louisiana

Gala have got a lot to answer for. And they have a lot more cinema-come-bingo halls to get rid of too.

yes yes, irony shmirony :)

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I know, I know, plenty of forelock tugging. :( > > If you can find it within your heart to attend > that meeting, please please do. If not for Alan > Dale (who probably is more concerned with house > prices ;-)), then at least for the secular future > of our community services. So Alan Dale was claiming it was a W hotel, and it isn't a hotel at all, and you are doing forelock tugging? FFS what's come over you Huge-nut?

Something like an Oxford Union debate perchance Moos? :-S

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I really don't get what this obsession with > consultation is. > > The council members were elected to talk on our > behalf. Why have a dog and bark yourself? Council members rarely have much planning knowledge. They rely on officers for that. I have heard a council member admit in a planning committee meeting to decide a major planning case that he didn't know the different classes in the Use Class Order: exactly the issue that was the key to the committee's decision! In larger boroughs, many members will never have been to the area subject to a decision. Most depressing was seeing that several members deciding on a case had not even read their own officer's report for the case before the meeting that was hearing the case. Of course most people never get to hear about this stuff: the public gallery will only take a few dozen, meetings rarely get covered in the press, and there's generally no webcast or audio. You just get a sanitised version of the discussion written up a few weeks later. Edited to remove a rogue 'p'

Huguenot I'd say you're going out on a bit of a limb here. My experience with local planning is that a council is subject to fairly relentless lobbying behind the scenes from moneyed interested parties: developers, architects with pet projects and all the rest. There is huge lobbying industry and deal-doing that many of us are never aware of. Teams of people who are paid to do nothing but put pressure on local councils. This is how we get things like a local MP pressing in the House of Commons for a developer's ?250m pet project to be built on Metropolitan Open Land (two weeks ago). All of this does ultimately affect the environment we all live in. I think the consultative process is perhaps an attempt to redress the balance a little. In the case of Crystal Palace, there are 5 authorities pulling in different directions and seemingly often not speaking to each other. Fairly crap for local residents, who seem to be the only ones insisting that the 5 sit around the same table and plan in a co-ordinated way across the 5.

The one that's really getting to me is VikkiM, Victoria Mills. Any opportunity to slag off an opponent, and she's in there, like some crazed Mrs Rochester on a party political paranoia jag. I shall now definitely *not* be voting Labour. Well done Victoria, you take the gold star for 'behaviour likely bring politicians into disrepute' (6)

Sorry! My intel was out of date. The hotel ppl pulled out, and a church pulled in. Sorry once again. My normally reliable moles and spies shall be sent for retraining :-S

tomchance Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Quite. I got my response in a couple of weeks > back, it will be interesting to see how the > elections affect this consultation and other > recent moves by the Government to open things up a > bit. Possibly the only worthwhile initiative that we know to have come from Brown? However, with Tom Steinberg advising the Tories, and pressure from other quarters, I don't see the issue falling away. It is an idea whose time has come, regardless of who is in power.

OpenStreetMap is lovely. The idea with OS Free would be that anyone would then be free to mash up the OS Free data (including national address and co-ordinate data) with their own data without let or hindrance. At present, as you are no doubt aware, if you try to combine *any* OS data with your data, OS will insist the resulting product belongs to them IP-wise, even though it also contains your (open/free) IP, and even after you've paid their licensing. The idea is that the public should benefit from what the public has already paid for.

Newcomer, would that view still hold if the relative concerned lived in another country (different language, different everything). To me, this makes the situation even tougher, as the elderly person cannot necessarily be brought to the UK (legally), and even if they can, the language barrier and problems of age and memory means a 50-75% dependent person becomes 100% so. Even if they have mobility, they cannot walk down their own street without getting lost - they really are not acquiring any 'routes' or even streets at that age - and they cannot ask anyone the way either. They cannot communicate with health care workers or care assistants. etc. They cannot speak to anyone except you. They cannot go to daycare centres without being incommunicado all day. They cannot understand the TV or the radio. So do you shut down your business, perhaps make people unemployed, and move to another country, together with your family? A country where available work is next to nil (and wages very low), and where you have no entitlement to benefits? Send your children to a school in a country where they don't speak the language, probably at just the wrong time in their schooling? Where do you all live? And for how long? It could quite literally be decades, indeed until you are retired and beyond retirement yourself. So, what to do?

Sad to hear that Jessie Tait of Midwinter Pottery fame died a couple of weeks ago. There's an obit by Charlotte Higgins in the Grauniad http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/12/jessie-tait-obituary and some of her designs here: http://www.art-deco.demon.co.uk/midwin/ Any other Midwinter collectors out there? I became one by accident, as my mum bought lots of Nature Study by Terence Conran in '55, and then I came across some unwanted Zambesi by Jessie Tait, which was a '56 design.

I've been embroiled with the Croydon Core Strategy in recent months; was aware of the Southwark one but didn't know the dates. Crystal Palace, by the way, if facing five different Core Strategies (Croydon, Bromley, Southwark, Lambeth, Lewisham). I would say that consultation process does seem to be a one way (PR/broadcast) process. I think it's difficult to get views acknowledged as weighty/serious unless you wear a hat of some kind: representative preferably. This is an important document. We've found the Croydon one quite useful for pointing to planning points we can make use of in current case; and have also provided feedback to its first round consultation. I'm not sure I can face diving into another one just yet... but will give it a go.

Quack quack. Quack quack. [emerges from water and wiggles bottom]

There's currently a consultation on the future of certain OS mapping data: "..on the Government's proposal to open up Ordnance Survey's data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information." Important stuff. No really. This could help many, many small not-for-profit projects working to provide info at the local level. And councils. Please take a look if you can, and respond if you wish. Closing date is 17 March. http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/ordnancesurveyconsultation

A couple of years back an estate agent recommended that I used sealed bids, as owing to the nature of the property it would be likely to attract a lot of interest. I didn't want to sell in the end...

Ah yes, election-maps. A truly dire website. The sooner OS get forced into opening up the licensing on map data the better, for local authorities and for all of us.

SeanMacGabhann Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > but there IS a (very good) hotel already > dangnabit!! > > > before we dismiss an area There is indeed a good hotel already. But I would be surprised if the area could support more than one. Hence my comment about Premier Inn. I'm afraid I don't have the intel about which hotel group/chain, so cannot confirm or deny on Alan Dale's view.

I hate it when you're reading on the bus and some idiot sits right next to you yacking at the top of their voice on their flippin mobile. For 30 minutes. Until their battery dies. More than once I've felt like ripping the thing from their hands.

I'm going to miss the glorious cholesterol feasts I've been having from Appennino in Spitalfields recently. PS Blood pressure just checked, and it's still somewhere around my ankles, so bacon all the way baby

Brilliant! There's a reply paid envelope, but you can't use it to opt out (send back your opt out form which you've managed to locate on the interweb). If you try that one, "the contents of the envelope will be destroyed". Charming.

jimmy two times Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What way are you looking when they walk into you? What way am I looking? The way I'm going. Sometimes I'm stood stock still waiting for them to charge cos I can see it coming and there's nothing I can do. Usually large blokes about twice my weight. They are the ones that never apologise for knocking you sideways.

Is there anyone local that does fast turnaround/instant business cards? Tried a trawl through the archives but drew a blank.

jimmy two times Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You mean people who walk backwards? Yeah, that's a > real bug-bear of mine as well. Can't they all walk > forwards like normal people? People who walk forwards while facing and looking sideways... and then wonder why they've walked into you/x/y/z

benjaminty Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Louisiana, > > If you have been round the systems block you'll > understand Access Management. The system > implemented provides the required Access > management capabilities... if those controlling > that process are not capable of doing so then > there is not a lot that can be done here. With > implementation of these new tools comes the need > for the correct resources and the appropriate > knowledge and experience to run with them. These > can be fixed and is not an issue with the system. Benjaminty The 'system' is the system. It includes checks, balances, people, processes... And the lack thereof. Please read your 'systems theory' basic textbooks.