The Greens show their colours!

In response to my questions about libraries, local shops and cycling and walking Labour Tom Chance from Southwark Green Party writes:

Here are our candidates' answers:

Libraries - yes, we would fight to protect libraries from public spending cuts. Whichever of the three grey parties form the next Government, all three are committed to large cuts in public spending and locally the axe often falls first on services like libraries. Whilst access to the internet is increasingly used as an excuse for neglected or shrinking library services, the reasons you cite in addition to the relatively low level of internet access in Peckham Rye make them all the more important.

Shops - the Green Party has long campaigned to protect local independent shops. We have published an action plan for Peckham town centre (http://southwark.greenparty.org.uk/peckham) and would apply the same principles to Lordship Lane, Forest Hill Road and other smaller arcades with handfuls of shops throughout Southwark.

Walking and cycling - we would press for three simple measures: first, actually implement the council's dormant policy of providing cycle lanes and infrastructure whenever road works are carried out, extending this to also include the widening of pavements for pedestrians where there is road space; second, prioritise roads on cycle routes such as LCN 22 and 25 when filling potholes and other road maintenance; third, more consistently implement a 20mph zone across the entire borough on all residential roads and ensure the police are taking road safety more seriously.

A Labour candidate answers

This is the reply I received to my questions about libraries, local shops and cycling and walking from Gavin Edwards, Labour Candidate for Peckham Rye:

1. On Libraries, All three of us recognise the importance of Libraries in our local community. I am a regular user of Peckham Library myself. We will all fight to defend funding for local libraries.

2. I agree entirely with the sentiment expressed in your question and this is precisely the approach that we would like to see taken in regard to both rents and the application of planning rules.

3. Yes. We think the cycle network in Southwark should be expanded. The more people we can encourage to cycle in our borough the better. If we were elected as councillors for Peckham Rye, this would be a policy that we would campaign for in the town hall. On a connected but slightly different issue, we have got involved in the local green chain walk. See here for more details: http://peckhamryelabour.blogspot.com/2010/01/peckham-rye-joins-green-chain-walk-try.html

A Conservative response

This is the reply I received to my questions about libraries, local shops and cycling and walking from Conservative candidate for Peckham Rye, Andy Tuck:

Libraries
We would wholeheartedly agree with you over their importance and recognise their role as invaluable intellectual resources for local communities. Therefore we would, if elected, fight to defend our local libraries from budget cuts and neglect.

It would be worth mentioning here that as a Conservative Team across Southwark we also plan to push for the refurbishment of Camberwell Library after the election.

Shops
We highly value small businesses and local enterprises in Peckham Rye Ward and throughout Southwark. We are keen to pursue policies that will help nurture and grow the local economy. Small independent shops are integral to this.

As part of our new purposed recycling scheme, through a voucher system, we would hope to encourage local people to spend money earned through their recycling in local shops. This will help keep money in the local economy and make small businesses more viable and competitive.

Walking and Cycling
To answer your questions in a word, yes. Encouraging walking and cycling is a great way of cutting down on both congestion and pollution. By expanding cycling routes and making sure that pedestrian needs are prioritised we would hope to achieve this.

The Liberal Democrats Reply

In answer to the questions I asked about libraries, local shops and cycling and walking, I have had the following response from Liberal Democrat Councillor James Barber:

Libraries.
We passionately believe in public libraries hence why we have 14 and are building a new £14M one at Canada Water. I pointedly encouraged Dulwich Library to be opened a 7th day each week and hope that the collegiate way officers, their managers and the unions agreed the re rostering to make this possible be extended to other Southwark libraries. I'm also expecting self service to help enable the same resources to allow more opening hours and more time to respond to individual queries from users who need help.

Shops.
For council owned shops we are obliged to charge a market rent unless specific other non financial benefits accrue. Equally Southwark Council can't force rents specific rents on private landlords for shops. BUT through enforcing planning laws we can ensure categories of use are maintained.
However, we do have a capital programme to invest in local shopping areas and all community council areas were given devolved significant budgets to choose shopping areas to upgrade and fix. In Dulwich we chose Norwood Road shopping areas. Borough&Bankside chose Great Suffolk Street. The latter transformation has been completed and its really is amazingly better. The latter also contributed to shop fronts and we'd like to do more of this especially in East Dulwich and Peckham Rye areas.

Walking and Cycling.
Agree and yes to your points.
We're working on removing one way streets or allowing cycle contraflows. This will take some time to complete but its underway and about 15 roads have plans in place for this. Even in East Dulwich we have roads with no obvious reason for being oneway - Spurling, Crewthrew, Hindmans.
Lots and lots of cycle parking has recently been installed. More will come.
Cycle Superhighway. We negotiated funding that Southwark Bridge Road will be made 20mph. So that this type of road will feel very different to other through roads.
We're trailing average speed cameras. This will at some point be approved and I would hope we deploy lots, especially for the half of vehicles that start and end journeys outside Southwark.

One caveat to all these answers. IF central government slashes the money it gives to Southwark we will need to prioritise. I'm hopefully these things will be prioritised but really depends how deeply cuts in our funding go. Fortunately the latter two categories are capital funding which we have more control by selling assets.

Local Election Special

Well, I thought I'd come out of retirement to show my disgust at the total lack of attention being paid to the local elections here in London. OK, I know there aren't any exciting televised debates with audience participation and red buttons to press. Local politics often seems dull and all about such mundane subjects as refuse collection, recycling, planning control, parking, maintaining the roads and fixing broken paving slabs. (oh and education, social services, housing...)

But what councils do matters. It matters to the people who have the chance to choose who run them (but rarely use it) and it matters to the children who don't get to vote but do have to go to schools, some of which are actually still run by elected local authorities.

But following the themes of this blog and its forerunners, I decided to write to the local candidates for the parties standing in my ward (Peckham Rye) focusing on libraries, local shops, and cycling and walking:

Libraries: Public libraries provide not just a free leisure service but a vital lifeline to those who need internet access to apply for jobs and purchase goods, support for lifelong learning and a place to study. Children especially gain enormously from being able to choose and read the books they like, giving them the opportunity to acquire the reading habit early on. In times of recession, this service becomes even more important to help people retrain and get back into employment. If elected, will you fight to defend our local libraries (Dulwich and Nunhead) from budget cuts and neglect?

Shops: Lordship Lane is a shining example of the success of small shops providing a unique and characterful centre for the community. If elected will you ensure that independent shops are not driven out by high rents and prevent large chains from running rough-shod over planning rules?

Walking and Cycling: The cycling facilities in Southwark are reasonable but there's huge room for improvement. Will you ensure that the cycle network is expanded and existing routes improved. Will you ensure that all road schemes prioritise cyclists and pedestrians over through traffic?

So far the only party to reply is the Liberal Democrats. I'd like to hear what the others have to say.

The Singing Librarian

If like me, you've woken up feeling like death this morning, this clip of the mighty Andrew might cheer you up somewhat. Well, it did me.

Going for a song

It's one of the few perks of working in a public library that you can borrow CDs for free which gives you a chance to listen to stuff you wouldn't normally. Or, even that you've never hear of. Right now, I am enjoying a compilation of that wonderful singer, Mr Sam Cooke but the biggest discovery of the week is a certain lady of Jazz, Lorez Alexandria.



There's not much info about her on the web. The Album I've borrowed was recorded in 1964 and she has a beautifully, controlled voice, mellow and meaningful, taking on standards such as Satin Doll and Over the Rainbow . Amazingly enough there is no Wikipedia article for her but from the Verve Label site is that she had her roots in Gospel Music, disappeared between 1965 and 1974 but then returned to singing up until the mid 1990's. She died of a stroke in 2001. The quality of her voice is up there with Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, I'm amazed she's not better known.

Now far be it from me to encourage any pilfering of intellectual property but it may not have escaped my readers that, with the advent of digital music, it is quite simple to transfer tracks from borrowed CD's onto your computer or MP3 player. And if you haven't ventured into your public library lately, you might be pleasantly surprised by the selection on offer. Libraries in Southwark and Lewisham are both doing two for one offers at the moment. In Lewisham this means you can have four albums worth of tracks for a pound -- compare that to $0.99 a track via iTunes.

And they also have Books!

going back -- in time and place

Strangely there is a place in a public library service for an unfashionable librarian with outdated views (like believing that books are really quite "cool" and computers are a mere adjunct to the magnificence of the tome). An Inner City library, a nice big old-fashioned one with a reference library and "no mobile phones" signs, has kindly dragged me out of retirement to cover some summer vacancies. Starting in two weeks time. So I'll have to dust down my best cardigan (the green one with the leather elbow patches) and polish my bifocals and get ready for the exciting cut and thrust that is 21st century librarianship.

Ah, it's nice to feel wanted.

So I spend this weekend in the country, visiting friends in Devon. On the way down, I notice some young people on the train heading down to Glastonbury festival. What so struck me is how smart they looked in their clean clothes. How times change! When I went to Glastonbury back in the 19XX's, you could buy a ticket at the gate and then get yourself a plate of lentils, a gallon of scrumpy, an eighth of rocky (so hard you could break your teeth on it), a nice strong cup of mushroom tea, and still have change of a ten bob note. I gather that the young people of today pay tens of pounds for the privilege of covering their designer jeans in mud and to watch popular beat comboes performing their latest video recordings. Not for me any more, alas. My idea of a good time is a small glass of Southern Comfort chased down with a hot chocolate and then bed.

The paradox of time (or why everytime you think you've finished one task, another five turn up together)

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water of rl, my agent phones me up to ask me if I'd consider a temporary summer job with a nearby public library service. Well, I couldn't say no really so they put forward my (frankly rather embarrassingly archaic) CV and to my mild surprise, their interviewing me on Friday morning.

I remember the days when student life meant a grant and if you got a summer job at all, it was picking fruit, while living in a cave in Southern Crete. But if this comes off, I'm going to spend the balmy months of June, July, August and September weeding the mills and boon, listening to kids earn their summer reading challenge rewards by reciting the entire story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and saying "shh!" a lot (I wish).

Still I need the money -- paraconsistent logic doesn't pay the rent (or rather it does and it doesn't pay the rent).

Anyway, I feel that I've let down my readers of late and so as soon as I've done a bit of research on the library service in question, cycled over to their new super-dooper libary (so I can tell them just how wonderful it is), and I think we're late spring cleaning this afternoon. When I've done this I will:

** List my own 8 tediouser tag facts (sorry AHH)
** Put a new post on the primary site of East of Dulwich (sorry MRV)
** Find a way of transferring and cleaning up the EOD files (Word 2000, yes seriously) on the MacBook so that I don't have to fire up my poor ailing PC every-time I want to update

(By the way if AHH is reading this I would like one more guess at who GP is but it's a bit of a long-shot...well at least as distant as his philosophical interest is in time (2,329 years by my reckoning.))