Rockets

The plans certainly show barriers at each end of the road - you have to hope that is some sort of mistake or oversight - the council seems to be rushing these all through so maybe commonsense will prevail. All of the council's plans overlook displacement issues caused by them and there is a long held view by many that the fact these measures cause chaos elsewhere is useful to the council to help justify more changes.

Saucy has now been vacated, one of the betting shops recently closed - it was as I walked down past where the old Sogim pharmacy was that I noticed a lot of empty shops. I seem to remember an estate agent or two with notices saying the nearest branch is now....not I hasten to add that I will particularly miss betting shops or estate agents!

It was emergency service access that ultimately forced Lambeth to have to relent on the Loughborough junction debacle - not access along the individual roads that had been closed per se but for the chaos and gridlock it caused on surrounding roads which greatly increased response times for the emergency services. The London Ambulance service couldn't get Lambeth to listen so they had to go to Kate Hoey who wrote to the council and demanded they remove the scheme as it was putting patients at risk. It was only then that Lambeth listened. Lambeth had completely failed to consider the impact of such closures on surrounding streets and I fear the same thing is happening here.

I am not sure if anyone else has noticed but the number of empty shops on Lordship Lane is increasing rapidly and I wonder what will happen in the post-Covid world and whether any of them will get filled given the various pressures of high rents, business rates, CPZ etc? I hear there will be a number of independent shops that will likely not re-open post shutdown and I do wonder whether it may change significantly or whether others will take their place.

Goodgirlbadhair - what communication have you had from the council - are they really expecting you to park elsewhere? One would have thought that the council would have considered the residents on the street.

That's the point the council seems to overlook - traffic doesn't just disappear - it goes another route. Look at the origins of the lie the council was telling in relation to a supposed 40% increase in traffic through the Dulwich Village area to try to justify the "improvements" they were suggesting (and will now roll-out under their Covid emergency powers). The 40% increase they touted was an increase in traffic between the time they were doing the roadworks (when traffic dropped hugely as DC became impassable) and then the time after the works were completed. The numbers went back up to something slightly lower than before the roadworks very quickly thereafter. It doesn't take a PHD in traffic management to realise that during the period of the roadworks the traffic found another route. All of the measures being put in place by the council under their Covid powers are all designed to stop through traffic (DV, Champion Hill, Melbourne Grove, Goodrich Road) but they haven't spent any time trying to work out where that traffic will go next and what impact that will have on the roads not being closed to traffic. The utopian view of the world is that everyone will jump on bikes or walk - yet they won't - no-one is stupid enough to actually believe that.

Everyone knows that these measures have nothing to do with social distancing, it is wanton opportunism by the council to circumvent their own consultation and due-diligence processes (which, it has to be said, are usually implemented with the same attitude to democracy, fairness and balance as a directive from the politburo). Take a look at their long list of fast-tracked programmes throughout the borough, all but a handful are those that they had in the consultation system already and have nothing to do with Covid. If these changes cause the problems many suspect then will have to ensure those who supported them are held accountable for their actions - but, as we see so many times with this version of the Labour party no-one is ever responsible and it is always someone else's fault.

Can?t imagine the residents will be best pleased if they go ahead with blocks at each end.

Are they proposing NAL blocks at each end of the road? If so, where do the residents within that section park?

James, Your political ideology shapes everything you do. Take your twitter feed. Today you have been tweeting anti-police rhetoric. Let?s look at what you have been tweeting..... The Youness Bentahar video. Why would you decide to tweet that today? The video first appeared in July 2019 and you decide to tweet on the day of the BLM marches. Why? I learned of it when Graham Hunter Sky?s Spanish football correspondent retweeted it and you got national exposure (and, I am sorry for you, a lot of right-wing bots that come with that). Your tweet claimed that this was an example of police brutality yet if you had done your research before tweeting you would have been able to find Youness? own video that showed he was asked to move his car (which was parked illegally - yours and other council?s rules, including those where he was parked, are quite clear that you cannot park a car that close to a junction even if you have a disabled badge - as he did). In Youness?s video the police made it quite clear that he could move his car or face arrest. Moving the car was by far the best course of least resistance but he decided not to, and after numerous warnings the police moved in to arrest him and he resisted. His video stops when the police try to cuff him and then we cut to the video you tweeted showing the police wrestling with someone who doesn?t want to be arrested. That isn?t brutality, that appears to be the police trying to do their job with someone who steadfastly does not want to comply. Talk to any police officer and they will tell you that if someone doesn?t want to be arrested then it will take 4 or 5 police to actually subdue them to a point where they can be arrested. All the police want to do in those situations is to get an arm behind the back to be able to cuff the assailant - a lot harder to do than you think when someone doesn?t want to comply. In other situations those hellbent on disorder often use this as part of their strategy...resist arrest and you take 4/5 police out of the situation. Later this evening you tweeted your disgust at the video of police using horses on Whitehall to disperse those who were determined to cause disturbance at the BLM march. Thousands of people marched peacefully to show their support to the BLM movement, yet a few were hell bent on disturbance around Downing Street, as they had been on previous nights. Your tweet said that protests aren?t safe if horses charge into innocent people...but they weren?t charging were they? The video you retweeted showed horses barely cantering to disperse the crowd who were causing a disturbance (Let me be clear though that horses are used by the police to disperse crowds as 1) people are scared of horses as horses don?t care what they tread on and 2) you can?t sue a horse or have it fired should it tread on you) and then one of the horses gets spooked by something that is thrown at it causing it to bolt and badly injure its rider. Yet you respond to a police tweet that the horse was uninjured that you have ?solidarity with this conscientious objector - refusing to partake in violence?. I am just wondering what compels someone to tweet this stuff out? You are an elected representative - or was this tweet only meant for Labour Party members? ;-) This screams to me that you are constantly letting your political ideology get in the way of rational analysis and I can?t understand why you don?t apply a pragmatic approach to what is actually happening, and this is why I accuse you of doing the same in every aspect of Goose Green and East Dulwich decision making. Anyway, politics would be nothing without differing views and discourse therein so I hope you have a good weekend...despite the weather!

James, Where does the council expect that through traffic to go - I am presuming the council has modelled this? Perhaps you could share? Are you expecting traffic to significantly increase along Matham Grove, for example, as people search for another route? The Matham Grove right turn onto Lordship Lane is pretty hazardous as it is and I suspect there will be a big increase in traffic along this route to avoid the no right turn from East Dulwich Grove onto Lordship Lane. Are we to presume the traffic along Lordship Lane will also increase significantly with both the Melbourne Grove closure and the Dulwich Village closures? What plans does the council have to deal with this?

To be fair James the blog post is hosted on your personal public blog that you advertise within your own signature on this forum. So to allude to it being sent just to Labour party members is a bit disingenuous - anyone can click on the link at the bottom of your last post.

James, Our messages crossed in the ether. I am glad you will be installing some bike securing points along Lordship Lane - you might also want to look at temporarily widening some of the footpaths along Lordship Lane - anyone who has walked down Lordship Lane can see that a quick fix can be installed very easily and will be hugely beneficial to aiding social distancing. You say that the temporary measures will be installed in the next two weeks - yet the council's document within the link you pasted says, quite clearly, that a decision "is not due BEFORE Jun 15th" by my basic maths that is 9 days away. Have you jumped the gun a bit or was this always a done deal from the outset, like many of us suspected? On the basis of this can we presume that all of the other measures are like Dulwich Village and Champion Hill are also being given the green light? It will be interesting to see what the cumulative impact of the DV, Melbourne Grove and other closures have on the surrounding roads once they all start in the next two weeks. The point you, deliberately, miss on my challenge to you is that everything you do can be rooted back to your political views and party political aspirations. Look, we understand - you're a politician - you're a marxist - you're a teacher - you're a union activist - all of those things are admirable and I commend you on fighting the government at every opportunity (somebody has to but I also think schoolchildren should not be used as a political football by either side) but sometimes, just sometimes, you have to take a step back and question whether you are actually listening to all your constituents or just those who resonate with your own ideology. Unfortunately the Labour party took an absolute hiding in the last election and delivered us four more years of tory fun and games because of just this blinkered approach and, I am afraid, you seem to be falling into the same trap and it is the constituents as a whole across all of your ward who will suffer.

And look at the link, it's not just Melbourne Grove - they are basically trying to fast-track every programme they have under "consultation" - Dulwich Village, Champion Hill etc etc. They are using Covid as a means to circumvent their own consultation process - you have got to admire their chutzpah.

I think, and I might be wrong, that the council's hands are tied by government directives on this (although as we have seen on school re-openings councils can advise against compliance - maybe public toilets aren't such a political football!) but it would make absolute sense to re-open them as a matter of urgency. I have been shocked by how little Southwark seems to have done to aid social distancing. Lordship Lane is a nightmare. On Saturday afternoon it was almost impossible to socially distance along its length - the lines that formed out of Moxons and Oddono's were ludicrous and often overlapped one another - the council could have easily put temporary bollards along the length of Lordship lane to take away the parking lane along it. A few weeks into the lockdown I was very pleasantly surprised to see the efforts Lambeth had gone to to ensure social distancing near Brockwell Park by putting temporary bollards under the bridge near the station. A simple but very effective measure that benefited everyone. By comparison, Southwark, or certainly Southwark council in the Lordship Lane area, has done nothing. Perhaps Cllr McAsh might care to give us an update on what has come of all the great suggestions made by the posters on this forum?

I think much will depend on your own personal feelings and aversion to risk. If you think the risk of him having it is low, welcome him back - if you're worried, tell him no or tell him if he does he needs to self isolate. He hasn't been part of your household during lockdown and given people are being discouraged from being in anyone's house (the advice on BBQs is to stay outside and only use the toilet and then return outside immediately) you would be perfectly right to say you don't feel comfortable with it. It's the same approach to second homes where people are being encouraged to stay put and not travel back and forward to a second home. It is a difficult one as it is his main home but what was the reason he stayed in North London - everyone knew we were heading into lock down so it couldn't have come as much of a surprise - let's be honest it wouldn't have been difficult to get back? It wasn't like he was stuck on the other side of the world. Is there any background as to why he wants to come back now - did he fall out with his girlfriend or will he be going back and forward to hers over the coming days and weeks? ;-)

Rahrahrah - I don't think there have been any. The only action the local councillors seem to have taken is setting up the survey for the Melbourne Grove closure and the invitation on this thread to come up with some ideas. Walking down Lordship lane it is clear that social distancing is a huge problem and there could be some very quick fixes to alleviate the problem like reclaiming the parking spaces in front of the Co-Op and Jazz's on the other side to allow people to pass safely - the section in front of Tandorri Nights is particularly narrow. I can't work out why Southwark aren't doing more. A lot of other local councils (Lambeth, Lewisham, Croydon, Camden, Hammersmith, Kensington) have moved with great speed and made wholesale temporary changes to roads and pavements to benefit their communities yet Southwark seems to be doing next to nothing and moving incredibly slowly. To be honest I am amazed that our local councillors haven't done anything to help the shoppers and traders who use Lordship Lane. I just wish they had approached Lordship Lane and the wider community with the same vim and vigour that they jumped on the opportunity to try and close Melbourne Grove.

Yes I am afraid they are. They are limited on the number of night take-offs and landings they can make and they try to schedule the planes to arrive (mostly from the Far East) from 4.30am to 6am. We tend to hear them buzzing our house from 5am but if they get a good tailwind they can be as early as 4.30am.

James, I added an entry to the interactive map. Will you be alerting us to which plans are being implemented and when, there are a lot of great ideas that have been posted?

A lot are repatriation and cargo flights - even a lot of the passenger planes have been re-equipped to carry cargo. I think Heathrow is running at about 10% of capacity and a lot of those flights are basically empty. Terminals 3 and 4 have been closed, only one runway is operating and I suspect they are funnelling arrivals into windows (much like they used to do at City) so you'll get a flurry of landings at certain times of the day.

James,you started the 3 threads.....;-) You are clearly putting your ideological and political aspirations ahead of the majority of your constituents - you did it with the CPZ, you did it with your canvassing of Melbourne Grove when the Dulwich Village changes were proposed and you are doing it now with the Covid closure of said roads. We are all but a stepping stone in your political career - you seem more interested in keeping the Labour paymasters happy than the people you represent.....expand your echo chamber and you will hear that people want you to do more to represent your community against things like the DV road changes as they will have huge impact on us in East Dulwich - but no, you tow the party line and lobby for them even though the majority of your constituents don't want them. And for the benefit of those who haven't read the blog here are the things you are most proud of in your two years representing Goose Green ward - all very admirable but not a lot there to inspire confidence that you are doing much for the people who voted for you. And with that, m'lud, the prosecution rests their case.....;-) 1) Amplifying the grassroots Change comes from below, not from committee rooms. I see my role as giving progressive campaigns a voice in the Council. After voting against Delancey?s plans for the Elephant and Castle - with its lack of social homes and support for local traders - I have worked with campaigners trying to get a better deal. When Sisters Uncut pointed out that a Home Office immigration officer was working from Southwark Council, I worked with them, the Law Centre and local party members to kick them out. 2) Members shaping the council When it comes to local government, party members often feel shut out. In my first year, I was Secretary of the Labour Group of councillors. In that role, I tried to bridge the divide by liaising with branch secretaries and putting members? motions on the Group?s agenda. More recently I campaigned with party members and fellow councillors for an all-members hustings and member-participation in the vote for the new Leader of Southwark Council. We were successful with the former but not the latter. (This has since been postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic.) 3) Supporting trade union struggles We?re called the Labour Party for a reason - the workers? movement is central to everything we do. As a councillor, I have always tried to support trade union campaigns and disputes, from joining picket lines like at the PictureHouse to challenging the Royal Mail on the closure of our sorting office. On a number of occasions, I have aligned council policy with campaigns by Unite, Unison, GMB, TSSA, RMT, and NEU. 4) Engaging with the community I pledged to meet every state school in the ward during my first six months. Since then, we?ve worked together on a number of projects, from road safety to social inclusion. During the coronavirus pandemic, Cllr Maggie Browning and I have hosted a fortnightly coordinating meeting between East Dulwich?s mutual aid groups. These groups show Goose Green at its best: caring, generous and committed to supporting the local community. Finally, I cannot mention community engagement without bringing up the East Dulwich CPZ. This divided opinion in the community and there was no solution which would have satisfied everyone. Nonetheless, I?m proud of the work we did to bridge the divide and carve out a proposal that most people could live with. 5) Getting the work done It?s the four points above that really motivate me. But much of the work of a councillor is unseen. It?s not enough to do the campaigns if the day-to-day work is neglected. I?ve not missed a council meeting in the last year, my record on casework is one of the highest in the borough, and I?ve submitted the most Council Assembly motions of any councillor.

Cllr McAsh, To address some of your responses: Other Locations: Why don't you do the pragmatic thing and do an area wide review rather than taking this haphazard piecemeal approach? It speaks volumes to the council's ability to deliver on anything, that you have not undertaken an area wide approach to the issues that Covid presents? You have done nothing to help people trying to go about their business on Lordship Lane - there has been an huge amount of inaction on your part. Other local councils seem to be far more coordinated and have responded more quickly. Your approach seems knee-jerk, panicked and suggests a complete lack of preparedness and it makes some wonder why more thought wasn't given to this over the 9 weeks of lockdown. The decision-making process Yes other councils have enacted those powers but have done so in a far more broad brush approach - is the best you can come up with one of your pet projects that you have tried every route available to you to get implemented. I spoke to a lot of people on Lordship Lane today and no-one had any idea that you were planning to do this. All were in shock that you would try to use Covid as the reason to fast-track this through and all said the same thing - what does this mean for the roads and routes around here especially Lordship Lane and why isn't our local councillor doing more for the broader community. Schools Reopening In your role as a teacher and a member of the NEU when do you think children will be allowed back in schools? Many share the same concerns you have but there are also many whose children are missing school, their education and their friends and many parents need to start getting back to work and are beholden to when schools re-open. One of your tweets suggested that maybe schools should not reopen until the summer of 2021 per Cambridge University's announcement of the same for lectures. Realistically, when do you think your union's 5 point plan can actually be met and children should be returning to school? I note on another of your tweets that you said no private schools are returning until after the summer (until someone pointed out to you that the schools you mentioned are secondary schools and would not be expected to under the govts current plans). I know you hate everything about private schools but you do realise some of the ones in your local area are returning on Jun 1st? Your focus to try and close Melbourne, Derwent and Elsie seems to be at the expense of other initiatives that could help more people in your ward. You started a track on this forum asking for input from residents and plenty were given but none have been actioned. I walked down Lordship lane today and it was clear the council need to provide more bike parking structures - that is a simple and effective way of helping people get to and from Lordship Lane and benefits everyone and I am surprised it hasn't been actioned already - you have had fleets of Conway workers doing other work during lockdown so why not divert some of those resources to trying to deliver something tangible to the community. How You Contact Goose Green Residents You're trying to divide and conquer on this one. You should be on here engaging with everyone in the community. When you want something from the community - like your Melbourne Grove survey - you carpet bomb the forum to try and drum up support and then when people start asking you questions you don't answer and suggest email instead. A bit like when people challenged you on the lie that your are spinning about the 40% increase in traffic at the Dulwich Village junction to justify the changes to the road there. You repeat it and then hide behind your colleagues and tell people to lodge a complaint when you get exposed. If there's one thing people hate it's invisible politicians. As I mentioned on another thread the things you are most proud of, per your blog, in your two years in office have little to do with Goose Green and far more about your ideological and political aspirations and this Melbourne Grove farce is a classic example. I will make a prediction now that if you go ahead with it it will cause complete chaos in the surrounding area on a par to Lambeth's folly at Loughborough Junction.

It may have been mentioned somewhere on this thread before but it would be good if the council looked at more bike securing devices along Lordship Lane. A lot of people do want to cycle to use the shops but are unable to due to the dearth of places to secure them.

James, But why Melbourne, Derwent and Elsie? You mention 3 schools nearby but that's hardly justification for emergency closure of roads when none of the schools are open. Given your work within the NEU and your passionate fight against the government for a June 1st return for parts of the school community I just wonder when are you expecting schools to re-open - if September or more likely much, much later given your fight then surely these measures are not urgent and should be properly considered to assess the impact on other parts of the area and within a properly organised and community engaged area wide review? Knee-jerk implementation of such measures will not end well. Am I interpreting your note correctly that your colleagues in the council were about to block those 3 roads without any consultation under the emergency powers you have been given and you had to intervene to give residents a "say"? I am not sure many people trust you that anyone other than the residents of Melbourne Grove etc will be listened to and even if they said no to it you wouldn't rehash the results to give you your mandate as you did with the CPZ. Also, this is a Labour party survey conducted via Google Docs not a council survey so does it count as a consultation? We would be a lot more supportive if you properly communicated with your constituents and didn't make arbitrary decisions that impact everyone. You have been rallying to get these closures in place for some time and it seem to a lot of us that Covid is the trojan horse and it is political opportunism. I have suggested to you before that perhaps you should spend more time on here - this is one of the main community forums and your drop-in, drop-out approach and encouragement to people to email rather than discuss here suggests a divide and conquer strategy. You spend a lot of time on twitter so maybe a little less time there and more here might improve your communication with your constituents as I am sure you can see there are plenty of people locally who are incredulous that you are trying to implement this! ;-)

Rollflick - as I said there needs to be pragmatic and rational analysis and your point illustrates that perfectly. Just because Melbourne Grove is a designated cycle route doesn't mean it should be closed. Now I understand why Khan is suggesting closing (amongst others) the route from Waterloo, across Waterloo Bridge and on along Kingsway past Holborn to all traffic bar buses and bikes (one presumes they are encouraging those who have no choice but to travel to Waterloo by train - per my comments on London's linear creation - to do the last part of their journey on bike instead of on the tube) - but I am sure you'll agree there is far less justification to close Melbourne Grove when applying the same rational and pragmatic analysis of transport in the new Covid world - I doubt you'll see flocks of commuter son bikes bombing along Melbourne Grove. Also when you look at the report you linked to there are a lot of other designated cycle routes that are not being closed to through traffic or their residents being consulted by our councillors. So it begs the question - why this, why now and, to your point, why is it being done in isolation and not part of an area-wide consultation? Once again the council and councillors are opening themselves up to a lot of difficult questions, alienating themselves to a large percentage of their constituents but they don't seem to care - they did it with the CPZ, they are doing it with the Dulwich Village "consulation" and now are at it again. They are completely incapable of engaging in any sort of balanced dialogue and use under-hand tactics to lever their projects through.