Rockets

In your world maybe, to others they are taking the balanced, rounded and pragmatic approach that the council should have taken from the outset - acknowledging that traffic is an issue but being smart enough to realise that just blocking roads is not the solution - it just pushes the problem elsewhere. They make it very clear that their objectives are aligned to that of the council - it's just the implementation and execution of the strategy that they are questioning. 156 people have registered their support thus far and I am sure many more who are fed-up with the way the council handles these issues will join. There is growing anger and frustration at the way the council manages these consultations - they would be well-advised to take note and course-correct quickly.

All, If you actually want your voice heard look here and sign-up - a fantastic, non-political, pragmatic group taking a balanced approach to the road challenges around Dulwich. It was set-up by people who were fed-up with the council's reluctance to engage in a balanced area-wide debate on traffic issues. https://www.onedulwich.uk/ 156 people have registered thus far and hopefully this will create the leverage needed to get our councillors to finally start taking a more democratic approach to these issues. And James, you were misled - the baseline measurement was during the road works - perhaps you would like to investigate further and let us know what you find out?

My goodness me, isn't onedulwich refreshing - what a well-thought out and pragmatic approach to the challenges Dulwich faces in terms of traffic. This is just the type of thing the residents across Dulwich need to support to ensure they are listened to by the council. The council's divide and conquer, knee-jerk and frankly dictatorial approach to area wide traffic challenges cannot be allowed to continue as we will be the ones who suffer. I hope more people get behind this and force the council to listen to a broader swathe of local opinion and input rather than those that engage with in their personal echo-chambers. It is more than damning on our local councillors that this even has to exist and suggests a complete dereliction of duty by them.

They really should not still be using the 47% figure for their propaganda - it is a lie - a deliberate fudging of figures to manage the narrative to their advantage when, in fact, there has been a steady decline in traffic through that junction over the years. Interesting as well that, when challenged, Cllr McAsh, perhaps not surprisingly, washed his hands of it and told us to complain/take it up with the local councillors in that ward when the figures were exposed as fake. Given the impact of that closure will be felt across his ward with more traffic on A-roads one might have expected him to try and get to the bottom of it.

I think, deep down, our local councillors and council resent what Lordship Lane has become and aren't interested in helping at all....I am utterly shocked by the lack of action pro-active distancing measures - bar the "Covid" closure of roads around the area, of course.

According to someone posting in the lounge the following are rumoured to be going: Next door oddbins Sylvester's pearspring and maybe headmasters

The plans certainly show barriers at each end of the road - you have to hope that is some sort of mistake or oversight - the council seems to be rushing these all through so maybe commonsense will prevail. All of the council's plans overlook displacement issues caused by them and there is a long held view by many that the fact these measures cause chaos elsewhere is useful to the council to help justify more changes.

Saucy has now been vacated, one of the betting shops recently closed - it was as I walked down past where the old Sogim pharmacy was that I noticed a lot of empty shops. I seem to remember an estate agent or two with notices saying the nearest branch is now....not I hasten to add that I will particularly miss betting shops or estate agents!

It was emergency service access that ultimately forced Lambeth to have to relent on the Loughborough junction debacle - not access along the individual roads that had been closed per se but for the chaos and gridlock it caused on surrounding roads which greatly increased response times for the emergency services. The London Ambulance service couldn't get Lambeth to listen so they had to go to Kate Hoey who wrote to the council and demanded they remove the scheme as it was putting patients at risk. It was only then that Lambeth listened. Lambeth had completely failed to consider the impact of such closures on surrounding streets and I fear the same thing is happening here.

I am not sure if anyone else has noticed but the number of empty shops on Lordship Lane is increasing rapidly and I wonder what will happen in the post-Covid world and whether any of them will get filled given the various pressures of high rents, business rates, CPZ etc? I hear there will be a number of independent shops that will likely not re-open post shutdown and I do wonder whether it may change significantly or whether others will take their place.

Goodgirlbadhair - what communication have you had from the council - are they really expecting you to park elsewhere? One would have thought that the council would have considered the residents on the street.

That's the point the council seems to overlook - traffic doesn't just disappear - it goes another route. Look at the origins of the lie the council was telling in relation to a supposed 40% increase in traffic through the Dulwich Village area to try to justify the "improvements" they were suggesting (and will now roll-out under their Covid emergency powers). The 40% increase they touted was an increase in traffic between the time they were doing the roadworks (when traffic dropped hugely as DC became impassable) and then the time after the works were completed. The numbers went back up to something slightly lower than before the roadworks very quickly thereafter. It doesn't take a PHD in traffic management to realise that during the period of the roadworks the traffic found another route. All of the measures being put in place by the council under their Covid powers are all designed to stop through traffic (DV, Champion Hill, Melbourne Grove, Goodrich Road) but they haven't spent any time trying to work out where that traffic will go next and what impact that will have on the roads not being closed to traffic. The utopian view of the world is that everyone will jump on bikes or walk - yet they won't - no-one is stupid enough to actually believe that.

Everyone knows that these measures have nothing to do with social distancing, it is wanton opportunism by the council to circumvent their own consultation and due-diligence processes (which, it has to be said, are usually implemented with the same attitude to democracy, fairness and balance as a directive from the politburo). Take a look at their long list of fast-tracked programmes throughout the borough, all but a handful are those that they had in the consultation system already and have nothing to do with Covid. If these changes cause the problems many suspect then will have to ensure those who supported them are held accountable for their actions - but, as we see so many times with this version of the Labour party no-one is ever responsible and it is always someone else's fault.

Can?t imagine the residents will be best pleased if they go ahead with blocks at each end.

Are they proposing NAL blocks at each end of the road? If so, where do the residents within that section park?

James, Your political ideology shapes everything you do. Take your twitter feed. Today you have been tweeting anti-police rhetoric. Let?s look at what you have been tweeting..... The Youness Bentahar video. Why would you decide to tweet that today? The video first appeared in July 2019 and you decide to tweet on the day of the BLM marches. Why? I learned of it when Graham Hunter Sky?s Spanish football correspondent retweeted it and you got national exposure (and, I am sorry for you, a lot of right-wing bots that come with that). Your tweet claimed that this was an example of police brutality yet if you had done your research before tweeting you would have been able to find Youness? own video that showed he was asked to move his car (which was parked illegally - yours and other council?s rules, including those where he was parked, are quite clear that you cannot park a car that close to a junction even if you have a disabled badge - as he did). In Youness?s video the police made it quite clear that he could move his car or face arrest. Moving the car was by far the best course of least resistance but he decided not to, and after numerous warnings the police moved in to arrest him and he resisted. His video stops when the police try to cuff him and then we cut to the video you tweeted showing the police wrestling with someone who doesn?t want to be arrested. That isn?t brutality, that appears to be the police trying to do their job with someone who steadfastly does not want to comply. Talk to any police officer and they will tell you that if someone doesn?t want to be arrested then it will take 4 or 5 police to actually subdue them to a point where they can be arrested. All the police want to do in those situations is to get an arm behind the back to be able to cuff the assailant - a lot harder to do than you think when someone doesn?t want to comply. In other situations those hellbent on disorder often use this as part of their strategy...resist arrest and you take 4/5 police out of the situation. Later this evening you tweeted your disgust at the video of police using horses on Whitehall to disperse those who were determined to cause disturbance at the BLM march. Thousands of people marched peacefully to show their support to the BLM movement, yet a few were hell bent on disturbance around Downing Street, as they had been on previous nights. Your tweet said that protests aren?t safe if horses charge into innocent people...but they weren?t charging were they? The video you retweeted showed horses barely cantering to disperse the crowd who were causing a disturbance (Let me be clear though that horses are used by the police to disperse crowds as 1) people are scared of horses as horses don?t care what they tread on and 2) you can?t sue a horse or have it fired should it tread on you) and then one of the horses gets spooked by something that is thrown at it causing it to bolt and badly injure its rider. Yet you respond to a police tweet that the horse was uninjured that you have ?solidarity with this conscientious objector - refusing to partake in violence?. I am just wondering what compels someone to tweet this stuff out? You are an elected representative - or was this tweet only meant for Labour Party members? ;-) This screams to me that you are constantly letting your political ideology get in the way of rational analysis and I can?t understand why you don?t apply a pragmatic approach to what is actually happening, and this is why I accuse you of doing the same in every aspect of Goose Green and East Dulwich decision making. Anyway, politics would be nothing without differing views and discourse therein so I hope you have a good weekend...despite the weather!

James, Where does the council expect that through traffic to go - I am presuming the council has modelled this? Perhaps you could share? Are you expecting traffic to significantly increase along Matham Grove, for example, as people search for another route? The Matham Grove right turn onto Lordship Lane is pretty hazardous as it is and I suspect there will be a big increase in traffic along this route to avoid the no right turn from East Dulwich Grove onto Lordship Lane. Are we to presume the traffic along Lordship Lane will also increase significantly with both the Melbourne Grove closure and the Dulwich Village closures? What plans does the council have to deal with this?

To be fair James the blog post is hosted on your personal public blog that you advertise within your own signature on this forum. So to allude to it being sent just to Labour party members is a bit disingenuous - anyone can click on the link at the bottom of your last post.

James, Our messages crossed in the ether. I am glad you will be installing some bike securing points along Lordship Lane - you might also want to look at temporarily widening some of the footpaths along Lordship Lane - anyone who has walked down Lordship Lane can see that a quick fix can be installed very easily and will be hugely beneficial to aiding social distancing. You say that the temporary measures will be installed in the next two weeks - yet the council's document within the link you pasted says, quite clearly, that a decision "is not due BEFORE Jun 15th" by my basic maths that is 9 days away. Have you jumped the gun a bit or was this always a done deal from the outset, like many of us suspected? On the basis of this can we presume that all of the other measures are like Dulwich Village and Champion Hill are also being given the green light? It will be interesting to see what the cumulative impact of the DV, Melbourne Grove and other closures have on the surrounding roads once they all start in the next two weeks. The point you, deliberately, miss on my challenge to you is that everything you do can be rooted back to your political views and party political aspirations. Look, we understand - you're a politician - you're a marxist - you're a teacher - you're a union activist - all of those things are admirable and I commend you on fighting the government at every opportunity (somebody has to but I also think schoolchildren should not be used as a political football by either side) but sometimes, just sometimes, you have to take a step back and question whether you are actually listening to all your constituents or just those who resonate with your own ideology. Unfortunately the Labour party took an absolute hiding in the last election and delivered us four more years of tory fun and games because of just this blinkered approach and, I am afraid, you seem to be falling into the same trap and it is the constituents as a whole across all of your ward who will suffer.

And look at the link, it's not just Melbourne Grove - they are basically trying to fast-track every programme they have under "consultation" - Dulwich Village, Champion Hill etc etc. They are using Covid as a means to circumvent their own consultation process - you have got to admire their chutzpah.

I think, and I might be wrong, that the council's hands are tied by government directives on this (although as we have seen on school re-openings councils can advise against compliance - maybe public toilets aren't such a political football!) but it would make absolute sense to re-open them as a matter of urgency. I have been shocked by how little Southwark seems to have done to aid social distancing. Lordship Lane is a nightmare. On Saturday afternoon it was almost impossible to socially distance along its length - the lines that formed out of Moxons and Oddono's were ludicrous and often overlapped one another - the council could have easily put temporary bollards along the length of Lordship lane to take away the parking lane along it. A few weeks into the lockdown I was very pleasantly surprised to see the efforts Lambeth had gone to to ensure social distancing near Brockwell Park by putting temporary bollards under the bridge near the station. A simple but very effective measure that benefited everyone. By comparison, Southwark, or certainly Southwark council in the Lordship Lane area, has done nothing. Perhaps Cllr McAsh might care to give us an update on what has come of all the great suggestions made by the posters on this forum?

I think much will depend on your own personal feelings and aversion to risk. If you think the risk of him having it is low, welcome him back - if you're worried, tell him no or tell him if he does he needs to self isolate. He hasn't been part of your household during lockdown and given people are being discouraged from being in anyone's house (the advice on BBQs is to stay outside and only use the toilet and then return outside immediately) you would be perfectly right to say you don't feel comfortable with it. It's the same approach to second homes where people are being encouraged to stay put and not travel back and forward to a second home. It is a difficult one as it is his main home but what was the reason he stayed in North London - everyone knew we were heading into lock down so it couldn't have come as much of a surprise - let's be honest it wouldn't have been difficult to get back? It wasn't like he was stuck on the other side of the world. Is there any background as to why he wants to come back now - did he fall out with his girlfriend or will he be going back and forward to hers over the coming days and weeks? ;-)

Rahrahrah - I don't think there have been any. The only action the local councillors seem to have taken is setting up the survey for the Melbourne Grove closure and the invitation on this thread to come up with some ideas. Walking down Lordship lane it is clear that social distancing is a huge problem and there could be some very quick fixes to alleviate the problem like reclaiming the parking spaces in front of the Co-Op and Jazz's on the other side to allow people to pass safely - the section in front of Tandorri Nights is particularly narrow. I can't work out why Southwark aren't doing more. A lot of other local councils (Lambeth, Lewisham, Croydon, Camden, Hammersmith, Kensington) have moved with great speed and made wholesale temporary changes to roads and pavements to benefit their communities yet Southwark seems to be doing next to nothing and moving incredibly slowly. To be honest I am amazed that our local councillors haven't done anything to help the shoppers and traders who use Lordship Lane. I just wish they had approached Lordship Lane and the wider community with the same vim and vigour that they jumped on the opportunity to try and close Melbourne Grove.

Yes I am afraid they are. They are limited on the number of night take-offs and landings they can make and they try to schedule the planes to arrive (mostly from the Far East) from 4.30am to 6am. We tend to hear them buzzing our house from 5am but if they get a good tailwind they can be as early as 4.30am.

James, I added an entry to the interactive map. Will you be alerting us to which plans are being implemented and when, there are a lot of great ideas that have been posted?