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Latest Discussions
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You say that this post should be considered as a complaint. I am afraid that it won't be. You need to write directly to the council and sign the communication with your own name. -
By first mate · Posted
More power to them. I very much hope they win and it would be fantastic if a precedent is set to stop exploitation of park land by councils. I would also like to see Gala moved to the Common. -
By Jenijenjen · Posted
I would disagree that the tables outside the Blue Brick bothered nobody. They were not within the cafe's curtilage (one table was even placed on the other side of the road!) but on a narrow public footpath where pedestrians have a "public right of way". Added to that, some customers rearranged the tables so the footpath was blocked completely. -
By Lee Scoresby · Posted
Walking last Friday early evening anywhere near where the bottom end of Lordship Lane meets the Goose Green roundabout, one would have been directly confronted - as I was - with this scene: Outside the East Dulwich Tavern an impenetrable phalanx of pushing yobs, shouty louts and selfish yahoos pressed outward from the open doors of this establishment, past the curtilage (the land in front of and owned by the business), all across the public right of way, to the kerbside. This was the situation all the way along, end to end. I watched as passersby, old people, children, parents with buggies, people just going about their business, were forced by these booze-sucking bellowing scumbags onto the road - where, at that hour, traffic rushed endlessly off the roundabout. We have, I realised, somehow become so used to this revolting spectacles as to believe it to be inevitable. It is not. This is why I'm dropping this post. Enough really is enough. This roiling boozy blockade represents a total failure by all the responsible authorities - the licencing authority, for example - but most of all (yet once more, again, as ever), by Southwark Council. Two very different comparisons to give you some perspective: 1. The Kings Head pub on the corner of Albermarle and Stafford Streets, London SW1. Here too, patrons like to drink and chat outside on a warm evening - why should they not. But here, on the latter side a line marks the curtilage on the pavement. Drinkers remain, respectfully, in good order, within the line, watched, quietly and carefully, by a security guard. I wager good money this arrangement is a condition of this pub's licence. 2. The Blue Brick is a cafe in the quiet backstreets of East Dulwich, on the corners of Fellbrigg and Shawbury Roads. Until a few months ago, about half its covers were tables out on the pavement. They bothered nobody. Oh! But they extended all of several centimetres too far into the footpath, so into fearless action swang Southwark Council officers - and now these tables are gone. Result, eh? "Well you see," some wiseacre said to me, "There needs to be a complaint." Not actually true, but for sure this is all too often how local authorities get pushed to do what they should be doing. Hard to think why a complaint trumps, say (and god forbid!) a child being injured on the road. In which circumstance, of course!, Southwark would swing into noisy, virtue-signalling, belated action. But in any case let this post be considered a big, very definite COMPLAINT about this prolonged abuse of our public right of way. I invite readers who agree with me to add their voices. Oh, and all those wee local ward councillors might get off their chufties, defy their party managers, and actually help sort this scandal out. Thanks for reading, Lee Scoresby
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