Penguin68

Sainsbury's in Dog Kennel Hill normally stocks it and has done for years. As does Sopers in Nunhead.

But this doesn't say by how much. The figures being quoted were for drivers doing double or more the relevant limit, which is clearly awful, but people doing 80 in a 70 mph limit, or 35 in a 30 limit, or 25 in a 20 limit are also breaking the law, but not, I would suggest, quite as awfully.

What is not clear from the reports is what proportion of drivers are driving so recklessly? Any who do so should of course be prosecuted, this has nothing to do with carelessly drifting over a limit by a few mph but is clearly a willful breaking of the law in a reckless manner. But how many and with what frequency? The way this is being reported here is lots and all the time, but I suspect this isn't so.

Because they can and nobody is there to stop them. Drivers who do so of course are law breakers and should be prosecuted, cyclists are free spirits who mustn't be tied down. Haven't you got the message yet?

That was my point, the smaller the city the more cost effective and useful a tram or trolley network is, London is too large and dispersed.

You will also find that most European cities that support a tram network are much smaller and more concentrated (and frequently flatter, but not Lisbon) than London, making such a network more viable, as does the Boulevard redevelopment of many cities with much wider main thoroughfaress allowing proper space for trams.

The old trolley network had the disadvantage that the tracks could very easily 'capture' cycle wheels, leading to accidents.

The question which poses itself is, is this a brand new troll or an existing troll in a new hat?

Rather directly, in my view

That photograph was taken in the Broad Street, relatively recently I'm guessing, which is now almost a traffic free zone (and, by the way, lives up to its name as Broad). The area is made up of Oxford Colleges, University Buildings and a few shops (including the original Oxfam shop) and a cafe or two. Such a plethora of parked bikes is not a common sight in streets in Oxford, although most students do have and use bikes (and did when I was up, when The Broad had cars parked round it and also in two lanes in the centre of it, before it was mainly pedestrianised). In my day students were not allowed to own cars until their second year. Oxford City council is notorious as being even more anti-car than Southwark (strange when you think the City's worth stemmed in part from Morris Motors!). The photo has been taken so that the two roadways on either side of the parked bikes in the centre of The Broad are obscured. And issues in the non-residential (indeed prime University) parts of a student centric City like Oxford are not relevant to the issues in Dulwich.

If you remove lots of parking places then you create parking pressure. Previous yellow lines around junctions were sufficient for safety but were later deemed expandable. That's also why the council extended lines over driveways, to remove parking space. It all adds to parking pressure where there wasn't any to get people to beg for CPZs. They hope. The big pressure is of course by introducing CPZs to increase pressure on adjacent streets. Remember that Southwark policy was until very recently to enforce 100% CPZ on the borough. They're now forced back into their past incremental approach.

Not if you're only interested in any positive impacts. Southwark Council is very much a political entity, to consider it won't politic is somewhat naive.

Well, thank goodness sweeping generalisations aren't something we get from you, oh, wait a second, 'Southwark Council is always right, posters who disagree with me are always wrong' sort of leans into that. As you neither live in Southwark, vote in Southwark or pay taxes in Southwark your loyalty to Southwark is curiously touching, unless, as I have suggested in the past, you're employed by Southwark?

As has been noted, I think, elsewhere, collisions between cyclists and pedestrians are less likely to be recorded, unless serious injury or death is the consequence. There being no vehicles from one direction is definitely going to reduce the opportunity for collision of motor vehicles. Indeed, and in general, removing or reducing the number of motor vehicles anywhere is going, necessarily, to reduce both collisions and air pollution in the areas being controlled (my emphasis). The moot point is whether these are an overall reduction or simply a shift to an outlying area. Of both air quality issues and incidents. No way of knowing, ever, whether a collision which didn't take place at the Calton Road / village road junction did take place somewhere else, of course, but the air quality issue is at least measurable, were anyone to be bothered to measure it, and whether anyone had taken appropriate and comparable 'pre' measures (they didn't).

I have noted on another thread that Thames Water contractors are unlikely to want to incur significant costs until it is clear that Thames is not going into administration such that they may not be able to pay for the work. With the very poor quality of repairs locally anyway you may expect more disruption before things get better. And restrictions on road usage locally mean that what would have been alternative routes in the past are sealed off and unusable. Good, isn't it?

The problem is that Thames does replace whole sections of pipe, for instance outside the Horniman, which took several months, but which fails about every 18 months needing more repairs. They replaced sections around Underhill which failed almost immediately and the original work and repairs also took out the gas supply! Their work quality is incredibly shoddy, and they don't care. And their regulator is a joke. They are the worst sort of grasping monopolists, owned by overseas capitalists with no moral investment or relationship with the country in which they operate. Without a tough regulator with real powers and teeth they are uncontrolled foxes in our hencoop. Privatisation can work, look at Telecoms, but this absolutely hasn't.

Thames Water is at the High Court today trying to get a £3bn loan extension sorted. If it isn't then they will go bust and go into administration (actually it's more complex than that). If I was a contractor supplier to them I might well not be doing work I might not be paid for until that's sorted. Doesn't help us ordinary Joe's who just live in their bailiewick of course. But who cares about us?

Oh, so that's what 'off street parking' means.

Generally the word 'collision' is used when two vehicles, or a vehicle and a pedestrian, hit each other. In this case the car has certainly left the road and hit a wall, indeed collided with it, but normally you wouldn't use the word collision to describe a moving object hitting a static one, like this. Unless you were looking for the most emotive word. Looking at the front of the car it's relatively unscathed. It certainly didn't have a front end collision. The most likely event to achieve that position on the wall is that it hit some sort of ramp, possibly at speed.

Dogs can't read and some owners don't bother to, I'm afraid. Too many seem to think that rules don't apply to them. Or their charges.

Maybe because driving standards are already covered by things like adherence to the Highway code, speed limits etc. Clearly people who drive do breach these, but for them there are remedies, some quite stringent. There are very limited remedies on transgressing cyclists, indeed so much that cyclists do is not acted on by anyone in authority, nor even treated as a transgression. Nobody says 'something should be done about drivers who speed, or who jump lights', because on many occasions something is done - there are cameras on many traffic lights to do that for instance, as well as speed cameras. It's just a matter of installing more, or moving them where transgressions more frequently occur. Maybe someone should be reminding Southwark that they're missing out on another revenue stream?

Up until a couple or so years (possibly slightly longer) ago I was very able to distinguish a push bike from a moped, amongst other things the moped had a petrol engine (often two stroke) and sounded like a moped. It would only have been legally driven by someone with an appropriate licence (my car licence allowed me also to ride mopeds legally if, if I recall, under 50cc). It needed identity. Now there are low powered (speed limited) electric assisted cycles which are road legal for anyone with a credit or debit card, apparently, to drive without licence or test, and there are high powered, road illegal, electric vehicles which look pretty well identical, and again have no warning engine sounds. These are the modern equivalent to mopeds (save, unlike mopeds, they are not road legal and their drivers require no licence, as I understand it) but the ordinary joe would be hard pressed to distinguish them (unless speeding) from their legal brothers. I think this is the point that is trying to be made. If they are on the road (they are) and can't be readily distinguished from electric assisted bicycles to the casual and 'lay' observer then both classes of vehicle should be treated similarly, under the same rules.

I would have thought that if a normal car had hit this block at speed it would still have been wrapped round it when the photo was taken, I assume quite shortly afterwards. Which would suggest a much bigger vehicle with greater mass may have shifted it without a significant collision. Or possibly risk to others.

I think it may also be relevant to ask what time the incident took place, and whether there is any suggestion the vehicle was stolen. Dangerous driving is of course always dangerous driving, but where it happens in the small hours, and if the driver is also a car thief (and possibly a joy rider) may also be relevant, as appears to be the case in some incidents. The proximity to a school, for instance, is less of an issue if the event was after midnight than if it had been during school hours (and particularly school at start or end time of the school day). There is a tendency to assume all incidents are just caused by ordinary joes like the readership here - and that all drivers are the same under the skin. And that all incidents are as dangerous as each other, whenever they occur.

Yes, it does seem a step change and followed their recent significant uplift. It did used to be dire immediately before. You have to think back to the 1990s when there were some good dishes, but even then somewhat hit and miss.