Last night popped along to the open air cinema screening Back to the Future in Dulwich Park. Theirs something about open air cinema – kind of like how food tastes nicer when its BBQ. bBQ cinema.
Everything was really well organised.
Hopefully we’ll see a lot more BBQ cinema.
Alleys are magnets for anti social acts and worse. A simple measure to drastically reduce such problems is gating alleyways. Sounds easy – so I thought. The first act as a councillor was to arrange a pot of money to fund gating alleyways. Boy, is it hard to gate them. You have to obtain agreement from everyone who has legal access. Once you have agreement to gate an alleyway you need to arrange keys for everyone, who can provide emergency access. The list of issues and problems is long, very long.
So I’m delighted to report that the alleyway from Northcross Road behind the Palmerston has now been gated.
That an alleyway on Ashbourne Grove is imminent. We’re working on an Elsie Road one, and a Chesterfield Grove alleyway. We’re working on another but need to talk to residents more before telling anyone else.
If you know of any alleyway in East Dulwich that would ideally be gated please do get in touch.
Last night the final part of the specification for new outside lighting for East Dulwich Community Centre on Darrell Road was agreed by the centre.
The centre will have 90w lighting columns with total costs of £14,000 funding by the East Dulwich councillors support via the Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding. This lighting will enable outdoor activities for young people the whole year round.
Lots of complicated calculations involving predicted lux values and uniformity. The final solution will be 35% more energy efficient that the original proposals. Providing 35.52 lux with 45% uniformity.
I’m looking forward to having a kick around under these new lights in the next couple of months.
The current uproar in America about allowing all Americans having access to health care available from state funding rather than just retirees has crystallised for many Brits arguments about the NHS. For some, notably from the Tory party, its highlighted their true beliefs that the NHS should be dismantled. For many others we’ve heard deeply affecting stories of how the NHS has saved lives for all parts of society.
Several arguments that persuade me that a NHS system is best for individuals and society. A close friend took up a job in the states that came with medical health insurance for him and his family. The day he took up his new job his young child became dreadfully ill and spent a month in Boston’s children’s hospital. If she’d become ill a day earlier they would have been financially ruined by the medical bills. We are so lucky that we don’t live under the shadow of such fear. Even where medical insurance is in place the fine print will often mean it doesn’t pay out.
A few facts the World Health Organisation and Commonwealth Fund have reported:
US healthcare spend 16% of GDP, England 8.3%
US Life expectancy 77 years, England 78 years
US acute bed/1000 people 2.8, England 3.6
US average length of stay acute care 5.6 days, England 3.6 days
US under 5 mortality/1000 live births 9, England 6.
So we spend roughly half the cash but get better results.
Hopefully in America common sense will prevail rather than a poverty aspiration amongst the rich and powerful.
Hopefully the exposure of many Tories uncosted views on the NHS will ensure common sense. We can’t afford as a nation to double health spending for poorer results emulating the states.
It means that the Dulwich Hospital isn’t directly competing with Kings College Hospital for custom. But instead conitnues to compliment each others work.
I’m not a Muslim but for a number of years I’ve been thinking about taking part in Ramadan – this 30 day period of fasting and contemplation. I’ve been impressed by the fortitude of a work colleague every year. This year I’ve finally plucked up the courage to see if I can show sufficient resolve to take part.
Two big fears. My wife will have a sense of humour failure at my eating before 4.30am and after 8.30pm every day for a month. That I wont be able to stick to it. Wish me luck.
In January the East Dulwich Lib Dem councillors supported the planning application for the £6.5M renovation of the East dulwich Leisure Centre but asked that the scheme should be rejected if as planned due to the buildings heritage the pool roof wasn’t insulated. The main planning committee added a condition that this should be assessed and if practical roof insulation included.
What a relief – we’ve just been told that although insulating the roof will add 4 weeks to the centres closure it can and will be insulated. So I’d like to apologise for the extra 4 weeks the pool will be closed but the reduced CO2 emissions will make this really worthwhile.
Ensuring maximum insulation, as per this condition, is crucial to Southwark Council helping fight global warming.
The £6.5M renovation will be fantastic and will once again become the truely great facility it once was.
Caroline Pidgeon a local Lib Dem Southwark councillor and also a Greater London Assembly member has come up with the great idea for 1 hour bus tickets. The idea is much like the tube where once you’re in the system you can change tube trains and lines as many times as you need. 1 hour bus tickets would mean you could change buses with no extra charge. For me this would mean catching the first bus in the direction I want to go rather than a bus that goes exactly where I need to go. It will reduce the overal time taken to get me from A to B. It would also mean people are penalised for living in areas that have poor bus choices.
Caroline has visited a number of boroughs across London to drum up support including Lambeth, Waltham Forest, islington, Brent, Westminster, Harrow, Hammersmith and Fulham with lots more visits planned.
If you support this idea please sign the petition through the online petition www.ourcampaign.org.uk/1hourbusticket . Reaction from Londoners has been extremely positive. We need as many signatures as possible to really persuade the Mayor of London to listen to our idea and get a better deal for London bus users.
Each year, Dulwich Community Council has around £370,000 to spend on improving our area through the Cleaner, Greener, Safer programme. No one likes a constitutional anorak but if ever there was a demonstration of how the way we make decisions can improve the quality of those decisions it is Community Councils. In the past all spending decisions were made in Peckham by people who may or may not have a clue about our local area. Now spending decisions are made by people who represent the area – and that means we’re more likely to invest in things the community really wants to see happen. Liberal Democracy in action.
Each year, any local person or community organisation can submit an idea for how to improve our local area. All ideas are welcome no matter how big or small and each year the applications flood in.
In the past projects have involved things like improving open spaces , small parks and playgrounds, tree planting and public art. The famous East Dulwich SNUB Say No to Unwanted Bags campaign was funded this way, as was the crime fighting alert boxes for local shops in Lordship Lane. Funding can range from just £2000 for small projects to over £150,000.
This year, we’ve funded another great range of projects. Here are a few:
Back to school.
East Dulwich parents and children are anticipating the start of the new school year. It’s easy to forget what a major event this is for children. It’s less easy to ignore the lack of equality in educational chances. The gap between those who have and those who have not in education is stark in an area like ours. The whole range of provision is there to be seen, from the private schools of Dulwich Village, through our popular over-subscribed state schools to those schools that some parents fight to avoid.
Things have of course improved immeasurably over the past few years. It was only a few years ago, before the Lib Dems took control in 2002, that the local education service under Labour for 44 years, having failed two OFSTED reports was deemed so dreadful that it was privatised by the Labour Government and given to an engineering firm to run. That Labour period is behind us and now, year after year, our local schools under the Lib Dems are improving above the national average rate.
At primary level, the latest results show our primary schools to be amongst the best in London and at key stage 2 we are now at the national average for the first time in Maths and English. The pupils, parents, teachers and governors who have worked incredibly hard to achieve this all deserve our congratulations but there is still so much to do.
But being one of the best in London is not good enough when so many parents want to leave London because of their concerns about education. Approaching the national average is great progress but we are not content to settle for average.
In East Dulwich we will continue to strive to improve the facilities and opportunities available. After years of community campaigning, a new secondary school for boys is now being built at Peckham Rye. It opens in temporary accommodation in September and in the purpose built new building next year. We wish the school well in this critical first year.
But at primary level too it is suspected there is a lack of places available. This year a few parents were offered places at primary schools in Camberwell as competition for places at East Dulwich schools exploded. It seems this was partly through the popularity of East Dulwich as a place to bring up children and partly through fewer people being able to afford private schools.
We need to move quickly to address this issue before next year. Plans are already in place to expand the number of spaces at Goodrich. We may need to go further though and look for further expansion of other schools. Expanding St Anthony’s is an option, although in my view, only if we can ensure those spaces are available for all the community. It may be that we also have to look for a new primary school.
One thing is clear: Education in our area is improving and it is great that more parents now want their children to stay within our local schools. But education is still one of the main reasons why parents think about moving to the suburbs. This year, we need to get our heads down and ensure that our rate of progress accelerates and we make the right decisions to ensure we in the years ahead we are top of the class.
Southwark Liberal Democrats come close to beating Labour across Southwark. Quite amazing considering two sitting Labour MP and one Lib Dem MP represent Southwark at Westminster.
Local Liberal Democrats in East Dulwich, and across Southwark are celebrating after coming the closest they have ever been to beating Labour across the whole borough in a European election. The Labour majority nearly halved with the Conservatives coming a distant third. The Conservative vote fell from 19.3% in the 2008 GLA elections to 14.9% this year.
The news even says Gordon Brown is toying with the idea of Single Transferable Voting for other elections. Times they are a changing…..