peckhamboy

Barry - any chance that the speaker volume on the LB-bound platform could be turned up? I was no more than ten feet from the speaker this morning, downwind of it, and still couldn't hear the announcements properly. I know it's a bit of a balancing act between being able to hear the announcements on the platform and not getting complaints from the nearest houses, but i reckon there must be a way to go before they can hear the speakers if the sound isn't going ten feet with a favourable wind.

VikkiM - people in glasshouses and all that. I hope you're not suggesting that Labour have no non-dom connections? For example, before you start throwing stones at the shockingly non-domiciled multi-millionaire Zac Goldsmith you may like to consider that, according to the Guardian "Of the ?188m raised by political parties from donations since 2001, some ?17.5m, or 9.3 per cent, comes from those who have declared themselves to be non-domicile or are very likely to enjoy that status. Labour has received ?8.9m from non-doms or suspected non-doms. The Tories have received ?5.6m." Perhaps in the interests of fairness you will be writing to Gordon and asking him to return the ?4.1m donated to Labour's coffers by Lakshmi Mittal who is *gasp* not only non-dom but a multi-billionaire and one of the world's richest men. Puts poor little to Zac to shame doesn't it? How about a bit of rational, reasonable, balanced debate rather than petty party-prejudice stone-throwing and name-calling?

So you think that we should be judging the next government one year after the election? No doubt in 1998 you were there saying that Blair needed time to make a difference because the Tory years had left the country in such a terrible state. Funny how people forget when the situation's reversed. Whoever wins, it's going to be years before the economy is remotely robust again. If Labour win, Gordon will increase taxes on employment - eg income tax and NI (including employer contributions which will help to deter recruitment). To my mind, that is penalising rather than encouraging hard work. He has also announced plans to save literally hundreds of pounds by abolishing the childcare voucher scheme for anyone earning effectively more than minimum wage - which will act as a deterrent to women to return to work after having a child because the amount you would need to earn pre-tax just to cover nursery care and travelling expenses out of the net pay is higher than the average wage. Whereas, if the allowance were to be increased, it would help women to return to work and the tax take from their employment would be significantly higher than the savings from the cuts. But that wouldn't tie in with his mission to screw anyone he perceives as "middle class".

True, but this time I can't believe it really is "better the devil you know". Besides, I'm not against class divides and social entrenchment per se - as long as I'm on the right side of it...

Are you all seriously so blinded by class prejudice that you think Labour are the best option? Gordon's views are unprincipled, small-minded and represent the politics of envy. All he is interested in is being PM and for him that is enough - at least Blair wanted to be PM in order to do something. Gordon wants to penalise hard work and re-create class divides - ultimately everyone will suffer.

Come on, they're a hell of a lot better than the old ones, both in terms of appearance and lighting. Personally, I quite like them.

Details and sample prices on TFL website - TFL. Higher than underground prices - no indication whether daily cost is capped at travelcard rate either. I assume it is?

womanofdulwich Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > if you saw someone doing this would it be a good > idea to take a photo of them at work???? Why would you wait for them to get to work? Wouldn't it be better to take a photo of them stealing the bike?

Really? I thought people moved to ED to get away from Clapham.

Surely the issue at that end of LL is far less to do with "people parking to catch buses into town" and far more to do with the fact that most houses are converted into flats and are situated on a main road with very limited parking? Each house has space for one car to park in front, so if it's divided into two flats and both flats have a car, one of you is parking outside someone else's house, which pushes their car onto the next house and so on. 100 cars into 60 spaces just doesn't go. A CPZ won't solve that one I'm afraid, but will just add an extra layer of nuisance to everyone else's lives.

We live very close to ED station and have never had a problem either, so it sounds as if the problem is restricted to very specific areas and/or very specific times and is probably not a huge one (albeit that I'm sure it's very annoying for the small proportion of residents affected by it). I certainly don't think that an ED-wide CPZ is the answer - strikes me as a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Perhaps a one or two hour resident-only parking slot in a few targeted streets would be sufficient, without causing massive headaches for residents as well? As a matter of principle, though, I'm opposed to any CPZ where residents have to pay for their own car (maybe a fee for a second car could be considered though) or for visitor parking within reasonable limits (eg 30 free visitor permits/year per household?).

By the way, trains from ED only go to London Bridge, not Blackfriars. Peckham Rye or Denmark Hill will get you to Blackfriars though (where it's only the tube station that's shut anyway - trains are still stopping there).

To be honest, I agree with peckhamrose about that survey. Half the questions are leading ones pointing towards an answer the Labour candidates would like you to give (eg "Do you think the council makes the most of every penny of your council tax?"). How about following that one up (in the interests of fairness and impartiality) with "Do you think that this would be any different if Labour had control of the purse strings?". I think we can all be fairly sure that very few people (probably not even current councillors) would say that the council makes the most of every penny. Similarly, I would be surprised if even our Labour candidates had the gall to suggest that a Labour council would make the most of every penny. The other half of the questions seem to be asking about your voting habits and intentions (after asking for your name and address). Personally, I think that's rather inappropriate. And please stop using the forum for political point-scoring (and before anyone starts that applies to all political parties, I just can't be bothered to start a new thread). By all means tell us what you would do if you ran the council but give up on the usual blarney about all society's ills being the fault of the Tories/Lib Dems/Labour (delete as applicable). I'll vote for whoever looks more likely to be concerned about what they can do rather than what others can't do.

I see that they've finally found a tenant for the shop space in the new(ish) development opposite the station. And it's................ an estate agent. Like the area needs another one of those.

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The irony is that even if the strikes are successful in forcing RM to back down and "saving" jobs, the loss of confidence in RM means that this time next year they will probably have to make more workers redundant than would have lost their jobs if they'd gone along with the current plans. They seem to be stuck in the early 80's. Fundamentally, strikes only work if the people on strike are actually missed - like the miners' strikes when the country had to go to a 4 day week, or essential workers like firemen, tube drivers, even bin men. Sadly for them the RM is no longer as essential as it used to be - it's a bit like Starbucks workers going on strike. It might hurt the company they work for (and Dulwich Mum) but most of the country will just go to Caffe Nero or Pret instead and some of them won't come back when they realise the product is better.

Can you shed any light on what the statistics actually relate to, though? As far as I can see there is no actual "rate" shown. What is the basis of calculation? Reported, investigated, or prosecuted crime, for example? What is the rate per capita? What is the year on year change? Has there been any change in the way in which crimes are classified in the last few years? I'm afraid that the figures shown are useless without any of this information.

Lots of good points made on here - not all cyclists who use pavements are dangerous (most of them are just trying to avoid being run over) and not all cyclists are responsible road/pavement users. This weekend, one cyclist pulled out of a side road at speed and without looking, right in front of my car, then swerved across the front of me without indicating to turn right at the next junction, before coming up behind me at the next junction (where we were both turning left) and as I pulled away, taking the corner without braking by cutting across the pavement (there was a high fence so he could have had no idea if there were any pedestrians coming round the corner) and jumping off the kerb right in front of me again. Without wearing a helmet. Three times in the space of about two minutes that he could easily have been knocked off.

Sorry, but this sounds like a load of garbage. I can see the sense in imposing a 20mph limit on roads like Barry Road that are used as a cut through by a significant number of vehicles, but it seems like a waste of money on the majority of roads in ED where, due to parked cars, road humps or insufficiently long streets, you can't actually get past 20mph even if you wanted to. As far as enforcement goes, I agree with previous comments that I would much rather see police out on the beat or investigating genuine crimes than hanging around residential streets trying to catch someone driving at 23mph. And frankly the thought of vigilante residents with speed guns is just ridiculous and likely to be abused by people with too much time on their hands and a vendetta against one of their neighbours. I would have thought that it would be (a) more effective, and (b) cheaper to install one of those signs that flashes up your actual speed and tells you to slow down. My experience is that those signs do actually make people drop their speed by several mph generally. I appreciate that my experience is not a scientific study but I would wager that it's a lot more accurate than your (frankly ludicrous) assertion that all drivers who break speed limits turn out to be criminals. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one and assume that you simply wrote with too much haste, but I would suggest that the number of drivers who exceed a speed limit is very high indeed, and the number of drivers who are caught speeding and turn out to be criminals is probably very low. I certainly don't accept that hanging around Barry Road with a speed gun is an effective way of catching criminals. JBARBER Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi indiepanda, > Signalising a junction costs around ?50,000 and > currently has to be done by Transport for London > who have a 2 year waiting list unless they decide > it is urgent. Also, huge number of hoops to jump > through. > > Placing 20mph speed signs on roads does reduce > speed on their own. Total cost per street roughly > ?500->?1000 per street taking into account all the > legal hurdles, traffic counter, signs, etc. They > also gives the opportunity to enforce where > necessary. Happy coincidence is that drivers who > break such speed limits on residential streets are > disproportionately dodgy in some other way from > the no insurance, no MoT, driving without a > licence onwards up through crimes I suspect you > would consider serious. > > Now for the contentious possibility....some > residents would like to be trained and borrow the > Police speed camera and note speeds and number > plates for the Police to send warning letters. > Do you think we should do this in East Dulwich? > would you want to volunteer to help?

The problem is that the buses that have been commissioned to replace the bendy buses take about 1/3 of the passengers, and have about 1/4 as many seats (or so it appears - I've not actually counted). Which means that at busy periods you could end up waiting longer for a bus even though they're more frequent, and the way most London buses are driven round corners I wouldn't fancy spending too much time standing on one. It's a shame really as I was quite happy for the bendy buses to be phased out, but I don't think they've got the right solution.

None to/from the London Bridge platform. There are about four steps on the way to the southbound platform though. Would have thought they'd be relatively easy to negotiate with a buggy though.

Barry On the subject of ticket machines at LB, one thing that I find quite irritating is the absence of Oyster facilities upstairs. Presumably this will be addressed by January when pre-pay is rolled out on the train network? In the meantime, it is quite frustrating to have to fight your way down into the Tube ticket hall to get an Oyster travelcard - and picking up a travelcard paid for through the TFL website means having to go through the tube barriers and then back out again as touching in the card on the train barriers doesn't actually collect the travelcard credit. I realise that this is probably a Network Rail issue rather than your responsibility but wonder if you could raise it at your TOC meeting and find out what plans there are to introduce this functionality upstairs? SMBJones Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > nunheadmum Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Have to agree re ticket machines at London > Bridge. > > Maybe I'm missing something but as far as I > can > > see the only ticket machines are outside. This > > means that when you are rushing for a train, > you > > have to buy a ticket BEFORE you know if the > train > > is running, or waste time running in and out. > > I've wasted money a couple of times now - and > > following up on a refund for 2.40 seems like > even > > more of a waste of resources. Why can't there > be > > machines on the concourse? > > Plimsoul/NunheadMum > > Whilst at London Bridge yesterday I decided to > have a good look round the station to check ticket > selling facilities. As you are aware there are > lots of building works going on and wondered if > some of the machines had been removed for this > purpose. > > I noted the following, to the front of the station > there are 6 ticket vending machines, near that > entrance (fruit seller) as you walk in to the left > there is another area which is set back a little > near the Information Desk which consists of 3 > ticket vending machines and 7 counters run by > Southeastern staff. > > This makes a total of 16 places to buy tickets at > London Bridge plus an Excess Fares Booth > > > Nero > > I have a TOC (Train Operating Company) Liaison > Meeting with Network Rail on the 1st September, I > will raise the issues of announcements then as my > colleagues and other Station Manangers will be in > atendance. > > All > > Lastly I would like to comment on 2 things, > firstly London Bridge Station is run by Network > Rail and Southern are the tenants, all issues > relating to the station (bar services and > staff)have to go through them and I have no > control of the facilities etc. I have known the > Station Manager from Network Rail a number of > years and have a great working relationship and > will listen to any issues raised. > > Lastly, in addition to my own area which consists > of 16 stations and London Bridge, I am also > looking after a further 10 stations that will be > handed over to LOROL on the 20th September. All > stations from LB through to West Croydon, Norwood > Junction come under my remit untill then and any > questions relating to these stations I will be > happy to answer or pass onto my contact at LOROL > > Hope all this helps > > Barry

I got mine from Amazon at around ?80 for the full set. I think if you can be bothered to shop around and buy them all individually you can probably get the total price down (although 5 sets of P&P might add up) - I've seen them priced from about a tenner.

Fine. The banks are not discussing how to dump liability on customers for credit card fraud. They are in fact facing increased regulation and new legal protections against fraud for customers using credit cards or similar methods of making payments. Which will make banks legally obliged to cover most CC frauds.

snorky Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thats cos the banks are still covering losses on > CC - despite Chip & pin being hailed as the > unbreakable security solution for the future ( and > making things easier for those pesky technically > adept fraudsters) > > The banks are discussing with renewed urgency, > dumping the liability back onto the customer as > losses are starting to get silly - they are not > legally obliged to cover CC frauds, but know that > they would see a lucrative side of the business > collapse of they introduced these changes. Interesting. But wrong.