exdulwicher

jimlad48 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don't for one second believe the 470K death > figure. The science behind it is deeply > questionable, there are real concerns over how the > figure was reached and the people behind it have a > very long track record of crying wolf over > previous incidents. How they got listened to or > taken seriously again is beyond me. > So it's all a big global conspiracy? Virtually every country in the world was in on it, the scientists had all collaborated beforehand to say "I know, what a terrific game it'd be if we could bring the planet to a standstill for a few months! You take these countries over here, we'll knock up some pretend figures, oh what a laugh we'll have!" ? Has the Flat Earth forum got a bit boring for you, thought you'd pop over here? What's your views on the Moon Landings? Just wondering if there's any other science you'd like to not believe in for us...

What effect on the economy do you think NOT locking down would have had? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52968523 An extra 470,000 deaths in the UK which would have completely overwhelmed the NHS (and morgues). 470,000 key workers, elderly, vulnerable dying. You reckon the economy would still be functioning fine and we'd all just be carrying on, stiff upper lip, we're British? There'd be CHAOS. Riots and looting as a result of the massive hoarding that would have been going on, mass absenteeism from work as people took their own decisions (or were off work seriously ill) - you may remember that many companies had already closed up shop, locked down, gone to remote working etc BEFORE the Government finally mandated it. No-one would be "just carrying on", there'd be no normal operations at the NHS (because they'd long since have been overwhelmed and would be taking years longer to recover beck to normal). The idea that everything would just be fine with the UK just carrying on regardless (while virtually every other country in the world was on lockdown) is just farcical. It's not realism, it's complete utter fantasy. We had this with the Millenium Bug computer code thing. Thanks to a LOT of very hard work behind the scenes from a lot of computer programmers, nothing happened. (well, almost nothing - in some cases the problem got kicked 50 years down the road by tweaking some 2-digit year codes). That lead to a load of conspiracy theories saying it was all overblown, all a big hoax. It wasn't at all, the preventative measures taken stopped it from being a catastrophe. Without lockdown, we'd be in a far worse place and the economy would still be wrecked for a decade.

Lambeth have done some good work so far, there's a related thread from Lambeth Living Streets here explaining some of it: And a further related metastudy: https://londonlivingstreets.com/2019/07/11/evaporating-traffic-impact-of-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-on-main-roads/ Depending on what you're asking for, FOI's are allowed to be refused if they're going to cost too much (the threshold is usually ?600) or they can ask you to be more specific. Asking for every piece of info from every single meeting for the last 3 years is likely to be refused simply because it will take too long to gather or because the info is already in the public domain if you're willing to spend long enough on the planning pages of Southwark's website. Asking for a specific item from one meeting is pretty easy to gather so do just be targeted in what you're after. Hope that helps.

Unfortunately, all the lunatics are currently in the Government and pushing hard for exactly this, a no-deal Brexit. Covid has been a nice distraction for them - allows them to kick the negotiating can down the road a bit, blame the EU for lack of progress and then sell everything off to the Americans in a "trade deal" that rips up food standards, public services and public protections and turns the UK into a paradise for disaster capitalists who, coincidentally, are the same people who fund the Conservative Party.

Depends how you're defining "the fox problem". The foxes are already there, as pointed out there are actually quite a reasonable number of them. Therefore by their very nature they'll be in and out of most gardens most nights (whether you notice them or not). They'll be marking territory as standard so regardless of whether you / a neighbour are putting food out, they'll still be there and (potentially) defecating / urinating there anyway. But they're obviously finding decent amounts of food whether it's a neighbour actively feeding them or a badly sealed bin or just a bramble patch full of blackberries. They're not going to go away, they're obviously thriving quite happily so the options are: ignore them, they're not really doing any harm (I suspect we'd know if there were lots of decapitated cats or high instances of toxicaris infection) feed them every once in a while (so long as it is periodic and you're not putting out a full roast dinner every night or trying to get them to eat from your hand) do everything legal to actively dissuade them from your garden (fox repellents, a dog, a gravel / concrete / stone garden so there's nowhere to dig, no food). I have to say, overall, first mate's post above (fifth one down on this page) is excellent.

https://www.bbcwildlife.org.uk/urban-fox There's some useful and comprehensive info in that around feeding (or not feeding!) foxes.

I'd be more concerned and worried if the council had said "all these things that we've been consulting on and modelling and surveying people with a rough general idea of expected traffic outcomes - yeah well we're not going to do any of that post-Covid, we're actually going to do a whole host of completely unrelated stuff which we've suddenly decided is better". Not saying they're right or wrong at the moment but they're only NAL barriers (blocks of concrete). Can take them out in a couple of hours.

It's more or less the first thing that gets considered. Councils and emergency services are very used to this - any time roadworks and/or temporary restrictions go in (digging up streets for gas works etc), the emergency services all have full advance notice. There are slightly different legal proceedings depending on the exact nature of / reason for the closure and the location and permanency of any barrier(s) but emergency services are usually involved right from the start of planned closures like this.

Agree with what @rahrahrah said above. Piecemeal bits here and there don't work (or at least, any benefits are very tiny because people don't change their habits for such a tiny inconvenience, they just drive around it). Would have been the ideal time to put in the full Healthy Streets plan on a temporary basis. Lambeth have got some good stuff going on actually, the vast majority of it has been well managed.

A tin of dog food once a week or so (especially during the winter months) is a nice treat for them and for you to see them up close. Any more than that and they tend to get dependent plus you risk inviting other less welcome guests like rats. Don't give them cooked chicken carcass, the bones can splinter and cause serious injury. Clear up the bowls / any uneaten food promptly and it'll be fine.

We call that "anecdata". When anecdotes (stories, opinion, sometimes first hand, sometimes a mix of "a friend of a friend said/did/experienced...") get blended with assumptions and supposition and (usually) a fair bit of emotion and then uplifted to be "fact". Classic case is pretty much any thread to do with cycling/cyclists and especially helmets which always brings out anecdata like never before - I got knocked off and I WOULD HAVE DIED without my helmet therefore everyone should wear helmets. First part is fact - got knocked off bike, was wearing helmet. Second part is supposition that can't be proven - "would have died" (well maybe, maybe not) Third part is the illogical leap to (wrong) conclusion. The introduction of the Workplace Parking Levy in Nottingham https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/10/17/nottinghams-workplace-parking-levy-creates-jobs-cuts-car-use-and-slashes-pollution/ saw similar responses, if not even more negative than some of the posts on here. It's been a resounding success. It's why anecdata is a dreadful measure of "what should be done" and you look at the bigger statistical picture. It's also why it's important to fill in surveys, questionnaires etc on the council website. Sounding off on here won't do a lot, much as the local councillors do seem to engage fairly freely and openly.

Statistically, low paid workers are far less likely to have cars in the first place; they rely disproportionately highly on buses (in particular).

OK, first off, do not take them alcohol. Mostly because they could then be in a position where they could be drunk in charge of a vehicle. If the police come by and they're in a car, drinking alcohol (whether they have any intention of moving the vehicle or not), its unlikely to go down too well plus they'll be in a position where they can't legally move the vehicle anyway after drinking! If you're genuinely concerned for their welfare (as opposed to being concerned that this person is potentially lowering the tone of the neighbourhood), either ask them if you get a chance or pop a discreet note on the windscreen offering assistance. Don't just walk up with random food or drink. Chances are everything is absolutely fine - it could be someone working locally who has no accommodation option (cos Airbnb, hostels etc are all shut), someone who's split up with a partner/unable to pay rent and currently has nowhere to live but is sorting themselves out, maybe even someone who is self-isolating and unable to do it in the family home. If they're not causing any issues like using your garden as a toilet, they're not doing anything illegal.

SnakeFilth Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i thought it was spooky as the car is in > complete darkness and all i can see is a pair of > eyes staring out of the crack between the door and > car frame right at me as i walk by, im sorry but > its a bit unsettling! If it's any consolation, whoever was in there was probably thinking exactly the same about you - wondering if it was the police come to ask them questions or a vandal looking to put the windscreen through. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-52256245 There was a second BBC article which I can't find now about the number of people forced out of lets, temporary accommodation etc or who could no longer afford rent due to furlough and were trying their best to live in cars. Most of the time (under normal circumstances) you can get away with it if you move around regularly; you can use gyms / leisure centres etc for showering and cafes / libraries etc for going to the toilet but that's not an option at the moment. Also there's much less traffic around so unusual cars or people parked in areas where normally they wouldn't be noticed (like a gym or shopping centre) suddenly stick out a lot more. https://www.southwark.gov.uk/finding-a-new-home/advice-about-homelessness?chapter=9 (info and a link to the Streetlink website) Edit: worth noting before you go in there with calling the council etc (however well meaning) that the person is probably doing their best to AVOID being noticed or interacting with people too much.

Wind has changed direction. Last week or so it was almost all from the east so what little that was going into Heathrow was approaching via Slough. Wind is now SW again so everything is circling in over London. Flightradar is a good site, there's this one as well which shows up military flights: https://tar1090.adsbexchange.com/ Often a few Typhoons, F16s and Lightning II out over the North Sea with a tanker plus the massive C17 and A400M cargo planes have been doing a fair bit in the quieter skies. Everything commercial in and out of City is suspended so that's certainly helping with keeping the peace over Dulwich.

Meant to add by the way, Evans Cycles down at Goose Green is now open. They were closed for a while, then appointment only last week but they're now operating normal hours (10-5) but with the usual social distancing requirements, one person in/one person out rules etc. Think it's the closest bike shop within & around ED if you need spares / repairs.

A very recent (one month old) round up here of phone based cycle navigation apps https://www.cyclingweekly.com/group-tests/best-cycling-apps-143222 It's a constant bugbear of mine that so many apps and cycle GPS computers focus on fitness and speed and assimilating all manner of random data like power and cadence rather than concentrating on actual navigation. For a few years I had a GPS that would quite routinely crash during navigation, come up with all manner of weird re-routes and recalculations, pick random dirt paths over functional roads or go 5 miles out of its way just to ride a 200m section of "cycle path". But hey, it'd tell you how much power you were putting out while doing all that... Waste of time.

bels123 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Can anyone recommend a good cycle route app - > Google maps took us onto main roads this weekend > 😬 They all have their pros and cons. Are you just using it off a mobile phone or do you have a cycle GPS device? You can persuade Google to do a cycle option but it's not great. Strava is very popular - fitness tracking app that will work on mobile phones or on GPS devices, the basic version is free with a whole load of options that you can pay an annual subscription for. It will do routes but it uses an algorithm to steer you towards popular routes. So if you ask to go to SW London, it WILL send you into and around Richmond Park as that's the most popular cycling area locally. Komoot is another popular one, again phone or GPS. A friend uses that by default, I never really got on with it and have very limited experience. And the final one is Santander Cycles app. It's really designed for getting you to and from docking stations so less useful in Dulwich where there aren't any but if you ask it to plan a route up in town, it gives you 3 options, Fast, Mixed and Leisure. Fast is predominantly the most direct way, Mixed will use cycle paths if there's any there and Leisure will specifically direct you to towpaths, cycle lanes, parks etc. As I say though, not much good around Dulwich but excellent up in town.

NewWave Wrote: > > Thats me..I have to be at work 9.30-6pm its 7.5 > miles door to door which according to google will > take me 2 hours 30mins (probably longer..I'm a > slow walker) and aside from my hour's lunch break > I stand all day. > I really cannot do that 5 days a week As before, no-one is asking (or telling) you to do that. You sound like one of the key workers who might have to use public transport or drive a private vehicle. The problem is that if everyone else, for every journey they have to make, also goes by private car then your journey is going to take 2.5hrs anyway - it's just that you'll be stuck in traffic for all of it and have nowhere to park at the end! Everyone knows that there are some journeys that cannot be made by bike / scooter or on foot. It's still important that roads are maintained for deliveries, emergency servcies and essential journeys. The point is not the individual, it's saying that if people are to move around efficiently and be able to maintain (as far as reaosnably practical) a 2m distance to each other, some road space is going to have to be reallocated to pedestrians. Much of the pavement down Lordship Lane is not 2m wide, you can already see people stepping into the street to get past others and where there's a queue at a bus stop or outside a shop (even if it's just 5 people), that's still 10 sq m of pavement space minimum. So some road space needs to go to "spillover". You can still run cars and buses down the middle but if everyone decides to drive, that'll be solid within minutes, everyone can understand that. All it's saying is to walk or cycle where reasonably possible. And councils can put (and are putting) in temporary measures to enable that safely. You only need to look at some of the other traffic-related threads on here to see how many journeys CAN be made by walking and cycling, there are stories of neighbours driving 1/4 mile to the school gates and back again or 1/2 mile into the village for a loaf of bread. That's not going to be feasible in future! And if they can walk or cycle, then that frees up the increasingly narrowed / filtered roads to allow you to drive or get the bus 7.5 miles to your workplace, hopefully without sharing a bus with 50 other people or being stuck in an endless traffic jam.

Monkey Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Agree, Gromit. Walking to work would take me two > hours and 30mns according to Google maps. And I?m > not getting on a bike after the crazy driving I?ve > seen this weekend... As mentioned - no-one is suggesting that every single person walk or cycle every single journey. But what threads like this always bring out is people quoting one example - yours of going to and from work for instance or people going "I drive a builder's van with loads of tools". Absolutely - in those cases it's clearly not practical to walk 3hrs each way per day or try to carry all your plumbing kit round in a rucksack. But what about the other journeys you make? To the shops, the pub, to see friends... Obviously not all of those are applicable right now but as we come out of lockdown, those journeys will once again be on the table. But if we all try driving them, the roads won't work. That's a given, even the Government can see that. So we HAVE to try something else. We need to maintain distance (at the moment, and potentially for a quite a while). We can't do that on the existing pavements, we can't fit an extra 500 cars per hour on the roads so that leaves re-allcation of road space away from private cars towards people to allow efficient transport for everyone. YOU might not be able to walk or cycle much but at some point in a journey, you'll be walking - even if you've driven to the shops, you'll need to be moving around on a pavement and staying 2m away from others. The people that can walk, cycle and scooter for that particular journey should aim to do so. That frees up road space for those who need to use a vehicle for their particular journey. Knowing of course that people can and do swap modes of transport. Coming out of lockdown, if every child is being driven to school to avoid buses, trains etc, we'll be back at square one of the arguments going on over on that Healthy Streets thread - congestion, lack of parking, pollution. There are a dozen schools within a stones throw around ED. Numerous examples of other cities worldwide doing similar things becasue it is the only feasible option to maintain distancing and fit everyone into the finite space. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-coronavirus-road-space-cycle-lanes-berlin-a9462771.html

But it's not an either/or picture, no-one is saying that everyone has to ride bikes all the time. There's a finite set of road space in East Dulwich (and indeed in pretty much all towns and cities). Most of that road space is already not far off capacity at least some of the time, if not quite a lot of the time. It takes AGES to build more roadspace, you're talking years to plan, approve and construct a new highway or bypass or housing estate with the corresponding road network. We can fairly safely assume that some working patterns will change dramatically - much more working from home, remote meetings and so on which will remove a percentage of journeys from the roads and public transport. But obviously not everyone can WFH, there's still going to be a need for travel to and from work. In the short term at least, we can also assume that a lot of leisure facilites - gyms, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, museums - probably aren't going to open up at anywhere near capacity so again, that removes a percentage of leisure travel. International tourism we can probably write off for the rest of the year which again frees up a significant chunk of travel in and around central London (less applicable in ED). However, we can also assume that social distancing is going to be a thing for a while. There's a related and interesting read here about viral transmission in different circumstances (in/outdoors, pblic transport etc): https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them So public transport can potentially operate at about 15-20% of current levels at best. You could put on more buses but that leads to issues up in central London when they all converge plus there's not a massive amount of spare capacity and drivers just sitting there waiting to go. Train and tube capacity is even more difficult to increase. There's the school coach issue I mentioned ^^ as well which is a bit of an unknown at the moment. Working off all of that, we can probably assume a drop of about 25% in people actually needing to travel from pre-Covid levels (change in working patterns, remote working, only in the office one day a week for example). But that still doesn't balance with the 80% cut in public transport capacity. So... if you put all of those journeys into private cars, they won't fit on the roads. Gridlock, pollution and Rupert's point of "the hard-working people trying their best" is no good if the hard working people are all stuck in traffic along with critical delivery vehicles, emergency services and the public transport that is still running. Years and years of largely pointless Government campaigns aimed at "sharing the road" and "giving cyclists space" have amounted to nothing, the ONLY things that increase the number of people cycling are segregated lanes and reducing traffic. You can see it now (not just in ED). Cycling, when there's vastly reduced traffic on the roads is really nice. Great way for families to get around together, fantastic for keeping distance from others, cheap, easily accessible. But they won't ride if/when, traffic is back at pre-Covid levels. They didn't before, why would they now? Traffic scares people off the roads and we end up in the Catch-22 of the roads being dangerous because of the traffic so I won't cycle, I'll drive. And there's more traffic so it's more dangerous to cycle so more people drive... This is 100% wrong. You don't wait until the whole house is ablaze before calling the fire brigade. Similarly, you don't wait until the streets are solid with traffic to then go "hmm, best do something about that". The change has happened - people need to move around reasonably efficiently and in a well-spaced manner. By enabling the ones who can walk / cycle / scooter to do so safely, you free up space on public transport and on the roads for the people who need it.

sally buying Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Has a new money tree orchard been discovered https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/coronavirus-and-the-ultimate-magic-money-tree/20/03/ There's a related article linked in that one about "austerity" as well, both are worth a read. Plus that money isn't new, it's a re-announcement of previously allocated funding, just been repackaged and brought forward a little bit.

It depends a bit on how lockdown is lifted, what restrictions remain in place and for how long and what (if any) mitigation (eg masks, social distancing) is used on public transport. Masks are difficult - mostly for security reasons and while you might have commuters willing to risk a short bus journey, how many would be willing to be surrounded by masked individuals...? It's something not publically acknowledged at the moment but it's a major concern; you basically swap risk of a virus for a much increased risk of crime. It is impossible to replace reduced mass transit capacity with private cars. If car sharing isn't possible due to social distancing, every previously full rush hour bus will generate an additional 30-40 cars. Within London, if you drop public transport by 85% or so, that's an additional 8 million journeys you have to "move" to somewhere else. You don't have to have a huge amount of experience commuting in cities to know that 8 million additional car journeys will be complete and utter gridlock. The only way to even partially replace lost mass transit capacity is active travel. There's the equality issue as well because (while it varies borough to borough), the figures are that roughly 1/4 - 1/3rd of Londoners don't have access to a car. So if you prioritise cars, those people are disadvantaged further because the roads are clogged solid making it dangerous to walk or cycle and impractical to take the bus due to the congestion. Most cities (towns, boroughs etc) have virtually no capacity to quickly increase their capacity for cars but most can increase the bike and pedestrian capacity relatively quickly and cheaply. Lambeth have already done a fair bit in and around Brixton and Herne Hill and they put in place a borough-wide Emergency Traffic Order to allow the changes. The smart thing for Southwark to do is put in place a temporary version of the Healthy Sreets Plan NOW - it can be done relatively quickly and cheaply using fencing, plastic wands, planters etc although you can't put in camera-controlled permitted turns (as talked about at EDG / Townley Road) as fast, that's a fairly major logistical task to install and programme it. There's your trial period straight away with the knowledge that it can be quickly and cheaply removed again (rather than several months of roadworks to rebuild junctions again). Some of it will depend a bit on work patterns - will people continue to work from home where that's possible? What about schools, how can social distancing be maintained in school classrooms, sports facilites, changing rooms nd on coaches to and from school? In the Healthy Streets thread is a whole raft of complaints / issues with coaches but if you have to go from 25 coaches to 50 to fit all the kids on in a socially distant manner then that's gridlock again... But if kids can't go to school, the parents can't go back to work so...??? And you've got to admit, the area with far fewer cars is really nice. Less traffic noise, less pollution, it's nice to see families and kids riding bikes along streets previously solid with cars. And if every open shop is going to have a 2m-spaced queue of people outside it then there isn't enough pavement space for everyone so the only option is to expand into the roads. This is being done worldwide now, it's not something that just Sadiq Khan is talking about - if anything the message is now coming from Government that this has to be done otherwise the pollution and gridlock will kill the economy just as badly as coronavirus has. This cartoon shows where we've sort of blindly stumbled to with car culture: Just need to take back some of that yawning chasm of car space and make it people space.

malumbu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > (note, yes I did see a guy on a penny farthing, > breaches, tweed jacket and cap) Jacob Rees-Mogg out for a shopping trip? ;-) I know who you mean, I've seen him before and he's a regular at Herne Hill velodrome every time they have a vintage cycling fayre or penny farthing race.

seenbeen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Look at the timer at the top- it takes 6 minutes > for the particles to settle.... > https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-coughing- > spread-covid-19-grocery-store-researchers/ That report is a bit like the "study" with cyclists and runners (linked earlier in this thread) and how they leave plumes of aerosol in their wake. Some unverified / unreviewed theories, some nice modelling (everything looks good with some shiny graphics) and some interesting ideas but the ultimate conclusion from that (if it is vaguely accurate) is simply to shut EVERYTHING. No supermarkets, no shopping of any kind, everyone locked up 24/7 except for people who would come to your door and deliver a tray of food like the catering trolley on an airline. Going back to what Sally said, it's obvious that there's a balance to be struck here - such extreme measures are likely to do more harm than good in the long term. Personally, so long as social distancing is adhered to, I see no issue with cycling to work (if you're a key worker) or heading out for a spin around the park with the family just to get some fresh air. It does everyone good (especially kids), it's within the guidelines and it helps to minimise the issues from being inside 24/7. Even prisoners are allowed out for exercise!