Build me up, buttercup

A new year, a new start - and what better New Year resolution for Lewisham Council (and their PFI contractors) than to finish off last year's 'to do' list?

Let's start (and sadly this is becoming predictable) with that wall. You know the one. On the corner of Wickham Road and Cranfield Road. We've written about it before. Endlessly.

It received a bit of festive cheer just before Christmas with the installation of some solid-looking white boarding, but after a good nine months of being tumbledown and unsightly, it remains fundamentally unrepaired.

And another section further down the Cranfield Road side has been unrepaired and unboarded for even longer.

We know a bit about the labyrinthine nightmare of PFI contracting and therefore have a fair amount of sympathy for the frontline council staff who have to try and make this ridiculous set-up work. The experience of the wall has however given us less sympathy for whoever made the decision to go with this PFI contract - and of course for the PFI contractors themselves.

It's not too much to expect, guys, that you might get round to sorting out a brickie or two in the next couple of months, is it? Because I doubt we want to mark the wall's first broken-birthday with cake and party poppers.
But if that's what it takes ...