30 September - Sneaking one in

Is BexleyCo launching another assault on Wilde Road? A Planning Application has been made for the adjacent Bronte Close. (19/02229/FUL.)

 

20 September - Mainly rubbish

Capita
Nearly ten years ago Barnet Council outsourced pretty much all of their services to Capita and the local blogging fraternity has been complaining about it ever since. Around a year ago Barnet Council services collapsed in a stinking heap, literally in some places.

A week ago Bexley Council issued a Press Release to say they had entered an eight year contract with Capita, more limited than Barnet’s, which they claim will result in a saving of £1 million a year. One must hope it is more successful than their recently abandoned big contract with Amey.

Usually BiB keeps a copy of Bexley Council’s Press Releases but recently they have been so poorly produced that they do not lend themselves to easy conversion to PDF so that one has been given a miss.

Food bins
Another Press Release was issued yesterday which was once again a bit of a techno-mess but perseverance paid off and a PDF version was eventually produced. It says you may order a better food recycling box.

The Press Release gives details of the delayed issue of new wheelie bins too.

The last Press Release I saw that was done properly was issued by Lynne McVicar two weeks ago. Another warning not to misuse Blue Badges.

Paul Moore
I found out a little bit more about Paul Moore who has so often stood in for an absent Chief Executive. He is definitely away for some reason or other. Not just ordinarily away it would appear because a replacement has been dragged in from another borough. It doesn’t sound like a holiday and one must hope his health is in good shape.

The replacement is another of those rent a pen-pusher types who have worked just about everywhere. In this case Wirral, Bristol, Plymouth, Havering and perhaps significantly Newham, the new Chief Executive’s old stomping ground. A local authority so efficient that it claims to need 20% more Councillors. Maybe they are trying to maintain the London average number of Council brain cells. They have recently been persuaded that a 10% increase may suffice.

I’d rather back a public servant who stays in one place and is loyal to those who pay his wages more than his own pay packet.

The loon is back
The lunatic who wrote the diatribe reproduced here two days ago came back overnight. This time she claims she has enough on me to put me in jail and “we have reported you”.

Her deranged mind says I work in IT for a Local Authority, if so I don’t think I would last long. I decided to amend the Contact page so that it demanded a verified email address but I made a total mess of it and now it doesn’t work at all. So much for my IT skills!

Temporarily it is disabled totally until I find a better way of doing things. For the desperate the Contact form used to send messages to enquiry at bexley-is-bonkers dot co dot uk.

 

19 September (Part 2) - In search of a scandal

I went to the Code of Conduct Committee meeting yesterday hoping that I might learn something slightly scandalous to liven up the blog but the closest I came to a scandal was bumping into Councillor Hackett outside the Civic Offices and being led through the tradesmen’s entrance around the back. If anyone finds out he may be in big trouble.

The Agenda had revealed that a Councillor had complained about another Councillor allegedly dishing out budgetary falsehoods to residents and the complaint didn’t even get past the first stage examination. Petty minded aren’t they?

A Member of the Public complained about a Councillor’s language on Twitter and that too got nowhere. The timing is such that the complaint may be the one reported here, and then there was the third one which had me intrigued.

The Labour Group, that is all of them not simply one with an over developed sense of outrage, was complaining about a Councillor’s alleged bad language on Social Media and a failure to declare an interest in something or other. I know very little of the latter but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the former is likely to be a reference to Danny Hackett’s Bollox, bollox, bollox remark after being goaded by several left wing nutters who object to Danny’s unfortunate intolerance of political bullshit. (Unlike Danny I am allowed to use that word. I am not a Councillor thank God.)

The meeting began with Chairman Linda Bailey being concerned about “the gentleman at the back videoing all over the place” so for her benefit I’ll let everyone know that although my five year old camera does have a button marked Video I have never ever used it, not even as an experiment and I am not going to experiment on her. I took three more photos than was intended but only because Councillor James Hunt kept dodging out of view.
The meeting was mainly about a revision to the Code of Conduct but the changes were minor and not the sort of thing to which anyone could reasonably take exception.

There were a few slightly interesting questions and answers and then out of the blue the meeting came to life. Only very briefly but I believe it may well cause Danny Hackett’s current predicament to explode in a few faces. (Please excuse the assumption; I think it’s Danny in the firing line, his presence at last night’s meeting probably confirms it and his questions surely must do, but nobody ever comes clean and says so.)

Anyway, the meeting went like this…

Immediately after the preliminaries, Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) asked when the third complaint (Danny’s?) was submitted. Mr. Hollier the Monitoring Officer said “it was submitted some time ago, March of this year and I hope to have it concluded within the next week or so”.

Councillor Slaughter also asked what constituted “a timely fashion” for investigations. Mr. Hollier said he aimed for within 28 days but that is not always possible.

Councillor Hackett sitting in the public area as a Councillor asked if the time taken on investigations was monitored and recorded and how often complaints were made by political groups. He didn’t get a straight answer there and then but was assured that all the data was readily available. My guess is that he thinks a Labour Group complaint is a rarity. The Monitoring Officer volunteered the fact that group complaints are “very few” and they’re “normally simple”.

Councillor Hackett also enquired about the costs incurred by the Council in investigating such Group complaints. I think I am beginning to understand where Danny is going with this.

As if to confirm it he asked for “Publicly Accessible Social Media” to be defined. Did it include extracts taken from Private Facebook accounts to which friends might have access? The Monitoring Officer believed that Private accounts were Public “if they were read by anyone”. This is presumably a warning never to say anything to anybody capable of talking, writing or making semaphore signals.

When the meeting went beyond the new Code of Conduct and got down to the actual procedure for handling complaints the incisive legally trained mind of Councillor Slaughter said the rule which said that complaints must be made within seven days of a breach of the rules might be acceptable to Councillors who knew the ropes but not to a Member of the Public who might take time to realise what courses of action were open to them.

The Monitoring Officer said that the seven days was “given leeway” when it affected Members of the Public but Councillor Slaughter was not happy with that. Neither were Councillors happy with the suggested “within a reasonable time”. Mr Hollier said he would go away and consult on it.

Councillor Hackett jumped in quickly after that, he admitted he was unaware of the seven days rule. His Bollox remarks were made a year and a bit ago and Mr. Hollier had said the complaint was not made until March this year. He asked the very obvious question very directly but Mr. Hollier said he would prefer “not to debate cases here”. Danny moved to “the hypothetical”. Mr. Hollier “did not want to have a hypothetical debate here”. He may not have wished to offer any opinion on Danny’s case but his facial expression was worth a thousand words.

“I think I have the answer I needed” was Councillor Hackett’s only response.

If the complaint is against him and he is not going to all this trouble on behalf of someone else, he is presumably now entitled to have the complaint against him thrown out on the seven day rule. Nine months is a lot longer than seven days.

I have no idea what the Monitoring Officer’s verdict on Danny will be especially in respect of the declaring of interests because I do not know sufficient details of it but I am beginning to think that I will have little option but to seriously embarrass people with whom I have enjoyed a reasonably friendly relationship. Then I will have none left in Council; well maybe Danny and James but no one else.

Note: Mr. Nick Hollier is sitting on the top table.

 

19 September (Part 1) - The Invisible Man - and woman

While wading through the backlog of ancient emails I came across two that were sort of related from nearly a month ago. Both anonymous and I would guess from different people, but who knows?

One asks if I have seen Deputy Chief Executive Paul Moore recently and do I know what he is currently up to. It goes on to commiserate with him for once again not being picked for the Chief Executive role.

The other question was “Is the new Chief Executive Jackie Belton any good?” The flippant answer to both questions is “How the hell should I know, no one talks to me”. Almost no one that is; I have spoken to both Councillors James Hunt (Conservative) and Danny Hackett (Independent) in the past two weeks but only about aeroplanes and cars (his and mine) respectively.

I too commiserate with Paul Moore’s failure to win the top job. He has given the best years of his life to Bexley and all the time BiB has been in existence survived as Deputy to the Chief Executive so he must be competent at his job and he’s always been good enough to stand in for the Chief Executive when they suddenly disappear for whatever reason.

Somebody must have it in for him but where he is now I am not sure. I have heard he is on holiday, I have heard he is on sick leave and I have heard he has been replaced by a namesake.

Time will no doubt tell.

Is Jackie Belton any good? I don’t know. Nothing to judge her on, I have been to all the big Council meetings since she arrived and have come to the conclusion she is probably mute.

 

18 September (Part 3) - For your amusement (and despair at the lack of intellect on display)

It is not only MPs who have overflowing email Inboxes, it is sometimes me too. A week ago I had 82 unread emails and now it’s 110. Almost none of it is truly spam, I have senders I do not recognise in both Liverpool and Hull who send offers I simply cannot refuse but the remainder is from people or organisations which purport to be more local or at least known to me. Recently I have ruthlessly deleted anything that has an unappealing Subject line, otherwise I am going to be submerged.

An email I have read is perhaps relevant to Bonkers but gives every indication of coming from a deranged source. No one has ever called me Malkie before; here it is in all its glory, spelling errors, poor punctuations and all…

So , Bexley Council are busy with ADOPTIONS , you say .Well people who go about “ METAPHORICALY MURDERING” other people’s children TOTALLY REQUIRE to have ALL subsequent generations REMOVED from them .This is being done in order to ERADICATE FAR RIGHT TRASH from society . Speaking of FAR RIGHT TRASH ,how is that investigation into the DANNY MORGAN case going ? I knew Morgan back in 85 .He tried to " investigate " me on behalf of his bent ,pimping , criminal Dibble mates . He was like a cheap version of Del Trotter , always going to be a next year millionaire , off the backs of other people , of course. He was mixed up to the hilt with drugs and the trafficking of young females . " Oh NO! Not Danny " , I hear you say .But YES ,Morgan was a State sanctioned SUPER CRIM .I saw what he was up to .I worked as an authors researcher at that time , and so I kept meticulous diaries and notes of all that went on around me .Danny boy features in those quite a lot . Now , I’m going to publish al l my info from back then ,plus helpful website ,YouTube channel , tell all interviews on other peoples channels , Facebook and Twitter accounts to. I should pull a ‘Nice little earner’ from that , whadaya think Malkie ? BTW , I’m the Mother of the child who you allege to have been “METAPHORICALY MURDERED ” So , Malkie the alchy, how funny do you think you are now ? Bet you wish you hadn’t crossed me . You could go complain to your local Constable Dibble ,NO WAIT , you can’t because they hate you....Teresa Pearse might help ,but no ,her party are getting rid of her .Is that because she’s pals with your NAZIFIED self ? You could go to your trusty local councillor , but he/ she likely can’t stand the sight of you either .Oh what a conundrum , PMSL ,LMFAO ,LOL ,LULZ ,MWHAHAHAHAHA etc etc ....Have a good day Malkie , hope Danny’s brother isn’t too mad with you for stirring up shit in the first place .

I fail to understand any of it. The word adoption (in the giving a home to a child sense) was last used on Bonkers in December 2018 and was a reference to the cost of the service. The only child murder ever reported was of Rhys Lawrie in 2012.

Could this be the mother of the child? No, she was at most a toddler in 1985.

Danny Morgan? I’ve never heard him referred to as Danny before. To family he was Dan. For the uninitiated he was a sort of distant relative of mine who I never met. He was murdered in 1987 when he attempted to expose police corruption (robberies and drugs mainly) in South East London. It’s well established fact and I have a copy of the letter in which the Met. Police accepted it was their worst ever case of corruption.

Teresa Pearse (sic) has not been sacked, she has done her bit for the community and decided not to stand for election again and I am on good terms with Daniel’s brother so long as we steer clear of the B word.

“Malkie the alchy.” That’s a good one, not even one drink a week and I still have the unopened bottle of whisky in my cupboard bought for my 21st birthday party.

And to think such people are given the vote.

Incidentally, the anonymous email facility is not totally anonymous, nothing on the web is. I could probably ask the technical director of my ISP - a personal friend - who accessed the Contact page at whatever time.

I only did that once after receiving some pretty rude stuff and the police became involved. At their request it was traced to a company office known to be frequented by Councillor Peter Craske.

 

15 September (Part 1) - Karma

There is a shocking amount of car crime in Bexley. Keying in Thamesmead, tyre slashing and window breaking in Abbey Wood, several catalytic converters a day stolen right across the borough by Eastern Europeans in a white Transit anxious to bring cultural diversity to the UK and then there is the almost daily keyless car thefts from people’s drives. And that’s just the reports that have come my way this week.

I’m very glad that my car hasn’t got a catalytic converter and I have always kept the garage just about clear enough to keep it in there when it is not being driven.

While browsing through Hugh Neal’s Maggot Sandwich blog last week I came across a familiar sounding address. 95 Woolwich Road. Yesterday I found the time to research why it sounded familiar.

It is the registered address of Balmonza Ltd and linked to Kulvinder Singh. Mr. Singh is the man behind the demolition of Ye Olde Leather Bottle and for the concrete bunker at 238 Woolwich Road.

He is due in Court this week charged with breaching Health & Safety Regulations

If the snapshot of Hugh’s blog is not big enough to read on your tiny screen, it says that “a black Land Rover was stolen from the front drive of 95 Woolwich Road, Belvedere”. You do know that it is not nice to smile at other people’s misfortunes don’t you?

 

14 September (Part 2) - What about Welling?

The Shoulder of Mutton fence made me think about Welling. I’ve lived near Lesnes Abbey for more than 32 years and was in Plumstead for three years before that and I have very rarely been to Welling.

Racking my brains I bought double glazing there about 30 years ago from a showroom long since gone. In recent years I have bought four pairs of shoes from The Wide Shop because too many of Clark’s quickly fall apart since they moved production to Vietnam; one pair lost both soles within three weeks. I’ve bought a few small electrical bits from the shop opposite Lidl and that’s it. I almost never go there.

After I bought the new car a year ago from Motorline Hyundai Bluewater, who were very ordinary at best, they closed their Dartford Service Centre and asked me to go to their beyond Maidstone premises which I might generously describe as absolute rubbish, so I was very pleased when Ancaster’s in Welling swapped their franchise from Nissan to Hyundai. I was in there for the annual service two weeks ago which they offered to do while I waited and that is how I came to walk the length of Welling High Street, by far the longest in the borough.

There was an amazing range of shops. Beds and furniture, sewing machines, specialist locks and security equipment, a fascinating little tool shop that I plan to go back to when needed and more electrical shops than I knew about.

So why don’t I go there?

The lack of a direct bus service is a factor as is the fact that I am paranoid about Bexley’s parking regime. It’s not that I am totally unwilling to pay but it’s knowing that one silly mistake with a Phone App - mobiles are not my strong point - will cost me dear and then there is that blooming Yellow Box junction.

So I buy almost everything on line and don’t go to Welling and the major factor is Bexley Council. Waiting in for deliveries is a total pain in the backside but better than a PCN.

 

14 September (Part 1) - The ugly face of Bexley Council

On 31st October 2010 I submitted the following question to Bexley Council to be answered at their November Council meeting

“The Council’s Summer 2010 magazine said that fencing had been put up around Lesnes Abbey Woods to “eradicate” the problem of motorcyclists riding in the woods.

It is obvious to anyone walking there regularly that the fence has been a total failure in that regard but it has excluded the disabled in wheelchairs and at some access points makes entry by the fit and well difficult with a danger of heads making contact with scaffold poles - as the hazard tape confirms.

May I ask the Chairman of the Environment and Regeneration Committee the total cost of fencing Lesnes Abbey and Frank’s Parks.”

The answer was £74,995 which seemed dirt cheap when you consider it would take half an hour or so to walk around those two parks and my own 90 feet of fencing had cost more than two thousand just a few months earlier.

Further questions revealed that there was no prior consultation and the Conservatives blamed Labour for the decision; an Administration that had by then been out of power for four and a half years.

I doubt very much that so much fencing was done for just £75k.

After a few years the wooden posts rotted.

History is now repeating itself. Without prior notice Bexley Council has made an eyesore of Shoulder of Mutton Green in Welling. Concrete posts and scaffold poles around a delightful local amenity. The Philistines.

The locals have complained and been given lame fob offs about travellers’ caravans. They have sought support via a petition too. Take a look and see if you agree with them.

Nice house. Nice church. Nice park. Ugly fence. Uncaring Council.

 

11 September (Part 3) - Profiteering from having fun

Beware propaganda!

On this day in 2018 I signed over £32,110 to a car dealer and with considerable trepidation drove home in a vehicle with no gear box. No, not an automatic, no gear box at all just 204 horsepower with a direct link to the wheels. It left me pretty much broke but you can’t take it with you.

It took a bit of getting used to.

I was also very aware that at the moment one drives off a car dealer’s forecourt several thousand pounds are tipped down the drain.

Today seven and a half thousand miles later and in a moment of of idle curiosity I put my details into webuyanycar.com.

This was the result. The most expensive second hand model like mine that I have seen was £42,995. Total madness but that is what was being asked.

The reason is supply and demand. You can’t get an electric car on demand anywhere, the best you might do, if you don’t pick up someone’s cancellation, is a two to three month wait for a Tesla.

Meanwhile the government talks out of its backside while encouraging widespread adoption.

If I might rub the petrol heads nose in it a bit the last time I calculated fuel costs it was 0.08 pence per mile and it still brings a smile to my face when I see the driver of the car next to me at the lights has his cap on back to front, windows down so that we can share the throbbing bass line, revving his turbocharger and then I see him receding rapidly in the rear view mirror. (†)

By the middle of next year it will be different, most of the big manufacturers will have electric vehicles on sale and the value of mine will likely plummet.

Ford and Toyota are the only big names with their heads in the sand. When we eventually see Fords they will be little more than rebadged Volkswagens.

† The reason is that an electric motor delivers its full output from the off, no gears necessary to optimise the power output. It just goes smoothly from a standstill.

 

11 September (Part 2) - Five years of misery. (No it’s not another Parliament)

I suspect that most of those who live in the leafy south of the borough have no idea of what northern residents have had to put up with for the past five years. Southerners have the occasional spell of disruption while Bexley Council wrecks another road but in the north it has been relentless as five separate but overlapping operations go on for ever and well past their predicted completion dates and the revised completion dates.

Maybe it is time for a reminder of just how poor Bexley’s highways planning has been under their current Chief Engineer.

It started in August 2013 when Network Rail moved in to build the Crossrail station and closed the Felixstowe Car Park aided and abetted by Bexley Council who imposed additional street parking restrictions not to mention exorbitant street parking charges in selected roads.

Fortunately the Network Rail operation went according to plan and the station opened on the day that had been predicted several years earlier. It may not have been completely finished but at least they didn’t disrupt the roads further. Network Rail completely moved out of the Felixstowe Road Car park about a year ago but Bexley Council has kept it closed.

Network Rail has not however been the big problem, it’s been Bexley Council with their four separate but related road projects. The flyover, Harrow Manorway, Gayton Road and Felixstowe Road. You might add Wilton Road too but that was done by Greenwich Council and finished more or less on time.

Bexley Council first made a move on the flyover in 2017. My first photograph of it was taken on 1st March. By coincidence I took my last photo of the work on 1st March 2019. That was seven or eight months late according to Bexley Council.

Very soon after work began on the flyover Harrow Manorway itself was disrupted. FM Conway moved in on 26th May 2017. Bexley Council said the job would be completed by the Autumn of 2018. When it was wasn’t they said it would be done by June this year. Naively I believed them which is why all my 709 photos of the work are filed under a June 2019 date.

The job is still nowhere near being done.

Work on Gayton Road was not due to start until January 2018 but it was deferred until October for reasons which were not entirely unreasonable and given a February 2019 completion date but here we are in mid-September and it is still not completed. The barriers are still there and the promised passenger drop off points and black cab rank are not available either. Did someone mention the promised dozen or so trees? There are none.

Felixstowe Road was supposed to start even earlier, November 2017. Work actually began in April this year and my first photo was taken on the 18th and scheduled to end this Autumn. Perhaps I was optimistic in filing the photos with a September date but the job is probably no more than half done right now.

Their four road schemes reveal shockingly poor planning by Bexley Council. If their forecasts had been correct everything would have been back to normal a year go. Meanwhile we have massive diversions, some for months on end (Felixstowe Road) and others for only weeks. (Harrow Manorway.)

I’m no expert but FM Conway seems to have done a decent job and one must hope it doesn’t go the same way as Bexleyheath Broadway. I do however wish they took more care with pedestrian crossings. The latest example is by the roundabout near Sainsbury’s. They have diverted two carriageways into one which may be fair enough but there is no provision whatsoever for those who might need to cross the road.

 

9 September - Speculation and squabbles

While the Council is pretty much still in Summer recess I have looked elsewhere for things to do. One was the aircraft noise issue and I rather wish I had not covered it because until then I didn’t notice aeroplanes going into London City and now I hear them frequently, albeit far away and not very loud. Perhaps I really had learned to tune them out. However at long last a meeting is coming and the Agenda is published. It is the Members’ Code of Conduct Committee meeting on Wednesday week and the list of complaints received is just a little bit interesting.
It’s the third one that caught my eye and persuaded me I ought to attend. The Labour Group is complaining about a Councillor’s behaviour on Social Media and a failure to declare an interest in something or other. That sounds very reminiscent of another meeting I attended; one with the Councillor for Thamesmead East in a pub.

I am guessing there is a connection but I remember that rather a long time ago, it may have been last year, Danny Hackett came over all LibDem (†) and said Bollox, Bollox, Bollox in reply to an idiotic Twitter or Facebook post. My recollection is that no one cared until he left the Labour Party. They wouldn’t be so petty as to complain about it now would they?

The failure to declare an interest is by now just a vague memory for me but what recollection I have is that Danny either didn’t do a job at all or he did do it and it didn’t amount to much, I dunno.

I could be barking up the wrong tree or as Councillor Read might say, simply barking but it would be enormous fun if my guess was somewhere near right and I could persuade Councillor Hackett to run some of his old emails past me again.

Bonkers has not done any decent muck raking for months and months and a mini-scandal could be just what it needs as the blog’s tenth anniversary approaches.

† Former LibDem Leader Vince Cable said Bollox to Brexit.

 

5 September - Gate crashing City Airport

One of the possibly throw away lines by Tim Hulley, City Airport’s Director of Infrastructure and Planning, at the meeting last Tuesday in Belvedere was that any “stakeholder” could go to their quarterly consultative meetings. I’ve never been sure what defines a stakeholder but I do know that Bexley Council’s delegated airport stakeholder is Councillor James Hunt. I also know that James has been in trouble with his Labour colleagues for not attending any of the meetings and I have heard his excuses.

I looked up when the next meeting was to be held and discovered it was to be this afternoon in Newham’s swanky new headquarters overlooking the airport runway. I was due in East Ham anyway so escaped early presenting myself at the reception desk as a stakeholder for Thamesmead. The airport PR people welcomed me with open arms. Nobody had represented Thamesmead before. (It was only a small fib.)

Ten minutes later Councillor James Hunt rolled up having taken a half day off work. We sat together to see if we would learn anything. The presentation was a slightly extended version of what was shown in Belvedere two days earlier so I didn’t learn a lot that was new. James who had mugged up on the Airport Master Plan on-line was probably the same.

It soon became apparent that the failure to invite James to previous meetings was not special treatment meted out to him. Three Councillors from other boroughs made the same complaint.

So what was new compared to Tuesday?

Despite passenger numbers being up by 42% in the past five years aircraft movements are down. I learned that the overnight flight curfew caused massive inconvenience to delayed passengers who are diverted to Stansted etc. all over a couple of minutes lateness with the knock on effect of the aircraft not being available for an early morning departure. The word flexibility was mentioned but without any intention to change the basic opening hours.

There was confirmation that a new generation of aircraft, some are already operating from London City, will be noticeably quieter on take off but not a great deal better on the landing approach. The diagram below indicates the old (blue) and new (orange) the ground level noise at two decibel levels.

The bad news is that it will be 15 years before the quieter aircraft become 75% of the total. (The current new planes are operated by Swiss Air, the ones with the big red cross on the tail fin.)

To the surprise of many it was said that the old propeller driven aircraft were noisier on landing than any of the current jets but quieter on take off however the fact remains that with more aircraft movements the gaps between them will be shorter; speaking of which between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. I noted only two landings but from 5 p.m. to 6 planes were taking off very frequently.

The airport people were at pains to say that their Master Plan was only their forecasts and initial ideas and that they had made up their minds on nothing. It has no statutory force. There was widespread cynicism.

A Councillor from Lewisham had a big bee in her bonnet about climate change and so didn’t really want anyone to fly at all. She got very close to calling the airport management liars. Someone from a group called Stop City Airport went further and said they were all “duplicitous”.

A Greenwich Councillor read a question from a sheet of A4 and freely admitted she didn’t have any idea what the question meant. Presumably she didn’t understand the answer either.

There were at least five of us who were no more than resident busybodies some a lot more knowledgeable than others. A lady who lived at the eastern end of the runway seemed to be reasonably content with her lot whilst others from as far away as Lewisham and Lambeth were not.

In my humble opinion James Hunt’s absence from earlier meetings has made no material difference to any Bexley resident. One might argue that Bexley Council should have nominated a Thamesmead East Councillor to be the airport delegate but that is not the way the Tories work. In practice it doesn’t make a scrap of difference, if any of the Labour Councillors are serious about defending their residents right to a quiet life they can take a seat alongside James Hunt. As I proved this afternoon there is nothing to stop them taking an afternoon off work as James did.

Aggrieved residents could go too.

 

4 September (Part 2) - Green but very mean

I was thinking of driving around Bexley to see if there has been any progress towards the Council’s planned installation of 13 electric charging points but today I have been saved the trouble. Bexley Council has issued a Press Release on the subject and it is clear that they have yet to make a start.

Their 13 charging points is fewer than half what can be found off Bugsby Way in Greenwich alone but they are not the same. Bexley’s are to be provided by a company called ChargeMaster with every indication that they will cost plenty. In Greenwich they are free to use.

The more popular Electric Vehicles become the more the industry is showing signs of becoming a rip off. The electric car I bought a year ago is now £5,000 more expensive which makes it a candidate for George Osborne’s iniquitous Luxury Car Tax.

A year ago the most expensive public charging was 25 pence per kilowatt hour with many being free and now it is 39 pence almost everywhere. That makes it more expensive to run an EV than it was to run my old petrol engined runabout.

In practice it is not as bad as that sounds for the many people who can charge overnight on an Economy tariff but the situation is getting to be silly especially when so many of the chargers at Motorway Service Areas are out of order and do not work on newer cars.

Sooner or later the government will want to recoup the lost fuel duty revenues; but back to the present.

Except where there are large banks of charging points it is almost the norm to find the charging bays ICEd, which is short hand for them being occupied by Internal Combustion Engine cars or EVs which are not charging.

Just for once I hope that Bexley’s Parking Enforcement teams are out in force handing out Penalty Charge Notices.

Motorists can be a selfish bunch and the picture shows the remains of a charging plug lazily not replaced in its holster in a Bexley store’s car park. Then someone ran over it; the voltage and maximum wattage available are most certainly lethal.

Fortunately the charging points chosen by Bexley Council require motorists to bring their own cable so maybe they will be a little more careful than they are with the more powerful tethered cable units.

Proposed locations. Bellegrove Road, Danson Lane, Sherwood Park Avenue, St.John’s Road (Welling). Blackfen Parade. Walnut Tree Road and Erith Road (Erith). Methuen Road and Sandford Road (Bexleyheath). Nuxley Road and Picardy Street (Belvedere). The Oval (Sidcup) and Crayford Waterside.

 

4 September (Part 1) - London City Airport is growing. Noise can only get worse

In another example of Bexley Council’s neglect of their northern territories they have taken no known interest in London City Airport’s long term forecast which predicts a near doubling of the number of flights.

Not once has their delegate attended a Airport Consultative Committee and unlike all the other nearby boroughs they have not brought the current Consultation to Bexley. I was told why Bexley’s delegate had not attended any Committee meeting, he missed a meeting due to a date clash after which he was never invited again. It’s a reasonably good excuse but the fact remains that Bexley has been left without a voice while City Airport gears up for expansion.

Bexley Labour’s Transport Spokesman Stefano Borella and his Belvedere and Thamesmead East colleagues decided that standing idly by while the Conservatives did nothing about the Consultation was not an option. Last night there was a public meeting in Belvedere with a representative from the airport and their noise consultant.

It should be stated at the outset that there are at present no airport plans as such, at this stage it is more of a crystal ball exercise looking at the next 15 years and until the middle of October anyone is free to tell the airport authorities how they feel about it.

London City Airport is a big employer (2,200 jobs) doing a vital job for the economy although its five million a year passengers is a drop in the ocean compared to London’s three big airports; just 4% of the total.

However their studies suggest a 42% growth in passenger numbers by 2025 and eleven million ten years later without extending the operating times. That’s twice as many passengers as today and with aircraft not likely to get any bigger it must mean twice as many flights. The new taxi-way being constructed right now will free up runway capacity to allow the increase.

Future aircraft are expected to be as much as 6dB quieter on take off which is a big reduction but only about 2dB quieter on landing which is barely perceptible. Residents living on the flight path are understandably concerned and the most usual wind direction means they will not benefit from the 6dB reduction.

A small number were quite vocal about it last night and I began to think I should get my ears tested again. One visitor had come from Stockwell because of the perceived noise problem down there but when I have been sitting at the nearby Oval watching Surrey lose cricket matches I see the planes immediately overhead heading for London City. I never seem to hear them.

Perhaps I have learned to tune out aircraft noise. I live almost as close to the airport as it is possible to be whilst remaining within the Belvedere ward. I see the aircraft from home but I am not very aware of any noise.

I stood in my front garden this morning looking and listening and I agree I could hear them but not louder than the buses 150 yards away on Abbey Road and nothing like as loud as a passing train. However someone at the meeting whose comment suggested a nearby address said that when an aircraft takes off in an easterly direction and turns to the north he is subjected to the full force of of its engines. Either my hearing is seriously kaput (and SpecSavers says it isn’t) or I feel there must be an element of exaggeration or intolerance going on.

Perhaps I should declare an interest or maybe it’s a bias. From 1949 until 1984 I lived less than a mile from the runway at Farnborough when it was the centre of British Aviation.

If you have not been blown to the ground by a Vulcan bomber as it switches its Olympus engine to reheat at low level or you have gone through life and managed to avoid having the hairs on your arm singed by a Naval Buccaneer bomber (†) you don’t really know what aircraft noise is.

The underside of Concorde pictured here was taken from my back garden long before I owned a telephoto lens and what you see has not been cropped.

The difference from me in Farnborough and Thamesmead residents is that Concordes and Vulcans flying over were relatively rare events.

No one flies pure jet engines commercially any more (Concorde was the last) and quieter bypass engines have become the norm. (Name dropping; the leading ‘inventor’ was a personal friend until he died four years ago.)

So as you can see I am not a good judge of what constitutes unacceptable aircraft noise but I do know that on the rare occasions I take a trip to Thamesmead’s shopping centre I am surprised at just how low the aircraft appear to be but I have never been particularly aware of the noise.

When you have been under a slow moving Harrier jump jet you just accept that aircraft are noisy. I also accept that it can’t be any fun living under the flight path and many of the houses there pre-date the opening of London City and the promise never to fly jet aircraft from it.

Labour’s Press Release on the subject is here and perhaps more importantly anyone with more sensitive ears than mine should make sure their opinion is heard via the Consultation process.

† As a teenager with a group of friends I climbed the airfield perimeter fence and got a little too close to the runway.

 

2 September - Harrow Manorway regeneration gets even messier

This evening Bexley Council closed the Harrow Manorway/Yarnton Way roundabout for resurfacing; why it will take three whole weeks is not yet clear, maybe the roundabout is to be remodelled.

Traffic at the roundabout at 9 p.m. was quite light although 90 minutes earlier I noted a queue of nine buses waiting for the single bus stop at the foot of Knee Hill, many of them diverted routes.

At various bus stops along Harrow Manorway people were waiting for buses that will not come until dawn, many people were walking towards Thamesmead.

At the roundabout itself it was far from clear what motorists should do. The car in the final picture had come from Yarnton Way without impediment and took the northern side of the roundabout towards Eynsham Drive where a head on collision was narrowly avoided because it had been made one way only without warning.

Harrow Manorway from the Station to Eastern Way was scheduled to be completed a year ago.

Well done Bexley Council, it’s what we have come to expect of you.

 

1 September - It’s just not cricket

I’ve said before that for technical reasons there has to be a blog entry on the first of each month but right now I can’t think of anything of much interest. Does anyone need a reminder that Bexley Council plans to reintroduce evening road chaos to Abbey Wood and Thamesmead?

There’s only a couple of Council meetings this month that might be worth going to; I wonder who has caused the Code of Conduct Committee to be convened. Has someone managed to stick some nonsense on Independent Councillor Danny Hackett yet? It is obvious that there are people out there determined to get him for having more sense than they have.

The picture shown here is a bit worrying, I have seen Councillor Philip Read Tweeting from the Oval Cricket Ground before but I’ve not worried about it as the photographs have shown him to be sitting on the opposite side of the ground to me.

This time they are pictured uncomfortably close. It’s a good job I did not go the the Members’ Bar or I might have had to offer to buy Philip a drink.

Perhaps I should rethink my Surrey Membership. Given their performance in the T20s over the past couple of years and the number of times matches have been rained off it’s probably the sensible thing to do, Philip Read or not.