I wasn’t surprised to read that the Harris Academy at Peckham has taken an injunction out against Jacqui Fergus. Faced with the undemocratic nature of Academy schools, Miss Fergus took the only route available – protesting about exclusion with parents outside the school. Figures last year revealed the Academy has a temporary exclusion rate that is three times the national average. Labour have sold us into a Faustian pact, letting a Tory Lord buy up community schools in the hope that standards will improve. Never mind that we hand over control of the school to unaccountable governors, selected by a man with an estimated wealth of £285m. Southwark has been pretty gung-ho for academy schools, in contrast to Lewisham where Greens have helped keep schools in the hands of local people. In August I added my vote to the new Green Party education policy, which includes a freeze on expansion…
Tag: <span>Peckham</span>
Last night’s Growing Southwark meeting was graced by British-Armenian designer Vahakn Matossian, who explained his Fruit City project and his beautiful picking tools. When I first got involved with OpenStreetMap I started to make my own private map of apple trees and blackberry brambles in public places. I spent one or two summers eating about four fruit crumbles a week! I love his map, and although it might lead to some sources drying up due to demand, that will hopefully just lend weight to public calls for more fruit trees and bushes to be deliberately planted in our streets and parks. I’ve started to enquire about the chances of getting some fruit trees in small parks like Warwick Gardens and Holly Grove in The Lane part of Peckham/Bellenden/Camberwell. Jenny Jones has been doing the same in her ward – South Camberwell. Maybe Vahakn will get the production line going for…
In preparation for the Peckham Mapping Party this Wednesday evening (3rd June) I tried out the house numbering system in OpenStreetMap known as the Karlsruhe Schema around the south east corner of The Lane area of Peckham. Well, mapping and leafletting again with the all-important Euro elections on Thursday. With all the buildings, points of interest and house numbers it’s getting pretty crowded! It will be good if this is picked up by the search function on the OpenStreetMap homepage, so one could search for “15 East Dulwich Road” and get at least the right end of that rather long road. All that time in the sun left me completely wiped out, though. I’ll be glad when the elections are over so I can spend a few consecutive weekends and evenings with no leafletting on the horizon. Just the Exec meeting in June, and lots of local events to do…
What a bank holiday! Saturday morning out leafletting for the European elections with Jenny Jones, followed by an afternoon in the wonderful Bussey Building with the Peckham Power Company. Never mind the sandwiches, the sun brought out a great mix of people, including a policy expert from DECC no less. Anna from the PPC took us through the mix of energy we currently use — nice to see people quite so shocked by the proportion of energy ’embodied’ in the stuff we buy; next, the mix of energy we could physically generate in the UK; and finally some realisation of the challenge both for the UK and for Peckham in responding to the triple crunch of the recession, climate change and peaking fossil fuel reserves. The recipe for Peckham and The Lane area? That’ll be lots of refurb, solar thermal & PV, a ground-source heat pump system under Peckham Rye…