Rockets

This is getting fascinating. Are there conflicts of interest at play here within the Dulwich Society? A little bit of research has provided some interesting nuggets.....

DulvilleRes...is this correct - did the Chair make that threat?

@DulvilleRes any response? This hardly seems very democratic.....is someone trying to influence the Society members unfairly to force their personal agenda?

Yes never ever camp at the bottom of Pennard Hill!!! 😉 Interesting that Lambeth council have said that they will re-run Brockwell Bounce in the summer but away from Brockwell Park - I do wonder whether damage caused by the rain is such that they know they are going to have to take major remedial action which may mean the affected areas are going to need to be cordoned off for a while. I wonder whether the decision on whether Mighty Hoopla can go ahead has been made yet - apparently the organisers have be frantically laying duck boards over the mud.

These pictures from the Brixton Buzz website are pretty reminiscent of a wet Glastonbury......

This is always the problem - if it is dry damage tends to be superficial - if it is wet the damage is much longer term and actually becomes a health and safety issue for future events - the remedial action festival organisers tend to take is putting down wood chips or other such to provide firmer footing and soak up some of the residual water/mud or to put down metal walkways over the affected areas but, as anyone who has been to a wet Glastonbury can attest, once it goes muddy it stays muddy - very muddy and the damage takes a long time to recover - normally requiring complete re-seeding or re-laying. Ironic too that the free community festival - no doubt a quid pro quo from the organisers of the bigger festivals using the site - is the one that is cancelled and that the organisers will do the remedial work and still go ahead with the revenue generating Mighty Hoopla etc at the weekend because if they cancel that then refunds will be required.

I think this is one of the major issues - nowadays almost anyone can rent a motorised Lime bike and head out onto the road. I was sat outside the Actress a while back and watched as, within minutes of one another, two people came flying up North Cross Road on Lime bikes and neither of them even paused to check whether anything was coming along Crystal Palace Road - they just drove straight across the junction without looking. If a car had been coming in either direction they would have been hit and no doubt local lobby groups would protest that another driver hit a cyclist when in fact it was the cyclists' stupidity that would have caused the accident. It's clear more people need training on how to use bikes and I think initiatives like this are needed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11gnlv9mro

Saw the best initiative during the Ride London event on Sunday - marshalls at every pedestrian crossing carrying huge STOP signs on massive sticks to force cyclists to stop - perhaps this is something TFL should employ at every red light moving forward with those disobeying the lights getting swatted with the stop sign....;-)

Interesting that Pub in the Park decided not to come back to Dulwich this year

I wonder what is "commercially sensitive" about it? I wonder if that is for the council or the organisers of Gala.

Sorry? I was describing the noise around Herne Hill, I wasn't passing any judgement on the type of music just that the noise of the drum kit reverb and sounds from one stages' sound system was competing with the same from the other...happens at every festival once you get away from one stage you get interference from the sound from another. And thats why it doesn't work having festivals in inner city areas as the sound become noise pollution. As we walked down Stadella the noise was bouncing off the house fronts and it was awful. I pity the poor residents there as they have three weekends of it.

Just walked back from Herne Hill and if you want a future vision of how Gala might end-up just look at what is happening in Brockwell Park. The noise from the first weekend of three weekends of activities is unbelievable, not sure how the residents are supposed to deal with that. Just a cacophony of noise from competing stage sound systems. Festivals and inner city environments will never mix well and residents are suffering from the revenue catnip that council's salivate at when they think they can make a quick buck from selling our public spaces to the highest bidder. It's getting ridiculous.

What's food debris? I think the wind is in a different direction this year as last year we could hear Gala but this year it is the Brockwell event we could hear all day. Dulwich is sandwiched between revenue-first disruptive council events where Southwark and Lambeth put revenue over everything else...

But the council do not care do they because of the £...let the views of residents not stand in the way of the revenue...heaven forbid...

Any pragmatism or leeway is lost when anything gets turned into a revenue opportunity for councils. The £ dictates policy and implementation….

DulvilleRes- that escalated quickly...is this, per chance, another case of the pro-LTN lobby spinning things to such an extent that it bears no semblance to the facts? We have seen this type of behaviour before. We eagerly await your reply....

The 1,200 registered residents around Dulwich on the One Dulwich website would probably argueotherwise... Just out of interest are any other subcommittee's that may deal with contentious local issues that are afforded anonymity? By way of a reminder DulvilleRes - you were calling for the "outing" of whomever is behind the One Dulwich group in your previous posts so I can't help but think a lot of this is laced with a massive slab of hypocrisy - that you are quite happy to protect and defend anonymity for people who are claiming to represent the community at the table of the Dulwich Society when it comes to traffic matters yet scream that One Dulwich don't represent the community and should be stripped of their anonymity. I must admit your postings and the actions of the Dulwich Society do make me wonder why those transport sub-committee members so want to protect their anonymity (sorry I am not buying the trolling element) - I think it will make many wonder if they are linked to the council or the local Labour party, maybe part of the cycle-lobby, maybe have a conflict of interest or maybe their online presence is as part of one of the many pro-cycling lobby groups in the local area - who knows but thanks for highlighting this issue as I am sure most of us were not aware.

Probably a great day for Rachel Aldred and Anna Goodman to do one of their cycle counts.....;-)

Ha ha...where to start dissecting another Peter Walker less than impartial puff piece...so many places to choose from..? The very best example of activist journalism. A pro-cyling "transport professional" (out of interest is there anyone with a job in transport that doesn't come from the cycle lobby or is it a closed shop to anyone from beyond the two-wheel fraternity?) highlighting an article by the pro-cycling lobbyist "political correspondent" from the Guardian....kind of highlights what the problem is...less than impartial people trying to convince everyone they are impartial - when all they care about is their blinkered cycle-centric world. Yes it is ludicrous given most bang on about Vision Zero and trying to reduce road deaths to zero - surely this would help? Or don't people killed by.cyclists count?

Hen123 are you still struggling to bring yourself to watch and pass comment the cycling videos? Your continued blinkeredness seems to be the go-to position for many of the cycling cultists and is amplifying our position on why it is so difficult to have a pragmatic, rational discussion with the pro-cycle lobby.....they just don't want to hear anything other than cyclists are angels and car drivers are devils...I am afraid to break it to you but there are a growing number of cyclists who are giving the good ones a very bad name by their selfishness. Probably a good time for another of the regular updates on the rogue's gallery of local offenders....anyone recognise themselves on here on the latest compilation posted 9 days ago...;-)

But we are talking about the cyclists are we not? Did you also notice the very same pedestrian walks across the pedestrian crossing and what happens...the cyclist cycling up the wrong way of the cycle lane doesn't stop at the pedestrian crossing.... Perhaps you would like to try and find fault with the pedestrians in the other video....or are you refusing to watch that one too...time to take the blinkers off perhaps... Well if they get caught speeding they get fined...you can kill someone when youre riding a bike and claim the speed limit doesn't count for you and you can't be charged with causing death by dangerous cycling. Is that perfectly acceptable in your world? As I have said for a long time the daily repeated examples of.bad cycling everyone can see must be down to arrogance or ignorance...which one is it? Police are starting to have to more aggressively police cycling not because they want to but because they have to..why..because cyclist behaviour is getting worse.

Some choose not to watch the Simon Munk video because it confirms what we are saying that bad cycling is very prevalent. There are three cyclists in the video: one is cycling along the pavement, one cycling the wrong way up a one-way cycle lane and another cycling incredibly fast across the pavement onto the cycle lane. And the previous video shows every cyclist ignoring the pedestrian crossing and others riding in a manner that puts pedestrians at risk. One ignores the pedestrian crossing and knocks and old lady flat on her face. But Simon Munk, and no doubt a lot of the cultists on here, will have you believe that all you need is a raised pedestrian crossing to solve the problem and anyway, how dare you change anything to do with cycle infrastructure as it will "endanger lives". They'll probably also try to provide a defence that if you're a cyclist and you kill someone whilst you're doing an average of 25mph whilst racing in a peleton around Regents Park you can claim: "The speed limit does not apply to me". Well it's about time it did and cyclists are just going to have to accept that they need to stop thinking they own the road and start following the rules. Changing laws like causing death by dangerous cycling is only due to an increase in dangerous cycling and affording protection to pedestrians, who are the most vulnerable road users - something the Highway Code now makes very clear yet many cyclists chose to ignore.

Love this video of Simon Munk talking about the floating bus stop issues...just watch the behaviour of the cyclists who appear in shot....not one of them following the rules....the fact that LCC pushed this out shows just how blinkered they are...it's like that famous clip of some local government official being interviewed on the road side to talk about how much safer that particular stretch of road is now because of their interventions and a crash happens right behind him!

Chris Boardman makes a very valid point but he is also engaging in a serious piece of whataboutery and the go-to position for the pro-cycle lobby that we don't kill as many people as cars is blinkered in the extreme. Let's be clear - there is an increasing problem with bad cycling - that video from NFBUK clearly illustrates the problem and the swerving around pedestrians (did you notice an elderly woman actually gets hit by one of the cyclists) and ignoring of infrastructure to make pedestrians safe is all too familiar - now is that bad design, or cyclist arrogance/ignorance? I saw Simon Monk on the BBC news last night saying that they shouldn't remove floating bus stops as that increases risk to cyclists - which can also be interpreted that he is happy for the risk to be put on pedestrians instead. For too long this type of attitude has created the feeling that many in TFL etc only care for cycling, that cycling is king and the only form of transport that matters but this can hardly be surprising if you install cycle lobbyists in positions of authority and power. There was a lot of focus on how the changes to the Highway Code offered more protection for cyclists (a good thing) but many cyclists seemed to have overlooked the increased protection afforded to pedestrians with the new hierarchy of road users and the need for cyclists to give way to pedestrians at junctions - which you very rarely see. And when I read articles like the below it is clear there is an increasing problem and when Strava has the Outer Circle on it's leaderboard it is encouraging cyclists to race and it will inevitably lead to more accidents and deaths like the one below. This sentence sums up the problem: The fastest ever public completion of the Regent's Park CCW segment, which is 4.4km long, was 4:49 in September last year, which means it was done at a speed of 54.8km/h, or 34mph. https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/strava-urged-to-delete-popular-london-cycling-segment-after-deadly-crash I think it is time for the cycle lobby to start engaging in pragmatism instead of idealism - their increasingly negative perception is being crafted by their own actions.

On a day that Will Norman tries to convince us floating bus stops are not an issue I do wonder whether he is in deliberate denial or being misled by his own numbers when I watch videos like this - is it bad design, cyclist arrogance or ignorance?