PokerTime

I?m going to have to take issue with you on your comments about Peckham Vision Louisa. You seem to have no knowledge of who Peckham Vision are and what they do (because of your biased prejudice perhaps?). There is a woman at Peckham Vision for example, who is the reason why Peckham still has a high street at all, because in the 70?s the council wanted to turn the High Street into a huge bypass for the A2. So there is a lot to thank her for. To suggest the people at Peckham Vision are working to an agenda that has no considerations for the diverse views of the local population of Peckham is just nonsense. Peckham Vision is a conservation group. It is protecting the Lane from exactly the kind of developments you don?t want to see. Network Rail for example (as part of the station redevelopment) want to build flats alongside the station so they can cash in presumably on sales from exactly the kind of people you think gentrify an area. Peckham Vision are challenging this in order to protect the businesses that would be lost. Just as when Ken Livingston had designs on turning Rye Lane into a huge marshalling depot for a tram network, they fought that. There is nothing to stop you from joining Peckham Vision and influencing policy, but no, your prejudice towards anyone not of your class wouldn?t allow you to do that would it? Similarly, the artists are bringing things like theatre at affordable prices. You can see a play at the Bussey Building for ?5 for example (as opposed to the ?30 it costs in town). How is that a bad thing? Why do you feel so threatened by that? The arts are serving people of all classes and backgrounds. You live in an area that is still overwhelmingly working class, and will continue to be so for a long time to come. Bellenden Road and that area started as a middle class enclave. It has never belonged to the working classes. Just as Rye Lane in its real heyday served the kind of middle and upper classes that you so detest. It could be argued that if the working classes hadn?t moved in on masse, the department stores would have stayed (although that?s not something I believe). Why should any shop come to Peckham if there aren?t enough people to shop in it? Why is that so lost on you? The department and large chain stores have gone for a reason, all of it to do with economics. There is nothing the council or anyone can do about that. We are actually spoilt in London for shopping centres anyway. Most people in the country have to travel several miles or more to find any shopping centre or street. Where do you get this right to have everything you want or need on your doorstep from? And to suggest that the poor will be shifted to the suburbs also shows a complete ignorance of the evolution of London. Southwark is one of the highest providers of social housing in the country. That is not going to change any time soon. I don?t think I?m as old as you but I too grew up in a mainly white working class neighbourhood and it had plenty of rogues, thieves and vandals. People I would never want to live amongst again. Yes there was a community but it was also a very insular community. Insularity you are displaying perfectly in some of your views. And I have no nostalgia for that.

LOL. That was a bit blunt LadyDeliah but is truthful. According to the last census, around 70% of the local population of Peckham, and other areas local to Rye Lane, is a mix of of non-white ethnic groups. So the Lane is simply a reflection of the local customer base. That's how business and economics work (as everybody knows). I'm sorry that Louisa feels the way she does about this debate but I think Straferack has summarised things perfectly. And there ARE chain stores in Rye Lane. Argos, Boots, Primark, Morrissons, Lidl, T-Mobile, Macdonalds, KFC are all chain stores. Even Poundland is a chain store. Iceland, and I'm sure I could think of a few more. So this vague idea that there are not enough chain stores, or the retail mix isn't diverse enough, doesn't hold up. Once anyone brings class into a debate it opens up a whole new dimension to the discussion and Louisa, you were the person who brought class up. If a person is working class, and then dispises the middle classes, they are displaying inverse snobbery. If the middle classes despise the working classes, that's snobbery. The census also shows that the overwhleming majority of those non white ethnic groups are within a working class earnings bracket. So my opinion is that class isn't really that much of a factor here. Ethnic diversity however is and that is what I was alluding to in my earlier comments. The vast majority of people shopping in Rye Lane are working class. Ethnic diversity is the dominent market force. And that's just how it is. Bringing back stores that can't make enough profit within that demographic serves no-one. The impression I get, and it is just an assumption on my part (not based on any hard evidence) is that middle class people are less bothered about ethnic diversity and culture than long standing white working class communities. That's just from various conversations I've had and witnessed. To criticise the middle classes because they've brought some arts to the Lane is just bonkers. The community that Rye Lane serves isn't suddenly going to dramatically change in any capacity.

Can I be forgiven for asking 'what just happened here?'

I believe it is MIPTV. It now takes place in April but back then it was the end of February. MIPTV is an important sales through to TV vehicle for European territories, just as MIPCOM serves as a pre-cursor to Cannes and movie distribution for theatrical release within Europe.

That's where regulation comes into force Mr Fox. An EO looks at storage and procedure. So a food establishment without adaquate overnight refrigeration and storage would not be granted a license to trade. I find the assumption that these small businesses are not operating within the legal guidelines unfair. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? As for 'blooded chicken'. Much of the meat on sale is Halal, which means it hasn't been mechanically bleached and then reinjected with colorant like the meat you find in supermarkets. Of course it will look different. But the process of sell by dates remains the same. Off meat will look and smell off. And like the issue of food poisoning above, it would be very hard for an establishment to get away with selling off meat for any length of time. They'd go out of business if nothing else. And just edited to add that for me this is a really interesting discussion to have because most people have no idea how the food they buy is produced. Much of the chicken in supermarkets comes from disease ridden battery chicken farms (that's why they have to be bleach bathed after slaughter and plucking, to remove the bacteria from months of living in their own feaces). If most people were taken to one of those farms to see for themsleves how that chicken is produced, they'd never buy chicken from a supermarket again. Shiny and clean premises doesn't mean the food you are buying is healthy or clean either.

I think matthew McConaughey should get that Oscar Karen. His performance was truly transforming in 'Dallas Buyers Club'. Whereas Leo was just Leo in 'Wolf of Wall Street' imo. I think the arrival of Hollywood to the Baftas though has something to do with those Actors being en route to some big annual sales agent thing in Europe that they are contractural obliged to attend for promotion by their studios. The Baftas used to take place later but they were moved about 10 years ago to make it worth those stars attending en route. A clever move clearly.

Louisa, all it would take is one complaint of food poisoning for an EO to investigate. If an establishment is selling unsafe food there would be many, not one who would become ill on any given day. There is just no evidence to back up your fears. Also if you were to laboratory test any chicken or fish product you buy from a supermarket before you cook it...you would find all kinds of bacteria. That's why cooking things properly is so important. It doesn't matter where you buy a chicken from. If you don't cook it properly, you will get ill.

Food hygeine ratings though (however they are measured) do not necessarily mean that an establishment is selling food that is more or less likely to be unsafe. Establishments that engage in unsafe practise, or are unsanitary are closed down by Environmental Officers. There is no grey area there. A business can for example be given a lower hygeine rating because it's records are not up to scratch. The EO will then advise on how that area can be improved. Similarly a business can be marked down for layout or lighting, things which don't actually impact on food that is prepared, cooked and stored in a correct and safe manner. Handling and storing the food itself in anything but a safe manner will get a business closed down, until it fixes those issues.

Good debate. With reference to goverments experimenting on the poor Louisa. It is the poor that most often need investment and help from governments. Finding solutions to poverty, poor health, infant mortality, poor sanitation (and let's remember many of the demolished homes nationwide had no indoor toilets or modern bathrooms) has been at the fore of pretty much every social reform going back 150 years. Add to that better working conditions, because let's not forget too that this golden age of tight knit communities was also an age of long working hours for pay so low (and often in conditions dangerous to health) that those workers were at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords. People had those communities because they had to depend on each other to get by. The middles classes have never needed such help. They are also more often than not, more articulate and better at fighting their cause. That's why they do better at lobbying local government. The Unions used to play the same role for the working class and public sector workers. Now a growing slice of the labour force has no Union protection. These are all changes that bring us to where we are today. Peckham only began to exist as residential and growing retail area when Peckham Rye Station was built. It is the whole reason that Rye Lane exists in the first place. Can't see how that has ever been a bad thing. Writing things like 'So many of those shops must be selling out of date 'fresh' food items, because as Dulwich Fox points out, a fishmonger for example should smell of the sea- not gone off fish.' doesn't really help. The smell of off fish and meat is so strong that it would be very obvious. I know for a fact that Environmental Officers DO regularly inspect retail outlets there. Just on Chains. Chain stores are not interested in communities. They exist for profit and many of the big ones are now owned by multinational corporations. They often kill off small retail businesses (there's plenty of evidence of that nationwide). They do though create jobs and have a place. 'Clustering' which is the term given to retail outlets of similar nature operating within the same area is a natrual feature of free market competition and is actually good for the consumer in keeping prices competitve. It has always been the case that if one shoe shop opens and does well, another will open to try and cash in on business. Banks have done it. Departments stores, jewellers, cafes and so on have all worked to that same theory when deciding where to locate outlets. We are seeing the same with the Pound Shops. They can't really undercut each other on price, so they try to compete for customers with ranges. KK is closer to my thinking on all of this. I do think there is an element of us versus them in the debate. The idea that only sterile and uniform environments are safe to buy from is nonsense. But everyone is entitled to their own take on all of these things.

So in your belief Louisa, governments deliberately set out to destroy communities by clearing substandard housing and building an 'experiment' ? Whilst I agree that with hindsight, there were fundamental flaws in the design of large 60's estates, exacerbated by economic decline over the following decades, any suggestion this was intentional on the part of the planners is nonsense. Many of the design ideas came from Europe, part of a movement that had to address housing provision, and fast. There was genuine reason for removing substandard and delapidated homes, many of which had no indoor toilet and poor bathroom provision. Let's not be nostalgic about the homes they were replacing. The move was right, even if with hindsight the means were flawed. I think also, the argument plays on a notion that these communities would somehow have continued to be unfractured, yet technology and the way life has changed now sees just as many broken communities in the many streets that didn't see the wrecking ball. To think that architecture and redevelopment alone has broken community spirit is just not born out by evidence. Neighbours just don't need each other in the way they did in 1960. Where community spirit can be found is where people actively engage to create it. Again, architecture plays little part in facilitating or stopping that. You might not like Rye Lane without it's chain stores, but many other people do. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it intrinsically bad. What you are are saying is very different from genuine comments about litter and parking. You are the only person on this thread that seems to hate everything about it. That is what I am having great difficulty making sense of. I may be wrong, but I suspect your dislike goes deeper than the range of shops.

But Louisa, you shoot yourself in the foot by contradicting yourself. You clearly despite the working poor and you clearly hate the better off. That to me only means one thing.....ME ME ME and ME (AKA as inverse snobbery). And btw, I am working class through and through, but thankfully have managed to escaped the kind of narrow mindedness that so many of my kind are unable to move away from. The North peckham Estate was not a social experiment. It was built to deal with a real housing problem. It replaced slums and delapidated buildings (like many other similar developments) and those that were first to move into the homes were impressed with the imporved living standards. Sadly by the end of the 60s and into the 70s the country had hit recession. Traditional industries were collapsing and the traditional labour market for exactly the kind of people in North Peckham was disappearing fast (ergo factories and the east end docks). Louisa, you seem to have no conception as to why socio-economic change occurs. To blame bricks and mortar over industry and economy is just plain ignorant. The working classes are also every person that owns or works in one of those small businesses on Rye Lane that you bemoan. There are many ways for local people to influence town planning and local government. Sat in the comfort of your own home whining on a local forum isn't one of them.

lol, yes muffins, I agree. I thought Mr. Fry was the best thing there!!!!

No-one has said Rye Lane is flawless. It's just that some of us are not as bothered about the melange as others. As someone who likes markets for example, smell, ambient noise, and stacked empty crates don't really bother me. Yes there could be more effective refuse desposal/ collection. Maybe there needs to be an additional and later collection along with better conformity by some traders. I personally don't find music by that bus stop an issue. I think you are making something out of nothing on that one. It's not the same as a noisy neighbour having a party late at night is it?

Wow that was a strong reaction Nigello lol...especially as my comments were more aimed at Louisa's points. Illegal parking is punished with PCNs issued from the CCTV that runs the length of Rye Lane. Your assumption it is tolerated is incorrect. Businesses have to leave refuse outside for daily collection. All businesses do this....even the big stores. Rye Lane's problem is that it is a narrow road (the clue lies in the term 'Lane'). It was never designed to be a big shopping mile. Many of the shops there do not have rear thoroughfares for deliveries and refuse collection. Solving that issue without demolition and redevelopment is difficult. and likely to be prohibitively costly. I will take issue with you on loud music though. With the exception of the record store (which you would expect to be playing music) I'm purplexed as to why you cite this as a problem along the Lane. It clearly isn't.

I think it has a lot to do with a dislike of the demographic. You would have to be 80 years old to have lived through any part of Rye Lane's Golden Age. By the Seventies Peckham was full of crime and unemployment. You daren't have walked down Rye Lane after dark. It was already very much in decline. Where is it now is a kind of regeneration from that. Open all hours, vibtant. Many of the people who I know that complain about Rye Lane do so because they are white, working class, and see the influx of ethnic diversity into the area as having robbed them of some cultural heritage - let's be honest here and say that. Well London is a cosmopolitain area. It always has been. It has always had migrants and a reading of the history on any borough or street in London reflects that. Too often we equate 'good' with 'affluence' or 'uniformity', and equate bad with 'poor' and 'foreign'. When I walk down Rye lane, what I see is life. Vibrant, colourful, busy and people of all cultures working hard to keep their shops open. Let's remember, many of the business that Louisa is so keen to describe as 'smelly' and 'unclean' are small businesses run by people who work extremely hard, all hours. They are an example to the rest of us.

Yeah it's twice as long!

I was a bit irritated by the lack of British in it. The Televised show is just a showcase for American and the same old prominent British Stars. Why don't we see the winners of all the other awards receive theirs? Surely the winners of Sound, Editing, Production Design are as important as Actors, Directors, Producers? And in no way is '12 Years a Slave' a better movie than 'American Hustle' imo, so looks like those voting (Academy members) were a bit partisan after all.

Try brand O'Neill. They make pants and jackets in all sizes.

There are rodents everywhere in London. To say that because a shop front is open, that it doesn't feel clean is nonsense. Markets are like that, with crates piled up for refuse collection. By your definition, Billingsgate is a rodent filled unclean smelly place that should be shut down too! The market style of Rye Lane might not be too your liking, but that doesn't mean it should go. I'm aware of the history of Peckham and Rye Lane, and yes, Higgins and Jones in their day where a great success. But that was also a different time and the community was very different. There is nothing special about large chain stores. Those stores prefer now to be within large shopping malls, like Lewisham. You might want them on your doorstep but it makes no business sense for them to be there. Things change. That's life.

What do you mean by 'smelly' shops Louisa. If I go into a fish shop, I expect to smell fish. If I go into a shop selling herbs and spices, I expect to smell herbs and spice. Don't ever move to a coastal fishing Port Louisa....you'd be complaining every time you leave the house. Personally I love Rye Lane, because I love to cook and can get all the asian, indian and carribean herbs and spices I desire there, at reasonable prices. People bemoan the loss of chains stores, but on the same hand complain if a chain stores comes within sniffing distance of LL. You can't have it both ways. Chains stores are just that...chains....boring and predictable and easily found in Lewisham! I'm with Jeremy. Rye Lane is a reflection of it's consumer base, just as LL is a reflection of the gentrified area it serves. To compare the two is meaningless. Re Parking. Rye Lane has CCTV all the way along it. Aren't PCNs issued that way?

Done

I did :D

She also starred in a movie called 'Muff Match' (in 1995).......hope the selectors don't see that!!!

The CGS is a very transparent process. Anyone can apply. Shortlisted candidates are announced publically at community council meetings which ANY member of the public can go to. Shortlisted candidates are invited to perform a public presentation to councillors, who then make a final decision on which applications recieve money. In the application, all projects have to make the case for who will benefit from the project. Money awarded is not simply handed over either. Where contractors are required, the council organises and pays for that directly. Everything is properly audited. No mystery, no conspiracy.