Pops walks!

Pops walks!
Originally uploaded by clogsilk

Look, look! Claudia has taken some steps! Go girl!

Standing!

Standing!
Originally uploaded by clogsilk.

As an antidote to the no-sleeping misery post of earlier, here's a picture of Claudia standing unaided! And loving it!

I hope she starts walking soon! (and her teeth come through) Then maybe things will settle down a bit!

She likes standing like this, saying "ready steady go!" and then falling to the floor. She thinks it's hysterical.

Pear shaped

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. A combination of illness, nothing interesting to say and....

guess what?

Pops has stopped sleeping as soon as she started! Back in our bed from 11pm til morning.

SOB.

Oh wow, a weekend of firsts!

Well, little pops is surprising us! On Saturday night she took her first unaided steps. Only two of them, so she's not exactly running her brother ragged yet, but I'm so chuffed! She looked so pleased with herself and from a selfish point of view, my life with two toddlers will be easier in a number of ways than my life with a baby and a toddler. (No comments from smug mothers of two toddlers about how hard it is now please! Let me bask in my ignorance...)

And then, the best thing - on Sunday night she slept from being put into bed at 9pm (after Ben's 5th birthday party) until 7:30am this morning! Can we call that sleeping through?

[I also had a first, my first ever trip to the Valley to see the not so mighty HTFC play Charlton. Unfortunately we lost 2-1, so heigh ho! Still, the company was good so not all bad...]

As an aside: the pic above is a cute one of Claudia on our trip on the Kirkless Light Railway last weekend. I meant to blog about that but I haven't, so I'll do a post about it next time we go. I think we'll do a Thomas day there at some point. I edited the photo (taken using a Canon Ixus 750) using a fab app called FotoMuse on my iPhone. This app is brilliant! It was recommended to me by Spud. Have a look at what she's done with it - some excellent stuff. I'm quite pleased with my effort, think it makes my little one look a bit hip and trendy!

Bob the Blob's visit

Bob the blob in Jesshops
Originally uploaded by clogsilk.

This sight greeted us as we headed out for lunch from work on Wednesday. Bob the Blob in our local bakery in Exmouth Market. We never did get to the bottom of why!

Still it looks like he's having fun.

What's a neighbourhood?

Way back in 1997/98 the Government was all about neighbourhoods. That was how our cities were going to be transformed, by small groups of people coming together and improving their local areas. Sure Start was based on neighbourhoods, and the fledgling Neighbourhood Statistics Service was set up by the Office for National Statistics. Then someone realised that to come up with statistics for areas, they need to have boundaries. And that if you want to make sure that any data you release for these small areas don't disclose the identity of individuals then these boundaries need to align with pre-existing areas that you've already published data for. And of course, you probably need to know the number of people living in your neighbourhood to do anything meaningful with the fact that there were 53 births in the area last year...

And lo, neighbourhoods became wards and all was fine and dandy. Except that wards are a political construct, and they change in order to keep electoral numbers to a reasonable level in each. Quite often your ward bears little relation to where you feel you live. But of course data and feelings don't really go hand in hand. I used to live in Lee. When we moved there we were in St Mildred's ward. This had no impact on my life if I'm honest. I had no real idea who St Mildred was, or why her name was on my ward. But then there was a reorganisation and we came under Lee Green ward. Now here was an area I could identify with. Particularly when the good voters of Lee Green ousted its Labour councillors and appointed a team of hard working Lib Dems in their place. People who live in Lee Green and care a great deal about it.

We then moved. To the Corbett Estate on the other side of Hither Green station. Technically Catford according to the Post Office, though it was considered to be in Hither Green at the time it was built, and in Catford South ward. I can't say I feel any attachment to Catford South. Hither Green is my nearest station and these days I mostly travel to work from there (Catford traffic makes that option a nightmare - it can take an hour to get to Catford station at the moment, a journey of just over a mile). When I was off on maternity leave, and on the days I do childcare, I spent most of my time at community centres which happen to come under Whitefoot ward. Catford South itself has very little going on for babies and toddlers that isn't run by religious groups with huge waiting lists to join. Or I spent time in Hither Green and Lee's parks. There are no parks in Catford South itself.

What prompted me to think about this was a leaflet I got through the door inviting me to the Catford South local assembly. The local assemblies are a great idea and give people a chance to input into what's going on in their neighbourhood (that word again). Unfortunately for me, I have far more of a personal stake in what's going on in Hither Green (Lewisham Central ward) or Lee (Lee Green ward). And what happens to the facilities I use in Whitefoot ward. The projects and initiatives for Catford South just don't relate to me at all.

It's a shame that neighbourhoods ended up drifting back to being wards, a real opportunity to get people doing something different at local level has been lost. On the other hand, if no one could measure the impact of any initiatives that were put in place, would they really be worth doing?

A review of the Catford South/Whitefoot North 20 mph zone

I received this questionnaire from Lewisham council asking for my views on the 20 mph zone covering the conservation area, Corbett Estate and North Downham estates (though oddly not the prefab estate, not sure why). The zone was set up in "Spring 2007".

The first thing they do is to look at the impact of the zone in terms of accidents and casualties. A laudable aim. However, some of the data are not what I would consider fit for purpose. First things first, they claim to analyse two periods of 30 months, before and after introduction of the zone. A reasonable approach for a first pass at looking at the impact of the zone. Unfortunately, if my calculations are correct, that means that the "before" period includes 3 winters (2004/5, 2005/6 and 2006/7) and the "after" period includes 2 (2007/8 and 2008/9). Since accidents are strongly seasonal, this gives a false picture, making it very likely that numbers would be higher in the first period.

Secondly, they present two tables, one of accidents and one of casualties, which split injuries into "fatal", "serious" and "slight". There was 1 fatal accident, giving rise to 1 death, in the period before the introduction of the zone and no fatal accidents/casualties in the period after the zone was introduced. Presented in the table as a 100% reduction. Well, yes, but what is more likely is that fatal accidents in the zone are so rare as to be pretty much random. A good thing, of course, but nothing to do with the zone itself. When we look at serious injuries, there were 10 before and 3 after, a 70% reduction, but again based on tiny numbers and without taking into account possible seasonality. I'm not very convinced about using these figures for a before and after analysis either. The number of slight accidents/casualties is greater, and shows a similar percentage reduction. Again, not taking into account possible seasonality.

They then go on to extrapolate savings to the community based on some method of allocating a cost of each category of casualty. They estimate a saving of £3.5 million. Unfortunately, the leaflet doesn't see fit to tell us how this was done. Clearly it has more validity if based largely on the more robust figures (i.e. those with larger numbers). I would be very sceptical if this applied any significant amount of money to the one death before (though I suspect that it does). I would be very interested in the details of the method.

What is probably more robust, and in my mind should probably be the focus of the leaflet is the measurements of traffic speeds. According to the leaflet, these have reduced in all but three roads and the average speeds range between 14 and 27 mph. However, this paragraph fails to tell us what the average speeds were beforehand, so only a cautious welcome there. There is also no explanation of the average speeds of 27 mph, though one would hope they are on the 30 mph roads that border the zone.

I have filled in my views on the relevant sheet and returned it to the council. Their analysis is clearly well intended - it makes a change for analysis to be done at all to look at the impact of policies. It's just unfortunate that it wasn't done better.