Rockets

I noticed the higher number of boards going up in the last few weeks and wondered whether these were green shoots or people being forced to sell due to redundancies. Interestingly, there are some very competitive mortgage deals out there if you have a big deposit and maybe those city folks who are still getting bonuses are looking at this as a good time to get into East Dulwich. In fact, two agents recently dropped letters through our door saying we have folks wanting a house in your road - maybe they are bluffing to get valutations done but we have not had those for a long while now. And pleasantly surprised when we got an initial valuation on our property for a mortgage application - it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

The same helicopter flew over LL today. They weren't doing the school run were they - when I was at school every year an army helicopter would come, land and take some 6th formers up for a flight to try and persuade them to sign up, either that or we have an army camp in our midsts!!!!

Posters are up in the area (went up at the weekend) and taking it to the vets to check for a chip in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, all three cats are tearing round the house having a whale of a time and the new one looking very relaxed!

We still have this kitten...taken it in during this snow storm and it is becoming very at home here so I hope we will not be accused of cat-napping once the weather improves!

Thanks for the warning. ;-) Rather oddly the poor little blighter will willingly chomp down on the Iams we gave it (our cats wouldn't touch the stuff so we had some spare). It is such a gorgeous cat but is not chipped, has no collar and seems to have taken up residence under a bush at the end of our garden. I do wonder whether it has been dumped as it is not a pure bengal cat - if it starts looking a bit ropey over the next few days we may take it to the vets and see if there is a chip on it somehwere. Our cats seem to have adopted it though so the decision may be made for us!!

Poor thing has been sat on our garden furniture all day. It looks about 6 months old and has obviously been cared for but when presented with food it wolfed it down as if it had not been fed in a while.

Just wondering if this is your kitten: we live on Hillcourt Road and for the last few weeks a tiger-striped (caramel and black stripes) kitten with white lower socks has been coming into our house, playing with our cats, sleeping on our sofa when we are out, generally making itself at home and hanging out with our cats (including tucking into their food). It's a persistant so and so and whilst we have no issues with it hanging around (nor, rather bizarrely, do our two cats) I just wondered whether it does have a home to go to!! Thanks

Has anyone noticed a drop in mains water pressure over the Christmas period? Both mine and my neighbour's boilers are on the blink due to the falling mains pressure. Spoke to my plumber who says he has been inundated with calls over the last few days from people in the ED area with the same problem.

Keef already admitted that he shouldn't have said it, and that he doesn't like violence. Perhaps Keef should drive a bus - sounds like he has the patience of a saint, tends not to engage brain before stiking and regrets his actions afterwards!! Sorry, couldn't resist! ;-)

Bus drivers - bringing a new form of terror to the roads. Every day you see or hear about bus drivers driving dangerously, aggressively or down-right irresponsibly - does TFL have any quality control and do any of them actually have to pass an intelligence or driving test of any kind!!!? No matter who was right or wrong in that incident you highlight the bus driver should be arrested and charged with assault for the punch and assault with a deadly weapon if it is right he tried to run the cyclist off the road. If he had managed to run the cyclist off the road and killed him under the wheels he would probably have been signed off sick due to the stress! I really hope the cyclist reported it and the bus driver can have Christmas to contemplate his actions and give long consideration to where he will get another job.

It would be interesting to press the council to reveal where their camera "hot spots" are i.e. which cameras generate most revenue, sorry I mean fines! I have been caught by that camera and had the fine. I suspect that camera must be their number one best earner or something close which would beg the question as to whether the council ever takes steps to make it clearer for drivers when one spot "catches" so many. I was in an Addison Lee cab the other day who went through the same junction - I warned him as we went down Rye Lane but the "Buses Only" signs are not at all clear and when people are using Sat Navs it ignores that 30 yards of Southwark Council Fine Heaven!!!

Gemma, whilst your caring nature has to be commended I fear making a point of highlighting this gentleman's plight to his boss will have a negative effect. I am sure his boss is fully aware of the situation and highlighting it to him will probably only result in the guy in the shop being sacked. Also, for a multitude of reasons, I would probably edit any reference in your post to where this shop in question is.

njc97 - merely pointing out the way that everyone now wants to use fines as a way of generating revenue. Was sarcastic to the guy after he had threatened to arrest me (which the head of park's police later told me was not following procedure and would have been illegal itself). Also, the bigger worry is the damage these parkies, sorry "police officers" do to the reputation of the police in general. I have never had any reason for the police to stop me for anything before and this jumped-up, glorified metermaid (park's police get six weeks training yet carry handcuffs, wear the same uniforms as the police - most police want rid of them as they are council police not police) was the most abnoxious person I have ever come across. The power had obviously gone straight to his pretend police hat!!! ;-)

I got stopped by some over-officious, jumped up, wannabe policeman in Battersea Park (they have their own very contorversial Parks Police) some months ago for cycling on Carriage Drive. This plastic policeman threatened to arrest me as I could not identify myself with photo id, so I offered him my wrists to cuff me and he lost interest then. He then took my details, phoned my pregnant partner to identify me (and ignored my request to treat the call sensitively as most folks who receive a call from "police" to identify a cyclist are receiving bad news) and then said I would be fined anything from one pound to a million pounds (I am not joking he really said that). Took his number, wished him a good day catching violent criminals and went about my way. Wrote a letter to the head park keeper, sorry I meant park's police, and he went into great detail explaining what a manace to society cyclists are and how the fabric of society will crumble if cyclists use Carriage Drive in Battersea Park. Nice little to and fro going, someone even added the CEO of Wandsworth Council to the thread, but suddenly parkie, sorry I mean park's police, lost the will to fight after I pointed out the complete lack of no cycling signs on some entrances to Carriage Drive. I then got a lovely letter telling me how the solicitor of Wandsworth Council had decided not to send me to court and fine me but that I had been a very, very naughty boy and should not do it again. I know this is very different to being caught cycling on pavements but I think councils now see cyclists as another way to generate revenues. A policeman friend of mine quite nicely pointed out to me that if a parkie, sorry park's police, tries to stop me again and he is not wearing a high visibility jacket I don't have to stop and can quite legitimately run him over (apparently it is something to do with PACE)!!!

Could it have been part of the card fraud clampdown going on at the moment?

Sounds like by doing what they did the Somerfield staff will probably end up on the receiving end of an assault charge and probably lose their jobs and the shoplifter will end up with handsome out-of-court settlement so he will probably not have to shoplift for a while. Now, if only he had been resisting then they could have slapped him about a bit and taught him a lesson the courts would never do.......

I was in the petrol station on East Dulwich Road and their chip and pin machine has gone to be replaced by a note saying they have been withdrawn. I suspect everyone is having a good poke around the machines just to make sure none of their staff have fitted something illegal into them. Kind of makes you laugh that the whole industry, despite all of the millions invested in security has potentially been undone by staff who use the machines in store - so I ask the question, does that make the store potentially liable for the loses rather than the banks? Just a thought.

Did I hear correctly somewhere that the banks insure themselves against the fraud and thus are not too keen to deal with the problem as they are the insurers and the insured. It seems to be such a huge problem that all the banks seem incapable of countering. It was not that long ago that I got a card reader from Barclays that I had to use everytime i logged onto internet banking which all seems a little pointless when no-one ever needs to get online and abuse my account they just ask a friendly petrol station attendant to take a webcam pic of both sides of my card and then use it in some country far far away and will never have their collar felt! And the irony is that now the card is blocked I cannot go online to check to make sure no-one has been buying things in that country far far away!

It does amaze me that we all seem to know about the dodgyness of some of the employees in our local stores/petrol stations etc yet no one seems to be able to do anything about them.

I just found out from Barclays that my card has been done and they found out when the city of london police raided a house and found my details on a laptop along with thousands of others. I do hope the owners of said laptop enjoy their time being detained at her majesty's pleasure as I am now unable to withdraw any money or use my card and I go on holiday tomorrow!!!

I had problems with freeview when using indoor aerials, could only get two channels and even then the quality was awful but as soon as we got an external one put up the reception for both was fine. Aerial engineer who came said the indoor aerials don't work so I took one of them back to Currys and the spotty sales boy said exactly the same thing that they get loads returned and the only way to get good coverage is to use an external.

Went through there last week (albeit with hand luggage only) and it all went very smoothly, although make sure you don't wander around the shops too long to get to some flights takes about 15 minutes of small trains, hundred of escalators and a lot of walking!!!

We received this idea this morning and I have to say I am not impressed. I live on one of the roads that already has speed humps and they are proposing more along the road. This will not slow anyone down - there is plenty of research to suggest that speed humps cause more accidents as people accelerate more between them, not to mention the additional environmental damage caused by them. What annoys me about this is that the council opens their letter by saying that "the urban speed limit of 30mph is PERCEIVED to be broken by many drivers". Why don't they go out and find out whether it is or isn't instead of suggesting the roads are filled with speeding maniacs. Yes, there are people who will speed round the roads but they will do that whatever measures are in place. From my experience the worst offenders are the buses - especially the P13 bus as they shoot along Underhill Road. I would like to know where these 113 collisions in three years took place as I suspect many happen on the road junctions in the area where line of sight is obscured by parked cars or worse (I am thinking of the removal truck that makes one of the junctions along the Lordship Lane end of Goodrich a nightmare to negotiate). How many of those collisions were caused by parents ignoring parking restrictions to drop kids off at school? How many were caused by people trying to drive down the middle of the road to avoid the incessant bouncing of the cars along speed humps? Without this level of detail it appears the council is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Traffic management is no longer about trying to slow people down - look at the experiments underway on Kensington High Street and other places where luddite traffic calming measures are being removed to be replaced with sloping pavements, no barriers etc. Whilst these measures may not work in ED it shows that sometimes more creative thinking is required than just sticking lumps in the road. We have plenty of lumps in the road and this looks like an admission by the council that the current traffic calming measures are not working so they will throw more of the same.

I suspect the arrival procedures (known as STARs) have been changed and I bet it is because the new holding areas for Stansted and Luton are pushing planes further south on their approach to Heathrow. Why does the cynic in me also suspect the changes may also have something to do with the third runway plans. A bit like Red Ken changing the phasing of the lights in London before the congestion charge came in! Either that of a government minister has complained to BAA about the noise above their house in Chelsea and has got it changed!!!

???? - yes I had to use commercial airlines because my Learjet is in the garage being converted back to 4-star leaded!