Personal Safety Tips

Before I get accused of scare-mongering, its important to note that the chances of a rape attack remain small. There were six attacks throughout the year, spread amongst the population of Southgate borough, which is certainly a cause for concern but not a call to stay locked up inside our homes. Get a personal safety alarm, ensure that when walking at night you are not alone and stay vigilant.

In the awful event that you ARE accosted I found a site that offers some useful advice:
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What To Do If Attacked.

Do Not....Kick your attacker in the groin. Your assailant 's body will have undergone many chemical changes; adrenalin will be pumping, blood will be sent to the areas he may need to use (eg arm and leg muscles) and so on. He will probably react with rage rather than pain, if he is hurt down there.

Any defensive attack on your assailant should be aimed at his boney bits...Shins, Nose, Elbows etc.

DO...Imediately you sense danger .....Shout: "Stop. Stay Away!" Repeat as often as necessary. Get out your alarm and be ready to use it. If he still approaches you, activate the alarm.

DO...If grabbed....Shout "No, No, No!" as loud as you can. Activate your alarm and, if possible, shove it in his face.

DO...If grabbed from behind...shout as above and scrape the edge or heal of your shoe down his shin, raking his flesh from knee to ankle. Follow through by grinding your heal into his foot.

The intention is to distract him with pain so that you can break free and run for help. Believe me...it will work! Activate your alarm and continue shouting.

DO NOT shout passive, submissive things like, "Help Me" or "Save Me" This conveys weakness to your attacker and may intensify his attack. Instead, shout agressive, commanding phrases such as "No!", "Back off!" or "Get Off Me!"

Unfortunately, there are too many possible scenarios for me to cover here. I suggest that you contact your local police or crime prevention panel, and ask if they run personal safety courses. Many do, and they are inexpensive (or free) and provide some invaluable knowledge.

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Personal Safety Alarms

Following on from my last piece here is a link to a site that provides personal safety alarms. The one I know of is the Defender Personal Alarm with strobe torch. Its small, operated by a ripcord and emits 130decibels of noise. At only £8.95 its got to make sense.

Warning: Serial Rapist in our area

I don't know how many of you are reading this site, but whoever you are I would be grateful if you could spread the word about a disturbing report of a serial rapist operating in our area that has appeared on the BBC website (link above).
A friend of ours contacted the local police recently as she had heard rumours of this but was told there was no truth to the rumours. Thank you Southgate Police.
There have been six attacks to date, all late at night - the earliest being 22:15 and the latest being 04:10 - and spread amongst Waterfall road, Chase Road, Ridgeway and Bourne Hill/Winchmore hill. This is a section of the report:
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The first victim was raped in January last year and there have been five more sexual assaults over a year.
The man is described as foreign, about 5ft 9in tall, of muscular build. Police say he spoke in mock patois, as satirised by the comedian Ali G. Police do not know if this is his normal mode of speech and say another victim described him as black.

Officers also believe he has good local knowledge. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We are issuing warnings to lone women in the immediate vicinity of the attacks to take appropriate personal safety precautions."

Anyone with information about these attacks should call the Specialist Crime Directorate at Hendon on 020 8358 0100 To give information anonymously call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111
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For now I suggest that if any female needs to walk in the area late at night, they ensure they are not alone and ideally make arrangements for a taxi or get picked up by a friend/partner/husband.

EDIT: A piece has now appeared in the Evening Standard:

Enfield receives warning letter on Council tax

I spotted this in last Fridays Evening Standard. It seems that the Government is a little upset over our councils proposed local spending plans. The article states the following:

"Council tax bills rose by 12.9 per cent last year, and by 18 per cent in London, where a typical household now pays more than £1,000. This has prompted Nick Raynsford, the local government minister, to threaten to curb "excessive" rises. Seven London boroughs are understood to have received warning letters from him instructing them to trim their spending plans. These are Islington, Barnet, Enfield, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kingston, Newham and Redbridge. "

It will be interesting to see our friendly neighbourhood Finance Directors reaction, given the eloquent speech he made at the last Southgate Green Forum.

House Alarms

For those of you who may be thinking of purchasing a house alarm I can recommend Armour Security who are a local provider of house alarm systems. I have provided a link to their website above. They do both wired and wireless systems, which can be standalone or monitered. Nice people, good quality of installation, good support, reasonable prices.

Links

So I just belatedly noticed that the links to the Winchmore hill club and Evening Standard articles from yesterdays posts were not working. Well, after a bit of code jiggery pokery they are now. cheers

Walker Cricket Ground: What could be...

Just came across the Winchmore Hill Cricket Club website, promoting Cricket, Football, Table Tennis, Hockey and Tennis. Its really nice and a nice insight into what the Walker grounds could be. Ahh well....

Street robberies: Well, there's good news and there's.....

In tonight's Evening Standard there was a piece on how extra Police on the beat has helped to reduce crime in the City. In fact in terms of street robberies there has been an overall fall of 5.4%, which is comforting news and you can read the article by clicking on the link above.
"So what's the bad news?" I hear you say. Well, what is not displayed in the online article, but was published in the newspaper is a table that details the year on year change in street robberies for each London Borough and guess what, Enfield's figure actually rose 9%!
It will be interesting to listen to the excuses from our local police representative at the next Southgate Green forum.

London Underground: Meet the Managers!

This Thursday (5th Feb) between 16:00 and 20:00 Managers from the LU will be available for a chat at Arnos Grove station, main ticket hall. So, if you have any concerns over the running of the LU, suggestions for improvement, general queries or just fancy letting off some steam at the oppressors of rush-hour commuterland, then here's your chance. Unfortunately I have a 2 year old to entertain that night as its my turn for the bathing ritual, but if any of you do go, send me an email of your experiences and I'll post your comments on here. Have fun!

Walker Cricket building: Conservation Area Status

Hi
I have been rereading the email that Denise Ghandi of the Southgate Green Association sent out last September and one point in particular is of interest. It is concerning the fact that the Cricket building is in a conservation area:
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When a proposal entails demolition of an existing building or structure, or part building and a replacement is proposed, there are two aspects to the scheme: Demolition and New Build. In a conservation area, developers are required to submit a 'CONSERVATION AREA CONSENT' request - CAC - requesting permission to demolish whatever it is they seek to replace. Such permission is considered concurrently with the proposals for what comes after the demolition, but they are TWO separate aspects.

When SGA commented in July, we said that the application was incomplete. There were numerous omissions in terms of drawings and permissions, surveys.etc. Residents would have normally received notification of demolition (CACxxx) and replacement (TPxxx) together, but this didn't happen.

Requests for demolition have different criteria for judging whether they should be allowed. I don't have all of them to hand but from memory, it runs like this: you are allowed to demolish structures (or part of) in a conservation area where the building is 1) unfit or unsuitable for its current use, 2) cannot be rehabilitated, or 3) the replacement provides an overall enhancement to the conservation area such that it overrides the previous. In this case, it is not only the building which matters but the current use and users. If the replacement scheme does not represent an overall enhancement to the existing use and users, demolition cannot go ahead.
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My feeling is that the current plans certainly do not constitute an enhancement of existing (i.e. Cricket, Squash, children’s football etc.) use but instead is being developed to cater for a NEW use, namely a Health Club. If we could contact the Cricket clubs that use the grounds and seek there opinion I think this would be a good avenue to pursue.

Its tricky as in my opinion we cannot be seen to be against development per se, bar complaining about the scale of the build - which we have done and which they have attempted to address - but we CAN object to the change of use. The CAC will certainly help this argument.