Penguin68

Well, this week, Tuesday, it was the general kitchen and garden waste bin men who made the collection. I think they may have changed their policy.

It's a trade-off - great looks, interesting behaviour and flight patterns, irritating call - magpies and parakeets. Lovely voices, often hidden - other birds. The whole together adds to, at least my, joy in life. Indeed the best sounding birds are often the drabbest/ most hidden.

The council seeks non-capped revenue streams (such as park parking and CPZs and garden waste collection) yet seems entirely profligate when it comes to some types of street work (of course a lot of the problem is utilities). Do they have a minimum contract with Conway's which they are spending up to?

In my youth I seem to remember being able to go within 10 minutes drive of my home and not come across any road works disrupting traffic for months, even years. Even when I moved to ED over 30 years ago it could be weeks and months between disruption (lights or diversions). In the last 18 months or so I cannot remember a day when one road at least somewhere within, as I said, 10 minutes drive of home, wasn't partially or wholly blocked. Sometimes there have been no ways away from my house (including in directions I didn't want to travel!) where there wasn't some blockage or other. What is happening? I know that infrastructure needs renewal and repair, but frequently simple road works (without gas, water or electricity renewal or repair elements) result in no discernible difference after 6 weeks of delay. I cite the works on the Crystal Palace Road and Whateley junction Is my memory simply playing tricks - or are things really much worse now than before?

It's also worth pointing out that Melbourne Grove is a sat nav route from DKH towards the South Circular at Forest Hill - missing out a whole section of Lordship Lane. So it is driven by drivers unused to the area, often in inappropriately large vehicles. This exacerbates an already difficult situation.

The bits which don't show racing all appear to be at a reasonable speed, so I'm guessing they did go like the clappers when racing.

It would be courteous only to put them out on your collection day, rather than prematurely littering the streets with desiccated trees which can blow about, but otherwise on the pavement, I suppose, or just inside your front gate if you have one. Obviously the bin-men must be able to judge they are out for collection and disposal. The council determining to charge for regular garden waste collection does not stop them making additional special collections (such as Xmas trees) whilst staying within their own regulations (not law!).

My Veolia mole has told me that, this morning, it was decided to collect all trees left out and not just those left out by those who pay for garden waste. He also tells me the number of trees this year seems a record, some houses have several!

This is a really useful tab, or it was, but it's sadly outdated now (local councillors go at least 2 elections back and no longer match local wards!) I know it's a non-trivial job, but an update would be really appreciated.

A number of local dry cleaners also offer alterations - depends on how much you are looking to get altered, I imagine.

Panatone makes the base of a very good bread and butter pudding.

I believe that normal sterilisation will not address CJD contamination (Creutzfeldt?Jakob disease). As this was once believed to be due to be very significant throughout the UK population, normal sterilisation methods were deemed useless and hence possibly contaminated instruments were simply disposed of. I would be very happy to stand corrected on this.

I think this would be better reported to the police than a social forum. It is clearly, as described, aggressive and threatening behaviour. However, I suspect that it is extremely unlikely that the alleged transgressor is a forum regular, or even reader, so addressing him through this forum is probably otiose. And your own words 'have a chat' can themselves be interpreted, in context, as threatening. I am clearly sorry that you child should have felt threatened and, I'm sure, frightened. But involving the authorities who can actually do something about this, if you haven't already, may be a far more productive move.

34 objections, 33 rejected. This borough is like North Korea. I hope we all remember this when the next local elections come around. No support from our local councillors (again) Can I perhaps refer you back to a thread I started in March this (just!) year. /forum/read.php?5,2015611,2027910#msg-2027910

Outside Bar Story in Peckham

You can check whether it's anything to do with you by turning off your central heating whilst you are hearing it. If it doesn't stop it's not your system at least, and that's one thing you can rule out.

It would be quite unlikely that a cut cable (alone) in SW London would impact SE London. Depending on what the cable was doing, traffic might be re-routed elsewhere (and anyone directly connected to the cable would lose service) which could place undue traffic pressure on the links, but networks are designed to be resilient and IP traffic can effectively self re-route. It could be a cable which is a feed into a Sky hub, and that is impacting controls over part of the Sky leased network - so you may have actual route integrity but have lost command signals which switch your phone and internet. In which case again, those signals should be readily re-routable, depending on what network resilience Sky has bought for its leased lines. The two (main) providers of fixed network are BT (through its arms-length wholesale arm, BT Openworld) and Virgin. There are other providers of wholesale fixed network to the business community.

As will all these things I would guess the price of repair is factored into the agreement to use the site in the first place. I think that will depend on the experience of the events team that let Goose Green out in the first place -they may have factored in costs or made repair/ reinstatement part of the contract, or they may not. If Southwark park people didn't know about it (apparently they didn't) they won't have been able to provide cost guidance here.

Perhaps because this section is for ED specific topics, the general election is much wider. Its not the topic that is being banned but its location within the forum.

It has already been reported that (1) this experiment will not be repeated in future years and that (2) those who paid for licences unaware of their new rival will have their fees reimbursed. Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of Southwark or their apparat, but in this case a timely and fair decision seems to have been made. Tree Amigos have a contract, which legitimately cannot be broken, but they, or others, won't appear next, or future, years, and the 'old' traders are not having to pay for a devalued licence to trade this Christmas. I'm not sure what more (legally) could be done.

Let the Police deal with this. The chances are very slim that they will. No violence involved, so their interest will be minimal. I provided clear pictorial evidence of a burglary (and another neighbour the get-away-car details). Nothing happened. The availability of things like CCTV were meant to be a justification for the reduction in front-line policing (because crime evidence was more available) - but the focus is on violence, terrorism, and old sex cases. Simple thefts rarely get a look in. Even though a conviction should be a slam dunk with video evidence of the crime, there wouldn't be any punishment if they took the case to court. Reporting non-violent crime to the police is only about getting a crime number so you can claim on your insurance. They won't do anything about it. In my experience. I would be hugely happy to be proved wrong.

If the quote includes removal of existing concrete foundations for your paving I would suggest (plead) that you consider replacing with gravel over membrane or brick/ porous pavours. That will allow rainfall back into the land and avoid run-off. It will help stop subsidence associated with drying clay etc. It is worth googling 'cost of driveway paving' to get an idea of alternatives and comparative costs. Depending on the actual square meterage and complexity your initial quote which you said excludes materials does seem on the steep side. If your contractor is having to dig up for the work, do remember that your services (water, electricity, gas) will run towards your front door (probably). These are meant to be set deep but in my case I found the electric cable was only 1 foot deep or less! It was nearly severed and would have been if I hadn't had a very good contractor (and friend) working on it.

Customer collect is fulfilled in-store - don't know about home delivery - I suspect that's from a dark site.

Although the basic ingredients (even good quality) of an iced sponge cake are relatively cheap, the cost of using a skilled baker may well not be, if undertaking custom work. When you think that many tradesmen charge between ?30 and ?60 an hour (and a pastry cook is no less skilled than a plumber*, I would argue) ?100 for what may be a couple or three hours of work (depending on the complexity of the icing) - when you consider that there are overhead (fixed) costs to meet and a profit to be made - is not wholly unreasonable. Bespoke cake making may be overtime if the pastry cook is otherwise fully employed during the normal working day. * A pastry cook is an artist as well as a technician and should be rewarded as such. Ready-made bought cakes are produced industrially - the design work costs being amortised over many cakes. A bespoke cake will be 'unique' to your requirements, even where pre-designed components are used.

I worked for Sains a very long time ago (1996) and they had a sales-based ordering system, I suspect priorities may have changed since then. There is now a considerable (and many would argue quite reasonable) focus on avoiding waste and throwing less away - the ideal, difficult to achieve , is to sell the last item of perishable goods wanted by customers in the last minute before the store closes for the night. If this is part of their re-stocking algorithm they may have got it wrong (well, they clearly have got it wrong) but possibly for the right reasons. I also know that despite the 'automatic reorder' based on sales this doesn't always happen. They were without stock, for instance of fresh beetroot a few years ago for a number of weeks, the store manager said he simply couldn't get this back on his ordering system, despite many attempts. A computing glitch. I also suspect (with no evidence) that Sainsbury's may be implementing some sort of rationing as a Brexit response (obviously too early). Perhaps they are softening us up for post December shortages.