Extinction Rebellion posters/vandalism

These have been pasted all around Forest Hill. The council will now have to find funds it can I’ll-afford to remove them and the like - no doubt using chemicals of which XR would not approve. Make no mistake, this is vandalism not protest.

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I think we’ll be OK.

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Honestly, if pasting up paper posters is too exteme then what would be an acceptable form or protest to you? And from the looks of that phone booth there’s rather a lot of other groups we’ll need to go after next too…

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Forest Hill is covered in artless tags and graffiti that hasn’t been cleaned, particularly in lockdown. I don’t think a few extra posters are the worst of it.

I kind-of get this whistleblowing thing against particularly climate-damaging companies, but with ExtReb’s social media machinery, I would have thought that they could have easily targeted and reached everyone they’d need to to get this message across without burdening local councils’ overstretched budgets to remove loads of pasted-on posters all over the place.

Agree.

I don’t like people defacing our neighbourhood with posters, regardless of what the posters say and whether I agree or don’t agree with the message. In the end somebody has to waste their time cleaning that poster off!

I’m confused as to why SE23 was up in arms about the Xmas tree seller’s posters being plastered around a few months ago but now are mocking somebody for complaining about poster littering in the area. Same nuisance…no? Are we to just accept poster littering because there’s also fly tipping and graffiti happening in the area too? Anyone familiar with the “broken window theory”?

Some disappointing comments on here in my opinion which makes me quite sad about our community and also this forum. I thought we had a conversation the other month to discuss how we can avoid discouraging people posting and how we should strive for constructive comments, doesn’t seem like much has been learned about how to be an inclusive and friendly forum.

My reply was to robertjroy who I considered was mocking the OP, if I have got it wrong I apologise.I am it total agreement with the OP.

It’s the same nuisance to people who are

• not interested in buying Christmas trees from that place
  AND
• not interested in extinction rebellion
  To everyone else it’s not the same.

Tbh even if I had no interest in extinction rebellion I would still prefer to see people try to make a (perceived positive) difference to the world than sell Christmas trees, do I would not consider these signs the same.

As for the mocking - I didn’t see it as mocking of a person, just a very short response which suggested a lot more.

Incidentally the remnants of those Christmas tree ply boards are still bike locked to the lamp post outside Sydenham Hill station. I noticed today. Nothing if not prolific

Whether you agree with their fly posting methods or not (and I’m not saying I do) XR seem to have a kind of neighbourhood-cell-based approach that can at times be more constructive and creative.

Take a look at their localised missives in Southwark, which are more direct fact-based appeals to a particular council to do more to face the mounting challenges of climate change:

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I appreciate why some find them an eyesore and are angry about the cleanup costs. Personally I don’t find them as offensive as the heaps of soggy old mattresses and busted furniture collecting on street corners, and I’d much rather limited council resources went on clearing those than on peeling off posters that will naturally deteriorate with a bit of bad weather.

Before they do, even if they get just a handful more people googling climate concerns and realising how much of a state we’re in, I suppose they can call them a success!

I did not intend to mock the OP, and I’m sorry if it came across that way, but you can certainly infer that I feel there are bigger things to deal with in our area. We need to be realistic and pick our battles, and with climate change being a serious issue, I don’t personally mind some fly posting to highlight it.

Any suggestion that those who do not agree with the OPs viewpoint lack consideration for our community is obviously false.

From an awareness raising perspective tbh the beautiful mural in inglemere road of the ice creams on the iceberg makes me think of climate change every time I see it. Whereas posters randomly stuck on street furniture, not so much.

Also I’m just not the kind of person who is won over by confrontational messages so the SE23 posters just don’t work for me personally. its also not the way I go about winning over stakeholders at work but I understand it’s what campaign groups do.

Good point advertising like this is just white noise, I’d much prefer a nice mural that had a point to make and brightened up the area.

Agreed.

But at the same time a member is upset about littering and whilst it may seem rather trivial to some, the people behind the posters have actually defaced our beloved Forest Hill pool’s sign in the process. What if that was a private local business that had had a poster slapped over their shop signage? There’s a reason why our area has a nicer aesthetic than some nearby - the community having respect for the area and a mutual interest in improving the area is probably one of the reasons.

I also think that when for weeks and weeks a lot of people haven’t been able to go out of this area and are maybe spending more and more time walking the streets and green spaces of SE23, it probably makes them more aware of the environment they are in, what it looks like and how it feels.

It is worth reporting bill posting on fixmystreet. Even if you agree with the cause in this case, do you want to see more bill posting on every surface - because what starts as a few always encourages more.

The same is true with graffiti/tagging, and there is a lot of it around recently on the main roads and beyond. If anybody has some free time and is going for a walk, it is well worth taking photos of each piece and reporting it on fixmystreet, as the council (at least pre-pandemic) were very good about dealing with these reports. I haven’t tried it since the pandemic because I don’t go out very much by myself.

Also I noted that some have already been torn / defaced and so look fairly grotty already.

The Love Clean Streets app is also quite convenient for reporting any issues with fly posting, fly tipping, graffiti etc…

Lewisham Council now prefer reports are submitted via Love Clean Streets as it integrates directly with their systems. I’ve been told that they have to manually transfer reports from FixMyStreet, although they still accept them they may just take longer to deal with.

Besides fly posters advertising events, etc, I find them intriguing. It’s the face of an unknown element of local society which can provoke discussion and speculation along the lines of ‘is so-and-so next to me on the London Bridge to Forest Hill a militant vegetarian or Tory climate change campaigner?’. I’m sure that those with an equally overactive imagination will get where I’m coming from.