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Yvette Pathare |
Antiques market fight a polls issue
ONE of Islington’s best-known antiques traders has announced she will stand for the Conservatives in the local elections next year in an effort to save the famous Camden Passage market.
Yvette Pathare said she was fed up watching the decline of Camden Passage over the past 10 years, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
She said: “First, we lost the Georgian Village, then Angel Arcade and now the antique trade’s flagship Mall is being transformed into an upmarket clothes store.”
Ms Pathare, 50, said she was “thoroughly disenchanted” with Islington’s ruling Lib Dems. “We’ve got a world-famous antique trade in Camden Passage but it is slowly being eroded,” she added. “The two parties who run Islington, the Lib Dems and Labour, have not done enough to save the market.”
Ms Pathare, a former director of business development with Mirror newspapers, has a shop in Pierpoint Parade in the Passage.
She has been selected to stand in St Peter’s ward, where she lives.
“I’ve not always been a Conservative,” she added. “I voted Labour a couple of times. But we’ve had no Conservative elected representation in Islington for more than 20 years. It’s time for a change.”
She argues that a lot more can still be done to save Camden Passage. “I would hope that a new council would declare the market a place of special interest, like they have done in Portobello Road.”
Ms Pathare, who lives close to City Road Basin, has a special interest in that area. She is supporting Lorraine Fox’s battle to keep open her canalboat café after British Waterways declared the business must go out to tender.
She opposes plans by British Waterways, Islington Council and a developer to site two tower blocks in the basin – one 36 storeys and the other 26. “I don’t think there was sufficient consultation over the scheme when it was announced,” she said. “There is still time to think again.” |
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