Camberwell Online Blog

Welcome to Camberwell: land of betting shops

http://www.camberwellonline.co.uk/2011/12/welcome-to-camberwell-land-of-betting-shops/#comment-436614

Ah! Yes;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markdodds/6559557477/in/photostream/lightbox/ A Happy Christmas to All ...

Great to see Phil G back out of retirement for a flurry. And to see festive cheer manifest so clear on the site of choice for Camberwell Lovers.

I feel compelled to point out that the article James J linked to above IS ABOUT THE EXISTING shoe shop opposite Pasha - Men's Traditional Shoes of South London. Fred (aka Fred the Shoe) owns the shop and, on his own, is an institution. The shoes are traditional, many made in England, Northamptonshire and are between £50 and £100 less than you'd pay on Regent Street. So go there and spend your Christmas money, look after the shoes and they'll last twenty years easily. That works out about £7.50 a year plus re souling. When you get them resoled DO NOT USE THE TWAT at the bottom of Grove Vale who ruins shoes for only £80 a time.

As far as the earth works at Burgess Park goes - the delays that have happened were OBVIOUSLY going to happen ... That was preordained by the way Southwark started the project way back when, managing expectations about the amount available and letting it slip that £2million would be put into research, consultation, design and decision making.

It's distressing, in the extreme, to see how the whole charade of public spending is meted out the way it has been on that public space over the last sixty years. £millions chucked down the drain in half baked social engineering projects done by half baked intellectual idiots who couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery. Demolish, Renovate, Refurbish, Renew Repeat - at decades apart at public expense. This has been the case on that site for decades. It's been used in Landscape Architecture courses all over the world as a case study in WHAT NOT TO DO. I fear this incarnation will be but another chapter in the tome of foolish failure although I fervently hope I am wrong. If it's a triumph I will be pleased and will regard it as a sign of HOPE.

I'm voting for
More Betting Shops for Christmas
More Hair n Nails for New Year
More Evangelical Churches for Easter
More Chicken Takeaways for Summer Solstice
More Cornucopias of Yams & Batteries for the whole of the rest of year. Season upon season ...

There will be peace and goodwill and shooting galleries and rehab centres and parking issues and noise and bad street furniture and one ways that make no sense

In the meantime I'm off ice skating in Edinburgh