Happy New Year?

Recent posts suggest that concern is mounting amongst residents at the prospect of chaotic scenes in Pennington Street caused by Mango's revelers.

If you are disturbed by the all-too-familiar noise nuisance or witness any criminality, please take the time to leave a comment on the blog.

Happy New Year? Well, it will be if we get the desired result at the Magistrates Court.

HOW CAN THIS KEEP GOING ON?

A local resident left the following comment on an older post:

"Friday 27th and Saturday 28th- Mangos patrons show the usual amount of respect by shouting, swearing, speeding down the street, fighting. Saturday was particularly bad with hundreds of people coming out of the club from 2:45am onwards. One group of around 10 drunk men stayed around the corner of Artichoke Hill sat in cars from 3:00am until 4:30am listening to loud music. No one from Mangos was there to move them on. I was unable to get back to sleep until they left. Another show of how little the owners of Mangos care about the surrounding residential area. HOW CAN THIS KEEP GOING ON!?"

Midweek Mango's Mayhem

In spite of the imminent hearing to decide the future of their alcohol license, Mango's has chosen to add to the disturbance suffered by local residents by opening a fortnightly student's night.

Here is one resident's view:

"Last night (Wednesday 29th September) was the opening night for a fortnightly student event at Mangos (http://www.mangos-london.com/) and I was woken at 2:00 with hundreds of drunk students flooding out of the nightclub blowing whistles, shouting, fighting and beeping car horns. This noise persisted until 3:00 meaning that I did not get a good nights sleep. No individual from the nightclub was present on the street. The next morning Artichoke Hill and Pennington Street was covered in alcohol bottles, fast food wrappers and sick."

As we move ever closer to Christmas the chances are that increasing numbers of residents will suffer disturbance caused by rowdy, drunken groups of youths leaving Mango's intent on anti-social behaviour.


As residents, our best possible chance of ending this nuisance will be at the Magistrates Court on 19 January 2010. We need to continue to collect evidence in support of our case. Mango's will no doubt assume that we will eventually get tired. We will not. We will eventually win.



If you suffer any late night noise, whether on Wednesdays or at the weekends, please leave a comment here.

Progress Report

A local resident left this comment:

"The last 2 weekends have been ridiculously busy and I've had cars parked right outside my house on both sides of the street. So much for the parking attendants, who seem to be there to observe the mayhem. I've been woken up at 4.30 in the morning by fights, screaming and cars beeping and revving. There is also the usual gangs of people hanging around on the corner of Artichoke Hill who stand about shouting after leaving the club. They never seem to be asked to leave by the "attendant" stood metres away. On the plus side, my sleep has been so badly affected I am able to get up at 4 in the morning and take lots of nice video footage of all this. I am expecting the next bank holiday to be horrific as always so I'm sure I will be forced to wake up and capture more of the same."

It seems clear that there have been no changes for the better over the past year.

To ensure that Mango's appeal fails we need to gather as much evidence as possible so please keep the comments coming.

Summer Bank Holiday - 31 August

The summer Bank Holiday will fall on the 31 August. Experience suggests that this will be a big weekend at Mango's. Residents should be aware that until we win the appeal Mango's will not be closed. If you are disturbed over the Bank Holiday weekend - or at any other time for that matter - please leave a comment on the blog.

Can this be legal?

A recent comment:

'Saturday night/Sunday Morning June 28. midnight to 5.00am. I was woken several times by shouting, by persons going to or leaving Mango's. I have to leave for work at 5.15am. I feel this is very unfair. I have also noticed flyers offering free admission and a 5,00am license. Can this be legal? '

Bank Holiday Weekend

A number of recent comments underline the fact that for residents the Mango's problem continues. We all know what the symptoms are. Equally, we are all aware of the treatment required, or, as a recent contributor put it, 'I hope this place gets shut dowon soon'.

Please continue to leave a comment. It could ensure that we get the right result at appeal.

'Entirely revoke the licence'

Following the Licensing hearing on the 28th April the council sent out this letter to those who attended.

Mango's to appeal

It should come as no surprise that Mango's will appeal the council's decision to revoke their licence. On page 13 of Docklands 24 of Wednesday 6 May, 2009 there is an article under the headline, 'Owners to fight revoked licence'.

In the article Mr Sharma makes a number of statements. He states for example that 'For the sake of 10-15 neighbours they are taking my licence away.' At the time of writing there are nearly 1000 hits on this blog. Are we to attribute this traffice to '10-15' neighbours?

Signatures from 65 neighbours were submitted to the council.

Mr Sharma goes on to state, 'I can't see the justice - we're in a small commercial area which is not residential.'

If the area is not residential how are we to explain the 65 signatures? These signatures included many from Breezers Court and Telford's Yard as well as Artichoke Hill. The presence of The Times and a garage does not make our area into an industrial estate.

Over the coming weeks it is imperative that we continue to gather evidence of the problem. The council may well have found our case compelling but we are close to a solution now and must bring all efforts to bear to ensure that the appeal is not upheld.

LBTH Licence Review Hearing

A formal hearing was held this evening by LBTH to review Mango's license. Having listened carefully to evidence given by both sides the council has found in favour of the residents and has revoked Mango's licence.

Mango's have the right to appeal. If they do, the appeal will be held at the Magistrates' Court to which everyone has the right to attend.

Pennington Street residents are now an important step closer to a long-term solution to the violence, noise, disruption and general anti-social behaviour that Mango's attracts to the street.

We are not there yet. Please continue to gather evidence and to leave comments on the blog. Tonight's result should make it clear to everyone that the situation is not hopeless. We will get there in the end.

Mango's license

A formal application has been lodged with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets' Licensing Department.

Support from local residents is essential.

Please email Mohshin.Ali@towerhamlets.gov.uk . It is important that you include your name and address in the email. Give as clear a picture as you can of the level of disturbance that Mango's brings to the area. Emails must reach Mr Ali by 25 March.

Keep reporting anti-social behaviour

Ah... so that's how it works... If only we'd known... Get that ASB number in your phone, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has a special squad standing by. So, if, hypothetically, you have a mob of drunken and howling sociopaths beating each other with empty Jack Daniels bottles outside your window every Saturday night, well, you know who to call... Remember, your calls work.

On and on it goes...

In the early hours of Sunday morning a local resident reported the following:

Another crazy weekend. Going to put some comments on the blog. Saturday was particularly bad, I took some video of a car revving that woke me up at 2.00 and then a fight between two groups of men that occurred at 4.15!! Absolutely no regard for the residents, one man spits at the car with girls in after calling them whores.

Docklands24 - Pennington Street Video

This link will take you to a compilation of various Mango's-related incidents in Pennington Street over the past few months.

Infernal din...

Click on the image for a larger version.

Make your views known

Very useful comment:

Has anyone gone to the safer neighbourhood police briefings? This problem is much more than a nuisance now. Here are the next ones:

14/03/2009 - 16:00 - 16:30 - Street Briefing - Waitrose - Thomas Moore Square E1

14/03/2009 - 16:30 - 17:00 - Street Briefing - Wapping Lane E1 - By the Green

14/03/2009 - 17:00 - 17:30 - Street Briefing - St.George's Town Hall - Cable Street E1

The Docklands24

Click on the image for a larger version:

Or click here to go directly to Docklands24

I don't want to hear your car stereo at 04:00 am is grateful to John Hyde, journalist at Docklands24 for his interest in our ongoing noise and anti-social behaviour problem. An article on our problems in and around Pennington Street will appear in the Docklands24 of 24 February.

In the article concerning the Cable Street clubs, above, the remarks made by the council spokesman seem very relevant to our situation:

'The continued operation of late night clubs and bars in this area, so close to residential occupiers, was not desirable and should be located in a town centre. Residents had been subject to noise and anti-social behaviour as a result of the unauthorised clubs and the benefits of allowing the clubs to operate did not outweigh the residential amenity concerns.'

Frantic Friday

I was woken at 1.20 with men shouting at the top of their voice at each other and having a brawl. Unfortunatley this was just out of view of my window, I have most of the shouting on the video though. Girls were shrieking at the top of their voice to try and stop the fight. One girl got caught by a punch. This was ongoing with the men being broken up by their friends, the police eventually arrived in a police van. Someone was taken off by an ambulance. The rest of the people were loitering around the street shouting and waking the residents.

The girl who had a punch thrown at her, drunk off her face, another male and a girl walked straight past me as I was filming and started hurling abuse at me. The girl who had the punch thrown at her said "Oy what the fuck are you doing, Guess what fuck you" and stuck her finger up at me. Great footage!! The drunk girl then went to the other side of the road, sat down and started crying. Another ambulance then pulled up and took her in. She was in there for about half an hour. She seemed pretty fine when she was throwing abuse at me! What a waste of the paramedics' time and taxpayer money.

Her friends (about 6 of them loitered around while the ambulance was there) being antisocial. When the ambulance left the girl was given a red blanket by the paramedic. She then started hurling abuse at her friends and punched one of the males in the face. One of the residents above my flat shouted down at the group to tell them to leave however one of the men shouted back "Fuckin' come down here, innit". They then walked off back towards Mango's front door.

At the same time as this two men were also having a verbal fight with one of the men (guy in white top) trying to start a fight with another friend.

My camera ran out of battery but from 3am until 3.30am a group of men were chanting Bhangra songs at the top of their voices and clapping their hands. Unfortunately I didn't get any of this on camera. I finally got to sleep at 4am.

What a load of rubbish...

This is what Pennington Street looks like on a Sunday morning.

11th January, 2009

More footage of the howling, urinating, car door-slamming, brawling and bawling individuals who patronise Mango's. Police officers and Mango's security staff are nowhere in sight.

Drunk, enraged...and ARMED.

The following comment was left by a local resident:

Mango’s was obviously in full swing again on Saturday night (10 January, 2009) as I was kept awake until after 4 o’clock in the morning with the usual gangs of Mango’s customers shouting, urinating in the street, playing ridiculously loud music and beeping car horns relentlessly outside my flat.However, I just wanted to warn you all about an incident myself and my boyfriend witnessed in the early hours of Sunday morning (11th January.)At about 3 am we became aware of a particularly aggressive and loud argument escalating in the middle of the street. At this point we got up to look out of our window to check what was happening and saw a young Asian man who was clearly drunk and enraged, threatening to go after someone and “get them.” His friend who had driven them there was trying to calm him down but after the argument continued and the first man was getting more aggressive towards his friend, they both went over to the boot of their car and rummaged for something, (lowering the boot door and shielding the view whenever a car passed.) It was then that the drunk man produced a long, metallic blue cosh in one hand and a large butchers knife with an 8 inch blade in the other. His friend began demanding the drunk man to give it him back and this argument continued for 5 minutes during which time we took the make and model of the car and its number plate. Eventually, the driver managed to take the knife off his friend and persuade him to get in the car, they then drove off. We phoned the police immediately and gave them full details.We’ve seen a lot of anti social behaviour since living on Pennington street but this was by far the worst. The fact that people are now bringing weapons in to our street just to go on a night out is frightening and it goes without saying we would never be exposed to this level of danger if it weren’t for Mango’s. This also suggests that any safety measures Mango’s may claim to put in place (a security attendant was no where to be seen all night) clearly have no benefit to us as residents. The metal detectors on Mango’s door just mean that people leave their knives in the car and take any violence into our street later.

For all we know this is a common occurence. For all we know there could even be firearms in some of these cars. The key point, and a point very well made by this contributor, is that residents would not be exposed to weapons in the street were it not for Mango's.