Penguin68

He seems to think that the problem has been largely resolved - I have told him that it has not. The core immediate problem was a huge backlog of delivery - over Christmas the focus was on parcel delivery and mail (literally) piled up - apparently in heaps all over the Delivery Office. This is now broadly resolved - there are no more foot-high heaps of undelivered mail. To this extent the Royal mail guy is right. However the underlying problem - of under staffing, remains. Where regular post-people are off on leave, or sick, their walks are not being covered - as they used to be from Sylvester Road when it was logistically simple for a post-person to return (walk back) to the DO and take out another round - being paid over-time of course. And where walks are uncovered - with no regular post-person - these go on being uncovered. So deliveries can still be at best patchy and at worst non existent. This was a knock on from the initial management decision to close Sylvester Road (which wasn't any longer fit for purpose) but not to replace it with a fit for purpose DO locally - but instead to cram the ED work into the Peckham DO. The Forest Hill DO was better placed, logistically for this - but wasn't I believe big enough. At best Peckham, until it is properly staffed to include cover for absences, will only be fire fighting - and when we have Covid-19 and the requirement to isolate and quarantine if exposed, there will never be enough staff to do the job those paying for stamps should reasonably be expecting.

I?ll call 999 next time. Actually, most paramedics and ambulance people are not trained to handle psychiatric issues (i.e. in mental health) - neither for that matter are police officers, although both are frequently called in to handle people without the relevant skill sets to do it. I believe that there may be two (only) ambulances in London with appropriately trained people, although call-outs to handle mental health issues are constantly rising. Police will respond where there is clear and current danger to third parties or of self-harm (i.e. jumpers), ambulances where there is a clear and imminent danger of self-harm. 'Acting oddly' in and of itself won't normally get a response. (At least in part because such a bystander judgement is very subjective). The lack of training in and availability of emergency 'ambulance' psychological and psychiatric staff is of growing concern.

Has anyone yet, who subscribed, received their sticker for the upcoming fiscal (April 2021--March 2022)? With the, well, patchy, mail delivery we all suffer from I haven't yet. But has anyone else? I note Southwark's garden collection subscription page hasn't been updated since March 3rd - so no news there.

Magpies have a harsh, jarring call.

They were installing a stand pipe on the corner of Underhill and Melford at about 10:30.

ianr - thank you for that clarification and the links.

Perhaps someone could clear my confusion - I had thought the Tessa Jowell Centre was a health hub, with a GP Surgery (was this DMC?) a King's satellite phlebotomist unit (transferred from the old Dulwich hospital) and (currently) a Covid-19 vaccine centre for a consortium of local GPs. It is being referred to in this thread as if it was just a local GP. What is it?

Staff moving to Peckham were moving into inner London, as far as London Weighting is concerned. So would be better off. The union guy is working for the benefit of his members, not the general public. And he isn't interested in bad management decisions when they don't impact his members. It's management's job to manage, not the CWU's.

Staff moving to Peckham were moving into inner London, as far as London Weighting is concerned. So would be better off. The union guy is working for the benefit of his members, not the general public. And he isn't interested in bad management decisions when they don't impact his members. It's management's job to manage, not the CWU's.

Saw article 60k vaccine appointments missed due to delays in postal service?! I suspected as much.. Royal Mail has said publicly (and in letters both to me and to Helen Hayes, copied to me) that at least from the Peckham Delivery office such NHS letters were being prioritised. Certainly the main delivery interruptions I am now seeing are through lack of cover for sickness or leave absences. The NHS has also been contacting people via the telephone/ smart phone apps where they have the details (although that would exclude a group of elderly and likely female BAME individuals who are personally untelephoned). Hopefully their families would be supporting them, where they weren't rejecting the vaccine. I am sure 60k (and more) vaccine appointments were being missed - how many actually through Royal Mail failures may be more moot, although if that figure is nationwide it means about 1 in 500 letters (assuming all adults over 50 were written to) going astray.

Saw article 60k vaccine appointments missed due to delays in postal service?! I suspected as much.. Royal Mail has said publicly (and in letters both to me and to Helen Hayes, copied to me) that at least from the Peckham Delivery office such NHS letters were being prioritised. Certainly the main delivery interruptions I am now seeing are through lack of cover for sickness or leave absences. The NHS has also been contacting people via the telephone/ smart phone apps where they have the details (although that would exclude a group of elderly and likely female BAME individuals who are personally untelephoned). Hopefully their families would be supporting them, where they weren't rejecting the vaccine. I am sure 60k (and more) vaccine appointments were being missed - how many actually through Royal Mail failures may be more moot, although if that figure is nationwide it means about 1 in 500 letters (assuming all adults over 50 were written to) going astray.

Although I have not yet received my sticker (requested on-line as soon as they went live with emails and a letter drop) I have received a replacement brown bin as also ordered (my current one was split and is held together only with tape following an over-enthusiastic bin lorry mechanism incident). So I think we should be receiving stickers in due course. Also my card account has been charged.

Thereby, the polluters pay for the damage that they are causing and they themselves tip the scales to more people using public transport and active travel. Accepting a 'polluters pay' principle - how are you going to charge out to those with wood burning stoves - substantially more polluting, per household, than owning and using a diesel car? I mean, practically how? And a 'polluters pay' mindset means that those who can afford to pollute will do so, justified in doing so that they are 'paying' for this transgression. As those who fly all over the world feel justified in doing so if they pay some form of carbon levy. What this leads to is a concept that the wealthy can pollute, because they are 'paying' to do so. That what you're looking for? And I wouldn't hold your breathe. locally, for improvements in public transport. We're not getting the tube down our way, and bus services have, if anything, reduced over time. Indeed the change in work patterns probably means that as revenues tumble for public transport (as it's less used) services will actually reduce/ have to reduce. Or taxation - increasingly on those not using public transport (much) will increase to subsidise the few still using it.

Not clear what happens to the 'electrical items' If they just slide down a shute I presume that get broken up for the precious metals etc in the circuit boards, a lot of the remainder will get ditched and into landfill . I don't know about these, but the Southwark (Devon St. I think) dump site claims that they have taken 0% to landfill over a longish time period. They have an electrical item recycling part to their dump. So possibly the same.

There was a militeria shop on LL Target Arms - uniforms and equipment, edged weapons, firearms (made safe), air guns and ammunition, model soldiers, flags, badges etc. Some very interesting (some very weird) customers and stock. Gone with the other LL antique and second hand shops, of which there were many. Lasted longer than most.

I would check with your GP that (1) your condition is one which would bring forward a call for vaccination outside your age group and that (2) if it is, the right information had been logged in the right places. I have a 30 year old (South East London) acquaintance without a spleen, for instance, who has now had the first shot. So young people with the 'right' conditions are being called forward. But if your diagnosis is recent the relevant details may not have yet been flagged to the right database for call-up.

I'm guessing that the TJ is now well into 2nd vaccines - as they were pretty busy when I went for my first, and were booking everyone in at that stage to a further session in exactly 11 weeks (to the hour!) I suspect they have pretty full lists at the moment. So it may be that to get a vaccine in a timely fashion another deliverer is a better bet. I think this is simply about logistics and organisation.

I sort of agree ( if I've understood correctly) with Penguin's point - the good and bad instances can balance out .Except that makes it hit and miss and what's to say it doesn't balance out ? It balances out for me, at the moment. When it doesn't...? I was also invited to the pre-diabetic sessions (I am very pre pre-diabetic, by the way, only one point into the zone) - they will urge you not to eat cakes, biscuits and puddings (I don't), not to have sugar with your tea and coffee (I don't), to eat more vegetables (I do), not to drink sweetened fizzy drinks or fruit juice (I don't), to cut back on alcohol drinking (a unit every 3 weeks or so) - to take more exercise (good for cardio vascular, of little use for weight control - eating less is what works there). It's about them going through the motions - but they get paid for it and I don't! The two biggest predictors, for me, of getting diabetes (in the model) are my age and the fact that my late father was a Type 2 diabetic. If they can come up with ways I can remedy either of those I would drop in!

Sue - 1. The extrapolation made by the commercial publisher medpagetoday has not been made by the original researchers. It is therefore a guess - at best (as the study looked specifically at those with hard tissue transplants only - not even at those with bone-marrow transplants). 2. The study looked for detectable anti-bodies, but these are not the only protection offered by the vaccine - which includes e.g. T-Cells and B-Cells, as recognised in the report summary. The fact that, for those who had the vaccine, but without anti-bodies (or almost without) Of note, our previous research has not found that immunosuppressed transplant patients are at increased risk of COVID-19 mortality as we thought might be the case suggests that T- Cells and B-Cells may still be offering protection. 3. The Zoe people specifically touched on issues to do with immuno-suppressed and auto-immune diseases - they suggest that they should certainly take the vaccine, which at worst might suppress the extremes of Covid-19 if not fully protect. But the study looked at, and is relevant to, a single group (and an unusual one, statistically) of those who have had organ transplants. And it is not complete. I don't think that this, except for a small group of people, is actually 'bad news' as the more general extrapolation made by the US publisher is not one backed by clinical research. And even for the group which displays lower or no levels of antibodies following the first vaccination there may be other aspects of protection which are present for them. But bad news sells papers.

It seems as if TJ is linked to a number of local surgeries - who are using it as a central site for their inoculations (this makes logistic sense). Hence not being generally available to book, as 'slots' will be reserved for the surgeries - and of course now for second vaccinations, booked at the time of the first. But its scale is at the surgery, rather than the mass vaccination centre level.

I've been a patient there for 32 years and counting. They have gone through good (and very bad) organisational patches - although my young children, when they were young, could always get seen, even when their parents couldn't, except for weeks of waiting. In general the actual medical care has been very good (save for some problem locums, balanced by some excellent ones) - although their record keeping (and reliance on IT) has let them down recently. You are, however, generally not encouraged to feel welcome there by the non medical staff (again with some exceptions) and this has been particularly true during Covid-19, when you feel a chorus of plague rats would get a better welcome. They have sadly lost a number of excellent partners, and with one at least useful local surgery for locally operable skin conditions. Considering their volume of work it is hardly surprising that there have been organisational mistakes (including but not limited to prescription requests missing items in error) but these are normally quickly rectified. With the excellent local blood suckers (in East Dulwich Hospital and now the Tessa Jowell) they have not needed their own phlebotomist - and bloods taken there get very quickly to Kings for analysis. They are loathe to join up their activities; I have a medicines review (with the pharmacist) which is always enforced just before a set of routine blood tests, meaning I then need a second review (with a GP) in light of the bloods results. This wastes their time and mine. But overall, they are never so bad that a move seems that good an idea. And sometimes they are very good.

Because people parking would not necessarily be visiting the clinic, but parking there because everywhere else is now residents parking or blocked off.

Southwark apparently jumped from 18 such incidents in the six months before Covid-19 to 46 in the equivalent 6 months last year (June to November). That is an increase of 255% (two and a half times). And statistically (very) significant!

Saying that January was a car crash with 29% of staff absence due to COVID. I'm assuming that is having to isolate after being potentially exposed, rather than 29% actually having tested with Covid - which would be a very worryingly high incidence.

The reason will be interesting - I suspect that they may have missed a delivery and be expecting one on Monday for Tuesday - hence why they are closed for those dates. It is so specific that it is unlikely that they are simply missing staff or having to quarantine. And they've probably been asked not to say they have run out of vaccine in case it causes panic - when it's probably just an organisational cock-up. Or maybe their fridge has broken down and won't be mended (or replaced) until Tuesday? There are probably a number of legitimate reasons why this may have happened, without notice, to cause disruption. I'm sorry that you should have been so upset, but it looks like you should get your vaccine with only a small delay. And infection numbers are low locally, so your risk is probably small.