London Diary (3)

Text Messages. SMS. Mobile phones. Whatever, she never liked them. Despite the fact they had their uses, she never liked sending texts out as a rule. They were sloppy, like e-mails, but only shorter. The never got to the point and they still required a follow up call afterwards.

‘Damn,’ she thought, ‘why did I send “him” the mass text?’

It was only a mass SMS to all the contacts in her phone to tell them of her new number. She was not happy at the turn of events. There was a reply. From ‘him’. She didn’t mean to contact ‘him’, but that is the problem with mobile phones, you never get round to updating and deleting the numbers of people you don’t really want to contact anymore.

She sent a reply far too quickly, and then regretted it. ‘Damn’ she thought, but secretly inside of her, she was happy. It was contact, of a sort. And despite the fact that ‘he’ had not contacted her for months, she was pleased to hear from ‘him’. But she was still wary. She knew of ‘his’ games and more to the point, ‘his’ whims.

‘Damn, why did I reply so quickly to “his” text?’

Beep-beep.

Another text message from him. She looked at her phone. ‘Sod it,’ she thought, ‘let “him” wait.’

She sank slowly back into bed and smiled. It was a petty revenge, but it was a nice to think that ‘he’ was waiting for a reply. And with that thought, she drifted slowly to sleep.

Bicycle Diaries (Autumn/Winter ‘09)

Earlier this Autumn, I told about the repairs I had to do to my bike. Well, I had to do a lot more recently. On Saturday I was biking away when ‘pop’ went my rear wheel. It was going for a while anyhow, and it finally went. Luckily I got into work on time but it meant I was without a bike for three days – and so I faced the torture of public transport for that time.

Now, I have spent a pretty penny on this bicycle, but considering that I have got a good 13 months out of it, I am happy to do so. New rear tyre, inner tubing, wheel, chain and casstte. Hopefully the repairs I have made will last another year and the workmanship seems good. The bike looks a bit funky, half of it is old, half of it brand new, but it feels great to ride. And considering the mileage I get out of it, if it lasts two months without any incident, then I would have easily made up what I would have spent on petrol.

The economics of transport…

‘Baby on Board’

It is not often that public transport makes you smile.

But yesterday, I read that a woman had given birth on a bus last week! Apparently, baby ‘Dennis’ is the first child to have been born on London’s buses! Congratulations to all concerned and most importantly, thank goodness the baby was born without any complications and that both mother and child are doing well. I think the driver did a sterling job. London may be a harsh city, but there is still a lot of compassion left in this town…

Article – click to read!

The video of mother and baby, both looking very healthy!

Cinematic

Earlier this week I stopped off in town for the day ad did something that I have not done for a long time. Spent a day at the movies. The London Film Festival was in town so for lunch I watched on of its offerings, then headed to the Prince Charles for a late matinee before sauntering off to Trafalgar Square for a late night show in the open. The last of these, the freebie was the best one of the lot, the other two films being…’interesting’…but not really entertaining.

But it was the outdoor film that I really liked. It took a look at London’s transport from 1896 right up until the present day and it was fascinating to see how much and how little has changed in London over the past 100 years or so. And the Square was crowded with people, all trying to get a glimpse of what London had to offer. A lot of the time, I think the Festival in London can make some great choices, and this is one of them. Long may the freebie screenings in the Square continue, and thank goodness the weather held!

The rich get richer…

Money is good. There, I have said it. Just in case many of you think I am some mini-socialist on a computer, I am not I am a damn capitalist pig. I like capitalism, I like the way it, over other forms of monetary policy, gives the most freedom to the individual and reduces government dictates into your life. But I hate government managed capitalism. In the sense that during the good times, government keeps out and during the bad times, they prop up the system.

The whole point of getting capitalism to work is that the bad companies, the individuals who are incompetent are made to go bankrupt and loose their ability to con and swindle the public (I may like capitalism, but I am under no illusions to what its purpose is), while the good companies can continue to screw the public for what they are prepared to pay.

Good governments save up the tax receipts in the good times, so that in periods of slumps, they can manage the fall out, keep essential services running and keep the tax rate stable so that companies that are surviving, do not have the horrible shock of rising taxes during a recovery.

California has completely failed in this. Look closely, as what is happening over there, will be happening in the UK after May next year. At the moment, there is a lot of posturing due to the upcoming election. Once that is over, all hell will break loose and this ‘phoney recession’ that we are living through will suddenly bottom out.

If our politicians had any guts, they would have let those banks hit the wall. But there would have been a regulatory process in place to ensure that governments could have taken over the running of the essential services such as transfer of wage payments, withdrawals & deposits and debt repayments. Instead, the ‘light touch’ economy of the UK is hopelessly inadequate at doing anything much other than skimming taxes from business and enjoying long lunches in The City with the boys in suits.

And so these banks continue to survive, with the same people who f**ked about with our money, now screwing about with our taxes. Those long lunches are still going on, and the rich, well, they are getting richer.

The average house price in London is £260,000 (about $420,000). The average London wage per year is £26,000. Sensible lending gives a guide of three to four times the annual wage for the handing out of a mortgage to ensure affordability and guaranteed repayments. For an average worker he must take out a mortgage TEN times his salary in order to buy the average house in London.

I hate to be blunt, but house prices will not be coming down anytime soon. And let us be honest, if I wanted to live an ‘average life’, I would have to slave in a fantastically paid job to be able to afford just an average dwelling. I am very happy to see the fruits of success, but something tells me, there is still a huge lopsidedness in the economy of the UK. After all, why are house prices so high in London? Did we find oil, is there a gold rush, was some new technology invented that made Tower Hamlets the new Silicon Valley?

No. House prices went up because, firstly, there are a lot more singletons in London (either marrying later or divorces), thereby driving up demand. Secondly, people are living longer, which means there are more elderly people who remain in their house. Thirdly, the population has gone up, both through births and migration (internally, EU and beyond the EU). Fourthly, the Green Belt, a hackneyed 70 year old piece of planning means that London cannot expand naturally to cope with its population. All of this has lead house prices to be higher. But TEN times higher than the average wage? Surely, the income of people would have kept a check on demand?

Oh yes, those banks. How else can people get a mortgage? Well, they go to their bank. Fill out a few forms. Chat, discuss over coffee/wine and then get the keys to their new abode. The renovate it according to the latest TV programme’s style and wait to sell at a higher price. Except…well, there is only a finite amount of money in the bank.

At the moment, I am one of the ‘lucky’ ones. I did not rush to buy a house, and so I am debt free (although, not exactly living ‘well’, I am living within my means). However, there are a lot of people who are struggling right now to live. And that is with interest rates at a record low. They will increase in the future, no currency can continue to take a battering like Sterling has in recent months. And then what?

There will be a lot of repossessions. A lot of people made homeless. Yet, somewhere, somehow, those crooked banks that have supplied the mortgages in the first place will get their cash back. They are the ones who helped to inflate house prices to ten times the average wage, since, after all, without a mortgage, you cannot afford to buy that property. And so, while there will be the destitute and the homeless, barely covered by the state, someone will be in that winebar on Friday night, sipping champagne with friends and thinking how smart they are.

It’s nice when you have a government subsidy backing you up, isn’t it?

Royal Mail, RIP?

For those in the UK, the big news is that the workers of Royal Mail are planning a nationwide strike this week. This has actually been quite a nasty little dispute with plenty of drama unfolding over the Autumn.

Now, I am in two minds over this strike. Already, because of the local wildcat strikes, a lot of my letters have not got to their final destination, forcing me to register and redeliver them. Annoying, and expensive. I do not mind them getting to the destination late, I just think it sucks that they do not turn up at all.

However, the postal workers represent one of the last truly national industries left in the UK. The Royal Mail is one of the few symbols left of British pride. And it is managed by a bunch of muppets.

I have worked for the Royal Mail as a Christmas casual. Yeah, the permanent staff will eye them with suspicion, believing that you are there to undermine their position. But the bulk of casuals are there to scrape some cash for Christmas, and only a few actually ‘graduate’ to the coveted position of a real postman. I was one of those casuals, and I remember being so broke at one point that I had to walk home in the snow, as it was a few days before I was paid. Cold memories!

But yeah, the management are idiots. I remember standing in line for an hour so they could sign me onto their list. Although I was getting paid to stand there, as I had turned up on time, because they had to verify that I turned up, I was effectively doing nothing. There is also a lot of harassment of the casual staff, with permission needed to go to the toilets and other really petty issues. I do not know what it is like with the permanent staff, but there was always a union rep on the floor. A bit of 1970’s lunnacy methinks.

So do I have an opinion on this strike. Well yeah. In a way. Royal Mail does need modernising, it is a simple fact that they are carrying less letters. At the same time, with the huge explosion in parcel delivery due to online shopping, Royal Mail has really cocked that up. Come on, you essentially have a monopoly on the UK’s postal system, HOW can you be loosing money?

But also the workers do have to fight for their rights. We are quite happy to give billions away to bankers who are now turning a handsome profit, but as a nation we seem loathe to support the ordinary man on the street if they dare to rise above the parapet and shout ‘enough is enough’.

We have seen it happen before in the UK during the 1980’s, how an industry is fiddled by government and its public service remit then utterly destroyed until it is there to serve shareholders, leaving the customer with crap. Water companies, bus services and airports are great examples of utilities that have been privatised and utterly beaten into the ground, providing surly service for a high cost. Living in London, I have to put up with Thames Water’s overcharging for stuff that falls from the sky (in bucketloads), grumpy bus drivers who are worked into the ground (doing what a generation ago was the job of two people – conductor and driver) and the lunacy that is Heathrow (or the awful, falling to pieces Gatwick).

(Conversely phone companies and airlines have actually worked quite well from a consumer point of view as competition has been easily introduced).

The only place I see the government taking Royal Mail is to the knackers yard to be broken up and sold off to their buddies in The City for a tidy profit. In that way I do support the staff of Royal Mail, as if they do not fight for their jobs, then no one else will. Unfortunately, there is only one was that this is going to end. Badly, for all concerned.

Royal Mail: Born 1660. Died 2009. Killed by a bankrupt and utterly corrupted government. R.I.P.

London Diary (1)

October 16th, 2009…it was another bright and beautiful day in London town, the last remnants of a barbecue Autumn, swinging into view. The air was alive with the tingling sensation of something a little bit more than just tet-a-tet and yet, something was amiss from the usual bravado of “D’s” day. For some reason, as she looked out over the plains of suburbia, she felt that something was missing. Not from her life, she had a full belly, shelter and a job that paid well. But something was missing. Was it a broach, a pen, or that letter in the post? Nevertheless, despite the seemingly mundane issue of what was missing, the bugging feeling could not be dismissed so easily by “D” who retained a seemingly aloof quality to her normal daily routine…

Storm in a City’s Tea Cup

Wow! If not living in London is akin to being at the centre of the universe, the lack of real news has meant that two extremely trivial London matters have gained national attention.

1) The changes to the Tube Map:

There is no River Thames. There are no more zones. There are too many wheelchair blobs. That is the general prognosis of what has happened.

But what we are really talking about is a local metro network changing a couple of details on its schematic diagram. More important than Dafur? Or the current health of the British economy?

2) The end of the London Paper.

From 3pm onwards, an army of (mainly) Indian students are out on the streets of London distributing freesheets to all that pass them by. Many ignore them, I usually take from one and chuck it in the next bin in order to help those guys out.

The newspaper itself is fine for whiling away a few minutes on the tube, but there is very little reason to keep a copy. Nothing serious in it, just the previous night’s celebrity bashes and the occasional quirk about either the West End/Madia Vale. In about three weeks time it will be ‘The London What?’ rather than Missed Connections, although I do feel sorry for the people who are loosing their jobs, particularly the distributors, unloved and little thanked despite being exposed to the elements.

—

So there you have it. The largest city in Europe, the engine of the world’s fifth largest economy. Trivial pursuits rather than lofty ideas. The dream is not that great…

Bicycle Diaries (Autumn)

Shockingly, I have had this bicycle for over a year. And for eleven months, it has run pretty well. In fact, it is the longest lasting bike that I have ever owned. Now remember, I use my bicycle almost everyday. Not because I am some fitness freak (although there is an element of health to consider), but mainly due to convenience and expense. Petrol is shockingly expensive in the UK, and has risen to over a pound a litre (for anyone in the US, that is around $8 per gallon, for anyone in Europe, that is approx €1.40/l). As this week, I had to repair my bike instead of ride it, I have spent the best part of £20 on petrol, and that is not even driving everyday. This is not an expense I want to occur.

Secondly, the car is very unreliable in terms of traffic. Am I going to get somewhere? How long will it take? Will I get a parking space? All of these things must be taken into consideration. Despite the greater speed of a car, the distances that I am travelling means the time saving is not as much as I think. And I have to leave extra time to account for traffic. On a bicycle, the travelling time is pretty much static, dependent on how tired I am rather than how much traffic there is. Driving in London is an exercise in futility, especially in the daytime, where the time saved is negligible.

But this week, I have had to undertake some repairs. As you can see from the photo, the rear wheel is different from the front wheel . That is because, my back wheel buckled a few weeks ago, so I did a straight swap between my old bike wheel and current one. It is fine for now, although I will have to replace it come winter, otherwise I will skid on the frost.

Also, my saddle broke. This is quite embarrassing, but basically, I do not always cycle with my hands on the handlebar. Early mornings, late evenings, there is no traffic, and so with the roads to myself, I will wobble all over the place without balancing myself in the correct riding position. Great if coming off night duty, and hey, I look cool, but it is awful for the bike. Hence the buckled back wheel and the fact that I managed to shear through the half an inch thick of solid chrome that my saddle bar was made of.

I did go tot the cycle shop, but obviously they have not heard of the current rate of inflation. Like the rest of real world, inflation was not a few pounds increase, but a hundred pounds extra for exactly the same model. I was prepared to pay £200 for a bike (the amount I use it makes it worthwhile). But £300 was not even conceivable. So instead I bought a saddle post and clip and repaired the saddle myself. I will also have to spend cash on a new back wheel, bringing the current cost of repairs up to £90. Expensive, but considering this bike still has a lot of life left in it, and the amount of mileage I also get out of it, I hopefully will be able to get another good year’s worth of riding out of it, but there is no way in hell I will pay £300 for a bike.

Come on, this is London, and anything that expensive is going to get stolen before I even put the locks on.

But winter is coming, time to ready the bike for the last part of 2009…

A wander along the Thames Path…

A couple of weekends ago, I found myself with a free Sunday afternoon. Needing little more encouragement, I set out on what was to be the last warm day of 2009, and headed along the last couple of miles of the Thames Path from the Greenwich Peninsula down towards the Thames Barrier in Charlton.

This part of the river is still fairly industrial, as is evidenced by the working wharves that litter the river bank. Shale, shingle and gravel are piled up high in order to supply London’s construction industry (still going despite the recession). There are also some pleasure spots, believe it or not, yachting marinas and the like. However, this remains a very different river bank to the more popular reaches upstream. Few visitors make it down this far into South East London, and so the path retains almost a wilderness type quality to it.

However, do not think that this is a wasteland. After all, this is London and space is at a premium in this city. The river bank is well utilised even this far downstream, and although it was fairly deserted on that Sunday, it can be seen from wandering past this area, that this part of the Thames is a working area. London is not famed for its heavy industry, but it does exist in part throughout the city, you just have to look for it. And here, along the lower reaches of the river, there is plenty of industrial capacity, strewn across the water’s edge.

But this wander, was not just to see London’s ‘manly jobs’ but also a satisfaction of curiosity. After all, the famed Millenium Village lies along the Thames. Supposedly an attempt in providing good quality, low cost homes to Londoners, there is more than a whiff of corruption in the air, as it seems that us taxpayers have sponsored a brand new set of riverside apartments for sale at ludicrous prices…am I the only one in London to question why no ordinary Londoner can afford to live here, despite the fact that it was subsidised by my taxes?

Enough of the bitterness. I can’t be bothered to rally against corruption. Let me get some more soma and have a look at what my hard earned cash paid for:

Moving on from the balcony lifestyle, I always like to tell a story, or wind up with a tale of intrigue when on my wanders through London. And this part of the Thames Path is no different. This forgotten part of one of London’s greatest treasures is on the frontier of the North Sea. The Thames Barrier stands at the end of the Thames Path and protects the capital from the ravages of flooding. Opened on the 1980’s, it is one of the greatest examples of forward planning envisaged by this country. Shocking considering the usual ineptitude of the UK’s planning policy, but the Thames Barrier really does perform an essential function. It saves lives. Since its completion, it has been raised numerous times to protect London from the storm surges of the North Sea. As we enter Autumn and the threat of storms and spring tides loom ever closer, we will be entering the phase when the barrier will probably be raised up more than once. We take this structure for granted, but without it, London would be no more better off than Bangladesh. But silently, reliably, this magnificently built structure allows the city to sleep safe at night, and despite global warming (with rising sea levels), the barrier still has a few good years left in it…

But before I go, let us not think that South East London is all work and no play. After all, this is London, albeit a part of the city that even few Londoners bother venturing to. And yeah, I must admit, beyond Greenwich, much of London is pretty grim. There is not much to look at, there are no large attractions, and travel around here is difficult at best. Still, here is a little something to brighten up the riverside…

Getting there and away:

On weekends, don’t even think about it. The nearest tube is North Greenwich, and of course, the Jubilee line is only weekday only service.

Woolwich is a bus ride away from the Thames Barrier and of course has the very funky new extension to the DLR up and running. Otherwise, you are subject to the whims of Southeastern. You know what, better to stay at home, and let the El Director take you on an armchair tour instead…