Category Archives: Thinking allowed

Thinking allowed

100 days to go

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When you awoke today I’m betting your first thought wasn’t that you have only 100 days to decide who to vote for to run City Hall.

The main parties have already chosen their candidates, so I’ve been digging around their campaign websites to see what they’ve been saying on a variety of issues, as you’d expect transport, air pollution, housing, jobs and crime are all included.

So with a stubby pencil poised above my choice here’s what information I’ve managed to extract.

Sadiq Khan – Labour (1/6)

Khan claims that electing him for a record third time would be one in the eye for the Tories. He brags about his record on air pollution since the imposition of the popular Ulez; he warns us of the impending climate crisis after flying around the world; he claims reported crime is falling, although most now don’t both to inform the police; promoting housebuilding, which I can testify to as many car parks around here are now building sites; transport affordability (it’s cheap as chips apparently!); and the opening of the Elizabeth line after years of delays.

Susan Hall – Conservative (10/3)

Predictably Hall is keen to “sort out the mess” created by Khan, including stopping the Ulez after it’s cost us millions to set up, but that money won’t be wasted, word has it the cameras will be utilised for the police to spy on us; she does not want to see any construction of housing on the green belt so that cuts out obsolete rural petrol stations, and any derelict land being redeveloped; and that she will look to increase the number of low-rise family properties, rather than one or two bedrooms homes in high-rise blocks, just how without spreading out upon the green belt she doesn’t say.

Zoe Garbett – Green Party (66/1)

No surprise that Garbett pledges to make London a greener, fairer city with measures including free bus travel for young people (bugger the old as they’ve already decided to vote Tory); and cleaner ways to use Silvertown Tunnel, presumably turning it into the world’s largest underground cycle lane.

Rob Blackie Liberal Democrats – (66/1)

Anti-Brexiteer Blackie aims to tackle crime; keep London welcoming for European citizens and others who are “threatened by Home Office incompetence”, presumably to boost recruitment for the Met to tackle crime; and clean up London’s rivers, and there’s me thinking the £4.3bn Thames Tideway Tunnel aims to just achieve that.

Howard Cox – Reform UK (100/1)

A climate change sceptic, Cox promises to scrap Ulez completely, probably dumping the technology into landfill; cutting crime (could public flogging be on the cards?); build more houses, as climate change doesn’t exist let’s just chop down trees on the green belt; and he wants to “get the city moving” by scrapping low traffic neighbourhoods and 20mph zones, returning to the days of Brands Hatch wannabes outside primary schools.

There are several independents, most are not worth mentioning except one, who hasn’t thrown his hat in the ring.

Jeremy Corbyn – Independent (25/1)

As he hasn’t declared yet, so there’s no way of knowing what policies he’d announce. But one thing is for sure, it would split the Labour vote and keep the Red Flag flying above City Hall.

Featured image: Vote by Nick Youngson (CC BY-SA 3.0) Alpha Stock Images

Thinking allowed

It is so simple nowadays

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When I was young you’d get a bus to the local swimming pool proffer sixpence and the heated water awaited. Not so today: 1. download an app on your smartphone; 2. register yourself on the app; 3. obtain an entry card; 4. link card to your app; 5. choose your preferred pool; 6. book and pay for a swim; 7. gain entry using said card. Simples as they say.

Twice I’ve had only 10 minutes’ notice of the pool’s closure only to receive an email the next day informing me:

You are receiving this e-mail because our records show that you did not attend a Swimming Session which you had booked for yesterday at Central Park…We are asking all customers to please be considerate of others when booking sessions. We have limited spaces available, especially at peak times, so if you are unable to attend your session please cancel at least 4 hours in advance so we can offer the space to others…Thank you for your cooperation in this matter and we look forward to seeing you in-centre soon.

Thinking allowed

North Street Lights

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North Street, a road running, well North, from Romford crosses Eastern Avenue at its northernmost end necessitating a set of traffic lights at this busy junction. So reviled is Sadiq Khan and his Ulez around here, an area which borders farm fields, the Bladerunners (vandals who destroy Khan’s cameras) removed the cameras only to break the traffic lights which has taken days to mend, with the consequence of gridlock around these parts.

Thinking allowed

Obsolete technology

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I was out walking the other day and looking up, usually, I’m looking down to see what my dog is up to, I came across this piece of GPO ceramic history.

When I was young, the sight of this technology attached to a property’s fascia was an indication that the family was pretty comfortably off, for they could afford a telephone.

In those days after waiting months to have a phone line, you’d share it with a neighbour. Regularly when lifting the receiver you could hear a conversation by your ‘shared’ line user. Etiquette required you to immediately replace the handset on the receiver and not listen in.

Now wherever I go around this little outpost of north-east London men are up telegraph poles (why on earth do we call a tree trunk supporting telephone lines – a telegraph pole?) attaching wires and black boxes. It all looks very efficient, and BT has even subcontracted all this climbing malarkey.

Now to press this brave new world of telephony upon us we’re getting emails warning us oldies much of our 1960s technology won’t work, while ambitious young men knock on our doors in an attempt to lure us away from our current provider with deals ‘we can’t ignore’, and our daily paper forecasts calamity awaits our future ability to call for help should we need help.

But hang on a moment, haven’t we been here before? If memory serves, around the turn of the century all our pavements were dug up to lay conduit in anticipation for cable TV and the Internet. But here it is, the telegraph method of communicating is still being used for 21st-century communications, and the wooden pole is even named after a Victorian invention.

Couldn’t the owners of the plastic pipes under our pavements just lease the tube to whoever has a contract to supply a property, just as our electricity and gas are delivered by the company of our choice, and just remove those overhead cables? With climate change and the increased winds predicted BT might be forced to take the subterranean path.

Thinking allowed

A TfL Mole

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Listening to the excellent WizzAnn Podcast, one of the contributors advanced the idea that TfL has inserted a mole among London’s cabbie fraternity. The theory goes that how is it that an organisation filled with desk wallas knows all the cut-throughs we learned on The Knowledge? Once informed the road is then blocked to vehicles – thanks!