| Rotten borough no.356 in the series — Opposition Profile on 23:06 - Sep 11 with 1306 views | BromleyHoop |
I must confess, being a South East Londoner, a small weakness for Millwall. Their supporters are just lovable, cheeky, South East London scamps. They're the salt of the Earth really.
I was at the last game at the old Den and it was incredibly memorable. There were several pitch invasions and the last one resulted in the the pitch, goalposts and netting all being ripped to pieces and thrown at the Police. The thing that sticks me with me most though was that as the last pitch invasion occurred, Kasey Keller, the then Millwall keeper was too slow getting away from the advancing Millwall fans. He was stripped buck naked of all his kit and eventually managed to get to the tunnel covering his manhood with both hands.
I'm still a devout R though. 2-0 Rangers. [Post edited 11 Sep 2017 23:16]
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| Rotten borough no.356 in the series — Opposition Profile on 11:49 - Sep 16 with 615 views | GloryHunter |
The situation is not quite as simple as Barney Ronay (a Millwall supporter - although strangely he never declares this interest in his Guardian pieces) makes out. I recently moved to Lewisham and joined the local Party, and have heard this topic discussed at length in the course of selecting the Mayoral candidate.
Lewisham council built the New Den and lease it to Millwall. The council also owns the surrounding land and buildings, which they lease to Millwall. So the CPO is not proposed in order to steal land from some innocent third party - it is more a taking back of the leases to provide social housing - something the club's absentee American owner does not seem keen to do himself. There is no intention to apply a CPO to the New Den - in fact the proposals include ground improvements, including new cladding.
The reason for selling the land to developers is that the council can then lease homes back from the developers and use them for social housing. If the council were to build the homes themselves, then they lose them in time under the dreaded Right-to-Buy - which means council houses falling into the hands of buy-to-let landlords. Lots of local authorities are now going down this route - I can't imagine why it's taken them 30 years to come up with the idea.
I'm not taking sides here. I just want to point out that Barney Ronay's pieces are not as independent as they might be, and The Guardian does not declare that he is a Millwall supporter. Also, four out of the five Labour Mayoral candidates initially supported the CPO proposals, and three of them are now frantically rowing back from it. Paul Maslin is the only candidate sticking to his guns, and he explains why in his blog piece here:
http://themaslinmemo.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/why-i-supported-millwall-cpo.html |  | | |
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