Lee Scoresby

Thanks Taper. Always appreciate input from people with relevant knowledge and experience. However: Light levels and quality are actually perfectly fine. One can see clearly up and down the entire length of the slope; a newspaper can be read on much on the way. Making this light more intense, harsher and colder will achieve exactly nothing. It's a typical bogus 'solution'. Again, there is absolutely no evidence these lights are 'unstable' - it is taking huge efforts to drill into their surrounds. DuncanW, I don't usually respond to trolls - abuse condemns itself.'Supercilious' means acting as if believing oneself superior. I was perfectly polite to the workman. My posts on the EDF are often expressed vehemently. I am often critical of Southwark council particularly. I am dismayed at the way people put up with things they shouldn't. But my comments are always accurate and aimed to a positive outcome (whether that happens or not). Democracy, you know? 'Forum', you know? Are you perhaps, DuncanW, one of those outraged at, and terrified by, any challenge to 'authority'?

Thanks all for these responses. Better lighting helps deter crime in specific contexts but it is not the lazy, box-ticking panacea being hacksawed into place here. Online, one can find innumerable CCTV examples of muggings in broad daylight and well-lit streets. Here, semi-isolated inside a park, higher light levels by themselves are precisely no answer whatever, in the absence of properly resourced, more pro-active and imaginative policing. Tho I suggest we may all soon be CCTV surveilled each time we walk up and down this path. Alice, I believe the late 2017 mini crime wave on Peckham Rye was caused by a single person or several people. That is, it's not a general problem. Not a justification for this egregious (but no doubt lucrative) vandalism. Indeed, new lighting could be kept in character but - as I say - what's the betting it's pig-ugly. Where is the oversight and accountability of council managers and their contractors? I call them 'faceless-nameless' for good reason. And where the h**l are our local ward councillors? They are happy to prate on about the wonders of Peckham Rye when it suits them. The silence is deafening, no? LS

Are the faceless-nameless ones who run Southwark Council quietly uglifying yet another corner of poor old Peckham Rye Park? Running down the slope from the top of the NE corner is a boulevard under mature plane trees. This is lit at night by a run of very beautiful lights, of the Victorian gaslamp style (tho they are electric). Extremely attractive. Yes, they are almost certainly repro - it makes no difference. But what's this now? Southwark contractors have been busy since before Xmas drilling near their bases and installing new masts - see my attached photo. It's depressingly clear that these lovely old lamps are about to be ripped out, to be replaced - any bets? - by filthy-ugly inappropriate units that Southwark got as a job lot off the Bulgarian freeway authority. And the same furtive trashing is happening all along the path across the Rye itself. But don't bother asking the workmen about it - they're obviously under strict instructions to say nothing. The one I spoke to was just surly. No pretence of consulting park users or the local community, of course not. And not a peep out of our elected ward councillors. One can walk round the Park and the Rye itself and easily itemise a score of things that need doing. Just as one can easily imagine any number of improvements to this precious public space which would make it better for people in all sorts of ways. But that's not the jolly old game is it? The game is inventing things to do which create juicy contracts for private sector chums, even if it means trashing every last inch of OUR park and common. What a sick sick joke. Lee Scoresby

An article in today's paper has completely outraged (and alarmed) me. A fishing lake in Oxfordshire has erected a sign saying: NO POLISH OR EASTERN BLOC [sic!] FISHERMEN ALLOWED All part of the insane nasty Brexit fascist-racist mood, no doubt. You may well ask, Where are the cops? And the CPS? Nowhere, apparently. I always think that part of the pleasure of living in East Dulwich - or anywhere in London - is the mixing of so many different kinds of people from all over the planet. It feels like the future, in an entirely good way. Well, if that sign appeared in East Dulwich, would we accept it? So why is it OK out there in whitebread Oxfordshire? A legal challenge is planned, in the face of official inaction. See https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/sign/ and please donate, even a little. As the theme to The Wire reminded us, "Gotta keep the devil way down in his hole". Gotta push back hard or this hateful garbage will poison this country. Lee Scoresby

Y'know, Orange owl, equating fellow human beings who happen to have dogs with excrement - not very nice, not very helpful. The dog owners and walkers I know and talk to are highly responsible people. We would be happier than anyone else if non-picker-uppers and yobby owners were dealt with very firmly indeed. Why happier? Because it would draw a clear line between them and the great majority of good dog-people. I myself go out of my way to offer to let little kids say hello to my dogs (one of them large) and stroke them, in a safe supervised manner. Or else I keep my pets well out of the way, absolutely right and no problem . . . Live and let live. Likewise, dogs hassling picnickers is unacceptable, but the flipside, as J-and-B points out, is the vast amount of junk food tossed or abandoned on the Rye and in the Park. Which is indeed littering, and also a huge problem for people exercising their dogs. Are we really to believe it is somehow impossible for Southwark officers to be in place to confront such predicable (end of a game, end of a picnic/BBQ) and visible littering offences? My theory (and as elsewhere, I'll no doubt be attacked for saying so) is that the faceless-nameless senior officers and politicians who really run the local authority are going for a strategy of maximum monetisation of public spaces: as many school and other groups during the day; as many football games in the evening and weekends. Which is both understandable in these times and absolutely fine, except: - Southwark Parks is then highly reluctant to upset these 'nice little earning streams' - preferring that a cleaner scuttles round the morning after (thereby setting up a system that actually 'justifies' the littering). - The strategy requires a little covert lifestyle 'cleansing', to eliminate park users who might get in the way of this busy lucrative vision, and do not themselves pay for their use of this public space. Like dog walkers. Just a theory . . . LS

a) Dogs - about which Southwark is presently obsessed, or b) Piles of garbage left by football teams, to which Southwark remains utterly indifferent. The attached was taken a few hours ago on the so-called Grasslands East area, but similar scenes - and worse - can be seen all over our park at the end of any summer evening or weekend day. Q's to Southwark Parks management: Has littering EVER been raised with teams applying to use our park for games? Has any group EVER even been warned? Has there been a SINGLE prosecution by a Southwark officer of these littering groups as they saunter off leaving their mess? Thought not. (Unsurprising, really. Last time I looked, the TOTAL of prosecutions for littering ANYWHERE in Southwark over many years, was less than 20.) And: What happened to the big solemn promise - made here on the EDF - several years ago to put out extra bins for football groups to use? Weird wrong priorities by officers and councillors - most of whom probably couldn't find the Rye with satnav. Lee Scoresby

Agree or not, edcam, spare us the each-way punt. Shying away from saying it out loud and straight - and getting angry about it - has brought this country, at all levels, to its present ludicrous, toxic, disfunctional state of public administration. SouthwarkLovesDogs (www.southwarklovesdogs.org) has now raised the funds to test this illness. Results will be made known on social media. Generally, please be aware of this great self-organised citizens' defence group and consider supporting it practically ([email protected]). One might think that we should not need defending against 'our own' local authority. One might think that local authority could bestir itself to conduct this forensic analysis itself. "Overblown"? Meanwhile, the poisoner wins, no? We are all keeping our pets way from NC. Cui bono? (Or THINKS they benefit.) LS

Multiple instances of very severe illness are reported among dog walkers and owners on Peckham Rye. The common factor is always a visit to Nunhead Cemetery. "Outwith" (Penguin68 is evidently Scots), that is to say, excluding "the intentional placing of poison." Well, do not exclude this possibility. Just in practical terms, consider the mechanism most capable of affecting scores of dogs: fungi from one small compost heap, or toxic material being calculatedly distributed along paths there? Dogs will sometimes consume fungi it is true, but they are generally very cautious dining at nature's 'salad bar'. What they do wolf down without hesitation is scraps of junk food - which would be an extremely effective bait. "Fair" certainly does not properly describe Southwark's pronouncement that "It's your responsibility". This 3-word raspberry is actually a very partial, self-serving and complacent claim by a local authority which has allowed itself, once again, to waste considerable time, effort and (our) money pursuing yet another pointless and dishonest jihad against dogs and their owners. And what of those preposterous attempts by leading figures in the Friends Of Nunhead Cemetery to prevent dog walking there? This has been very widely witnessed and discussed by local owners and walkers. Is it possible - just as Brexit 'gives permission' for racist attacks - that these dismal municipal shennanigans could conceivably enourage some sick or vicious person to set poison? Southwark's words are not even consistent with their actions: if the compost is not the problem, why are they removing it? The claim is that weedkiller isn't used at Nunhead Cemetery. Well, maybe. One local vet has had to give up urban beekeeping after her hives (located in Peckham) were totally annihilated by a Southwark contractor merrily spraying pesticide. So who knows? Myself, I would find two sorts of further posts very helpful: - Specific reports of canine illness and poisoning, and vets' reported comments. - From a toxicologist or vet, the symptoms of different kinds of poisoning in dogs: from fungi, pesticides, warfarin, etc etc. Lee Scoresby

Any other DIEM25 (Movement for Democratic Change in Europe) members reading this? Anyone had ANY success EVER getting ANY response from DIEM in the UK? Anyone else getting nothing more from DIEM than a series of breathless emails describing workshops, conferences etc in mainland Europe, and asking for donations to pay for them? Anyone else left feeling totally locked out from 'their' movement, demoralised and frustrated? Send me a PM. Lee Scoresby

Interesting legal situation this creates. English law can be a bit of an ass about these things sometimes; honest citizens can get themselves into trouble. If a solicitor reads this it would be good to get an informed opinion. BTW the scooters and motorbikes (and cycles, indeed) that bother me are those belting full tilt round the paths inside Peckham Rye and PR Park. One of the many cr*p aspects of living in London now is that, for example, small kids, older people and pets are not safe on footpaths. If I myself turn and move sideways on a footpath I have to think, Am I about to be hit at speed by some 'planet-saving' toss-pot on a large piece of angular metal? Secure public space is a human democratic fundamental.

One of the shops this guy used the stolen card was Hardings in Cheltenham Rd, at the top of Peckham Rye on the (eastern) south Nunhead side. Police took prints there on Thu night. Maybe - doubtless not being a mastermind - the attacker lives further towards Brockley. Like many others I guess, I'm hanging on to see if the victim - Italian, it is said - recovers, and how injured he is. Lee Scoresby

The frequency of 484 buses - four an hour - is utterly inadequate. Moreover, daily commuting and school travel times with their increased capacity requirement are utterly predictable. So it isn't "grim" in the sense of something out of human control, like January weather. This cattle-trucking is the result of a set of very deliberate decisions. "Please move down inside the bus!" Doesn't that begin to haunt your nightmares? It's the sound of the driver doing what he's been instructed in no uncertain terms: 'Scr**w the legal maximum for standing passengers; get those suckers in!' If London Buses stopped chanting lalalala and took its fingers out of its ears, the electronic records of payment certainly make this ongoing daily pattern of abuse entirely clear. God forbid, but is it going to take a serious accident, with multiple deaths and injuries, before people ask, 'Why WERE there so many people on that bus?' Hilariously, following the iron rule in this country that chums in suits behind desks will never ever carry the rap, the driver would doubtless be blamed. LS

The 484 bus route serves Grove Vale and ED on its route. I have posted for years about the appalling 'service' failings of successive contractors. EDF participants know just what I'm talking about: other contributors have given countless examples of delay and overcrowding. Drivers (and their wives) have also posted to reveal that daily staff shortages mean drivers are routinely diverted to double-decker bus routes. Far from dealing with this long-running scandal, London Buses is gradually awarding the contractor Abellio one London bus route after another. So that, for residents of East Dulwich and surrounds, the P13 and 484 are now also in the hands of these cowboys. Abellio habitually puts the 484 on the Countdown notification system very far in advance of the bus ACTUALLY starting its run at Camberwell. This reached a new peak of absurdity one recent freezing, rainy evening when three 484s - THREE! - were shown as 'due'. This farce played out over 40+ minutes of bus-user misery. Ever left something on an Abellio bus and tried to reclaim it? Good luck with that! If you manage to navigate the shoddy online presence, the non-answering email and phone number, the loud distorted call-waiting music (a Strauss waltz!), the grumpy unhelpful 'customer service' operative, after all this you will discover that your belongings are way-way down past Croydon in a place called Beddington. And if you don't get there in 48 hours they will be shipped off even further, to TfL's facility up in Paddington, where you will have to pay to get them back.

To be clear, this guy lives in Poland. The chat would be by email. Surprised and disappointed no-one has offered to do this. I always used to find expat NZers keen to expatiate at length and with feeling on this exact subject: life in NZ. Very odd. Can you help? LS

Because I know ED is teaming with NZers . . . This lovely Polish guy helped me a lot with some research earlier in the year. Here's the thing: he has a longheld idea of writing a book about migrating to NZ, as a reconnaisance for moving his own family there himself. I know, bodacious. He asks me to connect him to a number of NZers to find out what NZ is REALLY like to live in. Problem is, I left there in One Million BC and have no real ties anymore. I have sent him several websites for Poles living in NZ, but I know he wants to talk to "the real kiwis" (bla bla) as well. If you have lived there yourself reasonably recently, and would be happy to talk to Wojciech (sounds like "Voychek") please send me a PM and I can link you to him. It would be a real kindness, and might be fun to do. He is a science grad who now works as a journalist and science fiction writer. His English is really excellent. Thanks, LS.

This afternoon, 3.05, strolling past Il Mirto Restaurant in Melbourne Grove. Some brutish boss-man roaring full-volume at a terrified and distraught woman, evidently over something work related. Another young woman, also grotesquely frightened and terribly upset, scrubbing tiles in her short sleeves in the biting cold outside. Seriously nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty. Won't ever eat there again. Not ever. LS

Many thanks for these responses. As I begin this, it's BANG-BANG-BANG on the fence (since 8.28am). In fact, other parents often leave their kids there - this is happening now - and I don't believe at least some of them don't realise what's going on. But it's just soooooooo convenient, so they drop off and walk away . . . In all my posts over the years to the EDF and elsewhere online I have always tried to avoid appearing uncivil to individuals (as distinct from useless institutions) but, your-brain-nowhere, I'm going to be very direct with you: you are a topsyturvey, victim-blaming, industrial-strength, traa-laa-laa, away-with-the-fairies fantasist. Perhaps I shouldn't speak unkindly to you - on reflection, I suspect you are in recovery from some major trauma of your own, but it is entirely inappropriate to project your programme onto my situation. Far from sitting round 'hating', a word I never wrote, I am expending considerable effort every single day in positive practical and emotional strategies. I particularly resent your voodoo-buddhist delusion that I am somehow CAUSING this problem by thinking about it (presumably via a karmic 'vibe' through the, you know man, the cosmic ether). Likewise, your claim - which seems to be the point you REALLY care about - that I am the culprit and they the victim, because (you say) I give "details of that family's life". In fact, I have been extremely careful to conceal precise identification. To be clear, I have zero interest in them and their lives - ZERO. If I never had to bring them to mind again I would be ecstatic. You're right Cella - just as Southwark sends a terrible message of complicity to these people by their inaction, so this mother and father pass on a dreadful lesson to the kids: 'F*** everyone else, do what you want!' I'm sure many reading this might have fervently hoped that British culture was at last overcoming this defining cultural pathology of the last few decades. The family is not renting, and anyway, the typical landlord couldn't care less as long as the rent is paid. (Even municipal landlords have an inglorious record of uprooting the victim rather than confronting the offender.) I have thought about recording this racket, particularly the point-decibel count which must be incredibly high. But I have no money for equipment or professional witnesses. And what to do with this information? Who has money for a civil court case? I have been left with absolutely no faith in Southwark Council whatever - they have simply let us down over and over. Worse, they have exposed us to malice. It wouldn't matter what evidence I had: these useless officers would need to want to do the right thing, you know? In fact, Southwark could end this nightmare right now, today, if they wanted to. I tried simply to contact the Met's community police over something else a few years ago. Good luck to anyone who is able to get any result from this possibly mythical outfit. In more civilised countries, a branch of the police would indeed have been the first contact and it would all have been nipped in the bud (administratively rather than judicially) several years ago. But the longterm trend in UK policing has been for the rozzers to stroll away from whole categories of problem - so, in this instance, we rely on municipal noise-nuisance officers. Which is fine, I guess, except that they are much too easily deterred from their function - by the offenders themselves, and by their own dishonest superiors. As to "local mediation people", I was already so apprehensive and stressed at the start of the summer that I went along with Southwark's pretence that what is actually blatant anti-social behaviour was somehow a neighbour dispute. The resulting 'service provision' was an ASBU contractor who repeatedly disappeared, obliging my local councillor to have him recontacted. And it was pointless anyway: this was the charlie I wrote about who was happy to be instantly duped by solemn promises to "keep it down" (for 14 ENTIRE DAYS!). Needless to say, at this date, I have heard nothing from him since - months ago now. The councillor has been conscientious in forwarding my problems, but UK local democracy as presently structured means these representatives have more or less no power. As to other neighbours: This problem happens within one of those spaces created by multiple adjoining backyards, on 3 sides in this case. I am about to canvas neighbours more completely than I have, but I forsee various problems. Particularities of distance, layout and acoustics mean that some nearby households may be less affected. Some will be renting, some away at work for long hours. Some houses seem to be oriented so that living spaces (kitchens, front rooms) are mostly on the far side. The nearest households are new immigrants who will (I suspect) be unwilling to 'cause trouble'. In fact, as anyone who has had trouble with noise and ASB will know, for some reason most people will 'suffer endlessly in silence' rather than act. I anticipate being accused by some of 'making trouble'. And yes, that was from the Southwark noise team's advertising ('Don't Suffer in Silence'), so Southwark understands very well that this happens. I am painfully aware that I seem to be knocking down the very suggestions I asked for. The thing is, it's all been going on for so long that I have considered and even attempted many of them. Believe me - BELIEVE ME PLEASE - at this stage I would try anything (legal and ethical) that just stopped the BANG-BANG-BANG and gave us peace in our home, peace of mind. But - the impacts continue unabated as I conclude. Soon, they will go to the park but it simply makes no difference, because then I am - physiologically, not intentionally - awaiting their return, and yet more BANG-BANG-BANG until late tonight. Lee Scoresby

I'm posting this in COMPLETE desperation. The stress has given me a haemorrhagic gastritis - basically a bleeding stomach ulcer. I'm looking for any SERIOUS suggestion anyone has to offer. This summer has been made hellish - again. My situation is this: neighbours allow their two sons to kick footballs against the wooden fencing at the rear of their property. The father often kicks the ball as well. Sounds wonderful doesn't it? What's the problem? The answer is the impact noise, which is incredibly loud, absolutely explosive, and extraordinarily penetrating. It's exactly like gunshots or explosions INSIDE THE ROOM you're in. There is nowhere in my house I can go to escape it. It can start any time between 8am and 10pm. It can continue for hours but is utterly unpredictable. In fact, waiting for the next impact is as terrible as the noise itself. I wake every morning in dread, with stomach pains. I'm waiting all day, every day. I spend ridiculous amounts of time away from home, sitting in cafes, in the park, on buses for heaven's sake, anything to put off going home. My life is derailed. Why not call the noise nuisance team? Three reasons. 1) Approach to my house is entirely visible by the neighbour; 2) the noise is very irregular, as I said, and officers will not respond repeatedly to a 'failed' complaint; and 3) not least, we were left baffled and outraged several years ago by noise officers' refusal to act against a different problem. I hear similar stories a lot, and I suspect there are plenty more across Southwark. An insider told me recently the council's legal department puts pressure on officers not to generate work. Indeed, fellow residents of this local authority won't be surprised to hear that Southwark's 'response' has been utterly disgraceful over two years. Their brilliant move last summer was to inform the neighbour. The response came early the next Saturday morning: a deafening volley of impacts. We were being punished for daring to speak out. This year, a different joke. A contractor to the anti-social behaviour unit got the father to agree to "keep it down" - whatever that is supposed to mean - "for two weeks". That's correct: two whole weeks. What it actually meant was absolutely nothing whatsoever, except that Southwark is now, in effect, conniving with the behaviour - nod-nod, wink-wink, bad faith all round. This is the neighbour's dirty, selfish little secret, and they learn again and again from Southwark's inaction that they can keep getting away with it. Nonetheless, I myself am a peaceable, law-abiding, neighbourly person, and until very recently my instinct was still to try somehow to get through to their decency and common sense. I am absolutely not against kids kicking a ball round. The cost and effort of erecting an acoustic baffle on the inner sides of their fencing would be minimal. But. They. Just. Won't. Do. It. A direct approach from myself or my family would be met with contempt, rudeness and possibly aggression. So, to repeat, I am looking for any help or solutions or ideas whatever - legal, administrative, technical, social, anything to make them stop. Or indeed, any feasible 'citizen's means' to oblige Southwark to start enforcing the law, however belatedly. I'm at the end of my tether. Lee Scoresby

If any kind person in ED has a copy of Stanislaw Lem's 'Solaris', either the original Polish text, or the French translation (and reads Polish or French, to be clear) and is prepared to help me just a little by consulting this work, could you send me a private message on the EDF? Many thanx, Lee Scoresby.

Sincere apologies if this has long since been posted, but I keep meeting people who haven't heard, now over a month after the event. Please pass the news on. Reggie Shareef, as he called himself, was from Northern Cyprus, a child refugee of the civil war there in 1974. He walked Yogi, a very calm shepherd-cross, on Peckham Rye, for a good 2 or 3 hours almost every evening thru the year, for a number of years. Short and stocky, always in some type of headgear, Reg was friendly and talkative, with a version of the English language all his own. He spoke Greek but I never heard much Turkish from him. Not just a 'character' but a really nice, caring, gentle, generous guy, without a vicious bone in him - a simple soul. He absolutely loved dogs. He was certainly the teller of amazing tall stories! - some of which might have been true, more or less. He had had a hard life and a rather strange one. Reg was also quite lonely, and battling various BS from the authorities, so he really lived for socialising with other dog walkers and park users. A lot of people must have met him, and would recognise him or Yogi if I had a picture to post. Reg became gradually unwell last year. His eyesight worsened. He stopped driving and by the autumn he was more or less blind. He then walked with a white stick - to dissuade drivers from running him down as he crossed the road, as much as anything. He began loosing sensation in his fingers and toes, so he wouldn't notice when he dropped the stick, 'back there somewhere on the dark, soggy expanse of the Rye . . .' He began to get confused and totally lost on even very local journeys, and would struggle to find his way home. These symptoms apparently persuaded the doctors that Reg had diabetes and for a time he took medication: which gave him terrifying dreams and changed his personality. Now he was often to be encountered as an angry, stoned-out ranter. And it was all pointless. The truth, the quacks eventually worked out, was that Reg had a fast-growing tumour in his brain. He went into KC Hospital some time before Xmas, and died on 28 December. I believe Reg was actually from the Maronite Christian minority, tho he was always vague about this - as much else - but he is buried in Nunhead cemetery in the Muslim section, behind the ruined chapel. The brass plate has his full name: Redjep Hulusi Sherifali. He was only 56. Yogi loved Reggie. How to explain to a dog the absence opened up by death? Perhaps we don't have to: his son tells me Yogi stands stock still on the grave. (Famously, back in Cyprus, the dog of Reggie's father pined to death on the father's grave.) People are talking about organising some sort of remembrance event for him. He was a friend. Lee Scoresby

Sorry, sorry - late night oversight: we have run into him in Peckham Rye and PR Park: outside the little kids' playground; at the outdoor gym; near Homestall Road. Really interested to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences, or knows anything more. LS

Apologies if this character has been reported on the EDF already. If so, someone might post to make the connection. I and a family member have come across him three times, day and night, the last two very recently. He is white, in his 20s or early 30s, with a London accent. He always wears a hoodie up. His dog is a white pitbull. On one occasion he was with a young woman, possibly his partner, and a young child. The encounter always goes like this: Unless you are very alert the first you will be aware is a figure in the distance, hysterically ordering you to put your dog on the lead. He always has his dog by the collar; it is straining and he is having trouble not letting go. He is evidently in some febrile state of anxiety, irrationality and extreme aggression. He says that he will release his dog, it will kill yours, and attack you. Within seconds he is also threatening to physically assault you himself. He repeats ?You got a problem?!? as a kind of crazed mantra. The pitbull itself is not evidently vicious, but it is totally wound up, and it will be taking behavior cues from its master. For these reasons it is potentially very dangerous. I cannot believe there is not a whole string of terrifying and upsetting incidents arising from this guy?s behavior in public spaces. He clearly has a severe personality disorder and needs help for that. He also needs not to be in charge of a pitbull. We have reported this last incident to the police. Up to you what to do if you have the misfortune to run into him. Please just bear this in mind: this guy is a loudly ticking bomb. Some beloved pet is going to be savaged to death, and some blameless dogwalker injured. If we manage to get an incident number from the Met I will post it here, so that any later report to them can also refer to this number, and help PC Plod join the dots. I suspect they know who he is, anyway. Lee Scoresby

New summer in prospect, the Rye does indeed look good, and a fresh 'football season' gets underway. But what's this? Again? Early Saturday evening and depressingly familiar piles, water bottles and other garbage, are dotted over the grass. Was this disgrace not raised several years ago right here on the EDF? Did local councillors not take Southwark park management to task? Did they - WE - not recieve a promise, not only that large bins would be put out, but that the situation would be properly overseen and warnings issued? Well, the promise is evidently long forgotten and these municipal zombies are, as ever, zzz'ing in complacent torpor at the wheel. I'm all for every possible activity on our green spaces. I think it's great that we all enjoy ourselves in the park and on the Rye. But to work, this little urban arcadia needs just a few rules, and one of them - surely - is not dumping your cr*p. Mutual respect, basically. The carrot is always better than the stick, and bleeding-hearts always think people just need to be 'educated' - myself, I think a few prosecutions and hefty fines for littering would have an exemplary effect. Common sense? Watch now readers, and see your humble poster accused of: making a fuss over nothing; of ranting; of having the temerity to question the sacred right of games-players to do whatever, wherever, whenever, however (like playing cricket on a busy Rye pathway); and - this one REALLY gets me - of racism. Lee Scoresby

1) The squalid sea of bags and strewn clothing around the large Scope bin in the carpark has become a permanent disgrace. I wish I had posted photo's last week. After a tidy-up in the last few days (which did not, however, include actually EMPTYING the thing) this spot is an eyesore once again. Certainly, Scope bosses should get off their incompetent, overpaid behinds and deal with it. But the final responsibility is Southwark's. If Scope can't or won't keep their bin tidy, it should be replaced by that of a more efficient charity. 2) Workers are now landscaping the 'bypass to and from nowhere', where the additional depot enclosure used to be. It's a tricky spot, usually shady for one thing. But a bypass path? Which wannabe motorway planner came up with that? And the planting looks as contemporary and interesting as, ooo! . . . Margate 1955. Peckham Rye and the Park are a magnificent space IN SPITE of the 'defensive [ie minimal] maintenance' strategy and utter-utter-utter lack of effort or imagination put into them. But as East Dulwich and SE London generally become ever more vibrant, creative and diverse, Southwark's lacklustre, asleep-at-the-wheel, same-old-contracts dead hand upon this green public space becomes ever more dispiriting. Look at the parks and spaces of other cities around the world. See what parks can really be, in the 21st century! 3) I suppose suggesting a speed bump to slow downhill cyclists on the newly paved path was the kiss of death. The faceless-nameless ones and their contractor chums don't want to appear to be 'responding to pressure'. What's that? Democracy? Designing-in safety? As Tony S says: Fuhgedabowddit! So Blah Blah (of this parish) will be happy to see reasserted his idea of English commonsense governance: that is, some toddler or elderly walker will have to be sent flying, and badly injured. Then - only then - will the faceless-nameless ones declare their boundless humanity on our behalf and belatedly install a bump or calming barrier. That this tendency is already expressing itself, I witnessed just a few minutes ago: A downhill cyclist, without slowing his considerable speed, swung into the gate adjacent to the outdoor exercise area. Elegant to watch - disastrous for anyone just coming up the inside path to that gate. Lee Scoresby

Oo-er, I've done it again on the EDF. Struck a little match, and next thing - - What a stirrer my mother spawned. Well, my work here is done [devilish chuckle] Tiptoe a w a y . . . LS (sssshhhh)