Haringey Paleontology Museum in reduced circumstances

The Museum's glass display cases from the side


The Haringey Paleontology Museum's collection of over 300 scale model dinosaurs (and skeletons, and other prehistoric animals that aren't dinosaurs) has been forced to move from its current accommodation in Haringey, just round the corner from The Salisbury pub.



Sauropods (left), Cetiosaurus (in dark blue, a British sauropod, by Invicta, for the Natural History Museum, centre) and one of the Haringey collection's more recent acquisitions, a Siberian mammoth skeleton. Photo from a couple of weeks ago, when they were all still on display.


Birds and dino-birds from the Haringey collection, including a 1980s "terror bird" in purple and an Archaeopteryx, with some miscellaneous armoured dinosaurs (bottom, centre).



The Hall of Therapods. The big one is a Gigantosaurus, and the grey-green one on the left with the narrowish snout and the ridge along its back is a rare Acrocanthosaurus model. There are also overflows from the iguanodonts (front, to the left) and from the Hall of Mammals, including Andrewsarchus (the one that looks like a dog) and a modern aardvark.


Well over a dozen Dimetrodons, left, including one dating from the early 1960s that I found in the garden. Other non-dinosaur reptiles are shown, including a rare Longisquama model from Poundland, Moschops (a licensed Marx retread from Dapol from their factory shop in Llangollen, and several takes on mammal-like reptile Cynognathus. And some modern reptiles.



In the centre is a rather expensive Kaidyo model of a Camarasaurus all the way from Japan.



The diplodocus annex.


Iguanadonts, some in the kangaroo-like pose of early 1970s reconstructions. Centre left is a rare Camptosaurus model by Mini-Machines.



Numerous ceratopsians and iguanadonts.


Top left: headbutting dinosaurs including Stygmoloch, centre: terror birds, bottom right: ankylosaurs, nodosaurs, Scelidosaurus, armoured dinosaurs. Background right: standing Diplodocus model by Safari. The big, mostly white long-necked mammal is a very expensive indriocothere (aka Baluchitherium).



The Hall of Marine Reptiles




The Pterosaur Wing


Therapods, including "strange therapods", Baryonyx, and a scratch-built Crylophosaurus conversion (with yellow crest,from a pound shop Dilophosaurus). In the background in various shades of grey is an obscure Delta Dromeaosaurus



Top left: Camarasaurus, case of therapods at the top, top right: an obscure ceratopsian and a Natural History Museum Troodon, in the case at the bottom left: giant ground sloth (a Marx Toys knock-off?), Brontotherium (ditto?), Saltasaurus, Triceratops, head of a Plateosaurus.

The collection, some of whose dinosaur models date to the early 1960s, was mostly built-up when cheap dinos flooded the market in the wake of the first Jurassic Park film. A surprising number of really obscure species of dinosaur turn up as models on sale in poundshops to this day.

Negotiations are currently under way for a limited Haringey Museum of Paleontology display, that will eventually be established in Finsbury Park. In its new form, it will be a rotating display, with - for examples - "This month: therapods" or "This month: Dimetrodons" or "This month: prehistoric probiscidians", or "This month: Dinosaurs from Africa" or some such.


Some of the Museum's collection already boxed up for the move.

For another Haringey Museum facing homelessness,the Haringey Museum of Egytpology for Under £5, see here.

Haringey Heads photo exhibition, Bruce Castle Museum, Haringey

Green Man, Hornsey High Street, N8

There's an exhibition of "Haringey Heads" - my photos of those ornamental heads on buildings around the Borough of Haringey that you often don't notice.

It's at Bruce Castle Museum, Lordship Lane, Tottenham. (The Tottenham High Road end.) There's an extensive guide to how to get the Museum here.

It's from 10 July-29 September in the Old Kitchen exhibition space. The Museum's open Wednesday-Sunday 1pm-5pm, admission is free.

I have a private view for the exhibition on Saturday 20 July, 2pm-4pm. (Not on the incorrect date I may have sent some of you by email, sorry!) If you want to come to the private view, email me on mattsal@gn.apc.org so I can know numbers.

For more on Haringey Heads, see this post from an earlier (and bigger) exhibition, with a flyer here.

Housing Benefits cap "will fail, quite spectacularly" in Haringey, says housing official

The benefits cap will be a disaster, predicts the deputy head of community housing in Haringey, one of the four London boroughs that will implement the cap early as part of a 'pilot' involving the London boroughs of Bromley, Croydon, Enfield and Haringey that will start on 15 April.

"I will be putting money on it that it was fail, quite spectacularly" when it is rolled out by other councils across the country from September, said Phil Harris, deputy director of Community Housing Services for the London Borough of Haringey. He was speaking to an audience of landlords at Haringey Council's 19 February Landlords Forum.

Harris's analysis focused on impact of the ceiling on Housing Benefit. Deductions to Housing Benefit will be the first step in bringing in the Universal Credit system to replace the many different existing types of welfare benefits.

"Most people will end up being capped… nothing in London's going to be affordable" for people on benefits to rent," said Harris.

Under the Housing Benefit cap, part of the phasing-in of Universal Credits, households will get one payment that's supposed to cover most of the 23 separate current types of welfare benefit. This one payment will include money that was previously covered in a separate payment by Housing Benefit.

The problem is that the new payment doesn't make any allowance for differences in tenure – the same maximum amount will be paid to cover the rents of council tenants, social housing tenants and private tenants, despite the considerable difference in rents between these sectors. There's no differentiation in the ceiling on benefit to account for regional variation – it doesn't take account of the fact that London rents are insanely high. Nor does the cap differentiate for family size – Harris says it's effectively a '"family tax."

Harris says there's a been a lot of talk recently along the lines of families on benefits being able to make up any shortfalls caused in their income by the cap on housing benefit by giving up luxuries like their Sky TV subscription.

But his department have estimated that in the ward of Tottenham – not particularly expensive by the standards of Haringey and actually a little bit less exorbitant than most of London – a family of two children living on benefits will have a shortfall of £293 a month, and a family with three children will have a shortfall of £578 a month. Clearly, this sort of knock-out blow to family incomes isn't the sort of thing that can be made up by little sacrifices like no more Sky TV.

Although the Department of Work and Pensions describe the Haringey experiment as a "trial", Harris says his council make a point of calling it not a trial but a "pilot." (A trial would also include an equal number of boroughs in statistically similar areas where the benefit cap was not applied, with monitoring of relevant data from those boroughs too. What's happening in Haringey, Bromley, Croydon and Enfield is not a proper trial. The DWP will go ahead and impose the cap eventually across England, Wales and Scotland, probably regardless of the outcomes in the four boroughs.) "We say 'pilot,' it does irritate," explains Harris.

Haringey didn't ask to be part of the trial/pilot of the benefit cap – it was imposed on the four borough's chief executives in a December conference call, by an "instruction" from central government.

Harris told landlords that as a result of the Housing Benefit cap, in Haringey in the first financial year of the cap's operation there will be "a £5.2 million loss" in money that's not going to the tenants, and is therefore not going to the landlords either. That's £2½ million in rent for properties in the private sector in the borough, £1.9 million in rent for temporary accommodation, and £1 million in "lost" rent for social housing in Haringey.

£1.8 million has been allocated by central government to Haringey to "tide them over" during the transition to the cap. There are some exemptions to the cap – pensioners, those on working tax credits, those on Disability Living Allowance and the PIP that's about to replace it, although the criteria for the new PIP will be tighter, and many now no DLA will suddenly find themselves outside it.

There was a lot of data-gathering in the run up to the cap, it took the DWP six weeks to check the data on 23 benefits databases in December, and when the data was shared with Haringey there were "some mistakes in it… the data from the DWP is not that accurate so far." Harris warned that "IT, staff, processes are not ready, lots of mistakes will be made."

See here for the likely impact of Universal Credits on the self-employed on a low income, People in this category face having to provide monthly accounts to the DWP.

There is a "We Demand Secure, Affordable, Local, Decent Homes For All" event for Haringey residents on Saturday March 16 at Wood Green Library, Wood Green High Rd, London N22, 2pm-4pm, with information stalls, know-your-rights sessions and discussions about what can be done. All Haringey tenants, mortgage-payers and homeless people welcome. Includes refreshments and a small toddlers' play area. Info: info@haringeyresidents.org.uk 0208 215 9651 haringeyhousingaction.org.uk

Private tenants protest letting agents' "scam"

Private tenants protested outside Drivers & Norris (D & N) letting agents in Islington's Holloway Road yesterday (Saturday 14 July). The action was in support of two prospective tenants who paid a total of £300 in fees for reference checks which has not been refunded, despite no services being delivered to them by D & N, and no tenancy agreement having been signed. The "D & N Three" asking for the money back - Phil Tsappas, Kyri Tsappas and a friend who is supporting them - are still homeless.

As Phil put it to me, there was "no deal, no contract signed" for a tenancy via D& N. Kyri told me that he and his fellow "applicants applied to secure a tenancy... Drivers & Norris failed to provide service."

The action was called by the newly-formed Haringey Private Tenants' Action Group (HPTAG) – the two-bedroom flat that the three people had applied for that is let by D & N is in Haringey.

The Drivers & Norris Three walked into D & N's Holloway Road office shortly after 11am, asking for the fees to be refunded, and to speak to the lettings manager, Sean Corrigan, although they were told his was out. It appeared at one point that lettings staff had phoned Corrigan and that he was on his way, but this turned out not to be the case. Meanwhile, HPTAG people assembled in the street outside, with banners and a megaphone.

Inside Drivers & Norris with the protesters (and a sales manager)

Phil Tsappas told me that their guarantor had been charged £60, and that he and Kyri had been charged £120 each for each reference check, making a total of £300 for all of them. The guarantor had failed the reference check. One of the D&N letting team told the D&N Three that the issue of the £300 fee was "not our fault, we didn't conduct it" (the reference check.) Phil told me the check had been carried out on D&N's behalf by FCC Paragon, who he says seem to do reference checks for most of the letting agents in Haringey. The Three then went to another letting agent – Winkworth, who also use FCC Paragon and, according to Phil, quoted them £150 each for a reference check.

D & N staff declined to give me their names and told me they had no comment to make.

Phil says he's done some research and the cost charged to a letting agent by FCC Paragon for each reference check is "£17-£19, we think."

A Police Community Support Officer arrived shortly afterwards and asked those protesters inside the D & N office to leave, as it was "private property" and that the D & N "guys feel like they're being harassed". Two police constables and Islington Division's CCTV van also showed up soon afterwards, with the police remaining in the D & N office for the duration of the protest.

The D & N Three left the office to join the protest outside. PC 577 at one point came to the door to tell them one of them could come into to talk to a sales manager from the lettings team. The D & N three declined – one of them told me that this was the same D & N employee who told him on the phone that he should consider himself lucky D & N hadn't kept their whole £800 holding deposit.

The Drivers and Norris Three


Despite the pouring rain, most of the 800 leaflets the protesters had brought along were handed out to mostly sympathetic passers-by, including one of the very few customers going into the D & N office on what's normally its busiest day of the week.

Jacky Peacock, director of Brent Private Tenants' Rights Group – on of very few such organisations in the UK - explained to a concerned-looking PC NI 577 that there are currently "no regulations" in place on what letting agents can charge prospective tenants. Jacky told me tenants can only go to the the Property Services Ombudsman if the letting agency is a member of one of the industry's associations. What about local trading standards officers? "Low on their list of priorities" according to Jacky.

Shoppers in busy Holloway Road were addressed by demonstrators by megaphone, who called for "affordable homes secure tenancy and end to rip-off fees!" One protester using a megaphone told the small crowd that "Drivers & Norris are having a laugh!"

In "discussion" with Drivers & Norris sales staff

One protester told me that letting agents offer "incentives that are designed to fail" - for every flat a letting agent has on books, five groups of applicants will look at it, "they take one [group of tenants], how many holding deposits do they keep?"

The D & N Three plan to return to demonstrate outside Driver some time end of next week, and until they get their money back.

Haringey Private Tenants' Action Group's next meeting is a on Saturday 21st July, 2012 11am, Cafe Life, North London Community House, 22 Moorefield Road, London N17 6QN, near Bruce Grove Station. All welcome. Email: haringeyprivatetenants@gmail.com

The police (and a PCSO) arrive

Links:

More photos from the event by NUJ freelance professional photographer Peter Marshall (please ask him for permission to reproduce!)

Haringey Solidarity Group's housing page

Recent Guardian "Comment is Free" piece "Landlords and letting agencies watch out – your tenants are angry and mobilising" by "Rentergirl" blogger

Photos: Matt Salusbury