It’s nearly two years since Rich and I saw the crew filming ‘Telstar’ in Holloway Road, forty years after the death of its subject Joe Meek.
The film’s due to be released on 19 June, and the Times has a preview here.
Posts Tagged Holloway
Popham Princess pt 2
Another Islington connection for Kate Middelton!
I blogged before about her mother’s forebears on Popham Street.
Now the Telegraph reports that another ancestor, on her father’s side, was in Holloway prison.
Not to be confused with Royal Holloway…
Fighting back on email fraud
Another serious-sounding email has arrived:
“Halifax PLC. has been receiving complaints from our customers for unauthorised use of the Halifax Online accounts. As a result we are making an extra security check on all of our Customers account in order to protect their information from theft and fraud.”
Which might be fine, except I’m not an HBOS customer.
According to the Met Police, the most recent scams are around fake job offers, accommodation – and bank services.
The advance fee fraud – offering you the chance of millions for a small handling charge – seems to be less prominent. Either my spam checker is getting better or the villains have given me up as a lost cause, but certainly I don’t get so many of those emails as I used to.
There are still plenty of the ‘419’ fraudsters out there: one of the fightback sites, Artists against 419, has identified over 32,000. Like the fake bank emails, they often mimic real institutions.
SWIFT is the main money transfer system used by banks. It’s genuine. There on the 419 list is ‘Swift Courier And Security Services’, ‘Swift Management Security’, etc.
The first of these has a plausible looking website but without any registered address or contact details which should ring alarm bells: and according to Artists against 419, it has the Domain Name Owner: Serena Parlarero, 200-203 Holloway Road London, London SE1 2AA.
Which may sound plausible if you’re not a Londoner. But Holloway Road is in N7; 200 Holloway Road is part of the London Metropolitan University site at 166-220 Holloway Road; and SE1 2AA is the postcode for the GLA at City Hall….. Buyer beware.
A more proactive approach than Artists against 419 was taken by one ‘Gilbert Murray’ who carried out elaborate correspondence to waste the fraudster’s time.
He obviously had great fun, even setting up a website to support his fictional village, and generally running a reverse Hustle on the crooks.
But for the rest of us, if you do get any of these dodgy emails, the advice is never reply, but instead forward them to ‘abuse’ at the sending domain name eg abuse at hotmail.com.
Studio line
What do the stamp duty changes mean for people in Islington?
The Chancellor’s changes mean that for the next year, house buyers will be able to buy homes costing up to £175000 without paying stamp duty. Previously homes under £125000 were exempt. So just for interest, I’ve been looking for local properties that might fall into that £125-£175k gap.
So I checked the property pages of the Islington Gazette. The only property in that range is a studio flat in ‘Hornsey borders’ N7, at £164,950.
Gordon Brown told the press, “Home owners need to know that we will do everything we can to keep the housing market moving”. It must be a very nice studio.
New council homes for Islington
It is wonderful to see new council homes being built for the first time in a generation at Boleyn Road and Armour Close.
I visited the Armour Close site last week and can’t wait to see the finished homes. More than that, I’m working with Lib Dem MPs across the country to help councils like Islington get the resources to build more of the homes local people need.
Back in March, MPs voted on proposals that the Government should give financial support to councils ‘to acquire, rehabilitate and build new housing’. The move was backed by Liberal Democrat MPs plus ‘rebel’ Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn. He put Islington first on this vital issue.
But where was Emily Thornberry? Voting with the rest of the Gordon Brown fan-club, against new money to help Islington build new homes.
Islington’s homeless families need more than crocodile tears from their MP, they need action.
