This, filmed at lunchtime today in Stamford Hill, is ostensibly a demonstration march to protest about the appalling destruction gun crime wreaks on communities round here. In reality it is members of the Respect coalition using a highly emotive issue as a Trojan horse to garner votes for Lindsey German’s mayoral campaign. The leaflet I was given did not contain one concrete idea for tackling existing gun-crime, though it did a marvellous line in disinformation (”An end to ASBOs - no more kids in prison”) and airy platitudes (”An end to racism”).

Round here, gun crime is a serious issue. We don’t need idiots manipulating it in this disgraceful way.

It’s not often that you get a chance to praise Hackney Council, so I’m not going to miss this opportunity.

On Tuesday, none of the recycling in our street was collected. I heard the vans in one neighbouring street, saw them in another. But they forgot to travel down ours.

So, on Thursday, I rang up the Council and asked whether anyone would pick up all the rubbish that was beginning to blow over the street. Yes, I was told: my call would be logged and someone would be along to pick it up “within 24-48 hours”.

And, much to my astonishment, it was. On Friday.

So, to celebrate, let’s all watch Alex Higgins making a break of 132, thereby snatching the World Snooker Championship from Ray Reardon’s grasp in 1982. For those of my generation, a thousand Sunday afternoons will come flooding back. Don’t worry, Bullseye won’t be on next…

If ever you feel like trying your hand as a citizen journalist, don’t just get hold of a pen, notebook and camera: make sure you ditch any 11-month-old babies you happen to be looking after.

That’s what I should have done this morning when Dave Hill got in touch to say Boris Johnson was coming to town.

I do say, though, that I put up a brave show. Dave’s email plopped into my inbox at 12.15pm, Boris was due at Wyversdale House, on the Woodberry Down estate at 1.30pm, and I managed in the interim to pack not only the notebook and camera, but also to dress and feed the infant (who had spent his morning staging a miraculous recovery from a wheezy cough which, of course, had prevented him spending the day with his childminder).

I even got as far as the Woodberry Down estate, roughly in time for Boris’s arrival. The only problem, though, was that the infant had other ideas and was beginning to behave in that way he often does 10 minutes before going into major meltdown. So I made a snap decision to disappoint Boris and instead head to Finsbury Park to share (safe from any maternal gaze) a Ribena ice-pole with the baby. With children bribery buys peace.

It was with great delight, then, that I saw a mildly bewildered looking Boris standing outside Manor House tube station, a rucksack slung over his shoulder and a mobile phone in his hand. As I approached he had obviously made a decision of his own and started heading in the opposite direction to the housing block at which he was expected.

So I ramped the pushchair into first gear, drew up alongside Boris. pointed the right way and said:

“I think you want to go that way.”

“Do I?” said Boris.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re supposed to be at Wyversdale House.”

“Am I?” said Boris.

“Yes. I was going to come along and see you, only,” I continued, pointing at the baby, who was miraculously being as quiet as Clissold Leisure Centre has been for the last few years, “he was getting rather fractious. So we’re going to the park.”

“Ah. Who are you?” asked Boris.

“I’m Ben. Ben Locker. How do you do?”

“Good to meet you,” said Boris, shaking hands.

“I was invited along by Dave Hill. He’s a journalist.”

“A journalist?” said Boris, and I think a note of surprise, if not revulsion entered his voice.

“Yes. He’s a local blogger. He writes for the Guardian and stuff like that.”

“I’m supposed to be meeting someone called Maureen,” said Boris.

“No idea,” I said, shrugging my shoulders exaggeratedly and pulling my best ’search me, guv’ face (though in retrospect I think he must have meant local councillor Maureen Middleton).

And on that note, Boris headed off in the right direction to meet his pals, and I took the boy to Finsbury Park, kicking myself for not having the presence of mind to ask the politician for his photo.

Still, it was a good ice pole, and it revived the infant’s spirits considerably. And as luck would have it, on my way home, I saw Boris being shown round Woodberry Down estate by a bevy of councillors and local people. So this time I took (an albeit distant) photo as I walked past. It’s at the top of this post, and looking at it I’m beginning to think I probably had a better time giving illicit Ribena ices to the child - those folks don’t seem to be enjoying themselves very much at all, least of all Boris himself.

Next week: a chance meeting with Andrew Boff in an E8 chip shop…

Surreal developments in what Kris has recently christened the London Borough of Happiness.

Read this extract from the 21st May 2007 edition of Hackney Today, which appeared with a prominent Hackney Council logo attached to it:

Now compare it with this claim from Hackney Planning Watch, in a report it has drafted with the intention of sending it to Hazel Blears, Secretary of State of Communities and Local Government:

Chris Berry, Hackney’s Interim Head of Planning, refused to provide answers to a Freedom of Information request relating to enforcement action under housing and environmental protection legislation in the proposed areas of exception. His reason for the refusal, there was no proposed area of exception! He stated: ‘there has been, and will continue to be no change to the Council’s policy with regard to residential extensions and alterations.’ He continued: ‘As there is no proposed ‘area of exception’, it is therefore not possible to provide the information which you have requested, and I trust that this response clarifies the matter’

I’ve already made clear my own views on the Council’s desire to let its inept planning department play by different rules when considering developments in my area, but - if true (I have only HPW’s report to go on) - Chris Berry’s apparent denial that “areas of exception” have been proposed is pretty breathtaking, even by Hackney standards.

Read the Hackney Planning Watch report for yourself: and if you live in my area, do consider adding your name in its support. Email planningwatch [usual symbol] btinternet.com to let them know you’re backing their efforts.

Characteristically wise words from The Shaigetz, talking about the present planning controversy in Stamford Hill.

A Democratic society has no problem when those with a different set of priorities express their opinions. The shtetl mentality, that teaches being noticed is bad, is wrong. Not because we have inherent rightness on our side, as some of our fundamentalists will have us believe, but because diversity is enshrined in British law. Thus if a brand new home in which to propagate God’s word to the fairer sex is more important to you than the colour coordination of the street it stands upon, you may say so unabashedly. Why, if your house’s style and its aesthetic value are less important to you than the number of rooms and its real value, you have the right to express that opinion - even to lobby to have the council approve your monstrous extensions. But it is deceitful, mean and immoral to deny the same right to those that disagree with you. Yes, even if that means you will be overruled.

You can find his full post here.

A petition and a campaign. If you want to retain a say in what happens to your community’s environment, visit both.

(Thanks to the Civic Trust for the latter).

About 15 years ago, I read a study that found racist attitudes were eroded when members of different groups came to live together in the same residential block. Partly this was because people got to see each other more often, began to share the same concerns and - the reason I thought most resonant at the time - because everyone enjoys having an audience when they’re complaining about how badly-treated they are by their boss, landlord or whoever else is in authority over them.

If there’s one thing that would help community cohesion in Stamford Hill at the moment, then it’s a bout of close-harmony whingeing about the many ways we have all been shafted by Hackney Council over the last decade or more. But one other thing’s for certain: if the various groups on the Hill continue to use shoddy and dishonest tactics themselves, no matter how admirable their motives, we’re not only sending a gilt-edged invitation to that local authority to shaft us some more, we’re going to find this place turned into a tinderbox.

That much was clear to me yesterday evening, when I went to a meeting organised by Hackney Planning Watch at Stamford Hill Library. I was two minutes late and skipped signing the register so that I could be one of the last allowed in. I bagged a spot by the wall where I could stand and not only get a good view of the speakers and everyone in the room, but could see out of the window and into the glass lined corridor opposite.

I’ve worked with Civic Societies before, and most would have been astonished by (and envious of) the number of local people who turned up to discuss a planning issue. There were about a hundred people in a room laid out for seventy, and there was a crowd of at least thirty more outside the door noisily demanding entrance. I could see quite a few trying to get a view of the meeting from the corridor.

So why the passionate interest? Put simply, the Council has released a document that contains suggested alterations to the regulations that control residential alterations and extensions in parts of the borough. If these suggestions are adopted, different planning laws will apply to residents in three areas: Queens Drive in Finsbury Park; Cricketfield Road in Hackney Downs; and 38 streets that comprise the core of my own area, Stamford Hill.

The new regulations are being proposed in Stamford Hill for a number of reasons. Firstly, the area is home to a long-established Orthodox Jewish community, members of which belong to families with an average of 5.9 children. Living space is in short supply and, to accommodate such large families, many have built extensions on the fronts, sides, tops or backs of their houses - and sometimes have done all four. A high proportion of these extensions would (under normal circumstances) have fallen foul of planning regulations but, for one reason or another, have been approved by the council. A significant number have been built with no reference to planning laws whatsoever, and have still not been awarded permission.

In other words, the extensions are a short-term solution to meet the needs of one rapidly-growing section of the community. Its members have been angered by a Council that is now more likely to refuse extensions and, with not a little justice, complain that it is unfair to crack down on these developments when they have been tolerated (or ignored) by the Council for years.

However, many of these extensions have angered other people who live in the Stamford Hill area. Some residents complain that the developments block the light that reaches their own properties. Others point to the noise nuisance that is exacerbated by larger numbers of people living in bigger properties near them. Many are angered by the fact that a good number of developments have wrecked the streetscape and damaged the original shape of Victorian and early-Edwardian terraces. Still more make the point that the developments are storing up trouble for the future, making Stamford Hill overcrowded, encouraging cowboy developers, giving people the incentive to carve up properties into flats and bedsits, and creating urgent problems with structure and flooding.

And underlying all this is a growing resentment nurtured by some people who feel that the Orthodox Jewish community appears to be given de facto special treatment under planning law.

No wonder it was a crowded meeting.

Sadly, in such circumstances, good sense often takes a back seat when one’s own interests are at stake. For example, I was very grateful to Hackney Planning Watch (HPW) for calling the meeting, especially as I had no idea that there had been a consultation on the proposed regulations, let alone that it had closed. However, the first thing that I did after reading HPW’s leaflet was to go and find the planning document on Hackney Council’s website (it’s here). What this document does propose is changes to the regulations to front roof slopes, rear roof slopes, and rear extensions. What it does not do is “abandon our streets to unregulated property developers”, as HPW put it. Nor does it cover those developers who “are even applying to build three story houses in residential back gardens”. Nor was it appropriate - at all - for someone from the table to say to Councillor Coggins that “it was your party who sold off our social housing”. I happen to agree, but it was unfair and antagonistic to one of only three councillors who made the effort to show up.

That said, what the proposals are suggesting - and this is the thorniest point for me - that residents within three defined areas of the borough should be subject to different regulations than their neighbours a few streets away. For that reason I thought it highly disingenuous of Councillor Odze to argue that we will all still be subject to planning regulations. Yes we will councillor, but different ones: that is not equality under the law.

This is the point that, more than any other, needs answering and I think that members of the Orthodox community recognise that it is the biggest obstacle to the proposals becoming law. I can think of no other reason why, instead of answering that question, most of the arguments in favour of adopting the new regulations fell into the “Oh go on, we’re nice” category; most notably when a girl of about 12 stood up to make a prepared speech about how her own home was too crowded for her to do her schoolwork properly, how her family faces pressures that arise from her brother’s serious lung disease and how she did “not feel we have been accepted or given space.”

I sympathise, but there are many people across London with similar problems. Should the new regulations apply to them too?

Similarly, I was astonished by the argument one person put forward that Stamford Hill has a miniscule crime rate, thanks to the Orthodox Jewish community: even going so far as to say “when did you last hear of someone mugged by an Orthodox Jew?” Apart from the fact that it ignores a problem with unrecorded crime in the Haredi community, what on earth has that got to do with planning law?

To return to the wider point, though, there was much that was positive about the meeting that could be used as a basis for us all. By and large, all communities on the Hill are sympathetic to (and often adore) large families. Most of us agree that we need more space to have a happier family life (I know I would like a lot more). I also think we all agree that the council’s past inaction and its approval of certain developments have stored up trouble that is now bearing ill-fruit. And I think that, deep down, we all know that allowing inappropriate extensions will only provide a short-term solution for a small proportion of families.

What we need to be asking is what we do about the problem long term. And for that we should be asking ourselves some hard questions, such as whether allowing our planning system to become a communal issue is ever going to be for the wider good, no matter what the motives behind it.

We should then be turning to the council and asking some hard questions, like:

• Why hasn’t there been a proper consultation on this measure?
• Why were the new regulations only published after the local elections?
• Why did no member of the council’s ruling party attend last night’s meeting to listen to the citizens’ concerns?

And when we’ve got their answers we can get started on that close-harmony whingeing I was talking about. It will do us all a lot more good than finger pointing, jealousy or diluting the rather limited protection that planning law already gives us.

Not my words, but those of one of our local councillors just under an hour ago, referring to the discussion he’d just taken part in. I’ll leave you to guess which party.

The councillor was just one of the speakers at a very crowded meeting at Stamford Hill Library, in which the room was packed with residents concerned - one way or the other - about the planning debacle I have been writing about on these pages. Apart from the odd fatuous comment, I was happily surprised by how it went. Whether it changes anything is a different matter.

The trouble is that I have only eaten about 4 slices of bread and an apple all day and, being the owner of a voracious appetite (ie getting fat), I need to have some dinner. More may appear on these pages later.

Incidentally, I’ve given these pages a bit of a facelift, more for technical than cosmetic reasons. But I think they look pretty good now, even if they need a final polish.