Insuflo

No. I’ve read the Guardian and the Observer for forty-odd years but I haven’t bought a printed Observer this century; I only read them online. I haven’t bought a Saturday Guardian for at least twenty years and have bought a printed weekday Guardian twice: once when it went to a berliner format and once when it became a tabloid, just to see what they were like. I might buy an Observer one Sunday this summer to see what it’s like before it inevitably disappears for good. I subscribe to the Guardian but there is zero chance of me taking out a separate subscription for the Observer. It and the Graun have been declining in standard for a long time and are ever more padded out with lifestyle crap rather good reportage and analysis. My Guardian subscription has gone up 20% this month but its worth to me is lower than it has ever been.

Penguin, I broadly agree, except that the Girobank was a genuinely innovative and successful operation. It’s rather ironic that after all these years we are now back to banking at the Post Office due to all the bank branch closures. I agree that the roots of the problem go back further than 2012 (?), when the PO and RM were separated so RM could be sold. I’m willing to blame Peter Mandelson, Margaret Thatcher or even Keith Joseph. But none of them will be standing for the local council, hoping to make capital out of the possible closure of Lordship Lane PO, as if they are in no way responsible. The Lib Dems can’t be let off the hook that easily.

I am not disputing that the Post Office remains publicly owned. But the Lib Dems’ decision to separate and privatise Royal Mail has fatally undermined the PO. It is within the power of the Labour government to save what is left of the PO and the service it provides to the community, if they care enough; I suspect they do not. However, the appalling postal service is a constant reminder of the Lib Dems’ duplicity on this matter. It is actions taken under the Lib Dem / Conservative coalition that have brought us to this point.

The Post Office has been heading for extinction since James Barber’s Lib Dems split it away from Royal Mail so that they could sell off the latter on the cheap. We’ve all been paying the price of that decision with closure of Silvester Road and the dreadful deterioration in the postal service locally.

Vladi, you are wrong. The single wheel tag axle is fitted at the rearmost, behind the twin wheel, driven axle. This is obvious from photos of the upturned vehicle.

Dear God. I thought this sort of thing only happened in Streatham.

I think the 19.99 refers to the price of two pints in there now.

If you fancy an affordable lager, head to Watson’s General Telegraph on Forest Hill Road. I forget the name of it but a 4% lager, brewed in east London somewhere: £8.20 a pint. Form an orderly queue…

You are a cynic and you are wrong. The scheme has been planned a long time and TfL Streets will have set aside funding as part of a long term plan. The idea that a rush of public sector works take place toward the end of the financial year to use up money that has been found lying around is a myth.

Splodgenessabounds!

Exactly, that’s my point. It’s pedantic to say that what most people would recognise as an SUV is not really one.

Building passenger cars on a chassis went out with starting handles. Range Rovers have not been built on a chassis since the end of the last century. The last British saloon car to have a separate chassis was probably the Triumph Herald, designed in the 1950s and discontinued in 1971. If you must be pedantic, at least be accurate.

I’m guessing that “work wear ” doesn’t include suits and “sportswear” doesn’t include Dulwich Hamlet colours. Or rugby shirts.

No, just children running around etc. Perhaps they pester their parents to take them there after school, I don’t know.

I really wasn’t going to add anything more to this thread but was on a bus delayed by an ignorant, selfish motorist impeding a bus lane when “London Traffic” by The Jam popped up on my iTunes. One of the recently departed Rick Butler’s finest drumming performances. But the lyrics by Bruce Foxton could have been written yesterday, rather than forty years back. Have a listen kids. I am not a traffic engineer but before retirement I was a manager in various modes at TfL. I knew many engineers up to director level who were responsible for the TfL road network. They were capable and committed individuals who spent their entire careers trying to make the network run better. Traffic engineers were invariably car and driving enthusiasts similarly that top people at London Underground were always railway nerds. TfL Streets people would often find themselves in conflict with TfL Buses people over what should be prioritised. They were Londoners who lived and worked in this city and saw and appreciated the benefits and disadvantages of their successes and failures in changing the TfL network. They introduced all kinds of improvements for drivers and pedestrians that simply don’t exist outside London and were often consulted by European, Asian and north American traffic management professionals for their expertise. They often had to defend their positions against political interference, as when Boris Johnson made the reintroduction of a morning northbound contra flow in the Blackwall Tunnel a manifesto pledge to please Bromley tories, despite the Met Police having ended it to prevent what they believed was a mass casualty incident waiting to happen. Reinstate the Blackwall contra flow or I’ll sack you, demanded Johnson: no, we will not endanger lives to please you and the Evening Standard, was the response of engineers at TfL Streets. They prevailed and now, thankfully, neither the Evening Standard or Boris Johnson exists to worry Londoners. Late last century I worked for the Highways Agency dealing with customer service complaints by phone, email and letter. We were what was known in the media as “the Cones Hotline”. A pathetic, grey little man who had inadvertently become Prime Minister had decided that there was tabloid traction in getting pathetic, grey little men (it was only ever men) to complain to the Hghways Agency if they saw cones (and therefore roadworks) on the motorways. Get the Great (always with a capital G) British people out looking for waste of our money! That’ll sort these shirkers out! Cones out and no work taking place was always our principal complaint. So, I and a whole department of civil servants that had never existed before, spent lots of time and money wasting the time of traffic engineers who invariably had a totally sensible, pertinent and time tested explanation of why repairing 100 yards of the M6 requires 2 miles of lane closures and cones (vehicles cover a hell of a lot of ground at 70 mph). They could have just been getting on with their jobs (and the roads would be open quicker) instead of explaining things to me, so I could pander to Angry of Mayfair and Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. We used to call the regular complainants the “I pay your wages “ brigade. The Daily Mail, Express and Evening Standard also took up much of our time on slow news days. The point is Penguin 68, is that your opinions are based upon ignorance, anger and a notion that somebody somewhere is trying to get one over on you. It’s all rather childish, I think. I have no doubt that these works have been carefully planned with every effort to avoid disruption. And the local populace has been engaged with and considered, as is demonstrated by the hand delivered letter you received and the previous consultation exercise, which I presume you didn’t respond to. Public servants are under attack in the USA and many parts of Europe. I really think that we need to consider how we use language and how we relate to those who serve us. Call out poor performance by all means. But please do so from an informed standpoint. The bus lane has cleared! It was some bloke in a grey BMW. What’s the chances? * NB: this lecture may have taken longer to write than my bus was delayed by that BMW lout but RIP Rick Butler.