Local Clicktivism

A couple of recent petitions that I’ve been asked to promote:

We want physically segregated cycle lanes on Albany Rd & Thurlow St and Dutch standard prioritised protected crossings for cyclists/pedestrians at cycle route junctions, in the Aylesbury Estate plan — with the recent cancellation of CS6, better provision for cyclists on the back streets becomes more important.

We call on Eric Pickles, to investigate allegations of governance failure, poor financial management and potential fraud at the London Borough of Southwark, relating to the sale of the Heygate Estate — not directly about Camberwell, but it’s just down the road and has also cost you money from your taxes.

Update: A public consultation on the proposal to extend the Bakerloo Line South — via either Old Kent Road, or a new Camberwell station.

Update: Here’s another one, calling for fairer flight paths to and from Heathrow — Camberwell is one of the affected areas.

If you know of any more, email peter@​camberwellonline.​co.​uk or tweet @camberwellblog.

Ten Years Later

I’ve been away, and busy. Away in New York and Italy, busy writing the second edition of a book about the other part of my life, making websites. But now I am back, so let’s have some local news.

Work is well underway on the new Camberwell Library, between the Green and the Magistrates Court. It’s set to open in Spring next year. Some revitalisation work on the Green itself is due to start soon, but nothing visible so far.

All of our new businesses are still going, and sounds as if we’re going to be joined by a new hip pizza restaurant on the site of the former Johansson’s cafe, and possibly a new artisan bakery a few doors up (the owners are actively advertising for a deli on the site, not sure if there’s any movement on that front).

And the proposed CS6 cycle lane [PDF], from Penge to the City, passing through Camberwell (AFAICT down Denmark Hill and along Camberwell Road), has been dropped.

But you knew all of that already, of course, because of the fantastic comments on this site, which keep going even when I can’t. The problem is, I don’t have time to devote to the blog as I did in the past. I’ve been writing this for TEN YEARS! (I missed the anniversary, in July). And while I have some helpful regular contributors (thanks Mumu, especially), most of the work is done by the commenters.

A few people, presuming abandonment, have asked about a forum for more regular news; we had the SE5 Forum forum in the past, but people preferred to comment here. Although that was when I posted more regularly; now that’s not the case, is a forum or discussion board an alternative worth pursuing? Or should I repeat the call for more authors, and hope for the best? Or, perhaps, provide more regular updates in the form of collected tweets, as the shorter form of Twitter makes it easier for me to write there.

I want to know what you, the loyal lifeblood of this blog, want to do. And then I’ll do it.

In the meantime, now that the writing’s finished I should be able to come back to some kind of semblance of semi-regular blogging. Send me your news.