SUMMER 2021 FORUM.
Please use comments to exchange ideas and opinions.
For real-time chats, our Jitsi channel is always open.
https://meet.jit.si/JUNIPERMEETINGS
Suggestions from meeting #1:
Skillbase
‘That residents with professional skills might also be willing to use their experience to run workshops.’
Please notify sec.junipertra@gmail.com with any contributions.
Our Estate Cleaning & Horticultural Promise
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, and in order to manage the risk of spread, a reduced staffing level may have some impact on this schedule.
On a daily basis our cleaners will:
• Litter pick, remove fly tip and spot mop/wash spillages in internal communal areas
• Sweep, mop and clean lifts, litter pick and remove dog fouling and fly tip from external communal areas, place dumped rubbish in domestic waste bins inside bin rooms, sweep bin room floors.
• Remove litter, fly tip etc. from recycling sites/banks and to a surrounding area of 5 metres
• Empty litter bins.
On a weekly basis our cleaners will:
• Sweep external balconies and wash/spot mop any spillages of bodily fluids, animal fouling etc.
• Clear dirt, detritus from drain gratings.
• Empty dog waste bins.
On a twice weekly basis our cleaners will:
• Sweep and mop internal communal areas other than lifts.
• Clean internal fixtures and fittings.
On a monthly basis our cleaners will:
• Remove fly tip, litter etc. from block entrance canopies & roofs to a height or 4m above ground level.
• Clean block entry doors and screens.
On a three-monthly basis our cleaners will:
• Power wash walls and floors of refuse rooms/bin chambers.
• Throughout the growing season (March to October/November) our cleaners will:
• Deploy a range of methods to control and remove weed growth on communal hard standing areas.
On a six-monthly basis our cleaners will:
• Wash dog waste bins.
• Wash walls and ceilings of internal communal areas.
• Polish internal vinyl flooring.
• Clean communal windows (excluding the outside face of first floor and above windows).
On an annual basis our cleaners will:
• Wash litter bins.
• Clean external fixtures and fittings.
On an as and when basis our cleaning service will provide a pro-active, rapid response service to deal with the following:
• Removal of fly tip.
• Removal of offensive and non-offensive graffiti and fly posting.
• Removal of snow/ice and application of grit to priority areas.
Our grounds maintenance service will:
• Cut all communal grass areas once a fortnight dependent on grass growth between March & November.
• Maintain shrub, rose beds, hedges and plant containers in a weed free condition.
• Prune shrubs, roses and hedges according to type, season, good horticultural practice and mitigate any nuisance or obstruction.
May Bank Holiday Weekend 1st – 3rd May 2021
Let’s get together in our own window art exhibition!
Display your best most colourful art works in your front windows for everyone to enjoy. The exhibition will take place over the May Bank Holiday weekend, so over the last weeks of April lets get arty and show off our best creations!
This is a great way to welcome in the Spring and celebrate our community over the past year of lockdown 🙂
2020
Things we won’t miss from last year:
The Rule of Six • Self-isolation • ‘Stay alert!’ • Tiers • Superspreaders • ‘Hands – Face – Space’ • Virus Clusters • Contact-Tracing • Redundancies • Elbow-bumps • Furloughs • Padlocked playgrounds • Five-person bubbles • Lockdowns • Pie-charts • ‘R-rates’ • Empty streets • Empty shops • Empty pubs • Empty theatres • The cold stink of hand-gel • Facemasks that steam up your glasses • Zoom…
But in spite of everything, bad times brought out the best in many people – as often happens. And we all realised that the best-paid don’t always do the most important jobs.
As a result, Key Workers gained long-overdue Respect, and Communities everywhere were reinforced by Thursday night displays of appreciation of them.
Also, the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Mutual-Aid’ emerged to offer a way forward. It wasn’t all bad.
today
Sunrise today marks the beginning of shortest day of the year. From now on, they get longer, and the nights get shorter. It is a day which has been celebrated ever since the first Stone-Age scientist realised its significance. It meant we could now roughly calculate how to share our food reserves to make them last until Spring. We were reminded of the Summers when the living was easier, and looked forward to them.
It was a time of Hope, because even if the nights were still cold, we knew from the position of the sun that there were better times coming soon. That Hope, based on Science, helped to keep us working together to make the most of the future, rather than fighting each other for the last stores of nuts and dried meat.
Without it, the idea of society would have been almost impossible. The same Sun shone on us all, as it still does.
This midwinter, we don’t have the same hopes as Cavemen. But we have just as much reason to believe there is a future. And we have proved this year that we have the same ancient ability to support each other through dark times – that helping each other works.
2021
Hopefully, Science will soon have partly solved some of our most immediate problems. And then we can carefully try to start living again, and be able to shake hands without fear.
However, Science alone cannot repair the economic damage done by the Pandemic, or help with Britain’s undoubtedly uncertain future in a world already facing huge environmental and economic challenges.
One thing is certain. The various problems next year throws at us will be easier to bear if we look after each other.
Because if we don’t, who will?
Can residents please check the metal cabinets on the walkways (underneath bathroom windows) for signs of leakage.
Some pipes from the kitchens and bathrooms are corroding badly.
One pipe failed spectacularly recently and flooded the three flats beneath down to the ground floor.
Water would still be pouring if the family at the source of the leak had not taken the decision to do without their bathroom and kitchen in order to prevent inconvenience to neighbours – at huge inconvenience to themselves.
On inspection, the fault proved to be a severely corroded waste-pipe in the walkway access-cabinet. There was a rupture along the length of the underside of the exposed copper pipe, which was paper-thin and crumbling to the touch.
The fault was clearly not the result of accidental fracture, or negligent installation, but long term corrosion. The other pipes and fittings in the cabinet also showed signs of their age and lack of maintenance.
It is highly likely that this kind of problem will happen elsewhere on the block, and clear that a complete survey of all pipework inspection-cabinets should be made as soon as possible with a view to wholesale maintenance.
report leaks from cabinets to efe.urubusi@southwark.gov.uk
This case also raised serious questions about Southwark’s ‘Emergency Repairs’ service, which took from Sunday afternoon to Thursday afternoon to take decisive action; and about LBS departments which repeatedly mislaid fault reports from 3 separate flats, and which continually and blatantly passed the case between each other and round again in a contemptuous circle.
Juniper House Tenants & Residents Association
Annual General Meeting
20/09/2020 • 3pm • https://meet.jit.si/JUNIPERMEETINGS
Or in the Garden if fine.
AGENDA
1) Approval of Minutes
2) Presentation of the Accounts
a) Expenditure
3) Annual Reports
a) Secretary’s Report
b) Garden Group
4) Grant Application Progress
(Cycle-shacks and drinking fountains)
5) Resignation/Election of Officers
6) Appointment of Auditors
7) Any Other Business
8) 2020/21 Meeting Schedule
Eid Mubarak
Thanks to everyone involved in the ceremony in the garden for such an expression of confidence in the community.
Anyone witnessing it would have felt the honour of being chosen to host the event.
Thanks to Covid19 for a timely discovery.
One of the donations to the new library was the Eagle Annual volume 9, a new kind of magazine from way back in 1959. Boys of a that vintage will remember The Eagle as the embodiment of post-war modernity and style; with its striking A4 scarlet and black graphic cover and high-quality colour printing.
The detailed instructions of how to build a rocket launch-pad, tales of lost worlds and extinct monsters, and constant fantasies about the future were intended as an antidote to the power-worshipping post-war ‘Yank-Mags’ in which every problem was solved by brute force or magic. The Eagle was educational entertainment packed with history, technology and science.
And yet even this emblem of change still clung to the habit of glorifying the criminals of Empire, for on pages 93-7 is a glowing bio-cartoon of none other than the infamous warmonger Cecil Rhodes, complete with heart-rending death-bed scene and the last words “So much to do – so little done.” Plus (literally) incredible tributes from the people he oppressed.
1959 may seem a long time ago, but the point is that it is within the lifetime of many people still alive who may therefore have passed on their misconceptions to a younger generation. And as we have seen, the same mistakes are still being made now.
The Rhodes memorial is probably to be removed from its plinth in Oxford this month. The question for us is, do we keep this volume of a vintage boys’ magazine in our library?
It will certainly guarantee straight-A’s if used as project source-material.
Rob Kenyon (secretary)
Juniper House 