Zero residential burglary

East Dulwich has had ZERO residential burglaries for two months. Zero residential burglary for two month. That is amazing.

In the summer East Dulwich councillors Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself agreed funding a crime prevention fund of nearly £50,000 from our bit of the annual Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding.

A large slab of this has been spent on over a 1,000 SelectaDNA (www.selectadna.co.uk) property marking kits. Aiming for every fifth home to have this property marking and homes that have been previously burgled or are in the proximty of homes that have been burgled. The East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team has been helping residents install these marking kits. Every school in East Dulwich has been given these kits. We also purchased UV lights for the Police to quickly spot marked property.

Even business burglaries are down. Four over the last two months. Two were pubs. They have now been property marked and helping promote these property marking kits.

Fingers crossed zero burglaries continues. As all the property marking kits are used the chances of burglars being caught and successfully prosecuted rises making East Dulwich an increasingly inhospitable area for burglars.

If you live in East Dulwich and have’nt yet had a SelectaDNA property marking kit installed by the Police then please do get in touch with me. 

Lambeth council rent 2nd dramatic rise

I was shocked ot read that Labour run Lambeth council rent will rise dramatically for the second time this year.

£12.01 rent rise per week and other charges for heating, hot water, etc will rise by 5% as well. This will cause incredible hardship for residents ,iving in Lambeths 30,000 council homes. What a terrible time for Labour to cause this fiasco.

Fortunately Lib Dem Southwark is running its council much better and doesn’t have a £15M hole in its finance as Lambeth does.

Virtual Water

I came across this term in a science journal. The idea that water is traded not as water directly but as the water required to make a product. So imports of Spanish Oranges results in us importing the Spanish water required to make Oranges. Apparently a World Wildlife Fund report found that 62% of UK water consumption used each year is Virtual. This trade is largely hidden.

I wonder how much virtual water we use and import into Southwark?

Freedom Pass Review scrutiny

Earlier this year Southwark Council ran the Freedom Pass renewals in Southwark and did a bad job. A colleague couldn’t attend the first council scrutiny meeting to review how things went and how things should be improved going forward.

Unusually I then attended the remaining review meetings to ensure I followed the process through.

The committees recommendations will be presented to the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee next Monday 8 December. Hopefully all our recommendations will be accepted. We put a lot of effort into this scrutiny.

Since my involvement further examples of how painful the process is have come to me as casework. We really must ensure we fix this service once and for all. 

Non 999 calls

The Met Police have introduced an alternative number to 999 for non emergency calls. Amazingly it the unmemorable 0300 123 1212.

Why could’nt they choose a memorable number – 0300 300 300 or something like that?

The end result of such a daft forgetable number will be lots of people still ringing 999.

Police numbers

At Mayoral question time London’s tory Mayor Boris Johnson was asked about the number of uniformed Police officers – the ones you see walking around on patrol or speeding past in cars.

He could’nt gurantee the current numbers would be increased or even remain the same!

He must at least occassionally read the papers, or speak to ordinary Londoners like you or me. He must know we’re worried about crime? Perhaps not.

Tell him if you think we need more Police in Southwark.

 [if you look at his website you’ll see ads for books suggesting global warming is a swindle – hello Boris smell the coffee]

Rotherhithe by-election

I’ve just about recovered from all the efforts of the Rotherhithe by-election held 9 October.

This by-election was caused by the sad death of cllr Anne Yates. She would have been proud of how hard her colleagues worked to ensure the new councillor colleague was also a Liberal Democrat.

Liberal Democrat Wilma Nelson duly won with 57% of the vote. Up 9% from May 2006.

Worst part of the campaign – being stuck in a lift with two colleagues within a private block Labour cllr Fiona Colley lives in. The private lift maintenance contractor was useless and eventually they called out the London Fire Brigade. The fire fighters were absolute stars.

Best part of the campaign – the glorious weather and working so closely with colleagues.

176 bus announcements

I’ve asked Transport for London to ‘fix’ the 176 bus announcements for the Dulwich Library. The announcements state Dulwich Plough. No.40 and 12 bus routes state Dulwich Library on the front of the bus. The no.40 announcement states Dulwich Library and then immediately Dulwich Plough.
TfL really need to get themselves sorted out and change these announcements to avoid confusion. It wouldn’t be a problem except the Dulwich Plough pub has had several names in the last few years.

Dulwich Library isn’t moving, closing, is well known and on A-Z maps. It really is an obvious landmark to use.

WAKE UP TfL. Get your act together.

Escalators – why are we such rubbish at maintaining them?

Its just been announced that refurbishment work London Bridge Underground station Northern line will take place 8 October to late February 2009. That’s five month.

I often visit Munich and other European cities for my normal day job. I see lots of escalators but they’re never closed let alone for five months.

How do they do that and why can’t we.

Not something to be proud to be British over. 

Dulwich Library or Dulwich Plough?

While travelling around on local buses I noticed that the same bus stops are described quite differently from one bus route to another. So the no.40 and 12 destination is Dulwich Library but the no.176 onboard announcement states Dulwich Plough at the same bus stop. How confusing.

So Caroline Pidgeon Greater London Assembly (www.carolinepidgeon.org) member kindly offered to take this up with Transport for London (TfL).
TfL Andrew Miles (andrew.miles@tfl.gov.uk 020 3054 0153) has responded saying that it would cause confusion to have the same bus stop called the same thing across bus routes.
If you think calling the same bus stop by two different names is just plain silly let Andrew know.