![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/pxl-20241214-093235070.mp.jpg\")
\n\n“without the knowledge of your history you cannot determine your destiny”
\n
Forty-seven years ago, Misty In Roots played at the Counter Eurovision rock festival in Brussels, in response to the Eurovision song contest being held that year in Jerusalem, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2026/overview-image-103766901-4464442.png\")
\nLess than a month later, Blair Peach was murdered by the British police on the streets of Southall while defending the town from the National Front.
\nEaling Council allowed the march of the fascists to go ahead despite a 10,000-strong petition from local people opposing it.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2026/overview-image-34258207-4463512.png\")
\nClarence Baker, Misty In Roots' manager, was violently assaulted by police that day and left in a coma for five months.
\nOrganist Vernon Hunt was jailed for six months on trumped up charges. He was so broken by this experience of state oppression that he never rejoined the band.
\nToday the British government allowed another fascist march in London on the anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2026/pxl-20260516-133330146.mp.jpg\")
\nToday I dragged my 11 year old down to the Dominion Centre and Library in Southall to meet Misty In Roots in the entrance foyer and learn a little history.
\nThe Dominion Centre is the site of the former Dominion Theatre where Blair Peach’s lifeless body lay “in state” for six weeks while thousands visited to pay their last respects.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2026/overview-image-146535334-4346468.png\")
\nThis iconic photo of Misty In Roots outside the entrance now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2026/pxl-20260516-140253436.portrait.jpg\")
\nWe came home with a signed limited edition red vinyl copy of arguably the best live album ever recorded. We spoke to some very nice people. And we bumped into my friend Happy.
\nAnd we met Poko, Kazi and Tunga from the band.
\n\n\n“if you’re not conscious of the present you’re like a cabbage in this society”
\n
For balance and transparency: I ate lamb biryani at my little Black African heritage kid’s friend’s Halloween party last week. I don’t know where or how the middle-eastern heritage parents sourced the meat, but their south-east Asia heritage neighbours happily attended the party with their son, too. The lamb was sooo tender. As Bournemouth heritage Ed Morgan might say, “I’m a terrible person.”
\n", "date_published": "2025-11-03T23:35:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2025/11/03/for-balance-and-transparency-i.html", "tags": ["Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2025/06/17/its-been-a-very-noisy.html", "content_html": "It’s been a very noisy and smelly morning. Reversing forklifts, car alarms, barking dog, pneumatic drill. Now it’s the fucking ice cream man doing his rounds (mate, the kids are all at school). To top it all off, we had the delightful petroleum aroma of our local asphalt recycling plant drifting in on the prevailing wind.
\n", "date_published": "2025-06-17T13:15:08+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2025/06/17/its-been-a-very-noisy.html", "tags": ["Kids","Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2025/06/14/forking-hell-again.html", "title": "Forking* Hell (Again)", "content_html": "Almost exactly sixteen years ago I wrote a blog post titled Forking* Hell! about the relentless, sleep-shattering racket of reversing forklift alarms from the Beaver Industrial Estate (aka Chancery Gate Business Park), just a stone’s throw from my home.
\nIt took months of escalating complaints, sound diaries, late-night MP3s, and even a YouTube video to get Ealing Council to take the matter seriously. But eventually, following site visits and interventions, they did. Forklifts were fitted with quieter white noise alarms, acoustic barriers were repaired, and the beeping stopped.
\nFor a while.
\nWe had more beeping in 2013 and 2017. Each time it was the same old story, but also it was eventually resolved.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2025/pxl-20250606-080749950.jpg\")
\nAfter years of relative peace, the problem has returned. Forklifts with traditional beeping alarms are once again reversing their way into my headspace—late at night, early in the morning, and all day long.
\nThis isn’t a one-off. It’s relentless. Some nights, the beeping continues past 11 p.m.; some mornings, it starts before 7 a.m. I work from home. My wife does too. Windows stay shut even in hot weather just to make it bearable.
\nAnd once again, I’ve gone through the motions:
\nResponse time from the council: One week.
\nReason for delay: “Your email may have been blocked because it included links.”
\nSuggested action: “Call us next time it happens.”
Because obviously, I’ve got nothing better to do at 6:45 a.m. than call a noise hotline while forklifts beep through my kitchen window.
\nHere’s the timeline in a nutshell:
\nI’m not asking for miracles. Just the same thing that worked before:
\nIf you live near the estate and you’re also being disturbed, I encourage you to file your own complaint. Noise pollution doesn’t fix itself.
\nYou can:
\n🎧 Audio recordings from our kitchen
\n🎥 Video showing forklifts in action (YouTube)
History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes, said Mark Twain.
\nIn my case, history reverses slowly, with a loud, repetitive beep that echoes off corrugated warehouse walls and slices through what was once known as my attention and the “quiet enjoyment” of my home.
\n*Thanks again to Andy C
\n", "date_published": "2025-06-14T19:05:04+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2025/06/14/forking-hell-again.html", "tags": ["Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2025/04/02/morning-walk-sat-on-a.html", "content_html": "Morning walk.
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2025/pxl-20250402-074107869.mp2.jpg\")
\nSat on a tree stump for a few minutes enjoying the sunshine, breeze, and sights and sounds by the canal.
\n\n", "date_published": "2025-04-02T09:30:53+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2025/04/02/morning-walk-sat-on-a.html", "tags": ["Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2025/03/18/fundraising-for-my-sons-school.html", "content_html": "Fundraising for my sons' school got off to a slow start, mainly because the school was slow in sharing the online fundraiser with the school-to-parents messaging app, and then when they did share it they forgot to attach the link to make it clickable. As soon as they made it clickable and shared it again we got £190 in donations in one day. I’ve asked the school to keep sharing as “every day you share the school gets £200!”
\n", "date_published": "2025-03-18T14:15:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2025/03/18/fundraising-for-my-sons-school.html", "tags": ["Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2025/03/13/my-boy-got-his-picture.html", "content_html": "My boy got his picture taken for the local council propaganda rag when they opened the school street this week.
\n", "date_published": "2025-03-13T00:03:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2025/03/13/my-boy-got-his-picture.html", "tags": ["Kids","Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2024/12/14/southall-odours.html", "title": "Southall Odours", "content_html": "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.
\nStill, 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.
\nAnd it’s better than the smell of tar, which we still get when the wind is blowing from the west. Before the asphalt plant was built, we didn’t get any odours even though there is also a Tarmac plant nearby. The Asphalt plant owners say that is because the Nestle coffee plant closed. The (burnt?) coffee smell masked the tar.
\nI get around the corner of my block, on my morning walk, and see the small industrial estate that was the bane of our life for months in 2022. The main culprits were the paper recylcling company, which had its own incinerator for burning (believe it or not) plastics and coated wooden pallets.
\nTheir neighbour opposite was a custom kitchen furniture maker, which also had its own incinerator for burning laminated particle fibreboard. The garage at the front regularly burns stuff in an old oil barrel.
\nAll of which contributed to some of the most disgusting odours imaginable blowing into our kitchen, bathroom and hallway whe the wind blew from the north-east.
\nI walked down the street to the corner where the local council installed a tiny corner “wildflower garden”, which my wife and kids loved because it smelled so good. Two years later, it’s reduced to a dumping ground (no one could have foreseen this).
\n
Further on my walk, past the homes reeking of marijuana, and weaving in and out of the obstacle course of bed bases mattresses and pallets stren across the pavements, I reach the town and smell the food aromas.
\nI’m reminded of the old Honey Monster factory, which used to regale us with the smell of roasted (burnt?) onions (I know, right?).
\nAnd my first visit to Southall (in daylight hours), twenty odd years ago, turning left out of the old station and naively going into the underpass. The stench of piss that hit me! “Welcome to Southall!” indeed.
\nI finished my walk through the town and back up round and through the park. If I’d gone further up the canal by my sons' school I would have got the smell of the narrowboats' wood-burning stoves, which sometimes fills the school playground and causes kids to have to use their inhalers.
\nAnd if I’d walked along the main road home or by the junction with the big industrial estate I would have choked on the heavy air filled with the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
\nSouthall stinks so bad that the council set up its own Southall Odours web page, email and hotline where you can report bad smells. Because if you don’t report it, the council can’t do anything.
\nIf you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining, as long as you can withstand the constant gaslighting.
\nIf you’re unlucky, and you’re not already dead or too ill to complain, you’ll be branded a troublemaker and excluded from local democracy.
\nOr you’ll be told to move by the council’s community safety director.
\n", "date_published": "2024-12-14T14:19:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2024/12/14/southall-odours.html", "tags": ["Southall","Longform"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2024/10/31/copd.html", "title": "COPD", "content_html": "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).
\nMy GP helpfully seemed very keen to blame my twenty-odd year history of smoking.
\nI first smoked at about age 20. My parents were smokers (wasn’t everyone back then?). I was never a heavy smoker. The most I ever smoked was ten a day. It’s also true I smoked a number of other substances that didn’t come with filters. And then there was some vaping. I suspect that might have been the worst of the lot, but who knows? I haven’t smoked for ten years.
\nIn my childhood, I remember several episodes of severe shortness of breath, e.g., when running around the sports field at primary school I collapsed gasping for breath, and unable to continue. I was never diagnosed with asthma. I was told to get up and stop being so weak.
\nAs I got older, whenever the football season started, I could never get through a full game. I put it down to lack of fitness and stamina at the time, but whatever it was, the symptom was breathlessness. I was told to get fit and sent off on cross-country runs.
\nI had regular episodes of shortness of breath throughout young adulthood that were not triggered by exercise (I’d more or less given up by then, helped by a dodgy ankle). I thought it might be hayfever or a dust allergy.
\nFourteen years ago, I needed a thoracotomy on my right lung after a chest infection went wrong. I developed pleurisy, a collapsed lung and an empyema. In the post-op, my surgeon said my lung was “as good as new”.
\nIn the years before covid, I had frequent chest infections requiring antibiotics and time off work to recover. Then and now, I wonder if that was triggered by the Southall Gasworks remediation and air pollution?
\nI now see that studies show that exposure to volatile organic compounds (including benzene, naphthalene and toluene) is related to COPD.
\nThe good news is that I had no symptoms of COPD, so it’s been diagnosed at an early stage. I’ve started with my new inhaler, and my wife reports that I’ve stopped snoring.
\n", "date_published": "2024-10-31T20:44:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2024/10/31/copd.html", "tags": ["Football","Selected Writing","Southall","Longform","Health"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2024/10/30/the-southall-gasworks-story.html", "title": "The Southall Gasworks Story", "content_html": "The story of how the remediation of Southall Gasworks highlights the environmental injustices faced by communities of colour.
\nThe disregard for the health and concerns of these residents raises questions about the inequitable distribution of environmental burdens and the role of local government in protecting vulnerable populations.
\nIt also highlights the potential conflicts between development, profit, and public health, and the need for greater transparency and accountability from authorities and developers.
\n(This is a Google NotebookLM creation, based on selected sources from my blog posts on Southall Gasworks.)
\n\n", "date_published": "2024-10-30T00:21:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2024/10/30/the-southall-gasworks-story.html", "tags": ["Podcast","Southall"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2024/05/19/the-cuckoos-nest.html", "title": "The Cuckoo's Nest", "content_html": "Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!”
\nCllr Dr Murtaza of their number aggressively reprimanded me. “What evidence do you have that we support genocide?” he demanded to know. Well, I told him, my main piece of evidence would be that you have done nothing to oppose it.
\nOoh! There’s Cllr Martin! Our locally elected anti-Traveller racist! “What evidence do you have to support that?” Well, here it is.
\nOh, and while you’re at it, Cllr Dr Murtaza. Next time you are chauffeuring our glorious leader around in your Porsche, try not to park in a cycle lane, please.
\nThen there was illegal samosa factory proprietor Cllr “I own half of Southall” Anand.
\nI hadn’t realised until yesterday quite how visceral my revulsion for these people is. The grand cuckoo in the nest arrived about half way through the event. I would have confronted him myself, and previously I have done. Maybe I was just worn down from a week with the ‘flu, but I felt like I really had to keep my distance for my own sanity. In any case, a few council officers made beelines for me and made sure I was busy answering their questions.
\nInterestingly, one officer suggested to me that resident-led ward forums would be the likely outcome of this event. Fantastic news, if that’s the case. Another officer I spoke to later, knew nothing about this idea, though, but took copious notes. A neighbour and friend told me that she spoke to the cuckoo himself who told her that this meeting was in fact the replacement for he old (councillor-led) ward forums. That’s that then.
\nThe event itself was a repeat of several resident[pdf] surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so (for which I’ve seen records, or taken part in). The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same. Nothing.
\n<img src=“https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/screenshot-20230207-223355.png" alt=“Microfiche of old newspaper story with headline “Councillor’s illegal samosa factory”">![\"Photo](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/pxl-20240518-1409389422.jpg\")
<img src=“https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/pxl-20240518-153732131.jpg" alt=“Photo of Resident Survey board “What is Your Voice Your Town about?"">![\"Photo](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/pxl-20240518-1538052222.jpg\")
AI is more ethical than Ealing Labour Party. No money was exchanged.
\n\n\nWhat are the risks to health from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air? The land is highly contaminated with benzene, naphthalene and a while host of other VOCs, PAHs, heavy metals, “blue billy” and asbestos, and surrounded by residential streets. The local community is mostly of south Asian and African heritage, and it is known that people with this heritage can be genetically vulnerable to naphthalene poisoning. What response from the developer and regulatory authorities should there be if levels of benzene and naphthalene are consistently above the legal safety guidelines and local residents complain of eye, nose and throat irritation, new or worsening of respiratory conditions and infections, or other health problems as a result of odour and air pollution?
\n
The health risks from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air are significant. The site is highly contaminated with a variety of hazardous chemicals, including benzene, naphthalene, VOCs, PAHs, heavy metals, “blue billy” and asbestos. These chemicals can cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems, neurological problems, and birth defects. The local community is mostly of south Asian and African heritage, and it is known that people with this heritage can be genetically vulnerable to naphthalene poisoning. This means that they are more likely to experience health problems from exposure to naphthalene.
\nIf levels of benzene and naphthalene are consistently above the legal safety guidelines, and local residents complain of eye, nose and throat irritation, new or worsening of respiratory conditions and infections, or other health problems as a result of odour and air pollution, the developer and regulatory authorities should take immediate action to protect the health of the community. This may include:
\nThe developer and regulatory authorities have a responsibility to protect the health of the community. If they fail to take action, they could be held liable for any health problems that result from the contamination.
\nHere are some additional information about the health risks of the chemicals found at Southall Gasworks:
\nIt is important to note that the health risks of exposure to these chemicals vary depending on the level of exposure, the length of exposure, and the individual’s health. If you are concerned about your health after being exposed to these chemicals, you should see a doctor.
\n", "date_published": "2023-05-01T12:00:38+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2023/05/01/risks-to-health.html", "tags": ["Southall","Health"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2023/04/30/i-am-the.html", "title": "I am the leader of Ealing Council", "content_html": "I asked Google Bard to advise me on a local matter.
\n\n\nI am the leader of Ealing Council. I have received more than 250 reports about a BAD odour nuisance and air pollution from the remediation of the highly contaminated Southall Gasworks land. We had a public meeting where 250 angry residents complained about health problems as a result of the air pollution, including eye, nose and throat irritation, respiratory problems and infections, and even cancer and death of loved ones. The developer has implemented increased odour suppression to the satisfaction of the Environment Agency. I’ve given residents three numbers to call, each of which takes twenty minutes or more to get through and treats every report as an isolated incident. By the time my investigating officers arrive hours later the smell has gone. I’ve accepted over £30,000 in gifts and hospitality from the developer. What should I do?
\n
\n\nWhat you should do:
\n
What you should not do:
\nWatched Under Poisoned Skies on BBC iPlayer last night.
\nIt’s the sad and shocking story of children in Iraq dying from leukaemia as a result of toxic air pollution from mega rich oil companies burning off excess natural gas in the open air near their homes.
\nBenzene (found in the air) and naphthalene (found in the children’s urine samples) are the main carcinogens.
\nLevels of benzene are between 3 and 9.6 Micrograms per cubic meter or “µg/m3”.
\nLevels of benzene by the so-called soil “hospital” at Southall Gasworks were between 4 and 12 Micrograms per cubic meter or “µg/m3”.
\n![](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2023/bfd445d4a8.jpg\")
![](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2023/7ebb614428.jpg\")
I returned to work last week after my extended absence due to respiratory illness, which may or may not be related to three years of breathing the poisonous gasworks' air.
\nI find I now have to literally climb over two rough sleepers camped outside the door of my workplace in order to get in. There is no more space in the nearby doorway, and the doorway around the side entrance is similarly occupied.
\nBy my reckoning, we have five more rough sleepers than we did two months ago, or two years ago, or four years ago.
\nMeanwhile, Southall’s skyline is rapidly changing from terraced family houses to much-needed ‘genuinely affordable’ skyscraper studio flats, while ‘parklets’ are opening up in the posher parts of Ealing.
\nTo be fair, I did see that the Bell regime have cut a deal with Compton’s foldaway bikes so that residents on the Copley estate can hire them without having to pay a membership fee, and improve air quality at the same time.
\n", "date_published": "2019-10-08T09:14:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2019/10/08/return-to-work.html", "tags": ["Southall","Health"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2019/08/25/southall-under-siege.html", "title": "Southall Under Siege: The Neighbours From Hell", "content_html": "‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.
\nHe’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.
\n‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’
\nMoving swiftly on.
\nThe highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.
\nCarcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and particulates large and small, are in the air.
\n‘The odour is oppressive,’ says Damian Leydon.
\nThere are twenty or thirty people in the room.
\nNo one bats an eyelid.
\nDamian is the Operations Director at 'Southall Waterside', as the gasworks site is being marketed.
\nIt's wedged between the grand union canal, Yeading Brook and Minet Park to the north-west of the site, and two of the twenty percent most economically deprived council wards in England. Southall Green to the south, and Southall Broadway to the north and north-east.
\n‘The last thing we want to do is upset residents,’ says Damian.
\nIt’s a bit late for that.
\nDamian previously worked as the Construction Manager on Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset, and the Athletes Village at the 2012 London Olympics.
\nPresumably, there were no carcinogenic leaks, oppressed, or upset residents there.
\nThree times I ask Damian, ‘How many residents are you prepared to upset before you will stop?’
\nAs for almost every question that night, at Ealing Council’s Air Quality Scrutiny Panel meeting in September 2018, there is no answer.
\nThe meeting concludes, and later the ‘minutes’ are published, but such minutiae do not make the cut.
\nWas I at a different meeting?
\nThe final report of the ‘scrutiny’ panel, six months later, reads as if the problem is in the past, finished, with yet more ‘lessons to be learned’ (and immediately forgotten).
\nAs I leave the meeting, I see Damian having a cosy-looking chat in the corridor (of power) outside the meeting room with Julian Bell, Ealing Council's Leader.
\nCouncillor Bell sat through the two hour meeting in silence.
\nI ask Julian if he’s booking his holiday in Cannes?
\nThe south of France resort hosts the annual MIPIM property developers’ ‘booze and hookerfest’ (as Private Eye magazine calls it).
\nJulian is a regular attendee, all expenses paid for by Damian’s employer Berkeley Group, despite claiming to be teetotal. Peter Mason, my ward councillor, is a new attendee. He is not teetotal.
\n‘If my son gets cancer because of this, you better not stand so close to me,’ I say to Leydon.
\nHe rolls his eyes.
\n‘David, don’t let’s make this personal,’ says Bell.
\nFor two and a half years, my family, my neighbours and friends, have been harassed, attacked, and gassed in our own homes and gardens.
\nOur children have been forced to breathe ‘stinky’, poisonous air in their school playgrounds, and in our public parks.
\nWe have been laid under siege through three hot summers, including last year’s extended heatwave.
\nDespite many repeated requests to stop, Damian’s uncovered, unenclosed cesspit of decontamination of a hundred years of toxic waste continues unabated.
\n‘Be a good and respectful neighbour,’ says Councillor Mason, at the ward forum.
\n‘It’s unpleasant’ we are told. ‘It will clear in days, and it’s not harmful to health,’ Ealing Council namelessly tweeted. In June 2017.
\nRound and round we go.
\n‘It’s the wrong kind of wind,’ claims Bell.
\n‘It’s not our responsibility, it’s the Environment Agency.’
\n‘It’s not us, it’s Public Health England.’
\n‘I’ll phone Julian and get him to put a councillor on it for you,’ Tony Pidgley, founder and chair of Berkeley Group tells us.
\nWe started a campaign. Clean Air for Southall and Hayes. CASH for short.
\n‘I DO NOT TAKE CASH! I DO NOT TAKE CASH!’ is our MP Virendra Sharma’s frankly bizarre opening statement, shouted at us when we go to meet him.
\nWhat’s going on?
\nBack to the future with John Freeman.
\nI email John to ask him when remediation of the soil (the cleaning of the contaminated land) is due to be completed. It’s the excavation, the turning, the moving of the toxic waste that has laid at rest for fifty years or more that we’re told is likely to be the main source of the odour nuisance and air pollution.
\n‘March 2019. It’s finished already.’
\n‘But it still stinks.’
\n‘Did you leave the cooker on?’
\n‘But I’ve seen the planning documents where it says remediation is scheduled to be completed in 2038.’
\nJohn consults his colleague, James Potter, Ealing’s Contaminated Land Officer, whose post was initially funded by none other than Berkeley Group.
\nA very simple explanation as it turns out.
\n‘The remediation for the next nineteen years is, in a sense, NOT remediation.’
\nThen there is the fact, confirmed (and denied) by Public Health England, that the majority Asian and African population of Southall, due to genetic factors, have an increased risk from exposure to naphthalene.
\nAnd then there’s Berkeley Group's track record of paying off their former finance director to keep quiet about allegations of bribery and corruption at the top of the company.
\nUnderstandably, we doubt the veracity of their own reports of the air quality monitoring data recorded by their business partner, data which they refuse to share with us.
\nStop the work at the gasworks site while it is made safe.
\nStop poisoning Southall.
\nPlease donate to our legal campaign for justice: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/cleanairforsouthallandhayes/
\n", "date_published": "2019-08-25T22:14:32+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2019/08/25/southall-under-siege.html", "tags": ["Selected Writing","Southall","Longform"] }, { "id": "http://davidmarsden.micro.blog/2009/06/22/forking-hell.html", "title": "Forking* Hell!", "content_html": "Date: 2009-06-22\nTitle: Forking* Hell!\nAbstract: Noisy neighbours.\nTags: complaints, customer service, forklifts, noise, beeping, reversing, BEEP! BEEP!
\nMarch 16
\nMr Marsden,
\nThank for you email, please accept our apology for the delay in responding to you regarding this complaint. Due to a new complaint system being instigated and problems arising from its application, your complaint was not allocated correctly, hence the delay in response.
\nWe apologise for any inconvenience caused and hope to resolve you complaint at the earliest opportunity.
\nIs this complaint with regard to Forking Noisy Bastards that you complained about in October last year? When I looked into this originally the company did have a 24hr operating licence, that being said if they are causing a noise disturbance to you we would be able to take some action. I have put a letter in the post to you detailing our service hours and contact numbers, please can you use our response service next time the noise is happening so that an officer can visit and assess the nuisance.
\nOnce again, sorry for the delayed response.
\nRegards
\nNoise & Nuisance Officer
\nMay 12
\nThanks, Noise & Nuisance Officer.
\nPlease find attached a scan of the Noise Disturbance Diary and a MP3 recording of the noise.
\nI haven’t been able to get any of our neighbours to witness the noise. I believe that this maybe because our location is unique in that everyone else has some barrier between them and the source of the noise (e.g., the warehouse building itself or the surrounding fence). If you care to view Google maps you can see the view from the entrance to the works site straight through to our flat on the first floor, to the right.
\nI’d very much appreciate anything you are able to do to bring an end to this disturbance as currently my wife and I are having two or even three nights a week of interrupted sleep thanks to this noise.
\nKind regards,
\nDavid Marsden
\nMay 28
\nDear Noise Nuisance Officer,
\nCould you please acknowledge receipt of my email of 12 May, below and let me know what the next steps will be.
\nMany thanks.
\nJune 1
\nFurther to this, please see this video, demonstrating perfectly the noise pollution I am complaining about and a what appears to be a perfect solution:
\nNote that I am emailing you at 1:54 am after being woken up yet again by this disturbance.
\nJune 3
\nNoise & Nuisance Officer has not responded to any of my emails, below. Does she still work there?
\n10 minutes ago
\nIs there anybody out there?
\nHaving been woken up by these forkers yet again on a Sunday night at 3am - and they are still going, started at 11pm - I am at the point of losing it. I commute for an hour and a half to work meaning I have to be up at 6:30. What are they doing that can only be done in the small hours? Drugs? Bombs? Anyone care?
\nFrom a Council Tax paying resident in the forgotten town of Shitton.
\nGood night, sleep well!
\n*Thanks to Andy C
\n", "date_published": "2009-06-22T13:31:00+01:00", "url": "https://davidmarsden.info/2009/06/22/forking-hell.html", "tags": ["Southall","Longform"] } ] }![https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/screenshot-20230207-223355.png"](\"https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/2588/2024/screenshot-20230207-223355.png%22\"){kind=link}
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