Sergeant Barry Edge confirmed the issues of speeding drivers around Shooters Hill could be tackled by getting the traffic division of the Met Police involved, but this will only happen if more residents call the issues in.

We need your help in calling any issues of speeding drivers, logging the date, time and registration numbers.

So, provided any speed freeks don’t whizz by too fast, and the vital statistics can be taken, why not 999 it (noting that callers are sometimes interrogated about themselves as well as the dangers they see).

According to the latest police report for this ward, local safety is up on the last quarter, so collecting previously unknown information on speeding would support new safety initiatives in the area (such as solar powered smiley/frowny faces), and perhaps even give the police the odd chance of a go in the helicopter.

sham petition

Here’s a copy of the SHAM petition in text:

Residents Petition Against the Shooters Hill Masts

Please complete this petition; it will be collected by a SHAM (Shooters Hill Against Masts) member. It is important you complete your name and address to ensure the validity of the petition.

l/we the undersigned hereby support SHAM’s aims as outlined below in regard to the phone masts in the Shooters Hill area and in particular the powerful TETRA mast on Eaglesfield Road:

1. That Greenwich Council ensure masts ad [original typo] all existing mobile/TETRA/and other operators immediately remove their equipment from the Shooters Hill area and relocate them away from peoples homes in the area;

2. That Greenwich Council seek the immediate removal of the recently installed TETRA technology on the mast at Eaglesfield Road;

3. That OFCOM seek the immediate removal of various equipment on the masts which does not confirm to agreed licences and safety guidelines;

4. That the London Fire Brigade remove their mast on Eaglesfield Road and relocate it on one their own operational sites; and

5. That Greenwich Council refuse further planning applications from communications companies where these affect heavily populated communities.

SIGNED:

Name:

Address:

Email Address:

Telephone No:

Your Health:

Have you, your family or your pets experienced poor health that you think may be caused by or exacerbated by the radiation from the phone masts? If so, please give details below.

Shooters Hill Against Masts - click to zoom and read the planning application

A recent TETRA related planning consultation period that expired on February the 17^th has perhaps rather late in the day caused something of a stir. The mast is on eaglesfield road near the fire station. The opposition to proposals for the upgrading of equipment owned by airwave solutions has led to mo burgess of the greenwich conservatives writing to residents to survey local feelings on this topic; she explains in her letter that she has received a number of complaints. More recently, a number of posters have gone up on lamp posts in the area, with a couple of contact phone numbers at the bottom, not having rung them myself I’m not sure if they are to do with mo burgess.

Base stations in general are unpopular, partly because some of the masts are so menacing to look at, but airwave equipment in particular is seen as somewhat controversial because of the comparatively higher health risks thought to be associated with the encrypted TETRA radio specification they use. Firstly there’s the slow cooking problem, which relates to both those near base stations and handset users (in this case ambulance workers, firefighters and the police). Additionally there are the so called non-thermal effects associated with TETRA. The story about base station risks is fairly complex (i.e. I couldn’t fully grasp the main literature review after one very boring sitting), but it does seem that the continual repetition of signal oscillations at around 17Hz might (to me) be the mechanism behind the sleep disturbances reported in some of the survey findings, although the so-called nocebo (negative) effect can’t necessarily be ruled out in that study due to the way it was set up. This all led me to speculate that since neural firing patterns oscillate around 11-39Hz during open eyed wakefulness and 2-7Hz during sleep, a constant stream of 17Hz signal frequencies pulsing through ones bedroom wall and head at night could potentially induce wakefulness?

The experiments on the topic is divided into two camps, and Epidemiologists haven’t really been able to investigate TETRA yet as they probably need more time (they are now going over >10 year data for GSM and even that has been divisive). The general scientific consensus seems to be that more long-term adverse health affects have not been ruled out for this technology, and with the previous concerns over some of the signal frequencies and microwave radiation used in TETRA, the response of some people is quite reasonably, “Why should we be the guinea pigs!”

Red Lion Lane - One Way Proposal

Highway safety seems to be fairly active theme in the area at the moment, there was the traffic monitoring in cleanthus road last year (not sure what came of that), and the extension of the 20 mph zone to eaglesfield road; now there’s a new speed/vehicle counter on the hill going down to kent, plus the occasional traffic police with lidars round the garden centre, and the new road safety improvements to shrewsbury lane where it meets the main road plus the pedestrian refuges at various stages, and the proposed double yellow lines on the main road round the farm (this will save people getting parking fines when they drive to the lambing day in april)…

Overall it just goes to show that gene selection for fear of spiders and snakes, useful though it may have been in the ancestral environment, is now being replaced by meme selection – i.e. we’re just not scared enough of vehicles yet, so culture has to intervene whilst we wait for the genome to catch up (i.e. all the people who are afraid of cars reproduce more effectively than those who aren’t).

In 2000 Red Lion Lane benefited from traffic calming as part of the 20mph traffic calming measures enjoyed by many roads in the area, and was also turned into a down-the-hill-only road at the top end. At the same time the idea of excusing pavement parking on the bottom end was briefly considered before being, erm, parked. Since then the council have received a number of complaints about drivers having difficulty passing each other on this lower section of the lane, and also complaints about damage to parked vehicles, which presumably happens when things get tight. Efforts have been made to revive the pavement parking idea, but now a more radical measure is being proposed which is to make still more of the lane down hill only.

A mini vote is currently on, mainly to sound out the feelings of those who live on roads that will get the up-hill traffic that currently use red lion lane as a rat run when the junction at the old shooters hill police station gets slow, and so I anticipate that herbert road→paget rise→ankerdine crescent→shrewsbury lane→foxcroft road→eaglesfield road will now become the cut through of choice for those in an, erm, hurry. The other way that through traffic might cut through would be herbert road⇒ripon road⇒eglinton hill⇒eaglesfield road – so it may be that residents in these roads are being polled.

The changes due to take place are as follows:

• Provision of an ‘entry treatment’ at the junction of Shrewsbury Lane and Shooters Hill. This will hopefully reduce the number of recurrent collisions with drivers turning out of Shrewsbury Lane on to Shooters Hill.
• Installation of ‘SLOW’ carriageway markings and red-coloured surfacing on Shooters Hill at the junction with Eaglesfield Road. This in turn should alter driver perception and encourage reduced speed.
• Installation of a pedestrian refuge island east of Cleanthus Road, very near the water tower. This will provide a safe crossing for people using the bus stops near Eaglesfield Road.
• Installation of a pedestrian refuge island near Woodlands Farm. This will provide a safe crossing for people visiting Woodlands Farm and the bus stop located opposite on Shooters Hill.
• Installation of five traffic islands on Shooters Hill towards Welling, in addition to red-coloured surfacing within the central hatching from Shrewsbury Lane to the Greenwich-Bexley Borough Boundary.
• Installation of a ‘Speed Warning Sign’ on the traffic island near Woodlands Farm.

Let’s hope it works! I personally feel that these changes could have taken the side of the pedestrian a bit more than they did, but there might be a good reason for keeping the traffic moving.

The Old Shooters Hill Fire Station

Earlier this month I wrote about what I referred to as the old fire station on Shrewsbury Lane.

It was then brought to my attention that referring to the station on Shrewsbury Lane as old is a mistake, because in actual fact that was the new one, and there was another one before that, by the old police station… Now I’m not going to make the same mistake again and refer to the old police station as being the one where the hill meets well hall road, just because there’s no police stationed there any more, but judging by this postcard picture viewed from lower down the hill, the old police/fire stations can be made out, well, apparently the police station replaced the gallows, and the fire station is probably the building next door with a large entrance and lots of very tall chimneys!

The Old Shooters Hill Firemen (and boys)

Anyway, I was also provided with these pictures of the old station itself, and a little bit of history – apparently it opened in 1879 for horse drawn engines, and closed in 1912 when the new station opened in a more strategic (?) hill top location. Following the move, the building was then used as a Warrant Officer’s quarters for the War Department, and presumably fell into disuse during less warlike times, and was knocked down. Looking at the second picture is quite interesting as the firemen being photographed outside their station are joined by two little boys, I wonder what they did – given the dickensian style of the picture it wouldn’t surprise me if children did work there, although they aren’t wearing uniforms… so perhaps they didn’t make much of a public showing, and their job might have been to keep the place warm when the men were out on duty. Anyway, rather than speculating, I should probably go and do some more investigation, when I can make the time.

The ex New Shooters Hill Fire Station ¹

1. Smoke Alarms (tested weekly)
2. Smoking
3. Cooking
4. Candles
5. Portable Heaters
6. Open Fires
7. Electrical
8. Escape Plans
9. Before Bed Routine

Eltham Fire Station ³

I was reminded that, like lots of electrical items (batteries, toys etc), smoke alarms would contaminate landfill with lead/lithium/cadmium etc, and should be disposed of at nathan way.

The other thing that happened is that I started to ask about the selling off of the fire station, the historical preservation of the doors, and where our new station is (Eltham High Street). As a result of the closure, the call out time for this area is around 3 minutes longer. This makes home safety all the more important, especially during icy winter when the hill becomes less accessible to traffic.