Charlton Average

Councillor Parker speaks...

2009-05-17T18:04:00.003+01:00

Well I seem to be doing well this week, having annoyed Councillor Nigel Fletcher I now seem to have needled Councillor Gary Parker too.

Well at least I'm an equal opportunity annoyance.

Anyway I do give my Councillors a fair amount of stick on this web site so I think that it's only fair that I share his response. It might well be that you agree with him and you think that they are doing a good job, please read and make your own mind up.

I have read your blog today with interest, you say in it that Floyd Road - your road has been cleaner than it has been for some time (your blog dated 16/5/09)- this is due to action by ward councillors and officers to address this issue. Then you claim later in the blog that the council is indifferent to this and is happy to have rotting food in the streets etc- is this not somewhat contradictory?. You also claim the council is wasting tax payers money on these issues, yet as I have explained to you previously, due to our recycling facility in Thamesmead the council recycles over 40% of its waste- the highest in London, saving money on expensive landfill. We provide more collections than many other local authorities and are still saving council tax payers money too, some local authorities only provide bi-weekly collections for some items of waste.

The fact is, ward and other councillors including myself have taken action on this issue, and when it has been brought to our attention we have acted quickly and so have officers- none of us have been indifferent to it as you claim. It is people who dump rubbish, not the council and we need to educate and inform people on these issues- which we also do through the council website, leaflets etc.

Officers are working on these issues and the enforcement team has been out in the area and officers have met with you and corresponded with you personally, have they not? As I have intimated to you before, the council is constantly reviewing this issue and looking at other areas/ councils more models of best practise- in Tory Bexley for example they fined people £12 for non compliance on these issues, this was then replaced with a policy of non- collection. Neither of these has worked particularly well and the latter could be counter productive – if you have any suggestions I would be interested to hear them.

In the meantime myself and my co- councillors have been working to support local community groups working to address a number of issues which will involve community action day on local environmental (not just waste issues) issues in July. We have also dealt with a wide range of other issues and casework regarding other issues too and will continue to do so.

As far as I am concerned I reject your assertions that ward councillors are indifferent on these issues and as you are aware, I have responded personally to you on several occasions this year alone and will continue to address these issues not only in Floyd Road but other parts of Charlton as and if they arise.

And here's my response:

Thank you for your email. I am grateful for the level of contact you have had with me and I hope that I've been open about how you do keep in touch on the blog.

Yes my road is cleaner than it has been in some time. However that is the result of the Council doing daily collections, and we seem to only be getting those because I've been pushing and complaining for over a year. Those daily collections are not the solution to the problem and will, in my opinion, make the problem worse as people continue to see that they can throw what they want into the street and it will be taken away.

That it's taken a year of letters, emails, chats to the staff at waste services, silly tables of monkeys and blog entries to reach a situation when the same problems are still being reacted to rather than fixed does, in my opinion, make is reasonable to question the Council's level of concern and commitment over the issue.

Yes the problem is ultimately with the people who are ignoring the new scheme. However we didn't have these problems with the old system so they are directly connected with the arrival of the new scheme. You're right to say you do need to educate and inform people about the issues, and that's just what's not happened until quite possibly the last few weeks.

And as for the comment about other Councils "only" offering bi-weekly collection of some waste I would remind you that that was Greenwich Councils' original intention too. However that intention evaporated in Floyd Road some time ago as extra collections were introduced to keep a lid on the problems and finally vanished borough wide relatively recently. I see nothing wrong in bi-weekly collections for some waste, I believe that the original version of the new bin scheme could have worked. However when problems appeared rather than resolve them the Council just seems to have backed away and implemented the easiest "fix" rather than stand by their plans.

Sometimes my emails and blog entries can be somewhat bitter however I would remind you that I've spent a year just trying to get my street back to the level of cleanliness that we used to have. I've had to also spend that year weaving along a pavement blocked with overspilling uncollected bins or sacks of torn apart waste with their rotting contents scattered all around. I've also had to frequently read in sources such as Greenwich time about how well the new scheme is going and how there were only a few teething problems, which just rubs salt into the wounds.

It's not been a good year.

We've still got the the same problems that I wrote to the Council about back in March 2008.

I defy anyone to call the current situation a success or say that we got to it quickly.

A "success" would be easy to measure, clean streets with no extra or special collections. We're not there 16 months into the "new" scheme, and I think that's really quite depressing.

OfBlog's back again

2009-05-16T11:29:00.003+01:00

In my apparent role as OfBlog I'm pleased to announce that we've seen a flurry of online local Conservative action.

No seriously I am, really.

I've not got the highest faith in the local "opposition" however regardless of my feelings it's great to see some activity and some information.

With a turnout in my ward of less than 40% the current shambles that we call a Council is genuinely vulnerable to being ousted, or at least so threatened with being ousted that they actually converse with us (which is different from talk to, on an occasional basis) and work for us.

So local political debate is great, hopefully we might get a Council that cares. However to do that we've got to wake up the 60% of the people who don't vote, connect with and inform them.

Anyway we have a new blog by one of the Conservatives standing as a Councillor for Charlton here:
http://jamesincharlton.blogspot.com/

And Councillor Nigel Fletcher has struck back at my claims that he's more interested in getting himself an expenses account in Westminster than in Greenwich with some interesting posts about what the Council is getting up to.

Thinking about all of this it's actually rather telling of the depths of my despair with my local Councillors and the Council as a whole that I, a Labour supporter, am telling people to go and look at what the Conservatives have to say. Well we've got about a year to question them and see what they have to say before we have to decide who's really interested in running this borough.

One thing that I learned from Councillor Fletcher was that one of my local Councillors, Alan MacCarthy, has been elected to be Mayor.

Now I've initiated contact with my Councillors twice over the past year. Both of those times Councillor MacCarthy has taken a while to respond and then when he basically just passed the buck onto his colleagues.

And now he's got another post he's going to be even less involved in his ward than he is already, if such a thing is possible.

And people wonder why I'm sceptical about my Councillors and their level of commitment?

Perhaps the title of Mayor should go to the Councillor who's worked hardest for his constituents? We certainly wouldn't see Councillor MacCarthy get it then...

Bin Bag Blog

2009-05-16T11:18:00.003+01:00

Once upon a time this blog was labelled Bin Blog due to my recording of my struggles with the Council over the filthy state they left my street in and the lack of concern or interest that they showed over it. I think was meant to be a criticism but I quite liked the sound of it.

Anyway since they've taken away my bins I guess I should relabel myself as Bin Bag Blog as rather than having rubbish bins dumped out and overspilling on the pavement we now just get the bin bags, which act like some kind of rotting food cluster bomb once the local wildlife gets at them.

Well certain people are still dumping rubbish out in plastic carrier or bin bags on pretty much any day of the week, some muppet even did it on Tuesday just one day after our normal collection.

However the Council's promised daily collection does now finally appear to be in swing and they have been cleared up.

But what are the Council actually doing to avoid them having to do those extra collections, which surely can't be cheap. I've been told that the enforcement team are also monitoring the road, but it seems to be the same people throwing the bags out every time.

So is there actually any effort being made to talk to those people?

Or is the Council just going for the sticking plaster tactic of covering up the problem without tackling it?

On the one hand my street is cleaner than it has been in a long time, which is good.

On the other my Council tax is being wasted and people are being actively encouraged to throw out what they want when they want by having it taken away on a daily basis.

Greenwich Council.
Indifferent to rotting food in your streets.
Indifferent to the causes of rotting food in your streets.

Conservatives in Action (and in avoidance)

2009-05-10T18:44:00.005+01:00

As I posted the other day Councillor Nigel Fletcher made a blog posting defending his focus on national rather than local political issues. That happened hot on the heels of me posting an entry about local Conservatives seem to have their eyes on Westminster and not on Greenwich.

Well I responded to that in detail here but I also left a comment on Nigel's block basically taking the same angle.

Now comments on Nigel's block require approval, which is good common sense, I do the same thing.

My comment has not yet appeared, however Nigel has been back on his blog and made two new entries. They're both on the same subject, but I guess breaking it into two can help him improve his 50:50 local:national split.

So he's logged on, so surely he saw my comment, yet it's not been published.

I wonder why......

Councillor Spencer Drury has also popped up again commenting that for what it is worth, quite a lot of my ward work is shown at http://elthamnorth.elthamconservatives.com/index.php. It isn't relevant to the Greenwich and Woolwich constituency, but does show what I spend my time doing in my ward.

So I checked it out.

There are 7 postings for this year. That's not even 2 per month.

If that does show "quite a lot" of the work he does in his ward then I couldn't help but think, "well that's still not very much is it".

I'm being really tugged around time wise at the moment with many things demanding my attention, however even I've managed to maintain a better post rate than that. It's hardly something that I'd use to defend myself against allegations that I'm really not that interested in something.

Anyway check out the links and make your own mind up.

On the positive side he seems to be more engaged with his area than my three local Councillors, though that's not saying a great deal.

For those who are thinking that all of this is getting a bit political, well yes, it is, and rightly so.

Our Labour Councillors have sat back for the last year letting filth pile up in our streets. Either it's an incredibly hard problem to solve, though they had no problem before the "new scheme", or they simply don't care.

Meanwhile the so-called local "opposition" have seemingly sat back with their eyes glazed over dreaming dreams of Westminster and a nice little expense account.

In the last election the turn out for Charlton was 37%.

For every person that did vote nearly two people didn't.

We can change things, we can vote in people who care and will work for us.

However to do that we need to be informed and we need to demonstrate the willingness to get out there and vote. Someone who stays at home with the misguided belief that they won't vote until someone engages with them is someone that the main stream political parties can simply forget about. They only bother worrying about the people that will vote.

I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that the only hope for Greenwich is something outside of the main political system, perhaps even a residents party. However I remain passionately convinced that we can change things, and with just 37% of the people being bothered to vote there's a huge potential vote waiting to be tapped...

Edited to add: Aside from his comment below Councillor Fletcher has written a substantial rebuttal of my accusations of lack of interest in Greenwich poltitics. It's well worth a read, click here.

What the Council Do Do....

2009-05-09T11:57:00.004+01:00

Well the Council can't, or can't be bothered to, keep the streets clean so what do they do?

Well as I've said before Jim Wintour is the Director of Neighbourhood Services and is therefore responsible for the mess. However it seems to he's too busy investigating horse based sporting events to reply to emails or do his job.

So what of Maureen O'Mara who is, as it turns out, is the Cabinet Member for Neighbourhood Services.

Well I was somewhat surprised to read her name when catching up with the news in an article about age verification for online shops. You can read the story here but the key part is this quote from her:

"Although a small sample, our findings from this operation seem to show the danger to which young people can be exposed on the internet".

OK kids being able to order knives online is a bit of a problem but what about the danger that local residents are exposed to from broken class and rotting food in the streets due to Councillor O'Mara's department not doing it's job?

Isn't that more within "Neighbourhood Services" remit and therefore worthy of more time than giving quotes to the BBC?

Or could it be that it's not just opposition Councillors who prefer to tackle the risk free low hanging juicy fruits of national issues rather than stick their neck out and try to tackle local problems where they can really make a difference?

It's nice to know that "Greenwich Council has written to all the web firms involved in the test" but they couldn't find the time to tell me they were taking all of our bins away or to reply to my recent emails...

Greenwich Conservative's Response

2009-05-09T10:49:00.002+01:00

As I've commented upon Councillor Spencer Drury has become involved in what has now been a year long struggle to get the Council to keep my street clean.

Well it also appears that there's been a minor flurry of other local Conservative action, coincidence?

The first sign was a leaflet through my door from them. It all appears to be pretty generic and recent(ish), but undated, material. Most interestingly though they have said that there is a "Charlton action team". They are Richard Shackleton, James Garry and Louis McLean-Wait. Could this be a new dynamic trio to replace the current "couldn't give a monkey's" trio of Labour Councillors that we have?

Well if the street problems aren't sorted out maybe I'll give them a poke and see if they can get any kind of a resolution.

You can contact them at jamesincharlton@googlemail.com.

I am somewhat suspicious of the local Conservatives and believe that too many of them view Greenwich as a stepping stone to a nice expense account in Westminster rather than as something that actually want to passionately serve. I said as much in a recent post.

Well one of the examples I used in that post, Councillor Nigel Fletcher, has recently published what appears to be somewhat of a retort. It's his only posting in May and given how many, if not most, of his postings don't have anything to do with the borough it does look a bit coincidental...

He says: "I have often been criticised on this blog for focusing too much on national politics, but I make no apology for doing so again. The truth is that what happens in Westminster has a real effect on people across the country, and the people I represent in Eltham North, and people across the Borough of Greenwich, can see this Government is failing them. We need change at the top, and a new Government is the only way we will get that."

It's a well written response but one that I just don't agree with. So to Nigel in particular and his ilk in general I say....

Yes what is happening in Westminster does have an enormous effect on the people of Greenwich, however questioning and working on those issues is the job of the opposition MPs and the national Conservative party.

Those national focussing Conservatives are therefore too busy dealing with those "bigger" issues to deal with the smaller ones that affect the day to day lives of people within Greenwich. They have delegated responsibility for that to you, if you drop that responsibility so as to chase after their scraps in Westminster then who is left to challenge the Council?

You acknowledge that there are problems with Greenwich's schools, social services, housing and responsible usage of our Council tax.

And then there's the plethora of other issues that pop up on a day to day basis that the Council seems to deal with badly. We've had our roads badly gritted, ground up glass used as grit, rubbish piling up in the streets, dodgy dealings over free air race tickets and the waste of money on a corporate box at the O2. Actually you'd best not tackle the box at the O2, until you were named and shamed your snout was rammed right into that trough right alongside Chris Roberts (read about that here, scroll down a bit, oh Greenwich Watch, you are missed...).

Those issues are what you should be dealing with and what I would expect to see a true local opposition writing and campaigning about.

Taking Greenwich away from the current group of disinterested and arrogant Labour Councillors will be tricky and it will take a lot of work. Devoting so much of your time to national issues is not only doing nothing to advance peoples confidence in you as a potential local Government but also damages that cause by giving the impression that you're not interested in what is really going on around here.

Proving that a Conservative Councillor is interested in the real low down and dirty problems of Greenwich when it's not just the few weeks before an election will do far more to set Greenwich right than talking about how "call me Dave" acknowledged your existence.

However not talking about your connections with the national party won't bring their attention upon you, which will slow down your climb out of Greenwich to a seat and an expense account at Westminster.

However what are you in this for?

I'll drop my cards right on the table, I have never once voted Conservative in any type of election.

However they can prove that they really are committed to making a difference to the borough and it is here that their passion and interest lies then I can see myself looking beyond the blue rosette and voting for the person behind it.

Right now though that just simply isn't the case.

Greenwich Council's Response

2009-05-09T09:59:00.004+01:00

Well my street has been cleaned and the rubbish has been taken away, but other than that not one person from either the Council or the ruling Labour party has seen fit to give me any kind of a reply or response to my email.

Now Google's a wonderful thing, it indexes pages on the web and makes them searchable for years after they were written. So in the interests of any any inquiring mind who goes goggling for details on any of these people over the next few years let's name them nice and clearly here.

If you have any doubt as to the power of Google then try searching for "Councillor Gary Parker", I'm in there at number 2 right after Greenwich Council's own site.

What these people do, or fail to do, will stick around on the internet for years...

On the positive side that also means that if they do pull their finger out of wherever it's been stuck for the last year then that will also go on record.

Unfortunately my cunning plan that holding these people up to the dim light of what public accountability I can provide may get results is somewhat hobbled by the fact that not only do the Council clearly not care about Charlton, but they don't appear care who knows that they don't care. Why else would we have a year of inaction?

Anyway, on with the naming.

These are the people who I've contacted and have had absolutely nothing to say:
Councillor Allan MacCarthy
Councillor Gary Parker
Councillor Janet Gillman
Councillor Chris Roberts
Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services
Ray Collingham, Assistant Director of Neighbourhood Services

It's interesting to note that throughout the most recent saga of the Council taking all of our bins away Jim Wintour, the man nominally in charge of waste services, hasn't replied to me once.

Even Councillor Allan MacCarthy found time to reply to me, even if it was to do his usual trick of passing dodging any kind of responsibility and laying it onto his colleagues.

However perhaps I'm being too harsh on Mr Wintour, he is after all Greenwich's resident equine sporting expert and is therefore no doubt far too busy to actually do his job.

So perhaps I should send him the following photo, maybe that would combine his experience with what he's actually meant to be doing and would get the job done....

The Council in not doing what it promised shock!

2009-05-07T19:23:00.003+01:00

Well there's rubbish out in the street again, this email to the Council just about sums it up....

On Wednesday night, the day after our rubbish collection, there were sacks of rubbish out on the pavement along Floyd Road.

This evening they are still there.

Yet I was told by Ray Collingham that you "have arranged for further, regular monitoring and action by the Council's Enforcement Team and for street cleansing crews to remove bagged domestic waste from the western part of Floyd Rd (between Valley Grove and Charlton Church Lane) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays."

Later he clarified that "the back up service from street cleansing is due to start on Tuesday 5th May."

So did the extra cleansing begin but for some reason the rubbish was left behind?

Did the monitoring occur but perhaps they failed to notice the filth?

Or did you lie? Is it yet another broken promise of action?

Is there not one among you who has the ability and determination to follow through on your commitments?

Ineptitude I can understand, at least that indicates a willingness to try.

It appears that Greenwich Council can't even be bothered to do that.

Now, what are you going to do and what assurances do I have that you will actually do it?

Must I spend another summer walking along a road clogged with foul smelling rubbish rotting in the heat?

I have had some communication with Conservative Councillor Spencer Drury over these matters and I include him on this email in the probably vain hope that some of you might fear enough for your comfortable Council seats that you will finally after a year or pressuring do something. At the very least this gives the Conservatives more examples of the shocking disregard that the current Council shows to it's residents.

The Conservative "Opposition"

2009-05-03T10:02:00.003+01:00

Councillor Spencer Drury has recently been in touch with me about the state of my street and my struggles with the Council to get them to sort it out.

I am wary of becoming a mouthpiece for the Conservatives, which could happen quite easily given my refusal to accept the disdain and contempt with which the ruling Labour party treats us locals. I've said similar things before and one of Spencer's comments to me was "I know that you are somewhat suspicious of Conservatives".

Well I'm not sure if suspicious is quite the right way to put it, what I said back to him was:

"Yes I am indeed somewhat suspicious of the local Conservatives. Too many of your Councillors, or would be Councillors, seem far more interested in what is happening in Westminster than what is happening in their own borough. To be ignored by the local Labour party is bad, to then feel that the local opposition seem interested in using the area as little more than a stepping stone onto bigger things is depressing."

So I thought that that statement needs some qualifying, so I looked into the three local Conservative bloggers of which I am most aware.

Simon Emmett, Conservative Candidate for Shooters Hill Ward
Nigel Fletcher, Conservative Councillor for Eltham North
Conservative Council Group Leader

So what do those people blog about?

Is my statement that they're seemingly more interested in national rather than local politics based in truth?

At this point I'm quite literally going to find out, I've not checked out the results before starting this entry so I could very easily be proved wrong, let's see.....

Simon Emmett
1	Labour Suporting Media Show How Much They Are Out Of Touch		National
2	Representing The Constituents?		National
3	Having Your Pension Screwed		National
4	Obsolete I.T.	Local
5	London Marathon	Local
6	Promise on the Common	Local
7	Fly the Flag Today			Other
8	George Osborne’s Response To The Budget		National
9	Economic Competence?		National
10	Brown's Expenses Review		National
Totals		30%	60%	10%
Councillor Nigel Fletcher
1	Bin and Gone	Local
2	Celebrating St. George's Day		National
3	Day 3 of the Henry trail	Local
4	Henry VIII and modern Greenwich		National
5	Newsflash: The King is Dead, Long Live the King!			Other
6	A Labour man with an internet plan		National
7	Oysters in the Thames	Local
8	Boris pledges to protect Greenwich Park	Local
9	Normal service is resumed			Other
10	Mandelson's Custardy Battle		National
Totals		50%	30%	20%
Councillor Spencer Drury
1	LABOUR CLOSE CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND FOR EASTER	Local
2	Conservatives write to residents about roadworks on A2	Local
3	More help needed for Greenwich and Woolwich’s small firms during the recession	Local
4	Labour reject Conservative proposalsfor increased police numbers and reduced council tax	Local
5	School closure is short-term panicked decision	Local
Totals		100%

Well all told they did better than I expected.

Simon Emmet managed a depressing 30% of his posts with a local focus. On the one hand I enjoy reading his national commentary, on the other shouldn't a prospective candidate be generating more posts about his area? Isn't there something going on of importance like the bins around me?

I've commented on Councillor Fletcher's focus before and since then he's improved, he was on about a 25% local post rate and he's now doubled that to 50%.

Councillor Drury did impress me, a 100% local focus. On the downside though he's managed 5 posts since the end of February. As I've said about Simon Emmet isn't there something local to post about?

So in conclusion think my initial impressions have been pretty much justified. It's not as bad as I felt it was but the local opposition doesn't seem that interested in local issues, or at least in blogging about local issues. National issues also take up a higher proportion of their posts than I would hope or expect when in opposition against a Council as rubbish as Greenwich.

Please note though that I'm not saying that the local Labour Party is any better, but then you only have to look at the state of our streets to know that they don't care.

However all the links and posts are up there, so take a look and make you're own mind up as to how interested the opposition is in Greenwich and your lives.

A talk on Gilbert's Pit

2009-05-02T00:53:00.004+01:00

I've been meaning to post about Greenwich Industrial History Society for a while now, however life taking a turn to the busy side and the Council still letting my street descend into a rats paradise have side tracked me.

However out the blue they've emailed me with an announcement about a talk on Gilbert's Pit. The pit is in Maryon Park and I've blogged about it before. Since then I've found out some more about it and become really rather interested, so needless to say I was chuffed to get the email.

I'm very tempted to go, if you're curious as to who I am I'll be the person at the back looking really interested.

Anyway here's the mail, it also includes some other talks they are doing.

This is to remind people that Greenwich Industrial History Society has the well-known (internationally famous) historical geologist PAUL SOWAN to speak at its next meeting on 12th May on GILBERT'S PIT.
Gilbert's Pit is an incredibly important site in Maryon Park - which we all hoped would be the recipient of restoration funds from the London Mayor's Office - but sadly it went unappreciated and lost the ballot. Here's your chance to learn more about it!

Its at the Old Bakehouse, Bennet Park, SE3 7.30. The Old Bakehouse is behind the Age Exchange Building in Blackheath Village

This is also a cry for Help - Paul would like a slide projector - does anyone have one which they could bring along to the meeting for him to use??? Please!!! I know its old tech but .........

Remember to look at the GIHS blog http://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com

and here are the rest of the meeting bookings we have at present. See you there!

23rd June Lorna Coventry on System Building on the Morris Walk Estate
21st July Thames Discovery Team on discoveries on the Foreshore.
15th September Mary Mills on the Hills of Greenwich and a lot of other places
20th October Duncan Hawkins on Waterfront Archaeology of Greenwich and Lewisham
17th November Edward Sargent on The Grand Surrey Canal
16th March Ken Mcgovern Pitcher’s Northfleet Dockyard (provisional booking)
13th April Diana Rimel. The Ashburnham Triangle - a Reappraisal.

The Council has a plan for the rubbish in our streets!

2009-05-02T00:25:00.004+01:00

Could it be tackling the people doing it?

Could it be being seen to be serious about keeping our pavements clean?

Or could it be just throwing more extra collections at the problem?

Have a guess for now, I'll get back to it later.

Since last weekend a fair bit has gone on. It's curious to note that since I blogged about the lack of a response I've suddenly had a lost of emails from various people within the Council. Now a cynic would say that that's only because I've written about the Council's shocking indifference to the filth on our streets on a public web site. On the other hand you could argue that it takes a short time for the Council to formulate a plan and respond, about the only thing they seem to be quick at is taking peoples bins away, they're so quick with that they don't even tell us.

Anyway.....

First off the blocks this week on Monday was Councillor Gary Parker who promised a response from Ray Collingham, who is an Assistant Director with responsibilities covering Cleansweep and waste management issues for the Council. But other than that had really little else to say.

However the residents of Floyd Road struck back and on Tuesday, a day after our normal collections, rubbish was already appearing in the street.

So I emailed the Council pointing out the fact that the letter tactic had clearly failed and asking what would be next.

Members of staff at the Council did get back to me the next day (Wednesday) saying that the "Enforcement Team are monitoring the road regularly, and in fact did so this morning, so hopefully they may have captured the culprit."

Well perhaps they were monitoring the road, but they weren't doing a lot of enforcing because on Wednesday night not only were Tuesday's sacks still in the street but they had been joined by some more.

Then on the 30th (Thursday) I got my promised response from Ray Collingham (kudos to Councillor Parker here, he may not always say a lot but what he does say tends to happen). It's worth repeating it in full here so I'm not seen to be potentially taking things out of context.

Thank you for your letter dated 11th April to Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services and the attached letter to your ward councillors and the Leader of the Council.

I was very concerned to learn that wheeled bins had been removed from properties in Floyd Road without prior notice or consultation with residents. This should not have happened in this way and I would like to apologise on behalf of the Council for the inconvenience caused to you and your neighbours.

We received your letter on 16th April (the delay may have been due to the fact we have just moved from Peggy Middleton House to Crown Building) and the matter was referred to Peter Dalley, Head of Waste Services. Peter arranged for Jo Oliver (who I know you have met before) to visit Floyd Road.

Jo reported to me that she and a colleague visited properties from 2 - 30 Floyd Road on 21st April and contacted as many residents as possible.

They:-

Apologised for the fact that bins had been taken away without prior notice or consultation

Explained purpose of their visit - to ensure that residents were ok with their waste arrangements since the removal of bins

Explained the reasons for bin removal - in particular the problems caused by bins being left continuously on

Discussed individual property arrangements and requirements with residents

Explained that collection day is a Monday and waste in sacks or bins should only be presented on this day (or Sunday night) and that bins must be returned to within property after being emptied

Explained that Enforcement Officers would be monitoring Floyd Road and should waste be presented on days other than collection day then they could risk a fine of £100

Following the visit she arranged for crews to deliver bins to those residents who confirmed that they were able and willing to store them off the pavement and recycling bags to other residents. Letters were sent to all properties contacted in Floyd Road to confirm the discussions that took place on 21st April.

In addition, we have arranged for further, regular monitoring and action by the Council's Enforcement Team and for street cleansing crews to remove bagged domestic waste from the western part of Floyd Rd (between Valley Grove and Charlton Church Lane) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

I will be meeting with Council colleagues on 6th May and will we review these arrangements then.

I can assure you we will continue to work to improve the cleanliness of the area.

Yours sincerely

Ray Collingham
Assistant Director of Neighbourhood Services
Greenwich Council
020 8921 3656

My first comment is that the callers only apologised for the complete lack of any consultation or communication about our vanishing bins after I mentioned it to them. It certainly wasn't their opening gambit, in fact they seemed shocked to hear that we'd not been told anything about the removal.

The second point regards the daily collections they've decided to introduce. Unfortunately on my way home prior to reading that email I'd had to pass a whole new load of rubbish that had been dumped out in the street, I was to put it mildly somewhat grumpy. My response to the Council sums things up pretty nicely...

Thank you for your reply, I'm CC'ing my response to my local Councillors, Council Leader Chris Roberts, Head of Neighbourhood Services Jim Wintour and the people at Waste Services with whom I've communicated.

I would remind you that I've been in contact with the Council for over a year trying to resolve the problems that the "new" bin scheme introduced. Yet here I am still discussing the same problems and trying to get you, the Council, to act and keep my street clean. Please excuse me if I therefore come across as being a touch frustrated.

I am curious as to when the "regular monitoring" and daily removal of bagged waste will begin? There certainly haven't been such collections either yesterday or today, bags of rubbish have been out in the street since at least Tuesday evening.

Also how long will the daily removal of bagged waste continue?

While I do want my street to be clean I do not believe that continuing to waste tax payer funded Council resources is the right way to do it. We've already seen the Council fund extra collections and buy us extra bins (the latest of which only lasted a few weeks before you then took them away) in order to tackle the symptoms of the problem while continually dodging dealing with the actual causes itself.

Such actions might be needed in the short term but they must be coupled with action being taken so as to actually stop having to do them.

To my Councillors, I voted for you in the last elections and so I therefore feel that I am somewhat responsible as I elected people who demonstrably don't care about their constituents. You've had over a year to iron out the wrinkles with the new scheme and you've failed. If you still can't resolve the issues that you have created will you please consider stepping down at the next election so that someone who is interested in the lives of local people can take your place.

I attach some photos showing the current state of the street a week after the visits, the letter and the street getting the "daily attention" of Clean Sweep.

Ray Collingham did reply today to that email and he had this to say:

Thank you for your reply and the attached photographs. Waste Services arranged the clearance of the bin and sack this morning and have identified the properties from where they came for further action.

The back up service from street cleansing is due to start on Tuesday 5th May.

I don't know what further action they had in mind but at least one of the houses who had dumped plastic bags in the street have dumped so more out today after the first load had been taken away.

I've said this before, I've said it above and I'll say it again but let's make this really clear shall we.

Extra collections alone will not fix the problems they will simply cover them up. In fact they will make matters worse by giving people the clear understanding that they can dump what they like when they like. This will only be solved by engaging with residents and actually sorting their problems out.

So are the Council going to stand by their letter and actually sort the problem out?

Or will they just slide away back to their corporate box at the O2 and think that spending our money on extra collections is the solution.

Well, time will tell, I do however appear to have caught the right peoples attention and if the problems are solved then you'll know which Councillors and which Council Workers to thank.

Someone's doing something...

2009-04-26T17:52:00.003+01:00

It's been over a week since my last comment on the matter and since then I've heard absolutely nothing from all of my Councillors, Chris Roberts the Council Leader and Jim Wintour (the head of Neighbourhood services).

Nothing.

Not one word.

However something is happening...

Workers from Waste Services came around in the week and tried to talk to people, though it was during the day so much success they had is debatable. That was followed up with a letter which basically said that bins and rubbish go out on Monday and only on Monday and that the Enforcement team is watching.

At the moment there are still many sacks of rubbish out along the pavement, however I believe that they were all dumped out early in the week and I'm not sure that many more have been added since the letter was sent out.

However next week will be telling.

Will people still throw out whatever they want when ever they want?

Will the Council actually do something about it?

By do I don't necessarily mean throw their legal muscle around and fine people, but instead to try engaging with them so as to resolve the problem.

The Council has spent the last year enabling and encouraging people to ignore the new bin system and litter our streets by continually refusing to address those with difficulties and wasting our tax money funding extra bins and collections.

Might things now be changing?

Fingers crossed...

What Would Roberts Do?

2009-04-19T18:33:00.003+01:00

Not a lot, or so it would appear....

Over a week ago I emailed my three local Councillors, Jim Wintour and Chris Roberts the Council Leader an electronic copy of a letter that I also posted to them (which given the holiday they should have got on Tuesday).

Overall I have had no proper responses to my questions. I still haven't been told why the bins were taken away, why there was no consultation or why the Call Centre have after nearly 4 weeks still not called me back.

Here's a summary of what each person has done, and I'll tell you now it's not long...

Councillor Allan MacCarthy
He emailed me on Monday to say:
My colleagues are dealing with the matters you have raised. Nevertheless I want to assure you of my concern with these issues. I shall look out for your letter and help as best I can.

Passing the buck onto his colleagues was his response the first time that I tried to contact him. Given as how nothing has happened I have to presume that the best he can do is, to be frank, nothing.

Councillor Gary Parker
Councillor Parker actually had a preview of a draft form of my letter on the 4th of April. He replied on the 11th saying:
I have just come back from holiday and will get onto this as soon as possible.

Well "as soon as possible" doesn't appear to be within a week, I've not heard anything from him since.

Councillor Janet Gillman
She emailed me on the 13th of April saying:
Thank you for the email and photographic evidence of the rubbish in Floyd Rd about which I am pleased to say as the Leader of the Council was in the vicinity of Floyd Rd over the weekend, he was able to take immediate action. I am not in receipt of your letter yet, but as you and my co-Councillors are aware there is a history of problematic rubbish collection in Floyd Road. I will therefore ascertain what has happened to the Floyd Rd wheely bins and why it has taken so long to let residents know of the situation resulting in rubbish on the pavement over the weekend.

Since then? Nothing.

Council Leader Chris Roberts
Unfortunately despite his early rising to the challenge and responding within the day to my email he's now sunk back down to the standard level of Greenwich Council's commitment to it's residents, that is to say that I've heard no more from him.

Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services
Absolutely nothing...

Is this lack of action and concern a surprise? Well no, not really, though I had hoped for a change when Councillor Roberts swung the arrogant silence seems to be pretty much par for the course.

I'm also aware that now I've mentioned this on here we'll never know if any response that I do get is because I've publicly shown how little they care or because they genuinely were working on the issue.

For completeness here is the letter that I sent to all of the above over a week ago:

On Wednesday the 25th of March all the wheely bins from my side of Floyd Road vanished. A neighbour managed to find out that it was apparently due to complaints received about the bins blocking the pavement.

I would like your responses to the following issues and questions.

1) On Wednesday the 25th of March I called your service centre to ask what had happened to my bins (call reference 378658). The person on the end of the phone didn’t know and I was told that a supervisor would call me back with an answer. Over two weeks have passed and I still await a response. Is this an appropriate level of service? If not what is going to done about it?

2) There was no communication about there being a problem with the bins before they were taken away. Do you believe that it is appropriate for such actions to be taken with no consultation before the event and, to date, none after?

3) Storage of the bins is a problem along my part of the street with the only off street area being accessible via a steep flight of stairs. Despite this many residents may have preferred to have tried to keep one bin back, balancing their physical capabilities and the expected weight of rubbish. Why were we not given this choice?

4) Many residents will now probably give up on the idea of separating their rubbish, keeping three bins running inside a small flat being somewhat difficult. Are you happy with the effect that this will have on Greenwich Council’s land fill statistics? Again consider that this could have largely been avoided had you talked with residents first.

5) One of the reasons that Floyd Road had so many bins is that we were issued them in an attempt to deal with the problems of contaminated bins and black sacks put out in the wrong week. The issuing of bins seems to have been the chosen solution rather than talking to residents and trying to resolve the problems with the implementation of the “new” bin scheme.

6) How many complaints were received about bins blocking Floyd Road and when did they occur? Consider that it took one resident of Victoria Road four weeks and emails to his Councillors and Council executives to get a few bins removed (http://853blog.wordpress.com). Did the complaints occur before the new black bins were issued? If before then why were the black bins sent out? If after then why did the Council act so quickly and with no word to residents?

7)Residents are now dumping sacks of rubbish out in the street from the day after the rubbish collections. Rather than wheely bins blocking the pavement we now have plastic sacks full of rotting food doing the same. They are damaged by wildlife and pedestrians and rubbish is now scattered across the pavement on a daily basis. Do you believe that this is an improvement? Will you now talk to the residents who are having problems or will some other “out of the blue” solution be foisted upon us all?

8) Looking through the above points Greenwich Council’s failure to communicate with residents comes through time and time again. Sending out leaflets or publishing articles in Greenwich time trying to assure us that all is well with the new scheme is not communication. Why has the Council repeatedly avoided talking to residents? Over the past year due to a number of residents having difficulties we have been given extra bins, extra collections and now a complete removal of all of our bins. Do you not feel that all of this could have been avoided had someone actually talked to those people who were having problems.

I await your responses with interest.

Emailing the Council

2009-04-12T11:03:00.003+01:00

I've sent my Councillors, Jim Wintour (the head of Neighbourhood Services) and Chris Roberts (the Council Leader) a letter and I also emailed them all a copy taking advantage of the medium to attach some photos too.

The first surprise, well to be honest perhaps not that much of one, is that Jim Wintour's details page on the Council web site has the wrong email address on it. It lists his email address as brenda.howlett@greenwich.gov.uk (his PA). If you try and contact him via that address you get a bounced back message saying that Brenda no longer works for the Council and, rather helpfully, Brenda Howlett has now left the building.

Nice to see the Council making sure it's contact details are up to date and that it's easy for us residents to contact them.

The second surprise is that within an hour Chris Roberts himself replied to my email, that did somewhat set me back. In all honesty I've not held a very high opinion of Mr Roberts ever since he stood on stage at the O2 and lied to me and thousands of other residents. However in all honesty he does deserve some praise for this. On what I presume was a day off he received an email from a resident from a different ward to his own and very rapidly he responded.

However unfortunately he couldn't read the letter attachment as he was on a mobile gadget that didn't support the format, though I presume that he could see the photos. He did provide me with Jim Wintour's proper email address which, for the record, is Jim.Wintour@greenwich.gov.uk.

Later in the day he emailed me again saying that he had walked along Floyd Road and that the rubbish in the street had been cleared away, which had happened at some point in the morning.

I replied saying:
The actual problem isn't the rubbish it's that the rubbish keeps happening and the wheeley bins along my side of the street were all taken away with no contact from the Council before or since (in fact I'm still waiting a call back from a supervisor at the Council call centre over two weeks since I called them asking where the bins had gone).

I'll wait for you to be able to read the letter which details the problem and some of the history behind it.

So so far I'm actually impressed with his response. It's not just what I believe we should get from a Councillor but is, in my opinion, above and beyond the call of duty, and I can't believe I'm saying that about a Greenwich Councillor but I've got to be honest and pat him on the back over this.

However what will happen when the letter is actually read?

Will the call centre actually call me?

Will we get an apology for the way our bins were just taken away?

Might we be offered a small bin if we keep it off the pavement (which is actually fine with me)?

Might the Council finally do something about those people who throw rubbish out in the street on any day and block the pavement?

Or will the Council think that cleaning up when prodded is a genuine and satisfactory solution and replace it's head in the sand?

A Photo Diary of my street

2009-04-11T00:25:00.005+01:00

Wednesday
This is the second day after the bins were collected, a lot of the sacks were actually dumped out at some point on Tuesday just one day after the collections.

Thursday
The difference a day makes... Yes that is a food caddy bag in the first photo and yes it has split open. Note how the second shot shows rubbish dumped outside almost every house along the street. There's still five days to go until it's taken away.

To my Councillors
You have spent the last 14 months refusing to tackle the problems with the new bin scheme and the photos show what you have caused. By refusing to speak to those who were having problems and instead choosing to spend our money funding extra collections and bins you have enabled this sort of behaviour. You have sent the message out loud and clear that people can put anything out in the street, on any day of the week and you will, eventually, fund something to paper over the problem. As if that didn't chip away enough at the morale of those trying to follow the complexities of your new scheme the final slap in the face is when you took all of our bins away without any word to us either before or since. You don't care, that much has been made perfectly clear. And now it's apparent that your attitude has rubbed of on many of the residents along the street.

You have safe seats and you know it. You sit on your chairs in the council chamber, take our money as pay and then spend our tax so that you can avoid taking responsibility and talking to us. As if that's not insult enough you then have us fund a paper that tells us that everything is wonderful. Our money is spent to avoid facing problems and then our money is spent again to try and convince us that there aren't any problems.

Why waste money on extra bins, extra collections and white washes in a paper when I'm sure that so much could be achieved by the simple expedient of knocking on a few doors and saying "hi, how can we help you out?"

I hope these pictures, the memories of your inaction, the money you have wasted, and the arrogance that you show by refusing to talk to us haunt you when next you stand before us and ask for our votes.

What will it take for you to do something and to come down and fix the problems you have caused?

PS: The call centre still hasn't contacted me and it's been over two weeks since they said that they would.

PPS: There's a Charlton Match today. As if the shameful evidence of your lack of care to tens of thousands of visitors isn't sufficiently bad I'm sure that the bags will also be kicked and torn even more.

Early, early bin bags & a Chocolate Teapot nomination!

2009-04-07T10:43:00.002+01:00

Well the bin collection was yesterday and somewhat surprisingly the bin men did indeed take all of the sacks of refuse along the street. However they left behind a lot of waste that had spilled from the bags that had been ripped open, the street looks lovely.

Someone has also claimed the prize for the earliest bin bag out on the street and had dumped a bag outside there house before the early hours of this morning. So that’s going to be there for a whole week given that next Monday’s collection will be pushed back to Tuesday due to Easter.

I can only imagine how things will look in another seven days time.

And still the Council will do nothing and after nearly two weeks the call centre hasn’t even bothered to get back to me.

The call centre has certainly earned itself a Chocolate Teapot 2009 nomination….

This is an improvement on bins in the street?

2009-04-04T17:54:00.004+01:00

These photos were taken on Saturday, people been dumping sacks of rubbish in the street from Wednesday onwards and this is how it looks now. We had our usual collections on Monday and an extra one on Tuesday that took away the sacks that Monday's didn't.

Yes this is the fault of the residents but I can understand even the most determined recycler becoming disheartened and sick of the Council after a year of seeing them fail to deal with people who ignored the new system and then having their bins taken away with any notice.

A letter is being sent to my three local Councillors, Jim Wintour (head of neighbourhood services and apparent Olympic Equine specialist) and Council Leader Chris Robers, if you don't like how they are happy for our streets to look then please please please contact them yourself. You wouldn't know it from the lack of consideration, contempt, and arrogance that they show but they are meant to be working for and to be accountable to us.

Councillor Gary Parker
Councillor Janet Gillman
Councillor Allan MacCarthy
Jim Wintour
Council Leader Chris Roberts

Our money and then landfill targets sacrificed so the Council can avoid talking to us

2009-03-27T10:58:00.002Z

Well it's true, someone has taken all the bins away from one side of Floyd Road. The finger of suspicion has got to point at the Council over this. I have called their contact centre to ask and was told that a supervisor would call me back, that was two days ago and I've heard nothing since.

When I discussed this with someone the other night they said to me, "surely the Council wouldn’t just take everyone’s bins away without saying something?" My response came quickly and unthinkingly, "this is Greenwich Council, what do you expect?" It says a lot about the level of service that we get that not only do we get treated with this level of contempt but that it's really not that much of a surprise.

Looking into the future I can see emails and letters going out to various Councillors, a lack of response from them and then the drawing up of yet another Monkey Chart, as if we need further proof of how little our Council cares about us.

So why would the bins have gone?

As I said last time the Council say you can't have a wheely bin where the property has insufficient space for storing the container off the public highway.

I remember also that the staff from Waste Services said to me at last years Great Get Together that "black bins are going to be introduced for black sack waste, couple with this is going to be an increased drive to get bins stored off of the street."

So after we got the black bins could this be the councils drive to get bins off of our streets. If so it's interesting to note that in typical Greenwich fashion the drive involves no consultation and no communication.

Now on the one hand I can feel some sympathy for the Council over this, Floyd Road had dozens of bins along it's pavement and they were often overflowing with the wrong uncollected waste and generating a rather foul smell in the summer.

However walking around the area and seeing the number of other streets that have no choice but to keep their bins on the street and continue to do so I can't help but feel that Floyd Road is perhaps being somewhat picked upon?

Picked on over what? Well regular readers will now of my long running struggle with the Council to get it talk to residents and fix the rubbish problems they, both the Council itself and the residents, have caused.

The Council have tried various "fixes" to avoid them having to actually lower themselves to engage us in a conversation ranging from unannounced regular extra collections through to the recent issue of new black bins. All of which involved spending more of our Council Tax, I can only presume that our Council must be terribly shy.

Could this be another new move from the Council to fix the problem without actually tackling it by simply taking the bins away?

Or is it just coincidence that some new Council drive on bins on the streets starts in one of the streets they couldn't be bothered to try and help?

Also remember that the proliferation of bins was caused by the Council and that as recently as a few weeks ago they were continuing to issue new bins to residents.

The Council, it's Councillors, Waste Services and the head of Waste Services (Jim "I'm an expect of equestrian sporting events, fly me to Hong Kong, someone else can deal with the bins" Wintour) have all known for sometime about Floyd Road and not once have did any of them ever give any sign that a bin purge was coming. Indeed Council Gary Parker was hoping that the new black bins would help out. What a waste of money they turned out to be.

And I can't help but feel that all of this is happening because the Council just won't admit the problems it has caused and just refuses to come and talk to us.

Up until now the Council has been willing to sacrifice our money in order to avoid talking and admitting there is a problem.

Many of the properties along Floyd Road are converted flat and have no access to a garden. Do they really expect them to continue to separate their rubbish out in to three different types and to keep them all indoors until rubbish day?

Or is the latest sacrifice that the Council is willing to make to pay for their lack of action their landfill targets as residents just pop it all into black sacks?

No more bin problems!

2009-03-25T14:36:00.003Z

The bin problem along Floyd Road appears to have been solved at a stroke! Despite over a year of the Council assuring us that there were only a few teething problems and that giving people even more bins to choose from would solve them decisive action now appears to have been taken.

The bins have gone from one side of the street.

All of them.

Apparently people have had plastic sacks popped through their door.

So do we have a bin thief on the prowl? Some Robin Hood type figure perhaps who believes that a stash of plastic sacks is fair recompense for your wheely bins?

Or could the Council be up to something?

A page on the Council’s web site does say that you won’t get wheely bins where the property has insufficient space for storing the container off the public highway.

Many of the houses along the street don’t have anywhere off of the highway, or if they do it’s accessible via a steep set of steps down to the basement level and that’s clearly unacceptable and dangerous for many people.

And in a fantastic display of financial prudence and joined up thinking the Council have been dishing out extra bins for a while now. New black bins made their appearance along the street a few weeks ago.

So who’s taken my bins away?

If it was the Council then why weren’t we informed either before the event, which would have been nice, or after, which you would think would the bare minimum for any decent organisation.

However you’ve got to admit that it’s a brave solution to the problem, though I dread the state of the street in a few days time…

I should add that I actually haven’t yet seen the results of the great bin dissapearing act but have been informed of it by a friend.

Maryon Park didn't win a grant

2009-03-04T15:24:00.000Z

Maryon Park was one of the contenders in the Help a London Park competition where a number of parks were going to be given cash grants.

Well the results are in, and unfortunately it didn't win.

The park came third from bottom but did get what seems to be a respectable number of votes (2101).

Greenwich is home to one of the winning parks though, Avery Hill, which must be a good thing.

It's a real shame that Maryon Park didn't win, apparently there were plans to allow access to the Roman settlement and Iron Age fort.

Still congratulations to the winners and fingers crossed they do this again next year.

RIP Bi-Weekly Bin Collections

2009-02-27T13:42:00.004Z

Firstly a question. What should I refer to the bin collection system as? I would normally call it the "new bin scheme" but it's now over a year old. However it's also still not working as it should with the Council refusing to tackle the problems that have been apparent with it from almost it's very first week. "The bin scheme the Council couldn't be bothered to fix" is perhaps accurate, but a bit of a mouthful. For now I'll stick with the "new bin scheme" and we'll probably still be calling it that and discussing it's continued failings in another years time.

Anyway.

It appears that the Council have silently backed away from one of the key ideas of the new scheme, bi-weekly collections of black sack rubbish.

Did Greenwich Time tell me this? Well no they didn't, though I'm sure that they soon will once they can come up with some spin as to how it's a good thing for us residents and not a sign of Council ineptitude. Local blogger 853 was the first place I heard about it, and he heard about it from Councillor Nigel Fletcher's blog.

It's actually very nice to see Councillor Fletcher blogging about genuinely local issues. I've commented in the past that Councillor Fletcher seems to have his eye more on Westminster than the people who choose him to represent them. His blog used to be full of "I'm Dave Cameron's mate", "I'm President Obama's mate" or "the national Labour Government sucks" type stories of hardly any relevance to his actual position.

However it's also interesting to note that this stepping up in gear and shift back to local issues happens at the same time that we see David Evennett, the MP for Bexleyheath and Crayford, blogging on the News Shopper web site. He's facing an election this year so the blog does look somewhat like an obvious attempt to engage with voters now that he needs their votes. Could there be a move among local tories to try and engage local residents via the internet? Could Councillor Fletcher's suddenly local focus be a part of that?

Anyway, I'm digressing again.

Bi-Weekly bins...

Well if you've read the above links to 853 and Councillor Fletcher's site you'll see that the Council does appear to be reintroducing weekly collections for black sacks.

Now maybe I'm "lucky" but Floyd Road has had those extra weekly collections for months now. Faced with the choice of actually talking to local residents who were having problems or blowing our Council tax on trying to cover up the flaws with the new system the Council choose the latter path.

The black bins also seem to have been another attempt to deal with the issue of blacks sacks being left on the pavements week after week. And once again it was one that involved spending our money rather than admitting there were problems and tackling them.

And now the Council are going to roll out their sticking plaster solution over the whole of Greenwich.

I think that's a great shame. Bi-Weekly collections could have worked and should have worked but the Council lacked the honesty to admit there was a problem and the fortitude to tackle it.

So the black sack issue should now hopefully fade away, covered up with money that I'm sure could be used for better things than hiding the Council's failings.

That leaves the "contaminated bin" problem where residents put the wrong waste in the wrong bin. Once again in Floyd Road the Council have taken the "spend our money" path instead of the "admit there's a problem and fix it" one and we've had yet another extra weekly collection to deal with it.

Numerous homes now have black bins but the problem remains.

The Council's reaction to the black sack issue appears to suggest that the Council just doesn't want to deal with that problem and they will continue to fund those extra collections in order to pretend that everything's rosy.

However we shall see...

If at first you do quite well, lie.

2009-02-13T08:49:00.002Z

Well the new copy of Greenwich Time is out and once again Greenwich Council is trying to tell us that all is good and wonderful in Greenwich.

They mention the weather and sing the praises of Greenwich Council's response. All things told I was actually reasonably impressed with how well the Council did. I was out and about very early on the Monday of the snow and Woolwich Road was pretty clear and running well. Considering we'd just had the worst snow in 20 years I think that's a good achievement.

So I'd have been quite content to see Greenwich Time praise the Council for keeping the main routes open and clear.

Except Council Leader Chris Roberts just can't help himself, he's in a position to be positive but then he goes and lies.

Now this isn't the first time I've seen our good leader do this. Back when the O2 opened he told thousands of Greenwich residents at the residents' preview that the tickets for the event had sold out in 2 or 3 hours. Except they hadn't. I got mine 3 days after they went on sale, others around me made similar comments.

Chris Roberts couldn't just accept the glory of getting a special residents night at the O2, oh no, he had to big it up even more and lie to us.

Likewise with the gritting. Rather than stating the challenges and resting on his Council's achievements Chris Roberts has to go and be less than frank with the truth.

He apologises that the Council "weren't able to get to some minor roads and residential streets."

"Some"?

Streets in Greenwich are, as I've said before, broken into three priorities. A few are Priority 1, some are then Priority 2 but the majority are Priority 3.

My street, a Priority 2, didn't see a gritter at all during the week of the snow. So therefore presumably the Council never got down to Priority 3's and a number of other 2's were quite probably also not done.

That's borne out by the people I've spoken to, many of whom could list many of the roads in their area that were never gritted. Being more specific the only road's around Floyd Road that I know were done were Woolwich Road and Charlton Church Lane. Despite being on a hill and being a bus route Charlton Church Lane wasn't done until at least after Wednesday morning.

Yet the leader claims that only "some" weren't done.

I guess you could call "most" "some" but at best that's being disingenuous, at worst that's lying.

Now as said I'm not that displeased with how the Council actually did, these were truly extreme conditions. However don't try to lie to me about it in the local propaganda magazine.

The worst of it is that there's no one to really call him out over it. Only a few people read this, the opposition will keep their heads down and the local press won't be bothered.

Edited to add: Catching on my morning reading I've discovered another local blogger is also a bit annoyed about the Council newsletter's take on the gritting.

Councillor Parker on the commuter boats, gritting and the "new" bin scheme

2009-02-11T12:59:00.005Z

Edited to add: Well I emailed/blogged just a bit too early, the extra collection of contaminated bins happened over lunchtime today. This entry will however remain as it is what I said to the Councillor and it also illustrates what will happen if the Council do just stop the extra collections.

Councillor Gary Parker has responded to my last email with details that also cover a number of other blog postings.

I do just want to take a minute here to point out how good he's being over this. He's willing to enter into a conversation over several issues and I do believe that's a truly good thing. He's also quicker at emailing than I am, his response came in last night, it's only over lunch today that I've been able to reply so I'm the slow link here.

However in the end actions speak louder than words so let's see what happens. I must admit to still being a tad sceptical, after all we're still discussing the problems with the "new" bin scheme over a year after it was introduced and to be frank my street today looks pretty much as bad as it did a year ago.

it's interesting to note that I've received a response about the claims over the Council's Clipper Boats campaign but that the News Shopper seemingly didn't, then again that could be down to them being more than a bit rubbish.

Also something that I didn't say to the Councillor is in answer to his statement that all school closures were advertised on the Council Website on both days. Basically on Wednesday morning at about 9am I checked out the web site and it said nothing. Later on in the day changes were made and something was added. So was there information up there on Monday and Tuesday, that was taken down early on Wednesday morning and then added again Wednesday afternoon? Does anyone remember seeing anything on the web site Monday or Tuesday?

But anyway, here is the Councillor's email and after it comes my reply.

I think you have misinterpreted my previous email ,even though it was a very quick response. I will deal with the issues once I get clarification from officers.

Other points I would make though from your recent posts having read them
though are:

Clipper Commuter Boat service- Greenwich council has supported and provided financial support for the service as did the previous mayor Ken Livingstone. The council leadership did approach the GLA to discuss the issue as I understand it and were only offered meetings with one of the inumerable deputy mayors who subsequently cancelled several appointments. So if the Tories at City Hall find communication difficult that's down to them. They cannot say they were not aware of the issue because they are about to end their subsidy for the service- a decision presumably by the Mayor. The Mayor and the local tories can resolve this easily by confirming their position on this issue- the silence is deafening. But to claim some conspiracy by the council is completely off the mark.

Snow & Gritting & Schools-
Some of the comments on this are totally inaccurate and I would like to point out that there were staff injuries- see below, as a result of carrying out normal & additional duties after struggling to work

I attach an extract from a recent report by the chief executive

2. KEEPING THE ROADS OPEN

2.1. As a result of the severe weather warning for 1st and 2nd February, Greenwich Council's road gritting teams worked continuously from 7.30am Sunday morning (1st February). All priority roads were gritted on Sunday 1st February before and after the heavy snow fall and during Monday 2nd February. Vehicles have covered over 1,000 miles in that time and the Council has used 300 tonnes of grit in the 3 days (1st to 3rd February).

2.2. The road gritting operation has been prioritised using the Winter Plan. Main roads, emergency routes, town centres and keeping areas clear to operate public transport are the key priorities. It has also focussed on bus garages and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to ensure emergency vehicles can access safely. All roads of high and medium priority have been gritted and were kept open.

2.3. In addition to the gritting of roads, some 230 Cleansweep staff have been diverted to undertaking gritting and cleaning operations on pavements. The priorities are town centres, shop parades, entrances to schools, sheltered blocks and pavements on hills. This is in accord with the Winter Plan.

2.4. The need to prioritise does mean that minor and residential roads may not have been tackled. In addition to focussing staff resources on priority areas as set out in the Winter Plan, it has also been necessary to use our store of grit in a targeted way. The Council maintains a large store of grit but the volume needed has been significantly higher than normal and it is known that the level of demand nationally was high leading to a depletion of suppliers' stocks. By Thursday 5th February the Council held approximately 320 tonnes of grit and received a further delivery of 90 tonnes that day. The Council, therefore, has adequate stocks to last several days, depending on conditions.

2.5. In addition, we have sourced an additional stock of 20 tonnes of 'glass sand' (made from recycled glass) from Days Aggregates on Greenwich Peninsula. We have mixed this with salt to make it available for use on hard surfaces away from the public highway, eg schools, parks, entrances to Council services etc.

3.1. Refuse Collection
As a result of the heavy snowfall, refuse collection services were suspended for Monday 2nd February and Tuesday 3rd February. It was not safe to use refuse collection vehicles on residential and minor roads which were still icy or blocked by snow. A limited refuse service resumed on Wednesday 4th February, prioritising the collection of nappies, black sacks and Euro-bins. That day fourteen members of staff fell and injured themselves and there was one minor traffic accident.

3.2. Schools and Children's Services
a. Schools
The decision to close schools rests with the Head Teacher and the School Governors. All Schools and Children's Centres were closed on Monday. After school clubs were also cancelled on Monday.

Following the severe weather warnings which were issued by the Met Office on Monday afternoon and circulated by the Council to schools, a number of Head Teachers took the decision on Monday night to keep schools closed on Tuesday. This meant they could inform parents well in advance. Further schools took the decision to close on Tuesday morning when they discovered the schools sites were unsafe, and staff could not make it in. There was liaison between Children's Services, Press Office and the Council web team throughout Monday and Tuesday to ensure all school closures were
advertised on the Council Website on both days.

Each Head Teacher/Governing Body will determine how to deal with any staffing issues, eg use of training days.

Other Services

Sufficient staff succeeded in getting to work to ensure that all other services could operate. Libraries, leisure centres and parks were open to the public, funerals and cremations were able to proceed. The pest control service could not operate on 2nd February due to the conditions and the noise team did not operate out of hours on Monday 2nd February. Services
were operating normally from 3rd February.

And this is my reply.....

Thank you again for your very rapid response.

Regarding the Commuter Boats can I just clarify that you are saying that Greenwich Council have contacted the GLA about your campaign in particular? Or have you, as in the Council not you personally, just spoken with them about the issue in general? Furthermore you are saying in particular that at least one of the Deputy Mayors knows about this, and this if the Mayor doesn't then that's not your fault? What about TFL? Have they been spoken to or is there no need for that? I'm aware that I've given space to Councillor Drury's claims that neither the Mayor or TFL know anything about your campaign and would like to make clear what the Council's position actually is.

Thank you for the information about the gritting of roads. I do have a question about the "glass sand", what is classified as being "away from a public highway"? Is it suitable to be used on pavements?

Finally a few words more about the rubbish collection situation. This week in Floyd Road the additional bin lorry that used to empty the "contaminated" bins every week has not appeared. Now that may be because it is an extra collection and waste services are still recovering from the situation last week. However could it also be because that despite your statement that it's "too early to assess the success or failure of the new arrangements" someone within waste services has decided that it's not too early and that given how we now have our black bins they can stop the extra collections?

Well I do hope not, the attached photos illustrate the state of the road today where alongside unemptied bins it appears that residents, frustrated at finding their own bins still full, are dumping waste sacks in the street. It's another two weeks before our next scheduled black sack/bin collection so this could be quite a problem for quite a period of time if the additional collections are simply stopped with no other remedial action.

Can you confirm if the additional weekly collection of contaminated bins and the upgrading of black sack collections to weekly is to continue?

Or if it is they are to stop, which I agree that they must, that something is being done about the state of the street?

Without announcement or admission of the problems extra collections were introduced by the Council, residents have now obviously come to expect them and withdrawing them without comment will create the problems that the photos clearly show.

Waste sacks dumped by a public bin.

This is almost certainly due to the contaminated bin being unemptied, the sack could only have been there for a day or two and already it's been torn open by animals and rotting food waste is spread across the pavement.

Incorrectly filled and unemptied green and blue bins next to a seemingly empty black bin.

The History of Floyd Road (Part 2 - 1894)

2009-02-10T18:04:00.005Z

Following on from The History of Floyd Road (Part 1 - 1867) here's part 2 27 years later. This is once again using a map published by Alan Godfrey Maps and as I've said before if you're enjoying this go and buy yourself a copy either from their web site or the Heritage Centre. They're £2.25 each and they really are good. There's just so much to look at, especially if you pick up all the the three vintage maps.

Anyway, here we go, Floyd Road in 1894.

The first thing to notice is that Floyd Road still isn't on the map. There are a few houses there but the street is known as "Cedar Grove". That's now the name for the little road that comes off Floyd Road and lies between it and the railway, well almost, that's Cedar Place. There are buildings marked out along there but those along what is now Cedar Place are obviously far too new. So I wonder what was there?

The garden that was where Floyd Road will be in 1867 has now gone completely and the buildings that were on the NE corner of it now appear to have changed. The one nearest the railway is marked as being a bank which is the logo you can still see faintly painted on it's side. The newsagent on the west side of Charlton Church Lane was the Post Office back then.

The chalk and sand pits now appear to be closed down, off the scanned area of the map they're labelled "Old Sand & Chalk Pits". Note how the tramway has also been removed. However before that all went there had been substantial further excavation. The excavations have gone further south and Charlton Grove, what I imagined to be a large house has been lost. Industry remains in the area though, a disinfectant works has appeared.

Charlton Station has also changed, and not just it's name to Charlton Junction. It's now got a Coal Depot and goods handling facility to the north of the current eastbound platform with what appears to be at least two lines of track. You can see a photo showing the beginning of that area here. Those tracks lasted up to the 1960s and explain why Troughton Road has some newer houses and car parking space there now.

The Railway has also had bigger changes. Back in 1867 there was no train through to Greenwich, the Royal Navy College and/or the Observatory had been refusing permission to tunnel underneath them. However by 1894 that's changed. A new set of track cuts straight west away from the line running off to Blackheath and Westcombe Park Station has appeared.

The biggest change in the area has just got to be the amount of extra housing that has been built. Delafield Road, Sundorne Road, Priolo Road, Invarine Road and Fossdene Road were fields back in 1867, now they're there and lined with houses. Roads that were already there have gained extra housing. The entire east side of Charlton Church Lane is now full of houses right up to the village. Wellington Road used to have some substantially sized buildings on it's south side, they've now been joined by some smaller neighbours on the other side of the road. Around the new Westcombe Park Station a whole new estata with dozens of houses has sprung up.

On a personal level of history a building to the north of the railway has now been named, Lime Villa. You can read all about it here. It was the home of a Thomas Nichols who was a Lime Merchant and he moved in in the mid 1860s. The article linked to mentions the trouble he had getting local chalk/limestone, that ties in nicely with the decline in the quarries between this map and the one from 1867. I wonder if when he moved there the local quarries were already running their production down? The house, and the name he gave it, remained there until the 1960s when it was demolished and Barney Close built over it.

So there's been a lot of change in the few years between 1876 and 1894 and there's a lot more to come in the 20 years between this map and my next one from 1914.

It's all the snow's fault!

2009-02-09T17:40:00.004Z

Councillor Gary Parker has to his credit replied to my email. I should point out that he replied very quickly after I sent it and that this is the first chance I've had to post it up.

This is what he had to say....

I will get back to you on this, though my initial comments are that given the new bins have only just been delivered and given the weather recently, when many of our staff in waste collection have been diverted onto gritting and other related issues, its still to early to assess the success or failure of the new arrangements. But I will consult officers on some specific issues you raise and get back to you.

So if I'm reading that right it's the fault of the weather and it's effect upon waste collection staff that is causing people to continue to put black sacks out in the wrong week or to "contaminate" their bins.

So that must mean that there are more black bins on the way but their deliveries were held up by the snow. Or perhaps Council staff were due to go around and talk to residents but were called away to deal with the weather.

Or it could just be a convenient, but not too plausible, excuse...

I'm sure that he'll get back to me, to his credit he is good with email communication, and we'll see if he goes into any more detail.

"The introduction of a third bin for residual waste should further improve the situation."

2009-02-09T13:06:00.004Z

This is an email that I have sent to Councillor Gary Parker.

Hi,

Well the new black bins have, as you promised, been delivered to Floyd Road and after a couple of collections it seems like a good time to assess your statement that "the introduction of a third bin for residual waste should further improve the situation."

Has it worked?

Well no, I don't believe that any honest man could claim that it has.

Residents without black bins are continuing to put out black sacks in the wrong week, now perhaps you might say that the black bin deliveries are not yet complete and that they too will soon have a black bin.

However even residents that do have black bins are continuing to fill their other bins with the wrong waste, which the Council defines as "contaminated", which results in the bins not being collected.

So can we agree that the black bins have certainly not resolved the situation?

So what are you going to do now?

The Council has tried a number of tactics over the last year to implement the new bin scheme. At first you ignored rubbish in the street and overspilling contaminated bins. Then additional collections were introduced every week both to take away black sacks and to empty contaminated bins. Finally black bins were introduced. None of these ideas have worked.

I fear that the Council will return to the "ignore" mode of last spring and once again rubbish will accumulate.

However I also do not support the continued extra collections, on both a budgetary and an environmental front they do not make any sense. They also act as sticking plasters covering up the problem and in fact encouraging residents to ignore the new scheme as it's been proven that their bins will be emptied and black sacks taken regardless of when and where they are put out.

I've said from the very early days of the new scheme, when it's failures were all too readily apparent, that the only real solution is for the Council to come out and talk to those residents who are having issues. Unlike many people I know I do believe that the Council did do what could reasonably be expected to publicise the new scheme before it began. The Council have also been persistent in singing the praises and claiming the successes of the new scheme to us residents in publications such as Greenwich Time.

However those things are all one way communications, Greenwich Council has shown itself to be very good at talking at residents and telling us that everything is fine.

Now surely you have to actually talk with residents to resolve the problems and establish a real two way conversation with us.

Perhaps you could even give some of your time to walk around the streets and talk to those people who are having difficulties complying with the new scheme. Surely that would be a move environmentally and economically viable solution than spending our money on extra black bins and extra rubbish collections?

I enclose some photos illustrating the continued problems that are occurring.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing your response.

Regards,

CA

How many bins do residents now need to have? Is any thought given during their distribution?

This was taken last week. Residents without black bins are continuing to put black sacks out in the wrong weeks and those sacks are being torn open by animals spreading the waste around.

Even residents with black bins are continuing to fill their other bins with the "wrong" waste. These problems are not caused by people having no where to put their black sacks.

Chocolate Teapot Clipper Campaign?

2009-02-06T09:01:00.000Z

There's rather an interesting story on the News Shopper web site.

Greenwich Council are calling on the Mayor to get Oyster Cards accepted on the Clipper commuter riverboats, a better level subsidy and an increased timetable..

However Boris Johnson has said that neither he nor TFL have heard anything about this.

Loathe as I am to quote the local Tories, who are in my opinion as much to blame for the shocking state of politics in Greenwich as the Labour party are, Councillor Spencer Drury seems to sum it up when he says "I am curious what sort of campaign fails to contact the person or organisation which it is seeking to influence. The council is complaining because Boris hasn’t done something that it never asked him to do - this campaign is simply deceitful."

Could it be that Greenwich Council are making a noise about doing something when actually they're doing nothing? That's not like them now is it?

Or is there some decent explanation behind this? Are the Council trying to gather support first before contacting Boris?

I'm not totally convinced that there is a genuine problem here and not just some Tory trying to cover up their own "do nothing" attitude by accusing the Council of the same.

However it is very hard indeed to think of a reason why a campaign wouldn't at least touch base with the people who make the relevant decisions to at least see if something is on the cards.

So the Council's Clipper Campaign might be the 2nd nomination for the Chocolate Teapot 2009.

Should your road be gritted?

2009-02-05T00:03:00.006Z

As I've said already today Floyd Road has not been gritted, and it's not alone. I've seen a number of other roads that haven't had any attention and I'm not the only local blogger to notice this.

However should we expect all of our roads to be gritted?

As it turns out the Council do provide some information about this. In particular they have a Winter Service Policy that goes into a reasonable level of detail about what they aim to do.

From that I've learned that all streets are broken down into three priorities:

Priority 1

main distributor roads
secondary distributor roads
main bus routes
transport interchanges
roads leading to hospitals, ambulances and fire stations

Priority 2

routes linking main and secondary distributor roads
routes through industrial estates and housing hubs

Priority 3

all remaining residential roads

Pavements are broken down into similar groups:

Priority 1

main shopping areas such as Eltham, Woolwich and Greenwich Town Centres
transport interchanges i.e. around rail stations

Priority 2

local shopping areas
footbridges
routes through housing estates
hills
around schools

Priority 3

all remaining footways

Floyd Road is, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, a Priority 2 road and the pavement around the station should be a Priority 1 area.

Neither have been gritted.

So three full days after the snow begins to fall Greenwich Council have failed to grit their Priority 2 roads and their Priority 1 pavements.

Is that reasonable?

I am quite genuinely not sure. On the one hand this has been truly exceptional weather and buses along main roads now seem to be fine. On the other we have had three days and what sort of priority is "priority 2" if it's not done after all that time?

And all of this must come with a warning that in order for gritting to be effective you need a certain level of movement over it. So perhaps my street has actually been gritted but hasn't seen enough vehicles to get it to work.

Anyway check your street out and let's see if we can gain some measure as to how the Council is doing when measured against it's own priorities.

I'm very tempted to go out and buy a shovel, if I already had one I'd have been out there by now trying to make a bit of a difference around me.

Final photos of the snow...

2009-02-04T16:41:00.003Z

...or are they? More might be on the way later in the week.

Anyway because I really enjoyed having the snow here are a final few photos.

"We want information" and "improvements"?

2009-02-04T09:23:00.010Z

Train & Buses
Southeastern's Web site appears to be under a bit of stress right now and seems to be serving up a minimal simple page. They do claim to be running a normal service. The station this morning however saw rather large queues and about a half hour delay on some services into London.

The buses should be running, the TFL web site appears to be made of sterner stuff than Southeastern's, or perhaps it's not getting hit as much, and is giving out all sorts of information. Some routes are being diverted, the 486 is apparently going via Westcombe Hill thus avoiding Charlton Church Lane. A friend waited 30 minutes for it this morning. Charlton Church Lane does seem gritted and pretty clear, but there is a massive queue of traffic on it running from the lights right up past Conran's.

Council Services
Lewisham's Web Site is being quite helpful with some nice links on the front page.

Bromley's Web Site is doing similar things, right at the top a nice green link to an information page.

Bexley's Web Site puts a link to information right at the top of their home page too.

Greenwich's Web Site leads with a story about the Royal Arsenal Co-Operative Society. Maybe they've got some information further down, um, no, not that I can see. Nothing about schools, nothing about roads and nothing about waste collection. Even searching about through the site I can't find any information.

Could the Council be failing to communicate to it's residents? Surely not!

Edited to add: At some point over the morning Greenwich have got a page up with a small amount of information on it, it's here. Basically if your rubbish isn't taken this week then it will be taken next week and they're only aware of one school, Woolwich Polytechnic, being partially closed. Oh and they did manage to deliver Greenwich Time to me today reminding me that all is well and wonderful here in Greenwich!

Floyd Road itself doesn't appear to have been gritted, though for grit to work it does also need a certain level of traffic so maybe it has and it's just not worked properly because of that. It still looks rather nasty, cars are getting up and down though as I walked up it this morning I saw a lorry get stuck on the corner half way up. This road isn't a major one or even a through route so it's got to be a very low priority so I'm not sure if we should expect it to be gritted or not, I think I'll bet on the "not" as there's so many other more high priority roads around.

Edited to add:I'm not the only local blogger to notice that only main roads appear to be being gritted. Still the question stands, should we expect them to be?

I did see a bin lorry in Floyd Road this morning, which in all honesty did really impress me. It was emptying the blue wheely bin at the top of the road, none of the other waste has been collected, so their heroic efforts appear to not be aimed at us residents.

I can understand completely why we've not had collections, but I would like to know what's going to happen.

Anyhow a few more photos....A rather ropey looking Floyd Road, cars are getting up and down it though, I'm not sure that I want to try.

The blue bin that a rubbish lorry has been able to empty, and behind it a green bin overspilling with plastic bags. So was Councillor Gary Parker right when he said that the new black bins would improve the situation? Or did I have it closer when I suggested that "we'll continue to see black sacks on the street" and "over spilling wrongly filled bins"?

Further signs of improvements.

How many bins? Well I presume it's better than actually talking to people to try and sort things out.

Nice...

So are all the black bins for Floyd road delivered? Do all the houses that need them have them? Well the answer to the latter question is obviously no.

After the snow

2009-02-03T13:44:00.002Z

So how are things now that the snow has stopped falling.

Well my road hasn't been gritted, but I wasn't thinking that that was really much of an issue. When we had the big snows back in 2003 I lived elsewhere and my road wasn't gritted then so I'm not sure if we should be expecting it now.

However I read a story on the News Shopper web site that made me think about how well Greenwich was prepared and how well it's dealt with things.

Basically our neighbouring boroughs of Bexley and Lewisham claim to have most of their schools open. Greenwich on the other hand has most of it's schools closed.

So why's that then?

Was the snow in Greenwich somehow heavier than on Bexley and Lewisham?

Or could it be that the Council simply wasn't prepared and couldn't organise it's gritters properly so as to enable the schools to open.

Before reading that story I really wasn't that cynical about Greenwich's handling with what's going on. My view was that this sort of event is rare enough as to make more extensive preparations a bit of a waste of money.

However when Council's around us can open their schools and we can't aren't there some questions to be asked? Even if it's the case that Lewisham and Bexley did something special and out of the ordinary as opposed to Greenwich Council being their usual shambles isn't there something to be learned?

Snow!

2009-02-02T08:47:00.003Z

The morning commute today was a fail, the trains and buses are all suspended. So I went for a stroll instead and it was really rather lovely. There was a moment up in the park when the sun was coming up and everything turned this amazing shade of pink :)

Black Bins Appear

2009-01-29T15:18:00.001Z

Well Black Bins are beginning to make an appearance along my road. The Council seems to hope that these will be the magic bullet solution to the problems with the new bin scheme.

As Councillor Gary Parker says "The introduction of a third bin for residual waste should further improve the situation. The reason for this is it will assist those who are reluctant to place residual waste in black sacks."

At the moment there's only a very small number of the black topped bins and certain properties which have repeated problems with dumping black sacks out in the wrong week or filling up their bins with the wrong waste don't have them. So are they on the way or is this it?

The houses that do have them also don't appear to have had any of their old bins taken away, so the pavements are looking impressively cluttered right now.

You can read more about the Council's view on the black bins here.

It's interesting to note that they try and make it sound like they're giving us a choice with the new bins rather than admitting that they're doing it to try and tackle the problems with the new scheme. Problems that the Council haven't had the tenacity, honesty or resolve to genuinely attend to.

It's also very interesting to read that to "be eligible for wheeled bins, you must be able to store the bin off the highway and where it can be reached without steps."

Not so.

Walk down Floyd Road and you'll see a number of black wheeled bins outside houses that don't have anywhere to store them.

So if you do want a bin and the Council say "no" because you don't have anywhere to store it then ask them why they're giving them out to some streets.

Anyway let's just see what happens over the next few weeks.

Personally I'm willing to bet that we'll continue to see black sacks on the street in the wrong weeks, over spilling wrongly filled bins that won't be taken by the regular collections and extra rubbish collections every week to deal with those issues.

I don't think that black bins alone are going to solve the problems, heads will have to be removed from sand and contact actually made with the residents who are having problems in order to get it sorted out. To me that would appear to actually be the easier option as opposed to buying in a whole new load of bins, but maybe that's just me.

Remember to vote for Maryon Park

2009-01-28T15:25:00.003Z

Someone's popped a little leaflet through my door asking me to vote for Maryon Park to receive a grant for a makeover.

I've actually already done so but this is good chance for me to remind any readers out there to cast their vote.

Click here to vote.

I'm also really impressed that someone out there is organised enough, and also cares enough, so as to get some leaflets printed up and posted through doors. Good on you!

Charlton in 1746

2009-01-23T14:39:00.001Z

I've been hunting around for more information about Charlton in connection with the old maps that I've got and one of the things that I've found is a map of Charlton from 1746, you can find it here.

Unfortunately it's not got the greatest amount of detail on it but there's several interesting things to see.

Where Floyd Road is there are "Lime Kilns" marked on the map. That used to be one of the things done with the chalk that they dug out of the ground from there. Lime played a bit part in the area for quite a while to come, I'll be mentioning a Lime Manor when I do the follow up to The History of Floyd Road (Part 1 - 1867), and it's interesting to see that it goes back at last that far.

There's a road that seems to follow the present course of Woolwich Road already there and it also looks like there's something running south from it that seems to follow the path of Charlton Lane too.

Anchor and Hope Lane is there, complete with the kink half way along, but it's known as "Manor Way". That's got to have something to do with it running up to Charlton Manor and I'm left wondering what then came first, the Anchor and Hope pub or the road name? Did the pub manage to get the road renamed as a bit of free advertising at some point over the next 120 years?

To the east of Charlton there's "Hanging Woods", which was apparently a haunt of highway men and other such dubious characters. It doesn't appear to have changed very much from then until the 1867 map.

If you look at the village itself you can see the original road and village green layout in front of Charlton House. The owners of the house didn't enclose the green, thus stranding the gate, until 1829.

One final interesting thing compared to the 1867 map is that up in the top right you can see the Dockyard and/or Arsenal. The later map ends in almost exactly the same place but has a curiously blank area enclosed by roads, Ordnance Survey covering up military secrets no doubt...

Anyhow it's nice to see how much you can get out of such a seemingly simple map!

Lewis Glenton's Tramway

2009-01-20T14:00:00.001Z

A very helpful comment to my last past on the history of Floyd Road has confirmed that their used to be a railway, or a tramway as a number of documents refer to it as, running from the sandpits under where the football stadium is down to the river. The footpath under the railway on Ransom Road with it's arches is indeed the course it followed. I'm tempted to nip down there with a tape measure at some point to check it's width out, I'm not at all sure it's big enough for a standard gauge track.

The tramway was built by Lewis Glenton who got permission for it in 1840, it was certainly there in 1852 as it's referred to when giving the location for a garden in another document. That reference also confirms that the pub on the corner of Church Lane and Woolwich Road was known as the Antigallican (or Anti-Gallican, making it's anti French meaning very apparent) at that time too.

There appears to have been some legal problems building the tramway, there was a court case between Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson (whose family owned much of the land around here) and the Reverand of the parish Church and Lewis Glenton in 1840 or 1841. The Reverand might have been involved because the case refers to the tramway being built over "Glebe land", which is Church owned land that is rented out. So maybe the Church owned the land, Lewis Glenton rented it and built the tramway along it. I wonder what Sir Thomas' problem was?

Anyway thanks very much to the anonymous poster, if anyone does know anymore about the tramway please pass it on.

Here's some information that I've managed to find with a quick bit of googling....

Greenwich Industrial History Society
The National Archives

The History of Floyd Road (Part 1 - 1867)

2009-01-19T14:57:00.004Z

Quite a while ago I posted an entry about my visit to Greenwich Heritage Centre and I said that I bought some maps, well I thought it would be nice to use them to try and tell some of the history of my street.

So here's a map of the local area from 1867.
As you can see Floyd Road didn't exist, where the top half of it will be appears to be a garden of some kind, possibly for the properties that are where the Chinese Takeaway is now. I'm saying that they're gardens because the layout seems to be pretty structured and organised. That's not just the normal map markings for woodland, there are other areas on the map that are woodland and they're drawn very differently with many randomly placed trees rather than the clear "avenues" that we have where Floyd Road is. You can also see what appear to be paths laid out, it must all have looked very nice.

Charlton Station is already there and there are some houses along Church Lane between it and Woolwich Road (or Greenwich and Woolwich Lower Road as it was known then). The Antigallican, as I believe it was known back then, is on the corner.

It's interesting to see that there's what appears to be a railway running from the Ballast Pits down to the river that passes under the railway. Does that explain those funny little arches that the footpath running from the eastern end of Floyd Road out to Woolwich road opposite PC World? It looks like once upon a time little trucks, and they must have been quite little given the width of the two arches, ran up and down there carrying quarried material down to the river. Could it have been a narrow gauge system with it's own little trains? I wish that I knew...

Looking a bit further afield a Church Lane runs up to the village but doesn't have any houses along it at all until you get to a couple of them opposite St. Luke's Church.

There is something marked as "Charlton Grove" about half way up Church Lane on the eastern side. There appears to be a decent size building in Woodland. A patch has been cleared in front of it and there appears to be paths or tracks sweeping around the cleared area and leading to the building. Could this be a well to do house? Opposite the entrance to Wellington Road (which is there) is a small building by the entrance to the path leading to the "house." A gatehouse?

I can imagine visitors coming up Church Lane in a horse drawn carriage. Then turn off by a gatehouse and then have woodland on both sides. After a minute or two the woods on their left open up into a landscaped garden and the large lavish house comes into view. The path takes them around the edge of the lawn before curving back into the house where a dinner party awaits.

Too imaginative? Well I do love maps and the stories that they can tell.

The area around Church Lane is mostly open and seems to have little tracks running along it like the one that seems to run away from the station, then west before heading back to the railway at the Signal Box. I think that is the most surprising impression from this map, the area's really not very built up at all, all of this will soon change.

I will say a bit more about the map itself, it's published by Alan Godfrey Maps and is a copy of the original Ordnance Survey map. As the small scanned snippet should show it goes into a huge amount of detail about the area and it's very well printed on decent quality paper. If you've got even the slightest interest in your area then do try and check these maps out. You can get them from the Heritage Centre itself or you can order online from the Alan Godfrey Maps web site. They're only £2.25 each and I consider them a real bargain, I've got hours of pleasure from my set.

With the 1867 Charlton Map not only do you get the map but a brief potted history of the area and a list of residents of the area complete with addresses. Not all of the roads are covered (Maryon Road and Victoria Road seem to be the most common ones listed) so don't go getting this thinking that you're certain to discover who lived in your house. However you just might, and wouldn't that be great.

The Council's Domestic Violence Campaign

2009-01-14T13:45:00.001Z

I've given the Council a fair bit of stick lately over the bins and the state of my street so it's actually really nice for me to be able to say that I'm really pleased with and proud of them.

In the latest copy of Greenwich Time they talk about the Council's new poster campaign about domestic violence.

The poster and the article both make very clear that men can be victims of this crime as well as women and that to me is a big change from the usual campaigns which are aimed at women and often only give numbers that they can call.

I've had the misfortune to know two victims of domestic violence, one of either sex, so I'm painfully aware of how anyone can suffer from it. I also remember the man confessing to what he'd been through years after the event still feeling shame that those sort of things shouldn't happen to men and that he felt there was no one, official or otherwise, he could turn to for support.

At least the woman knew that when she made the matter official, which is terribly hard for anyone, there were all sorts of support schemes and hostels ready and waiting for her.

So anyway a big pat on the back for the Council and I'll repeat the words of Councillor Maureen O'Mara:

"Domestic violence will only end when the whole of society challenges it as unacceptable and sees it as a crime."

A Council Briefing on the new black bins

2009-01-14T13:35:00.002Z

Someone in the know has provided me with a copy of a briefing sent around to Councillors last week on the subject of the new black bins.

I don't think there's a huge amount of interesting material in there other than the discussion on how the new black bins are going to be allocated. It seems that the majority of them will go to the "54,000 households [that] received a letter and questionnaire at the beginning of October."

So who are those 54,000 households and why were they chosen to get the survey?

It's worth noting that the "background" to the briefing talks about the problems with ripped black sacks and sacks out on the wrong week and not about those residents who ignore the scheme and fill the wrong bins with the wrong rubbish.

Is that the Council trying to hide the fact that it's bringing black sack bins in to deal with those that it's shown an inability to deal with over the last year?

Or are the black bins only aimed at the "sacks in the street" issue, which generates an extra 1/2 a bin collection a week, and not at the more costly "contaminated bins" problem which is causing them to send an extra collection lorry out every week?

Personally I can't see the black bins helping the latter problem very much at all. At the moment people put can't, or won't, follow what bin to put what rubbish in when they've only got two of them. How is giving them a third bin to further complicate matters going to help?

If they do then put all their rubbish in the black bin then they're going to fill it up within a week (witness the green bins over spilling every Monday) and the extra weekly collection will have to continue.

Councillor Parker has said that he believes the extra bin will help matters because "it will assist those who are reluctant to place residual waste in black sacks. Typically this means putting plastic in the green and kitchen waste bin and food waste into the dry recycling bin.

Is the problem really with those who have lots of black sack waste or those who simply don't care what colour bin they put it in because they know the Council will send around extra bin lorries to take care of it?

Time will tell...

The Introduction of Black Topped Bins
Waste Briefing – 7th January 2009

1. Background

1.1. The new waste collection service was introduced on 21 January 2008. This initially consisted of weekly collections of mixed dry recycling from blue-top bins, weekly collections of green and kitchen waste and fortnightly collections of residual waste from black sacks. There were problems with black bags being put out on days other than the collection day and then being ripped open.

1.2. As a result it has been agreed to replace the black bags with black-topped bins. A consultation process has been carried out to find out what bins people want.

2. Bin Consultation Process

2.1. All households originally provided with a Red Top bin (approx 6,000) have received a letter and questionnaire. Approximately 160 households requested the removal of their bin and this has been undertaken. Other bins will be converted in accordance with household requests during the bins delivery programme commencing in January.

2.2. A survey was undertaken to re-identify properties that have nowhere to store their bins, or are in multiple occupation and may wish to share bins or need arrangements specific to their needs. A programme to provide the configuration of bins/sacks best suited to their needs is 75% complete and we expect to finish this by early February 2009.

2.3. Approximately 54,000 households received a letter and questionnaire at the beginning of October. This questionnaire invited households to specify what size Black Top bin they require (140 litre, 240 litre, or none) and identify any changes they require surrounding their Green Top bin.

2.4. The questionnaire was also made available as an e-form on the Council’s website and approximately 1500 residents used this facility.

2.5. Blue-top bins were not included in this exercise and deliveries will continue to be made in response to requests through the Contact Centre.

2.6. Households that did not return their questionnaire within three weeks received a reminder and a further copy of the questionnaire. Since mid November, Contact Centre and Waste service staff have been telephoning residents who did not responded during the evenings (from mid November onwards) to complete their questionnaire. Limiting the number of non-responses in this way is likely to reduce the level of calls in Feb/March when the bins are delivered to those who have responded.

2.7.Nearly 40,000 responses have been received including those on the website.

2.8. Of these, approximately 16,000 have requested 240 litre black top bins, 14,750 have requested 140 litre black top bins

2.9. In addition approximately 9,500 residents have requested a smaller, 140 litre bin for their kitchen and garden waste.

2.10. The order schedule will allow for additional requests from residents, based upon the survey results. Following the consultation, residents will still be able to register their bin requirements and changes. However, residents who have not returned their questionnaire by 31 December 2008 may have to wait until after the main delivery programme in January to March 2009 before receiving their bins.

3. Planning for Deliveries

3.1. The delivery programme will be undertaken by a specialist bin delivery company and will commence in mid January and is scheduled at the end of March 2009. They will be provided with detailed delivery sheets generated from the survey results and supervised by Greenwich Council staff. Waste Services will have a team to pick up any urgent issues that can not be met within the main programme. In case of problems with deliveries (due to bad weather or other slippages in the delivery programme) space for a week’s delivery of wheeled bins is being identified at Birchmere Depot. Should further problems occur, arrangements can be made to store bins temporarily at Tilbury docks.

Bombay Bicycle Club Update

2009-01-06T12:32:00.003Z

Back in November last year I commented upon the Bombay Bicycle Club.

Well since then I've ordered from them a few more times and have also recommended them to friends who have all been very positive about them.

I did encounter a bit of a problem with an order the other day. They called me to let me know that they wouldn't be able to give me one of the things that I asked for. While unfortunate that's about the best that you can hope that a take away will do in such a situation so it's nice to know that they handle such things well.

Anyway they've certainly become my take away of choice and I think I've swayed a few other households as well so I'd say that there well worth a look. If you know of a better delivery service do let me know...

Full details about them can be found in the original review here

More from Councillor Parker, extra bins all round!

2009-01-06T12:13:00.002Z

Councillor Gary Parker has emailed me again. I had not got around to replying to his last email so it's nice to see that he is following up on the bin situation.

Fingers crossed I'll be able to get respond to this soon...

Here's the Councillors email anyway:

Dear CA, I have now checked with officers on some of the points you have raised, in summary these are detailed below:
We appreciate the support you continue to give to the Council's recycling and composting efforts.

The scheme so far has increased the borough's recycling and composting rate to around 43%

For the last 2 years Greenwich Council has sent less waste to landfill than any other local authority in England.

We continue to work with residents who have difficulties in operating the scheme and continue to make progress. Since February this year the proportion of bins requiring follow up collections has reduced from around 17% to 5%.

The introduction of a third bin for residual waste should further improve the situation. The reason for this is it will assist those who are reluctant to place residual waste in black sacks. Typically this means putting plastic in the green and kitchen waste bin and food waste into the dry recycling bin. We will review our approach to residents and our collection arrangements once the bin delivery programme has been completed.

Costs for other associated services- new black bins, additional collection etc are being met through allocated funding in this years budget.

My additional comments are as follows:

In some local authority areas in England collections have been reduced to once every two weeks, leading to protests by local residents, yet we have increased collections, significantly addressed landfill issues and built a ‘state of the art’ recycling centre – all this without significant increases in the council tax

We have increased the service and dramatically reduced landfill, improving the environment and saving the local council tax payer very significant sums of money- we send less waste to landfill than any other local authority in England, something we can all be proud of

The council will look at collection arrangement and issues with individual residents once the new black bins are all delivered and we will continue with our education programme which includes, letters, leaflets, information on the councils website and interaction and events for local residents like the recent ‘Christmas Cracker’ event at Charlton House which attracted hundreds of local residents and at which incidentally, all local councillors were present ,representatives of all council departments, the mayor and various members of the councils executive were in attendance too

We are not complacent about these issues and will continue to try and improve both waste collection and environmental services in the Charlton area

I am always interested in your comments and those of others, who post them on your blogspot and as I said in my previous email will be bring to your attention some further proposals for improving the local environment in due course.

Once again happy new year

Cllr Gary Parker

Are the trains running on Sunday?

2009-01-06T08:50:00.005Z

I'm seriously considering running a Chocolate Teapot 2009 award for companies working in the Charlton area and I think I've found my first nomination.

I've been helping a friend make some travel arrangements for the coming weekend and had heard that the Southeastern train service through Charlton wasn't running due to engineering. I thought I'd better check up on it.

So to Southeastern's web site I go where there's a nice bold link claiming Southeastern helps visitors get to The O2 on Jan 3 & 11, seeing how the 11th is this Sunday I thought I'd have a look at it as it could give me some clues as to what's going on.

That page all sounds good, the train line must be up and they've even laid on a special bus service from Charlton to connect to the O2.

However my friend had said that the line was definitely down, so to double check I dig down into the Southeastern site to find out. Now that's not so easy, unlike the O2 news there's no helpful link on the front page.

You have to click on the Plan my journey link, then on the Engineering Work link before finally clicking on Sunday 11 January.

When you finally get there you discover that There are no train services calling at Abbey Wood, Belvedere, Charlton, Deptford, Erith, Greenwich, Maze Hill, Plumstead, Slade Green, Westcombe Park or Woolwich Dockyard.

Oh. Right. Ok.

I thought that "Southeastern has teamed up with the O2 to help people going to see Chris Brown at The 02" on Sunday. They even told me that "one of the easiest ways to get to The 02 is to get a train to Charlton and then catch a special free bus service to the venue."

The O2 themselves are even talking about this on their web site. They make it sound like TFL stitched them up when "recently announced" that the Jubilee line would be closed.

They've got a document here that says that in association with Southeastern trains they've laid on special buses from Charlton.

Well it appears that Southeastern have stabbed the O2 in the back as well and have now turned the trains off.

Or have they? Which page is right? The nice obvious link on the front page or the engineering information that's buried deeper in the site.

I'll try and find out, well to be more accurate I need to find out so as to help my friend out.

Anyway don't you just love Londons's coordinated and linked up transport policy!

Updated: I've just called Southeastern and there are engineering works so Charlton station will be shut. I asked about the special free bus service to the O2 from Charlton and apparently it is still running.

To use it though you'll have to get on the wonky replacement bus service running from Deptford to Slade Green.

Blackheath station will be open however and I'll probably route my friend through it, why they don't divert the special O2 bus to there is a bit of a mystery...

So will there be a lot of Chris Brown fans who have read the news on the O2 and Southeastern's web sites expecting Charlton Station to be open?

Do I do the decent thing and phone the O2 to ask if they know?

Anyhow I've certainly got my first Chocolate Teapot 2009 nomination, Southeastern trains for running and boasting about a special free bus link to the O2 from a station that they then go and close.

The new bin scheme "is generally seen to be working"

2008-12-31T15:18:00.003Z

I've had an email from Councillor Gary Parker replying to my response to his comments on a blog entry about the costs of the new bin scheme (166% more rubbish lorries).

It contains a statement that's one of the funniest statements I've heard in 2008, either that or either Councillor Parker or myself is incredibly out of touch with the opinion's of Greenwich residents.

The statement?

"the new system is generally seen to be working and both improving the environment locally & regionally"

Seen to be working by whom? I don't remember my street looking like a rubbish dump before the new scheme came in and my efforts to be green have resulted in more than double the number of polluting rubbish trucks trundling up and down my street.

My local friends seem to be equally fed up with the new scheme and other local bloggers have been critical.

So am I and my friends in the minority and on the whole local people think the new system has made things better?

Or is Councillor Parker making it up?

I'll send a response to him later, for the moment I'm too busy alternating between laughter and a concern that I'm living in some weird parallel universe, besides there's parties to be got ready for.

Happy new year to everyone and in the mean time here's the Councillors email in full:

Thank you for giving me space on your blog, to put forward the points I detailed in my previous emails. I would prefer not to get caught up in too much detail on this issue without seeking clarification on a number of issues you have raised. As I am not personally responsible for day to day management of the service, I will forward this email to council officers for their comments.
I would add though:
While are still things that need to be improved in both waste collection and environmental improvements, the new system is generally seen to be working and both improving the environment locally & regionally and saves significant sums of money
Myself and other ward councillors are working on initiatives to improve the environment and involve local people, work with CCRA as described in my previous email is only the first step
We will provide further information later in 2009 to local people, once we have consulted local community groups and developed some further proposals with these groups

Happy new year to you, all your readers and Charlton residents alike

Cllr Gary Parker
Charlton Ward

Councillor Gary Parker Responds...

2008-12-30T11:27:00.005Z

Councillor Gary Parker has emailed me about my last blog entry.

I'm very grateful that he's done this and I will be replying in full. For the moment though and in the interest of giving the Council a right of reply here is what he said to me:

I have just read your blog dated 18/12/08 regarding rubbish collection, many of the points including the statistics are either misinformed or just plain wrong, rather than rebut them point by point, I would like to point out a few facts that are not in your blog

1) The new recycling & collection system is both environmentally friendly- thanks to our recycling centre in Thamesmead (the MRF) we now recycle up to 40% of waste materials, this results in less landfill, significantly less journeys to landfill sites, less lorry journeys and has less environmental impact and pollution.

2) It also saves the council tax payer and the council money

3) We are now one of the highest recycling local authorities in the UK and the MRF centre is state of the art and the envy of many other local authorities- try quoting another local authority in the surrounding areas who can match this or provide a similar service.

4) The council is trying to educate people on recycling and associated issues, if we start taking other action against people without trying to educate them first, no doubt we will be accused of acting like ‘big brother’ ‘nanny state’ etc. If you read the rest of Cllr Sidhu’s letter and enclosures you will see information regarding the recycling programme and associated issues, this is something you did not bother to quote in your blog

5) Some local authorities give their residents up to 6 boxes or bins to recycle various materials, so I think your point on the numbers of bins etc, without comparison is not well made.

6) I think it is the height of cynicism to suggest we would rather cut children’s services to pay for more bins- you do not understand the budgeting process ( some grants from central govt are ‘ring fenced’ and in many cases we have a legal obligation to provide certain services, so we cannot just switch funding from one area to another, as you seem to suggest in this case, even if we wanted to- which we don’t) and that report is very inaccurate, we are not going to cut ‘front line’ children’s services , as you will see in due course, once the new proposals are in the public domain.

7) Greenwich Council provides very good value for money and over the last few years the Greenwich element of the council tax has either been frozen or had a low increase, far less than surrounding authorities such as Bexley or Bromley. I am hopeful this will continue as Greenwich as a local authority is often commended for its financial stability and management- (if you noticed it recently, we were not on the list of authorities which invested in Icelandic banks and had subsequent problems, due to our good financial management & policy), this also helps us provide extra services and invest in new ones, like the MRF, as circumstances change.

8) Today I and my co-councillor Janet Gilman have been on a two hour walkabout with members of the Central Charlton Residents Association in the area to identify problems and issues and are working constructively with them to take action, identify solutions and to develop new ways of working with them and other community groups to improve the local environment. This is the way forward in my view and as a local councillor I will continue to work with such groups to tackle these issues which are often complex in nature and not so simple to address as some people might suggest.

Cllr Gary Parker Charlton Ward

Edited to add my response:
Thank you very much for getting in touch with me and responding to my blog post.

To begin with I'd like to clarify that I believe in the new rubbish collection scheme and support the Council's aim to increase recycling and decrease landfill.

In brief I'd like to say that I believe the best way to do that is to tackle the problems caused by the new scheme and not just to send out extra rubbish lorries, with the associated extra cost of emissions and money.

Going in to more detail you say that the Council is trying to educate people on recycling issues. It appears to be the same households that have continual problems with the new scheme week after week after week. Therefore how can residents conclude that a years worth of education has been a success? Yes we've had leaflets, yes Councillor Sidhu's letter did once again give the details of the new scheme and yes occasional articles in Greenwich Time have done the same. However it's not working is it?

Can you understand the frustration and confusion that residents feel when instead of actually solving the problem the Council send an extra 1.5 bin lorries a week down our street? If this were the early days of the scheme perhaps that would be an understandable short term remedy. However when the scheme is a year old how can it be anything other than an admission of failure?

Furthermore in these times when so many of us are having to tighten our belts it smarts somewhat when we see those extra collections being done by lorries seemingly hired from an external company.

Can you reveal how much these extra collections are costing us?

My statements about the number of bins we will have wasn't really about the quantity itself, instead I was trying to ask how, when people are unable to deal with a two bin scheme, it is believed that having three bins will improve things?

Greenwich Time, Council leaflets and your email tells us residents that we get value for money, that we're helping the environment and that generally everything's going great. However when we've spent a year walking down our streets stepping around ripped open black sacks and green bins overflowing with mouldering bags of rubbish that just doesn't ring true.

Not a creature was stirring, except for 166% more rubbish lorries.

2008-12-18T11:08:00.004Z

I've received a leaflet from Greenwich Council informing me of the rubbish collection dates over the Christmas period, it also includes a letter from Councillor Rajwant Sidhu congratulating residents for supporting the new collection scheme.

Supporting? Congratulating?

What fantasy fairy tale world is Councillor Rajwant Sidhu living in?

Further on in the leaflet there is an admission that there is a "relatively high volume of waste being placed in the wrong bin." Perhaps the truth is beginning to penetrate the sand in which the Council has it's collective head stuck.

So what is going on?

Well one measure might be how many collections per week the Council is doing.

Under the old system there would be a green bin, what was all waste, every week and recycling every other week. So on average 1.5 collection lorries a week would roll down your street.

Under the new scheme the theory is that green and blue are taken every week and black sacks once per fortnight. So that's 5 lorries every two weeks, or 2.5 a week.

The practice of the new scheme in my road is that green bins, blue bins and black sacks are taken every week. There is then an additional collection the day after to empty the bins that have the wrong waste in them. So that's 4 rubbish lorries trundling down my road every single week.

They have to do this weekly black sack and "contaminated bin" collection because so many people are continuing to completely ignore the new scheme and keep on doing the same thing.

Now the Council could try and tackle the problem by going to talk to those residents who continually put the wrong rubbish out.

But no.

The Council would rather spend our money funding a 60% increase in the number of bin lorries per week (I'm getting 4 lorries a week, compared to the 2.5 I should get under the new scheme). To do this it appears that they're having to charter in lorries (and staff?) from external companies.

But apparently they do have a long term solution! Black wheely bins will be making a reappearance! Somehow people that aren't bothered to use a two bin system correctly will magically do the right thing when presented with three of them.

And how much will that extra bin cost?

All to avoid actually admitting there's a problem and talking to people.

What do we gain from the new scheme? Well we've boosted our recycling rate by 40%, which is a good thing.

But what's the price the Council are having us pay?

Well compared to the old scheme when I had 1.5 lorries a week and I now have 4 the price for 40% more recycling is:

166% more rubbish collections.
166% more diesal consumed and fumes emitted.
166% more working hours for rubbish collection staff.

Does that seem economical or green?

Well in the wonderful world of Greenwich Council it surely must.

Consider though that Greenwich Council are planning to cut childrens services but can find the money to continually paper over the problems with their new rubbish scheme.

Could it be that the rubbish problems they've caused might actually make the electorate turn away from them and that their seats are more important than children?

Edited to add: As Simon has pointed out my maths went a bit pear shaped... I think I got caught up with my comparisons with the new scheme as it should be and the new scheme as it is and it all went downhill from there.

To clarify under the old scheme I had 1.5 bin lorries roll down my street every week.

Under the new scheme I should have 2.5, 1 extra or an increase of 66%.

Under the way the Council are working I get 4 lorries per week. That's 2.5 more than the old scheme, an increase of 166%, and 1.5 more than the new scheme should be which is an increase of 60%.

The Princess Alice, Thamesmead

2008-12-16T14:24:00.001Z

I've not commented on this, and I should have done, but since my praise about the Blackheath Standard it's gone through several new managers and most definitely entered a bit of a slump when it comes to the quality of the food.

A number of my friends have now given up on eating there and this lead me to return to the Princess Alice. A couple of years ago it used to be a part of the Brewers Fayre chain but then it closed down, it's been reopened by Crown Carveries for a while now but I hadn't been back there until recently.

Aside from a handful of other dishes all they really do is roast dinners, which was exactly what we were after. On a Sunday a roast dinner was about £6.50, in the week I think it was about half the price. For the money we had a choice of beef, turkey or gammon and as many vegetables as you can handle.

Was it any good? Yes it was, better than the last few roasts I've had at the Standard. True enough I have had better but this was good solid food and everyone was happy.

We all had desserts too which also pleased us all.

If there is a downside it's the location (opposite Belmarsh Prison) and that some of the other clientele seemed to be suffering from the "I can't tell my child to sit down and behave in a public restaurant" disease that seems to afflict so many people there days.

Still all things told for the large family group of us, including children, that went it was a good option and I think we'll be returning there.

Princess Alice
2a Battery Road
Thamesmead
London
SE28 0JS

Tel: 0208 3177847

PS: Oh and as for the Blackheath Standard they have recently brought in a new menu and the manager's said that things will improve so I should check it out...

Chas & Dave at the Blackheath Halls

2008-12-15T13:21:00.000Z

I spent the first half of my life north of the river, the land of tube trains and late night taxi rides home, in the east end of London. My Dad was born within earshot of the Bow Bells and I heard him once claim that "the Kray twins were good blokes, they only did it to their own." If the first part of that doesn't make my Dad a true Cockney then the second surely must.

So perhaps it's strange that it's taken me so long to attend a Chas & Dave concert, perhaps it's stranger still that when I did it was south of the river.

Saturday night found me at the Blackheath Halls with a very diverse crowd watching the "Rockneys" in action.

The show was broken into two rather different halves. In the first they played some of their more obscure songs, answered questions, sang happy birthday to a couple of audience members and played old style Rock and Roll songs. Chas was on an electice guitar, Dave was on an accoustic and tucked away at the back was Mick on the drums. Now maybe they felt an urge to prove that beyond their slightly humorous image they've actually got some serious musical chops and, in my opinion, prove it they did. They clearly loved the music they were playing and they played it well and with passion, which is always a joy to watch.

The questions and answers were also amusing, Mick joining up with them a very short while after they got together is why they're not known as "Chas, Dave & Mick", though there was a claim that they'd review the situation and consider renaming themselves. And did you know that Chas used to play the violin in the band? One night in the middle of a solo the neck of his violin broke off and he took it as a sign to call it quits on that front.

And then on to the second half in which Chas moved to a keyboard and the "favourites" came out. At this the audience really came alive with people dancing up in front of the stage and up the back, they even had a stage invasion or two.

So it was almost like two gigs in one. An intimate performance of some great songs and then a party like show of songs you remember from years ago. The second half was what I expected the show to be like, the first half was what really impressed me though.

They're on tour again next year (the dates are here) though as of today there's no repeat showing in Blackheath. However chatting to some of the crew did reveal that the evening was a sell out, so hopefully they'll be back there. I'd certainly like to see them again and it would be all the better if it were local.

Oh and to the person who wrongly claimed a signed T-Shirt that they hadn't paid for, stealing from Chas & Dave? Shame on you! Shame!

Vote for Maryon Park!

2008-11-27T17:01:00.002Z

As local news papers and local bloggers have reported Maryon Park has been nominated as one of the Help a London Park parks. What that means is that it's up for a vote as to which ten should get grants of up to £400,000.

Maryon Park is a lovely little park, though perhaps it's easily confused with Maryon Wilson park which has the little animal zoo. If you've never been there it's well worth a stroll through, there's some great views, nice greenery and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Apparently the Council would like the grant to "improve their management" (well that shouldn't be hard, the whole lot can quit and be replaced by a several small kittens and a ball of fluff) and to "open up the archaeological site". By that I presume that they mean what little remains of the Iron Age Hill and Roman Settlement. At the moment all of that is fenced off and you can't get to it, I for one would love to be able to see what there is to see.

So anyway please vote here to lend a hand!

Spooks vs Bins

2008-11-27T16:43:00.005Z

Brenda emailed me the other day to say Thought you might find it "amusing" to know that the big blue bin at the top of floyd Road made it on to an episode of Spooks last night as they drove up Floyd and turned left onto Charlton Church.

I'm not a big fan of Spooks so I had a look using the BBC's iPlayer that let's you watch you episode on line, you can see it here and Brenda is indeed on the ball! As it turns out Floyd Road has a safe house for MI5, who'd have guessed!

It's really quite fun to see your local area on the big screen, it's also amusing to see them make "mistakes" such as drive along the same piece of road several times during one conversation.

Brenda's also right in that the big blue bin that used to live at the top of the street is visible in one brief shot.

Also visible during many of the other quick shots are other unemptied bins and piled up rubbish.

So I wonder if anyone from Greenwich Council has seen this? How did they feel having their failures and lack of interest recorded for all posterity in the background of a BBC show? I doubt that they care...

Anyway here's some screenshots...

Dashing to the safe house, the young lad appears to have noticed the rubbish and is trying to comfort his mother and reassure her that not all of London looks and smells this bad, just the bits under Greenwich Council's care.
The secret safe house at number 38!
Heading away from the safe house.
The lovely bins at the top of the road, well done Greenwich Council!

Big thanks to Brenda for making this post possible!

A Healthy Start with a pack of fags?

2008-11-20T15:32:00.000Z

I've just seen a woman use her Healthy Start Vouchers to buy two packs of cigarettes, a bottle of wine and what appeared to be a tin of pineapple chunks.

The vouchers are meant to "give your kids the best start in life" and can be swapped for "milk, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and infant formula milk."

That's working well then...

I'm not sure if I'm more shocked at the shop or the shopper.

Hazel Blears vs. Political Bloggers

2008-11-20T12:33:00.005Z

A few weeks ago a journalist from the Bexley Times contacted me and asked if I would submit something to go into their Your Shout column in response to Hazel Blears' comments on political bloggers. Amongst many other places you can read about those comments here.

After emailing in my thoughts I was told that the newspaper didn't have room for the column that week and that what I'd said might be reused in the future. I'm not sure that it has been and given the time since I sent it in and that far more eloquent and political local bloggers, such as the Last Boy Scout, were also asked to submit something I doubt that it will ever see print.

So I thought that I might as well share what I had to say here.

I have disdain for the political system and politicians and I’m encouraging a culture of cynicism and despair! What am I doing? Well those are the words that Hazel Blears recently used to describe political bloggers, which is a category in which some would include me.

I have a blog that covers my local life and during my time online I’ve covered a number of political issues that directly affect me. Examples of that would be the peculiar allocation of tickets by Greenwich Council for the first Red Bull Air Race or the recent changes to our rubbish collections.

I’m a strong believer that our political system thrives when people are informed and feel involved and when politicians feel accountable for how they are performing. It’s when those two parts of the system break down that it is damaged. When people feel in the dark about what is happening around them and when there is no examination of what our politicians are doing then the gulf between the electors and the elected grows and real cynicism sets in.

Local blogging can both inform people and expose low level local politicians to the public eye. For example I came to know that it wasn’t just my small area that was affected by rubbish being uncollected and other people in turn knew of my attempts to get things cleaned up. We’re not alone and we can do something about our problems.

It used to be that only the politicians working at a relatively high level were exposed to the public’s gaze and judgement. Now if you go onto the internet and search for your local Councillor the chances are good that you’ll find bloggers talking about them. Good deeds and answered letters will be remembered, details of unanswered letters and promises unfulfilled will be readable for years to come.

 We’re shining a light into our political system from the bottom up and that surely has to be a good thing? This isn’t about cynicism but is instead about hope that when we are involved we can change things.

Edited to add: Just after I posted this up I heard from the newspaper and apparently my "Your Shout" went into the paper yesterday. I should try and get a copy...

The Bombay Bicycle Club

2008-11-19T14:47:00.004Z

The Bombay Bicycle Club chain of Indian Restaurants has recently opened a take-away branch in Greenwich, they're meant to be pretty famous but I'd only heard of them in passing before and didn't know that much about them.

Recently I've begun to feel a bit let down by my usual delivery Indian, the Coriander in Westombe Park. It's just felt like their standards were slipping and things just weren't as tasty or as well presented as they used to be.

So after I had a leaflet popped through my door from the Bombay Bicycle Club I decided to give them a go and I'm pleased to report that we really enjoyed our dinner, we enjoyed it so much we had another one the following night too.

The best part of the experience for me was that you can order online where a complete menu is displayed, this is especially useful for me as I often lose menus. You go to their website and chose what you want and then select a delivery time. Both of my orders turned up in the selected half hour slot and were still hot enough to eat without a brief spell in the microwave.

The dishes that we've had have been tasty and one in particular, the Lasuni Murg, was nicely spicy but was still flavoursome. Many lesser curry houses will just overload a spicy curry and attempt to napalm your tastebuds into hiding but not the Bombay Bicycle Club.

The only negative thing I can comment upon is that I found the Naan bread to be a bit too similar to the ones you buy in supermarkets. They had that slightly floury texture where as I like mine to be bubbly and ever so slightly doughy so you get that lovely sensation as you tear at it.

Price wise it is also a bit more expensive that other places seem to be, the Lamb Biryani (a common price thermometer for me) was £9.00. However considering that I got easy online ordering, "club card" style reward points, delivery at the time requested, hot food and it all being very tasty I think that price jump is worth paying.

Two thumbs up and a new favourite Curry House from the Charlton Average Household!

The Details
Tel: 0845 478 8214
Web: http://www.thebombaybicycleclub.co.uk
192 Trafalgar Road
Greenwich
London
SE10 9TZ

Blackheath Fireworks

2008-11-09T15:51:00.005Z

So last night I went up to Blackheath for the Fireworks and as per usual I thought that they were great. It always seems to odd to see so many thousands of people all up there and aside from the actual display it's a real experience. Was it just me though or did they move the location of the display?

Before the show a number of us had plans to meet and eat at the Royal Standard in Blackheath. However due to the numbers of people they had through their doors they had a much reduced menu of burgers and nachos, worth remembering when you're planning for next years event.

There are rumours that Lewisham Council may not sponsor any more fireworks shows, I hope that they do continue as it is a great evening and I'm looking forward to next year's one already.

So a big pat on the back to Greenwich Council, Lewisham Council and the fireworks company who sponsored/subsidised the evening but who's name I've forgotten. Thank you all very much!

Oh and there's only the one photo as I've got a new camera that I've not quite figured out how to work, the fireworks setting appears to be rubbish if you don't have a tripod or a steady hand.

Body Worlds and the Mirror of Time at the O2

2008-11-06T15:35:00.000Z

A few days ago I took myself down to the O2 to see the Body Worlds exhibition that they've got there.

So how was it?

Personally I found it all very interesting, I've never been to one of the shows before so this was all new for me. I did find it informative and it was quite fascinating to see how we're actually put together.

Although I knew what the exhibits they didn't look macabre or gory, in fact they look strangely unnatural and I didn't get any "ick this is a dead body" thoughts.

However there were some things that I found a touch gratuitous. I couldn't, for example, see the value in the gymnast on the rings having his internal organs hung beside him. It's as if they're trying at times to make an artistic statement, which to me just didn't work. I personally wouldn't mind my body being used in an exhibit to show someone how it works however to use it to make something that looks "interesting" to me seems somehow different.

Was it worth my £14 to get in? Definitely. However I'm not sure how useful the audio guide, an extra £3, was. I often found it a distraction and stopped commentaries short preferring instead just to look for myself.

One thing I should perhaps point out is that a number of the exhibits are things that I'd heard of from previous exhibitions (the man on horseback and the pregnant woman for example) so it might be the case that if you've seen one of these shows before you won't get as much out of this one as I did.

Oh and I'm still a bit clueless about the "mirror of time" thing. Yes there was a vague theme about aging on the information boards but that seemed to have little to do with the exhibits.

Las Iguanas at the O2

2008-10-31T13:54:00.006Z

The other night I went to the O2 to meet with some friends and we chose to eat at the Las Iguanas Resturant.

The O2 and all it's bars and restaurants were very very quiet. We had checked that it wasn't a gig night as my experience of those is that eating is nigh on impossible. However we were surprised at how quiet it all was, "dead" seems to be the word to use.

So do gig nights support the bars and restaurants? Are people put off of going to it as a general "meeting" venue because it is so busy when the Arena is in use?

Anyhow to Las Igaunas we went.

The starters that we had were great, tasty and a touch different, we were all impressed.

The mains however didn't leave up to the opening. I had the Puerto Rican Paella, which was nice but I know that I can cook a better Paella myself, and I don't believe myself to be a great cook. Others had the Carna Asado, both the Venison and Lamb versions, which again were described as being nice enough but nothing great. One of the Brazilian curries was also chosen with once again the same sort of response.

Don't get me wrong, no main course was "bad" and everything was enjoyed but it just wasn't something I would get excited about.

The staff were very good offering a friendly and helpful level of service.

However there is a downside, it was cold, very cold. We had to move tables twice to find somewhere that wasn't in a freezing cold draft. I don't know if the Restaurant had it's heating turned off due to the low level of customers but it really wasn't good.

So the big question, would we go again? Yes, I think that we would. However I'm far more likely to try and east at Rodizio Rico, which happens to also be Brazilian. I've eaten at their Angel branch and it was great, so I'm hoping that the O2 can live up to those same standards.

If you want more information Las Iguanas has a web site here: http://www.iguanas.co.uk
The page for the O2 branch is here: http://www.iguanas.co.uk/london_o2.asp
And you can see the current menu here: http://www.iguanas.co.uk/pdf_menus/LI_15_O2main_food.pdf

Blame Newham or Greenwich Council

2008-10-14T17:16:00.004+01:00

In a story on the News Shopper web site (click here) John Austin, the MP for Erith and Thamesmead, says that he is concerned about the increase in flights from London City Airport.

"Many of my constituents are naturally concerned about increased levels of noise and atmospheric pollution" he says.

Somewhat contradicting that he also says that many of his residents may not be aware of the proposals as Newham Council haven't informed them.

So it's Newham's fault?

Well not quite.

There is a group called the London City Airport Consultative Committee which describes itself as a forum for discussing Airport issues, keeping people informed and monitoring the local environment.

Deputy Council Leader Peter Brooks is not only the Councillor for Thamesmead (the people right under the flight path) but is also a member of that committee. Which makes a lot of sense, if he bothered to attend the meetings.

As I've mentioned before (here and here)up until the October 2007 meeting Councillor Peter Brooks hadn't bothered to attend any of the meetings for the previous four years.

There was nothing of any impact to Greenwich to be discussed he claimed at the time. Oh no, just an extra 40,000 flights a year and the concerns, as described by the local MP, of his own constituents.

In the January 2008 meeting Councillor Denise Hyland was described as Councillor Brooks' deputy who would attend when he couldn't. Well Councillor Brooks again failed to make that meeting or either of the two since then. Councillor Hyland has attended just one.

So if there is a failure here is it of Newham Council or Greenwich?

Greenwich Council has representatives on the airports consultative committee but in over four years they've attended just one meeting.

Will John Austin tackle the council over it's failure to become involved and it's ignoring of his, and it's own, constituents?

I doubt it. This isn't about the well being of residents, if it were we would have seen the Councillors attending the committee meetings that they were meant to, it's about political point scoring and trying to point the finger anyway but Greenwich.

Edited to add: I thought something ran a bell when I looked up Councillor Hyland, she represents Shooters Hill ward. Who else does? Well non other than Councillor Danny "stuff the people who trusted me when I said I would represent them, I'm off the Australia for 6 months" Thorpe.

Is it any wonder that Councillor Thorpe thought it was acceptable to run off? He probably looked at his colleague Councillor Hyland and thought "well she's on a committee and doesn't bother attending it when she is on the same continent, I can offer the same level of commitment and dedication to my constituents from Australia!"

More on the Horn Fair

2008-10-13T16:06:00.002+01:00

I've written about Charlton's Horn Fair before but I've recently found out a bit more about it.

No one actually knows when it started, one explanation dates it back to the times of King John. It used to take place for three days from St Luke's day (18th of October), the church of St Luke's in Charlton dates back to 1250 which explains the day of the fair and opens the possibility that it really does go back that far.

I've previously touched upon the connection of horns with cuckoldry, there is though an alternate explanation for the horn connection. Apparently the traditional symbol for St Luke is an ox with horns. Many ancient fairs would apparently display some symbol of their being open, and it's easy to imagine that a fair taking place on a saints day would use the symbols of that saint for that purpose. So perhaps that's how it got it's name.

However the story of King John, in which he was caught in the act with the wife of a Charlton miller by the miller himself and thus got permission to hold the fair as compensation, is far juicer and therefore probably became more popular as the years passed.

The fair was opened by the procession from Cuckold's Point for which people apparently dressed up as the miller, his wife and the King. Cross dressing was also apparently the thing to be done for this procession. William Fuller wrote in 1703:

"I remember being there upon Horn Fair day, I was dressed in my landlady's best gown and other women's attire, and to Horn Fair we went, and as we were coming back by water, all the clothes were spoilt by dirty water etc. that was flung on us in an inundation, for which I was obliged to present her with two guineas to make atonement for the damage sustained."

The Victorian's weren't too keen on London's fairs which had a notoriety for unpleasant and lewd behaviour, Charlton's reputation was such that when an law was passed in 1871 that allowed such fairs to be abolished it was one of the first to go.

This additional information comes from the book London Lore by Steve Roud. It's packed with all sorts of tales about London and it's a really enjoyable read, so if you're into this sort of thing it's well worth a look.

Villa Moura, Blackheath

2008-10-10T22:15:00.003+01:00

The other night Miss Charlton Above-Average and myself went to the Villa Moura restaurant in Blackheath for dinner. We'd driven past it a fair few times and I thought it was time that I finally gave it a go.

Villa Moura describes itself as a seafood and Portuguese Restaurant, and it is very much, in that order. Most of the dishes are fish, the meat menu seems to be a very secondary add on.

So how did it go?

Well very nicely thank you.

The restaurant is pretty small and feels a bit "old fashioned" and cluttered as it were, not overly so but it's not a "modern" feeling place.

For food we had Mediterranean Peri-Peri Prawns and Avocado and Prawn salad as starters. Both were nice, especially the Peri-Peri Prawns which were nice and juicy with a lovely sauce.

The mains were a special of garlic spinach stuffed Sea Bass and Dover Sole, the Dover Sole was merely good while the Sea Bass was lovely.

For dessert if was Fudge Cake and Creme Caramel. The Fudge Cake was great, nice and soft and not too heavy. It also came with some great vanilla ice cream that we could easily have eaten a whole bowl of itself. The Creme Caramel was good, very enjoyable but not remarkable.

All told it was a great dinner. The "worst" courses were those that I would still say were very good, the best courses were lovely. Everything tasted nice and fresh, it was filling but not overfilling and with some lovely tastes and textures.

The service was good, prompt without being over pushy.

So all told two thumbs up and I would love to go again, which is about the best complement I can give to a place.

After one visit it is hard to tell but I think it is quite possibly the best restaurant that I've eaten in around here. It's certainly better than most of the tourist traps in Blackheath itself and well worth the extra journey out of Blackheath to get to.

Villa Moura has a web site here, you can find all sorts of information about the place and complete menus.
http://www.villamoura.com

The address is:
Villa Moura
121 Lee Road
Blackheath
SE3 9DS
Tel: 020 8318 2116

It's located here

Hired Rubbish Lorries?

2008-10-07T15:01:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was my bin collection day and, as is usual now, all the right waste was taken.

So what do I see rumble down my road today, a rubbish lorry.

It appears to have been collecting "contaminated bins", that is residents who nearly a year into the scheme still can't understand what they're meant to do and put the "wrong" rubbish in the "wrong" bin.

Interestingly though the lorry wasn't a Greenwich Council one, it was hired from a company called Gulliver's.

Now on the one hand this is a good thing, they're proactively emptying the bins before the fill up and overspill onto the street.

However are the Council having to hire in extra vehicles to do this extra collection?

If so how much is it costing?

Is this a long term "solution" or are they also addressing the problem of contaminated bins that the "normal" bin lorries leave behind?

Firepower Artillery Museum

2008-09-26T23:25:00.004+01:00

A few weeks ago I went to the Firepower artillery museum at Woolwich Arsenal. I've been meaning to write about it for a while, so it's about time I got down to it.

Basically it's good, very good.

There's actually two museums in two different buildings opposite each other, so if you do go do make sure that you do both.

If I had to make a complaint about it I would say that some of the layout can be a bit disorganised. You can have seemingly unrelated items popped into the same display case next to each other, which can make it a bit confusing. However that's really only a minor niggle, and in a way it's quite endearing.

It's more of a museum of artillery, as the name suggests, than a museum about the Royal Arsenal. Though it does have a lot of artefacts and information about that aspect of it all.

All told a very interesting day out.

The Arsenal used to have narrow gauge railways criss-crossing it. I believe that this is a surviving wagon from one of them. I think it used to be over the river at North Woolwich but was moved over fairly recently.
A piece of the Iraqi Supergun and a gun shield that was shot at in order to test it's strength.
"Yes son you can have a cannon, but it's got to look like a cute animal!"
The main hall, lots of things!

They've also got the cannons captured during the Crimean War from was taken the metal that all Victoria Cross medals have been cast from. Unfortunately the photo upload now seems to have died, so I can't get anymore photos up...

Chocolate teapot or no teapot?

2008-09-26T23:07:00.003+01:00

Now I've had my issues with my local councillors. Basically with 9 months of the new bin scheme and the streets still regularly littered with uncollected rubbish I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that they're about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

However spare a thought for the residents of Shooter's Hill, one of their Councillors Councillor Daniel Thorpe has been on holiday on Australia for the last six months.

I thought that it really took something for a prospective Councillor to stand before the people and say "trust me, I will work for you, I will represent you" and then to blithely ignore them as my terrible trio are want to do. However Councillor Thorpe appears to have taken that sort of behaviour as a bit of a challenge. He's taken contempt for his ward to a new level and skipped off out of the Country.

As if showing that level of disdain for those who voted for him isn't enough he then proceeds to really push him out front in the "I couldn't give a Monkey's Uncle about you" chart by also being on the following committees and panels and abandoning them too.

Best Value Review Team: Homelessness

Best Value Review Team: Libraries

Children and Young People Scrutiny Panel

Greenwich Council Joint Committee

Safer and Stronger Communities Scrutiny Panel

School Teachers and Lecturers Joint Committee

What a thoroughly revolting example of public service.

And what do the Council do about him? You'd think that they might chastise him and stand up for the residents of Shooters Hill and those affected by the Committees that Councillor Thorpe has jilted.

Oh no, not Greenwich Council, they seem to be backing him.

Sigh.

You can read more about this story at the follow web sites:
News Shopper
The Last Boy Scout
Thurrock Gazette

It's quite nice to note that if you Google for "Councillor Daniel Thorpe" the Thurrock Gazette story comes up first.

Maybe he was trying to beat some of his fellows on Google too?

Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services and therefore the man responsible for the shambolic new bin scheme, has negative stories about him coming up in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th positions (myself and the last bus home).

Councillor Allan MacCarthy has my discussions about his lack of performance at number 4.

Councillor Janet Gillman limps in with a link to her lack of interest in Charlton at number 6.

Finally Councillor Gary Parker draws with Allan MacCarthy with one of my entries about him coming up 4th.

So Councillor Daniel Thorpe is good at something, it's a shame that it's not serving his ward.

There's a Charlton Residents Association...

2008-09-23T15:38:00.004+01:00

...but not for the likes of me.

Local Blogger The Last Bus Home has been to a meeting of the Charlton Central Residents Association, read about it here.

I did hear about this group a while ago when Councillor Gary Parker mentioned that he had addressed them in an email that he sent to me.

However they didn't seem to have a very active web presence, I only found a holding page, and I soon gave up on them.

Well it turns out that they do exist, but they're only for residents of a very small number of streets in west Charlton. So why do they call themselves central? Surely "central" is the old bit around the Church? No idea...

Anyway apparently excluded, and so is the Last Bus Home despite living much closer to them than I do.

Councillor Parker was addressing them again and he admitted the problems with the new bin scheme and blamed them partly upon "management of the services".

Well the manager of the services is Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services. So if there's a management issue isn't it his fault? If so what the hell were the Council doing sending him on a free holiday out to China? Well I say free, the chances are that we paid for it.

Also bear in mind that the Neighbourhood Serivices team that deals with waste collections is severely understaffed and wants to tackle the residents that foul our streets but can't as it's "political".

So the Council understaff them, send their boss away on a holiday, tie their hands when it comes to enforcement and then seemingly blames them for it.

Nice.

Still it's easier than admitting that, in the end, it's the fault of the Council and the Councillors themselves.

We'll soon be entering our second year of the new scheme and sites like the one below are still a weekly occurrence.

True enough after a week or so of it being like that it does get cleaned up but they're still not talking to the people who are doing it. They would rather spend what cannot be an inconsiderable amount of money doing extra collections than really get to grips with the problem.

Open House Biggin Hill

2008-09-23T15:05:00.007+01:00

Last Sunday I was involved with the Open House event down at Biggin Hill. I didn't do an awful lot, in fact I did what felt like very little in comparison to many of the other volunteers but never the less I was there on the "other" side of the fence.

They were doing an event to highlight the role that the airfield had in the Second World War and to show people some of the things that remain from that time.

The original plan was to have people taken through a "time tunnel" in one of the bomb shelters and when they emerged they would be back in the 1940s. There would have been a RAF re-enactment group, a Spitfire parked up, a tour of a few bunkers and then a simulated air attack.

Things didn't quite work out that way.

The "time tunnel" didn't happen, the bunker was full of paint and other nasty chemicals. The real hardworking volunteers spent hours on the Saturday trying to clean it out but it was just decided that it wasn't safe, so scratch that idea.

Then the Spitfire was late, it had a flat tyre and engine problems. So the early people didn't get to see it. And then when it did turn up a Jet popped out of a hanger and started having various tests done upon it. The result? Well it had to be squished up near the re-enactors and the people couldn't get to the pillbox, sleeping quarters and final bunker where the simulated attack would have happened. Oh and the pyro guy got stuck in traffic so the early people didn't get the attack either.

It was still a great day though.

Visitors were first taken to a WW2 C-Pen (a C shaped walled area to park aircraft in) and given a talk on the airfields history. Then they went past the re-enactors who gave them a shortened briefing as if they were pilots about to go on a raid to Dieppe. The re-enactors had set themselves up in front of one of the last remaining, if not the only remaining, ready room on the airfield. That was where the pilots would sit drinking tea and waiting to scramble and intercept incoming bombers.

Later visitors then got to walk around a Spitfire.

Then it was off to another set of re-enactors who had set up an anti-aircraft post. After that it was off to visit a pill-box, the sleeping quarters and finally the E-Pen (like the C-Pen but E shaped, it could hold two aircraft).

The weather was lovely and the visitors just kept on coming, the scheduled lunch break didn't happen. In the end I believe over 500 people put in an appearance. It was great to see the level of interest, and it was quite moving to watch some old veterans talking to the re-enactors about their memories and sharing some great stories with them.

The state of the ready room was a bit of a sad affair though. Apparently it's a listed building, but the owners of the airfield have no intention of refurbishing it and it's being left to fall apart. They have, allegedly, offered it to the re-enactors who could move it to another site on the airfield. But it would remain on the airfield, and owned by the airfield, who after it's all refurbished could then do with it as they please.

It's a shame to see one of what can only be a very few such buildings just being left. Hopefully something can be worked out and it won't just fade away.

Anyway I'll close with some photos and an advance notice that a similar type of day will quite probably happen next year. So if you're at all interested in that period of history then get yourself down there.

If you're interested the Spitfire is the Pride of Kent and it's a Mk IX that was built in 1944, you can read about it here

The E-Pen

The re-enactors giving their briefing.

The re-enactors, some period vehicles and the ready room.

Looking from the AA Post to the re-enactors.

The Spitfire finally arrives!

Being this close to it as it taxied along was just amazing.

A final posed photo.

Greenwich Heritage Centre

2008-09-07T16:24:00.007+01:00

Last week I went to the Greenwich Heritage Centre, it's next to the Firepower museum on the old Woolwich Arsenal.

It was fantastic, for reasons I'll expand on shortly. However I will briefly get a negative issue out of the way, and then I can be all positive and glowy, which will be nice.

As I walked up to the Heritage Centre from the river path I went along the side of the building, I then came across this:

It's a memorial to those conscripted for National Service and it was put up by the Council. Which is all well and good, but isn't it in kind of an obscure place? Why not put it on the front of the building where more will see it? It just didn't strike me as very fitting.

And now back to the positive.

At the Heritage Centre there's a small but informative museum about the history of the area mainly focussed upon the Arsenal and Docks.

There was a lovely information board about a residential area called the "Dustbowl", a 1900 visitor noted that "the male inhabitants are bullies, dock and waterside labourers, costers, hawkers and tramps. The women are prostitutes."

The police only entered the area in pairs and officially it was out of bounds to the soldiers from the barracks, "the military patrol can capture and confine any solders found there. But nevertheless the low class solder goes there."

And they say this area can be rough today?

They also had some artifacts that were found that were found at the Roman Settlement west of Maryon Park, that's not far from my house. I knew that the camp and/or fort existed but it's fascinating to actually see things that your neighbours from 2000 years ago left behind.

After the museum I found the best part of the centre, the research room at the back. Basically it's a library of books, local newspapers and photos of Greenwich. Best of all the staff were amazingly helpful. I was looking for any photos of Charlton and they got me boxes of them out and then made copies of them for only 10p each. I've since seen the woman who seemed to be in charge on a documentary about ship wrecks in the Thames and she's a local historian. So it's not just workers in there, they're skilled and knowledgeable workers!

I managed to find some photos, which I believe that I can't post up because of copyright, and some old maps of the area. I actually bought all the maps they had of Charlton and then some of other areas for local friends.

I'll be posting some more soon about the maps and photos I found have to show.

I believe the Heritage Centre is connected with the Council, they certainly have a page for them on their web site. I know that I knock the Council a lot but they are doing a great job with the Heritage Centre, I would love to see it expanded!

If you're at all interested in your area then get down there and have a look around and then do talk to the staff.

Jim Wintour's Cleaned Up!

2008-09-02T18:45:00.004+01:00

Unfortunately I don't mean the streets, instead of sorting out the problems with the "new" rubbish scheme he's been off on a nice trip to Hong Kong, presumably paid for by us.

He was sent by the Council to observe the equestrian events in Hong Kong during the Olympics.

Quite what horses have to do with the man who's meant to be in charge of keeping our streets clean is a bit beyond me. Maybe horses are his hobby, he's got to have some interests in life after all and clean streets clearly aren't among them.

Considering that he's also failed in his main responsibility you'd have thought that giving him a trip to Hong Kong is the last thing the Council should be doing. Giving him the sack might be somewhat more appropriate.

Perhaps the Council has done this to make up to him. After all Waste Services have said that they want to enforce the new bin scheme but can't as it's getting "political". Perhaps Jim's been frustrated at having his hands tied by the Council and the trip to Hong Kong was given to him to make up for it, or to shut him up.

How do I know this?

Well Councillor Andy Jennings the Conservative representative for Kidbrooke and Hornfair emailed me. This is what he had to say...

I was the councillor who obtained the details about the costs of the Greenwich China trip. For your information the six were

Councillor Roberts, Leader
Councillor Fahy, Cabinet Member
Mary Ney, Chief Executive
Frances Dolan, Director of Culture & Community Services
Ray Gerlach, Head of 2012
Katrina Delaney, Head of Communications & Community Engagement

Regarding the costs, the £14,000 was on flights alone. The Newham costs included accommodation and subsistence as well.

You may also be interested to know the answer to one the questions I asked, given the response…

8. Which members of the group will be visiting Hong Kong during the trip?

None. There is a separate Official Observer programme for Hong Kong for the equestrian events. LOCOG allocated one place for this to Greenwich Council and Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services is undertaking this task.

I am currently formulating a response to the chief executive’s responses and will publish on www.greenwichconservatives.com in the next few days.

So the Council spent far more than £14,000 on getting the six Councillors to Greenwich. And how much more on top of that did Mr Wintour's vacation cost us?

I wonder what would happen if I were as efficient at paying my Council tax as Mr Wintour is at keeping Greenwich clean. Would I get a free holiday seemingly completely unsuited to my skill set too?

Edited to add: Someone called Steve commented on this story and of particular interest he said "Greenwich Council didn't pay anything for accommodation etc, for as reported in all local media the costs of this were picked up by the local authorities in Chongwen."

So the total cost to Greenwich was £14,000, I wonder why Newham didn't get the same deal.

The Council's trip to China

2008-09-01T21:39:00.003+01:00

The News Shopper web site has ran a story about Greenwich Council sending six representatives over to China.

In a way that sounds fair enough, we are going to be a host borough for 2012.

But then you read that Newham sent only four, and those went cattle class where as Greenwich Council (or us tax payers) stumped up for Business Class seats.

Then consider also that Newham has the Olympic Stadium and village, which surely gives them more of an interest in the games than Greenwich.

So Greenwich paid £14,000 to fly six people out.

Newham paid £9000 to fly out four.

News Shopper named three of Greenwich's representatives as Council Leader Chris Roberts, Councillor John Fahy, and council chief executive Mary Ney. Who were the other three I wonder?

Did we really need to send more than Newham?

In these times when so many of us are tightening our belts did they need to go Business Class?

Greenwich Council, promoting equality and quality of life for all, especially themselves (yeah I said that on the News Shopper site, but I like it so I'll re-use it).

It's this sort of thing that makes me lament the passing of Greenwich Watch.

The missing bit of the Thames Path...

2008-08-30T13:35:00.006+01:00

The other day I wanted to take myself down to the Firepower Museum at Woolwich. It was quite a nice day so I decided to walk along the river to get there, I had the idea of following the Thames Path in my head.

Now you may know this but I was surprised to find out that the Thames Path has a missing bit. I took myself down to the Thames Barrier but you can only get along the river as far the visitors centre.

After that, and somewhat confused, I backtracked to Woolwich Road. There I discovered signs for the Thames Path "Intermediate Stretch" (or something like that). They take you off Woolwich Road at Roston Road and then back to the River. Looking at Streetmap.co.uk you can see that there is indeed a missing stretch between the Thames Barrier and the Leisure Centre by the Woolwich Ferry.

For those who are interested below is the route that I took:
I got from Harlinger Street to the river by walking under an archway in the middle of the block of flats that appears in front of you. I believe that this is technically private land, but I was good, I promise.

I'll post some more stuff up later about both Firepower and the Greenwich Heritage Centre but in the meantime I took some photos as I went along, it was really quite nice.A boat that was seemingly very low in the water, odd...

Canons! There was information in the heritage centre about how there was a fear that the Dutch would sail up the Thames as far as Woolwich and therefore the area was fortified. The cannons seem to be on loan from somewhere but I wonder if this is an original emplacement.

A sadly tired looking mosaic about the Thames Path.

Looking back towards London.

A cluster of metal statues outside Firepower.

More of the statues...

Odd set of blocks between Firepower and the river. I wonder if this was the old waterfront?

The Woolwich Ferry has a bed to go to sleep in :) I guess this makes a lot of sense, they can keep the spares out of the way by the river bank without it sinking into the mud. Still I did quite like the idea of it having it's own little cat bed type thing to retreat to.

Reactive or Proactive?

2008-08-30T12:14:00.002+01:00

The other day I posted that the contaminated (bins with the wrong waste in them that the bin men therefore refuse to empty) at the top of the street had been emptied.

I wondered if the Council were simply reacting to the problem or whether they had finally made the move to talk to the residents who keep fouling our streets.

Well there appears to be an answer, and I'm said to say that it's not a surprise.

Once again there is at least one bin stuffed full of plastic bags at the top of the street.

Waste Services, the department responsible, want to move from talking to the offenders to actually enforcing the Council's new bin scheme. However they've been unable to do this due to "political" reasons.

So our local Councillors know about the problems and they are unwilling to put the effort in themselves to actually resolve them (as opposed to occasionally organising a clean up) and are preventing Waste Services from sorting it out themselves.

Heads in the sand again.

And you know that they'll get re-elected in a couple of years.

I am well aware that in the end this is the fault of those residents who appear to be completely unwilling to work with the new scheme and are happy to make our streets a waste strewn health hazard.

However the Council chose to implement this new scheme, before which we had no real problems, and therefore have the responsibility to deal with it's fall out.

If there's a spate of robberies in an area the people really to blame are the thieves, however don't we ask questions if the police continually refuse to do anything about it?

Bins emptied!

2008-08-27T22:00:00.005+01:00

Yesterday the top couple of houses along my road had about five unemptied, or contaminated, bins outside. One in particular, a new small green one that one of them had been given, had been stuffed full of black sacks for at least a week.

I took some photos and lamented as to how long it might be before they were cleaned up.

I get home tonight and they've all been tidied up, blimey!

This means that either the Council are indeed getting on top of things or someone else along this street is starting to give a damn about how our road looks and contacted Cleansweep themselves.

Either way that's a good development.

I'm still sceptical, very sceptical, that the Council have actually talked to the people who continually fill their bins with the "wrong" rubbish. And remember this, it is the same people who are doing this week after week after week. The Council know who they are and Waste Services do want to tackle them, but they're having they're hands tied. As Waste Services themselves said moving to actual enforcement of the new bin scheme has become a "political" issue.

However maybe now we're finally seeing a change.

My fingers are crossed!

Cleansweep's 48 Hour Response

2008-08-23T10:48:00.000+01:00

Some nice chap along Floyd Road has seemingly been buying some new furniture for his flat. The waste from him doing so has been dumped outside on the street. There's a big pile of huge sheets of cardboard, plastic wrapping, boxes, a small mattress/futon/"bed thing" and other assorted bedding.

Now it's quite possible that he can't get it to the dump himself, after all he's got a very nice silver Mercedes and he probably doesn't want to get it dirty. So instead it's the street that he dirties.

At least once this week the pile has been kicked over by passers by and he's had to tidy it up. Last night it was kicked over again, it's now blocking the pavement and spilling over into the road.

CleanSweep were told about this and I was given a 48 hour response time, that was on Wednesday. There's a Charlton match today and in a few hours tens of thousands of people will pour down the street and over the rubbish. That can't be good.

Phoning the Council all I can be told is that the call has been marked as "work in progress."

So to fulfil the 48 hour response all Cleansweep have to do is to go onto the task list and mark a task as in progress?

The Council will show due diligence and begin to remove cars from the street in a few hours, for which they will get at least £50 a car.

Hopefully the Council will show due diligence and begin to clear the pavement, for which they will get thanks from residents and fans.

Update: Quite literally as I type this a lorry has turned up and the rubbish is being cleared up. Great stuff! It doesn't take much for the Council to impress me, they've managed to do it.

Now will the Council just react to this problem or will they have a word with the resident responsible and try to stop it happening again?

"A-level success"?

2008-08-18T16:30:00.000+01:00

Well the A-Level results are out and Greenwich Council are making a bit of a song and dance about them.

"A-level results day was one of celebration in Greenwich. With an overall pass rate of 96.4%, a number of pupils achieved excellent results and will attend top universities" says a news update email that they sent out.

A page on the Council's web site boasts of "many success stories".

Let's step behind the spin and have a peak at what's really going on.

Pupils educated by Greenwich achieved an A-Level pass rate of 96.4%.

That's below the national average of 97.2%.

It's worse than last years pass rate of 97.8%.

It's worse than Lewisham's pass rate of 98.3%.

Once again Greenwich Council has gone into "head in the sand mode" in the face of a potential crisis.

Greenwich Council, failing our streets, failing our children.

Bin Blog Update

2008-08-16T11:56:00.002+01:00

It seems that despite claims to the contrary people are interested in reading and commenting about the state of the streets since the new bin scheme staggered into life.

So here's a quick update, and it's actually reasonably positive, sort of.

The street has been a lot cleaner of late and the problems at the top of the road haven't reoccurred. There is, or was, still a small green bin up there stuff full of plastic waste but that's better than it was.

It seems that recently the Council have even been around every week to take black sacks away.

However just around the corner the Last Bus Home is still having problems.

I was told a while ago that Floyd Road was a "priority road", is it still? Is this a standard level of service or are the Council still scampering around trying to keep on top of the mess while failing to tackle the cause?

Time will tell, and hopefully I'll have a bit more time on my hands to do the telling...

A quick update...

2008-08-04T10:28:00.002+01:00

A very quick follow on to my last post...

After last weeks cleanup a green bin at the top of Floyd Road is once again over spilling with plastic bags and recyclable waste.

What was I saying about the Council seemingly being unable to be proactive about the causes and simply reacting to problems?

I closed the last post with:

I think I'm right to be pessimistic over this being any change in the tide, I think I've got the historic evidence and an explanation of how the system works that back me up.

But come on, someone out there prove me wrong.

It looks like I've been proved right, again. That's such a shame.

On a lighter note did anyone see the air race this weekend?

I've caught people's attentions...

2008-08-03T09:32:00.005+01:00

My last post and the email it described has attracted a number of responses.

To open with I'll point out, to those who might not know, that my street has now been cleaned up. I suspect this is only temporary, I'm depressingly sure that the same residents and businesses will once again pile their rubbish up at the top of the road. However for now something has been done, I can only hope that that something included actually tackling the causes of the filth and not just the filth.

Have a look at the post for all the comments made there but here's a summary of everything that's gone on.

Monday 28th of July
Coucillor Janet Gillman emails me twice with an impressive average word count of 9 words per message. To be fair though one of the emails was blank. She told me that she had forward the email on to Councillor Maureen O'Mara who is responsible for Cleansweep. This response, in a way, goes right the heart of the problem. Cleansweep are a reactive group who clean up mess when it occurs. To the best of my knowledge Waste Services are the ones who are responsible for the longer term management of the problem. Greenwich Council, and Cleansweep in particular, actually do do a decent job of cleaning up when they've been made aware of something. However all they do is keep reacting and seemingly do little, or little that actually has any impact, to tackle the cause.

Tuesday 29th of July
I'm emailed by someone, who's name I have but will omit, from the Greenwich Contact Centre. Last Sunday as well as the email I reported the problem online to Cleansweep. There's a ridiculously tight word limit to what you can enter so all I managed was this:

Other information: Between number 2 and the top of the street and down the alley between number 1 and the top of the street.

Description: Blue Clear Away bin between #2 and the top of the road full of rubbish and smells. Outside #2 are green bins full of plastic bags also smelling. Alleyway between #1 and top of the road also has green bins filled with plastic and sacks.

Their response was:

With reference to the green top bins that are full of plastic etc. Do they belong to any of the residents in Floyd Road.
It is the responsibility of the residents who these bins belong to, to contact us to get these bins emptied. However, I have raised a Service Request (ID 225927) to advise Waste Services that these bins need emptying.

With regards to the Clearaway Bin, Clearaway need to be contacted to get this bin emptied as this does not belong to the Council.

The first point seems almost dismissive of my report, which was nice.

The second shocked me. They seemed to be saying that the bin was nothing to do with them and that they weren't going to do anything about it, to get it cleaned up I would have to report it to Clearaway.

Excuse me but isn't dumping commercial waste on a residential road fly tipping? Isn't that kind of the Council's business or can any group leave what they want where they want?

I did email them back asking:

Thank you for your response. Should I not report overspilling bins to Cleansweep? As to the Clearaway bin is this being dealt with or are you saying that I need to contact Clearaway myself to get it removed?

I've heard nothing back from them.

Councillor Gary Parker also emailed me. He did this to my email address for this site and not the one which I used to send the email. That does show that at least he remembers me and has got something filed away under my name. A small touch but one that did quite impress me.

He had this to say:

I was already aware of issues on Floyd Road, I have spoken to Jim Wintour and action should have been taken today to deal with the backlog of waste today; recent industrial action in waste services due to national pay issues may also be a contributory factor here, there is more planned in September, unless the dispute is resolved. Jim Wintour will be writing to you in the next few days with an update on the situation, if there are further issues, please do not hesitate to contact me.

So the mess was the fault of the national strike? Really? What about all the other times that the same people and businesses have fouled the top of my street? The strike doesn't really have anything to do with this at all, well apart from their possibly being a delay in getting it cleaned up. This once again goes back to my point about all we see Greenwich Council being is reactive and not proactive.

However he did successfully prompt Jim Wintour into action, as we shall see in a bit.

Thursday 31st of July
An appropriately named commentator commented:

Isnt it about time you start having a go at th pigs that live in your local area creating this problem ie the residents rather than blaming the council for the scum that live in your street?

I've had that kind of comment before. My response is that yes it is the fault of the residents and businesses who make the mess. However the Council have implemented a new, and somewhat complicated, scheme with seemingly no thought given to what to do when it goes wrong. It's been over 7 months now and still there are repeated problems. To begin with it seemed to be just residential waste that piled up, now however certain shop owners have cottoned on to the fact that the Council do nothing about the causes of the problem and have added their waste to the pile. The Council may not be the direct cause, however as the creators of the new scheme (which incidentally I do support) they have a duty to see that it's implementation does not cause problems. When problems are caused they have a duty to keep the streets clean.

I also hear from Jim Wintour, the director of Neighbourhood Services.

He said this:

Your ward councillors have contacted me about your concerns about Floyd Road. Indeed I should make it clear that your ward councillors have been assiduous and consistent in pressing me for a higher standard of waste collection, particularly in Floyd Road.

The new waste collection service has had many successes. For example, the percentage of waste recycled has increased from 24% in 2006/7 to 42% now.

The service has also had its problems, particularly with black bags. We have listened to what residents told us and taken action. The Council has agreed to offer all households black topped bins to place their residual rubbish in. Owing to the European shortage of bins we will not be able to introduce this until March 2009. In the meantime we are putting more intense efforts into collecting black bags and bins with incompatible rubbish.

There have been particular issues in Floyd Road. The road is closed to vehicles, making collection more difficult. However, I can only apologise for the unemptied bins on Sunday 27 July. I attach a photo which I took on the morning of Wednesday 30 July and you can see the bins had been emptied.

Some residents in Floyd Road still seem uncertain about recycling. You may wish to draw your neighbours’ attention to our website, setting out what rubbish goes in what bin, and when black bags are collected. The website is at:
http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/Greenwich/YourEnvironment/RubbishRecycling/

In conclusion, can I again thank you for the hard work that you and your colleagues do. The reports from concerned citizens like you are essential to delivering a cleaner and a greener Greenwich.

So my Councillors have been "assiduous and consistent in pressing" for cleaner streets? 7 months of pressure? With no end to the problems? Make your own mind up on that one...

As with Councillor Parker and the national strike Jim Wintour wheels out the water works as a partial cause of the problem. As with the strikes though the water works are a one off event, the same problems have been going on in my street for months, there's no connection there.

Yes some residents are unsure about the recycling so why don't the Council go and actually talk to those people? We all know who they are. You know reach out and make contact? I really don't see it as my job to go up and down my street trying to sort people out who for all I know could be not the most pleasant of characters. Don't we pay Council Tax to keep the streets clean? I would, and have had to, talk to my immediate neighbours about certain issues and between us we've sorted them out. However am I meant to take on that role for the entire street?

Saturday 2nd August
I get a surprise comment from Councillor Paul Webbewood of the Liberal Democrats.

Well the Liberal Democrat councillors put down the following motion at last Wednesday's Council:
(sorry it's a bit long)

"Council wishes to take stock following the introduction of the part-fortnightly rubbish collection system in January 2008.

Council notes that estimated recycling levels between January-March 2008 were 42%, compared to 24% in the whole of 2006-07. Compostable rubbish has increased fourfold following the introduction of the separate collections for food and garden waste.

Less positively Council notes many complaints about untidy streets due to the greater use of black bags.

Council welcomes the decison to purchase bins which will be offered to residents to use for non-recyclable rubbish in place of black bags, although it notes that this may cost over £1 million and believes that the problems should have been foreseen earlier.

Council notes that, while it is frustrating that a minority of residents are not co-operating with the new collection arrangements, it is not accepatble to leave bins deliberately uncollected even if they contain the wrong type of rubbish.

Council therefore:

1, Thanks all staff involved with the new rubbish collection system;

2. Congratulates new residents who have contributed to the increased recycling levels;

3. Apologises to residents for the extra mess on our Borough's streets since January;

4. Calls on Councillors Roberts and Sidhu to repeat this apology in a signed article in Greenwich Time;

5. Guarantees that all bins will be collected promptly even when contaminated by the wrong type of rubbish;

6. Will collect black bags weekly until the bins for residual waste become avaialble;

7. Will use all available powers to deal with residents who consistenetly fail to separate their rubbish in the proper way. Where such residents are private tenants Council will endeavour to make the owner of the property take responsibility for any such failure"

This was voted down by both the Tories (who at least had an alternative motion) and by Labour (who clearly resented discussing this in public). Deputy Leader Peter Brooks clearly wasn't interested and his only contribution to the debate was a bogus point of order.

All very interesting.

However if the opposition really do care about the borough then why not come out here with your camera and a journalist or two and really make a big deal about this issue. Perhaps they already are, but if so why aren't I hearing anything about it?

We have a real and demonstrable example of the failings of this Council on the streets of Greenwich. Use it.

Councillor Allan MacCarthy
Councillor MacCarthy gets a heading all to himself.

I heard nothing from him.

I presume he's too busy with his new role as Deputy Mayor, before then he was always so prompt with his responses and committed with his actions.

Oh wait, hang on, no he wasn't.

I've got an image of him spending the time that he used to spend ignoring the needs of his electors spending it sneaking into the Mayors Office, putting on the pointed hat and spinning round on the chair going "wheeeeeee!". Oh that and still ignoring the needs of those that put him where he his.

The Conclusions...
Congratulations to anyone who's made it this far!

We've seen a whole lot of hot air spouted above, a fair proportion of it from me. So is anything going to change? Will we see a real desire to resolve the problems? Will the opposition parties swing into action and really tackle the Council over this? I'd put money on the answer to those questions being "no".

Remember, as I found out, Waste Services are severely under resourced. Their rules of engagement are also being limited by "political" constraints, namely over their desire to use the law to tackle the persistent offenders.

I think I'm right to be pessimistic over this being any change in the tide, I think I've got the historic evidence and an explanation of how the system works that back me up.

But come on, someone out there prove me wrong.

My road stinks, again

2008-07-27T20:28:00.004+01:00

This this is another post about the Council, my Councillors, the new bin scheme and the same residents and businesses who continue to soil my street. I wish that it wasn't, how I so wish that it wasn't. However after being away and walking down my street and smelling what I can smell I really couldn't spend my "Charlton" time doing anything else.

This is an open email that I've sent to my local Councillors and the press, it should say it all.

This is an open email to my local Councillors. In particular I write to Councillor Gary Parker who has at least managed to give me comparatively substantial responses to my queries in the past, This is compared to Councillor Allan MacCarthy, who simply said that Councillor Janet Gillman was dealing with the problem (and that after a substantial delay due to "illness"), and Councillor Gillman herself who after a brief (ninety word) letter saying that the current problems were reported with no mention of a longer term plan.

Once again the top of Floyd Road is in an unacceptable state. The blue Clear Away bin that Waste Services said belonged to the local Kebab shop has reappeared and the green bins outside number 2 are full of plastic sacks. There are piles of plastic sacks and opposite, between number 1 and the top of the street, down the alley way are more green bins and plastic sacks with organic waste rotting in the summer hear. The smell is, on this warm Sunday evening, something that is rather impressive. I've attached a number of photos with this message that show the problem, what they don't show is that during the few minutes that it took for me to take them several people walked past me either commenting on the smell or simply wrinkling their noses.

In an email to me dated the 25th of June Councillor Parker told me he was "continuing to deal with issues regarding waste management in the Charlton area." One month has past, how effective can anyone claim that that "dealing" has been. If anyone has the chutzpah to claim that the response has been in any way effective I challenge them to come within a few meters of the top of my street, take a deep breath and then to repeat that same claim.

Councillors Parket, MacCarthy and Gillman have the audacity to claim that they are of the Charlton Ward. My dictionary informs me that the root meaning of the word "ward" is "keep safe, guard."

Consider the following:

1) We've had 7 months of the new bin scheme.
2) We have the same residents and businesses continually soiling my street with the same refuse.
3) Only one of my three Councillors has entered into any form of dialogue what so ever with me.
4) Councillor MacCarthy has himself been appointed to the role of Deputy Mayor of the borough.

I claim that not one of my Councillors, or indeed the Council itself, cares for, keeps safe or guards my local area.

They know about what is happening but still it continues to happen.

To be ignorant of a problem and to do nothing to resolve it is one thing.

To be aware of a problem and to still fail, or worse to not attempt, to resolve it is surely worse.

And this is how they tackle so simple an issue as to keep the streets clean and safe. Do they ask, or expect, us to trust them to deal with anything more serious?

And so once again I challenge my local Councillors to step up to that which they promised. I challenge them to care for, keep safe and guard the people that elected them into office.

You choose to stand for office, so now show that you stand for your residents or continue to prove that you simply don't care.

The Waterworks Arrive

2008-07-19T00:22:00.002+01:00

The road works to replace the water pipes that were meant to hit my road a month ago have finally arrived.

I've already seen at least one scrutty individual decided that he's too important to pay attention to the road works and throw the cones and barriers out of the way so as to get his car up the street.

According to a letter they popped through my door they're scheduled to last three weeks. It'll be a bit awkward but it's got to be done, a bit more noticed about the delay and rescheduling would have been nice though.

Red Bull Air Race

2008-07-18T23:57:00.004+01:00

The Red Bull Air Race is returning this year! I caught some of the practice runs in the week before the last one and bought tickets for the final and I had a great time. I will be looking into the possibility of going again.

What is reasonably interesting about this years event is how the organisers are handing the distribution of free tickets to local residents.

Last year the organisers gave tickets to the three London Boroughs who bordered the event. This is what Red Bull had to say to say at the time 10% of all general tickets will be given free to local residents of affected boroughs (Greenwich, Newham and Tower Hamlets) (click here for a bit more information).

So what happened?

Well both Newham and Tower Hamlets announced an open lottery for their residents to apply for tickets.

Not Greenwich, oh no, not Greenwich. They kept kind of quiet about the whole thing and I discovered that the tickets were to be distributed to "Community Groups" and then any left over would go to residents who managed to discover that they could register an interest. It was all very messy and as hinted at above somewhat secretive.

Local Blogger The Last Bus Home found out what happened to the tickets, you can read his findings here.

So two Councils did a free draw and Greeenwich had our glorious leader, and the first politician to lie on stage at the O2, Chris Roberts "hand pick" some local community groups before the rest went to the general public, or those that had heard about it anyway.

And what are Red Bull doing this year? Well they're organising their own draw for local residents to apply for (read about it here).

Could they be hinting that they were not too happy about the somewhat shoddy way that the Council dealt with the last batch of tickets that they gave them?

You can make your own mind up on that one.

If you want to know a bit more about last years saga then click here.

The Streets of Charlton

2008-06-21T17:43:00.006+01:00

As I walked up to the Great Get Together I took some photos along the way to capture how Charlton looks today.

There would have been more but as I said in an earlier post a truck came along Floyd Road today and picked up a number of black sacks that were out and about.

The next black sack collection isn't due for over a week...

Waste Services at the Great Get Together

2008-06-21T17:14:00.004+01:00

Today was the day of the Great Get Together at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich.

I took myself up there with the intention of having a word with someone at the Talk Café, where according to the Council's web site "you can enjoy free refreshments and give feedback on local issues by writing your suggestions on the suggestion wall, or filling in questionnaires and online surveys".

There were a fair few people up there and a few activities going on, if you had children I think it would have been quite a fun few hours. However I was there on business, so into the Talk Café I went. Well into it I went eventually, it did look a touch intimidating. They had a police car, a police CCTV van and a metal detector gate arch thing, maybe they were expecting trouble.

I couldn't see any of the Councillor's for Charlton there so I took myself over the the Waste Services stand and had a word with them there, I ended up talking to a couple of women who were very helpful and open with me. The key points to come out of this were:

Floyd Road is indeed a priority street and is still being dealt with.

A Councillor did bring Floyd Road to the attention of the Waste Services Team.

Reporting a problem to Cleansweep via the Call Centre (020 8921 4661) should result in the call being logged and Waste Services getting involved if they have to, you shouldn't need to contact them directly.

The big blue wheely bin at the top should have been removed by now, the Kebab shop owners had told them that it would be. Enforcement Officers will be sent to check it out and have another word with them.

Enforcement Officers will also be around this week to check for stray black sacks and contaminated bins.

Moving from trying to help residents who are having persistent problems to some kind of actual enforcement is proving to be awkward, "political" was the word actually used.

The whole scheme was dropped onto waste services with very little notice and there's only four of them to deal with the whole borough, they are working through a huge backlog of problems.

Black bins are going to be introduced for black sack waste, couple with this is going to be an increased drive to get bins stored off of the street.

On the matter of contaminated bins there was a waste lorry going around the streets this morning emptying contaminated green bins (those with plastic bags in), Miss Charlton Average believes that they had to empty about half the bins in Floyd Road. This is clearly a huge problem.

As to why actually enforcing the new bin scheme being a "political" matter could that go back to the Council claiming that 90% of households are doing the right thing with their bins and that their have only been a few teething problems?

If the Council continue to try and claim that all is well in Greenwich how will it look to set Waste Enforcement onto 1 in 10 of the households in the borough?

It would seem that it's better to let the four people in Waste Services run themselves ragged and to allow the streets to look like rubbish dumps than to actually admit that the problems we face are more than teething ones and that they never planned for this new scheme properly.

Anyhow I do get the feeling that Waste Services are trying hard to deal with this and I have seen some changes already, there's still a way to go but after nearly 6 months of nothing any progress is a great start.

So if you're street looks, and smells, like a rubbish dump what you need to do is to get Waste Services involved. This could prove to be rather tricky given the small numbers of staff and the borough wide spread of problems. However push your Councillors and it seems that you can get some form of action.

Here are some photos anyway.Looking across the main field towards the tents that housed lots of different stalls giving advice on different things, it all looked rather useful to be honest.

The Talk Cafe.

Another view of the Talk Cafe, note the Police van, Police car, metal detector arch and security people. The Council seems convinced that everything is well in Greenwich and that the people are happy...

Tomorrow's "Great Get Together"

2008-06-20T22:15:00.004+01:00

Barbara, in a comment to an earlier post, points out that tomorrow there is a Great Get Together at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich (read about it here).

She's going to be going along to talk to her local Councillors about the poor state that the new rubbish collection scheme has left her local streets in.

That seems to be my local "Great Get Together" too so I will try to make an appearance there and collar a Councillor or two as well. The more of us that do that the better. So please if you're bothered by the state of our streets please try and get there if you can. I'm convinced that people power can work and that we can make a difference over this.

It's interesting to note that I don't think I've had one email from the Council about it though. They're more than happy to email me when the O2 seems to be short of bums on seats (like the one today for the Comedy Event tomorrow that's happening when the Jubilee Line is shut) but nothing about an important local event like that.

I'm sure you can make your own conclusions on that...

Bin blog?

2008-06-20T21:48:00.003+01:00

Jim posted a comment to my last posting about the state of my street basically saying that all I seem to be posting about recently is the bins and that it was more interesting when I wasn't.

I can actually see his point, there's a number of local history things I was going to be looking into and posting about and I'd find that far more interesting. However my time right now is really rather pressured, and my street has been looking (and smelling) awful. So what's a blogger to do?

So yes I am going to write about what's happening around here, or more importantly I'll be writing about what the Council are not doing. It's tempting to just turn my back on it and write about more interesting things instead, but I do feel that there has to be some public record of how the Council are treating their residents. So I keep on at them and I keep a record of it here.

And maybe, just maybe, that tactic is actually working.

As I've said I've made contact with some people in Waste Services and things do actually seem to be happening now. People have been spoken to and the owner of the big blue wheely bin located (it's the kebab shop). It seems like there has been some poking around as the shop on the corner has now put up a small notice on their side wall saying that the rubbish is nothing to do with them. There's also been talk about removing some of the bins as well.

I suspect that Councillor Gary Parker might be behind getting Waste Services involved, it's very hard to tell. Someone managed to designate this street as a priority and it was that that triggered their visits.

Perhaps I'll now be able to devote my Charlton Average time to more interesting things, it shouldn't take this amount of effort to get the rubbish collected.

Water Mystery

2008-06-19T15:23:00.004+01:00

Somone, Thames Water I believe, is gradually going around the borough replacing the old water mains with new ones.

The works were due to hit my road on Monday, we had a letter about it and big signs went up on the lamposts telling us that the parking bays were being suspended for three weeks.

So Monday comes, I fill some bottles with water as we'd been warned that the supplies might be turned off. My car has been moved around the corner.

And then suddenly nothing much happen. Strange paint markings have appeared in the road but that's about it. The signs about the parking suspension vanish at some point during the day and many people are now parking as per usual.

So what's happening? Is the work going ahead? Is it rescheduled? Can I park my car outside again?

The work has presumably got to happen at some point and I'm fine with it being done, I'd just quite like to know when so I can plan accordingly.

I've tried to phone the Council and they weren't a lot of help. They told me that it's not their highways department, which I knew, and that they didn't know anything about it, which is a surprise.

I'll try and find out what's happening...

Update: I found this page on the Thames Water web site. A phone call turned up that the works have been delayed by a week or so and so the no parking signs were taken down. The man was unable to tell me when the restrictions will come back into force but said that they might do so without much notice.

So I'm keeping my car around the corner and a bottle of water in the fridge.

The Road manages to get worse...

2008-06-13T12:55:00.001+01:00

Well the state of the top of the road is getting worse and a very nice smell is developing.

Perhaps inspired by the filth on their doorstep the people up the top of the street have also once again filled their green bins with plastic bags.

Today is the third day since I've reported it to Cleansweep. So according to their own estimates it should be cleaned up. Fingers crossed.

Following on from the visit by some Council people last week I do have a name within waste services who I'm now trying to contact. It's a new angle of attack and she did seem helpful and wanted to know of any further problems.

But can I be excused for feeling very pessimistic about actually seeing any results?

The blind indifference of a merciless, unfeeling Council

2008-06-10T13:28:00.005+01:00

As I alluded to the other day I found out last week that Floyd Road is now a "Priority Street" for the Council when it comes to cleaning it up and sorting out the rubbish issues.

This came about because the Council sent some people around to chat to the residents about the new scheme and our feelings on it. I spent about 10 minutes talking to a very nice and seemingly interested lady from Waste Services.

She said the Council were serious about tackling the problem and they knew who some of the more problematic residents were. In particular she spoke to the people who keep doing things like this (their bins are on the left) and this (again their bins are on the left and they were responsible for at least for of the rubbish in the pile on the right, there was a parcel addressed to them amongst it). I suggest that they have a word with people like that a while ago, perhaps they were having some problems or were new residents baffled by the new collection scheme. Well either way it was seemingly finally being done.

So anyway I felt confident that things were finally being done. Perhaps the Council really were going to get this street looking like it did before the new bin scheme came in. I admit that even that wasn't great but it was better than the "the bin men are on strike" look that they seemingly are trying to cultivate now.

However towards the tail end of last week my optimism began to wane, today it's broken completely.

The least of the problems is that yet again numerous people around here have put black sacks out on the wrong week. So they sit there being animal and lout fodder for the next week.

However what's now up at the top of Floyd Road really takes the biscuit. There's an overflowing bin, a huge pile of black sacks and other rubbish next to it and sitting near the top is a large blue wheely bin thing that's also overfilling.

So this is a "priority street"? May your deity of choice help the rest of you.

So let's recap the things that I've heard from various representatives of the Council nearly 5 months into the new scheme and 3 months since I began to try and get them to clean the street up.

Councillor Janet Gillman: One fifty word letter back, a quick response but aside from saying the immediate mess at the time would be cleared up no comment about any long term solution. I've heard nothing from her since.

Councillor Allan MacCarthy: Took three weeks to respond due to a claim of illness. His letter dropped Councillor Gillman into it by saying she was dealing with it and would keep me up to date, not a word since. So did Councillor Gillman slack off in keeping me up to date or is Councillor MacCarthy a liar and she said she would do no such thing?

Councillor Gary Parker: I've had quite a bit of contact with this Councillor, he puts the others to shame on that front. However in terms of actual results he's not faired much better. Over a month ago he told me he was "monitoring the situation" in Floyd Road. Well either he's given up on that or he's seen that state of it and is happy with it, neither are particularly nice options. When there have been particularly bad problems he has been able to get them cleaned up and I believe it was him that prodded Jim Wintour into action, see below, and seems to also have been connected in the Waste Services staff coming around last week. However the problems haven't stopped, so after so many months what I am to think?

Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services: Took three weeks to respond. He did get the immediate mess cleared up when he said he would, however he's seemingly done nothing to stop it coming back. Back at the tail end of April he did claim that letters were being sent to those residents who were having trouble following the new scheme. Were they? If so was he happy that the letters were just ignored?

So we've got one Councillor who did nothing, another Councillor who pointed the finger at another Councillor and then ran away, as final Councillor who seems able to tackle the symptoms when chased but is incapable of making a dent on the cause and a director of the department responsible who gave one long reply, did a single clean up within the timeframe he said that he would but then vanished into silent oblivion.

Great.

Let me remind those people that I for one regret with a great passion voting for what my dictionary says ward stands for.

Ward: Under care of a guardian, guardianship.

Charlton is under your care, you are it's guardian. That's not because it was forced upon you but because you choose to stand up before us residents and say that you could be trusted with it.

Look back through my old posts about this.

Look at the photos that close this entry.

Remember this has been going on for nearly half a year.

Can anyone say that they're doing a good job?

As before this will be reported and I'm sure that it will be cleaned up, but I'm equally sure that not one of the people listed above will do anything of substance and determination to stop it from happening again.

I'm not alone in this, another local blogger has reported a very similar problem with a very familiar lack or response from the Council.

Council in lack of action shock!

2008-06-06T17:06:00.002+01:00

I'm not the only person to be fed up with the lack of action from Greenwich Council when it comes to keeping the borough clean and tidy.

Read this story from the NewsShopper web site.

That's been running for 18 years!

"Ms Brown says residents have been in constant contact with council officials about the issue but there has been no end to the problem."

Constant contact with Council officials? No end to the problem? It all sounds very familiar doesn't it...

Actually to be honest there have been signs of action on my street. We had a Council employee come around the other day and apparently Floyd Road is a "priority street" for clearing up. I need to do a full post about that but I just really haven't had the time, it will be coming soon, along with some photos of what a "priority street" looks like, well that's unless they clean it up soon, which is unlikely.

"Very determined" against litter?

2008-05-29T16:57:00.002+01:00

The latest issue of Greenwich Time has just come through my door and I don't even have to open it to get a dry chuckle from it.

On the front page there's an article about Greggs the Bakers in Woolwich getting a telling off about litter in the street.

"We're very determined in our campaign against littering in our borough" says Councillor Maureen O'Mara.

Oh really?

Click here to see the state that the Council seem quite content to leave my street in.

Councillor O'Mare hopes that other companies in Greenwich "will take notice and make sure that they are not a part of the problem."

Can she widen her gaze to include the Council itself and in particular the Councillors for Charlton?

The new bin scheme is certainly a "part of the problem", as are my Councillors who have achieved nothing in over two months of contact.

Rubbish on Repeat

2008-05-28T19:31:00.005+01:00

Well the overflowing bins were emptied and the Council actually managed to get a nappy sack collection done this week, so all should be good.

Nope, the green bins at the top of the street are once again filling up with plastic rubbish sacks. As before it's the same house that's doing it.

After my last post Councillor Gary Parker responded again.

Regarding what to do with those residents who keep on putting the wrong rubbish out he had this to say:

Some work is being done regarding this but needs to be clarified, some work is currently being developed across departments in a number of services, including enforcement, but also includes advice and support on a number of environmental issues including waste collection.

Couple that up with his comment from about two weeks ago.

With enforcement action there are some legal issues and they often need clarification or legal advice.

So basically there's still nothing been done and they don't actually seem to know what they are going to do, they're still "developing" it.

Great.

Now maybe I'm naive from my years of working but whenever I've started work on any sort of a project one of the first questions that's raised is "OK, what happens if this goes wrong? What do we do to recover from it?"

With regards to the new bin scheme that never seems to have crossed the Councils mind and only now, four months into the system, are they beginning to wonder about it.

So the pattern for my road seems to be:

1) The street is filled with rubbish by the same people.
2) Either
a) A Councillor is needled into getting it cleaned up.
b) A residents reports it to Cleansweep and it's cleaned up.
3) Repeat from step 1.

Four months of the new scheme and two months of talking to my Councillors has not produced any change in that pattern.

For some reason I'm not very confident that we're going to see any change in it.

Councillor Parker responds...

2008-05-22T13:07:00.003+01:00

After I made my last post about the rubbish piling up in my road again I emailed Councillor Gary Parker about the issue.

Part of what I said to him was:
However once again it's the same people making the same mess on my road.

I've asked this before and never had any kind of a substantial answer, what is being done to address this? It would make such a difference to the area if those few persistent residents who continue to ignore the new bin scheme could be helped out to do so.

So what is being done to tackle the actual causes of this rather than just the week on week on week symptoms?

And now he's replied, which in the interest of fairness I should point out he is quite good at:

I am discussing your email with council officers, and will respond in due course, I am on holiday next week, so if I am not able to get all the issues clarified in the next couple of days ,it maybe a week or so till I get back to you, with enforcement action there are some legal issues and they often need clarification or legal advice

I may be reading too much in to it but it doesn't seem that the "legal issues" have been given any consideration until relatively recently, consider that the new scheme has been in place for nearly four months no and was "planned" (cough) for some time before that.

Well we shall see.

I've asked him if efforts have been made to contact the people causing the problems to see if they need any help before they go waving the legal stick around, we shall see what comes back...

Greenwich style bin schemes elsewhere...

2008-05-22T12:57:00.003+01:00

The NewShopper reports that Bromley Council are looking into implementing a new rubbish collection scheme. It will be somewhat similar to Greenwich's in that recyclable and compostable waste will be taken weekly, other things bi-weekly.

There's been a bit of a lively discussion about it in the comments section and in the end Councillor Colin Smith of Bromley chipped in with his thoughts. One part of his comments was quite interesting....

"It certainly WONT be like the Greenwich scheme. That's precisely why we are watching, waiting and seeing how other Borough's progress their schemes first to ensure we avoid similar mistakes."

So not only do many Greenwich residents think the new rubbish scheme is a bit, well, rubbish but other local Council's and their residents think so too. Their Council have to explicitly state that what they're doing won't by anything like what Greenwich have done in order to try and reassure people.

Meanwhile Greenwich Council are happy to keep their heads stuck in the sand and the only official comments are to admit a few "teething problems".

Updated:
Councillor Colin Smith has commented again about Greenwich:

"I'm loathe to criticise another Council, even one of a different political hue as every Council is moving in this direction and doing so as best they can, but we won't be using Greenwich's model."

He might be loathe to criticise but he is quite keen to once again point out that Bromley will not be copying Greenwich.

Our Council seems to be some sort of byword for doing the job badly. Well unless you believe Greenwich Time, in which case everything is peachy, oh yes.

And the rubbish came back...

2008-05-21T14:11:00.005+01:00

It's been another very busy couple of weeks with me spending less and less time in Charlton, which may have been good for the Council.

I was hoping to find the time to highlight, once again, the mess at the top of Floyd Road. Well by the time I find some time to post about it some of it has actually been tidied up. There was a big blue wheely bin thing full of waste, some of which appeared to be commercial (fruit crates?). Well something happened and the blue bin has now gone. Which is good. So a big pat on the back to whoever made that happen.

However whoever shifted the blue bin ignored the state of the once again overspilling green bins next to them.

Yet another week and yet another wrong load of rubbish stuffed into the wrong bins and left behind by the bin men (understandably so).

This is what I'm faced with going up and down the road...

It's outside the same house as before so I'm guessing it's the same residents that keep on doing this.

When I wrote to my local Councillors and Jim Wintour, the Director of Neighbourhood Services, over 2 months ago I ended the letter by saying:

I write to you in the hope that you can take charge of the situation and get the streets around here cleaned up.

Furthermore I can only dream that you will make sure that measures are put in place to stop it happening week after week after week.

This is your ward, you are meant to be the ones who care for it, please prove to me that you do.

In my emails to Councillor Parker, the only one of my Councillors to give me any kind of a substantial response or dialogue, I've explicitly asked him "What has, or is, being done about enforcement of collection issues?". I've never had an answer.

The same people seem to keep doing the same thing week after week after week. I know who they are, the Council surely must know who they are. Why aren't they helping/sorting them out?

Now if I knew them I'd have a word, I've spoken to my immediate neighbours about some problems that we had with the new scheme and got them all sorted out. But I don't know those people and I don't see why I should have to walk up to strangers and ask them what their trouble with the Council's cunning plan is.

So I write here.

And I phone Cleansweep (it will be cleaned in 2-5 days, apparently).

And I email my Councillors.

And occasionally something gets done and the street is clean for a few days.

And that seems to be the way that things are going to stay.

Am I alone in thinking that that's really not good enough?

Oh, and there was another failed nappy collection...

What they filmed in Charlton...

2008-05-11T21:47:00.004+01:00

A while ago I commented about some filming that I happened upon up at Charlton House (click here).

Well I've found out what it was, it's an advert for BBD HDTV.

If I've got my HTML right this should be it....

If not try clicking on the link below:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cHLKwjUkyQU

What is the solution to the rubbish problem?

2008-05-11T21:28:00.003+01:00

TroubleBrother left a comment on my last post.

He raised some good and challenging points so I thought it worthwhile giving a proper response.

Yes I know it is certain people along the street making the mess. While I agree that my street seems to have more than it's fair share of them walking about the area does show that I'm not alone. Friends nearby also report similar problems, though again perhaps not at the same scale.

However these problems never happened under the old bin scheme. The council have introduced a new system with seemingly no thought given as to what to do, which I simply do not believe is the right thing to do. You can't introduce such a big shift in so a basic a service, a service that many of us just take foregranted, without planning for the problems that non-compliance will cause.

So yes it's wrong that people are doing what they're doing, but the Council should have "disaster recovery" plans in place.

Personally I feel that they should be talking to the residents who are doing this, some old fashioned human contact with someone popping around to see if they have a problem. In the end there should be a final recourse of taking their bins away and "punishing" them under some form of fly tipping legislation.

As for forming a group, well to be honest I wouldn't know where to begin. There have been a couple of "problems" with my immediate neighbours and the new bin scheme and I've spoken to them and it's been fine ever since. When it comes to people that I don't know, and bearing in mind those are the people who are so selfish/ignorant/stupid so as to keep on fouling the street week after week after week, I really feel unable to just go knocking on their door and to say "Oi! No!"

I do hope that I'm doing something a bit more constructive than just whinging. As I've said before it looks like my time in Charlton is drawing to a close and it's tempting to just say "Oh s*d it" and let the street look how the Council and certain residents are happy for it to do so. However I'm trying to not fall into the trap of not giving a damn about my area and resolved myself to do something, I hope that I am.

There's been a tidy up...

2008-05-09T15:32:00.005+01:00

Councillor Parker emailed me in response to either my email or my last post. He said that he was dealing with the matter.

Well it looks like he has been good to his word and there has been a tidy up.

The car parking area has had the big pile of rubbish taken away and the chairs perched over the bins have gone as well.
Nappy sacks appear to have now been collected.
The bins at the top of the road have been emptied

The only slight niggle is that the wooden crate that was perched atop the bins is still there on the pavement and full of recyclable materials. Will the recycling bin men on Monday see it as there responsibility to take it? We shall see.

Anyhow this is a good start but it is not the solution.

Will the situation be allowed to develop again?

Have measures been taken to tackle the actual causes of the problem rather than just the symptoms?

Constantly reacting to rubbish in the streets isn't going to solve the problem. I shouldn't have to keep badgering my Councillors or doing silly charts about monkeys (though I must admit I've learned a lot about them now, which is nice) in order to keep the streets as clean as they were prior to the new bin scheme.

I want to believe that Councillor Parker and his colleagues really are on top of this, but four months into the new scheme and with no end to the problems in sight I've got my doubts.

Still fingers crossed.

Let's see if the Council really can deliver this time.

2 months on, how effective are my Councillors?

2008-05-08T20:35:00.005+01:00

Right, here we go, the rubbish situation....

During my travels Councillor Gary Parker emailed me again:

"I have been monitoring the situation and asked the Council to look at this situation again, re; enforcement of collection issues, they have promised to check on the situation and take appropriate action. I am sure you will let me know if there are still issues"

To open with isn't Councillor Parker a part of the Council? He's making it sound like it's some separate entity that he has words with now and again rather than something that I, somewhat foolishly, voted him on to.

And he's monitoring the situation is he? Well in that case then he's aware that the following photos show how my street looks today, indeed how I've seen it look for the past few days.

The car parking area between Floyd Road and the railway.
This is also the car parking area, those chairs have been there for about two months, I've got a photo to prove it (click here to see it).
The bins full of wrong and unemptied rubbish have once again reappeared at the top of the street. The drift from one side of the road to the other as the builders working opposite use them to seeming hold their gate shut.
Another week, another failure to collect nappies.

Now bear in mind that I wrote to my Councillors two months ago, and only the other day one of them personally emailed to tell me he was "monitoring the situation", how am I meant to feel?

This is the service and quality of life that two months of complaining, personal contact and assurance of action from the Council gives us.

I cannot see this in any other way than a complete failure of the Council and it's representatives to tackle the problem.

Councillor Parker I ask you what have you, as a part of the Council, done about "enforcement of collection issues"?

To any member of the Council that sees this, look at the photos above, how do you feel? If you feel that you can say anything slightly positive then come down to my road on a warm day and take a nice deep breath. If you can fight back the gag reflex and still be positive then you have my admiration, if not my respect.

I've given my local Councillors and the Director of Neighbourhood two months to try and crack this and they've patently failed. As soon as I get some more time I feel left with no option but to find some higher point to complain to.

London City Airport Campaign Group

2008-05-08T20:29:00.002+01:00

I've been emailed regarding my post on the Council taking a stance on the increased flights from Heathrow but ignoring the far more local London City Airport's expansion.

It's a short email so I'll post it up in it's entirety:

Read your post on the above issue, very accurate in our opinion! I'm not sure if you saw (are are aware of our campaign blog) our blog post on the HACAN meeting and Cllr Alex Grant's input on the very same:

http://londoncityairportfighttheflights.blogspot.com/2008/04/greenwich-council-change-flight-paths.html

Anyhow the web site above is worth a look.

"Special" pre-sale for Narnia Premiere

2008-05-08T20:18:00.002+01:00

I've just had a very helpful email letting me know that Greenwich Card holders can "take advantage of a special pre-sale before tickets go on sale on Friday 9 May" for the premiere of the new Narnia movie at the O2.

OK so maybe having an extra evening to buy tickets before the general public can is kind of "special", but how on earth are people going to take "advantage" of it if we're only told just before 5pm?

How many Greenwich Card holders are going to check their email this evening and be able to take advantage of this offer?

Did the O2 spring this on the Council at the last minute or is the Council's fault for giving us such short notice?

Good news for the potentially quite small number of Greenwich Card holders who will check their emails this evening, not so good news for the rest of them.

The Local Opposition

2008-05-08T14:38:00.000+01:00

Verumi commented on my previous post on how the Council don't seem to care about the massive expansion of flights from the neighbouring London City Airport but do seem to have an interest in the more distant Heathrow.

"We have a council that is hypocritical and shameless. Lets hope the question is raised in chambers" he/she says.

Well we can hope, but it's not going to happen. We in Greenwich are as badly failed by the opposition as we are by the Council. They won't kick up a stink about this, well they haven't so far and by past form I can guess that they won't.

Why?

Conservative Councillor Nigel Fletcher surely knows what an opposition party is meant to do, he proudly proclaims that he's "writing a Doctoral thesis on parliamentary Opposition."

So therefore he must know that the role of the opposition is to, well, oppose.

So why the silence?

Well as I've said before I believe that the opposition see Greenwich as merely a step on to bigger and better things at Westminster. This Borough will never be Conservative no matter how badly the Council seem to treat us and they know it.

So I see it as either being the opposition simply not caring about Greenwich at all, or in a far more mercenary fashion they realise that making a noise will draw attention to themselves. That attention will then focus on their lack of action in tackling the Council and in making things better, which is the sort of attention they won't want, so they keep quiet.

Heading back to Concillor Fletcher for a moment you can see clearly where his emphasis is by looking at his blog.

Here's a summary of his posts so far this year:
National Government's Rubbish: 2
I'm David Cameron's Mate: 1
I'm Boris Johnson's Mate: 2
London Mayoral Election: 3
The Conservative's are great: 3
China's Bad: 2
Cutty Sark: 2
Charlton House: 1
Death of a Constituent: 1

So in total:
Non-Local Issues: 13
Local Issues: 4 (all in January, not one since)

We could give him half a point in that one of his "China is bad m'kay" posts takes a pop shot at some Greenwich Councillors who took a trip to China. However I contest that that's hardly a major local issue when you've got rubbish piling up in your street and thousands of extra planes going over your head.

Of the 4 posts about local issues not one of them is about anything of real substance, not one is about tackling the Council over it's policies. Yes we know it's bad the Cutty Sark caught fire, yes Charlton House does look nice and I agree it's sad that you lost a Constituent in a car crash. However is that really all you have to say about your ward?

Not one word about the tens of thousands of extra flights going right over our head from London City Airport and how the Council are ignoring it?

Nothing to say about the cuts in Council Services?

No interest in the new rubbish collection scheme and it's "head-in-the-sand" approach to problems and hygiene issues?

Latching himself onto Boris' band-wagon seems to be something that Nigel prefers to spend is time on. Since January the election for Mayor seems to have captured all of his attention.

So basically with our Opposition Councillors' eyes fixed on bigger political ponds than Greenwich don’t expect there to be any real comment on the genuine local issues they're supposed to care about.

In the interests of political neutrality I will be returning with a post taking some more shots at the Labour Councillor's that do in fact run our Borough as soon as I get some proper time to spend on it...

Heathrow has more of an impact on Greenwich than London City Airport?

2008-05-06T12:31:00.004+01:00

Greenwich Time is usually worth a chuckle or two as the Council tries to spin it's way around various issues and attempts to make us feel like we're getting a good service.

The 16th of April issue (I said in my last post I've got a backlog of stuff I'm sorting out) provided a typical example.

A resident wrote in asking for support for a residents group objecting to the changes in the flight paths for Heathrow Airport which will, apparently, put far more planes over our heads. Which is all fair enough, however the Councils' response was far more interesting.

Apparently the Council did respond to the Heathrow consultation questioning the noise and air quality assumptions. They say they are monitoring developments to make sure their voice is heard "on this important issue".

Which is what a Council should be doing when you think about it.

It's a shame that they didn't show the same level of involvement when it came to London City Airport and planes flying several hundred feet, if that, over or heads rather than several thousand.

Councillor Peter Brooks is not only Greenwich's representative on the London City Airport Consultative Committee but also represents the people of Thamesmead, who have the planes going right over them.

He couldn't be bothered to attend any of the meetings of that Consultative Committee for the four years before October 2007, and quite possibly any of them since.

This despite their being a consultation in that period about increasing the number of flights by some 40,000.

When asked about his failure to attend his response was that there was nothing of impact to Greenwich that was going to be discussed.

So that extra 40,000 flights from the airport that he's on the committee for and going right over the heads of the very people he's meant to represent doesn't have any impact?

But changes to Heathrow do have enough impact for the Council to get involved?

What's the difference?

Why are local issues being ignored in favour of more wide scale ones with a lower impact?

I've said before that I get the feeling that far too many people who are involved in the politics of Greenwich, from all political parties, are not in it for the local area but instead see it as a leg up to the big boys in Westminster.

This lack of interest in the lives of the people of Thamesmead but involvement in what goes on at Heathrow seems to me to be just another example of that kind of problem.