Todays Evening Standard

I am delighted to see that news of our campaign has reached the Evening Standard. Please spend 5 mins posting a comment. Since the council have n't been very keen to listen to us face to face maybe they will pay more attention to our views via the Evening Standard.

This is a great opportunity for our campaign to make our views known.

Councillor Williams calculates 12% of the park is a reasonable amount to lose

Alright - maybe 12% sounds a reasonable amount to lose. Okay Councillor, which 12% of your body would you like to lose? Doesn't sound quite so reasonable put like that! Its the thin end of the wedge. We cannot afford to lose anymore open space. There are plenty of industrial parks, with vacant spaces which would be perfect for Goals Soccer Centres. Our parks need protection.

Thank you to my friend who inspired tonights post by agonising over which 12% of his body he would be okay to lose.

The perfect place for a carpark?

We will never get these green spaces back! Help us save the fields from the dreadful plans the council have in mind. Click here to see what the council want to put in their place.

Which would you prefer?

Tooting residents stop private football development on public common

latest issue of the Wandsworth Guardian (click on the link then turn to page 2).
Looks like people power actually works! Please let your neighbours, friends etc know about this victory. If people can see we have a good chance of stopping Goals then they will be more likely to write letters and lodge a complaint when the time actually comes.

If the good people of Wandsworth can save their open spaces then so can we!!!

Power to the people!

Update: To see what Wandsworth residents thought of the council's plans, click here.

great poster!

How many of these have you spotted? One resident has counted 86 down Hillcross alone!

Airbrushing the park out of history

Take a look at this leaflet:


Can you spot what's missing in the lower half?

Half of Morden Park, that's what! The half that's scheduled to be bulldozed into a commercial football centre, naturally.

Stalin was a big fan of editing photographs to eliminate people who had fallen out of favour. Is this the Council's new tactic?

Thanks to Greg for bringing this to my attention.

Great letter in todays local Guardian

Spot on Alex! (Click on the letter to read it.)

Friday is last day to respond to moreMorden consultation

Dont forget to respond to the supposed consultation over Mordens development. The questionnaire seems designed to ignore Morden Park but we need to tell the council what we think. I will be making the following points

• Why are there no specific mentions of the plans for Morden park?
• The draft vision booklet incorrectly states that the council "is working to bring the Morden Park Playing Fields back into public use" when in actual fact it is currently in public use and they plan to sell one fifth of it for private use.
  
• Why did the council choose not to distribute the booklet and questionnaires to residents of Hillcross Avenue whilst selecting other roads further from Morden town centre? Was this because they feared negative comments about Morden park?

Send your comments in now! Click here moreMorden@merton.gov.uk

No Councillor - we won't get over it!

Following Councillor William's now famous rude remarks to us, (look back at the local paper if you want to see his comments in full) there are are some lovely posters working there way around the borough. Can't wait to get mine so I can give it pride of place on my window!

Health worries about astro turf.

Michael Pahre believes that there are very worrisome environmental concerns related to leaching of carcinogenic chemicals from artificial turf into the water table in locations that are susceptible to flooding.

In America state legislators have filed a suit aginst the manufacturers because of concerns of dangerously high lead levels. Will we have to go through the same thing here or will Merton Council take our concerns seriously? Here they are removing astro turf from schools in jersey because of this.

Picnic time

The Save Our Field picnic on 14th September, held in the field under threat in Morden Park, was a great success. About 200 people turned up, including several councillors and the local Labour parliamentary candidate.

The weather was great, and the children played football and cricket while the adults talked and ate, enjoying the weather and the field.

Letter to Boris

Some children who live in Hillcross Avenue have written a letter to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to tell him why they want to save their field from the Goals proposal.

Here is the letter in full:

Dear Mayor Boris Johnson,

We are kids in the Hillcross Ave area, in the London borough of Merton. We want to save our playing field. The council want to sell the field to Goals. We have 4 reasons why we don’t want Goals taking over.

1. We will lose our place to hang out and play - because we have friends on the St. Helier Estate it’s a good place to meet. People use it to walk dog’s a lot too People also play football, cricket and tennis for free.
2. There will be floodlights and it will be too light to sleep and Katie has to get up at 6:30am and so do some other kids in the road. If we can’t sleep we will be tired in school.
3. There will be noise all day and night and again we won’t sleep also we won’t be able to concentrate on doing our homework. We have owls in our field and they will be really disturbed by the noise. Also because its 5 aside football it will be crashing against the walls and there will be loud crashes and players shouting all the time.
4. Lastly Goals want a licensed club house and there will be drunken people being loud in the street right by our houses!


We would like to invite you to come and see our field .You can even play football with us if you want! We’ll give you a delicious picnic if you come. We hope you write back.


No reply so far!