Penguin68

Farmers: - http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/1118/56791.php

The thing which particularly annoys me about all this is the implicit assumption that we could all, could we be bothered, switch happily to cycle transport, and that not doing so is inherently selfish. That is to say, that Southwark is blessed with no disabled people, no elderly and infirm, no very young children, nobody who needs to transport items which are heavy and/ or awkwardly shaped for bicycle transport, nobody who, whilst able bodied themselves has to transport any of those in the categories above and so on. Or, if there are such poisonous and pointless people in Southwark, then the inadequate public transport, not (mainly ) traveling east to west, not (frequently) operational at weekends or in the late evenings and so on will be entirely adequate to meet their, frankly, irrelevant needs, until they have the decency to move or die. And until then we will endorse a council which is intent on making the travel lives of these parasites increasingly difficult, hopefully, if we can blag in CPZs expensive, and frustrating.

A number of small trees have been planted locally and subsequently vandalised - however there are small growing trees/ shrubs which could be planted and kept at a manageable size - we do not have to have London Planes on every street. Rowans are generally good here - their trunks don't get too large, they are good looking and don't, I think, have peculiarly aggressive roots - silver birch again are shallow rooted (which does give a water issue) but aren't too intrusive. We should be pressuring for planting the right trees, not going with none (on very flimsy guidelines). Perhaps combine traffic calming with greening the environment by building out the pavements and planting on the build-out (though that would reduce parking)...

Whilst it is true that all parties go into elections with a shopping list - often quite long - it is more normal to implement without further consultation only those that have figured as major 'top line' policy commitments - i.e. those which might be expected to have been a significant topic of election debate. To go in with pages of 'policy' and to act as if each and everyone one of these has the full support of the electorate is either naive or duplicitous. I did not gather from what little election literature that I received that the labour party was so anti-car (and indeed it would appear anti-tree). The 20mph policy was one I did recognise (and, for purely residential streets supported), but had anticipated that it might have been implemented with more thought and finesse. I did not understand that it would be applied to all roads that Southwark (rather than TfL) had 'control of' without any further consideration. This is particularly confusing for us living at the bottom tip of Southwark, where any travel (on non-residential roads, normally) tends to take you quickly into neighbouring boroughs with different policies on speed. The US allows (in their sort of 'local' elections) for particular policy planks to be put forward (outwith the wider election) as local referenda which can be voted on individually. It appears that the labour party may be treating their individual local manifesto policies as if the more general council election was indeed endorsing each of these as if being individually voted on. Edited to say - I understood that labour was pro-safety (20 mph) and pro-cycling - I had not drawn from their literature, possibly because I did not read it forensically, that they were additionally hoping to drive out (sorry) cars and car driving from the borough on top of improving safety and encouraging cycling. Indeed, considering the poverty of mass transit in SE London, I had not worked out that the labour preferred (and ideally only) means of future transport would be cycling.

Is the new system (to be launched this month?) more secure against such attacks?

If you know that it's a cycle lane, not a footpath, then you wouldn't let a child run out there, no different to not letting them run into the road I would think... To put it simply - anyone living on your chosen 'cycle way pavement' side would have to cross the road in order to walk up or down their own street - crossing roads is inherently dangerous. No one could safely work outside their own house (for instance clipping hedges) if they were on the cycle side. Where would you put bins on collection days - these would now block your 'cycle way'? If you were loading children etc. into cars on the new cycle path side, could you do so safely?

that's your job Mr Barber - that's a 'job' which is basically unpaid and frequently unappreciated. It might be the function of our elected representatives to require of our paid apparatchiks some form of communication capability which allowed ordinary citizens to penetrate the morass of bilge pumped out in our names to discover the nuggets within - but, in the end, if we want to find stuff out, it is, sort of, up to us. Where our representatives do come in is if and when we discover ambiguities which need sorting out. But they are our representatives, not our secretaries.

Zebedee Tring - sorry - Corbynista humour bypass? - or is satire not allowed when the target may be left wing?

They will, however, be state-owned donkeys, with donkey drivers fully paid up members of ASLEF.

The most 'routine' ways in which hacking takes place are associated with the person being hacked (and their equipment) rather than the supplier - that is for such 'individual' hacks, rather than mass down-loads of account details and passwords - if you have been travelling and using public wifi that certainly is a route through which hacks can take place - unless your system is made very secure. Did you undertake any Amazon transactions whilst abroad? However I cannot imagine a US hack then attacking a physical UK address for delivery. A ?1000 loss to you/ the bank equates (broadly) to a ?100 gain to the criminal (that is why a safe 'cash-rated' at ?3000 can be used to store non-cash items of a value up to ?30,000). It doesn't seem worth the effort. Malware (key-loggers) can identify e.g. passwords being input (which is why some firms use drop-downs so that the actual password elements cannot be thus identified) - it is also possible to use electronic devices (close by) to snoop on keyboard and indeed screen activity. To avoid this you need to work in a Faraday cage. Did you actually receive transaction confirmation by e-mail from Amazon? If you didn't then the hackers would have been good enough to put their own (probably disposable) e-mail in - but they may have had to get it delivered to your address to match the credit card address. I think if there had been a mass attack on Amazon which compromised loads of accounts that would have been made public by now, which does suggest that this was an individual attack which is more likely to mean that you (or your card) were individually compromised rather than that the Amazon system was. I would suggest (if you haven't) changing the card used. And the methodology doesn't look, to me, to be Amazon specific. I am afraid your heading should probably be - 'Beware, Credit card and Internet Account fraud happening in East Dulwich' and yes, it certainly is. Your recommendations on cautionary behaviour go far wider than just for Amazon.

Just to clarify - Copenhagen has a population of 1.2m (1.9m across its 'metropolitan' area) with a population density of 1,850 per sq km. Greater London's population density of 5,490 is 4 times more dense - over an area of 1,572 sq km - compared with Copenhagen's of 711 sq km. What will work for a small, comparatively less densely populated area will not (necessarily) work for a much larger one - as regards suitable transport solutions. When distances which one has to travel to 'get places' are generally much smaller, then choosing self-powered transport (including walking) makes far more sense.

The Randstat conurbation on the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht) has a population of just over 7m (Amsterdam itself is well under a million) and covers an area of 8287 square kilometres. Greater London, with a population of 8.2m holds these in 1572 square kilometres. The whole Dutch area is flat (have you noticed that London, particularly around here, isn't?) To try to compare cycling strategies for these two areas is frankly ludicrous. [The urban density of Amsterdam City proper (occupying only 219 square kilometers) is equivalent to that of Greater London as a whole - but of course the overall scale is very different. Most people who live and work in Amsterdam City can walk to work (let alone cycle) reasonably easily, not true of most who live and work in Greater London.

Another recommendation for this firm, headed by Dave O'Donnell - they arrived well on time on 3 occasions (for the second the weather would have made the work unsafe, but we immediately rescheduled and the sun shone on that) - they work to spec and quote (which is reasonable) and the quality of their work is excellent - and they cleaned up well at the end. If they find (as they did with me) a further problem they photograph it so that you can see what they are talking about. The work they have done included re-fitting guttering (3rd Story) , re-seating and stabilising a ridge tile and re-cementing flashing along an extension roof. They offer a 10 year guarantee.

Have you picked up the phone to complain to their office? Have you called the council? What was the response? I would not expect any response from either council officials or Conways into the question - 'how bad do they have to get before the council stop using them?' - which was the question I was posing to any councilors reading - as to the proximate cause of my fury - Conways has long used Langston Rise as an extension to their builders yard, keeping spoil, materials and or/ very large pieces of equipment there for as long as they like - as there are only two entrances to houses on that road, and those side entrances, it is, actually and I admit, far less disruptive to store their kit there than on other more used roads - although not storing their kit and spoil, except overnight, might anyway be preferable. When I think their actions pose an actual danger I do then contact the council, but the council does not care, and neither does Conways, if they are simply inconvenient to residents. That costs them, and Conways, nothing. Indeed, to do the 'right' thing would probably be more costly than using our streets as dumping grounds at their convenience, hence their not bothering.

Over a week ago I saw a Conway's lorry tip a load of asphalt and paving stones into the roadway in Langston Rise - this goes across one carriageway, causing any car which is travelling up it to swerve into the other. More rubbish has now been added to the mess - which is marked by barriers. I am sure that Conway has permission to fly tip in our streets, they are after all paid to make as much mess of them as they can, for as long as they can, but I do dislike roads where I live being used as a dump by the council's favourite builders. Of course they have to dump stuff pro-tem, whist they are working, but over a week seems excessive. I would be interested to hear from any councilor who reads these pages just how far Conway has to go in tacking the mick before anyone is prepared to do anything about them. They are not so much a builder now, as an unbuilder, as far as I can see, actually making our environment steadily worse, and being paid for it out of our taxation.

some of the streets either side of Grove Vale on the premise that a lot of commuters were using these streets for parking for East Dulwich station. There was also some evidence that in some quite close streets to ED station - i.e. Ondine Road, it was actually easier to park there during the day than at night, suggesting that the parking pressure was more from ED residents who were car commuting away from ED than from those commuting in to it. The proposed lay-outs actually removed car parking spaces. The 'strangers commuting in, keep ED for ED people' trope turned out to be a bit of dog whistle politics, not necessarily supported by the facts.

Why reward you for acting properly when they can punish you for not. Carrots cost money, sticks can actually earn you some.

And when everyone observes the 20 MPH limit and the fines dry up.. what next... I've got an idea.. 15 MPH limit. As much as I generally hate and despise Southwark Council and its apparatchiks I do not believe the 20mph limit has been imposed as a revenue earner - the evidence on speed related injuries is clear - the slower the speed the less the injury. So on clearly residential or shopping streets a restriction to 20mph is (probably) a genuine contribution to injury reduction. I do not think it will have a great impact (sorry) on accident occurrence - speed (unless really excessive, or over e.g. diesel spills) is less a contributory factor than carelessness or poor driving, including phone based distractions etc. That its imposition has been poorly thought-out and planned, poorly targeted and poorly implemented (including logical and legal signage, appropriate roads, penalties etc.) goes without saying, and is par for the course. It may also reflect a general anti-car bias which we see time and again - as if using private vehicles (indeed any vehicles) is still the distinguishing mark of the idle (and hated) rich.

I think bgw is referencing hoi polloi (the many, in classical Greek) - one can say that someone is 'of the many' - eis ton pollon - that's if my very rusty classical Greek has it right.

This is much less about grammar than meaning, I certainly thought initially this was a thread about a shooting, not about armed police.

'Gun Down' is an active use of the noun gun as a verb - 'gunned' would be a passive use - indeed re-casting the noun gun into an adjectival form (as 'armed' is adjectival). As 'gun down' implies that someone has been shot, so does/ should the quasi adjectival use of 'gunned' (as in 'he was gunned down').

Impact on pedestrians at 20mph is less likely to cause death or serious injury than at 30mph. Imposing such a limit on streets which are functionally residential (where children are most likely to be out and about, playing etc., and where parked cars obscure sight-lines etc.) or where there are shops which would mean many pedestrians, need to cross roads and so on, makes sense. However there a numbers of roads now covered by the Southwark fiat which are not, in that sense, residential, nor where there are 'shopping' populations. Sydenham Hill is a good case in point - much less parking, wider pavements, very little signs of true 'residential/ domestic' style use of the street. A sensible policy (rather than the knee jerk 'one size fits all' response of our elected authority) would have applied some sort of rule of sense to road speed designations to take actual usage habits into account. And would then have ensured that there was funding and support to police the decision properly. 'We'll impose nonsense rules and then not actually apply them' is, frankly, stupid and insulting, leaving idiots (like me) who do follow them and then get tailgated in areas where they don't make sense frustrated and angry. Oh, and many cars in the UK are tuned/ optimised to support a 30mph low speed 'norm' - so cars do struggle to maintain a steady 20mph, at a cost of fuel, pollution and engine wear.

If we want to make the roads safe for cyclists then wherever possible roads should be made one-way for cars and the other lane should be two-way for cyclists. Actually, the safest thing we could do for cyclists is probably to stop driving diesel vehicles given the long-term damage to lungs and breathing that particulates cause - and to keep our children off cycles in London roads until that happens. Care can avoid accidents, but you can't stop people breathing in when they cycle. Cycling is not the healthy option. And making all roads one-way for cars (and lorries and buses and vans and coaches and motor bikes, let's not forget) would add massively to journey times and increase particulate and NOx pollution. Which wouldn't be doing cyclists (or pedestrians, or people just sitting around in their houses) any favours at all.

The 'duster sellers' are often in the control of a gangmaster who will be supplying them out of a van. The quality of the goods is invariably poor and their stories (and the proffered 'ID') effectively fake. What is true is that they are poor - what is not true is that any money you give them will be theirs. The gangmasters take it. Better give to (genuine) Big Issue sellers if you want to support the homeless/ poor.

Penguin - not 100% with you on cars. I do own a car, but most of us can't use them for work. Commuting into the centre of London by car is a thing of the distant past. I agree that car commuting to the centre of London isn't a good idea (and frankly, doesn't work except during unsocial hours) - but if you live in say ED and work say in Greenwich (I did) you are swapping a 15-25 minute car journey with one that can take 90 minutes by public transport. East: West travel (without a car) can be hugely time consuming from around here. As can travel at the weekends when so much of our infrastructure is frequently closed down for routine maintenance. For many of us our communities of interest (life/ work) are not contiguous - we don't have the mass transit (trains into the centre notwithstanding) to support that. The Orange line too is a boon, now, but I still find that having and using a car is a real benefit. As a (relatively unfit) pensioner living on a hill, bicycles do not fill me with glee. I use public transport a lot, but without a car I'd often be stuck unable to live my life as I want to.