Monthly Archives: February 2024

Previously Posted

Previously Posted: Committed to committee

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For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Committed to Committee (01.02.11)

What’s the difference between the Millennium Dome and the O2 Centre? Well, when the Dome was conceived and built on the Greenwich Peninsular – probably the most inaccessible spot on the planet – the “stuff” the Dome contained was chosen by a committee; worse than that, it was a Government appointed committee. So after deliberating interminably they came up with riveting ideas to pull in the punter, such as Faith: Making of Key Life Experiences, How Shall I Live?

Within one month of its opening it was running at a loss, nobody wanted to enter its canvas portals. Even the charismatic and talented Pierre-Yves Gerbeau could not persuade people to cough up the cash for a visit.

When it closed it was costing over £250,000 a month just to sit there gathering dust. Then the American billionaire Philip Anschutz came along, bought the place and spruced it up and persuaded O2 to sponsor the place to the tune of £6 million. And do you know what? With a government committee allowed nowhere near the place it’s been voted three years running as the world’s favourite popular music venue selling 75 per cent more tickets than its nearest rival. Yes, that’s right, better than Madison Square Garden, Wembley Arena or Sportpaleis in Belgium. An oversized tent in the middle of nowhere surrounded on three sides by water the world’s favourite – amazing.

Roll on a decade and we now have the Olympic Delivery Authority getting their collective knickers in a twist over who will take on the 2012 Stadium in east London.

Now here I should declare an interest – or more accurately – a non-interest, I don’t follow football. Get in my cab and I won’t be regaling you with my opinion of the upcoming transfer window; my interpretation of the offside rule, or for that matter; talking about Beckham’s left foot. What does rather exercise my brain however is how this Government, through its committees, spend my hard earned taxes.

The Olympic Stadium which is expected to cost £547 million and seat 80,000 spectators, who might be expected to pay on average say, £20 per seat per day, and given that the 2012 Olympic Games will last 17 days plus 12 days for the Paralympic Games, £46.4 million could be generated from ticket sales. That is if the Olympian God of profit (Dionysus the God of wine, celebrations and ecstasy possibly) was on their side,but unfortunately that leaves a short fall of at least £500 million.

Now two London football clubs are bidding for the venue. The original design allowed for 55,000 seats to be removed at the end of the 2012 Olympics which seems to be agreeable for West Ham with their smaller gate, but they apparently need a Government subsidy to pay for the Stadium. The other contender is cash rich Tottenham who have promised to redevelop the dilapidated athletics facility at Crystal Palace as part of their bid to take on the Olympic Stadium, which they intend to demolish and rebuild without the running track. Who want to demolish the stadium and as a sweetener is prepared to upgrade Crystal Palace Sports Centre, seems crazy to me. Why don’t Spurs just build a new stadium – in say – Tottenham?

Anyway my advice to both clubs don’t employ a government committee to help you in your endeavours, you’ll be bankrupt before next season.

Puppydog tails

Happy 15th Birthday CabbieBlog

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Blimey! It seems that today is the fifteenth birthday of CabbieBlog. A small celebration seems appropriate, right? And, if you’ll excuse the nostalgia, perhaps a little rummage around in the past . . .

The first blog post appeared on a now-defunct platform the previous year, this and the early excursions on the Cyberverse were uploaded to CabbieBlog here on Monday 23rd February 2009 at 13.50.

Fifteen years of blogging takes a lot of filling. I’ve published more than 2,600 posts, which is at least three a week for nearly 800 weeks (these last two or so years, posts have been uploaded every day). I’ve written all manner of London-related stuff, from the Alphabet of the Knowledge and Apostrophes in London to Zebra Crossings and Zoo Reminiscences.

That’s acres of screenspace to pack with maybe two million words, several thousand photos and a ridiculously high number of web links. It’s fortunate that I was born and live for most of the year in London which is possibly the world’s most interesting city, but filling the blog has required an eclectic spread of content, indeed a non-stop torrent of inspiration because an empty template doesn’t just fill itself.

That’s today’s post written I’d better get thinking about the next one.

Well, thank you all for reading thus far – both today and for however long you’ve been reading the blog.

It’s been a fun fifteen years… Cheers!

Thinking allowed

That is money down the Tube

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Another pointless exercise for the run-up to the mayoral election by Sadiq Khan who is rebranding London’s Overground lines.

Now Mayor Khan has spent £6.3 million making six distinct lines, each given a different name and colour.

The simplicity of Harry Beck’s map, which I remember from my youth, has been ruined. We now get a blue Mildmay line, apparently named in tribute to a North London hospital known for its work during the Aids crisis. There’s a Suffragette and Windrush Line, and my local is renamed the Liberty Line.

It is just a ludicrous waste of money and unnecessary added complexity on an already dense Tube map.

All this money is poured away on a vanity project as the London Transport network has received the accolade of having nearly nine times higher crimes per million passengers than New York. That’s 18.6 million reported incidents, and how many went unreported?

 

Puppydog tails

Johnson’s London Dictionary: London Marathon

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LONDON MARATHON (n.) Annual run that doth make claim to be not a race, that clearly it is.

Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon

Thinking allowed

Is the Knowledge of London harder or easier now?

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The iconic Knowledge of London (KoL), a comprehensive test for taxi drivers to master the city’s streets, has evolved significantly over the decades. But has the KoL become harder or easier to complete?

With London’s expansion, the challenge of learning its intricate road network has intensified. Complex one-way systems like Covent Garden, and the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs), have significantly altered and elongated the routes.

London’s growth in recent decades has led to more restaurants, businesses, and landmarks packed into towering buildings and densely developed areas, utilising every square inch of the capital like never before.

It could be argued that these changes demand a deeper understanding and recollection of routes for taxi drivers undergoing the KoL examinations.

New areas and communities that did not exist for some cabbies whilst learning the capital decades ago. Canary Wharf was unheard of and the area was once disused docks, but now that has transformed into a sprawling network of towers on the Isle of Dogs, demanding closer attention on the Knowledge.

The Blue Book runs are seen as the foundational element when learning the Knowledge. These runs cover essential big road routes and areas in London, although students today have fewer routes to learn by rote. However, the learning does not stop at these runs, they are just a framework to build upon.

Learning includes additional routes like the ‘missing pieces’, one-way systems, livery runs for The City and turnaround books, which detail smaller roads. There’s also the ‘livery runs’ which help cabbies better understand and recite the City, there are books covering runs spanning the entire radius learned within the Knowledge, such as from Crystal Palace to Alexandra Palace.

Critically, despite all these changes over decades, the standard for passing the Knowledge has remained consistent at 30 per cent.

While the fundamental standards of the KoL have stayed the same, the testing criteria over the years have changed.

I was listening to a recent podcast between WizAnn’s Dean Warrington and the United Cabbies Group’s (UCG) Trevor Merralls, as the current standards were discussed at great length.

Interestingly from the Knowledge school’s perspective, the perceived height of difficulty was between the 1990’s and the 2000’s, the very time that Dean and I were undertaking KoL.

Students at that stage were learning more obscure points: blue plaques, door nameplates and obscure statuary.

Dean Warrington with his innovative KoL course estimated that students can now get through the KoL knowing roughly 6,000 places of interest, which are the most frequently asked questions, on top of the capital’s road network.

Is the Knowledge easier now?

No.

Is the Knowledge harder now?

No.

The required standard remains.

How students get to that standard more efficiently is likely to become the central discussion point moving forward, especially as the industry awaits Transport for London’s KoL review findings to be published soon.

Taken from an original article by Perry Richardson on TaxiPoint.