Talk:London Borough of Haringey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject UK geography, a user-group dedicated to building a comprehensive and quality guide to places in the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you wish to participate, share ideas or merely get tips you can join us at the project page where there are resources, to do lists and guidelines on how to write about settlements.	United Kingdom Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale. (Add assessment comments)
Mid	This article has been rated as mid-importance within the UK geography WikiProject.

	This article is part of WikiProject London, an attempt to expand, improve and standardise the content and structure of articles related to London. If you would like to participate, you can improve the article attached to this page or sign up and contribute in a wider array of articles.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

Contents 1 Names 2 Haringey Harringay 3 Population question 4 "White British people are in an ethnic minority" !? 5 Move Demographics downwards? 6 Why remove the references to racial issues (inc. some census details)? 7 Famous Residents 8 Culture links

[edit] Names

I'd be interested to know the significance of the two names Harringay and Haringey. Maybe this could be mentioned in the article? Duncan Smith 10:48, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[1] this might provide some explanation MRSC 11:31, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now better to look at the more comprehensive and authoritative History of Harringay.hjuk (talk) 17:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Haringey Harringay

Excellent article - thanks for that. Looks like there is a good case for going back to calling it Harringay then! Duncan Smith 11:52, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I enjoyed the article too..although the big mistake in it was stating that Harringay pre 01/04.65 was part of the old Borough of Hornsey... it wasn´t, it was part of the Borough of Tottenham!! Maybe this is the reason that Harringay can´t be easily defined ..say like Tooting or Walthamstow IsarSteve 16:15, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In fact Harringay was split between Hornsey & Tottenham boroughs. See History of Harringay for the detail on this.hjuk (talk) 17:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Population question

How can white British people be a(sic) ethnic minority when they make up 45% of the population if the next largest ethnic group makes up only 20%? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.18.73.199 (talk • contribs) 22:54, 14 February 2007

Simple, a majority is, by definition, over 50%, and since 45% is less than that, it is a minority. The largest minority, to be sure, but a minority all the same. -- AJR | Talk 23:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not link to minority then too if it's so 'simple'? Minority means a lot more than just an opposite to majority. --Matt Lewis 06:12, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "White British people are in an ethnic minority" !?

Going by the quoted figures, this line should read 'White people of British decent are in an ethnic minority'. The original line without the 'decent' qualifier is just untrue.

I'm changing the paragraph - if anyone changes it back please can they explain here why I'm wrong. The population figures and categories were too inexact anyway, and the citation given was incorrectly made and a dead link too. (Note that Haringey council's own figures are slightly out - but only fractionally, so all the figures won't quite add up to 100%!). I'm assuming the figures about age and house-owning were broadly correct - so I've left them for now.

So my main reason for revision is that the other "third of white people" (20.3% of Haringey) are surely "White British people" too (or will be in the vast majority, for the sake of argument). Also, saying that "White British people" are "just 45%" has an unpleasant overtone for me. Simply put, around 65.7% of Haringey citizens are white and British first and foremost - and other details such as their heritage, Britishness or legality should be addressed at a later juncture, and only if relevant.

To try and avoid future conflict here, I've improved the accuracy of the initial figures and citation, and inserted another paragraph stating the 45.3% figure, briefly explaining that people are for and against ascribing importance to it. Please consider this before removing the paragraph (or look for a good citation for it if you want to help keep it). I have moved the uncited comment on whether the 2001 census underestimated Haringey's population figures to the bottom of here, and made it a more honest comment (merely to save somebody less sensitive from doing it).

If racism/cultural tension is an issue in Haringey, perhaps the contentious issues above could be included instead under another sub-heading dealing with that? In my wiki experience they won't go away, so are best dealt with rather than simply removed/reverted/removed etc!

ALSO NOTE - the Haringey article is currently labelled: "To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this article may need to be rewritten." - so it needs some more good contributions! --Matt Lewis 06:48, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move Demographics downwards?

It might be a good idea to move Demographics downwards. Perhaps to after Political Composition?

The opening paragraph actually contains the same statistics that are clearly visible in the Infobox on the right!

It would be a friendlier article if it began with the History too... --Matt Lewis 07:04, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why remove the references to racial issues (inc. some census details)?

Hjuk - I can understand why you wanted to remove the material, though a little less why you call it 'irrelevant', and not at all the reasoning in your edit-note calling the census data ‘unsourced interpretation’. It was sourced and accurate! I included it because the old data was incorrect and deliberately misleading. If you had read this page first you will have realised that it was included for consensus. If people put new racially motivated stuff in now, my work will be lost unless copied out of a past edit. I spent a while writing the paragraph - adapting it from the very biased material what was already there, and making it hard to refute. It took half a second to remove, of course - tsk!

If you didn’t find it objective, please tell me why? I have made comments directly about removing the paragraph (in 4 above in bold), I would have appreciated some kind of comment before someone removed it. Given what has happened here before, I have to be a touch unsure of your motives - which could be very unfair of course. Unfortunately, if the racial issues do come back, it could be seen as some form evidence of relevance - unsavoury though it is. Also this article has gone on to be 'mid importance' – so should you be doing this without discussion?

If you have a good case I won't mind the removal at all. --Matt Lewis 02:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Matt. A little heavy-handed I guess. I hadn't been aware of the racist issues you'd been dealing with in the past. I know how frustrating it is when you've been beavering away diligently at something then some arrogant git like me comes and blasts it out of the water.

So let me be honest about my reasoning. Despite some recent noticeable improvements, my view of the article is that it's way below par. I guess I took the frustration I have with it out in part on your demographics contribution. It sounded to me like thinly veiled racism - but from your msg, you don't sound like you have that agenda.

The para:

The fact that white people of singularly British descent currently form less than 50% of the total population of Haringey has been in focus. It has been noted that drawing such a distinction between being of ‘white British descent’, and of being a British citizen who has ancestors from elsewhere (white or non-white), can be used as a racist argument.

seemed misplaced in this article. I can now understand, perhaps, why you wrote it like this. My exepreince has been, however, that what works best is to cram in sourced facts. That, above all else, makes something hard to refute. As it was written, I, and I'm sure others, assumed it was intended to convey the opposite of what appears to have been your meaning.

With regards to the para:

It has been noted that white people of British descent form 45.3% of Haringey's total population, while the other 20.4% of Haringey's 65.7% white population are comprised primarily of people with Turkish, Irish, Greek or Cypriot descent.

I'm not aware that ONS data specifies ethnicity down to the level of country of origin, which is why I took that out. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to learn from you.

Clearly this is Wikipedia and anything I've taken out still exists in History and can be reinstated. I do apprecite your communicating via this page - as I should have done . Whilst I don't currently have plans to do a huge amnount of work on the Haringey page, if it sounds like it would be useful, I'm happy to collaborate on nibbling away to create somethig better than what exists already. But it sounds like you've had a bit of a battle on your hands.

hjuk 02:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough - I can see you do a lot on the subject. I'm not even a Londoner btw, so can't help with the rest of the page I'm afraid! If my new paragraph actually looked a little racist itself, I would rather it wasn't there. Best is leave it out and see what happens. Now the page is looking more serious, hopefully it won't become a dumping ground for that kind of insidious racism again. I wasn’t actually in an edit war in the end by the way - though it did look a lot to me like the page was an aftermath of one. Certainly the page was unacceptable as it was, and I know how persistent some Wikipedians can be (especially politically motivated ones) – so I didn’t just delete what I saw, I added accurate detail.

The Ethnic Group Theme tables citied actually link to the data as Excel files. I had to extrapolate the figures myself - I did it because I could see the ones up at the time were exaggerated to add weight to a racist point. Technically the numbers are all there in the link - they just needed a little subtraction to be totally clear (not quite original work!?). I basically did it to pre-empt a challenge on my re-writing the statement on ‘white’ Britishness. If anyone has came back to see the change, no one has complained. I thought maybe it was more of a local issue too - it's heartening if it isn't such a deal, of course. --Matt Lewis 20:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Matt. I'll keep nibbling away and try and keep any racism at bay! hjuk 21:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Famous Residents

A question as to whether this section has a place here. Many of the pages for the local areas in Haringey already have extensive lists. So this one just has a few that haven't made it on to those pages. If all the notable locals were put on, this list wd be huge. Might it not be better to refer people to local areas? In the meantime I've reformatted it a la Crouch End. If there are already Wikipedia articles for people, readers can find out who they are by clicking the link. Where there are no pages, I've moved the explanation to the footnotes. hjuk 18:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

There are far too many famous residents to put in this article. All people whose area of residence is known have been moved to the relvant area of Haringey page. All pages for the famous people have been tagged with a people from X tag and can be accessed via the see also category link in the article. The remaining people have been fact tagged pending addition of their area of residence. PLease add it as a note if you know it. hjuk (talk) 00:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Culture links

I'm going to remove a couple from this section; the Millfield Theatre is actually in LB Enfield and the Red Rose Club is in Islington.BTLizard (talk) 13:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)