Over the last four years we’ve allocated a lot of local resources towards crime prevention. Things like providing free property marking kit, Alertboxes, etc. Our latest work is to encourage people to contact the local East Dulwich ward Safer Neighbourhood Team and report all crime that occurs and alert criminals that most of East Dulwich has Neighbourhood Watch coverage – hopefully you’ve noticed the new signage poping up all over the area?
Lib Dem Transport Minister Norman Baker has just introduced a new secure Blue Badge starting this week (1 Jan).
He states it’s “as secure as a banknote”. The previous Blue Badges were made from card and they were handwritten. Easy to doctor and forge. So the new ones with security features similar to latest driving licences – holograms, digital photos, etc should make stealing Blue Badges much less attractive. That’s the theory. Fingers crossed that’s the practice.
Some boroughs traffic wardens when they see a Blue Badge call the telephone number of the Blue Badge holder. Sometimes they find they’re at home while the Blue Badge is being used away from home. Sad but with ever increasing parking pressures the temptation to cheat gets higher.
Hopefully I’ll persuade Southwark Council to make such phone calls!
I was saddened to hear that the Barbara Hepworth statue in Dulwich Park was stolen overnight – probably for scrap metal.
I’ve been encouraging people for some time to sign a petition so that this issue has to be discussed in parliament. The law needs to be. Change. Some predictions are that metal thefts cost UK plc over £700m pa.
So how to really reduce metal theft? Currently scrap metal dealers keep very poor records despite the Scrap Metal Dealers Act requirements. Ensuring greater compliance to accurate records would help but more importantly making it illegal to deal in cash would start to nail this crime. Whilst cash is king in the scrap metal industry, annoymity and corruption and theft follow close behind.
A private members bill has been proposed to make it illegal to make cash payments for scrap. An ePetition has been raised which is nearly halfway to the required 100,000 signatures to ensure the matter is debated by parliament.
Please do sign this PETITION to help end most metal theft.
I came across this plot of the summer riot offences on an outline map of Southwark.
In East Dulwich It shows 4 offences in the main part of Lordship Lane and a couple nearer Dulwich library. Mostly these were the odd glass pane being smashed. One attempted looter was citizen arrested and anecdotally relieved when the Police rescued him from several angry locals detaining him at his displeasure.
I wonder how many of these offences were related to the riots and how many would have occurred anyway. Overall crime was down. Probably people staying at home. But obviously the fear of crime rocketed.
For East Dulwich businesses the biggest issue was closing early and losing half a days custom.
What can we do to reduce the chances of this happening again – ideas welcome…
Metal theft has been a problem for many years. British Transport Police and others have shown a link between metal commodity prices and levels of theft – higher metals prices more theft.
It has reached the stage where on a typical month £1M of metals are stolen from church roofs every month. Even war memorials are being stolen and melted down for scrap.
With the eurozone crisis metal demand in Europe has seen a temporary downward blip but in Spring 2012 it is expected to surge again with Chinese house building causing demand to rise.
You can only harden targets so much and many have been.
So how to get really reduce metal theft? Currently scrap metal dealers keep very poor records despite the Scrap Metal Dealers Act requirements. Ensuring greater compliance to accurate records would help but more importantly making it illegal to deal in cash would start to nail this crime. Whilst cash is king in the scrap metal industry, annoymity and corruption and theft follow close behind.
A private members bill has been proposed to make it illegal to make cash payments for scrap. An ePetition has been raised which is nearly halfway to the required 100,000 signatures to ensure the matter is debated by parliament.
Please do sign this PETITION to help end most metal theft.
I’ve just read a wonderful insightful and witty letter by a Steve Melia in Local Transport Today…
” Inspired by Philip Hammond’s launch of the consultation on motorway speed limits, and the successful campaign by motorists’ groups against speed camera, I am pleased to announce the formation of a new organisation: the Campaign for Ethical Looting.
We believe in the principle of policing by consent. Through history, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the recent riots in British cities, a substantial proportion of the population has always responded to social crisis by looting. If significant proportions of the population routinely break a particular law, we believe it is the law that needs reform. Instead of criminalising looters, we believe a more effective strategy would focus on education: highlighting opportunities for targeted looting to make a positive contribution to a more just society; bankers, arms dealers, rail rolling stock companies, etc.
Above all, we will campaign for the removal of CCTV camera in town centre and shopping malls, which criminalise otherwise law-abiding citizens, and whose real objective has little to do with crime prevention and everything to do with raising revenue for the Treasury.”
Speed cameras – especially average speed cameras – enforce the law see people reduce speeds and save lives. Higher speeds on motorways will see more deaths and injuries as well as more CO2 produced. These are the dark side of the national coalition with ministers cocooned from the impacts in their chauffeur driven cars.
I was horrified to read a report showing that English school children are the most fearful for their safety before and after school in Europe. It feels shameful that we’ve not created a country where children feel and are safe.
The report by Stephen Moore of Anglia Ruskin University discovered that of 4,000 children surveyed in eight European countries aged 12-16, 31% of English pupils felt scared of being bullied or worse comapred to 19% across those European countries.
Four percent said they were often or always victimisaed on the way to or from school. 1 in 25!
Apparently kids didn’t want to turn to schools and that schools anti bullying strategies didn’t cover this. That children turn to other children but they’re not sure what to do.
How on earth do we as a soceity fix this?
London won the Olympics 2012. I was delighted. WOW!
But the plans for this and sponsorship make it clear that this won’t really be the London we all know and love Olympics but some emasculated parody of London.
The Olympic Delivery Authority is now asking London councils to impose draconian parking fines during the London Olympic 2012 games across London. So far Greenwich council is suggesting £500-£1000 parking fines and so far Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets support higher parking fines with most London councils yet to respond. I just think this sets the wrong tone.
I hope London Lib Dems will be holding out to minimise not maximise the disruption to London and Londoners.
The proposal for draconian parking penalties, wheel clamping, much more removal of vehicles, storage charges and disposal of vehicles fees should be an anathema to us all.
Londoners should not be cowed by the threat of heavy Olympic fines. London households are already hugely subsidising the games.
So no, we should not accept these increased charges. Frankly we should be telling the ODA to spend more time making the Olympics friendly to London and Londoners generating sufficient good will so Londoners want to help make it happen. I really fear a nasty Olympic backlash and these proposals make that more likely.
This week it was revealed that 65 people are injured by uninsured drivers every week. 15 people were killed, 307 seriously injured, 3,085 injured during 2010. by uninsured drivers. That is an awful lot of people lives wrecked.
People willing to drive while uninsured (compared to insured drivers) are:
On average every insured driver is paying £30 more each year to cover the costs of the uninsured.
The last league table I could find from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau showed two Southwark postcodes as the 2nd and 10th worst in the country for having uninsured drivers – Peckham SE15 has 4.33 x the UK average level of uninsured drivers and Camberwell SE5 has 3.75 x the UK average level of uninsured drivers.
Police and insurers have estimated uninsured drivers as between 1 and 5 million people. Truly astounding.
So how many live in East Dulwich?
The number of parking tickets issued by Southwark Council has fallen from 121,724 last year to 100,615 this year.
The phenomenon has also been seen in Lambeth 246,035 down to 201,743 now and Lewisham falling from 63,125 to 59,755.
Why is this happening?
Council officials tell me people are obeying parking regulations more which is great. But why the sudden change?
