My son ever anxious that my sedentary lifestyle will get the better of me (I keep reminding him that Jim Fixx who wrote an early best-selling book about running, ironically died of a heart attack at the age of 52 years whilst running), enrolled me at the local swimming pool. We oldies get ‘free swims’. The problem you need an enrolment card, an app to book installed on your phone (gone are the days of just turning up), a photo id and proof of paying local council rates. On the first attempt at a swim, I arrived to find the pool closed and they had phoned to tell me only 8 minutes before I was due to arrive. Now I’m finding that to use the other swimming pools in the borough I’ll have to register at each with id and proof of council tax. Gone are the days of just turning up at Wood Green’s pool in the 50s and proffering 6d. That was much too simple.
Monthly Archives: August 2023
Johnson’s London Dictionary: Chelsea bun
CHELSEA BUN (n.) Baked confection is named after an area of London devoid of costermongers marketing this sticky substance.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
ULEZ has arrived
After much hype by the Mayor’s office and objections by many, including low-paid shift workers, ULEZ has finally arrived with its Big Brother cameras now covering Greater London.
So let’s go through the arguments, first the scheme’s supporters:
• I don’t care because I don’t have a car.
• If I had a car it would probably be compliant anyway, most are.
• The new ULEZ zone will be the existing LEZ zone… which doesn’t quite cover the whole of London, so you’ll still be able to belch around Chingford or sputter along Farthing Downs to your heart’s content.
• Trying to gather accurate data on the existing ULEZ has been skewed by the pandemic, fuel shortages and the soaring cost of petrol, making conclusions harder to draw.
• Currently only 6 per cent of vehicles driving in the ULEZ are non-compliant, so only a small number of people are about to be shafted (but it’s 17 per cent of vans, so expect White Van Men to be angriest).
• The mayor’s office estimates that only an additional 135,000 vehicles a day will be affected by the extension of the ULEZ. For comparison, on an average day, London residents make 6 million journeys by car.
• If you drive daily then £12.50 a day is £4,500 a year. You could buy a replacement vehicle for that (which is probably the point).
• Londoners receiving certain means-tested benefits and disability benefits can apply for grants of up to £2,000 to scrap their non-compliant cars or motorcycles, so it’s not the cruel draconian scheme it could be.
• It’s not hard to get Londoners breathing ‘cleaner air’, even removing one car does that. What’s hard is making a significant difference.
• Brilliant, bring it on, the fewer polluting cars the better.
…and the arguments against:
• It’s ghastly that air pollution contributed to the death of that child the Mayor’s always going on about, but cars hitting things kill far more people.
• If ‘air pollution is making us sick from cradle to the grave’, then I have 76 years of breathing I ought to be able to sue someone for.
• If I genuinely wanted to reduce my exposure to toxic air the simplest solution would be to move out of London.
• The mitigation regarding ‘the biggest ever expansion of the bus network in outer London’ is mostly spin because hardly anyone’s going to live in the right place to make use of them. e.g. the first example on the list is ‘improved links between Harold Hill and Upminster’, a journey currently made by London’s least frequent bus, so nobody needs that.
• In Havering, where I live, no trains, no black cabs driving down our street, and all bus routes go in the same direction.
• The Mayor’s new scrappage scheme will include the option to get two annual bus passes, which at £464 a year isn’t exactly generous.
• Anyone who sends moaning letters to local newspapers saying “it’s just another Khan tax on the motorist, we need to remove all the bus lanes instead” should be forced to pay £12.50 anyway, as a cabbie that’s my opinion.
• If air pollution is as ghastly as the Mayor now claims, why has he taken seven years to implement this?
• If I had a non-compliant vehicle I’d be absolutely pissed off by the prospect of a £12.50 daily charge or forking out for a new vehicle during a cost-of-living crisis.
• Most households in the current ULEZ don’t have a car but most households in the extension do, so this is going to be a lot less popular.
• It’s not exactly surprising that ‘there are more deaths attributed to toxic air in the city’s outer boroughs’ because 1½ million more people live there.
• The M11 and M25 aren’t included but the M1 and the M4 are, plus you’ll be charged if you try to drive into Heathrow.
• I wonder how many one-off visitors to London are going to find themselves stung by an unexpected £180 fine.
• The first ULEZ expansion was announced with over a year’s notice, this one’s had only nine months.
• Just how are low-paid shift workers going to get home during the night?
• With most cars being replaced before they’re 10 years old, it wouldn’t have taken long before we were all-electric, without ULEZ’s additional costs.
• Surely more pollution will be created by scrapping millions of cars, but as this will occur away from London, I suppose that’s the point.
• If the Mayor want to display his green credentials, why hasn’t he allowed serviceable black cabs to be converted by Clipper Cabs to electric?
London in Quotations: Arthur Conan Doyle
Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I
London Trivia: Distilling the truth
On 27 August 1990 one of the highest profile court cases of the year was concluded at Southwark Crown Court. Defendants Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson, Sir Jack Lyons and Anthony Parnes were convicted of involvement in a conspiracy to drive up the price of shares in Guinness during a 1986 takeover battle for drinks company Distillers. Lyons lost his knighthood and the other were sentenced to jail terms.
On 27 August 1967 Brian Epstein, manager of many groups including The Beatles was found dead at his Belgrave home, from a sleeping pill overdose
In the 18th Century pick-pockets where known as ‘divers’. A prolific London pickpocket was Mary Young, renamed ‘Jenny Diver’ by her gang
Whetstone is named after a whetstone a block of stone used to sharpen knives, a large stone outside the Griffin pub could be the original
On 27 August 1877 at 35 Hill Street, Mayfair co-founder of Rolls-Royce, the car manufacturer, Charles Rolls was born
According to local legend Theydon Bois in Epping Forest was the site of the last stand by Queen Boadicea against the Romans in AD 60
Picturesque Browning’s Pool forming the junction of Regent’s and Grand Union Canals was named Little Venice by Victorian poet Robert Browning
Europe’s first cable car ran up Highgate Hill it operated between 1884 and 1909, which was followed by a second cable line to draw trams up Brixton Hill to Streatham
The ‘New’ Wembley Stadium cost £798 million to build, it’s predecessor cost less than one-thousandth of that at £750,000
The London Passenger Transport Board was nationalised and became the London Transport Executive in 1948
Greenland Dock was renamed in the 18th century when it became the base for the Arctic whaling fleet, it was once twice the current size and one of the largest in the world
A stone obelisk in New Wanstead whose base is a remnant from a Roman road was once an important mile marker stone between Hyde Park and Epping
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
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