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If you go down to the Park today…. Part Deux. You can take photos of here but not of there!

The ODA continues to live down to its reputation for Media censorship and control. Visiting the Clays Lane area another Games Monitor person and I wandered down the road past the Travellers’ Site as the Travellers were moving their goods. The entrance to the road was open and no security guards were present. After walking round for a while I found my colleague making some drawings near the entrance to the Park Village estate where she had been sitting for some time without any interference.

Eventually a security guard appeared and asked us what we were doing. We explained we had come to meet a TV crew who were filming the Travellers’ move. He asked if we were visiting the Travellers. We repeated we had come to meet up with a TV crew and that I used to live on the Clays Lane estate.

The guard then informed us filming was only allowed on ‘this’ side of the road (the Travellers’ side) but not ‘that’ side (the Clays Lane side). No photos could be taken of the Clays Lane estate on the instructions of the ODA!

Why not? No explanation for this fatuous instruction was provided. ODA control freakery in action.

We were then ushered back up the road. The guard said the ODA didn’t want us there to which we replied we weren’t greatly bothered what the ODA wanted and anyway there were no guards at the entrance and the road was completely open so who was to know what anyone wanted?

This guard was apologetic about the lack of any warning but another one started telling us not to interfere and let them get on with their jobs, the age-old way of stopping people asking questions. When the same company was supposedly ‘guarding’ Clays Lane thieves were stealing lead and satellite dishes right under their noses, at the same time as one of them was sitting in a van with a dog in the back watching the scaffolding, which had been put up to house the cradle for the electricity cables. He refused to get out and help residents and there were no other guards around.

Photos of the Clays Lane estate were taken from the other side of the entrance to Clays Lane.


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