addition to a respectable 1930s building and piece of wartime history.

Aside from the leisure centre there is also a privately owned bodybuilding gym and a large ballroom contained within the building, which would presumably be swept away.

There is a tiny glimmer of hope though. There have been many plans and schemes for the King Alfred 'site' over the years and all have come to nought for one reason or another. But there is still no room for complacency.