20 November (Part 2) - Lights out in Welling
Today has not gone according to plan and it is no longer realistic to expect
another report on last Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting before the weekend.
Most of yesterday was spent in Newham and Waltham Forest. A free visitor’s parking
permit in Newham (conditions apply but £2 for equivalent permit in Bexley) and playing motoring hopscotch with the innumerable yellow box
junctions in and around Chingford. Sometimes you cannot help being stopped in
them when the unpredictable happens, like when a child steps off a pedestrian
refuge and then freezes. It’s happened to me but no resultant penalty.
According to the local newspaper in Waltham Forest
some yellow box junctions are little short of being deliberate traps.
Now that Bexley council is both desperate for money and has taken the same
surveillance powers as other councils, the plague will spread.
Returning through Blackwall after midnight I detoured into darkest Welling.
It was pretty dark and dingy in the area covered by Bexley’s no lights experiment even though the
lights were still on. I’d forgotten the official off time so assumed it must be later than
half past midnight and made my way home
The lights, LED I assume, were barely adequate. Nothing like as bright as
the more familiar sodium lamps.
Meanwhile I suspect the lighting experiment is another example of shifting Bexley
council’s budget on to someone else’s shoulders. Usually the police but this
time the householders’ insurance policies too.