d.b

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epidemichttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epidemic

Not sure you can do much, like you say they are not behaving particularly unreasonably, they have business that's open at those times and they are on their property talking (i.e. not playing loud music, constant hammering, or anything that's obviously "unusual" noise). I suggest you invest in a pair of earplugs.

Not wanting to draw judgement without any knowledge, but seems like every post you make is rubbernecking around some police activity and jumping to conclusions about what has in the past been pretty run-of-the-mill stuff from the local coppers. Brazen violence... madness... yada yada...

Well I totally agree with a lot of what you say. Worth noting that we had an extremely hard working and responsive councillor active on this forum very regularly who sadly lost his seat in the last election. Sadly people just vote based on common national party lines, rarely on local issues and only occasionally based on real knowledge of the councillor's actual performance in the role. People bring this on themselves. Most people don't vote in local elections, don't seem to care a great deal about local politics and will only get upset if basic competence fails in some way. So, council seats are wrapped up by the few that are bothered to vote, usually the engaged political supporters who follow national politics and national leaders. All that means, nobody seems to really care who their councillor is, local dominant parties (i.e. Labour here in Southwark) get away with treating the council like a fiefdom, have incentives to focus on internal politics than doing the actual job, and the potential for corruption and complacency is high. Sadly it's a vicious circle so the more people see councillors as remote and unresponsive, the less likely they are to vote, and the more the bad ones will get away with it.

It's a no-brainer - if you take the new job with a higher salary, your net salary will also go up. The higher 40% rate of tax is only applied on the amount above the threshold.

We're sweltering in the heat and looking for good suggestions for places with air conditioning, or failing that a shady outside area which is actually cool... All suggestions appreciated.

Since you asked about Playfield and nobody has mentioned it, I'll give my view having lived there 5 years now. It has a great location, nice and quiet being a crescent and not a shortcut to anywhere. Parking is fine, since there are always spaces up by the school. Very little traffic or noise, but still just around the corner from Lordship Lane, under 5 mins to the cinema/pub/shops etc. Under 10 mins walk to ED station which is a bonus - east of Lordship Lane you tend to have a bit more of a walk. Houses are terraces and vary, there are some smaller half-houses on one side, slightly larger ones on the other side, gardens are small but still big enough to have a BBQ in summer. Definitely worth a look around. There are some council blocks in the middle between Playfield and Melbourne grove, which I know can put some people off but really you shouldn't worry, they are all good neighbours in the street, certainly no trouble. Most summers there's a street party, which is always good fun.

rahrahrah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is there a big move to 'chainification' on LL? > There are a handful of chains, but that's been the > case for a while now. I haven't noticed a huge > increase in the number of 'big names'. There has > always been a turnover in indies too as far as I > can recall. Am I mistaken? You're not wrong, just every time this discussion happens you get people bemoaning the imminent influx of Costa, Nando's etc, but actually very little has happened. There has always been turnover on the high street, shops and restaurants have tried and failed or just decided to go elsewhere. It's a shame there seems to be such pressure on rents but when you look at the empty units I hope the landlords losing money through lack of tenants end up reducing their rent as a result. I guess that's how the market works. n.b. Platform One is kind of a shame but I'm not surprised. The food was generally pretty good but they were hard work. When they were busy everything took ages - they needed another member of staff. The nature of the place meant you could have a great meal but if you went back you either had pretty much exactly the same thing, or a completely different chef so it was hit and miss.

Drum kits and parties tend to go beyond just adjoining houses - when there's a big noisy party it's something most of the street can hear. But the good news is ED is generally pretty normal/reasonable about this. Like anywhere, there will be the occasional party but (round my way certainly) it's more like once in a blue moon, and not on a work night.

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > dds29 Wrote: > ---------------------------------------- > > Surely the onus should not be on a potential > customer to find out what is behind a window with > no goods or information in it, and a business name > which gives no indication of what it is selling? > You're being massively disingenuous. There was a clear plate glass window through which anyone walking past could very easily see pasta sold, and usually could see the person actually making the pasta fresh right in front of the window maybe 2 feet away from where you're standing.

Agree with everyone that they were too expensive but occasionally when we wanted something easy and very nice, I definitely enjoyed their filled pasta, which was miles better than anything you'd get from a supermarket. But still on pricing they were competing with a nice steak from the butchers or something, which makes no sense. In the evening their food was excellent, and they were quick, informal and friendly. I'll really miss the shop just for that.

I have bad news I'm afraid. I think you're just getting old.

Lynne Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The last time I went I honestly thought they'd > forgotten to put the meat into my meal, there was > so little of it. Did you order meat? Really surprised by this, if you go and order e.g. a pork loin, you get a big chunk of meat. The smaller plates are clearly not traditional "meat mains" and are priced as such. I've always really liked the place, some dishes are a bit hit-and-miss but I've had several really memorable things there that compare favourably with properly high-end restaurants. They're particularly good at making vegetables taste amazing.

Sorry but you are being totally unreasonable. It is Saturday night and people are entitled to have fun in their own homes. 11pm finish time?? Sorry if you have to get up really early but the world doesn't revolve around your getting up and going to bed. Maybe invest in some earplugs if you can't handle noise at 11pm because everywhere I've ever lived there has been noise past 11 on a semi-regular basis.

You were woken at 4am and thought the site was being robbed... did you call the police? If not, why not?

It beggars belief. How is 8am-9am "overtime" for anyone? The answer is basically, it's not. The line through ED is clearly the least important for Southern, so any time they have an excuse, they cancel trains. Our trains are already DOO. These services are not running on staff overtime. There is nothing about this strike or dispute that directly affects our morning commuter services, but we always end up with these massive reductions in service.

Right, by "pretty reliable recently" I mean since they reopened after the summer, and of course as usual there are the 5-10 minute delays and occasional cancellations or problems. However, with a bit of perspective, a 5-10 minute delay isn't the end of the world, you're still getting into town in 20-25 mins, or if you have to wait for the next train then it's 35-40 mins most of the time. It's not ideal, but really par for the course with commuter rail in London, certainly you should be able to live with it. And you get a lot else to balance it out. If you want somewhere with the reliability of the tube, you'll pay through the nose for it I'm afraid.

Seems to be a common complaint but I'm not sure it holds much water. Southern trains have actually been running pretty reliably recently, just fine this morning despite the strike. Overground from Denmark Hill / Peckham Rye was opened in the last few years and has actually added a new and very useful connection. Buses have never been the quickest round here but there are new cleaner quieter more efficient models, and the number of services has definitely gone up. Basically for anyone who moved here in the last 10 years, whatever price or rent you paid is dependent on the area (nice high street, nice period housing, relatively quiet/traffic free, decent schools etc) and the transport links are just one part of it. If you want to find something at a similar price with better transport links you're going to have to compromise on something else. That's how it works. At the end of the day I'd say we're pretty lucky here, we have a nice area and it's really only 20 mins into London Bridge from ED station, or 15 mins round to Canada Water/12 mins into Victoria from Denmark Hill. Sure we don't have the tube running every 3 mins and sometimes we have to stand/squash ourselves onto trains at busy times, but mostly you should have known that when you moved here, it hasn't really changed much, and at the end of the day you still get where you want to go, even if there's a 5-10 minute delay which might feel like hours to an impatient soul...

Highshore road is a ~20 min walk from the EDT and from where I am further down LL it's going to be more like a 30 minute walk. The buses aren't really quicker (P13 goes all round the houses infrequently) or convenient. Closing Silvester Rd office is going to change a 10 minute round trip into a 1hr+ round trip to collect anything that doesn't fit through the letterbox. Pretty ridiculous.

Thanks Renata

cerv Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think what this dispute has highlighted is how > much of the service we get is reliant on their > workforce taking up overtime shifts. Presumably > that's still going to be the case even if they're > now happy to work them again. So if the people > working overtime are away on holiday or they're > off sick then there's quite a knock on effect to > services. It'll be better for sure but I'd expect > there's still the possibility of random > cancellations again. Almost all services are reliant on a workforce being there. If you go into a shop or a bank or a restaurant you don't expect to be told the shop is closed or the restaurant can only seat half the tables because of a staff shortage. If it happens, it is very rare because it very directly hits the bottom line. Southern have repeatedly failed to train and hire enough drivers to run the service and provide appropriate backup for normal levels of sickness/absence. This is a long-standing issue going back well before all the strikes.

There's another point here really. Southern could end this strike tomorrow if they just gave up the fight and let the unions keep things "as is". But, they don't need to for two reasons: a) The contract they have on this franchise does not appear to require running any actual trains. They get paid and make profits (e.g. increased profits last year) irrespective of performance. b) The government are backing them up to try and break the union stranglehold. The transport secretary also does not seem to put a very high priority on running trains and serving passengers. So we end up with the current ludicrous situation where local people with any alternative at all no longer bother even trying to use their local rail service. Rail companies nevertheless get paid big bucks and the government 100% back up the underperforming, overpaid, and incompetent franchise operators. I'm sick of the unions and I think they are being intransigent luddites, but ultimately we need these guys to go to work.

They are still out on streets uncollected around Colwell Road/Playfield Crescent, as of this morning when I left the house.

It has been awful. When I moved here in late 2012 there were 6 trains an hour scheduled to take 12 minutes into London Bridge. Then we have had the rebuild of the station, huge disruptions, and now the strikes. We are on 4 trains per hour if we're lucky (official timetables get changed on a whim) and huge numbers of cancellations due to strikes or staff shortages. When they run the timetabled journey time is now 20 minutes. This is all against a backdrop of rising passenger numbers. I'm sure most people who use the trains here are fed up with Southern and their poor communication, poor labour relations, and crap excuses. The RMT are not much better but as a long-time Londoner I'm used to that. Unfortunately the government seems to want to play politics with Southern rail, either to embarrass the new mayor or to try and break support for the unions. We just get caught up in the middle. One thing that would really ease the burden would be more Overground services through Denmark Hill and Forest Hill/Honor Oak. 4 tph through Denmark Hill is not enough, they are always hugely overcrowded. It's a great route connecting into the tube and a lifeline for people who would normally go to London Bridge. I know there are problems with the number of trains running through Surrey Quays, with so many lines converging there. But maybe we could have some that just shuttle as far as that, where we can change to one of the many other services to go onwards. It might help a little?

Will it even be applicable for people using TfL/Oyster travelcards? It is clearly different for us who can go via alternate (though inconvenient) routes vs someone totally reliant on Southern services commuting from outside of London. Does anyone know what a typical ED travelcard user might be entitled to, if anything?