Rockets

We have seen this narrative peddled as some sort of issue - can someone explain why some are so fixated on the amount of land for car storage - it seems to be the narrative of those (mainly the bike lobby) who want the space turned over to their chosen use? Surely the true value of car ownership is the flexibility of being able to jump into a car and perform a journey and not be beholden to the limitations of public transport? If it is (and I am not convinced it is) then is the transport system in London fundamentally broken? Given the repeated bail-outs TFL has had to fight central government for and given the increased revenues from ULEZ (and other revenue generation schemes targeting motorists) combined with the continued reduction in public transport is something foundationally broken with the whole system or is it now the mother of all political footballs with both sides happy to give it a good kick?

Bus services have been being cut in London since 2017....22 million miles in fact: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpde37700jjo#:~:text=The data%2C from the DfT's,a reduction of almost 14%. It seems that TFL took Covid as a strategic opportunity to cut things further and they have not returned despite passenger numbers returning. Meanwhile motorists are seen as a revenue raising opportunity by TFL and local councils at a time when public transport is declining...drivers are caught between a rock and a hard place and seem to be the go-to solution if you have a funding gap! One has to wonder where all this revenue is actually going - when I look at the £1.5m Southwark are spending on further updates to the Dulwich Village junction (and I know this is not TFL) I do wonder whether a lot of money is being wasted on ludicrous and utterly unnecessary ideological vanity projects that are championed by a few who have the ear of their local decision-makers. Although I do often wonder whether London doesn't ban them because it would hit champagne-socialist voters the hardest and that may not be a vote winner!! 😉

One Dulwich Campaign Update | 13 Apr Southwark to close Calton Avenue to emergency vehicles…again Emergency vehicles arriving from all over London need access through the Dulwich Village junction, which is the quickest connecting route in the Dulwich area. This was recognised in 2022, when the junction was reopened to the emergency services. Indeed, the design that went out for public consultation in December last year showed Calton Avenue as a ‘cycles and emergency services route’. Now, however, Southwark Council has decided once again to block off this arm of the junction, leaving just Court Lane open to emergency vehicles. This is clearly unworkable. The LAS has previously highlighted the dangers of closing a road at this junction saying that “emergency vehicles will be forced to take long detours around congested and narrow side streets… that could further delay an emergency response” for a “critically ill or injured patient”. The Council says it wants to block off Calton Avenue because a small number of non-emergency vehicles drive through the junction. In our view, this is down to poor signage – a straightforward traffic management issue. The London Ambulance Service (LAS) was pressured into accepting the blockage at a meeting with the Council in February. However, according to a recent FOI, the London Fire Brigade confirmed “we have had no confirmation of this proposal or communications regarding this”. Why is the safety of local residents being put at risk in this way? Please email us at [email protected] if you experience delays from the emergency services, and please continue to send us photos of emergency vehicles doing three-point turns or reversing out of side streets because of 24/7 road closures anywhere in the Dulwich area.

So I guess the £224m raised in 2022 was just a fringe-benefit to the mayor.....who then decided, during the worst cost of living crisis in living memory, to expand it to the outer boroughs as well...how wonderfully socialist! 😉 It's amazing how quickly socialist principles are forgotten when it comes to money and revenue generation..... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65778065

The climate crisis is being used by authorities to generate revenue - it's a convenient excuse/catch-all to help them justify revenue generation plans and, unfortunately, many lap it up and parrot it verbatim - CPZs were probably the last straw for many as they saw through the ludicrous narrative put out by the council that there were brought in to help the climate emergency which is clearly, utterly misleading greenwashing nonsense - but of course some drank the Kool-Aid. ULEZ is a revenue generation tool that may have a minimal (probably unmeasurable) impact on climate change and that is why so many challenged Sadiq on his claims that ULEZ had improved air quality in London after Sadiq and his team clearly tried to mislead Londoners: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68533703

Or perhaps the council just needs to get out and repair them.....the longer they are left the worse they get...

Potholes are caused by water getting into tarmac and then freezing and expanding and breaking up the road surface....but don't let the truth get in the way of a good story about increases in car weight.....roads are designed for buses and lorries and they weigh far more than an SUV...#makesyouthink

Yes and I bet a fair few of them who do jump on social media and so enrage Malumbu aren't actually from Bexleyheath or London at all but from the Russian or Chinese (or other) social media labs doing their utmost to try to destabilise. But the problem is that the likes of Malumbu get so enraged and give the trolls oxygen and then folks like Sadiq jump on this and try to create a narrative that there is some right-wing, fascist, conspiracy, tin-foil hat wearing brigade to deposition anyone who doesn't agree with his flawed plans. Let's be honest Sadiq cares not one jot for Londoners, he cares for Sadiq's political career and I, for one, can't stand his awfully cardboard media-trained patronising guff he comes out with every time he has a microphone thrust in front of him. But lots of people clearly do love him but that's probably more a reflection of the divisive nature of politics nowadays. Clearly Sadiq will win but he does seem concerned that people may protest vote against him via the Greens or Lib Dems which is probably a good reflection of how popular he actually is. When his vote for me leaflet dropped through our door and it highlighted not his policies but on how a vote for the Greens or Lib Dems would allow the Tories in - it spoke volumes.

Did this Guardian journalist not get the memo....https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/30/i-thought-selling-my-car-was-the-right-thing-to-do-but-part-of-me-wish-i-had-not-bothered?CMP=share_btn_url

A bit further afield the Crocked Well is good - and doesn't take long to walk. Rosendale has good days - again another nice Sunday stroll!

He took it everywhere with him - was quite the local character!

We had no issues with the digging - just major issues getting Openreach to send the right team for the dig! Can you shed any more light on the blame game ping pong?

I do wonder if the reason the monitoring strips have suddenly re-appeared all over Dulwich is as the council tries to satiate the above - given Cllr McAsh clearly stated that the LTNs can only be considered a success if they reduce traffic for everyone and given he now has ultimate responsibility for the LTNs and whether the council meeting the governments new guidance on them I do wonder if they are trying to "prove" they are working. How they manage to prove they are supported locally in light of new guidance on how they run consultations is a massive challenge for them - they can't fall back on previous consultations because they don't pass the new bar and if they run a new consultation they will have to add a yes/no response and that didn't work out too well for them over the CPZs.

P.S. admin I posted the DV junction comment in the wrong thread - the discussion from my post yesterday should actually be in this thread Malumbu, the majority of the 990 respondents (80% of whom said they live in Dulwich) tried to voice their opinions during the consultation but the council ignored them (see below). But really Malumbu £1.5m on a change to a junction that has already had a huge amount of cash spent on it that needs one alteration (Cyclists Dismount) to make it safer for everyone and at a time when the council is pleading poverty and asking the public to help it fund cycle hangers and street lighting - does that seem like a smart way to spend the money? It suggests to me it may not be a funding issue but a funding priority issue and this council clearly has it's priorities very, very wrong in light of this and really makes you wonder whether they can be trusted with our money - it seems frittering money on vanity projects to keep a few advocates happy is very much back on the agenda.

Makes me think the council is happily trying to pull the wool over people's eyes....£1.5m - there can't be anyone who thinks this is money well spent when there are clearly far more pressing needs elsewhere in the transport remit - instead the council is, for reasons known only to themselves, throwing money at a junction that has had a fortune thrown at it already. The council are treating people like fools but unfortunately a lot of people seem to be happy to be fooled.

Anyone want to have a bet that the rideout through the DV junction yesterday just happened to be the day Anna Goodman and Rachel Aldred chose to randomly select for another Dulwich LTN cycle count....expect to read all about the huge jump in cyclists in a Peter Walker Guardian exclusive.....;-)

Wow - just the circa £1.5m of tax-payers money being spent on the DV junction...but just remember folks the council hasn't got enough money to put in cycle hangers or fix street lighting.....but they have found £1.5m to make more changes the majority of people who responded to the consultation can't see the purpose of and clearly don't agree with..... I would love to know whether that parking revenue projection was based on a successful area-wide CPZ roll-out. https://twitter.com/DulwichCleanAir/status/1772173826446459346?s=19

And the areas and constituents they represent...but you kind of feel his role in Goose Green was merely his first step on the political ladder and his goal was to use it to get a foot up.

Is the hard-left/Momentum in Southwark trying to get control ahead of the election - trying to claw their way back into control of councils and create a problem for the Labour Party after the 2019 fiasco and Starmer's purge of the Corbynites to make them more electable? A very interesting article from when McAsh was at university and, interestingly, a member of the Green Party. https://bright-green.org/2012/04/09/democracy-and-direct-action-an-interview-with-edinburgh-universitys-new-student-president-james-mcash/

Ha ha she knows Conservative is a bad word..a bit like Southwark Labour avoiding all mentions of LTNs during the last council elections! 😉

There may be trouble ahead....that was close.

There now follows a party election broadcast on behalf of the Labour party.... Sadiq Khan: "I funded and approved this election message"! Is the pasting of the Highway Code meant to be there....?

Very much different crimes as well - you could have hundreds more bobbies on the beat and you still would not stop kids riding up behind people and snatching phones. The problem is victims of robbery now carry an expensive device with a high resale value on their person and often walk down the road using it and not paying attention to their surroundings (the lady I shouted at on Townley some months ago to warn her she was about to be robbed was utterly oblivious to the fact that someone was circling her like a shark as she pushed her pram with her phone to her ear) - the risk/reward of that robbery is weighted way towards reward for the criminal. Compare that to street robberies in a time before phones where someone would have to confront someone for something on their person - there is a much higher risk that that person may not have anything of value on them or might wallop/apprehend you. Phone snatching is a very high success/high reward/low risk rate crime and that is why it is so prevalent.

I think the issue is often kids are stealing these devices and securing a prosecution is very difficult - the kids are just the do'ers in a much larger network as these phones are not being flogged in pubs to mates but shipped internationally and part of a well organised network. The kids are often armed with all the information and background they need to make the police's job very difficult - they know what to say and what not to say, they all dress identically and ride identical bikes and wear face coverings as they know the police will struggle to identify them and the police will know that without a positive id securing any sort of prosecution is impossible. The raid you are referring to is probably the one in Brockley and I bet a lot of those phones were taken from people in Dulwich. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/men-arrested-brockley-stolen-mobile-phones-london-met-police-b1130365.html

Liv so sorry to hear that - unfortunately there is so much of this type of crime the police can't/don't bother with it. Our son's friends' stolen phone was showing as being in a house on Barry Road but the police were not interested. The stats on how much of a problem this is are really scary - not only in Dulwich but across London as a whole - 28% increase in London in 12 months and some 51,000 phones stolen - that's 150 a day and nobody seems to know what the solution to fix it is! The phone manufacturing industry isn't likely to embrace any measures that mean they can no longer make money from the lucrative trade-in/global re-sale market. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67125411