mastershake

from my herne hill experience, when there were parking restrictions 9-5 monday to friday (as the scheme originally ran) it had a really adverse effect on the HH shops. But once this was brought to council attention they sorted it so it was only 12-2 and the shops seemed a lot better as a result and the problem of station parking was more or less solved too. I'm sure if i lived further away from the station - if i had to drive to eat in East Dulwich, for instance - i wouldn't be so much in favour. everyone's opinion on this will be more or less determined by a) where they live and b) whether they consider it ok to have to pay to park outside their own house.

If the squeeze on parking is being caused by non-residents parking during commuting hours, I can see where a limited CPZ (not at the weekends and only 12-2 weekdays might help). However, if it's caused as much by increased popularity of the area to live, then it won't. I live very near the station and the roads are full to bursting any time after (but not before) 8am, and they're usually busy til about 7 at night. At weekends, even when there's a major church service, there are always spaces. It's very clear that the majority of the problems are caused by people driving to somewher near the station. This was the case in Herne Hill too, which is why they eventually worked out the extremely effective 12-2 system, and extended it to about 10 minutes' walk from the station. It didn't entirely solve the problem - the areas just outside were still quite busy - but it was certainly a massive improvement.

the area around matham grove is a total nightmare in the daytime. i regularly spend 25 minutes circling, trying to park anywhere vaguely near my house. can people who want to park near the station not use sainsbury's? not sure if I'm for or against parking zones, but it's so frustrating having to park 10 minutes' walk from my house.

the herne hill beggar is still begging there, he defintely has a mobile phone...

the npower bloke came round our house yesterday evening. after i told him i had no desire to change suppliers, he said, 'you should change anyway, all it means is a diferent company name on the bill' great sales patter there

i do find it weird how some people are so loyal to the most predicatble areas of london. i have friends who have been to visit friends in loads of areas of london but they will still ONLY live in either Clapham, Islington or Fulham.

yeah, compared with 10 years ago the bus services aren't bad at all. i lived in herne hill 10 years ago, you'd frequently have to wait at least an hour for a 37...

the 37 is much better than it used to be. Brixton has hideous roadworks that seemingly will never end which is why the service is so patchy going Brixton to Peckham. The other way it's fine. and though countdowns are worth having, they'll never be 100% accurate

where is this happening?

the area it was in is pretty rough too. not that the bloke deserved it, but it's not the greatest place to walk through on your own on a saturday at quarter to midnight in summer.

i think you need to look a bit more closely at the news report. it's at the Brockwell Park end of Rosendale Road, which places this in West Norwood/Tulse Hill, pretty much - both rougher areas than East Dulwich. That end of the road has always been dodgy, even when the Bon Bonne club was there and thus the place was a bit noisier. It's very quiet, between two railway bridges and with a row of shabby shops on one side and a large council building on the other, and it provides a lot of places to hide, at night. the police rarely bothered to sort out the groups who hung around there since the estate is pretty big at the back with a lot of places to disperse to. i used to live on Rosendale Road and there's no way I'd walk up there from the 68 stop at 11.45 at night. this guy evidently lived some way up Rosendale - I'd always walk up Croxted then Turney, having got off the bus at Herne Hill (not perfect, but still). and even with that, a friend of mine was mugged in broad daylight on the road a while back. i feel bad for the bloke all the same.

i don't think she's started in East dulwich yet, but she proved really resilient when I was in HH, they never really got rid of her. she tended when i saw her not ot be on station premises, just nearby.

yes - i used to live in HH and she was always around the centre there. doesn't look like she's moved onto East Dulwich - apparently she was based around Tulse Hill for a while too. She's very convincing and cleearly in need of help (the story is often one of domestic abuse), but as the above says, she's not asking for cash for the reasons she claims.

green and blue surely aren't showing it. the 'football' sign at the palemerston is an advert for football at the herne

sema thai is pretty poor. corner cafe might not be anything to shout about looks-wise - either venue or food - but the food is excellent.

given the results, i can't help thinking that the leaflets etc were aimed primarily at shoring up the council seats. i still voted for Jonathan Mitchell, mind you.

staff are so much better than somerfield days, but they still seem to have the same problems somerfield had with stock. veg in particular seems empty whenever i go in.

I'm not sure if it's exactly the same time every night, i agree it seems odd. it doesn't seem to have been driven for a while. there was another one on the road - possibly the same - which used to go off every weekend when its owners tried to open it. That was annoying enough but this is so much worse.

oh right, i see now. will that include compost etc - can you offer specifics? thanks for replying to all of this by the way.

double recycling rate - does that mean 2 collections a week? to my mind that's a waste of money...

thanks hill, i'll try to remember to do that though as it's so late at night I'm usually not very compus mentis... yes it is a black car, i guess a clio. and i didn't know that was a minicab doing the whole 'starting up and leaving the car running' thing - though i've not been woken by that recently so maybe I've managed to block it out. the alarm is still annoying though...

thank you, i will do

Not sure if anyone else here lives on Tell Grove but i was wondering if you could give advice. There's a car parked on our road and the alarm is currently going off every night at around 3am. I don't think the owner lives on the road - is there anything we can do to stop this from happening? Someone's left a note but I'm not sure if that is enough, they're quite easy to ignore.