Penguin68

Today I drove past the 'works', (I use that word completely wrongly) - a cursory glance suggests (I do hope I am wrong) that the Chinese granite slabs do not have beveled edges on the road side - if that is so they will, until they wear, very readily cut into tyres which scrape against them - for instance when trying to park close into the pavement. We had this problem when the pavements in Gallery Road were redone - the AA man who then helped us said that this type of problem was very common with new slabs. So do be very careful.

James Barber wrote (today at 11.10am):- Hi P68, How can a build out that does not protrude any further than parked cars "strangle" lordship Lane? [i actually wrote ...another attempt to strangle (sorry, calm) the free flow of traffic in LL - but let it pass] But he also wrote, today at 09.21am :-They will hopefully calm traffic but primarily ... Either the build out does have an effect on traffic or it doesn't. Up to you to make your case, but at least make it consistently.

James Barber wrote:- They will hopefully calm traffic but primarily make the entrance to our market much more attractive. Can I just remind everyone that 'our market' effectively operates only on Saturdays (I know it's available for operation on Fridays, but this is a very muted occasion generally) - and for only 12 of the 24 hours then - so for 13 fourteenths of the week the extended pavement is making only the entrance to a side street (one of many) 'more attractive'. And I am not sure why a wide stretch of empty pavement is peculiarly more attractive than a narrow(er) one. It would be good to put street seating there, of course, as it would be, I would argue, to have something growing there, although site lines on exiting the street are still an issue. But to argue that this is really anything more than another attempt to strangle (sorry, calm) the free flow of traffic in LL would I think be naive - Southwark Council is not spending the sort of money it is on the build-out to beautify a market it doesn't really care about (it's a very middle class market, with virtually no 'real' street traders) - it's up to us to make our environment more attractive if we wish to - wide empty pavements don't do that for me, I'm afraid. We could make something of the space, but it will probably end up as, at best, a cycle park - and give less space for pedestrians then before.

I am afraid you are stuck with it - but you could try having a chat to them, particularly about noise on their early starts. We have had the same thing, with outsize white vans that take up two normal car park spaces. It's annoying but unless they are actually lorries you won't be able to do much about them (you can get traffic orders which stop large commercial vehicles parking in residential streets, I think). At least they are away during the day when you need to park outside your house.

But this is about medical data sharing, not registrations with GPs - important but entirely a different issue. And most of the data being shared is anonymised - you can break this anonymity in some circumstances, and it could be breached accidentally - but it wouldn't get you to next-of-kin data if you did.

Based on your timing it will not be the NHS that has sold your data - GP practices are private business or partnerships that have a contract with the NHS - but they will not have had time to supply the NHS with your data and that then to be marketed by anyone in the NHS. This does appear to be a prima facie breach of data protection - I would not however complain to the practice manager (for fairly obvious reasons) but to your registered GP at the practice. However it is most normal for insurance companies to sell on data like this (because they have the volumes to make this worthwhile). I doubt whether it would be worthwhile for a GP practice. Is there any possibility that you (or your boyfriend) have shared details about next of kin with an insurance company or website - particularly motor insurance? Or with DVLC if you have changed your address and applied for a new driving licence registered at your new address? (I am assuming that you have moved to be changing GP). I believe people can get access to some DVLC data - you may have put next of kin data on that.

Even if bought to split it will still have a cost associated in bringing it up to saleable (or rent-able) value - particular when letting requirements are more stringent and mortgage interest relief no longer available. Buying, converting and selling-on as two flats is more likely now, I would guess - but those costs will be higher than uplift as a single house - you will need two kitchens for a start, and low-end installation will lend to low-end sales prices. The other issues raised above will still all need to be addressed.

I am not convinced that a 6 Bedroom house (which implies a family) will sell around here much over ?1m without something like a convincing garden - with a (probably ramshackle) garage in the middle of it this must go and you are probably looking at another bit of work to bring the garden into selling shape - that's more money, time and effort. A side entrance (to feed the garage) clearly has benefits - but it also has security issues - more expense to address. I am now guessing you could be tying up money for a year or more before the house is ready to go - and that's assuming you are buying as an investment. Buying it as a home, with all that needs to be done is even more problematic - I don't think you could move-in in under 4-6 months - (assuming everything went swimmingly, and still leaving stuff to do) - which means funding two abodes. Someone who could afford the asking price couldn't afford the time for a slow self-doer-upper I am guessing.

I tend to agree that to budget for your higher estimates - up to ?350k - would be sensible until the full picture can be made clear. On the view that, even if fully done-up to a high standard, the likely best price in the current market for that layout and location will be around the ?1m mark - then paying much over ?650k in current condition (unless there's a really compelling surveyor's report showing no significant structural problems) won't even get you your money back. I'm not sure that your ?1.3m - ?1.4m 'done-up' price isn't too high. It could take a good 5-6 months minimum to put right - with good builders and a good project manager. If there's a problem with the roof this weather has just knocked a few more pounds off the value!

The 'garden' (interesting there are no pictures of that) has a garage plonked into the middle of it - side access is clearly a good thing, but that layout looks awkward. It is clearly a fixer-upper - but it seems priced as a 'fixed-up' entity. With the loft already converted the potential is all in it being made rather more than just habitable. There does seem to be damp - this may just reflect something easily fixed (gutters or flashing) but may be something more worrying. If there has been a significant flood (perhaps through the roof or issues with internal pipes), what is the wiring now like? Stripping out the awful carpets back to bare board would be something - but are the carpets perhaps hiding problems? The decor suggests that nothing has been done to the house since the sixties (at least). I suspect that may also be true of wiring etc. There could easily be ?100k of work necessary, if not more (that's assuming there aren't structural horrors lurking). Would the house then (done-up) be worth ?1.3m? Sales around it (as in the e-flyer) don't really seem to support that.

I have seen troughs with 'hot lips' lobelia http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https://theplantfarm.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/salvia-hot-lips.jpg&imgrefurl=https://theplantfarm.wordpress.com/&h=640&w=640&tbnid=ZAftW5GE4SP4-M:&docid=2DirfyMlNddktM&ei=uh_bVd3xJMLWU56sq_AB&tbm=isch&ved=0CC4QMygKMApqFQoTCN22lIftwccCFULrFAodHtYKHg in Wimeroux work very well - they are hardy and can be encouraged to be low growing by pruning. They grow OK in my garden in ED, so I suspect they would work on that site.

You're welcome

Well, that's a roll-on to an increase in local fly-tipping then. Guess Camberwell Old Cemetery will be filling up again with mattresses. Good call.

They were saying that in August 1914

No, the orders in question will have been left clearly in the council offices in Alpha Centauri for anyone to visit and comment on, more fool you for not so doing. Anyone who thinks that this isn't part of a wide design to reduce car ownership and usage in ED (and to make, now through fines, in the future through CPZ charges) car owners into the new funders of council extravagance and unlimited beverages for the staff in Tooley St is misguided. 'Consolidation' orders, particularly those running to tens of pages are notorious vehicles for the undemocratic introduction of new restrictions. It's amazing how much change can be achieved when you 'tidy things up'. Whether the councilors themselves are in on this, or even aware of the nitty gritty of it, is a moot point - but the apparatchiks are having a field day and I am sure they believe they are dancing to the tunes they have been given by their political masters.

But of course there will be those who regularly post on here who will swear blind there are no conspiracies or (barely) hidden agendas

Did you know that Tooley Street and the other brand new New Cross office have spent ?169.000.00 on refreshments for staff drinks in the last financial year. My old company (a major blue chip) determined that meetings would not be catered (including coffee/ water), unless they were scheduled to last for more than 2 hours and were classed as 'training' - or as 'strategic development meetings' - when breaking for refreshments at a canteen (where employees would then be paying, not the company) would be seen as disruptive to the process. This was a commercial company which made substantial profits, not a publicly funded authority. But then, my old company also viewed any business meeting that lasted for more than an hour as (broadly) a waste of time - what can't be done in an hour face-to-face should be being addressed differently - or ideally in different, much shorter, meetings where only those directly impacted should be attending. This has not been my experience in the public sector, where interminable meetings to no effect seem to be the norm.

When the initial proposal about a CPZ surfaced a couple of years ago there was a lot of propaganda about 'foreigners' coming in to commute from ED Station and take 'our' parking spaces. However reviews of roads close to ED Station (i.e. Ondine) suggested that it was easier to park there during the day than at night, when Ondine car commuters returned to their homes (and the proposed CPZ layout would actually have reduced car spaces to park in Ondine). An alternative view was that roads became parked-up when people came in to ED to e.g. teach, work in shops and cafes etc. (i.e. to work in ED and provide services to people living in ED). Ondine is very handy for getting to the station, less so for working in Lordship Lane - so maybe the parkers in Melbourne aren't necessarily commuters using the station. So an assumption that altering the road layouts or parking options just keeps out unwelcome foreigners 'passing through' may not be wholly correct, we may be keeping out those who are teaching our children, serving our coffees, doing our banking, selling us our food - actually making ED a good place to live. I used a car to commute in South East London - driving to a job I had in Greenwich took 15-20 minutes - by public transport (and involving 2 or 3 changes) would have taken me between an hour and 90 minutes each way. People coming in to serve us frequently face the same commuting conundrum - 3 hours of travel by public transport a day, or less than 40 minutes by car. I know which I would choose.

As I have said elsewhere (and posted on a thread then taken down) there are a number of actions made by the council and or supported by Mr Barber all of which tend to put pressures on motorists in ED either to reduce their numbers or to encourage them to nimby their ways into CPZs - thus raising revenues and further punishing them for having the temerity to own cars. This proposal; the introduction of more yellow lines; the never ending and pointless (and now apparently dangerous) road works, some clearly not following 'agreed' layouts; the yellow-lining around dropped curbs seem all about reducing road space for parking and making driving around ED increasingly difficult, time consuming and generally wearing. This is either intentional (conspiracy/ hidden agendas) or demonstrates a huge facility for c*ck-ups. I tend now to see at the least a hidden agenda or two here. Car ownership (and worse, actually using cars) is seen by some as wholly anti-social, and anything which can punish car users, or can milk them of cash, is seen as fair game. Getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas by 'offering' them some better deal (private roads, parking in 'their' roads restricted to them - deals which will rebound horribly) is all part-and-parcel of this approach. The attempts to demonise local car users (by calling them rat runners and suggest that those who use our roads aren't local - when by definition the most use of our roads will be made by local car owners, who have at least to start/ finish their journeys locally, if not only drive around ED) is something which frankly leaves a faintly unpleasant sensation.

There are a number of threads current or recently so which have commented on the various road works, changes in regulation etc., proposed changes in lay-out in and around East Dulwich (excluding those by e.g. Thames Water, annoying but presumably necessary) all of which have had, or are having, the effect of making the lives of motorists more complex and difficult, often not (even) to the benefit of other road users (such as cyclists). I think of endless road-works rarely completed to time, or design, the dropped kerbs ? yellow lines debacle, the extension of yellow lines in residential streets and so on. Mr Barber (inter alia) has been the first to challenge any suggestion that there is any pattern, or intention, in these, even when he is frequently the progenitor or cheer-leader for them, or at the least seems to take an age to address them effectively (dropped kerbs) even when he is diligent in many other aspects. He is, of course (and entirely reasonably) an overt champion of the cycling fraternity. He has also championed (whilst often appearing not to) moves to institute CPZs in the area ? and most recently moves to physically block a residential link road between two A roads in the area. Even the unbiased ED-er (I am not) might see some sort of pattern emerging which is clearly anti-car and which is about either/ and driving cars (and car ownership) out of ED and/ or moving to create a climate where local charging of car ownership will be welcomed, or at least let slip through. That this is being achieved by piecemeal disruptions and changes may either be fortuitous (the left hand not knowing what the even lefter hand is doing) or might be all of a pattern to achieve an end. Rather than letting debate emerge on various different threads, as things happen, I thought I might offer a consolidated thread where concerns, or otherwise, might be discussed.

It can sometimes help, if you haven't, to leave a note for the postman asking for the mail to be posted properly. Even something which has an arrow pointing to the postbox and 'Please post here' can help. However some posties have problems with (a) letter boxes which are at the bottom of doors and (b) boxes with very tight springs - these can be genuinely dangerous and many posties suffer injuries to their fingers in trying to post in them. Is either of these the case for you?

Melbourne Grove links the A2216 with the A2214 - no others of the roads listed by Mr Barber links A roads (Friern does connect to the A2216 but doesn't then (and didn't, before it was blocked) connect to any other A road. Apart from Friern, about as long as Melbourne, the other two mentioned are tiny. But then, in his vocabulary, ED drivers are rats.

Just out of interest, if the petitioners were able to get part or all of Melbourne Grove turned into their private road, I assume the up-keep costs of this would also transfer to them, and away from the remainder of ED Community Charge payers, no longer able to access this street of privilege?

I have noticed that Mr Barber, on this thread and his own, keeps referring to Melbourne Grove as a 'rat run'. Obviously the use of the word 'rat' is an attempt to categorise users of the road in fairly pejorative terms - but I had always thought that the phrase was most generally applied to roads used as alternative commuting routes - so significantly between, say, 7 and 9 in the morning and between 5 and 7 in the evenings. Is this actually the most significant traffic time for this road (accepting that people who live in it and in adjacent 'land-locked' roads would have to use it then if they commuted?) Is this being used by 'foreign' commuting rats - or is it being used through the day by ED locals because it is a convenient route for them? I only ask because (at times, and when it is a convenient and a logical route) I am one of Mr Barber's Melbourne rats (living in Underhill Road I also rat up and down that as well) and I am not sure I particularly like the nomenclature.

My apologies Robin, for wrongly attributing the quote, there was so much good and relevant stuff from you that I glossed over who had actually made the point. And I don't see from you any party political drum being beaten, just a community aware one. I will amend my post to the correct source.