Alex K

Echo lpool: Inside the house, under the sink in the kitchen. Our kitchen faces onto Abbotswood Road. Some houses have their kitchens at the rear. Perhaps a different arrangement there...

The recycling / rubbish pick-up here on Abbotswood Road seems to work well. We don't have garden or food waste (those go into one of our two compost bins) and the regular rubbish bin, packaging, what-not: One bag every three, four weeks. But oh!, the empty gin bottles... For their sake alone, yes please, weekly blue-box collections.

That two-station backtrack from East Dulwich to Tulse Hill with Thameslink service up to St Pancras isn't always a time-saver, but it's far more relaxed than the bus slog via Camberwell, with the transfer to the 45.

It'll all be used by someone somewhere. A few days ago I was startled to see how many ads Hungarian websites have for "Angol ruha b?l?k", baled English clothes / English clothes by the bale, 55 forint the kilo... 'sabout 20p.

To DJKQ -- indeed it seems that measures during the Thatcher administration substantially shrank council involvement in provision of housing. I hadn't cottoned on to the extent to which this occurred. When I think of housing in Paris I think of a central core, within the peripherique, largely occupied by the well-to-do; an orbital of high-density housing for the disaffected with few skills to offer on the jobmarket; and a further orbital, greener than the core, again largely occupied by the well-to-do. Have tenant security and "rent control" slowed segregation of the poor into the banlieue? Possibly. But that system has its problems, too, or so it seems to me.

Hi, languagelounger. Thanks for an informative post. But may I ask you to re-consider one small aspect of it? "Unless they are subsidised by someone else (parents), which surely, in your language, makes them 'undeserving'..." -- I don't know who are "the deserving poor" and who are "the undeserving poor". Some centuries ago it was easier to tell, back when the rich man was in his castle, the poor man at its gate. Then the "deserving", after lives of conspicuous piety, were granted shelter in almshouses and the "undeserving" (blasphemers, fornicators, that lot) in workhouses. Or so I've heard -- all second-hand, though; really not my epoch. Accordingly, I don't have an opinion on whether recipients of transfer of wealth (as a house-purchase deposit) from older generation to younger generation are "deserving" or "undeserving"; and I take mild exception to being tagged as having an opinion on the point. The fragrant holders of fraudulently obtained "non-status" mortgages are in an interesting category. I didn't appreciate that large numbers of mortgages were granted on such a basis in recent years. (Certainly I didn't get one. I've never been clever about finances. A contributing factor to my still paying rent!) The transfer of wealth in that situation took place not within a family, but from mortgagor to mortgagee. You've traced that wealth beyond the mortgagor to the public funds that bailed out conniving banks. To have profited from that sort of transfer of wealth, obtained by deception, DOES seem wicked. But I shall be surprised to learn that enquiries into various failed banks' status have gone deeply enough to pick out individual mortgagees, to review loan-origination documents, and to prosecute the persons, on both sides of the desk, who swore falsely.

Thanks, DJKillaQueen, for a factual and informative response. My understanding is -- after some feats of WikiFu -- that charitable organisations such as the Peabody Trust began in the 1860s to provide subsidised lodgings for those who could not afford to live where they wanted to live. (I write "wanted to live" rather than "needed to live" because in that era, it seems to me, emigration was an option that some persons chose.) These organisations are now known as housing associations. They have increasingly accommodated themselves to governmental regulation (as a part of gaining access to government-dispensed funds) and are since 2008 considered in law public authorities. The Peabody Trust supplied, in effect, a privately organised alternative to the almshouse. (The balance between "almshouse" and "workhouse" has never been an easy one to get right... who are the deserving poor, who are the Bill Sikeses and the benefits scroungers?) During the 1850s, 1870s, and 1890s various Acts for the Housing of the Working Classes established that a municipality, that is, its representatives, could inspect housing owned by private landlords, command that it be set in order at the landlords' expense, or order that it be torn down -- and that a municipality could tax its inhabitants for the funds necessary to build subsidised lodgings. Council-erected housing was the result. Minder, when I wrote "always in the background", I meant: Always there, taken as a given, part of the landscape. Council housing for me has been part of How Things Are, un-noticed, in the same way that air is invisible. Good, now and then, to step back and ask: How did things as they are get to be as they are? With regard to your question of "Who else but the local council had to manage them?", the Wikipedia article on housing associations lets me infer that for decades the answer was: "Housing associations". They handled much of the subsidised-housing stock till after World War II, when replacement of housing stock lost to bomb raids was too big a job for the private sector to take on. In the Thatcher years, they accepted responsibility for much council stock, tipping the balance back the other way. Thanks, Languagelounger. Building codes, governmentally mandated inspections of rented properties (whether or not the rent is paid by the council -- I'm a private tenant, and my landlord sends in a CORGI gasfitter to check the boiler and cooker once a year), civil-rights legislation, and the Acts that permitted slum clearance have done a lot to improve the quality of housing stock. In theory, at least, or so it seems to me, a council could say: We don't want to own the housing; but before we write you, Ms Landlord, a rent cheque we shall be sure that the housing that you let is in apple-pie order. Maintain a force of inspectors, then, rather than a force of plumbers, glaziers, plasterers, electricians... There will always be Rachmans, always be inspectors who accept backhanders to look the other way. But in theory! **grin**

Having grown up with "council housing" always in the background (although our family never needed to avail itself of such a benefit), I don't know the answer to a simple question: When was it agreed that it is the council's business to own and to manage housing? (Just a blind spot in my education. But I shall be grateful for historical background.) A counter-example to the council-as-landlord model exists, of course: Private landlords, council tenants (rent paid by the council, but the properties in which the needy are housed are owned by individuals or by firms). Perhaps the question is: If Southwark Council were to "outsource" provision of housing to private landlords altogether, would things be worse for those who are now the council's tenants? So, two questions: Historical background, and a Tory-ish hypothetical... Thanks!

Northwest side (Dog Kennel Hill, DKH): More space than northeast side (Grove Vale, GV). DKH: Maybe two yards on the flat between railway embankment and Peabody Estate access road. GV: Foot of embankment almost adjoins building. No need for carving away the embankment and building retaining walls to create more flat area, I think. If the embankment were clear-mown and receptacles for tyres were put halfway up the embankment, bicycles could easily be rolled up the lower half of the embankment, with front tyre dropped into a receptacle (slotted concrete block with a high lip on the downhill side to prevent rollback?) and rear wheel locked to a stanchion, then left standing to await commuters' return. All one would need is a yard's-breadth of walkway at the base of the embankment and good lighting / CCTV taping - monitoring to let users feel comfortable venturing into the bike-park.

James, I'll skibble past there on the way home and reconnoitre. Peabody Estate side, I think you're talking, yes? But a general shufti.

As Jeremy pointed out, with six lockers max you blink and you've missed the moments when the lockers are in use. And James Barber says, at second hand, interest in their use is strong. And Boris bikes in East Dulwich, like a Tube extension, are for our grandchildren, not for us. It's a crowded spot there at the station entrance, nowhere to tuck another set of bike lockers, not right now. Maybe when the garden centre next the station is sold for another block of flats, as it must be one of these years, planning permission can wangle a bike-park in exchange for another storey or two.

The pavement on the south side of Dog Kennel Hill as the road goes beneath the railway line at East Dulwich Station is fairly wide -- wide enough to have become, against a masonry pier, the site of a set of bicycle lockers. Because I can't remember seeing someone loading a bicycle into or out of a locker, I wonder if the lockers would be missed. (Surely users can be relied upon to speak up here.) If the lockers would NOT be missed, then in their place, perhaps a rack of "Boris Bikes"? Could that programme extend this far into South London?

"Malay, Spanish, Irish, English, Dutch, and Bajan" -- whoa! That's a proper tangle of allegiances and no mistake! Almost any argument, any issue: Some ancestor will have been on the wrong side. Here's to Britain 2100 / Brazil 2000 and coffee-coloured people by the score, when none of this will matter any more.

InTexasatthemoment, you asked Loz, but I'll butt in. Answer: THEY SHOULDN'T. The council shouldn't be involved in shovelling snow away from our walks. In trimming back shrubs in our front gardens that encroach upon the public walkway. Indeed, you could make an argument that the freeholder owns her lot to the centre of the street in front, and that she is responsible for upkeep of front garden, pavement, and tarmacked road. For ease in co-ordination of larger projects (road re-tarmackings, kerb replacements, pavement clearance, rubbish disposal, provision of town criers and night watch[wo]men...) the council was given a mandate to act on individual freeholders' behalf collectively and to exact council tax in payment for those larger projects and their administering. That mandate is not cloisonne enamelwork but water-colour (and with a great deal of water in the wash, it seems to me). Crisp borders between responsibilities acknowledged as INDIVIDUAL and those foisted off upon the COLLECTIVE are few in the UK. In my opinion, when considering vegetable encroachment or snow removal, the argument for "violation - notice of correction - intervention - bill to violator" is strong. Efficacy in enforcement, however, seems to call for almost Swiss civic rectitude, with a willingness to accept responsibility and write cheques that (like the Swiss) reflects the cuckoo-clockwork android rather than the brawler bundled from beef and beer that is John Bull. Or: With compulsory trimmings-back of front-garden sprawl or walk-shovellings, as with compulsory motor-vehicle insurance, some people, the most "English" ones perhaps, won't play the game by generally agreed rules. Back to the stocks and ducking-stool? Well, since you ask... I'm all for occasions on which the East Dulwich community can unite, pro bono contra malum, and if hedge-neglecters are at the head of the social-opprobrium queue, so be it. Ripe fruit and riper dead cats only, please. Save brickbats for the inhabitants of Melbourne Grove who put their rubbish out in plastic sacks rather than in wheelie-bins.

"Hedge neglect" -- I glory in my shame.

At least it didn't have a sign around its neck reading "Headmistress". OF COURSE GOLLIWOG DOLLS ARE OFFENSIVE TO MANY PEOPLE. If you're among those people, don't buy a golliwog doll. OF COURSE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS OFFENSIVE TO MANY PEOPLE. If you're among those people, don't marry someone of your own sex. And leave other people to get on with their lives, eh, Dully?

Bleedin' Nora! We got off easy -- no TRIM OR DIE notices, just our front gardens whitewalled -- and no bills sent in afterward!

Agreed, Loz -- once every decade (see my original post) didn't seem a lot of money spent. Are funds available for that sort of thing in this fiscal year? Can't tell you. But if James can say "Here's the number to ring to ask that hedges be trimmed where they block the pavements", those whom rampant vegetation is crowding onto the tarmac will be able to find out if the council indeed can help.

Is the hedge blocking the ginnel (or other public footpath)? No? Sorry, yer on yer own!

No complaint, Loz -- came as a pleasant surprise, that hedge-trimming did.

Last year on Abbotswood Road council workers came by and whitewalled every hedge along every walk, cutting the vegetation back flush to the perpendicular from the edge of the paving. Front garden after front garden had the startled expression of someone whose eyebrows have been shaved off. No idea what prompted the intervention: My tenth year here and the first such event. An anecdote only, but demonstrating that money and people were available to the government for that sort of thing as recently as summer, 2010.

LadyDeliah cuts close to the bone. It sounds as if the school is in very bad trouble. But Lady D's text only hints at so many things! Let me quote her, below, and interpolate questions. LadyDeliah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My daughter left Goodrich last summer and I know > that Mrs Patterson was having a very difficult > time implementing the changes she felt were > necessary in the school. What were these changes? Why might she have felt them necessary? > There was fairly open > hostility from some of the White middle-class > parents whose advantage built up during the > previous regime seemed to have less currency with > Mrs Patterson. Advantage over whom? In what did advantage consist? > I didn't agree with all of her > changes, but I respect her reasons for making the > decisions she has made. What were the issues on which decisions had to be made; what decisions did she make; what reasons did she give? > It comes as no surprise to me that some if the 'I > know better' wealthy parents in the school have > turned their opposition to Mrs Patterson into > something of a vendetta as that was the flavour > that had started building up before my daughter > left. The poster is a smart arse insult to injury > and in my opinion Mrs Patterson was right to > interpret it as a veiled threat of an attempted > coup. I think the colour of the character about to > be lynched is irrelevant. It's the sentiment that > is important after months of undermining > hostility. Should a school offer several different sorts of education tailored to class or race backgrounds? Is an education that white middle-class parents might think good for their children not good for the children of black or Asian middle-class parents, or not good for the children of white lower-class parents? Conversely, is an education that black lower-class parents might think good for their children not likely to find approval from white middle-class parents? (I would hope that all these questions could be answered "No". Spelling, the multiplication table, ability to write the essay "My Favourite Pet", ability to give the proper change from a ?20 note for various small purchases -- the skills that one hopes a child will learn at primary school seem to me largely independent of skin colour or household income. Some pupils might receive most of their coaching in these skills at home, others at school. But the skills themselves...) Are those involved at this school REALLY lined up, in terms of what the school can do for children, on opposite sides of divisions by class and by race? I ask the last question because it seems to me that if they were, that would be immensely deplorable.

Seems as though WHATEVER the truths behind the story the headmistress may be done for at that school. From here onward no matter what the controversy it all might be about her and not about the kids / making the school better.

@alice: Oh, dear. I think I'm going to come over all Tory in this post, which is not my intention. What is the definition of "poverty" that has been used in assembling those statistics / percentages? Pensioners aside, the people whom I see on the streets of Peckham and Camberwell seem prosperous...

And me on my way home from Soper's yesterday afternoon, looking out the bus window at the park and thinking, Looks good for the hard use it takes.