A quick update for anyone who has just seen the news from London.
Firstly, I am not in Camden. I’m staying with Bruce and Holly in Queens Park.
Second, the location of the fire is the market area north of the canal, not the market area across the road from the Clutes’. I’ve just tried calling them and got an engaged signal, which is unsurprising. I suspect they are besieged by calls from worried friends right now. I’ve also checked Ellen’s Livejournal and she has a report from last night so it looks like all is as well as it can be under the circumstances.
Meanwhile I am worrying about the market traders. My guess is that a lot of them will have lost all of their stock.
The people I worked for lost £80,000 stock and all the money they would have made in those weeks. They couldn’t get insurance on an open air market, even though it was a Grade 2 listed building that was burnt down….that was never inspected by fire chiefs and never had smoke ditectors installed. Remember, the bit that burnt down first was within a roofed building and was not out door!
Some traiders are literally starving! and some cant keep up with morgage payments and are going to become homeless.
So they had an emergency collection. £700,000 was raised. which sounds good, but traders are still being brushed off at pointless meetings (that I’ve attended) by Camden management and their friendly local council!
A lot of that money is being diverted (without consulting those concerned) for advertising for the other 5 markets! Thats being done NOW. As for the poor traders? They have to wait!
The controllers of the donated money will not donate it to the traders. The nice management are going to give them Grants that they will have to pay back.
If the money is donated for the intention of helping the traders, what happens to it when they pay it back? Who gets to ‘Play’ with it then?
I could go on but it gets even more depressing so I wont.
Just know this, the fire at Camden is still burning for the poor traders.
Stables market hasn’t been touched, if anything its been re-vamped and looks better now than it ever did.
Andy