Rockets

Malumbu - genuine question, is your request for an apology aimed at Cllr McAsh or posters on the forum?

Duncan - you?re confusing and conflating local, regional and national politics. Local politics is very a unpredictable beast and, you never know, maybe change is coming. Local elections get decided by how much local people feel motivated to vote for councillors and that is mainly determined by how much those councillors have done for the local community over issues like LTNs. Labour and our local councillors are worried by what might happen in the local wards come May and the motivating factor to get people out to vote against them (and remember turnout is always low in council elections so it won?t take much to make a change) will be the LTN debacle. Apparently the response the councillors got during the door knocking exercise after they extended the LTN consultation period shocked them and made them realise May is not the shoe-in they have enjoyed previously. And the behaviour and attitude of some councillors over the past months has damaged their perception and reputation locally amongst many voters who may never have cared about council elections before. The problem for some of our councillors is that you cannot fudge, manipulate or dictate the result of an election in the same way you can a consultation and there are a lot of local people who feel the ballot box is the only way they can now be heard.

It's going to be interesting to see what the Lib Dems do - they have a couple of councillors in the north of the borough and if they are smart they could tweak their approach to LTNs to grab a few in the south too on the basis of what is happening around Dulwich? A policy shift to start building some more seats at the Tooley Street table could benefit their long term aims. Lib Dems have done well as council level picking up protest seats against both Tory and Labour incumbents. I agree we need more than a one policy councillor as this is much broader than just LTNs. It was interesting to see that an FOI has revealed pressure was being exerted on Lambeth and TFL to help resolve the Croxted Road issue as "there are elections coming in May". Our councillors know they are under pressure - their margins are tiny and they know that if people mobilise to vote against them they are under pressure. If everyone registered with One Dulwich in the area voted against the local councillors and galvanised behind specific candidates the political landscape could change massively. Going to be fun to watch! DKHB - your 3rd point deserves no response, such is the ludicrous nature of it....deary me....

But Ex- are you saying it was bad that people were trying to manipulate the consultation or that the council culled a lot of the responses on the basis that they thought they were duplicates etc? It may be timely to remind you that there was far more external influence being exerted by the likes of Southwark Cyclists and LCC on consultations across the capital. Across London there have been plenty of accusations of Labour councils manipulating LTN data and consultations to their advantage: Southwark, Lambeth, Islington, Waltham Forest and so the list goes on all with very familiar dodgy tactics being used by all of them that don't stand any scrutiny. Is this a coincidence? And I am not buying the Govt forced them too narrative, I think we all know these Labour councillors too well to suggest that they do anything the govt suggests without some sort of fight and this might be the first time in history that they have! So they were certainly willingly complicite and even if the govt forced them to do something strategically their tactical execution has been utterly horrendous - that responsibility lies with local councils not central government. Ultimately it seems May is the only time people will have their chance to have their say. Let's see what happens and wether the Southwark Red Wall starts to slowly crumble. It's unhealthy to have one party dominance for so long (at any level) and we are seeing the worst of it in Southwark.

Here?s what the Royal Mail said to Southwark News in October??why the hell isn?t this fixed by now?.it?s got worse not better?.does the Peckham office have a higher level of sick absences than other offices? https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/east-dulwich-postage-delay-royal-mail/ A Royal Mail spokesperson said: ?In the East Dulwich area, we are experiencing some disruption to service due to high levels sick absences and colleagues on annual leave. We are looking to resolve the situation in the near term by offering colleagues additional overtime and by getting in more resource. ?We aim to deliver to all addresses we have mail for six days a week. In cases of high sick absences, we typically commit to delivering at least every other day. ?We apologise to customers for any inconvenience they may experience as we work hard to resolve the situation?

I think some tactical voting is needed to send a message to Tooley Street that they cannot ignore their constituents any longer. A handful of independents could start the revolution! It's clear Labour are abusing their continual almost one-party state rule and for the benefit of everyone there needs to be some tangible opposition.

exdulwicher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Rockets - I'm no expert on council meetings > although I know the basic governance processes > from working with / for councils but the whole > point of a Scrutiny Committee is that the person / > people responsible for that policy are there in > the room to answer questions about it. This would > apply for transport matters, housing developments, > planning approval (councils often have a separate > committee specifically for that actually), > financial matters... > > No good questioning the policy if the people > responsible for it aren't in the room to be > questioned. It's a good thing they're there, not a > bad thing. > > For example, if the Overview & Scrutiny Committee > are going to look at the councils accounts, you > want the Chief Finance Officer in the room to > explain / justify / answer questions about it. No > good them hiding in an office somewhere saying "as > it's about my work, I can't be there". It's > imperative that they are there! But Cllr Newens is part of the Scrutiny Committee no matter what they are scrutinising so that's what led me to question whether she recuses herself and is replaced by a reserve if she has a vested interested in the items being scrutinised. I don't think she is invited because they are talking about LTNs, she is invited as she is one of the members of the Scrutiny committee.

Does anyone know why some roads would be getting deliveries yet others would have had nothing for so long?

Is that where this falls down then because there are so few cross-party members - it becomes partisan by virtue of there being so few opposition members? The fact that Cllr Newens gets to sit as part of the committee reviewing how the council has handled the LTN deployments in her own ward seems utterly ludicrous. Does she recuse herself from matters involving LTNs?

What annoys me is that there seems little appetite for anyone to fix the problems we are experiencing - everyone in the Royal Mail is great at giving the excuses but we never hear about what solutions are being put in place to fix it or when it will be fixed - the lack of post for so long across a whole area is a shamefully poor reflection of the postal service - it's no longer fit for purpose, people post things on the understanding that the items will be delivered within a certain timeframe and that is the contract they take with the Royal Mail when they buy a stamp or pay for postage. The fact that this is affecting a large swathe of South East London shows that something is totally broken within the system. We have not had any post for getting on a for a month and all of our neighbours and most in the area are in the same boat - how long can this be allowed to continue?

Did I hear correctly that the old bank in Dulwich Village might become an Ivy Brasserie?

Nope - I did see a postman last week and my hopes were lifted but they never arrived on our street. Perhaps one of the councillors can tell us what is being done to resolve this issue - I know Helen Hayes was intervening last year but it is getting beyond a joke now - how long before we can expect all the missed pre-Christmas deliveries or has Royal Mail given up ever having to deliver them?

What does the Overview and Scrutiny committee do - I see a number of the members are actually the pro-LTN protagonists within the council so isn't a bit of a pointless exercise?

And in case Cllr McAsh missed the questions posed on the other thread before it met its untimely end there are some questions that it would be good for him to shed light on: 1) Where is the Jan 19 data from (for what purposes was it collected and from which point was it collected as it is not the same location as the Sept 21 monitoring point)? 2) What methodology was used to arrive at the Sept 21 figure? 3) Why does the EDG Central chart say: the Pre-implementation data for Jan 2019 has been adjusted to September 2019 levels to ensure compatibility and what adjustment took place and why? 4) Why was the decision taken to add the EDG Central monitoring point in Sept 21? 5) When was the Sep 21 monitoring captured - was it at the beginning of the month before the private schools went back or at the end of the month during the fuel crisis?

Admin - surely that's a yellow not a straight red? I think you could have warned people rather than locking the whole thread - it seems a bit knee-jerk but we appreciate you have been under pressure to lounge the thread so perhaps we should have self-policed a little more!

It's utterly mindless to post that on twitter - what was he thinking? It could well come back to haunt him - that stuff never disappears. I suspect half of Southwark Labour have liked it....if Cllr Williams has liked it is shows the attitude problem goes all the way to the top...more and more they act as if they are untouchable.....May 5th may come as a shock to a few.... I am amazed as well that someone sensible in Labour hasn't had a quiet word in his ear to say it needs to be deleted.

It is, in fact, incredibly stupid to post that on twitter but as we have seen time and time again from many councillors all they care about is their own echo-chamber and seem to lose all sense of reality when it comes to talking to like-minded individuals. He thinks it's funny, and I am sure his comrades would be all rolling about laughing at the message on his jumper but he wouldn't be happy if a Tory councillor was wearing a jumper that was saying "F*** teachers" so why is is it acceptable for him to target any group no matter how despicable you think that group might be? But given some of the people he looks up to refer to their opposition as s**m you can see how this happens. There's an air of aggression in politics nowadays and people in public office should be engaging brain before posting - Cllr McAsh has made a serious error of judgement here and I am not sure his school would be overly happy if their pupils were following him on twitter to see one of their teachers posting that. I understand personal views etc on twitter but you are still representing both the council and the school in your bio - show some class and don't drag your profession and council office into the gutter. The fact Cllr Williams has liked it speaks volumes - perhaps he will claim he didn't see the profanity on the jumper, nor the finger sign on it too! I can see the funny side, I just don't think someone in Cllr McAsh's position should be posting it onto a public twitter channel when he has no idea who will see it. And the fact Malumbu thinks anyone who has an issue with this is suffering a sense of humour failure just shows how some people will try to forgive anything within their own echo-chamber and highlights the point I was making earlier. As the Manics so wonderfully said: If you tolerate this your children will be next My worry remains that is the council are treating their constituents with such contempt over LTNs what else are they doing and what else will they do in future?

Metallic also raises a very good point about why so many of us are asking for the detail behind the data. All we have from the council is that the monitoring was done in September 21 but we need to know when it was collected because at the beginning of the month the local private schools had not gone back and at the end of the month the fuel crisis was resulting in a massive reduction in car and vehicle usage. So it is vital that information is shared so people know what the council is comparing. This is why Cllr Williams promised to share that data but has yet to do so.

Wow - had missed Cllr McAsh's Xmas twitter post: https://twitter.com/mcash/status/1474732079938158600?t=FOR6wsnJTMOsIBiLoc4dKQ&s=19 I suspect if a non-Labour councillor had posted something like this there would be outrage from the likes of Cllr McAsh trying to get them cancelled, contacting their employer to say is this appropriate for a primary school teacher and representative of the council to be posting this. But it seems if you are a Labour councillor (or for that matter opposition front bench member) you can do what you like, say what you like without any form of recrimination.

Same today with the Tuesday collections - everyone has put them by their brown bins but none have been collected.

I think we pretty much have that model here: - council installs measures it has struggled to get support for on the basis of the need for emergency social distancing caused by Covid - council engages in tick-box "consultation" process because it has to by law - "consultation" process demonstrates overwhelming local opposition to the measures in their current form - council issues highly flawed monitoring data and summary reports that hail the measures as a "success" - council leader promises to share methodology, timings and raw data used to collate the reports but never does - council proceeds regardless and makes the decision to make them permanent which we all knew was going to be the outcome the moment they put them in under the ludicrous guise of the need for social distancing Malumbu - be careful what you wish for. Just because you think these measures are great doesn't mean you should be celebrating the way Southwark have gone about this because next time they might be employing the same under-hand tactics to railroad something through that you don't like......and before you know it the people have zero influence on anything the council wants to do and that is a very dangerous precedent. Respect for the democratic process should be the no.1 protected priority within all local, regional and national authorities but it seems Southwark likes to bend the rules to their advantage if it suits their political agenda.

It's getting beyond a joke now. It's worse than it has ever been, it's as if they have just given up delivering letters. We haven't had any for a couple of weeks now and we know that come the second week of Jan a huge bundle of letters will drop through the door, many of which were supposed to be delivered during December. I thought councillors and MPs were supposed to have already intervened some months ago to get this resolved?

Second that! Hope you had a good one all!

What a great idea Malumbu....let's us know how you get on. But wait, as a Lewisham resident it would be a bit pointless you writing to Southwark as you don't actually live in the borough..;-)

Yup, that's your explanation but even you say it is your "understanding" so you're not sure either. Maybe Cllr McAsh can put this to bed once and for all by answering a few questions: 1) Where is the Jan 19 data from (for what purposes was it collected and from which point was it collected as it is not the same location as the Sept 21 monitoring point)? 2) What methodology was used to arrive at the Sept 21 figure? 3) Why does the EDG Central chart say: the Pre-implementation data for Jan 2019 has been adjusted to September 2019 levels to ensure compatibility and what adjustment took place and why? 4) Why was the decision taken to add the EDG Central monitoring point in Sept 21?