Rockets

Spot on Penguin68 - there does seem to be some selective blindness amongst the cycling community and it is interesting how their own narrative has changed as more people experience the impacts of bad cycling. First it was very much the case of - "this just doesn't happen" and now when people are seeing it does happen then the narrative has shifted to "well we aren't as bad as car drivers". Only the most myopic could spend any time walking around London and say that there isn't a problem with cyclists - I often stop to wait to cross at junctions and wince as I see cyclists steaming through the junction on red lights without looking as they would stand no chance if any vehicle was passing under the green light and then the response would be "look another car hitting a cyclist" when it was the very action of the cyclist that caused the accident. There is a problem and the majority of the cycling community seems hell bent on refusing to acknowledge it.

In fact, in the new hierarchy of road users, the onus is on the cyclist to prioritise pedestrians - clearly something most are not aware of.

Apparently they have had to isolate the testing facility/company from the rest of the network and staff have had to revert to paper communication.

Penguin68 sorry to hear this. It is a growing problem with some cyclists presenting increased risk to themselves, pedestrians and other road (and pavement) users by cycling in a selfish and dangerous manner.

Boo hiss...I loved that story.....and I still think she made use of the hill to plan her attack, strategically it would make sense! 😉

Looks like she gathered on Dawson's Hill. got defeated at One Tree Hill and died on Peckham Rye.... https://www.dawsonshill.org.uk/

I had always been led to believe that Queen Boudicca had mustered her army on the hill before launching an attack on the Romans from there and then committed suicide on Peckham Rye.

Errr the signs on the fences....there were signs telling people how long the disruption was going to be under the original plans (diversions of public footpaths etc) and now the council has attached a new one over the top telling them that Brockwell Live are responsible for remedying the problems and the fences will be up "until further notice". I suspect they are going have to re-seed or re-lay large swathes of grass and that requires some time to bed in so I suspect the Brockwell Wall will be up for some time. If you want to go look yourself head on over to the BMX track at the top of the hill and you will find one of the signs there - I was there today.

Brockwell Park is still fenced off and looks like it will be for some time. The council have put signs up saying that Brockwell Live are responsible for restoring the park (got to love it when council's point the fingers at others to aportion blame!) and that the fences will stay up "until further notice". Looking through the fence gaps I suspect the Brockwell Wall will be up for some time as huge swathes of the park are compacted mud. The Brixton side of the park was very crowded due to the Herne Hill side being unusable.

You may not believe anything OneDulwich says but you would believe Cllr Leeming and his "handful of times in the past few years"? 15 times a month suggests he may have been less than honest about how often the emergency services had been using the junction wouldnt you agree..but, let's be honest, he has previous for this type of misleading spin...thankfully FOIs are great for exposing council, ahem, "oversights" such as these. Perhaps you should try and piece the jigsaw together again. It looks to me as if One Dulwich are saying some emergency services had not been consulted in March. The Southwark News article from April only confirms LFB had been consulted but no timing for this is given and the LFB statement about contacting the wrong Southwark team is a bit unclear. What you also need to understand is the emergency services hate road blocks - always have done, always will do. Why? Because they slow response times and endanger lives as a result and they are judged on how quickly they get to an emergency call.. Our local councillors, <Dulwich Society name> and the pro-LTN lobby love roadblocks so the two are always going to be at odds with each other. On one side emergency services want no road blocks so they can get to emergency calls quickly, on the other groups who want to close as many roads as possible to all vehicular traffic. And when LAS says they have "raised concerns" you can probably assume those concerns were ignored or rebuked by the council. It's LAS' way of saying "told you so". Given the council has a long history of ignoring the advice of the emergency services and putting their ideology ahead of resident safety I think it is clear where the issue lies here. Remember the emergency services were telling Southwark for months and months that the first DV closure was causing delays but Southwark repeatedly, and deliberately, ignored them. We also have to ask, again, why is the council and the pro-LTN lobby so desperate to block vehicular access at parts of that junction - so much tax payers money has been wasted on that junctions already? To whose agenda are they working as it is clear that the biggest danger at that junction is now posed by speeding cyclists yet the council seem utterly disinterested in addressing that issue? One wonders why that might be?

We always use Balfes and they are very good too.

I think it is far more telling that it got to this point and, it seems, that the Dulwich Society has an internal issue with a sub-committee headed by one of London's leading active travel lobbyists.....

To be fair DulvilleRes it was your post that triggered the change of direction and suddenly the affairs of the Dulwich Society seemed far more interesting than rants about who is behind One Dulwich. In light of some of the things you have now drawn our attention to I think there are far more pertinent questions around why <name removed> was ever allowed anywhere near a DS sub-committee - a clear conflict of interest and seemingly it led to less than impartial approaches to sub-committee issues. You focus on the most recent SGM (and it is clear there are two sides to that particular story) but what is of far more interest is what has been happening to get us to that point, why DS has had to state that the sub-committe headed by <name removed> does not make decisions on behalf of DS or that concerns were raised that the sub-committee was not being neutral in council consultations. Any thoughts on those issues?

But might it be something of a conflict of interest that an award winning active travel lobbyist (you forgot to mention that part), who LCC commends for bringing Dulwich Square into existence, is leading the environmental and transport sub-committee of the Dulwich Society, a society that insists on taking a neutral position? Or do you think that like <names removed> we are supposed to believe that <name removed> will take an impartial position on all matters? Are we to assume that since <name removed - the environment contact at DS> took the role some of the decisions made by the sub-committee have been seen by the Dulwich Society as less than impartial - the minutes from the 2021 meeting would suggest that might be the case? Is it telling that the Dulwich Society has had to put on record that the sub-committee that <name removed> leads does not make decisions on behalf of DS? Sanda, can I ask if had you attended meetings before 2021 and, if not, what made you tstart attending that year? It appears there was a large increase in members and attendees that year.

Wow...just read the SGM of 2021 and it is very interesting particularly where it says in bold: The Travel & Environment Sub-Committee does not make decisions on behalf of the Dulwich Society. Was there some sort of takeover of the sub-committee by active travel lobbyists? Very interesting to see that new chair was <name removed> who is: Volunteer Chair of Southwark Living Streets A member of Dulwich and Herne Hill Safer Routes to School which cites partners as: Dulwich Society Living Streets A seemingly now defunct group called Clean Air Parents Network - I wonder if this is any relation to Clean Air Dulwich? who won London Cycling Campaign Campaigner Active Travel Campaigner Award: LCC said: "<name removed> from Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School was awarded active travel campaigner of the year for all the work she’s done, particularly around Our Healthy Streets Dulwich and the Streetspace measures that brought us Dulwich Square." on accepting the award she said the below (I did read it and thought is Clean Air Dulwich a group - it seems to be more an anonymous online lobby group but very interested that she called them out specifically amongst actual groups.......: She said: "I've learned at the feet of greats like Alastair Hanton and Jeremy Leach. We are proud to work collaboratively with amazing groups such as Mums for Lungs, Clean Air Dulwich, Southwark Cyclists, Lambeth Cyclists, London Living Streets, Better Streets groups, the new love my LTN groups that we're getting to know, and more." who made deputations to Southwark Council on behalf of Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes in support of changes to Townley Road in 2015 Is this yet another example of the closed-shop active travel lobbyists assuming positions and then using them to propel changes - so interesting that the Dulwich Society said that the travel and Environmental Sub-Committee does not make decisions on behalf of DS...which suggests they did/thought they could? Does anyone close to DS have an opinion? I do wonder whether there is a very small group of local active travel campaigners, many of them who have linked to the local council and councillors who are behind all of the various lobby groups (online and actual) and all those groups are related to one another by that small group of people. And to think this thread was born from people questioning One Dulwich - what a can of worms those attacking One Dulwich seem to have opened as they seem to have, inadvertently, shone a light on the way the pro-LTN lobby operates. dulwich-society-sgm-20210628-amp.pdf

On the appointments to the sub-committees - do those appointed have to declare any conflicts of interest and does anyone know what the selection process is?

This is getting fascinating. Are there conflicts of interest at play here within the Dulwich Society? A little bit of research has provided some interesting nuggets.....

DulvilleRes...is this correct - did the Chair make that threat?

@DulvilleRes any response? This hardly seems very democratic.....is someone trying to influence the Society members unfairly to force their personal agenda?

Yes never ever camp at the bottom of Pennard Hill!!! 😉 Interesting that Lambeth council have said that they will re-run Brockwell Bounce in the summer but away from Brockwell Park - I do wonder whether damage caused by the rain is such that they know they are going to have to take major remedial action which may mean the affected areas are going to need to be cordoned off for a while. I wonder whether the decision on whether Mighty Hoopla can go ahead has been made yet - apparently the organisers have be frantically laying duck boards over the mud.

These pictures from the Brixton Buzz website are pretty reminiscent of a wet Glastonbury......

This is always the problem - if it is dry damage tends to be superficial - if it is wet the damage is much longer term and actually becomes a health and safety issue for future events - the remedial action festival organisers tend to take is putting down wood chips or other such to provide firmer footing and soak up some of the residual water/mud or to put down metal walkways over the affected areas but, as anyone who has been to a wet Glastonbury can attest, once it goes muddy it stays muddy - very muddy and the damage takes a long time to recover - normally requiring complete re-seeding or re-laying. Ironic too that the free community festival - no doubt a quid pro quo from the organisers of the bigger festivals using the site - is the one that is cancelled and that the organisers will do the remedial work and still go ahead with the revenue generating Mighty Hoopla etc at the weekend because if they cancel that then refunds will be required.

I think this is one of the major issues - nowadays almost anyone can rent a motorised Lime bike and head out onto the road. I was sat outside the Actress a while back and watched as, within minutes of one another, two people came flying up North Cross Road on Lime bikes and neither of them even paused to check whether anything was coming along Crystal Palace Road - they just drove straight across the junction without looking. If a car had been coming in either direction they would have been hit and no doubt local lobby groups would protest that another driver hit a cyclist when in fact it was the cyclists' stupidity that would have caused the accident. It's clear more people need training on how to use bikes and I think initiatives like this are needed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11gnlv9mro

Saw the best initiative during the Ride London event on Sunday - marshalls at every pedestrian crossing carrying huge STOP signs on massive sticks to force cyclists to stop - perhaps this is something TFL should employ at every red light moving forward with those disobeying the lights getting swatted with the stop sign....;-)

Interesting that Pub in the Park decided not to come back to Dulwich this year