Rockets

Wow, how on earth can the council justify that increase? Honestly, this comes as no surprise, the council continues its war on car owners with stealth tax upon stealth tax. And remember, their plan is for borough-wide CPZs as a matter of course. Amazing how they offer soundbite after soundbite about the cost of living crisis yet turn a blind eye to it when it comes to their own grand plans and ideology....utter hypocrites... But, some were smart enough to realise what the grand plan was when they floated the "commuters from Kent" blah blah blah to justify the first CPZ in the area. They did it again with the "socially distanced LTNs"! They are just bare-faced liars and should not be trusted...but with their majority they can pretty much do as they please.

The current connection is ADSL and apparently, in some cases, they can get the fibre connection to a home via the old copper cable run from the street but for a lot of victorian houses the old cable run is too small or degraded for the fibre so they have to re-route it and bury it somewhere else. One of the engineers said that the problem is happening a lot in the Dulwich area due to the older houses and only a specialised Openreach engineer can run the new buried cable so we have a fibre box/landing point in the pavement in front of our house, a fibre box on the outside of the house and are wating for the specialised Openreach engineer to run the cable from the pavement box to the house box via our front garden.....and we are waiting...and waiting...and waiting...and waiting. Openreach keeps heralding the number of houses they "pass" with fibre connection but that just refers to the pavement having fibre running to the and from the cabinet...the big challenge is the last mile and getting the fibre cable to the front of the house and Openreach is really struggling with that element.

From very painful experience just because they have fibre in the pavement doesn't mean it will be easy to get it to the home. We placed our order for fibre in September of last year after receiving an email from BT saying it is available on our street and we are still waiting, some 7 months later, for OpenReach to connect the bit from the street to the house as the old copper that connects to most houses needs to be replaced and Openreach are utterly incompetent. They have sent numerous engineers all of whom failed to complete the job. And when I look at Trustpilot it seems the majority of people have the same issue - BT take the order for fibre, Openreach fail to connect and then BT says..not our fault it's Openreach who can't do it. I think BT are under government pressure to connect as many homes as possible so are taking the orders for Fibre knowing full well they can't get people connected - our BT bill shows we have had fibre since when we placed the order (yet we are not being billed for it) yet still no sign of when we will actually be connected. Same issues with Sky apparently as Openreach are the only company who do the connections and cannot keep up with demand due to their lack of trained engineers.

Such a shame to see Hisar go - was a the go-to place back in the day but has felt very tired for a while. Probably inevitable given the plethora of eating choices now on the Lane and the arrival of so many chain restaurants forcing the prices up - but tend to agree with a previous poster that I wonder whether part of the allure for the chains is the delivery market and having a delivery option hub in an area they are not well represented by their outlet.

The view from, or of (as I think the building is iconic and I love the way it sits overlooking East Dulwich) Dawson's Heights is always a good one. I have always also loved the juxtaposition of Peckham Rye on a summer day with the masses of people flocking to it from the urban conurbations encircling it on each side The Queen and her Corgi's artwork. The William Blake mural in Goose Green.

So, I can't see from the photo, but the first sign says 4pm and the second sign says 4.30pm - is that correct? Wow, if that is the case then surely there is an ambulance-chasing lawyer who would want to take the council on over this and represent anyone who got a fine between the hours of 4pm and 4.30pm? I wonder how many people have fallen foul of this - yet another embarrassing moment for the council - someone get some good pictures before it is too late and send them to Southwark News - they'll love it!

Oh no....I wish I had never asked.....how many nail bars does one area need?

Sorry if I missed it but anyone know what's being done with the old Tandoori Nights - lots of people stripping it and working on the interior?

Poundland is going to win awards for this marketing campaign, absolutely superb.

Agree - very simple - if everyone follows the rules then everyone is happy. You can't focus on, or give any leeway, to any one group. Many cyclists think the rules don't apply to them and the videos posted from Dulwich by Barby illustrate that very clearly. And there is enough material for a whole other thread on elements of the Highway Code that cyclists seem to happily/wilfully ignore that goes beyond cycling on pavements and jumping red lights - Rule 74 seems to be a particular favourite - but let's not go there for fear someone calls me a name! ;-)

Malumbu - every time you try desperately to make things personal I just take that as proof that I have posted something you are incapable of responding to in a considered, adult way. It's almost a daily occurrence... sticks and stones and all that....

Does that mean that you get charged £2 for parking somewhere outside the bays and these bays (which I presume the cost is reduced to 50p), are they in addition to the ones the council are planning to install? Again, all well and good if people are actually using them and I am reminded that us Dulwich'ites are Southwark's greatest walkers so is there a demand? I know a lot of European cities are grappling with e-bike usage patterns - especially outside the main city centres.

I just don't get the bleedingly obvious statement "cars kill more people" deflection techniques put out by the pro-cycle lobby - I don't know about them but I don't want to be hit by either a car or a bike - when cyclists do hit people or things do they say "well, could have been worse, I could have been in a car". Just because bikes killing people happens very infrequently I suspect the numbers of people injured by being hit by bikes is growing all the time. Especially given the instances of bad cycling you can see on a daily basis. The bad cycling problem is so widespread now I think the police are having to take action and the quest for active travel has seemingly been taken by some cyclists to interpret that as they don't have follow the rules of the road. Of course, every accident involving a bike the natural position is to assume the vehicle or (or in Malumbu's suggestion above) the pedestrian is at fault but it's not always a simple as that and often the manner of the cycling has contributed to, if not caused, the accident. Just look at the most recent video Barby posted in the last few days of some of Dulwich's finest cyclists doing their bit for bad cycling - some of it is innocuous and pretty harmless but a lot of it is downright dangerous (both for the cyclist and other road users). The guy on the cargo bike at 4.28 and, then again at, 5.49 (looks like he does this all the time) really demonstrates why police are proactively trying to get offending cyclists to follow the rules - a fine for him would probably help focus his mind before he causes a collision. One wonders where he needed to get to in such a hurry that he couldn't wait at the lights.

Ah so the business model for the e-bike hire companies is changing then - will they now have to be left in parking bays exclusively? Is that confirmed? Great news if it is. I also suspect there is an element of if you build it they will come to this as I still don't see good numbers of people using the e-scooters left in the bays on Lordship Lane or the same propensity for e-bike use around here as there is in central London - hence my interest in the numbers from the trial.

Are we to presume then that there is the demand to support these new parking bays (that will inevitably be filled by devices from all of the companies in the trial) or are the council taking a punt on the "if you build it they will come" mantra? Alternatively are TFL and the councils under pressure from the companies involved in the trial to extend the footprint for the services as the usage data has been better than expected/not as good as expected in the trials thus far (delete as applicable)? Seems a bit odd that they are investing our money and rolling these out without publishing data on the success of the trials.

Hopefully it goes hand-in-hand with people actually using them as the parking bays on Lordship Lane seem to be full to bursting with e-scooters desperately seeking a rider. Has the council released any data on usage of the trial in Dulwich to this point - how many journeys are being made and from where to where?

The police are starting to clamp down on it as I think they are being forced to as the problem is so widespread. Just last week I walked across London Bridge and a cyclist rode up from Monument, on and off the pavements and then cycled across the pedestrian crossing in front of a police motorcycle who was waiting at a red light at the junction in front of Monument tube. The police offer watched them, shook their head, turned on their blue lights and then pulled the cyclist over further along the pavement on Cannon Street and was in the process of issuing something to the cyclist who had the most incredulous look on their face. The Plough junction is particularly bad with many cyclists thinking the green pedestrian lights apply to them and I am reminded of this video by Barbyonabike who works locally and films, amongst other things, Dulwich cyclists flaunting the rules of the road!!!

It's a clear manipulation of the data gathering process, the one on Lordship Lane is now more than 20feet away from the threshold of the crossing and roundabout meaning most traffic will be crawling over it. If that is providing data for that section of the road it is going to be inaccurate data. I see no reason it could not have been placed further up the road. The council know what they are doing and have been doing it since the measures went in - the one near Melford Road at the other end of Lordship Lane (which interestingly has now been removed) started it's monitoring life near the bus stop past the Court Lane junction...the only reason it could have been moved was to make sure if was exposed to crawling traffic for much of the day.

Have you seen how close the one on Lordship Lane is approaching the Goose Green roundabout, that will be recording very little?

P.S. You said: I have a stated position that the earth is round, but I don't have any vested interest in that. But you do if you are asked to assess if it is round or not don't you?

DuncanW - you're getting into semantics and it doesn't undermine my argument at all...if you are a cycle lobbyist and you get a job assessing the impact of measures that benefit cycling you have a vested interest (as you have previously lobbied for measures that benefit cycling) and a conflict of interest (because you have held a position within a cycle lobby). Pretty clear to me.

Ex- I have zero scientific credentials but if I can see the flaws in the data and collection methods then surely the professionals can as well! You are an industry specialist, what are your thoughts on the under 10kph recording issues and when you see monitoring strips in the Dulwich area do you think their positioning is giving an accurate picture given many of their placements near junctions. DuncanW - what you describe is exactly why Aldred has a vested interest/conflict of interest. In fact, and I am happy to be corrected, but in some reports Aldred has published she cites her involvement on the LCC policy forum in the potential conflicts of interest section.

And Ex- one of the reasons there is little point me doing the analysis of the data is that I have skin in the game, I have a publicly stated position on my views on what I would be assessing and reviewing....which takes us back to why Aldred should be nowhere near the "independent" evaluation - she has a well documented stated position on the very thing she is being paid to review. That's called a vested interest - surely even you can acknowledge that?

Good point well made! And in those circumstances if you are a vegan, a meat lover or a Tory you’d probably be overjoyed with the results and see no need for further scrutiny of the process or the people running it….. Hurrah, they say, we have the results we were looking for and this validates our personal viewpoint….how dare they question the independence of the process……I will now place my head back into the sand....;-)

Ex- you forgot to accuse me of being a right-wing, covid denier!!! ;-) Let me clarify something for you: Rachel Aldred was not just a trustee of LCC but also the chair of their policy forum - so she had direct input on LCC policies and lobbying efforts that LCC conducted - that was anything but an oversight role. And don't get me started on Chris Boardman - he runs a company that makes bikes and has been accused of favouring bikes in his role as Active Travel Commissioner - imagine the uproar if someone from a car manufacturer was put in charge as Roads Commissioner.....;-) At the end of the day Rachel Aldred is a cycling lobbyist and has spent her career lobbying for cycling which doesn't make her independent - you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Makes you think doesn't it...but let's be honest people seem to develop a bit of blind spot when something they want and support gets questioned and that's what all of the pro-LTN lobby are doing - turning a blind eye because it suits their agenda. There's more than enough evidence to show that data, reports and output are fundamentally flawed and being manipulated - if you don't care - good for you - just don't expect any sympathy when it happens to something you do care about. The issue remains that there are people who care and are concerned about what is happening and are trying to voice their opinions but have been ignored and depositioned since the outset. The latest attempt to quell any opposition is to accuse people of being right-wing, Covid deniers etc...seemingly the go-to place when people have exhausted every other means of silencing opinions they don't like to hear. And Malumbu - you may think that my argument is spurious but at least I have an argument - you're displaying some distinctly troll-like tendencies! Have you ever answered a question anyone has asked you on the forum? If you're here to debate then go ahead if not maybe the lounge is more your natural hunting ground - maybe time to revisit the self-imposed Lounge quarantine! ;-)