James Barber

Hi savage, You're right someone should answer the phone or it should divert in extremes to voice mail. Easy to hook this up to email voice converter so that the noise team get to see it straight away.

I've just received an email from SOuthwark Council officials hoping to open Denmark Hill to southbound traffic tomorrow. Must say I'm hugely disappointed at how this appears to have been handled. Closing such an arterial road then only reopening it northbound after 35+ hours and the southbound blocked probably for another 48 hours with little or not visible work going on for most of this time is outrageous. If we had tube lines people would have underground ways of getting past this. Even the nourthbound bus services are disrupted as they don't carry lots of spare buses and drivers to cope with the added journey times of the southbound buses.

Denmark Hill still pointlessly closed to southbound traffic. As of 8.15am no one on site doing anything. Clearly shows the high regard bus users are held by Southwark Council Network Management team. If this is annpying do complain to councillor [email protected] and cc please cc me [email protected].

Hi savage, Southwark Council is led by the Labour party and their budget for this year was to drastically cut the noise teams. They no longer operate after 2.30am and reduced. Weirdly they are on during weekday 9-5 hours. This was a political choice they made while hoarding an extra ?9M into reserves every year going forward.

Hi Fuschia, Great idea. Please do feed it into the Library review. Income generation last year was over ?500K. At the new Canada Water library its proposed to have a permanent full time booking person to maximise room bookings.

Hi triniy, Southwark Council have decided to reduce the number of lollipop people from 52 to 42. The 10 selected to be removed are at signalised crossings. I don't believe any survey of how many vehicles don't stick to the traffic lights have been undertaken. All are located on roads above 20mph. Recent research not taken into account is clear that 7-11 year olds are unable to judge vehicles speeds above 20mph - hence why kids in this age groups feature disproportionately in traffic collisions. The research surmises that this is why you get comments "they just stepped out" of course they did beacuse at 50mph you don't register in such kids brains. So the junctions Southwark Council have chosen to remove 10 lollipop people are exactly the locations they should'nt be removed without proof that vehicles ARE obeying the signals. The money that will be saved is calculated to be ?50,000 in total. The pot of money this comes from is the surplus on the parking account. So after paying for parking wardens etc all the money raised from parking fees (prices double this year) parking permits (increased by 26% on average this year), and parking fines (money spent enforcing this reduced after a renegotation). So they've loads more money and their slashing spending keeping our kids safe. This means many families will be much less likely to let our kids walk to school unsupervised and when they do let them do this they'll have to be much older. Huge cost to our society far outweighing the ?50k a year. Even one child in a serious or fatal collission every 20th year at these crossings will cost more than the savings. If you don't want this to happen then several things you can do: - write to Southwark News and/or South London Press ([email protected] & [email protected] respectively) telling them. - Email the Labour council leader your views on this and why and it can't be money - [email protected] - Join the Facebook group Save Southwark's Lollipop crossing. - Promote this issue to your PTA and spread the word via the school. Even if your school isn't affected it could be next time.

Hi Ko, Litter pickers have very little kit and a LOT of ground to cover. I suspect the idea is to avoid loading them down as they wont cover the ground. Whereas we now have street sweeping once a month and they have everything needed and more to undertake it. In the past we didn't have litter pickers only street sweepers who cleared litter at the same time and it costs an awful lot more sweeping the streets several time a week. Sorry to hear dog poo clearing now 4 hours rather than 1 hour response time. Another cut back this year (I'll refrain from explaining why it wasn't needed!).

I'm staggered at how Southwark Council highway Network Management have handled this. I had to walk along Denmark Hill at 9am this morning and 5pm tonight. The gas mains repairs are affecting the southbound lane of Denmark Hill. When works have taken place on gas mains on this southbound lane in the past Denmark Hill has been kept open - even during rush hours - using one of the two northbound lanes for southbound traffic. So this morning after 33 hours of Denamrk Hill being totally closed IT WAS STILL CLOSED. Northbound only returned some time today. No indication of when southbound working will return. Clearly zero CAN DO attitude. Past methods of keeping Denmark Hill open are not beign adopted. Very disappointing.

Hi Ko, I think we have our poo answer - thanks Fuschia. If anyone have dog poo on the pavement they want removed call 020 7525 5000 and it should be removed within the hour.

Hi chippy Minton, Many tha ms for this useful feedback. Hi Ko, I'm not sure about litter pickers remove ping do poo so will categorically find out for you (and me). And yes those days each week your street will be litter picked.

Hi Fuschia, My understanding is all children up to age 8 must be escorted by an adult over the age of 16. That 1-4 year olds must have an adult for EACH child and 5-8 1 adult can escort 2 children in that age range. All children upto 8 can attend rafts and rascale BUT the adult child ration must be kept. Example you've given of 3 year old you'd need one adult to supervise them 1:1. For the 8 year old technically they should be ok as my 8 year old has attended rafts and rascals and we all had a whale of a time - although when my son and I met the head of leisure earleir today we did suggest more fun floats were needed. If you get really stuck please email me and I'll get a more formal response.

A couple of corrections to the debate that have been helpfully sent to me: "The [inter library loan]fee charged in Southwark is 50p if a book is already in stock somewhere in the borough. If the book has to be purchased or obtained from another authority, or the British Library then we charge ?2 per item. These are some of the lowest charges in London, for example Bexley charges ?3 for books not in stock in the borough and an additional ?10 for a British Library loan, Croydon charges ?3.50 and ?12.60 respectively. We send e-mail notifications for people who have reserved books, although there are still some people who do not have e-mail addresses. The Home Library Service has not closed. The funding for this part of the service will cease on March 31st 2013 and we are currently looking at alternative ways of sustaining this service. It is too early to draw any conclusions on this and I am concerned that people may be misled into thinking the service is being cut and that we are not making any effort to look at alternative means of provision." I've been assured books are still fashionable with lending going up. The library consultation talks about lots of other non book things hence my misunderstanding!

I just wanted to express the thanks and gratitude of the East Dulwich councillors - Rosie, Jonathan and myself for the great job council officers and their extended internal and external team have done on the complete renovation of the Dulwich Leisure Centre. Its been a complicated project due to listed planning consents, maximising what was kept open while the works were undertaken and a change of political administration. The centre looks great. I'm sure it will now become an even more popular and much loved facility than ever before. Thank you. Attached a couple of pictures taken this morning a few minutes before the official gym reopening.

Sorry Dulwichbloke, I don't feel that having a limit of 20kg with other heavier weights gathering dust in a cupboard would make sense. I'm sure these heavier 30kg weights wont result in any change of atmosphere. And if Fusion thought it would its advice to Southwark Council would have been different. IT is a very large gym. IF it was much smaller then I think your point could be valid. Hope this explanation makes sense.

Hi richfish, Southwark has 12 libraries. Each one has a manager (well Kingsdale is managed under Dulwich Library) and then it should if everything devolved to local library management need just a head of library managers role. If you then layer it into a cross London Library function you would need lots of other layers and HR team a seperate finance team etc. So cross London I could see being more costly. It would also mean that you can;t blame local councillors when you're not happy. So local democratic accountabiltiy of a local service.

Hi dulwichbloke, As previously posted I've arranged for all the free weights to be put out and they go from 1kg-30kg? What have I missed.

Hi dulwichbloke, All our 2006 mainfesto pledges for East Dulwich are now delivered (greater library opening hours, modern street lighting, fighting to keep the area remaining surburban in character, new secondary school and renovated DLC). So not sure what you're talking about. The grand reopening should be fun. Tessa Jowell, Cllr Veronica Ward and I have been asked to pop along earlier than the official 10am reopening in our gym kit for photos.

I received the rota for all our local streets to be litter picked. Terrible format so I've hacked it around to make it easier to find your street. If you ever find litter picking didn't occur on one of the set days do let me know the details.

Sorry your heard this news from me Otta. Ideally home boooks service would be run from each librsty - this is the ONE area I think volunteers would be great in supporting the library service.

If a dog onwer is unable to control or encouraging their dogs to do such things then the dogs are likely to repeat it to another animal of human - it could be your child next. You must report this to the Police.

10am Frankito - I can't help being so excitied about our final 2006 manifesto promise being delivered.

Inter library loans are a perenial problem. When I've ordered books they sometime never appear. Several other councils have devolved all book purchasing to individual libraries. The library orders them direct and have them the following day if in print or use second hand service called for similar out of print speed of obtaining a book. Eliminates the need for inter library loans and when customers get such a great srevice they come back more often. This also cuts out a whole back office team that add delay to fulfilling actual demand. So I see lots of back office savings that should mean Southwark libraries can be open MORE than they currently are.

Hi micah627, Have you reported any of these criminal acts to the local Police so they can try and solve and deter futher occurences?

Hi Undisputedtruth, I would imagine 12 Starbucks or similar franchises making more than ?400,000 profit and meeting the savings target. But i think the top down library service isn't galvanising enough local support. I think the Simpson's approahc might be better at giving a great customer focused service and get more people in the doors enoughing books.

Ann, great to hear your son also thinks its amazing improvement. We promised in 2006 we'd renovate the centre. Its taken ?6.2M and several years - partly as its listed - to complete and I'm chuffed Labour have finished the job. And it now uses a fractino of the energy it used to. Official reopening tihs Saturday at 10am. Do come along.