Rockets

I think road planners have started smoking crack....what on earth are they trying to do - did someone declare war on drivers? What with this, Loughborough Junction, Melbourne Grove etc it seems that local councils and authorities want to create a life of misery for anyone who might actually have to get around this bustling city of ours. Perhaps some of them should pool their limited grey matter and maybe analyse why people are using those routes, where are they going. I suspect much of the traffic along Court Lane and Turney Road is school related so perhaps they should work closely with schools to organise something similar to the school bus programme in the US. Now there you go, that idea took about 30 seconds to come up with.....

It is incredibly confusing - deliberately so I suspect. The whole thing is an example of council scatter-brain ideas poorly executed with no consideration for the impact it causes for other members of the community. Whomever is responsible for it should be fired - and by the look of the weight of public opinion against these closures someone higher up in the council will start worrying about how it portrays their leadership or lack thereof. From what I can gather they are only policing this with one of the those mobile spy cars which lurks either under the bridge or on the road opposite - so you might be ok.

Renata - can you explain what you mean by the council doesn't gain financially from them? Who does then? And what other relationships does Southwark have with the company that makes money from them?

Sue, there is nothing attached to the fence that is dangling that anyone might be able to trip on or to hang themselves on! Granted they do have to negotiate a front gate that will swing shut in a brisk wind....perhaps they need to do a risk assessment....;-) Quite simply they are being bone-idle and not doing the job they are paid to do and many other people are having the same issue with these teams. Ultimately, it is wasting tax-payers money. I now have my third collection attempt booked (they were a no show on the second and the telephone helpline people say that you just need to keep booking slots and they will pick it up eventually). As I said earlier perhaps they won't want to pick it up for fear of getting splinters....there is definitely a potential splinter hazard....

Those minutes are laughable and I cannot believe that George Wright really said: "GW said emergency services have been told about the road closures and if they need to access road they will need to pull out the road blocks." Someone needs to send that to the Evening Standard as a follow-up to their article last night.... So if you're having a heart-attack the ambulance will be with you after they have moved the temporary road blocks....honestly.... And not sure who suggested the following but really.... ? Should close Herne Hill Road, Hinton Road and/or Milkwood Road.

Their response is utter poppycock - whatever next we couldn't touch wood as we might get splinters....? I can very much assure you they were not breaking up in hand as I moved them from the garden to the front of the house and they are very much intact.... And the trailing vegetation is laughable....photo attached of the killer vegetation.... James, thank you for following-up - could you send to me the contact details of the person who responded as I would like to speak to them? It appears there is a problem with the bulk collection team and I wonder whether anyone within the council is prepared to address the issues? Today I called their customer service line and spoke to a very helpful person who once again said they are having lots of problems with the team responsible for collections and a mass of complaints. It looks to me that there are problems and yet those responsible for the collections are turning a blind eye to it....

Drove around this morning and someone has decided to spray paint a lot of the road signs....looks someone is making their feelings know about this!

If anyone wants to send a note direct to those responsible for this mess then, according to the Brixtonbuzz website, these are the folks: George Wright [email protected] Barbara Poulter [email protected] Write to Steve Griffen at The Stockwell Partnership [email protected] I did a few days ago....haven't heard from them yet.....

I arranged for 8 fence panels to be arranged this Tuesday and needless to say the council guys turned up and left what they were supposed to collect. Just called the Southwark helpline and was told there was a note on the system that I have to tie all 8 fence panels together for them to be collected......I was amazed....not entirely sure how anyone will lift 8 bundled fence panels but I will give it a go! The person on the phone then said that they have been having a lot of problems with the collection teams who are not doing the job properly and leaving a lot of items they are supposed to collect and making lots of silly suggestions (like binding 8 fence panels). Anyone else had any problems? I wonder if this will continue like this when they start charging for the service?

They are starting to issue fines on this route now - a friend got a letter after being pinged doing 26. Southwark and surrounding boroughs are going in to lockdown mode - slowing traffic to a awful crawl in the name of "safety". How anyone can justify that stretch of road being a 20Mph zone is beyond me. Is there anything anyone can do? Cllr Barber?

It is obvious this has been terribly planned and executed by Lambeth - no one seems to have the first clue what is going on and the temporary nature of most of the signage and road markings is laughable. If they do start sending fines to people then it is a joke. I drove past there today (using a sneaky short-cut that Lambeth haven't yet tried to close) and everyone seems to be going up and down the road quite oblivious to the supposed closures - it really does look like a work in progress. @Dulwichquine if you look at the link at the top of the thread, which takes you to the Lambeth website, you can see that they are trying to cut most routes off around the area. How they are allowed to do this is anyone's guess. @Cllr Barber - can you speak to anyone at Lambeth to get an update on this ludicrous situation?

If those signs are all the effort Lambeth is going to go to then this is yet another example of local council shameful profiteering at motorist's expense wrapped in a veneer of "helping the local community". At a time when councils are being shamed across the country for entrapping motorists with unclear markings and roadsigns around bus lanes they are brazen enough to put a few tiny signs on an arterial route and start cashing-in via CCTV. Cha-ching! The Dandy Highwayman now works with a bucket of road paint and a couple of tiny road signs! Has anyone seen how they are "policing" the other road closures nearby which were obviously designed to avoid the creation of rat runs as people find a way round it? I have already found a route down some side streets which I don't think is impacted - and if the local residents have a problem with that they can talk to their council!

Still open to traffic now...unless we are all going to get a photo of our cars and a demand for monies for disobeying a tiny road-sign....wouldn't put it past them.... To be honest I am surprised Lambeth are able to ring-fence this area with a load of road closures - there is a reason people have to use it and it will cause chaos once it does close.

There were two cars with outriders this morning. The first, a Range Rover with two out-riders passed through Dulwich Village towards the a205 at about 8.55 and was followed a few minutes later by another Range Rover with four out-riders.

Nothing to indicate what happened but the police have been there all day, a house is taped off and police were going door to door but not saying anything about what they were investigating.

Crisis are collecting towels for homeless families this year

We had our post Christening party in The Actress yesterday. The staff were great with our large crowd. It was 4pm, post the lunch rush, so they pushed tables together where we all enjoyed drinks and shared a selection of pizzas. The chefs then cut our Christening cake for us. It worked out really well. Child friendly and very good value for the amount of food we had.

It makes me really sad that people unfairly set such hefty price tags to these local events. With 3 small children it would cost us an absolute fortune to go as a family! We've been to Harrods which was ?10, adults free, and we got the money back to spend in store afterwards. The kids got a book and chocolate coins and we bought some tree decorations. I really hope that a good slice of the profits are going to charities, homeless and needy children at this time of year. For those of you who decide to purchase tickets, please use some of your spare cash for something a bit more worthwhile as well whilst you're spending. Shame.... It would have been lovely to have a local grotto in the park, open to all children for just a few pounds.

Hi Busybee, where do you work from- is it home visits? What do you charge for high bikini? Thanks

Yes depends on wind direction, which of the two runways they are using and where they are coming in from.

Same thing happened to us a while back. Neighbour let the police through with dogs, they totalled the fence, apologised to my neighbour for doing so and said they would pay compensation. My fence so I contacted local police who put me through to some pen-pushing accountants at the Yard who claimed damage was not caused by police, argued and argued, then offered to pay 50% towards the repair, I complained and they then reduced it to 20% and the withdrew it. Needless to say, my neighbour and I won't let them through again unless they give us cash up-front for the damage they'll do!

And the wonderful thing about conspiracy theorists is that no matter the weight of evidence presented to them to counter their arguments they will never be swayed. Let them go on believing the moon landings never happened, Diana was killed by MI6, the twin towers coming down was due to explosives, Bin Laden isn't dead/been dead for years/never really existed. As someone pointed out today on the radio if conspiracies were as prevalent as some people think then they would have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! As the Monkees said: Daydream Believers......

But you have to remember that when they published images of Uday Hussein after he had been shot dead there was outcry in Iraq. The US is rightly treating this as sensitively as possible. Killing him and dropping him in the sea might give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists but what else are they going to do with the body - there's not a country in the world that would want to have him buried on their soil. Politically Bin Laden would have been worth a lot more dead to Bush than alive and I suspect he would be looking on at Obama enviously as the man who got him. Obama can rightfully claim mission accomplished. The benefit of having him killed is that it creates a vacuum within the organisation and it removes the fund-raising figure-head. I can guarantee that counter-terrorism agencies around the world are picking up all sorts of chatter from terrorists vowing to avenge his death and potentially revealing their plans/identities. There is no conspiracy. After months, maybe years, of meticulous planning and surveillance they took their chance. They had to make sure they had him, he had evaded capture/death at least a couple of times before (once during the Clinton era and before 9/11). I suspect that's why they sent in special forces rather than missiles as they needed definitive proof they had their man.

Love all these people claiming he isn't dead/been dead for years etc. They found him, they killed him, they buried him in the sea - good day at the office for the special forces. Sure these conspiracy theorists will be the same people who will be in uproar when a gruesome image of the damage done by two bullets to the head comes to light or begin complaining of brutality or injustice when a video of his execution comes to light.....

I will be more than happy to talk to the police on the doorstep but if they ask to use my house as access to the gardens to try and aprehend someone (as they asked my neighbour in this incident) then I will politely tell them no and why. Funnily enough the police members of my family agree totally with my stance and say that pen-pushing civil servants working in the police are making front line officer duties more and more difficult exactly because of this type of issue. Their advice has been that the officer concerned will have damaged the fence, said what he said to my neighbour, forgotten to write up the property damage report and then lied when confronted in light of this complaint to cover the fact he did not do the report. You hit the nail on the head when you say that you would have accepted the 50% because you could not be bothered to take it further - that's exactly what the civil-servants want us to do - to foot the bill ourselves. And that is wrong.