van dessel

Honestly? that's a completely infantile "stat". Treats us like idiots. Ofc there is no 'right' number but politicians like something their minds think is impressive. Real metrics are: species diversity and bio-interaction between them, male to female ration (this one was news 3-4 years ago), a big one is the aggregate canopy size vs. pavement & flat roof surface area ratio (addresses urban heat sinks), oxygenation and carbon trapping capacity of the tree stock, annual removals vs plantings, and for each one a 30 year trend line AND a league table against global cities AND a KPI to show how the effort is balancing against air quality targets. And the budget of course. (I'm sure there are a few more) Now that would be an interesting dashboard rather than some unaudited number from heavens knows where. I'm sorry but you have to take this stuff seriously else it will not be managed towards the betterment of our future.

No no and no. Community activism (or even just caring) is NOT about keeping you head down, minding your business, and assuming there are Mensa-level experts making infallible decisions based on impeccable advice and in perfect sympathy and harmony with public sentiment. Especially when it's with our money and impacts green space, no matter how trivial it might seem. The council cuts down way too many trees and never replaces them, there's no urban canopy, trees on my road especially are trimmed to within an inch of their lives so people can send an invoice. Southwark has a full time tree removal person but no green regeneration person around street trees in particular. It's like having 25 morgue workers in a hospital but no midwife. Best gift you can give anyone for the future is to plant a tree today.

Saw that too and was disappointed b/c it WAS a serene, green oasis - that footpath between Greendale and Dulwich Hamlet football stadium. I suspect it might be for safety of walkers after dark so it prevents people hiding there? I don't know. It was vandals b/c someone cleaned it up 😂 It's depressing that so much urban landscaping (i.e. getting rid of anything green) revolves around averting crime rather than with officers on foot to prevent crime and proper follow up. Benches taken out to stop loitering etc. Teens and early 20s kids who still live at home need somewhere cheap to get out to and socialise and just chill and drink tinnies and smoke - esp on warm evenings when it's beautiful outside. In addition - it's depressing that no one cleans up the parking lot where the car wash is - just a disaster area now, I see my kids scanning around when we walk through wondering what the heck is going on there. Does anyone know who owns that land?

Bit over-stated that. Fully-paved front drives cause same/worse issues. The hermetically-sealed, boundary-to-boundary hard surfaces you see all over Dulwich prevent natural rainwater from continuing to nourish the dirt/clay under the house. Houses around ED have very very shallow foundations which is the root cause, frankly. I just spent a year renovating a house down to the foundations and they barely exist and the brickwork is easily disturbed by any ground movement. Last time I checked, humans can't breathe their foundations can they? But most humans require oxygen... This foundations trope is the go-to bogey man. Defo not having a go at you Dave, I'm sure you'd prefer more trees to fewer trees, but short-term vs long term decisions must be made. Choices: Do we want a fully-paved, grey, barren landscape or greenery with all the health & beauty benefits?

I believe they can enhance the CCTV footage with facial recognition software. Whether they deploy that for a local mugging is anyone's guess, but it's captured in news articles they use it at airports, demonstrations and football matches. Be nice if they compelled the person they caught to make some sort of restitution to the victim. One day last week I saw a bunch of guys in orange hi viz vests in Dulwich Park cleaning up leaves - the vests had Community Payback (or something similar, can't remember exaclty) written on the back. On 1 hand I was like "that's good" but on the other hand I thought the slogan on the back was a bit demeaning. In my mind, the fear of god to make you rethink your life choices should be inculcated during the police/charging/judicial process where what you once thought was just a harmless mugging/shoplifting/vandalism etc. is in fact wrong and taken seriously by experienced professionals who are there to clamp down on these things. That should be what's in the forefront of a person's mind -- not "oh no I might have to wear that hi viz vest again"....

Sorry to hear that acycle, it's a small place and big group could easily make it loud for sure. I've been there 4-5 times in the last year and really like it. It's a great, better-value alternative to Rocca and Olivelli (I enjoy both of those too). The owners are proper italian so if you're just back from there on holiday and want to add something that you enjoyed it's not too much trouble for them to assist. The front of house lady is great with kids, I have no reservations to heartily recommend the food. We've also had the steak which they did a great job on as they have a proper charcoal grill in the kitchen in addition to the pizza over from it's previous iteration. Re: the karaoke, I asked them to turn it down once and they did. Please support folks by giving it a try, don't be shy to give them feedback on the window display or whatever, it would only help them.

I guess I'm in the minority b/c i do not agree. This is why I used the topical example of the gaza protests but you can use any example: football matches, G7 summits. There are TONS of cops, lots of cops, 10s of thousands of them in fact, there are just not enough on the beat in SE22 after school. It's all about allocation: this is why the bare stats are important and it's on us to all be proactive and report everything. But also, as someone said about meet and greets with local police, the influence and story telling re: our local situation is what makes the leap from just stats to actual, physical allocation. There has been lots of good proactive steps in this thread. I'll add the local southwark councillors you can find here (public site): Your Councillors - Southwark Council My area is DV and I've found both to be receptive on various issues like traffic and trees so worth a follow up regarding this incident and the wider issue around kid on kid muggings. My daughter just hit the age to walk to/from school herself so I have lots of skin in the game and care deeply about every day safety for everyone.

Thanks for brining this up, it is ALWAYS worth bringing up. This is our neighbourhood afterall - if we can't care about our own environs then what else should we be concerned about? Some war far away where regular people like us won't make a jot of difference but which still attracts tons of cops to police weekly while local kids get beat up? It takes a cool analytical big-picture head to think just how messed up this situation is. Too much on the 90% of our lives we cannot control, too little on the 10% we can. I applaud the OP for raising this. With things like stolen bikes, broken-into parked cars, intimidated children it's worth making a report b/c more of more services are driven by stats/KPIs. Eventually, the numbers amass. I don't care who is stretched. Tell me someone who would say they're NOT stretched - the point is we all pay tons of tax and are deserve appropriate level of services. Would tea with a cop help? I dunno, think this needs something a bit more decisive than that. I know there are supplementary parental patrols - worth helping them to assign their resources better by making them aware of recent trouble-spots. Realise this was out of term-time but worth raising nonetheless.