peckhamboy

"A stairway from the front restaurant descends to a 350 sq ft basement with beer cellar/store, plus a further 30 seater restaurant which is currently used for general storage." So the basement is purely storage at the moment, which is why customers won't have seen it. I may be wrong but it sounds like Mirash to me.

There is if you're an estate agent trying to justify a ?1.2m price tag!

Hmmm. Indian restaurant overlooking a green, with seating outside on the pavement for 12 people and a small bar at the front, in a four-storey semi-detached building. I wonder where that could be?

Is this a proposed development or an existing one?

Does anyone know how the targets work? Do the wardens' "kills" get struck off if they are successfully appealed, or is it just on tickets issued rather than fines collected? Could make quite a difference to their behaviour...

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Brian's law?

How about correcting the NE border to reclaim the "golden triangle" south of Avondale Rise and west of Adys Rd while you're at it? That's surely more ED than the Ivanhoe? And Peckham Rye Common strictly should be given back to Peckham :)

Which is why I paid the fine (grudgingly). But, if traffic wardens were simply paid a wage rather than given bonuses for hitting targets, they wouldn't have to look for technical breaches like this, which the council then use as justification for introducing more wardens and more restrictions. It just irritates me that there is no scope for simply saying "he's in a marked space and he's paid the parking charge, and the ticket is perfectly and obviously visible. It really doesn't matter that it's not in exactly the right place."

Maybe not on its own, but when there's about three paragraphs of instruction on exactly what you have to do perhaps it all adds up to unnecessarily complex rules? Especially if you're in a hurry and don't have 10 minutes to waste trying to figure out exactly what you have to do. Normally you'd expect that scratching off the date and leaving it on the dashboard would be enough. Are you saying that failing to put the ticket on the passenger side rather than the driver side should be punishable with a parking fine? Because if so, we'll have to agree to differ on that one.

I don't have a problem with cars being ticketed for illegal parking, but the only time I ever got a ticket (in a different London borough) really pissed me off because i'd even gone to the trouble of actually locating one of their parking shops, visiting it during their ludicrously short opening hours, paying for a day permit and displaying it in the car. I then got ticketed for some minor contravention of the unnecessarily complex rules, like putting it on the driver's side of the dashboard rather than the kerbside, or not attaching it to the windscreen or something equally trivial. Yes, technically, I was breaching their regulations but surely there's scope for a bit of common sense in how they're applied? Still, the warden probably paid for his dinner out of that fine, so I guess that makes it ok?

Presumably the benefit to the community is in having a bigger, better library? Whether the rent is commercial or peppercorn makes no real difference. And if the developers have to fit it out as well, there's a direct financial saving right there. Cllr Thomas says in his blog that the alternative would have been commercial premises (eg M&S Food). Personally, I'd rather have an M&S, especially as there's already a perfectly good library just 5 minutes by bus up Lordship Lane. But if people insist on voting the Lib Dems in, you get what's 'good for the community', not what the community wants. He also says I would have thought that M&S would increase pedestrian activity more, if that's what they want...

Proletariat? In ED?

It seems to me that the trains into London Bridge in the mornings are getting ridiculously busy now - even the early ones are standing room only by the time they get to ED. Part of the problem seems to be that they're using old carriages with fewer seats on. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just getting grumpy in my old age and turning into Victor Meldrew?

Why would you choose anything else? Like the rugby player Austin Healey, some people have a surname that is just crying out for a particular first name. I once encountered a gentleman by the name of Richard Fidler...

I've broken five bones in my life, although one of them wasn't mine. Does it still count?

Or the Castle maybe. I can't imagine too many kids in there either.

Catmedia, do you by any chance work in a rival estate agent that offers free internet?

Out of interest, do the catchment areas work on distance from school or on postcode?

Good response Paul, and commendably honest. I hope you get things back on track. I thought seacow was great when we first moved here, but had a couple of disappointing meals (mainly the chips - the fish has always been good in my opinion) and stopped going, but I'll definitely give it another go now.

Unfortunately, the main driver behind consumer choice is likely to be economic, as Jeremy says, and battery hens will always be cheaper than free range: 1. You need more land per chicken for free range. 2. Free range chickens must be slaughtered later (around 55 days rather than 35-40), so it costs more to rear them. But saying that, free range doesn't need to be "expensive" - WR meat for example tends to be comparable in price to (or not much more than) Sainsbo's 'normal' stuff. I'm often amazed by what I can get in there for less than a tenner. And the pork and beef in particular tastes vastly superior to the Sainsbury's non-free range stuff.

James - I think Sean was suggesting that people think vegetables (not vegetarians) are precluded from the argument, and was pointing out that a lot of veg is picked by exploited migrant workers in v poor working conditions... And PeckhamRose, I'm going to borrow Sean's hatchet I'm afraid: Of COURSE they would eat more healthily and better if they had education, time, money, (YES money). Not necessarily true... Still, I suppose they could stop smoking but could they afford the time to queue on a Saturday at the organic meat shop on Lordship Lane. Maybe not, but a lot of them might have time during the week... Maybe they'll all start stealing chickens from the likes of Chav's back yard and the govt will have to bring in new laws to stop people stealing chickens from people's back yards..... Those laws would seem to be in place already... my breasts are coming along nicely thank you.....! Thanks for letting us know, but there are other forums available for that sort of talk... :))

Actually, CWALD is totally wrong in her analysis. At the moment, there is nothing illegal about the charges, which is why the test case is going on - to determine once and for all whether the banks can make those charges and, if so, whether they should be limited in some way. The banks have been settling most of the claims that came to them because it is cheaper than defending every claim, but of those that did make it into the county court, only some actually succeeded. Chances are that the banks will be allowed to continue charging their fees, but at a reduced rate I reckon, so if any of you have massive claims outstanding I wouldn't bank on recovering more than 60% at most. Saying that, I think the fees are excessive. But they're not illegal (not at the moment, anyway).

You can't go to court at the moment - once the test case has been decided, the banks will deal with all outstanding claims, which would include your letter, mlteenie. Until then (and bear in mind the decision will probably be appealed and then the appeal decision will probably be appealed up to the House of Lords so it could take a while), there's not a lot you can do, I don't think.

This would seem particularly appropriate for ED: Oliver Bonas