Forest Hill Climber

My experience of the Forest Hill Post Office isn't good. Typical is today, where I arrive at 3:30 with parcels already labelled ready to be scanned and dropped off. There's just one of three windows open, a 30 minute queue, and a hand-written notice up that the service will close at 4 PM instead of the advertised 5:30 The woman working there came out and put a physical barrier at the end of the queue, then asked the last person to tell any further arrivals not to join the queue as she won't be able to serve them. When she made her way back through the locked door, I managed to get her to take my parcels with her behind the counter, but didn't get them scanned, so hoping for the best.

With the elections coming up soon, it's interesting to note that residents over the boundary in Lewisham have a different system of local government than Southwark. Lewisham has a directly elected Executive Mayor while Southwark has kept a traditional local authority structure. Nothing is perfect, but I think Lewisham made a mistake with the Executive Mayor in that it blurs the legislative branch and executive branch of governance, and makes serious scrutiny of decisions less likely to happen - especially in a Borough like Lewisham which is essentially a one-party state. None of the political parties are offering any major reforms of local government for London, which is very disappointing since it seems obvious that having 33 local authorities - all with their own internal administrations - is not a good way to run things, when most of them are struggling even to maintain basic services.

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It doesn't deserve the good review, as it is horribly congested - especially after the original main entrance was rented to a coffee shop and blocked off as access for passenger ingress/egress.

What is 'Chern'?

We had Dan help us with a satellite connection issue. Good communication throughout, he showed up when he said he would, and charged exactly what he'd quoted us, job completed. No hesitation in recommending.

I don't agree. That's like saying anyone who listens to music should never complain about a noisy party shaking the adjacent properties at 02:00 in the morning.

Best use of this would be to make a start tunnelling the South Circular. We all know it needs to happen.

If you want to check the destination of any aircraft that you can hear overhead, this website can tell you in real-time https://www.flightradar24.com/

In 2016 London City Airport began using concentrated flight paths. When there's a predominantly westerly wind, incoming aircraft approach from East London (north of the River). When there's a predominantly Easterly wind, incoming aircraft approach the airport from the West: circling through Forest Hill, Dulwich, Vauxhall, Tower Hamlets, Docklands. This latter flight path affects many of us in South East London. https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/london-city-airport-concentrated-flight-paths The planes going into City are often below 2,000 ft, so very noisy. Sometimes we have incoming Heathrow at the same time, flying higher. The early flights that I hear e.g. 04:30 are incoming to Heathrow. They are scheduled to land at 05:30 but are 'early'. Apparently the government allows a percentage of flights to arrive early and late (but these are now established as regular occurrences, informally part of the schedule). IMHO Londoners are getting very poor political representation on this issue. Incredible that if you want to complain about aircraft noise, you're supposed to contact the airport concerned! Preposterous and designed solely in favour of aviation expansion.

Thank you. I have seen shield bugs around for several years, just never the nymphs. I'm guessing it's the Common Green Shield bug variety, but possibly the Southern Green shield bug. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2021/05/shieldbug-identification/ https://britishbugs.org.uk/heteroptera/Pentatomidae/nezara_viridula.html

Thank you Sue. But are you certain? I've looked at several pictures of early-stage Harlequins and they look more elongated than the guys in my own picture.

I would appreciate it if gardeners and allotmenteers could have a look and let me know what the critters are in the picture. I haven't seen these in previous years.

This is a useful source of info regarding this issue https://www.hacaneast.org.uk/home/

Certainly unique, can't argue with that.