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Welcome To Rough Music - Brighton's free monthly(ish) newsletter...
MARTIN PERRY COPS
A ROASTING FROM THE RM JUDGES Of course Brighton developers are taking the piss left right and centre – try looking at a piece of skyline without a crane over the next few years. But Martin Perry (who’s got his snout in two troughs, Brighton & Hove Albion and Brighton City College) is taking it to new extremes. As chief exec of local footy club, the Seagulls, he’s aiming to despoil the South Downs – one of northern Europe’s last chalk grasslands - with an eyesore 22,000-seater stadium AND he’s behind an £80m rebuild for the Pelham St college, which he ‘leads’ as chairman. Now stop us if we’re missing a trick here, coz Merry-Perry sure ain’t, but hasn’t City College had a new glass-fronted reception added to Pelham Tower just five years ago AND a new link building over the road only last year, costing a total of £4m? It beggars belief that all this is going to be trashed to make way for an entirely new campus, presumably to fit in with the new compact and bijoux Sainsbury’s development just round the corner. Wasting resources doesn’t come into it does it, Marty-boy? And talk about backscratching – which institution is going to have onsite facilities at the planned new stadium? You guessed it, Brighton City College. The “corporate college”
(where Principal Ann Smith earns more than Blair - £145k a
year) will have a ‘skills training centre’ based up at
Falmer. And it doesn’t stop there; Perry and his bunch of merry
money-men have also decided that the smart new-ish COMART building
they’ve had on their books since 2005 could also do with a
re-fit. Well, actually, make that a costly overhaul – plans
are to level it then build an all singing, all dancing ‘vocational
skills and craft training campus for courses in Construction, Engineering
and Motor Vehicle Maintenance’. Just what we always wanted! “The commitment by Government creates a really exciting, once-in-a-generation opportunity to create facilities for Further Education in the City of which we can all rightly be very proud,” says Perry, in fairytale mode. “Our vision is for integrated provision fitting neatly within the Academic Corridor from Falmer in the east to the junction of Lewes Road and London Road in the centre of the City.” So in plain English, that means he’s eternally grateful for taxpayers like the caretakers, etc. in Brighton City College who take home around £15k a year, a tenth of Ann Smith’s ill-gotten gains, helping to take up the slack on his Albion venture. How does it work? Well, our money contributes to the government’s Learning and Skills Council (LSC) budget of £750 million on various ‘capital projects’ between 2006-07 and 2010-11 for 16-19-year-old educational provision. Part of the £80m which Brighton City College is bidding for will line Perry’s pockets if the Albion stadium gets the go-ahead and he can have his college ‘skills training centre’ built up there at the Falmer site. The college has 2,000 students a year plus 13,000 part-timers and internationals. If it does go ahead with the plans then Pelham Tower, and the 100-year-old Cheapside buildings, will make way for a site stretching from York Place to Whitecross Street and Brighton will move ever forwards with its steel and glass paradise. In fact, maybe we could just have done with it and level everything between the planned new Marina development, the new Sainsburys site and the planned King Alfred squashed cans affair – and you’d have one whacking great development site. Who knows, once we’ve all got jobs brainstorming for new media corporate re-branding consortia graphics companies, maybe we can buy overpriced soulless yuppie apartments and drive from one end of town to the other in Smart Cars, or shop-til-we-drop at homogenised supermarkets and shiny private malls. “Brighton: the place
to be” – don’t make us laugh! RM says put
a spanner in their works - let the Fanshawes, the Merry-Perrys and
all the other money-grabbing scum from Brighton, London and beyond
know that they’re not going to get it all their own way...
CLASS DIVIDEIn a shocking and unusual bout of fair mindedness local Labour politicians, supported by their pals in the Green party, have done something worthwhile - honest! They’ve gone and divided the City into several school catchment areas. Previously parents were 100% guaranteed to get into the school of their choice if they lived close by. Now, with the catchment areas, everyone has an equal chance of getting their first choice of school - and if its oversubscribed there will be a random ballot. Of course RM recongises that this is all very unfair to the unfortunate few who have invested tens of thousands over the odds for two up, two down houses opposite Dorothy Stringer and Varndean schools. That’s why the propertied were out in force to oppose the plans at recent demos in Brighton and Hove Town halls. Prattling about ‘peer group continuity’ (i.e. Oliver should be free to play with Benjamin and Charlotte and not be forced to associate with Tyson and Chardonnay), they’ve even attempted to pretend that their attempts to perpetuate a caste system are motivated by ecological concerns – of course it’d be so much greener if Tabitha walked to school. Sending yer kids to private school just wouldn’t fit in with dinner party morality. So why not practice a bit of sleight-of-hand selection and let house prices determine which kids get a good start in life. If you live in what has been called the ‘golden halo’ of catchment areas, you can sit back and watch the A’s roll in, safe in the knowledge that none of your fellow Guardian readers will be able to make snide remarks over the bruschetta. And those voices raised loudest against this minor levelling of the playing field? – the very people whose 9 to 5 is profitably occupied ‘helping’ the disadvantaged - ‘cos of course without an underclass there wouldn’t be any jobs in Wednesday’s Guardian Society pull out now would there...
Back to topKAJIMA GOO GOOTHE COMPANY BEHIND
B&H PFI HOSPITAL At the end of this month the Royal Alexandra Hospital is due to move into a new £37m Private Finance Initiative (PFI) building in a consortium led by Kajima Europe. Under the agreement, Brighton and Sussex University Hospital NHS Trust will pay Kajima and their partners around £3.66m a year to build, maintain and provide catering and cleaning at the Royal Alex over the next 30 years – at a total cost of £163.3m of public money – five times the £37 million capital cost. And it will still be someone else’s building at the end of it! Like most PFI contractors, Kajima has a pretty bad reputation for failing to meet deadlines. In Sept 2004 pupils found their new PFI Haverstock School in Camden closed and had to be taught in local community centres. Company Director Julian Rudd-Jones blamed the delay on ‘bad weather.’ In March 2004, Unison complained that Kajima’s project to develop a scheme for Sheffield Northern General Hospital had been ‘beset with problems and delays’ and also in 2004 Kajima failed to complete works in time at Burnside Community High School in Wallsend, making hundreds of pupils miss three weeks of the new school term. The excuse was, ‘resource difficulties’! Wacky excuses abound. In Nov 2004 Unison found that one of the new buildings of the Caroline Chisholm School in Northampton would remain closed until 2007. This time round it wasn’t ‘bad weather’ but, puzzlingly, ‘the hope that plasma screen technology will have superseded the whiteboards which are currently used.’ In Oct 2006, Kajima was fined ‘an undisclosed sum’ for the Haverstock failure. Despite this dismal record the company has been selected for rebuilding Brentwood Community Hospital in Essex. And now they’re going to run our local Children’s hospital! Frankly RM wouldn’t put ‘em in charge of a playgroup. RM’s favourite Kajima project was the ‘City-centre Apartments for Single People at Affordable Rent’ - a prefabricated housing project built in 1999 for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in Leeds. In Oct 2005, when consultants carried out a survey on the project, they discovered that it was in danger of collapsing in high winds and advised tenants to ‘get out of there before the next storm’! Eventually the Foundation was forced to pull the building down. At a time when the government tells us that ‘Every pound wasted in the NHS is a pound stolen from health budgets’, £3.66m is a slap in the face. With a shortage of medical staff, in 2006 the BSUH Trust was told to make cuts to prop up a £15m deficit, over half of which comes from payments to another private company, Mercury Health! PFIs are financial liabilities; across England, private contractors will receive a total of £53 billion for about 80 hospitals worth only £8 billion - a return of 540 per cent on the initial investment. Nice little earner! FLOUR POWERAddison and Highdown Road residents in Hove will fight another day following the “Battle of the Railway embankment” in March. Around 50 neighbours delayed tree cutting along the Littlehampton to Brighton line by chucking flour over chain-saw operatives and hosing them down from back garden vantage points. British Transport police were kept well and truly on their toes by protesters running from garden to garden and placing themselves between the chainsaws and trees. Network Rail had wanted to cut down a whole swathe of elms and sycamores which have stood for over 30 years above the line, rather than coppice and manage the trees which would also keep the embankment safe from landslides. As well as chopping ‘em down, NR plans to poison their roots so the cost of upkeep is nil – sod the environment and the gardens of those nearby. This seems to be national policy for the rail outfit and puts it at the front of the queue when it comes to dickhead companies whose environmental responsibility policy = jack shit. Strength of feeling was such that rather than yer usual rent-a-mob, mums and kids joined the Hove protest as well as 80-year-old women dangling from back garden ladders. One plucky 15-year-old was also nicked for having it away with some climbing rope belonging to the chain-sawers. Millie Ferguson, of Save The Trees, told RM: “This whole operation will affect the wildlife of the area. It’s ecological vandalism.” Network Rail plan the next phase of cutting in October. Save The Trees: 07751 076581. Back to top
A first for our self-love gong as RM crowns its first female winner: step up Ms Julie Burchill. Apologies for giving this tiresome mock-controversialist’s crimes against humility any extra publicity. Somebody egotistical enough to write their own Wikipedia entry doesn’t really need any further promotion. After her ill-informed temper tantrums ceased to tickle fickle Guardianistas over their croissants on a Saturday morning, Julie’s hit the doldrums and has been reduced to accosting passers by near her des-res in Hove with her ‘barbed witticisms’ on why child porn is good for society or why suicide bombers radiate sex appeal (or some such burning issue). Desperate for one more ride on the controversy rollercoaster, Ms. B is now trying to cash in on the RM market with a book moaning about Brighton’s Neo-Labour council. In it she claims to have spent ten years ‘squabbling with the council’, despite her local councillor saying he hasn’t ever heard a peep from her. Now having donated a modest cheque (which we’re sure dwarfed her advance) to Defend Council Housing she’s casting herself as a modern day Rosa Luxembourg, taking a brave and principled stance on how development hungry Brighton has sold out to media-luvvies, whilst chopping out lines of coke with a black Amex credit card. Julie’s real beef with the council of course is that she wasn’t allowed to flog her Hove pad to make way for luxury flats back in 2004. And the subject of her next bargain-bin blockbuster ? Hypocrisy - no it is, really... Wanker! WOULD' JUBILEE-VIT!FINE BEHAVIOUR AT THE LIBRARY Eyewitness RM! Outside the new Jubilee Library, two members of Brighton’s colourful street drinking community - apparently having a quiet chat, enjoying the sun, doing no-one (except themselves) any harm - found themselves the victims of some over zealous library security guards. Backed up with a riot van and six Old Bill, the drinkers received a shaking down from the boys in blue. And we can see the point – a can of vitamin T from the local offie is doing no favours for the profit-makers of the North Laine development zone. Our roving correspondent saw the the six tough-looking coppers taking action against the dirty rotten scoundrels, who ought to have been tucking into £4 bottles of designer beer in Yo! Sushi opposite. This is a Business Improvement District (BID), after all... Here at RM we’re not sure how much taxpayer’s money it costs to send six Rozzers to harass humiliate and move on two members of the public, but there’s no doubt that it would be better spent on books to go in a library currently characterised more by its gift shop than its reading material. The BID (see RM #13) is all about policing the North Laine corporate style. Hired goons watch out for any ‘anti social behaviour’ and report potential non-shoppers to the boys in blue. Now local fat cats are worrying that the absence of plastic police in Hove could have catastrophic consequences for profitability. As well as the big drive West, a BID is being proposed for the London Road, presumably in preparation for the ‘London Road Boulevard’ re-brand. Where will this gentrification end up? Followed to it’s logical conclusion, this will leave all central regions of the city policed by luminous Stasi, protecting the image of posing wankers and shops punting overpriced tat. Most Brightonians are not interested in the shite they’re peddling, and we do mind that our City is being redesigned by a self-appointed gentry, bent on extracting as much cash from anyone passing their way - the high street belongs to everyone, not the rich few. Back to topLOCAL ELECTION SPECIAL
PEACE OFFBrighton to be UN warmongering city? So another nail in the increasingly well-studded coffin of alternative Brighton - we’re no longer an International Peace Messenger City. After donkey’s years of Labour councillor Brian Fitch exerting himself tirelessly in the cause of world peace in exotic locations noted more for their beaches and bars than bullets and bombs, the Green Party Chief Negotiator Keith Taylor only managed to hold on to the post for six months. The council’s Policy & Resources Committee meeting voted to cancel the city’s affiliation to the International Association of Peace Messenger Cities. This was an unheralded Labour proposal and was supported by Tory councillors. All this on the 20th anniversary of the town’s membership of the organisation. No explanation for the dramatic move has been forthcoming. Keith thundered “This whole inglorious and tawdry episode smacks of narrow-minded party politicking and I believe those councillors who withdrew our city’s cherished Peace Messenger status should be thoroughly ashamed of their actions. And don’t forget to vote Taylor!” Not that the Greens themselves have done much for their standing in Brighton’s ‘peace and human rights community’. Last month they refused to allow local peace group SMASH EDO (www.smashedo.org.uk) a stall at their Mark Thomas gig fund-raising bonanza - safe in the knowledge that anarchists are not the demographic the Greens are looking for in the coming election... Back to topROUGH MUSIC GIG LIST
WE'RE ONLY STALLINGFancy raising a bit of cash for yer local sanctuary for orphaned donkeys? Steer clear of Sussex then, where undercover cops have been actively combating the vegetarian menace that threatens to damage profits (sorry ‘blight lives’). Fed up with not catching any real terrorists and following a nationally organised strategy, plain clothed Special Branch officers from Lewes have been busting animal rights stalls. In Worthing, just before
Christmas one AR stall was seized. One of those involved told RM,
“We were having a completely normal stall – just the usual
leaflets and petitions. Yes, some people give us money to support
our cause but why shouldn’t they, it’s their money. Any
cash gets spent on photocopying, vets bills and re-homing animals
– nothing to do with supporting terrorism. They took everything
including our bags and promised to get a court order to get the
stall burned” Not only did police seize the stall but they
also went back to CCTV footage to identify other activists manning
the stall – culminating in a dawn raid on one woman’s
house to serve her with a summons for ‘illegal street collection’. MARCH MARCHOn March 17th, in a final fanfare in the struggle over the right to demonstrate in the City-by-the-Sea, local activists of all stripes gathered to celebrate their victory over police intolerance. Last year Sussex Police tried to introduce a blanket policy of banning demos in the town centre (see RM12), but this time protesters, meeting in Churchill Square and accustomed to an overwhelming police presence and intrusive videoing, were pleasantly surprised to be met with smiles and not a camera in sight from the boys in blue. So much so that the march seemed a tad anti-climactic as it gently wound its way from Churchill Square to the Level, only occasionally stopping to block a bus lane. Contrast this to eighteen months ago on August 13th 2005 when over 100 police with dogs and helicopters ganged up on forty protesters connected with the SMASH EDO campaign, preventing them from marching. Four were arrested and one man, Chris Osmond, was charged with ‘inciting others to break a police order’. His day in court finally came on {date) and he was vindicated when all the evidence police could muster was 30 seconds of video footage of him shouting “Come on everyone let’s have a peaceful protest.” - Congrats to Chris and a big ‘up yours’ to Sussex Police! Back to topTURTLE NECKOut to Lynch at the Sea Life Centre... Following their victory over the seal pool plans, and to highlight the suffering of animals in aquaria, Brighton animal activists regularly protest at Brighton’s notorious captive animal peepshow the Sea Life Centre. Demonstrators are currently focussing on the imprisonment of Lulu – a turtle who is almost 70 years old and is, unsurprisingly, showing signs of serious mental distress as a result of her captivity since 1940. Imposing his ugly, bald presence on their notably polite, quiet demonstrations has been wannabe top protest-busting security guard and third-rate Mussolini impersonator Mark Lynch of Guardian Guards. He’s still not learnt his lesson after repeated humiliation at EDO MBM and Titnore Woods (see RM 12). Lynch shouted abuse at protesters and then swiped the leaflets from their table, assaulting and injuring two people in the process. He was given a fixed penalty notice for £80 for public order offences but cops have shown little interest in protesters’ complaints of assault. Members of Brighton Animal Action have been trying to check Lynch’s status as a security guard as he has ‘broken every rule in the book’. Merlin Entertainments, who own the Sea Life Centre, have not yet replied. Here at RM we’d expect that people who make money from animal abuse wouldn’t hesitate to employ a violent crook like Lynch to harass peaceful protesters, but you never know... * See www.brightonanimalaction.org for demo details and www.captiveanimals.org for background info. WHAT A RESULTYour sore-away RM sports correspondent writes: Score: (all?) 4 -1
/ Ref: none / Attendence: 8 (& 1 Dog) Feedback on training from scouts revealed a frighteningly, almost Stalin-like efficiency to the Pinkos’ rigorous regime, whilst the Punks kept trusting to luck that some kind of fitness, skill and game plan would just emerge in the fullness of time. Come the big day, how would the highly structured and organised red machine, perhaps lacking a little creative flair, deal with those reluctant to adhere to any rules at all, overly fond of putting the boot in, dangerous outside the box but equally likely to start digging up the penalty spot for a bit of guerilla gardening? The pitch battle was set for March 18th at Preston Park, and the first surprise of the morning was that a full ragtag squad of anarchists all autonomously decided to turn up on time. The next surprise was that communist faces were redder than their kit as they completely failed to turn up in sufficient numbers to field a full team. It seems despite the theoretical big talk and the rallying war cry, the reds had stayed under their beds on the day action was really needed. Ever able to come up with practical solutions under pressure, the anarchos grudgingly offered a number of players willing to suspend dogmatic political beliefs for 90 minutes and swap sides in order to get the game on. Despite going behind after conceding as blatant a penalty as you will ever see, the black bloc were otherwise solid in defence and went on to dominate possession and pepper the reds’ goal as the match wore on, eventually running out comfortable winners (with your very own RM journo scoring one of the goals!). Sporting solidarity was restored at the final whistle with a group photo of all players and everyone headed off for a early bath – er, I mean bar... * Next week: the neo-nazis
vs the gaia-primitivists. BLOOMIN 'ECKThe effects of climate change are already being felt around the city. Over on the Level, the unseasonally warm March weather has tragically led to this years crop of poi-toting, firestick-waving hippies (dreadlokus trustafarianis) sprouting earlier than usual. Flocking back too early from their winter breeding grounds in Goa and Koh Samui, in the riot of tie-dye colour that usually heralds the spring in the City-by-the Sea, the brief cold snap a week later caught them unawares and the population plummeted in a mass die-off. RM asked one member of the year-round hardy perennial species indigenous to the Level, Alcholicus Incontentia (or Common Pisshead), what they thought of the sad sight of frozen underdressed festie-entertainer corpses littering the popular recreation spot, but was told to feck off in no uncertain terms.
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