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"Hello Radiolympia. This is direct television from the studios at Alexandra Palace!" *
THESE were the immortal words spoken to camera by Elizabeth Cowell, on 2 November 1936.
Alexandra Palace was the birthplace of regular, public, "high" definition television broadcasting in the UK and arguably, the world.
BBC Studios A & B are the world's oldest surviving television studios.
YET in 2007, our People’s Palace was to be sold down the river by its very guardians – the Trustee – the London Borough of Haringey. The TV studios were to be destroyed with the connivance of the local council. Here is raw uncensored opinion and information about the scandal of the attempted fire-sale of our Charitable Trust’s asset, for property development. It includes letters sent to local papers, published & unpublished.
AFTER receiving a slap-down from the High Court (2007, October 5), two and a half years went by before the council finally abandoned its 15-year-old policy of "holistic" sale (i.e. lock stock and barrel). They now attempt partial sale ("up to two-thirds") to a music operator but without governance reform. To tart the place up for a developer, the council blithely seek about a million pounds towards this goal, a further sum of cash to be burnt, and much of the monies to come from local tax payers and from funds that normally help genuine charities.
THE real and ultimate solution to the chronic waste and repeated, failed sale attempts, is a Trust Board largely or wholly independent of Haringey Council. But this is opposed. That resistance is aided and abetted by some council bureaucrats, consultants and lawyers who have their own reasons for preferring the status quo. Unless the council-controlled Board cedes control to independent experts who know what they're doing, there will be no progress, only more decay and grand waste of time and money.
* Radiolympia was the big radio exhibition, concurrent at Olympia
