Jon asks:

On the page here Greenwich Council states that construction of the “Greenwich Centre” is due to start in December 2010.
 
I’d heard of the plans to build the Centre but I don’t recall seeing that date before.
 
Do you know whether this is part of the Heart of East Greenwich development? If so, has that date been announced officially? Are there now committed plans to do something with that site?

Andrew’s been worrying about this since May:

Whilst walking past the “New Heart for East Greenwich” today – something struck me as I walked past the blue boarded up former hospital site – if the E.Greenwich site were really in need of a new heart – it would be dead by now!

Perhaps the site is on an NHS waiting list ?  I think it needs the kiss of life!

I truly have no idea what’s going on there. The Greenwich Centre  is the one-stop shop for council services intended to go in the large empty space where the hospital was cleared, but any ideas about actual delivery are at best twinkles in eyes as far as I know.

In her latest newsletter Mary Mills says that at the June meeting of the East Greenwich Management Committee (not sure who this comprises of)  it was decided there was “ clarification needed” for the New Heart of East Greenwich (God, I hate typing that name, it just sucks)  but it “is understood a newsletter will soon be available for a developer.”

In June, apparently, this mythical ‘newsletter’ was ‘in the process of being produced. No sign of it yet, which doesn’t bode well for a December starting date.

One of the major problems appears to be that it’s not actually down to Greenwich Council what goes on on the site. It’s managed by (or at least it was last time I looked, but these government quangos seem to change with the wind) the Homes and Communities Agency (HACA) who recently lost their commercial partner, First Base. They now appear to have gone to the HACADPP (Homes and Communities Agency Development Partner Panel for those of you who don’t live in a Douglas Adams-esque world of bureaucracy) to try to find new development partners, which are pretty thin on the ground just now.

For the past – what – five, six years, there’s been a big hole in East Greenwich where the only thing that’s happened is that from time to time a new set of expensively-produced signs have gone up as the quango in charge has changed. My favourite was the jolly yellow set where small children talked about their dreams for the space – “fountains everywhere” said one young chap, who is probably in his twenties now (though unless they were going to reproduce the Tivoli Gardens – now there’s a thought – fountains ‘everywhere’ might be a tad impractical…)

Frankly I think it’s pretty unlikely that anything’s going to happen soon. In the meanwhile, East Greenwich library reels from the loss of the Meridian Music Centre, the Arches get just that little bit tattier and Woolwich Road continues to languish. I understand that the HACA are refusing access to anyone who might want to use the land for temporary purposes – as a sculpture park, for example, or temporary allotments. I’m assuming because they worry they’d have problems evicting people if they did.

Put the 1st- 9th July in your diaries, folks, as those are the dates when we can go along to Room 015 of Queen Mary Court at the ORNC to oohh and aahh at whatever the new building will be on the site of the old Village Market in Stockwell Street.

I have high hopes. I mean - this building is for a School of Architecture. If it isn’t downright ICONIC the University has no business having a School of Architecture at all.

In this particular case, and given it’s a school of architecture, personally, I would like to see something modern and truly funky, not too tall, obviously, but with that certain ’something’ that makes buildings worth talking about.  If it’s bland, or covered in ’sustainable’ wood planks I’m going to scream.

Paul would like to see a public market built within it – it’s a nice idea, but I’m guessing the University wouldn’t be able to cram in the projected TWO THOUSAND  students (are there that many architect jobs in the entire universe?)  if there are too many stalls doing fancy cupcakes, groovy t shirts and mango samosas.

So let’s all get down there on the 1st July and see what they’re proposing to build there. I get the feeling they’re willing to listen to local people over what will actually get built – so it’s up to us to tell ‘em.

Timings are thus:

Thursday 1 July, 5pm to 7.30pm; Friday 2 July, 8.30am to 7.30pm; Saturday 3 July, 10am to 5pm; Monday 5 July to Friday 9 July, 8.30am to 5pm.

Here’s a poser, folks. When you get an email from anyone at Greenwich Council, it comes pre-loaded with the following disclaimer, no matter how inoffensive the content of the missive concerned:

This message is for the named person’s use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Greenwich Council reserves the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks, in accordance with legislation.

Greenwich Council has scanned this e-mail for viruses but does not accept any responsibility once this e-mail has been transmitted. You should scan attachments (if any) for viruses.
Greenwich Council can be contacted by telephone on +44 (0) 20 8854 8888

Now, of course this isn’t just Greenwich Council. It’s increasingly tagged onto pretty much any form of electronic mail, mainly from companies who, if they had nothing to hide, might not consider it worth their while to do so.

So. My question is this. Since this message has been tacked onto the end of the email, and the agreement of the person to whom it is addressed to enter into such an arrangement has not been either sought or obtained, just how much clout does it have? After all, the terms of reading this email have not been agreed before the addressee has read them, so why should they take any notice of them? Why shouldn’t they just pass on the contents if they feel they are relevant?

I would be grateful for opinions – both professional and lay – on this increasingly invasive piece of legal add-on to the humble email format.

Tell me, folks, is it just me or is anyone else suddenly finding that their pay-as-you-go Oyster card regularly fails to acknowledge that they have reached the daily travelcard rate? I’ve been long suspecting it, even though it’s hard to keep track when you touch out at a barrier and all it does is tell you to pass through, rather than telling you how much your journey was (particularly bad at tube stations) but it was blatant the day I went to the National Archives.

I took the train to Cannon Street, then the tube to Kew Gardens, which took me to just under a fiver – the tipping point for automatic top up. When I got back on, Automatic top-up stuck a further twenty quid on my card. I got to Cannon Street, and just had time to nip home before going out again. The train was advertised for Platform 2, so I went there. On Platform 2 it also told me it was a Dartford via Greenwich. I got on. First stop Grove-something – Park, End, Row – I don’t know – somewhere I’d never heard of in deepest South East London.

I was cross with myself – I thought I’d made a mistake. It was only when a small army of similarly disgruntled passengers crossed the platform to go back that I realised it wasn’t just me. Still, I kept calm and carried on.

By this point it was too late to go home and change to my evening boots and cloak, so I went to London Bridge. As I got out, my Oyster card charged me SIX POUNDS for the pleasure of wasting an hour of my life. I hadn’t tapped in or tapped out as I’d just crossed the platform at the mysterious Grove station, so it must have been some kind of fine for taking too long to go between Cannon Street and London Bridge.

Cross, but still just about keeping the Phantom temper, I went to my evening appointment. When I came home, my Oyster card charged me another two pounds. I calculate that I was charged over £15 for travel that day. That would never have happened with a paper travelcard. I’ve talked to three people since, and they’ve all noticed that their Oyster cards seem to continue charging them after the travelcard cut-off, but I’m wondering if it’s getting to be universal, and TfL are just hoping we don’t notice.

I’ve written to Oystercard about it. I’ll let you know their reply.

What’s your experience of Oysters? I was so looking forward to them being on mainline stations too – in Greenwich it does make it much more convenient but it seems we’re paying through the nose for that pleasure. My Oystercard, ONE DAY AFTER I TOPPED IT UP, needs cash again. I am seriously considering going back to travelcards.

Hands up who remembers the Village Market? It’s not a year yet since the market closed, and yet it seems like forever ago. The site sits forlornly waiting for anything to happen while the traders have been scattered to the four winds.

The Old Bottle Shop lady made a stab at keeping going – from that secretive little upstairs warehouse marked only by a giant plastic geisha (whatever happened to her?) – to what some consider to be even more secretive Trafalgar Road – one of the many, many many empty shops along a sad-sack street that desperately needs a revamp.

She certainly shared the space with some oddities. Whenever I went by there was something new jostling with the assortment of vintage glassware – ladies’ knickers, grow-bags, saucy stockings. But it’s been closed for some time now.

Adrian was curious, and the next time he saw her, asked her what was going on. It’s a sad story. He says “Apparently, she has been evicted by the landlord and her stock seized by the bailiffs. And sure enough, Saturday’s catalogue at the Greenwich Auction was full of beautiful old bottles of all shapes, sizes and hues – a life’s work of collecting under the hammer. “

Adrian tells me she has still has some stock in a small space in the basement of the Junk Shop (where several Village Market refugees seem to have established themselves) and was talking also about doing more car boot sales, etc. but she won’t be taking on another shop.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Tourists just don’t get down as far as Trafalgar Road – and let’s face it, why should they? It’s just a bog-standard, local street full of takeaways and a few decent shops, but with a constant flow of heavy goods traffic and narrow pavements that don’t invite browsing. The shops are tiny – and would be perfect as cutesy little gift stores (I wish The Home Front every good thing, btw – a lovely shop, and a brave move) but anyone stopping to look in a window would hold up the entire street.

The East Greenwich Traders Association are keen to make Trafalgar Road a ‘cultural corridor’ for the Olympics. I guess if nobody’s allowed to cars during the games, they could spill out onto the road, but personally, I think they have an uphill struggle ahead. Any ideas for how Trafalgar Road could be made – well – a bit nicer than it is?

A pal of mine went to top up his car tyres yesterday. Normally, he’d go to Sainsburys, where the air is free (so to speak), but the queues were silly (have you noticed that there seem to be petrol supply problems all over the place at the moment?) so he went to the BP at Charlton, where it costs 20p a go.

He prepared the car first, by getting nice and close and taking off the little caps, and he’s a fast air-applier, but he still only managed to do three tyres before it ran out and he had to put another 20p in the slot.

Am I being cynical, or has someone at BP actually made the effort to work out how long it takes the average customer to do three of their four tyres and timed the squirter appropriately?

20p? It’s not even fresh air. But he did say it was a good pressure. You gets what you pay for.

I’ve been thinking about this morning’s post. As I said, I don’t encourage family history enquiries – I don’t have any interest in my own family’s past and I don’t really ‘get’ the whole digging-up-the-ancestors phenomenon (my mum does it and I still don’t get it.)

But from the responses today I can see that Phantomites are a generous bunch – and seem to enjoy a challenge. Should I perhaps relax my hitherto fierce attitudes to family tree-huggers and start posting a few more ‘personal’ posers rather than ploughing through them at a (very) slow rate myself via the privacy of email? Or does the idea of trying to find someone else’s Great Uncle George who worked at the dog food factory send you to sleep?

I’m open on this one – though it would help clear the Giant Backlog of Doom in my inbox…

So – apparently we’re to become a ‘Royal Borough.’ It sounds nice, and I read that it’s a rare honour, bestowed because of the links we had with the crown in the middle ages, but can anyone tell me what this actually means in any real practical sense?

I don’t want to be a grump and I guess I’d rather live in a Royal Borough than not – but what will it mean other than a some fancy road signs and new batch of stationery for the council?

Following on from this morning’s post about the proposed pedestrianisation of Greenwich, Fat Cat has suggested it could be time to introduce a local congestion charge.

It’s been mooted in the past, with mixed reactions. Certainly I don’t think it would work if it just joined up with the central London one, but it might be an interesting thing if it were genuinely local.

I’m not sure that we’d ever get away with residents being entirely exempt, but presumably a similar discount to the London scheme would be possible, perhaps with a slightly lower discount for residents in the immediately surrounding towns.

What do we think about this? Maybe it is time to at least talk about such a concept. In the meanwhile, let’s have a quick yea-or-nay straw poll.

We talked about the possible part-pedestrianisation of the town centre just before Christmas, but Helen thought it would be worth having another discussion now that at least some of us have been able to look at the proposals in a bit more detail. If you didn’t make the blink-and-you’d-miss-it consultation, you can get the basics here.

Pedestrianisation is certainly no new thing – as this proposal from 1970 shows:

It just seems to be the pedestrianisable area that’s changed. And to be frank, the new one seems more likely to get footfall.

I did manage to get along to the consultation and, despite it being during the pre-Christmas hurly-burly, it appeared to be well attended (it also gave me the chance to have a poke around what turned out to be a very boring, corporate-looking Davenport House.)

I can’t help feeling that what it boils down to is whether or not you’re a driver living near or regularly passing through the giant one-way Ring of Doom proposed as an alternative to using the covered market as a roundabout. If you are, then you’ll probably be very grumpy about it all. If not, it might seem rather appealing.

There are two basic options proposed by the council, but from what I can tell, the council itself really doesn’t have any preferred ideas – they genuinely seemed to be asking for thoughts from the public when I was there. I’m guessing they fancy the idea in principle but don’t really know how to go about it.

Certainly Option One – which is where they would just close off College Approach and the north end of King William Walk but do absolutely nothing else – is clearly useless. Even the guys at the consultation openly admitted that it would create utter chaos.

Option Two and its variants – sundry versions of a large one-way ring road with bus/cycle possibilities – seems better. Nothing’s going to stop congestion (short, perhaps, of a Greenwich congestion charge, a whole other subject – or maybe not…)but it merely being a pain in the proverbial to get round the centre of Greenwich might make people who currently just rat-run between Deptford and the Blackwall Tunnel take a different route.

Andrew Gilligan’s not happy at all and he has some valid points. Certainly buses have a hard time of it under the current ideas – working through the plans so that buses would have a clearer passage seems like a good idea to me; even at the expense of some of the council’s ‘boulevard’ dreams. If your aim is get rid of cars by making it physically hard to drive round, it’s essential to make the buses – and cycle provisions – as attractive as possible instead. And yes – something would need to be done to prevent more rat-running between Circus Street /Royal Hill / King William Walk.

But I’m not sure I buy everything he’s saying. I don’t think that pedestrianisation would necessarily make Greenwich even bleaker than it already is late at night on weekends, for example. We can’t just count on cars as some kind of Darwinist method of getting rid of Saturday night drunks; separate measures (probably to do with licensing) need to be looked at to counter that particular problem.

I also can’t see people making the effort to rat-run through the park. Once you’re as far as the park on the A2, you might as well take the pain and finish the job across the heath.

I agree that congestion is an issue – as it is now. And yes – it might get worse. But it also might not. It could end up as no worse – or not much- worse, with a net gain. I’m not convinced I agree with him that “the status quo remains the least-worst option.” I’d like to learn what the results of the consultation come up with, and see some modelling done on the best suggestions.

What do you think?