Penguin68

Camberwell New Cemetery (and maybe the Old Cemetery too?) still have burials. They started reburying in Camberwell Old Cemetery about 5-10 years ago after quite a long break (can't remember, but there was a long period when I first moved to the area, 27 years ago, when there were no burials), - there are now about 4 a week (at a guess) - they built up a waterlogged section along Langton Rise and Wood Vale two years ago to allow burials there.

I know that Wikipedia (via 'Save Honor Oak Recreation Park) is claiming 300k burials - and that just between 1856 and 1984) - but if we assume 140 burial years to date (and that only gives 20 years or so when burials stopped before re-starting, and I think that was actually a longer hiatus) then this is burying at a rate of over 2000 a year (in the first 30 years the run-rate was only 1000 a year, at a time of higher mortality, again according to Wiki) - or over 5 burials a day, seven days a week. An initial rate of 1000 a year for the first 30 years of operation, when mortality rates were higher, suggests a huge increase in annual burials after 1886 when death rates were falling to reach the claimed 300k. And of course many more than 2000 burials a year at some point. By 1927 the New Cemetery was operating - again suggesting that to get to 300k burials there must have been an awful lot of dying activity locally, particularly as the same source suggests that between 1939 and 1984 91k cremations had taken place in the New Cemetery. These figures do not stack-up (and neither will the claimed bodies to make up the numbers). Paupers graves, out of interest, by the mid 19th century were not 'mass graves' - they were unmarked and there might be a number of coffins in each grave (stacked)- but their positions were recorded. The number of quite large monuments don't suggest huge amounts of room for unmarked paupers graves. And 'out of area' burials are often a function of people returning to be buried in or close to family plots, or because they had a past connection with the area (or even because that's where their relatives now live, who wish to tend the grave. This is a graveyard, not a recreation park. Treating monuments and past burials with respect is something which could be demanded - wanting to change its use to a picnic area isn't. It's shameful that it should be allowed to become so overgrown and dilapidated, which should be remedied, not exacerbated.

When the cemeteries were built (in the mid nineteenth century) they were built on pastoral land bought from local farmers; this land has not been wooded (if it ever was)since the earliest middle ages. What has gown up over the (poorly looked after) memorials is the exact equivalent of growth in bomb sites - where left for many years before being developed. As has been said, above, there are a plethora of green and wooded spaces around us, which are planned and tended as such. Enjoy those. I am concerned where screening growth around the boundaries has been (and will be) cut back - but this is about aesthetics, not some 'green' agenda. There are better and more valid causes to expend effort on. I love walking through the cemetery, always discovering new memorials which I can't believe I hadn't seen before, but it is a contemplative, not a recreational space, and always planned such.

But then see also:- http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/scrubland Where artifacts (graves and memorials) are overgrown this is far more scrub than wood.

Within less than a week of the work starting and the time frame has now been extended to 'end July' - believe that if you will. That's a sixth of a year that Thames Water is blocking an important route and bus route (forget those travelling through, I live in Underhill and it's bl**dy annoying). Maybe if they had to pay residents ?5 or ?10 a day for the inconvenience they might get the work done a little quicker - as it is there's no incentive for them to work at anything less than a snail's pace.

As much as people moan about councils turning streets into residents permit parking zones only, it solves this problem of people dumping cars on streets with free parking. Dumping cars (which are not taxed and insured, or which are stolen) has a ready remedy - the police will handle these. Parking cars which are legally owned, taxed and insured is a legal right - the price of freedom from local authority money-grubbing through controlled parking is that (sometimes) cars which are foreign (to you) make use of that freedom. Small abuses of this freedom may annoy, but that is the price of freedom, and one well worth paying in many people's eyes. Societies which are overly 'tidy' (tidying away nuisances, eyesores etc.) are societies which are lapsing into ways to which democracy and liberty are strangers. I have also been annoyed by vehicles parked-up which are there too long (in my opinion), or in a bad state or repair, or dirty, or old, or in my way - but that annoyance is a reasonable price to pay not to live in a society which doesn't allow these things to happen.

Mine was for Forest Hill - close but not in that ward or post-code. Doesn't say much for their local knowledge.

otherwise it's an act of vandalism Sadly the length of time the mural has been there suggests that that wall would probably be in need of an additional coat of paint, purely for normal maintenance reasons - unless you can get someone to re-paint the mural as-is then over-painting may be the only option, particularly where the initial painting was not itself done on a newly painted wall. Depending upon the paint quality (and number of coats) initially applied, 5-7 years would be a maximum 'ideal' time between repaints. Allowing the paintwork to deteriorate too far adds to costs. If the current owner of the wall is not particularly committed to the mural, the differential cost between over-painting in one colour or repainting the mural would be significant.

It is now more PC to say a woman of colour???? Says who? How ridiculous is that. Says the American anti-racist literati, who complained vociferously a few month's back (during the Oscars) about Cumberbatch's use of 'coloured' instead of 'person of colour' - when he was making an anti-racist point about casting and recognition. And yes, I think it is worthwhile getting over arguments about phraseology when it was clear it was not intended to offend, and when the identification of someone's looks was relevant, in this case to aggressive behaviour and whether it was a repeat offence. This is not the same as arguing we should 'get over' casual (or intended) racist or offensive language. This wasn't it. The acceptable terms for describing someone's race (when it is relevant) have changed and are constantly changing. Using a now-outdated expression without intending to offend is hardly a capital offence. BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) has now segued into BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) - neither would be helpful in describing an attacker.

I'm rather in favour of the referendum, with luck (and unlike the Scottish one) it will put the issue on the back-burner for a generation - shooting UKIP's fox and leaving them just banging on about immigration. There are problems with the 'ever closer political union' strand (Delors et al), but that is losing support across the EU, in particular in both France and Germany. And I'm afraid some closer union for those in the Euro (luckily not us) does make sense in terms of economic governance. But I suspect that enough will be gained for the major part of the Tories to recommend a NO vote (i.e. to stay in the EU)

It is now more PC (cf Cumberbatch incident) to say 'woman of colour' - but let's get over this - in this particular case, as we were being asked whether we had been involved in similar incidents, the description of the pair (I assume the man was bald rather than just bold) is relevant.

Because of the way Underhill Road was developed (the name refers, by the way, to the former local manor owners and is not related to the topological Overhill Road) the land South of Barry Road was sold off in small plots, which means that the architectural design of houses normally covers only 2-3 groups of semi's. This gives a great variety to the street, and I believe adds to its charm. Most of the development took place from about 1860 - 1914 - newer builds reflect either war-damage infill or later sales and subdivisions. One house (which had a very sad past - and structural damage) was torn down and a modern replacement built in the last 15 years. Otherwise the only recent new-builds have been on former garage or builder's merchants sites (or as a replacement for post-war pre-fabs).

There is a small parade of shops in Woodvale at the Langton rise junction - including an excellent butcher's (best in ED in my opinion), a small newsagent/ tobacconist and a 'corner shop' grocers where there is a (very limited) choice of fresh vedge. The P13 (which now runs more frequently down Underhill) will take you to the main shops in Lordship Lane and thence East Dulwich station (to London Bridge) or (the other way) close to West Dulwich Station (Victoria). Walking down to Lordship Lane/London Road (i.e. broadly south-west) will get you to stops for the 176 and 185 buses, which you can also pick up from the Lordship Lane/ Whately Road end (Whately Road is the extension of Underhill into the Goose Green end of Lordship lane, as opposed to the London Road end. The 12 runs along Barry Road. The 363 (N63 at night) will take you from Woodvale to Elephant and the tubes there, the 63 itself runs all the way to to Kings Cross, but only starts (day services) just passed the cemetery entrance in Forest Hill Road. Honor Oak Park (or Forest Hill) are both within 20 minutes walk - and will get you onto a separate route (from East Dulwich Station) into London Bridge or the Orange Line (Overground). The hilliness locally means that use of a bicycle will be, well, invigorating.

That way motor traffic would have Barry and Underhill to get between Peckham Rye and Lorship Lane. More than enough and then we wouldn't have all the rat running that plagues that area. Oh, thanks, as someone who lives in Underhill you are planning to get all the rat-running past my front door (and no doubt take the share of it away from yours)

It's a shame they aren't prepared to close it entirely as a through route for motor traffic. There are precious few ways of getting in or out of Lordship Lane into and out of the roads that lie broadly north-east of it there - any one being blocked puts a lot of pressure on the others. Proper 2 way routes are now only Friern, Upland, Underhill and Woodvale. Coming from Forest Hill along London Road and Lordship Lane it is now only possible to get (legally) to that part of East Dulwich via Honor Oak Road and then Overhill - all other roads are either illegal to turn into, blocked-off or one-way the wrong way. Coming from Sydenham, Overhill is the first legal turn you get to. Channeling that traffic into Friern, Upland or Barry (particularly when these routes take you away from where you actually want to be) would be very unhelpful. For people who live in Overhill accessing it (if coming along Lordship lane or London Road) would require, again, a significant diversion through other small streets. No existing routes are ideal, to remove yet another would simply add further pressures to those that remain.

My guess would be that the power outage tripped an 'off' switch locally, presumably as a safety mechanism, which needs re-setting - presumably, again, manually - so until Virgin gets someone out here to do that power will remain down for their service.

He really is the last of an old style bobby - regularly saw him walking the patch - on his own actual feet! - and he seemed to know people around here, who knew him. And a real bobby, not a PCO. He was really helpful when my daughter's car was stolen (and then found, abandoned, locally). I am very afraid we won't see his like again.

Do you live in rented accommodation? There is now a requirement for landlords to test for Legionnaires Disease vulnerability. It maybe that this has been subcontracted to Thames Water.

I suspect the Lib Dems were stuffed in Dulwich for the same reason they were stuffed across the country - people were polarised wanting either a conservative or a socialist (Lab/ SNP) government. We had all been led to believe that further coalition was likely and the Lib Dems had indicated that they could ally with either the conservatives or the socialists. That meant that in voting for them you couldn't know whether that would make a conservative or a socialist government more likely. If you lent more to Tory, or to Labour, then voting Lib Dem was voting for an unknown, you could be left leaning and make a Tory led coalition more possible, or right leaning and find the Lib Dems allying with Labour. So that forced electors to go for the main party of their choice - even if they would have preferred either a Labour government tempered by Lib Dem views, or a Tory one ditto. Because the Lib Dems tried to ride both horses, they found themselves riding neither. Frankly the quality and reputation of the actual candidates wasn't relevant - hence we saw great constituency MPs being knocked down. If the Lib Dems had been clear about where their sympathies lay they would certainly have lost seats, but not nearly as many. Clearly they upset their more left leaning electors by working in coalition for the last 5 years, but had they stuck to their guns their former Tory sympathisers might well have stuck to them. Or vice versa. By keeping their negotiating powder dry they found themselves with nothing to negotiate for.

There are two issues about city centres - one they tend to have a mix of younger people, idealists, left-wing, well educated, together with a residue of 'traditional' working class. These are more likely to support Labour (and socialism more generally - see 'Scotland') Two - these constituencies are often small(er) than rural ones (population, not area) so there are more of them. So a smaller electorate can elect more MPs (per 100,000 head of population), which tends to exaggerate the first effect mentioned above. That is what the electoral reforms which the Lib Dems scuppered in the last parliament were about addressing. What is interesting is the effect you mention has only worked for Labour this time in London - basically Labour won London, Conservatives won the rest of England, Scots Nats won Scotland, Labour won Wales and the DUP won Ulster. Bit of a divided country, if you're thinking of the UK as a country.

In case anyone's interested http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000673

Yes exactly - except acts of God obviously. so, no such things as accidents except, well, accidents. Root cause analysis does, occasionally, come up with chance occurrences - such as heart attacks etc. It is a system designed to uncover what caused an 'accident' - so that avoidable elements can in future be avoided, but it does not require that all elements should be classifiable as avoidable. Of course actions have causes, but 'no such thing as an accident' implies (requires to imply) that the cause can never be a matter of chance or happenstance. In many cases random chance is called to account when proper analysis would show underlying fault, but not in every case, and as an analysis requirement. Sh1t (acts of god) does happen.

In general 'no such thing as an accident' implies that all incidents could have been avoided - and thus implicitly that if someone had done (or not done) something differently then the 'accident' would have been avoided. This is (by another route) an attempt to apportion blame to someone for the incident happening. 'No such thing as an accident' has as an absolute corollary 'someone is culpable'. At one level it is of course possible to argue that every thing that happens has a cause - but for instance to argue (as logically he must) that the deaths in Nepal are not accidental (although clearly with a direct cause) would be weird. If wind brings down a tree onto a car it is possible to argue that had the tree been felled earlier, then the 'accident' would not have happened - or if the driver had not chosen to drive then or there - but to blame the driver for the incident, or indeed council officials for not felling the tree (unless it had been specifically reported as 'dangerous') would be unreal. And yet, 'no such thing as an accident' would require this. It is wholly lazy to argue that because some accidents could have been avoided (were not the outcome of chance events) that the set of 'accidents' (implying something that happens by unhappy chance) is an empty one.

Concorde used to fly over our house, around 6:00 in the evening as I recall, such a beautiful sight, certainly forgave it every decibel as it went over (and that was loud)

No such thing as an accident. This is a zen idea that everything has a cause and a link - such that the effects of random chance are denied. So, if any incident happens, it must have had a cause - this espouses the physics of Newton, whilst modern scientists accept that quantum mechanics requires that events have a probability only, and will happen 'by chance' (and, more to the point, given any fixed starting position, events are still impossible to accurately forecast - whereas Newtonian physics believes that given certain knowledge of a start point, it would be possible to forecast events through to the end of time). In terms of road transport it is a belief that it will always be possible to apportion blame, anything bad that happens must be someone's fault. So we see in James someone wedded to a blame culture - which in many ways is quite sad.