Top Boy, Top Christmas

Cuts, strikes, protests, riots – 2011 was Hackney’s annus horribilis, an inauspicious prelude to our year in the Olympic spotlight.

But it was also a year of curious and scarcely believable goings-on.

There were muttered claims of class war over plans for a new supermarket in Stoke Newington, and the local proletariat were said to be on the side of corporate capitalism.

A Labour councillor furious at the government’s cuts defected to the Conservative benches.

A Liberal Democrat councillor suggested on Twitter that we should ship criminals to the Pacific.

Pop star Britney Spears, of all people, was spotted brandishing a gun outside Stoke Newington Town Hall, all in aid of the shooting of her new video. We assume that the council looked as carefully at the application to film  as it did for another crime drama that it decided to turn down (more of this later).

Ms Spears was later accused by the council of glamorising guns, which henceforth became something of a theme.

Hackney’s very own Top Boy, directly-elected Mayor Jules Pipe, suggested that novelist Ronan Bennett’s acclaimed TV drama (about the terrible impact of gang culture) was endangering the reputation of the borough and its estates, and so very sensibly banned the show’s producers from filming on council property, setting the tone towards all things creative ahead of the Cultural Olympiad.

Meanwhile, Iain Sinclair admitted he was secretly in favour of the Olympics.  Actually we made that last one up.

In any case, Christmas is traditionally a time to reflect, re-examine prejudices and assume the best of one’s fellow human beings, so we may yet see Sinclair and Mayor Pipe locked in a Brezhnev and Honecker-style smooch.

And in the spirit of goodwill to all men and women, let us say that whatever you may think of Hackney Council – and this newspaper is often among the first to express an opinion – the borough’s current crop of politicians have at least presided over a period of drastic change in the way in which this borough is perceived.

Ten years ago Hackney and many other parts of East London were often talked about as though they were dysfunctional, backward backwaters akin to former Eastern Germany but with a higher crime rate.

Now you are as likely to hear people complain about the prevalence of hipsters, who themselves move here because they’ve heard that it’s a bit like Williamsburg.

But there are other reasons that they come, and stay: the parks and the people, the spirit of the place.

So as the borough’s families prepare to settle down to roast turkeys and nut roasts, perhaps it is these images of union and goodwill that are most apposite.

If nothing else, let’s all just take a breather on what is, after all, a kind of collective uber-Sunday for the nation.

Keep warm, stay safe and have  a Top  Christmas.