Transport for London have a new cash cow. They have put up 20mph signs yards before the speed camera at the junction of Marylebone Road westbound, just before Baker Street. It then goes back to 30 mph just after the junction. TfL has also put up 20mph speed limit signs on Park Lane southbound. Are they serious? Traffic is normally gridlocked most of the day, and TfL’s transport planners feel the need to reduce the speed limit!
Johnson’s London Dictionary: M25
M25 (n.) Turnpike that doth retard the progress of its travellers, while claiming to ease the time to transit the Metropolis
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
Protected: Life as a cabbie
London in Quotations: Anon
To the outsider, London is a sightseer’s theme park, a rich assembly of landmarks and historic buildings, where blue plaques chronicle the passing of time right back to the Middle Ages.
Anon, publicity material distributed to the audience in a preview screening, Dirty Pretty Things
London Trivia: Brixton riot
On 10 April 1981, the Brixton Riot started, lasting 2 days. Tensions had been fuelled by unemployment and lack of social housing, these boiled over when a black youth was stabbed, was taken to hospital by the police and reputedly left to die.
On 10 April 1633 Apothecary Thomas Johnson hung a bunch of bananas in his shop at Snow Hill, the first bananas seen in Britain
In 1880 it was suggested redrawing London’s borough boundaries making each one hexagonal to stop cabbies cheating on their fares
Putney Bridge is unique in that it is the only one in Britain with a church at either end (St Mary’s Putney and All Saints Fulham)
Herts Shenley mental health hospital like many others was once a stately home with a long curved drive hence the term ‘going round the bend’
The green cab shelters were erected by Victorian philanthropists with the stipulations that no alcohol to be consumed nor politics discussed
The dinner party attended by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in the film ‘Notting Hill’ was held at 91 Lansdowne Road, Notting Hill
Between 1927 and 39 London boasted no fewer than 27 greyhound tracks. Today only three tracks survive, at Wimbledon, Romford and Crayford
Between 1743 and 1939 with fourteen Islington had the highest concentration of public and private swimming baths ever recorded in Britain
London cabbies are forbidden to transport passengers suffering with a ‘notifiable disease’, bubonic plague is but one disease specified
St. Paul’s Cathedral took so long to build in 17thC London that a lazy worker at the time would be called a St Paul’s workman
The Camberwell Beauty is the colloquial term for Nymphasil antiopa, a velvety, chocolate brown butterfly rarely seen because it migrates annually to Scandanavia from London
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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