Dogkennelhillbilly

...and yet in addition to employing teachers, it also employs accountants, marketing people, maintenance people, security people, operations and contracts managers and a bunch of other people outside its "core competence" of education. 🤔 If JAGS were (as it claims) legitimately committed to championing social awareness and sustainability inside and outside the classroom, then it would be simple to insist its outsourcers paid their labourers the London Living Wage, for example. This is a common provision in contracts where supply chain workers are at a high risk of exploitation.

That's a weird comment. Presumably the Head, the Director of Finance and the Director of Operations are all directly employed by JAGS instead of being outsourced. Do they only do it for the money and as such do the bare minimum? As JAGS outsourced their cleaners far in advance of the election (let alone the introduction of VAT, which still doesn't even have a firm date set) and JAGS has explicitly said it's nothing to do with VAT, I think we can safely conclude that VAT on private schools is totally irrelevant to the subject.

Interesting article in the paper today about the precarious and hard nature of this kind of work. JAGS and other facilities owners typically don't employ their own cleaning staff - instead they wash their hands of the arrangements by outsourcing them to agencies. It's the agencies that hire and fire the cleaners - but often acting at the direction of the clients... The same union that is representing the cleaners at JAGS represented the cleaner dismissed for "stealing" an abandoned tuna sandwich from a law firm's meeting room: "In London, Rodriguez joined the tens of thousands of Latin American migrants who have made their home in the capital in recent decades, a high proportion of whom work in the contract cleaning and facilities management sector. The work was hard, and her employment structures fiendishly complicated, involving multiple outsourcing companies, third-party recruitment agencies and byzantine lines of management and responsibility. On a typical day, she would leave her flat in Streatham, south London, at 6am and service at least three different sites across the city, often not returning home until midnight; pay was always at or very close to the minimum wage. But in the course of her labours, Rodriguez found herself playing a vital role at the core of some of the country’s most famous institutions, from flagship fashion outlets to the House of Commons, where she worked for four years. She and her colleagues sometimes felt like Britain’s skeleton: an unseen but indispensable support structure without which nothing else could stand upright." https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/03/the-cleaner-sacked-for-eating-a-tuna-sandwich

I don't think they have ever said that are a charity - but rather a Community Interest Company (CIC). It would help if I could remember the name...

Great work Alex Yee and Kingsdale!

As @Angelina says, the gates are never closed before the posted closing time. In July, the park is closed after 9.30pm. If you enter or remain after that time, bring a ladder or a sleeping bag! https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/parks/opening-times

Has anyone heard if this has been resolved yet? The last news from the union was the cleaning contractor had actually CUT wages by 12% following the dispute. Apparently these cleaners are making just 11p per hour above the UK legal minimum wage - how can anyone live on that in London? https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/en/campaigns/cleaners-fight-pay-cuts-at-prestigious-jags-private-school/

Yikes. That must have been terrifying. Thank you for reporting to police

Amalaser Clinic has opened up at 353 Lordship Lane (next to Plough Cafe). https://amalaserclinic.com/

The OneDulwich guy should just sign his own name to his letters and opinions then or at least be transparent that it is a nom de plume. Has he ever explained his relationship - if any - with the other "OneSomethings" that appeared in other parts of London at the same time with similar branding? 🤔 -- Signed on behalf of London Action Strategy Against Group Nontransparency Everywhere (LASAGNE), membership: 1, supporters: 6 billion. Sign up for our newsletter! That's absolutely true. There were also no votes exclusively in favour of decimalisation, independence for India, or the disestablishment of the Catholic Church.

When you say "a lot of conversation", you may be overstating the reach of a thread on the Road Moaning section of the EDF. But if whatshisname wants to say thank you to me, my DMs are open.

Interestingly, Redfield & Wilton gets a mention in this week's Private Eye for being rather "opaque". It's a loss-making company registered at an accommodation address, among other things... All this rubbish about opinion polls is a side show. Voters locally and across London have had multiple chances to elect candidates that have put abolishing LTNs as the centre of their platform. And those candidates fail time after time because apart from a few obsessives hammering away on their keyboard here, they're not a big deal and everyone's getting on with their lives.

"A Jags spokesperson said: “...These developments have nothing to do with VAT on school fees...” Nope - they have form for blaming everything on introduction of VAT (that won't happen for at least another year).

Pretty terrible that JAGS's cleaning contractor isn't paying its workers the London Living Wage already. How does that fit with the JAGS value of championing social awareness and sustainability inside and outside the classroom? https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/en/ https://www.jags.org.uk/welcome/vision-mission-aims/ https://livingwage.org.uk/what-real-living-wage

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can give botox and other filler infections without any training or licensure... https://www.policybee.co.uk/blog/can-anyone-train-to-give-botox-uk

OneDulwich is not a group. It's the alter ego of a single individual.

We have local elections, mayoral elections, Greater London Assembly elections and (I suppose) this last parliamentary elections. They are the definitive polls and they show that ULEZ and LTN opposition is a political loser, each and every time. Getting 0.7% of the votes cast is barely footnoteworthy. As far as I can tell I'm the only person who has noted it! But I do invite future Conservative candidates for council, mayor and Parliament to double down on the losinf streak and build their campaigns around opposition to LTNs - they can get a drubbing again, and again, and again for all I care...

https://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/search/?&q=Townley "bus gate"&search_and_or=and&sortby=relevancy

One of the candidates in the recent Dulwich and West Norwood election was Mike Spenser. I hadn't heard of him before election day. Spenser was an independent candidate running on a single issue platform: against LTNs. As far as I can understand it, Spenser wanted to: 1) scrap all existing LTNs 2) any measures to address pollution must be made on the basis of more extensive consultations 3) responsibility for local traffic management should be passed to central government. The candidate received 296 votes (0.7% of total). This is the second, or maybe the third, attempt by opponents of the LTNs to turn elections (first the Tories in local elections, then this candidate for Westminster) into referenda on LTN. If they were referenda, then the issue has been definitively disposed of: the anti-LTN candidates were all defeated by some margin. https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/117472/mike-spenser https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001205

I'm happy to criticise Alleyns, but there isn't space to dispatch coaches safely from the little tarmac semicircle in front of the school. Also, the whole street is railings, there's a million places to lock up bikes along there.

Good to see Alleyns making more reasonable noises. Hopefully they can follow through with reasonable actions. 🤞🏻

Did you get fined?

OneDulwich is OneGuy. There are no members. It is not an organisation. It's a nom de plume for an ex-PR consultant that lives locally, didn't like the traffic changes 4 years ago (!), and is still banging on about it. (And that's fair enough - he's perfectly entitled to his opinion).

I have been in and liked it a lot. Nice food, well presented, attentive service. 👍 Just walked past this place opposite Dulwich Library today - I'd missed it opening up. Looks like a nice little space, they're doing art club stuff for kids in the holidays.

You obviously have a political bee in your bonnet about charging VAT on private school fees (although you are still confusing it with charitable status) in a year or more's time. Your long-winded speculation in the absence of any knowledge doesn't make any of that relevant to the topic at hand.