Maryon Park didn't win a grant

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.

Remember to vote for Maryon Park

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!

Are the trains running on Sunday?

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.

Vote for Maryon Park!

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

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!

Blame Newham or Greenwich Council

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!"

"A-level success"?

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.

The Waterworks Arrive

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

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.

What they filmed in Charlton...

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

London City Airport Campaign Group

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.

Streetcar

Well another week away from Charlton in another part of the UK that seemingly doesn't have any problems keeping rubbish off of the street, which is a subject I will be returning too....

I've got a huge stack of things to get cleared over the next few days and bringing this Blog up to date is one of them.

So here we go....

Have you ever heard of Streetcar? I hadn't until a leaflet popped through my door the other week.

The basic idea is that you join up and gain access to a pool of cars for which you can book for as little as a 30 minute slot.

It turns out that Charlton has a number of cars, there's one in Wellington Avenue and a number in Sundorn Road.

This all sounds to be a really good idea for people who only really want/need a car to do an occasional large shopping run, which is about half of what I use my car for.

The hourly rate for a Polo seems to be just under £4, add onto that a yearly membership fee of £49.50 and if you do one big but quick shop a week it works out as being about £5. You get 30 miles of free petrol so there wouldn't be any charges for that either.

So basically, as said above, this seems to be a really good idea and a very positive initiative.

Has anyone out there used the service?

Anyway you can get more information here: http://www.streetcar.co.uk.

Photos of the filming in Charlton

As I said earlier there was filming going on today up at Charlton House.

I've now got around to uploading some photos of the action...

The red sports car and the fake wall behind it. There was smoke coming out of it, note also the antiques scattered around.

The Antiques Roadshow signs, one on the wall has come down, no idea if that's deliberate or if it was the wind.

Looking across the set towards the cameras (which were quite serious things on tracks). Just after this was taken there was a take and someone jumped out of the car, ran towards the house and then dove onto a blue crash matt. I think I might have disrupted the shot by being where I was...

If you look carefully you can see the blue crash matt that the person jumped onto earlier.

Filming in Charlton

If you're around you might like to know that there's filming going on up at Charlton House.

A red sports car has been set up to look like it's smashed through a wall and into some tables. There are some Antiques Roadshow banners up and lots of antique looking things scattered around.

Either the Antiques Roadshow is a great deal more exciting than I would believe it to be or it's a part of something else.

Asylum SFX are involved and they appear to have done some impressive things in the past so it's not something amateur.

Beyond that I'm clueless, I'm not the sort to ask questions.

There will be some photos up later...

What "matters most" to the Council, what "matters most" to us?

I've had the latest issue of Greenwich Time popped through my door, which is good timing as I need something to line my green food caddy with.

The front page boasts about how the Council are spending £1 million on a new police initiative to fight gang crime. This, they say, is a "part of [the council's] ongoing commitment to focus Council spending on the issues and services that matter most to local residents."

Remember that Greenwich is the Council that spends £3.1 million on publicity every year.

Bexley, Bromley and Croydon each spend an average of just over £0.8 million a year each.

£1 million a year for tackling gang crime.

£2.5 million more every year than other local Council's to tell us how good the Council is.

I think it's pretty clear which are the "issues and services that matter most" to the Council and I don't think they're the ones that matter to local residents.

PS: I've brought the spending on publicity up several times and I don't apologise for doing it again. It's important that we know about it and if just one person reading this remembers to tackle a Council member about this come election time (which is about the only time that we see them) then I think it's worth it.

The Blackwall Tunnel is closed...

...and there's traffic chaos.

There's been a big diesel spill northbound on the southern approach road. So the tunnel is shut in that direction.

Apparently it's chaos out there.

Some people took about 4 hours to do a one hour trip here this morning, and it doesn't sound like they're alone.

I am so glad I don't have to drive to work.

In theory the tunnel should reopen tomorrow so normal service will hopefully be resumed.

This has happened before though and it does throw up how vulnerable this area is when the tunnel has problems. If there's an issue then very quickly this how area locks up solid. I think it's especially bad right now as people are coming off the approach to the tunnel and trying to get to the Woolwich Ferry by going down Woolwich Road. So not only is there far more traffic trying to get that way than normal but there's also a huge queue building up.

Not good.

£3.3 million for our youth!

Greenwich Council are making excited noises about the £3.3 million in youth funding that they've received from the London Development Agency. You can read about it on their web site here or at the News Shopper site here.

£3.3 million is a lot of money, an awful lot of money.

But consider this, it's only a fraction over the £3.1 million that Greenwich Council spend each year on publicity.

Len Duvall, London Assembly Member for Greenwich, says that "my previous experience in working with young people means that I am well aware of the huge benefits the funding will bring."

Chris Roberts, the Council Leader, boasts "providing platforms which can enable young people to prosper and achieve is a priority that Greenwich places great importance on."

If our Labour Leaders are so aware of the benefits of a one off injection of £3.3 million and our young people are such a priority to them then why don't they cut the publicity budget down to the average of Bexley, Bromely and Croydon who manage to spend a total of £2.5 million between them?

That would free up £2.4 million every year! Imagine the "huge benefits" we could see from that!

That won't happen though, it's evidently not that important to them.

They'd rather spend the money, in part, publishing Greenwich Time trying to convince us that they run this borough in a reasonably competent manner.

And of course they've got to fund those big posters on the back of our buses telling us how good our children's exam results, when in reality even a cursory look into it reveals how poorly our schools are doing under their leadership.

"Providing platforms which can enable young people to prosper and achieve" might be important to Greenwich Council, trying hard to convince us that they're doing a great job so as to keep themselves in power is evidently the real "priority that Greenwich places great importance on."

The Pub at Well Hall Eltham

This is a bit out of my area but I've found out that the Tudor Hall barn at Well Hall in Eltham is shutting down.

What does this have to do with me?

Well I stumbled upon it while trying to visit Eltham Palace a few months ago. It struck me as being really rather pretty and worthy of a visit.

However the Pub's lease is owned by Greenwich Council, who have decided to shut it down to turn it into something more "community-orientated."

So that'll be something with the public in mind then? Like the tickets for the Red Bull Air race or the corporate box at the O2? I'm not holding out much hope for whatever they have in mind...

It'll probably be somewhere for the Council to get away from the smell of rotting rubbish while they hope for more Led Zeppelin tickets so they can see them again.

Oooo, that was a bit moody...

Anyway you can read about the story on the News Shopper web site here.

Return of the Red Bull?

It sounds like the Red Bull Air Race is coming back to London in the summer. There's a list of dates on their web site here. They say they're awaiting confirmation and don't give a location within London. Returning to the Greenwich Peninsula has got to be a pretty good possibility though.

So if it does return I wonder what's going to happen with the tickets. Will the Council get any free ones? Will they actually tell us local residents (who they were meant for) that they have them?

If you don't know what I'm on about then click here for all the posts on what happened last year.

Cutty Sark Update

The News Shopper web site has put a story up with an update on what's happening at the Cutty Sark, read it here.

Thankfully, as I hoped when it happened, it doesn't sound like the fire did too much damage at all. Basically the Iron Work appears to be fine and only about 10% of the planks were charred by the flames.

A couple of things were lost but they're apparently not original features of the ship and one of them isn't going to be replaced.

So all told it was an incredibly lucky escape. Hopefully some good will come out of the fire, maybe those of us who are local(ish) to the ship will realise how special she is and how lucky we are to have her in Greenwich.

Anyhow good news that's perked me up on a cold Monday morning :)