Greenhalgh: the fightback on estates begins

Well, that's called being stung into action I think! An impassioned defence from the leader of H&F Council in the local propaganda rag and its hard to disagree with the ideas of breaking down social barriers and allowing people to realise their potential - I would think those would be common aims to all mainstream political parties.

The difficulty Cllr Greenhalgh and the rest of the council now has however is one of credibility - they are doing now what they should have done from the outset: admit their plans to redevelop the estates and publicly argue for that. Instead we had surreptitious flights to Cannes, official denials and then the embarassment of a Leader being forced to contradict his own press office. In short, few residents believe what they say anymore.

But we are where we are, and for Shepherd's Bush residents for whom this may well seem far removed from their daily lives, that might actually be the sort of divide Cllr Greenhalgh is talking about. My own street looks out onto the White City estate which I understand to be one of the estates the Council wants to redevelop. But the two sides of our street rarely talk to each other. So, is this the right way to break those sort of barriers down?