Penguin68

Burying local people locally is more important to you than nature and history and heritage. Yes - in so far as the 'history' is well documented and the cemeteries, as working cemeteries are also 'heritage'. There are many other areas very local to us where there is 'nature' and indeed, should you care to look without blinkers you will find an abundance of nature within the cemeteries - for instance the hay meadow in COC which would disappear under your plans (and is far closer to the original heritage of the pasture lands which were purchased for the cemeteries in the first place). But thousands of local people can?t use the burial plots which will also be sold to people from other boroughs. And what about the local people's graves they are burying over and soon to be digging up? So much for local burial. But hundreds can, and many of those who do die locally will prefer cremation anyway. To deprive anyone of having something because everyone can't have it is madness. Those whose graves will be lost/ disturbed (where those graves are not anyway unmarked) will have died 75 or more years ago - so most unlikely to leave grieving relatives who will actually know them. Again, you wish to deprive relatives of those who die now a local place to mourn to 'respect' the wishes of mourners almost certainly long dead themselves. More people want to save the woods and nature and history and heritage than want inner city burial. You imply this is an either/ or debate - but it isn't. Any plans for the cemeteries leave oodles of 'woods and nature and history and heritage' locally - I can't be bothered to list them all again, but your reductio ad abdsurdum argument suggests that you can't have both with the plans, but of course you can. And, as I have said, the cemeteries in and of themselves continue to offer history and heritage (and nature) - indeed removing them as cemeteries would be precisely to remove history and heritage - like the grave of the Crimean VC which disappeared in the 'wilding' that you so espouse until uncovered by his regiment (nothing to do with any work by ssw). Give people such a (false) either/ or choice and you get the sort of result you quoted, maybe, but it isn't either/ or at all.

I have recorded this amidst these threads before, but, as a child in the 1950s I was not allowed (by my parents) on public roads until I could demonstrate proficiency riding one handed (left or right) so I could signal turns. This meant that I was, in fact, pretty proficient. I didn't ride on pavements (although the town in which I was brought up does now offer delineated cycle lanes on some of the wider pavements). If children are to be allowed (by custom and practice if not the law) now to use pavements (even local roads are far busier than when I was a child) then they should also be as proficient in bike handling as I was before allowed out in public. It is safer for them and for fellow users of their riding space. And there should be some very clear age-limit to their use of pavements. Possibly linked to their bike size - adult bikes should mean an adult use of roads, not pavements. Perhaps even intermediate size bikes. Cyclists who jink on to pavements from roads, and then back again, to avoid red lights when turning left, for instance, should be penalised.

JoeLeg/Penguin68: Are you really saying cemetery owners should NOT contact the War Graves Commission before digging up or mounding over graves? That they SHOULDN'T look to find out who and where soldiers are? Just out of simple respect for World War soldiers and their families? Or families of anyone buried in their cemeteries? For the nth time, YES - I am saying that. It's up to the CWGC to mark war graves - where they haven't it's not up to Southwark to incur costs by doing their work for them. And I'm sorry, but war dead are really no more meritorious than any one else buried in the cemetery. The VC you talk about (a Crimean War VC) for instance is not 'war dead' - although he was a war hero. And as I have also said, a very large number of those buried in the cemetery were members of the forces and served during WW1 and/ or WWII - although most will have survived the war - and, as it's a London cemetery, a large number who didn't serve as soldiers etc. will have served in other war-time capacities and will (WWII) been put in jeopardy by the Blitz and the V weapons. I know your right-wing friends have a fixation on the military - (although some of them not the Allied military) - but it's not one I share.

(1) - It is not uncommon to have your meter read (legitimately) soon after submitting a meter reading. All meters have to be read at least once a year, outwith any readings sent in by customers. This seems to be scheduled without regard to whether a recent reading has been submitted. (2) - Meter reading companies will often read meters door-to-door and supply the readings to the appropriate company. Individual companies don't necessarily send out their own readers. (Sometimes they do). (3) - All meter readers should have photo ID - and offer it. Did she? (4) - Readers should certainly be trained - what sort of help did she ask for (its hardly a complex business)? (5) - If in doubt - do contact the police.

It's good that Blanche can (finally) admit to error, but once again:- We wish we had known about the war graves two years ago. Southwark did not declare the locations of all 48 CWGC war graves in their planning applications and we had no reason to think there were more than the five. And it appears they only contacted the CWGC around September 2016, despite starting work in February. Southwark has NO responsibility for identifying or marking 'war graves'. This is the responsibility of the CWGC. Southwark included in its plans references to the 5 graves it did know about (and I assume the CWGC knew about as well) but it is not tasked with, or resourced to, undertake general surveys to identify particular classes of dead people. Once the existence of wholly unanticipated burials was (probably fortuitously) uncovered, Southwark has worked closely with the CWGC to address these. There will be many people buried in the cemeteries who are also worthy of respect, but who did not die in war, or did die as a consequence of war but were not in the services. There is a lady buried along one of the paths who is noted down as 'a casualty of war' - possibly killed in a bombing raid, as so many were. And, once again - the 'equality and anti-discrimination' actually practiced by ssw is to wish to ban everyone from being buried in Southwark - and to force everybody to be buried out of area 'in private cemeteries'. It is possible to argue that religious groups who chose not to be buried where others of different faiths or none are buried (i.e. in wholly exclusive cemeteries) should not be being catered for by a council which is itself anti-discriminatory. There are real moral and philosophical arguments about whether failing to fall in with a discriminatory practice of one group is itself being discriminating. And there are real issues about the ability of municipal cemeteries to offer the turn-round (burial within 24 hours) that some faiths require.

If the passport is lost or stolen it's much trickier to replace it (for obvious reasons) than if it's simply out-of-date - make sure that you read the rubric very carefully and get everything signed that you need signed, and all the ID you need together - a friend of mine had a nightmare over this because she didn't get every bit signed that should have been, and the office insisted that the same person sign everything. She had to start from scratch again as the original signer wasn't then available.

That might help, certainly. If it was a small animal the number of maggots it could have supported won't be that many, so the problem will resolve itself.

I'm afraid there may be bad news for you. Such a localised plague is likely to be hatching of maggots which have been dining off a corpse somewhere close to your sitting room (particularly if they are large blow flies). It may be a late mouse (or even rat) under your floor boards (if they are very small flies it will be fruit flies from a bowl of fruit etc., but I'm not sure you'd be swatting fruit flies).

To be fair, the answer is (sort-of) yes - Southwark is both planning to bring into use an area of cemetery (I think much of it hard standing) in CNC into first use for burials, and additionally will be re-using parts of COC for new burials as well - not I think mounding over quite as many bodies as is being claimed, but certainly some. These will be burials dating back at least 75 years (in many/ most cases much more) many of whom are in unmarked graves anyway - so nothing material on the ground, in these cases, is being lost. And some memorials, lost to scrub, will be re-exposed.

There is no official scheme in the UK for ex-con rehabilitation via door-to-door sales. These are young people (who may well be ex offenders) who are controlled by gang-masters. The quality of their goods is generally poor, their prices high (for what they are selling). The young men get to keep only a fraction of what they take. They tend to sell via a mixture of pathos and menace (depending on their customer). Buying from them encourages their gang masters in exploitation. If you want good value cleaning materials, try Farmers in Lordship Lane. Or (many) poundshops.

You've mentioned how Southwark could have easily located all the war graves via the CWGC or Deceased Online etc - so why say they couldn?t have found them? No, I have been making precisely the opposite point, which is that Southwark have NO OBLIGATION to identify graves of the 'war dead' - that is an obligation placed on the CWGC since 1917. Do keep up (and the fact that you cannot even get my pseudonym right does suggest a lack of attention). It was always possible for relatives of war deceased in the UK to have them buried in family or local or parish plots, and they would still be commemorated (unit, rank) on War Memorials - which is where the focus of remembrance actually is in the UK. So their place of burial, where even known, is of less significance. My (war dead) uncle is buried in Brittany - his brother (my father) mourned him in the UK. That was fine. Neither does Southwark have any requirement to pick out any particular class of relict of the deceased to whom to make specific notifications of its plans - it treats (and should be expected to treat) all its buried 'customers' equally. Your pretty picture - if there are dead people under there - exactly where, I wonder, and how will their mourners find them to mourn? But then what few memorials there actually are are completely lost under the undergrowth - which is exactly the scandal which Southwark is now having to put right. You are living in a fantasy land.

I have BT TV delivered via a roof aerial - but on a TV which can't be served by that (but upstairs) I get a perfectly workable signal on an indoor aerial - and can use the Amazon TV stick to pick up additional services via WiFi. Most of the clever stuff for BT TV comes through an ethernet link back to my router - so I suspect an indoor aerial is at least worth a try.

Is there a noticable diff in speed between sky Virgin bt talk talk? It will depend which service you sign up to. Fibre based services are faster than DSL services over copper. Fibre is also faster than coax. But it depends whether you have contention on the line and what the service is scoped to. Whatever you get will be less than the 'up to' claim. It also matters whether you connect to your router directly (Ethernet) or via WiFi. I use BT Infinity 2 - that's good enough for my needs.

the 104-year-old son or daughter of a war hero who last met their parent when aged five in 1918 could easily be paying a visit. Can you prove they wouldn't be? Good one, rendel... Unless mighty fit they would be hard pressed to - the scrub and undergrowth would preclude wheel chair access and anyway they would need cutters to get through to some of the (marked) graves. But that's part of the point - much of the area being worked on has become completely inaccessible - so graveside visits of families would not be possible. Southwark is bringing the cemetery up-to-date making old burials (those less than 75 years old anyway) for those who are still alive to mourn more accessible. And allowing new burial where there are (often unmarked) very old graves. The talk of respect for families is rubbish, when the families could not access these graves at all. But I am sure we will be hearing it for the mourning centenarians shortly.

If Southwark had contacted the CWGC when they were planning all of this - and listened to them - they wouldn't be in the position to defend driving roads over war graves or leaving 23 war graves without headstones. The poor treatment of the service personnel buried in the cemeteries and their families is just another reason why Southwark's plans have to stop. OK - this is just rubbish. 1. It is the CWGC, not Southwark, that is responsible for identifying and marking 'war graves'. As has been reported above, numbers of these graves were never initially marked, and indeed the 'warriors' were buried in common graves. The CWGC is on record as saying that it wouldn't be possible to mark some of the interment sites anyway, as the exact locations of bodies in common graves is not recorded. ['warriors' only because some of the 'war dead' were not front-line troops but, effectively, non-combatants - no less brave or worthy of memorial, but not actually warriors in any real sense.] 2. How treating service personnel buried in COC identically with any other interment is 'poor' treatment I don't know. I would also challenge just how many of their families now visit (but of course they couldn't in the scrub area) any graves - indeed for WWI burials the only family visiting would be people who have never met these war dead. 3. I don't think Southwark is 'defending' their path and roadway plans, but working with the CWGC to sort the issues out - remember Southwark has no special duty to mark out war dead - that fell to the CWGC in 1917. 'Area B' has never been used for burial plots ? after this it will be unusable for anything else. Picnics? Football? - it's Area B of a cemetery - burial plots sort-of come with the territory. Edited to add - 'Oh, and the honor oak nature corridor is another made-up thing, like southwark woods'. I have also just noted that Blanche is riding her hobbyhorse on a Momentum site as well on FB (a bit of googling got me there) so she is happy to involve extremes of left and right in her cause. An equal opportunity maven then.

As Lewis is banned from this forum quoting tweets etc, of his which are not thread relevant may not be helpful to debate. The fact of his banning speaks to his general (troll) character - there is no need to add further evidence. However, picking up on the use of other media in ssw's pursuit of their dubious aims does seem appropriate, where thread relevant. I saw the memorial to Edith Williams on the Wall yesterday - a later addition to others appropriate to the date of her death. To be so commemorated I would assume that she was on duty when whatever happened, happened. A tragedy for her family, considering how very close to the Armistice she must have joined. The memorial on the wall is entirely sufficient for Remembrance (as it is for all those who fell and were never identified or had a named grave in France and elsewhere). She died at a time when Spanish Flu was devastating the world (more died of that than in combat) - and she would have been at the most vulnerable age. The fact that she was buried in a common grave may be linked to that, mortality was fierce. The outbreak hit the UK in a series of waves, with its peak at the end of WW1. Returning from Northern France at the end of the war, the troops travelled home by train. As they arrived at the railway stations, so the flu spread from the railway stations to the centre of the cities, then to the suburbs and out into the countryside. Not restricted to class, anyone could catch it. Prime Minister David Lloyd George contracted it but survived. Some other notable survivors included the cartoonist Walt Disney and Kaiser Willhelm II of Germany. Young adults between 20 and 30 years old were particularly affected and the disease struck and progressed quickly in these cases. Onset was devastatingly quick. Those fine and healthy at breakfast could be dead by tea-time. Within hours of feeling the first symptoms of fatigue, fever and headache, some victims would rapidly develop pneumonia and start turning blue, signalling a shortage of oxygen. They would then struggle for air until they suffocated to death. Hospitals were overwhelmed and even medical students were drafted in to help. Doctors and nurses worked to breaking point, although there was little they could do as there were no treatments for the flu and no antibiotics to treat the pneumonia. During the pandemic of 1918/19, over 50 million people died worldwide and a quarter of the British population were affected. The death toll was 228,000 in Britain alone. Global mortality rate is not known, but is estimated to have been between 10% to 20% of those who were infected. Source:- http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Spanish-Flu-pandemic-of-1918/

Do you actually know how she died? Was she a victim of enemy action? Do you actually know ANYTHING about how the military works? If, as has been asserted by njxn she is memorialised on the Screen Wall, there is a good likelihood that her death was as a consequence of war, if not at the hand of an enemy. There was a high rate of accidents, particularly in the RAF and predecessor (RFC) (a lot of training flights ended in disaster) and she may well have been involved in such an accident - if her death was accidental but on duty she could well have been seen as a suitable candidate for the Wall Memorial by the CWGC. It is also a (remote) possibility that she was in a RAF depot behind the lines over-run during the German 1918 Spring offensive - however, other than nurses I am not sure how many women personnel saw service overseas in France in WWI. If she was a victim of the Spring Offensive she would still have died in the UK - having been hospitalised home. It may be significant that her mother was local to this area.

The grave of someone who served in the military - even when they may have died during the course of a war, is not a war grave unless their death was a consequence of the war - this may have been the case of Edith Williams - but it is very unusual. As I have said there are many many former soldiers, sailors and airmen who will have been buried in the local cemeteries - but whose death was not war related. Do you know how Ms Williams died? Has the CWGC claimed her as one of their own (i.e. a war-related death?). The CWGC was formed by the time this lady died, why was she not interred in a CWG if she 'qualified'? And, more to the point, so what? There are dead people buried in the cemeteries. Wow! Don't make a fetish of dead people, or give greater value to a life cut short by war to one lived fully. All deaths (well most deaths) are mourned. The mourning is no stronger or more valid if the deceased was killed in a war. Actually, the mourning for those who die in 2017 is because recent and current, more 'valid' to care about, perhaps than the mourning of those themselves now dead a hundred years ago. But then, you don't care for the living and recently bereaved, do you?

We support the CWGC efforts to protect the war graves which Southwark is developing over. This is a very tendentious use of the word 'developing'. Southwark is doing what has been traditional in London Cemeteries - re-using then for future burials - turning graveyards into parks and leisure and recreation centres (change of use) would be closer to the meaning of development here, which is what ssw wants. Why weren't the CGWC consulted in 2011 when Southwark was consulting on their burial strategy? Why should they be? - the known CWGC graves never formed part of Southwark's plans. It is the CWGC, NOT Southwark, which has a special responsibility for war graves - Southwark has no such special responsibility - it treats all its buried with an even hand. It is the CWGC who failed to properly identify or mark graves perhaps (and they had a lot more on their plate at the relevant time) - this was never Southwark's responsibility, As these have been discovered Southwark has worked closely with the CWGC - apparently to their satisfaction. Southwark should be preserving all the graves - not just the war graves - as well as the woods and nature. But only in your view - this is not an actual imperative (it's not in any real sense 'true'). I think Southwark should be ensuring continued availability of burial sites locally in Southwark. And that their strategy to do so is the right one. That's my view (but again it contains no universal truth). Most of 'the graves' you talk about are in fact (in terms of numbers buried) unmarked - so no more 'preservable' as anything buried in an unmarked stretch of land. In the areas being worked on many of the graves that are marked have monuments now broken and almost featureless. No burials (war graves apart) less than 75 years old will be disturbed at all in this phase (and that includes family graves where it is the latest interment which sets the clock). War graves older than 75 years will also be preserved, where they can be identified and marked. You want a (frankly creepy) museum and military fetish site and recreation centre, I want somewhere for the living to mourn their departed. As for enjoying nature - well I enjoy the working cemeteries we have, well tended (now) and curiously life affirming - and they are stuff full of nature, and not just overgrown scrub.

'Jersey Royal' potatoes are actually a variety called International Kidney - which can only be called Jersey Royal if grown there. In Jersey they are grown in a (very) sandy soil which (as has been noted) may be top-dressed with seaweed. Around south London it would be difficult to replicate this (with such heavy clay soils) - but a specially prepared bed could go some way to that, if very sandy. What you cook with (and how you store) vedge can often improve the taste - for instance refrigeration ruins tomatoes. Curiously a grinding of pepper (on strawberries) can really bring out flavours otherwise muted - without tasting 'peppery'. Salt on melon (if under-ripe) has a similar impact.

There are 4 entities with mobile radio spectrum in the UK (4.5 if you allow for the small amount of spectrum BT bought before it closed its EE deal) - EE/BT; Vodafone; O2/ Telefonica and 3. All others offering mobile services are Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). They buy capacity from the licenced spectrum operators and can then offer whatever deals they wish over that spectrum. If you buy from an MVNO it is worth checking details of service levels local to you (or where you expect to use your phone) offered by the underlying network. Basically you will get the service (3 or 4G) which the underlying operators give - even where the 'deal' you get may be very different from those offered by the underlying carrier. Sometimes the deals offered (or the types of customer addressed) will no longer be economically or strategically effective for 'your' service provider, in which case they may withdraw from that offer. They should provide an alternative carrier - how they do that may be open to challenge.

Are you sure the dog running around was the walker's and hadn't just tagged on to his pack? In which case it wasn't his to control. Or did you see him going off with it later on a lead?

We've just published the names of the 131 First World War soldiers missing in the old cemetery. Many, if not most, were local - coming from East Dulwich, Nunhead, Camberwell, and Lewisham. Their graves are at risk of being buried over or having roads built on top of them. As I have said before, responsibility for locating and marking the graves of war dead was passed to the newly formed Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1917 - this was relatively easy as regards existing inhumations at the Front, where records were kept by the army and where burial (often only temporary) was mainly in dedicated sites. For UK burials (of those invalided home who died of wounds) until 1917 many would have been buried in local cemeteries, with family grave markers (or none) and in no specific places - just where there was then space. Some were buried in unmarked (parish) graves. Local authorities (for municipal cemeteries) and local churches (for churchyard burials) kept records, of course, but not separately. These dead were never 'missing' - just organised as parishioners and not soldiers (as they were buried as parishioners). The CWGC had a great deal on its hands immediately after the war - and, frankly, failed to deliver fully its remit as regards UK pre 1917 war-dead burials. But all these dead were buried (often by their families) with love and respect. It was the CWGC's responsibility - not Southwark's to 'mark' their graves. So the failure to identify and mark the graves in COC (where they could be discovered - some were unmarked and in common graves) is down to the CWGC and not Southwark - although as has been noted nobody (rightly) considered it an issue until the ssw mavens got started. It is clear the the CWGC is happy with the attitude taken by Southwark, when an issue not in its direct remit was brought to its attention. As I have also said, COC is full of dead soldiers, sailors and airmen who served but didn't die in WWI and WWII, and nurses, and firemen etc. etc. All have served their fellows, all deserve our respect for that service. All have it, without making a fetish of their burial sites or memorials. This is all about getting right-wing bully boys to join the fray, by waving a flag which at least one half of ssw doesn't himself wear, and whose country was rather late in turning up for the fray(s) at all. If you do want to rally nationalists it would surely help to be one of that nation?

Old Cemetery Flowers... More like Old Cemetery Weeds - I note you have never posted either photographs of the wonderful daffodil displays in the early spring - or the growing (and will have flowers) meadow sections - but then, these are in the actual working cemetery and not the abandoned area of scrub. It would have been possible to argue for a 'woodland' planting in part of the recovered areas (in fact, clearly the sections along the Underhill boundary have been somewhat planted in this fashion) - but that would have been to look for helpful compromise - not part of the ssw shtick which is all about confrontation and half truths. And let's get it straight - what you want isn't a better cemetery - it's no cemetery, no burials - no use. Just another area for dog walkers. And foxes, and rats, and Japanese Knotweed and other invasive plants. Because there's no money for yet another pleasure palace for those who hate the living (people) - although apparently, by your posts, you worship the dead, as long as they are long dead and have a military background - and love only a muddle of trees. Because working cemeteries are very much for the living.

?We petition the London Borough of Southwark to stop destroying trees, open spaces and graves in Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries and make the cemeteries nature reserves.? (1) - Although trees are being removed in the clearance phase, there will be replanting (hopefully of the right species at appropriate distances from each other to allow proper growth showing the full glory of the trees planted). Southwark has estimated the net loss (if any) of proper mature trees (as opposed to scrub and unplanned sapling growth) to be small. (2) The 'open spaces' are a moot point - some of it is currently hard-standing as I understand, so hardly the basis for a 'nature reserve' (3) In your petition you do not say - 'stop any more burials in Southwark at all' - quite a key part of your intent. Many people believe (you apparently have done so in the past) that the designated status of the existing cemeteries somehow makes them a protected or nature reserve, so many people will assume, particularly outside Nunhead cemetery, that what you are asking for is the status quo, and not a change of use. Indeed you do not make it clear that the 'destruction of graves' includes the mounding of invisible grave sites (no memorials) to allow more burials. And you have not said what other statements were being made around the signing sessions which might have led people to misunderstand what they were signing. As I have said, many people sign street petitions without really attending to the actual words they are signing.