Loz

Having put up with a number of London councils, I find Southwark pretty good. The binmen come and get the bin if you forget to put it out, the streets are reasonably clean and our local councillors pop round every couple of months to gauge any local issues. They killed off the Homebase development a few years ago and the Leisure Centre next to ED station recently - both damn good decisions. Mt Sainsbury (the new speed bump they installed on Edgar Kail Way for the store reopening) lasted less than a week - I assume the council had a say in that one. For the basic stuff I can't ask for a lot more, really.

Any small print on the offer?

As a geek who wears thin-rimmed glasses, takes more than one ski (snowboard, actually) holidays a year and will be popping into White Stuff tomorrow for a look, I 'm now incomplete as I'm not accompanied by a man bag. I don't like man bags! What should I do?

Blimey, we've well and truly wandered in to Fantasy Lordship Lane. Can we add a branch of Ollivanders so I can buy a magic wand! (Or would that make them a chain?) Incidentally, your posting problem is caused by Viagra. >:D< Honestly! It's picked up by an anti-spam filter and words like special-ist contain the more scientific name for the drug buried in them. Why you're allowed to use the 'Viagra' word itself is a bit of a mystery.

It always looks to me like a plane crashed into it...

Maybe it could go from cop shop to Top Shop? Sorry... :-$

Ouch. Touche.

I'll be popping in for a look. Are you going to be doing snowboarding gear? But 10% discount??? Now you *know* you can do better than that... (PS Your website menuing is broken in Firefox. Tut tut)

Georgie, When is opening week??

That may make things safer, Mark. But at the same time can the hand out tickets to motorbikes who jam themselves in to the front of the waiting queue, usually diagonally across the front of your car, crossing the white line and so effectively going through the red light? And/or sit in the green bicycle-only area?

I think we should stop call it a railway *station*. It's more like two leaky bike sheds. For those looking for tickets, the newsagent on the other side of the road (Mark & Son) has the Oyster machine. I don't think the other one near the tyre place does it.

Likes: The Clipper on Northcross - good cheap haircut William Rose (though I wish it was closer to Goose Green). Cheese Block Dulwich DIY - so friendly and helpful and they'll happily sell you a single tap washer rather than a pack of six like others. Tandoori Nights A general lack of high street names - it's what I liked about LL when I first moved here Put Up With: Dulwich Garden Centre. Good enough for some needs, but my aren't they a miserable bunch. Don't Like: The state of the shops nearer to the station. The amusement arcade

I won't spoil the fun too much (cos I didn't know the answer myself), but Google can be your friend. Sometimes.

I don't think the researcher is after is a wider debate on if cars are Bad Things or not. I think we're missing the point here. If I park in a dodgy place (yellow lines, etc) and I get a ticket, then fair enough. However there's two other issues. 1) There is so much evidence of wardens issuing plainly invalid tickets and 2) are councils running parking schemes to keep things clear or to raise money? I'd love to see someone take a traffic warden that has issued a obviously dodgy ticket to court on a charge of fraud. It'd be an interesting case. Or, as I've said before, if you sucessfully appeal a ticket then the council pays you costs equal to the value of the ticket. At the moment there is no disincentive to write a dodgy ticket.

I'm betting it was an Elizabeth Duke bracelet from Argos.

I'm another that went to The Green a couple of years ago and won't be going back. Poor food and unforgivably bad service. Some dishes failed to even turn up. It's hard to believe that it is related to Le Chardon. The latter is always a nice place for a bit of a blowout, even if they do shoehorn a couple too many tables in.

Around near St Francis Estate, the traffic wardens had a big bonus time over that last year or so ticketing all the 5-a-siders that parked with wheels on the pavement. Given the width of the road, this was a sensible thing to do and kept the road clear. So now everyone parks 'properly', but the situation is now downright dangerous and clogs the whole road up on a blind bend. Brilliant traffic management. Not. In reply to LostThePlot, the simple answer is to create a rule that says if you contest a ticket successfully the council pays *you* ?120 (or ?60 if they pay you within 14 days!). That cost could be passed onto the private firms running the wardens. The dodgy ticket problem would disappear overnight. This will, of course, never happen...

Oooh... first post after a few weeks of lurking! I'm with [Ebico], who resell for Scottish & Southern Energy. Our last combined quarterly bill for a 2 bed house was about 100 quid. When I changed a year or so ago they were by far the cheapest, though I've not checked for a while. Not all the switching sites show these guys as they don't pay commissions.