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Philistine sale of icon
• SEVEN of the eight local residents on the 14-person NHS Islington board are paid about £100,000 from public funds, so they can reasonably be asked to explain their positions on the projected philistine sale of Finsbury Health Centre to developers.
Three have an arts background. Chairwoman Paula Kahn is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and chair of Camden Arts Centre and the Institute of International Visual Arts, Shoreditch. The other two are Louisa Bolch, a council member of the Arts Council London who was science editor of Channel 4, and Anita Charlesworth, chief economist of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Ms Kahn needs to share her thoughts with her fellow residents on whose behalf she sees herself doing good. She is almost unknown to the public but with an important, but electorally unaccountable, influence on us.
She needs to tell residents and the architectural world just how the board is voting.
It is quite puzzling that she, Ms Bolch and Ms Charlesworth, with their cultural links, seem to be going along, without demur, with the philistine sale for property development of Berthold Lubetkin’s centre, an architectural and social icon of world importance.
The other taxpayer-remunerated resident board members also have the local press open to them to explain their positions.
LEO CHAPMAN
Dufferin Street EC1 |
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