“For one night only”? – the Royal Standard one-way system gets resurfaced overnight

I had a look at the Royal Standard earlier this evening (June 10th) as the roads were being closed for resurfacing work: overnight, much of the one-way system here is being resurfaced, competing a programme of improvements that began in March with a safer pedestrian crossing at the junction of Charlton Road and Westcombe Hill, and new paving on both roads.  This was followed by work nearby to make it safer for merging traffic on the westbound stretch of Charlton Road.

This busy one-way system, with Batley Park and its fine trees at its centre, is much cherished by the community. It is a sort of Clapham Junction of local bus routes (served by eight of them – the 53, 54, 108, 202, 286, 380, 386 and 422) and as a result the police would not agree to a daytime closure of the roads, or a nighttime closure on a Friday or Saturday night, for the resurfacing work.

“After Woolwich”, it’s time to reflect quietly, not take to the streets

More than a week on from the appalling murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, the full enormity of what has happened is still sinking in.

Artillery Place is not, as some of the media reports suggested, an obscure backstreet behind Woolwich Barracks – it is one of the main roads out of Woolwich heading towards Charlton Village and Blackheath, with three bus routes and lots of traffic using it day and night. It is a spot, just 200 yards from Woolwich Town Hall, which I have passed by thousands of times on foot or by bus or car. How heartening it is that when the murder happened many of the passers-by did not pass to the other side of the street, but intervened to remonstrate with the attackers, and to try and shield the victim even though his killers were still close by.

How fire station closures will affect Greenwich

A great post on e-Shooter’s Hill (a community blog for the Shooter’s Hill area) has revealed the  full impact of Boris Johnson’s proposed fire station closures on this part of London (see http://e-shootershill.co.uk/save-woolwich-fire-station-petition/)

Although Blackheath and Greenwich are less affected (as our closest fire stations at Lee Green, Greenwich and East Greenwich will remain open), in Woolwich Common and Woolwich Riverside wards, average response times for fire engines are forecast to increase by up to 50% once Woolwich fire station (pictured above) is closed. Labour councillor John Fahy has launched a petition to oppose the closure, which can be signed at https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-mayor-of-london-stop-the-closure-of-woolwich-fire-station.

Every minute counts, and fires in these areas would not be responded to within the six-minute standard response time if the closure goes ahead. So much for the promise that the closures are “intended to improve the safety of Londoners” (see http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/lsp5.asp#.UZqplbXVCSo).

There is a public meeting to discuss the proposed closures on Wednesday 29 May from 7-9pm at Lecture Theatre 315, King William Building, University of Greenwich, 30 Park Row, Greenwich, London SE10 9LS.

One person’s ‘freedom’ is another’s nuisance: what Cator Estate parking tells us

The law of unintended consequences is already taking its toll on Blackheath’s Cator Estate, where a new ban on the clamping of cars on private land may paradoxically make it more costly for people who have parked their cars wrongly, and less easy for local residents to enforce sensible parking restrictions.

The coalition government’s Protection of Freedom Act, which came into law in May 2012, makes it a criminal offence for a private person on private or public land to immobilise a vehicle (e.g. by clamping or obstructing), or to move a vehicle, with a view to denying the owner access to it.

The Act also included several sensible changes to the law about fingerprints and DNA profiles taken from persons arrested for or charged with a minor offence, which will now be destroyed following either a decision not to charge, or acquittal.

But the Act’s ban on clamping of cars on private land, which may also seem sensible on the face of it, has also caused a number of problems. It is not just cowboys who clamp cars on private land – sometimes, on non-adopted roads, it is the only way of making sure that parking is  not a free-for-all.

The Cator Estate is a good example: a few yards away from Blackheath station, parking restrictions have been in place for years to prevent  its streets becoming a free car park for rail commuters. As the roads are not adopted, the residents there cannot rely on council controlled parking zones as on other nearby streets.

While there may not be much sympathy for the clampers, clamping has for many years been the only way the residents can discourage persistent offenders from parking on their streets for free and using the station or the shops in Blackheath Village nearby. Most of the Cator Estate’s residents have never wanted to live in a “gated community” sealed off from the outside world (the estate is crisscrossed with pedestrian rights of way and it has two council housing estates and a primary school, Brooklands, within its boundaries).  But having some parking controls, as with all roads near railway stations in this part of London, is the only way of ensuring that residents can park easily outside their homes.

How TFL has its priorities all wrong

Anyone living near the Sun-in-the-Sands roundabout take note: Transport for London wants to transform the road junction into  a site for “LED Media displays” featuring  a” digital display… of static adverts which will change sequentially no less than every ten seconds”.

In other words, TFL want to put illuminated screens on the bridges facing north and south, 3m high and 12m wide, showing ads to drivers on the A2/A102 motorway that passes underneath, with different images flashing up six times a minute. (May 18th update - GOOD NEWS: the Royal Borough of Greenwich has refused TFL’s planning application, although they could yet appeal against this refusal.)

Baroness Thatcher: why the best reaction from the left is dignified silence

By coincidence, just a few hours after Baroness Thatcher’s death was announced on April 8th, a friend and I had tickets booked to see This House, a play by James Graham at the National Theatre, in which Mrs Thatcher is not portrayed on stage but whose presence is felt throughout.

The play’s subject is the desperate measures taken by the Labour Whips to keep the Wilson and Callaghan governments of the 1970s in power. The small cast has to take its own desperate measures backstage, as the taut script requires many nifty costume changes from the drab brown suits of Labour MPs to the slightly smarter garb of the Conservatives, with a smattering of Liberal, Ulster Unionist, SDLP, Plaid Cymru and Scottish nationalist MPs thrown in for good measure.

Oddly, the only women who feature prominently on-stage are two young Labour women MPs, Helene Hayman and Ann Taylor, who are negotiating their way through the macho world of the Parliamentary Labour Party, just as Thatcher had done a decade before in the Tories.

Disruption ahead: Greenwich line passengers learn of two years of chaos to come at London Bridge

About fifty local residents (and local Labour councillors  Matt Pennycook, Dick Quibell, Mary Mills and I) were at the first meeting (at Davy’s Wine Bar last night, March 26th) of a new ‘Rail Users Group’ on the Greenwich line. Well done to the Greenwich Society, the Westcombe Society and the existing Charlton Rail Users’ Group for setting the meeting up.

Top of the agenda was the disruption that the rebuilding of London Bridge station will cause to services between now and 2018.