exdulwicher

Very true. In some respects, "society" has created this issue with delivery drivers and riders (and Uber). Food delivery companies promise you'll get your takeaway within 30 minutes - that doesn't leave much time for the restaurant to receive your order, prepare and pack it and for the rider / driver to then get it to you. They're almost incentivised to break the law. With delivery riders (all of them on zero hours / "pay per drop" conditions), literally the only way they can do this all day every day is to buy a bunch of cheap knock-off batteries and a motor from some dodgy online retailer, strap them to some old mountain bike and blat around on that. Minimal expenditure (cos they can't afford proper legal electric bicycles) and minimal regulation (cos they're all working under dodgy conditions anyway, half of them are probably on the verge of slave labour / exploitation / no legal right to work) so they can't get UK driving licences as required for mopeds / motorbikes. Lime riders are mostly on pay-per-minute (Lime do offer the option to buy blocks of time as a "Day Pass", I don't have any figures on how many people use that option). Uber drivers are all rushing to the next fare, knowing that if they're late they'll get a bad review. The whole system has created a sub-group of road users who are incentivised to speed, use mobile phones (cos everything they're doing is app-based, all their orders are received that way) and jump red lights. I don't really have any suggestions of how to put that genie back in the bottle, I'm not justifying their behaviour, just explaining some aspects of it. There was a long discussion on road.cc a couple of years ago about a proposed law change (which never made it beyond talking about it) and notes a few examples from around the world where cyclists can (in certain circumstances) treat red lights as a Stop or Give Way: https://road.cc/content/news/should-cyclists-be-allowed-ride-through-red-lights-298809

It is very much in the interest of cab drivers to drive to the speed limit and stop at every red light, they earn more that way! Cabbies are normally worse on mobile phone offences though.

Not really - turn right on red has been A Thing for motorists in many US states for years now, it's basically accepting that there are situations where a filter would be appropriate but for whatever reason it's too expensive / time consuming to put them in as a formal set of lights. A lot of US states have something similar for cyclists called the Idaho Stop - Idaho as the state that introduced it. Basically says that cyclists can treat a red light as a STOP sign and a STOP sign as a Give Way. So if you get to a red light, stop, can see that the way for a bike is clear and it's safe for everyone, you can make the turn. It;s a tacit admission that bikes are not cars and sometimes measures designed for cars are not entirely necessary for bikes. On the other hand, if you blow through a red light, mowing down pedestrians every which way, you can expect to be severely punished for it, there are traffic cops everywhere in the US. As a result, the road laws are generally complied with. Same in Australia where there are routine stop and search operations, regular speed checks and the fines (for drivers and cyclists) are eye-wateringly expensive and heavily enforced. The issues the Government is having with taxes and the welfare bill could be solved in a couple of weeks by actually doing some proper traffic enforcement (and to be clear, I mean on both drivers and cyclists). An issue mostly created by the pricing structure that Lime use which charges by the minute. People don't want to pay 25p to sit there at a red light for 2 minutes. Santander mostly avoids this by charging in "blocks" of time which largely removes the time pressure element because it doesn't matter if you ride for 5 minutes or 20, you still pay the same amount.

It's still a factually correct definition and given that Stonehenge, and every other significant henge, were built around astronomy, you could argue that it's the original one. You must be furious that the schools haven't started summer holidays given that we are (apparently) in "the height of summer". To be fair, for once the complaint wasn't about road closures or disruption but the much more important definition of "summer"... 😉

Meteorological summer starts on 1st June: June / July / August is meteorological summer, autumn starts 1st September. Astronomical summer, which is connected to Earth's tilt & rotation around the sun, begins on 21st June and ends on 22nd September. Summer solstice, the longest day of the year is today, 21st June. So he's right, even if it's a sentence that doesn't really sound correct.

Buy one shop, get 824 shops free. But I only went in for some shampoo!

Did it look like this? 😉

Back in about 2016 there was a rewrite of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directives (it's not exactly a fascinating read, I warn you now...) that required certain signs - things like "New Road Layout Ahead" or "Changed Priorities Ahead" - to have a yellow sticker on the back with a note that they were temporary signs and they should be removed by [date]. And to have a contact number for the council on there. So any of those can easily be reported. IN theory, councils are supposed to have a record of this stuff but in practice, most no longer have the resources to manage small scale highways assets effectively. Thanks, austerity.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding as to what a consultation is. The question is not "should be do X, yes or no?" The question is "we are doing X [because - state reasons], do you want version 1 or version 2?". That's perfectly normal and legal and above board and if you think about it, I bet we all do the same in day-to-day life. You don't say to your young kids "what do you want for dinner?" because that's too open-ended and can result in impossible requests. You present two options that you can actually deliver. Pizza or lasagne (for example). You might then get a bit more creative with pizza toppings but you're essentially offering two options that you have in the house (or can quickly order), it's not going to result in an impossible request that you can't deliver. Nor does it easily allow for the option of not having dinner. We are having a meal, here are your options. The council have done the same. We are putting some minor restrictions on traffic because [road danger, pollution, congestion, parking etc], should we do it via this method or that? Now in theory, everyone wants less road danger, pollution and congestion (much the same as everyone wants dinner), the mystery is how it generates such howls of outrage given the wealth of evidence that says LTNs, School Streets, pedestrianisation, more walking and cycling, less vehicle use etc are all good things. I mean you're basically complaining that the council are making the area a bit nicer.

Well it was only open to adult free males - no women, children or slaves allowed to have a say. So I'm not entirely sure that's the best argument in favour...

There have been Judicial Reviews done on many (if not most) of these schemes including one brought against Southwark by One Dulwich. Up until now, they've all been thrown out in their entirety and even this one only scraped by on one of the three counts. Besides, as explained, it does not automatically render the scheme unlawful. It examines the process, not the outcome.

Over the course of about 10 years there were at least 4 consultations on Dulwich Square which finally ended with the only design that could actually meet the original brief. One of the early reports (2016? 2017?) gave 3 options: what the council went with something about multiple roundabouts which I think actually referenced a scheme in Poynton (a village near Manchester which, again after extensive back and forth, finally installed (sorry, "imposed"...) a weird double roundabout system which, depending on your point of view is either a brilliantly innovative success or a total disaster - absolute proof that you will NEVER achieve any sort of consensus). a couple of other vague half-way-house type options In 2018, after all of that consultation, a bunch of re-prioritisation, new road markings, some buildouts etc went in - a scheme which failed all of TfL's route guidance but which apparently satisfied some of the NIMBY issues. Back to the drawing board for yet more consultations, in 2019 there were 3 phases of consultations over about 18 months which then ran up against Covid and the change of plans anyway but did allow Southwark (and numerous other councils around the country) to rapidly deliver on Streetspace plans which all had live feedback consultation. Out of Covid and in 2021 there was yet more consultation, the scheme finally made permanent but with watered-down aspects to appease the Onesies. Then it was council elections - remember that, where the Tory boy standing on a specific "rip out the LTNs on Day 1" was going to annihilate the "Socialist Labour Clowncil", send them running for the hills? Just remind me how that went will you? Cos it was hilarious. And then miraculously, he turned up an a council meeting, this time as the "spokesperson for One Dulwich" - well I never. Claiming to "represent the community" And he got his arse handed to him on a plate when it was pointed out that the actual community representative was - gosh - the elected councillor, not him. More hilarity. That should have been the end of it but Southwark then embarked on another 18 months of consultation around final design which One Dulwich did everything possible to disrupt and water down before finally, there's a completed scheme. So yes - you have been endlessly consulted. Repeated extra consultations. You cannot argue that you have not been consulted. You can get upset that the majority did not agree with you but not about the consultation.

The council were voted in on a manifesto. That means they've been given tacit support for at least the broad brush promises made in that manifesto, they should not then need to seek yes/no answers to everything they do. Consultations are a tricky one. Done well, they can engage and bring the community along on a journey. Done badly, they're a major source of distrust, anger and misunderstanding. Part of it is down to the questions you ask. Asking people who are not policy experts questions such as "what would you like to see?" is painful - people don't know that or they can't imagine that. Steve Jobs famously said that he never asked the customers what they wanted because most people don't know. If he'd have asked people what they wanted before they invented the iPhone, the answer would have been "a phone with a longer cord". If he'd have asked people what they wanted before they invented the iPod, the answer would have been "a Walkman with longer battery life". They're pointless questions that can only ever give worthless answers. And when you don't deliver a Walkman with longer battery life, people go "what is this, I didn't ask for this" and get angry and frustrated that they've wasted their time on engagement but not been given the solution they wanted - even though an iPod is a vast improvement on a Walkman with longer battery life. And what the council should be doing is designing the borough equivalent of an iPod.

They're turtle-y different. 😉 They hibernate, burying themselves under mud or at the bottom of the pond. There have been regular sightings in there (and in Dulwich Park) for years and terrapins can live for 15-20 years in the wild, 30+ years in captivity. They are however an invasive species - whether or not the RSPCA or a local wildlife charity would come out to try and trap / remove them is another matter.

Judicial Review challenges the process - not the outcome or the result. The one aspect of it that was upheld was that the consultation was flawed and that only came about because the anti-group submitted a 53-page dossier outside of the normal consultation route and Lambeth have been unable to show that they took it into account - even though everything in it was bollocks. It doesn't make the LTN unlawful nor does it allow the fines to be recovered.