Rockets

Went through there last week (albeit with hand luggage only) and it all went very smoothly, although make sure you don't wander around the shops too long to get to some flights takes about 15 minutes of small trains, hundred of escalators and a lot of walking!!!

We received this idea this morning and I have to say I am not impressed. I live on one of the roads that already has speed humps and they are proposing more along the road. This will not slow anyone down - there is plenty of research to suggest that speed humps cause more accidents as people accelerate more between them, not to mention the additional environmental damage caused by them. What annoys me about this is that the council opens their letter by saying that "the urban speed limit of 30mph is PERCEIVED to be broken by many drivers". Why don't they go out and find out whether it is or isn't instead of suggesting the roads are filled with speeding maniacs. Yes, there are people who will speed round the roads but they will do that whatever measures are in place. From my experience the worst offenders are the buses - especially the P13 bus as they shoot along Underhill Road. I would like to know where these 113 collisions in three years took place as I suspect many happen on the road junctions in the area where line of sight is obscured by parked cars or worse (I am thinking of the removal truck that makes one of the junctions along the Lordship Lane end of Goodrich a nightmare to negotiate). How many of those collisions were caused by parents ignoring parking restrictions to drop kids off at school? How many were caused by people trying to drive down the middle of the road to avoid the incessant bouncing of the cars along speed humps? Without this level of detail it appears the council is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Traffic management is no longer about trying to slow people down - look at the experiments underway on Kensington High Street and other places where luddite traffic calming measures are being removed to be replaced with sloping pavements, no barriers etc. Whilst these measures may not work in ED it shows that sometimes more creative thinking is required than just sticking lumps in the road. We have plenty of lumps in the road and this looks like an admission by the council that the current traffic calming measures are not working so they will throw more of the same.

I suspect the arrival procedures (known as STARs) have been changed and I bet it is because the new holding areas for Stansted and Luton are pushing planes further south on their approach to Heathrow. Why does the cynic in me also suspect the changes may also have something to do with the third runway plans. A bit like Red Ken changing the phasing of the lights in London before the congestion charge came in! Either that of a government minister has complained to BAA about the noise above their house in Chelsea and has got it changed!!!

???? - yes I had to use commercial airlines because my Learjet is in the garage being converted back to 4-star leaded!

I think they may have started routing the planes on a more southernly pattern going in Heathrow. I came in from the West on a flight and our approach took us to the north of london, turning over the Dartford bridge and then round over Crystal Palace rather than straight down the river as they used to go. Are the folks hearing more aircraft noise living more towards the Forest Hill end of ED? I live up that way and today every plane was coming in over our house rather than just a few as it used to be. They changed the holding patterns for Stansted and Luton a few weeks back and I wonder if that is forcing planes further south over London.

Loads of cabbies have said to me that they never used to get fares to ED and now go there all the time so the revolution is happening. Is it true they have to take you if it is within six miles of central london?

Profitable sledge-hammer to crush wrong nuts me thinks! According to the guy at DVLA I spoke to they do not send reminders anymore - it's your responsibility to do tax discs it. Funny how that stopped at the same time they started clamping people!!! Interesting that despite the extra vigilence on the wild, dangerous streets of East Dulwich you still get pestered by unlicensed cabs in the wee hours of the night in central London!!! ;-) Two more cars done on my street - lucky buggers - two weeks of not getting round to something is an expensive business nowadays and if you don't pay the fine in three days they lift your car and crush it - MOT and insurance or not!! It's funny how many of these dangerous untaxed drivers seem to drive the smarter cars in the neighborhood! Apparently they note down the date of expiry of cars on the street and return to the area if it is going to profitable! You have been warned!!

They do that every month - I got done some months ago and was on a business trip abroad and they were so inflexible. I pointed out to them that what they should be doing is doing something about the hundreds of unlicensed, untaxed, uninsured mini-cabs that tout around central london at night rather than clamping folks who forget to renew their tax disc!! A 200 quid release fee and a further 82 pound fine is a nice little earner for them and an expensive lesson for me! ;-)

My suggestion would be that our dear friends at Southwark council would not be as lenient as Ruislip and give an hour for free. In fact, I have never seen a first hour for free parking zone south of the river. Guaranteed the people who advocate CPZs now are the ones who would be complaining about over-zealous metermaids enforcing the parking regulations, clamping cars and towing away. The fights I have seen in Iceland car park over the clamping of cars parked in bays designated for non-Iceland use is amazing. Leave the lane as it is, it is a perfectly functioning commercial ecosystem and the inconvenience of not always being able to park outside your house or your preferred shop is not too much of an issue. And the parking issue will not go away if you introduce CPZs. I am with NorthernMonkey on this one - CPZs are cash cows for councils - look how many now have night metermaid patrols and enforcement.

Cos the council will see the good shoppers on the lane as a nice cash cow and charge about 2.50 an hour for parking and that will encourage a lot of folks to park in Sainsbury's and shop there instead, thus killing off a thriving local shopping community on the lane. I used to live on Chesterfield Grove and the parking was bad there but only really at lunchtimes and Saturdays, which suggests the issues are those folks popping to the shops during lunch hours etc. 2.50 an hour would deter them. Oh and the Bushell's cars which I think should be banned as a matter of course!!! ;-)

Any form of controlled parking would kill the lane as we know it - unfortunately we all have to live with the inconvenience and that is a small price to pay for the good stuff happening along it.

Is the crossing out due to the filming - seem to think it was not working at the weekend?

Well he has a steady stream of punters - every morning when I run past there on the way to Dulwich Park there seems to be two more white vans full of men, women and children turning up there. Always wondered whether it was housing asylum seekers and now thanks to the forum I know!!!

We caught come collateral egg damage as one of the little thuglets pelted the house next door but had all the accuracy of Lampard playing for England. Later in the evening some more knocked at our door and pointed out said egg and, as I went to get some sweets for them, one of the treaters said "we know who did that, it was..." but was gagged by her bigger sister! We only had two knocks at the door all evening and I reckon the eggy mess on the floor outside detered all but the most hardened treaters.

Pedestrianising LL could be the death of it as we know and love it. Whilst us folks lucky enough to live within walking distance are able to amble down to our favourite eatery/coffee shop/bar/purveyor of fine baby buggies (delete as applicable) LL thrives off passing trade. The easy parking on the Lane itself ensures folks use our local shops instead of the Sainsbury's. Northcross would work much better and I would be all for it.

Bet they were raiding someone's house; they often go armed with riot shields to keep dogs, angry spouses and have-a-go kids at bay!

Is BARA campaigning against the pharmacy as a whole or just the needle exchange? I, for one, think a late night pharmacy at the surgery makes sense. Anyone who has tried to order a repeat prescription at the Co-op and the debacle that can be will surely support any move. The fact that they will offer a needle exchange is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned; addicts will currently frequent the surgery so what's the issue? I live near the Forest Hill Road pharmacy but have never seen a discarded needle or anyone who looks any worse for wear than a skinful of ale.

Read with interest the cloth bag debate in an earlier thread and the ongoing Foxton's chit-chat and whilst shopping on LL today noticed that some of the shops have been given Foxton's plastic bags and are giving them out in lieu of their own bags - I was offered one in the stationer's near Goose Green roundabout. May I suggest that anyone seen over the weekend with one of the said offending bags be derided with a cry of "shame on you" and a public flogging on the roundabout? ;-)

Domitianus, My girlfriend just had her card skimmed in East Dulwich - I will PM you and let's compare notes. We have narrowed it down to two places in the vicinity. Everyone else beware! In my girlfriend's case the numpty used it to order from Tesco's direct and booked three flights to Italy - they better hope they used a false passport!

Depends on where your house is - I used to live on Chesterfield Grove and it was continuous, that area seems to be the junction point for planes coming in from the north, east and south and just about the point when they change their flap configuration and speed, which results in a lot more noise. Now live on Hillcourt and get much fewer planes overhead and they are much quieter. I often gaze out of the window of the plane as we approach heathrow, spot my house and long to be in it rather than heading to Heathrow and the arduous journey back to ED again! BTW another factor is when they are landing towards the west (over ED) they designate one of the runways for landings and one for take-offs and will switch between the two during the day - so this means the planes are lining up in different places throughout the day.

I had two go a year or so back and my neighbours reckoned it was the slightly, ahem, eccentric old woman across the road who would "collect" them!

I am not sure whatever happened started at the video shop as earlier a woman was ranting and raving from the window above one of the shops and a police car and van pulled up and double parked outside the flat. They later had moved down to outside the video shop.