Nearly 20 years ago, government transport planners came up with with the idea of a super-duper railway line straight through the middle of London. Crossrail would speed passengers across town in minutes flat. It would link places like Slough and Heathrow in the west to Romford and Canary Wharf in the east. It would be a futuristic railway with extra-long high capacity trains. It would help hundreds of thousands of people to go to work in the City or shopping in the West End. And it would cost a heck of a lot of money. So it was never built.
It's not easy to find fifteen billion quid for a railway. Governments aren't generally happy at stumping up that sort of money for a transport link which most of the electorate will never use. The total cost is even higher than the entire Olympic budget, and we all know how popular that's been. But you can't dig tunnels under central London without spending money, and without pledged cash this project is doomed to fail.
Things were a lot easier 100 years ago. The Central, Bakerloo, Northern and Piccadilly lines were all constructed within a single decade, using private finance, back in an era when there was far less infrastructure buried under the capital. Only two more tube lines have been built across London since, and Crossrail is doomed not to be the third. Which is why the government is going back to private finance, to the major corporations based in the City, and grovelling for cash. Pay up, or we won't build the railway you so desperately need in order to stay profitable. So far, no response.
Problems at Woolwich demonstrate the mess this project is in. The original plans for Crossrail included a proper big station at Woolwich, on the southeast Canary Wharf branch. Trouble was, this new subterranean station was going to be terribly expensive, so the planners dropped it. Sorry to the local population, all tens of thousands of them, but the new railway was destined to burrow straight underneath them without stopping. A wholly wasted opportunity, and all because the investment wasn't "affordable". But at the last moment a building company stepped in and offered to pay for the station so long as they were allowed to build lots and lots of new homes on top. Result. They'll get a stonking profit later on, and the good citizens of Woolwich are no longer sidelined.
But Crossrail as a whole is still stalled until somebody finds the remainder of the money to pay for it. Ken Livingstone reckons the project just needs "the last few hundred million pounds", but nobody seems to have them. Big business isn't interested, because they have their eyes on short term profit rather than long term gain. And the Treasury isn't interested, because spending money doesn't win votes. Some people have a very blinkered view of the future.
So it looks like we, the people, are going to have to find the last few hundred million pounds ourselves. If everybody in the UK contributed five pounds to the Crossrail project, we'd have the money in no time. A fiver's not much. It's one meal out, or half a round in the pub on a Friday night, all to be paid back (with interest) next time you want to get to Heathrow in a hurry. Or if everybody in London donated fifty quid, that'd reach the total too. It might mean forgoing a few DVDs, or a nice pair of shoes, but it's all for the common good. And we might just have ourselves a transport lifeline by 2015.
As we established earlier this month, one of the best things about blogging is getting comments. They're the icing on the cake, they're added depth, they're two-way conversation. But how do you get comments? I thought I'd carry out a scientific study to try to find out. I've looked back through five years of diamond geezer to see which of my posts got the most reaction. I've only counted single posts with a single comments box, and I've not counted any of my own comments within each total. And that leaves just ten posts which have gathered more than fifty comments. Here's my top ten most commented.
1) How deep is your screen? [115 comments] (9th November 2005) I wondered how big my readers' computer screens were, so I posted a huge long list of London's old telephone codes and asked you to tell me how far down the list you could read. Well over 100 of you responded, and we discovered that the most popular screen resolution was 1024x768. (It still is, by the way, but 1280x1024 is catching up fast) How to get comments, Rule 1: Run a survey, and make sure that the survey is extremely quick and easy to enter.
2) The Highway Code for Cyclists [73 comments] (31st October 2006) I wrote a tongue-in-cheek list of instructions for the capital's cyclists, jumped-up bunch of selfish red-light jumpers that they are. The capital's cyclists leapt to the attack, while scores of pedestrians sprang to my defence. I wouldn't say much has changed since either. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
3) My 40th birthday [70 comments] (9th March 2005) Not only was it my 40th birthday but it was also my Mum's 70th. You lot couldn't resist chipping in and wishing us both a happy double celebration, which was very nice of you, thanks. But I suspect it helped that "Happy birthday" is a dead easy comment to write, with no thinking time required. How to get comments, Rule 3: Tell everybody that it's your birthday. Special "round number" birthdays get the most comments.
4) Doughnuts - the aftermath [59 comments] (20th July 2005) Ah, the legendary "doughnuts" experiment. You wrote lots of comments on a miserably short post about doughnuts, but then wrote even more the following day as we dissected the results. If nothing else, we discovered that the number of comments on a post often bears no relation to how interesting a post is. And that you like jam-filled stodge. How to get comments, Rule 4: Writing about comments is an extremely good way to get comments.
5=) Starbucks comes to Whitechapel [57 comments] (26th March 2007) I noticed a new Starbucks opening in Whitechapel (in Whitechapel!) and wrote about it. And then in my last paragraph I insulted people who feel the need to drink multinational corporate coffee. And that seemed to upset a lot of caffeine addicts. But not as much as the eradication of local enterprise upsets me. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
5=) Ranking supermarkets [57 comments] (10th August 2005) I gave you a list of 12 UK supermarkets and asked you to shuffle them into rank order with the most respectable first. You stuck Waitrose at the top of the list and Lidl at the bottom. It was a nice simple idea and easy to respond to, but people also chipped in with a lot of fascinating (and class-ridden) insights along the way. How to get comments, Rule 1: Run a survey, and make sure that the survey is extremely quick and easy to enter.
7) London's burning [55 comments] (30th January 2007) I ran an entirely fictional week, timeshifted into the future, in which I pretended I was blogging from a new mobile phone whilst escaping from a tube train beneath Armageddon-hit London. You wrote lots of comments, but you saved most of them for the moment when you believed I was dead. Well thanks for that. How to get comments, Rule 5: People are really good at responding sympathetically to tragedy. Or imagined tragedy. (Or blog hiatus)
8) Thanksgiving [52 comments] (23rd November 2006) We don't celebrate America's turkeyfest over here. I dared to query other alien American concepts and phrases, such as "Junior High" and "The Prom", and you lot suggested more. Various American readers then thought we were taking the piss and promptly demonstrated their legendary sense of humor. Too easy. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
9=) Four letter words [51 comments] (13th December 2004) You know those really rubbish stocking filler books that appear every Christmas, with a few words scattered across a handful of tiny pages? I asked you to help me write one by contributing four four-letter words each. If only I'd got my act together and sent the result to a publishing company, I could be a rich author by now. How to get comments, Rule 1: Run a survey, and make sure that the survey is extremely quick and easy to enter.
9=) Saturday blogging [51 comments] (22nd September 2007) It's true - the number of blog visitors really does take a tumble on a Saturday. So I was very surprised when a Saturday post ended up getting more than fifty comments. Serves me right for questioning the social capability of my weekend readership, I guess. How to get comments, Rule 2: Pick a subset of society, preferably a self-righteous subset, and insult them. And then sit back and watch.
Conclusion: If you want a lot of comments, either ask your readership a very simple question which requires very little thought, or insult the bastards.
There are two different types of job: — jobs where you time your work — jobs where you work your time
Some people time their work. They're given a task to do and told to get on with it, and they get paid as and when it's done. Their income relies solely on them getting the work complete, so they have an impetus to knuckle down and get on with it. They might work fifteen hours a day on some days, or just five hours a day on others, whichever is more appropriate to the job in hand. And when the work's done that's it, they head home, that's their choice. Living job-by-job like this makes long-term planning difficult, but some people appreciate the independence of timing their work.
Some people work their time. I'm one of them. I'm paid a salary for what I do, and my contract says I work a set number of hours a week. Sometimes I end up working longer than that because there are "things to be done", but on the whole my working day is a similar length each day. I have plenty to do to keep me occupied, and any manic periods are generally balanced out by lulls and pauses at other times. I can plan my life, even six months from now, because I have a pretty good idea how my work is arranged. I like a bit of stability, and working my time gives me that.
Most of us work our time. We have a start time and a finish time, at least roughly, and it's our job to be available and productive between those times. Or at least available. Sometimes being productive is more difficult. We've probably all had those days where we have to be in the office, or on call, or whatever, but there's absolutely nothing to do. That usually means staring out of the window, or trolling the internet, or tackling the sudoku, or making another cup of tea, or planning your next holiday, or rearranging your email folders, or anything else that makes you look busy when you're not. Thankfully these days are few in number, for most of us at least.
But for some who work their time, there's a lot more time than work. It's their job to be ready to work, should the situation require it, but most of the time there's nothing to do. Absolutely nothing, except to wait. These people come to work at a set time, and they go home at a set time, and they get paid even if nothing happens inbetween. They're the clock-watchers left to their own devices to keep themselves awake and alert. You know the sort of people I mean... ... Firemen (who, unlike their other 999 counterparts, play a lot of volleyball) ... Shopkeepers (notably those in specialist boutiques which nobody ever seems to visit) ... Security guards (who spend almost every shift waiting for absolutely nothing to happen) ... Office temps (has anyone got any photocopying for the office temp to do? no? sorry) ... Village postmistresses (I wonder if anyone will come in and buy a stamp today) ... Art gallery staff (who do nothing but look at people looking at art, in case one tries to nick it) ... Waiters in not-very-popular restaurants (yes sir, we have several free tables) ... Understudies (oh damn, is the leading actress still fit and well? ah never mind) ... IT shift workers (because someone might ring with a technical query at 3am, you never know) ... (you must be able to think of some more)
It sounds great, getting paid to do absolutely nothing most of the time, but I bet it isn't. I couldn't do it, not week in, week out. Even for easy money. I'd be bored out of my skull if my job didn't engage my brain, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs for most of the "working" day. I'd hate having to sit around for hours, waiting for a real task to come along, until hometime finally came around. I suspect you may be the same. Because an unengaging job is an unsatisfying job, and sometimes avoiding tedium is more important than gaining salary.
As we shift further and further into a service economy, increasing numbers of people are going to find themselves forever poised to offer support that nobody requires, waiting around all day, in case they're ever needed. Because some people do time, rather than doing work. I salute you - sooner you than me.
It's been two months since the Olympic Park was sealed off and its occupants ejected. Two months since an impenetrable big blue wall was erected all around the perimeter, and a bored-stupid security guard posted at every entrance gate. Two months may not sound long, but it represents more than 3% of all the available construction time. So what's been going on here since July? Is the site still a ghost town of crumbling warehouses, or have the Olympic Delivery Authority and their big yellow bulldozers been busy? It's a bit of both, actually.
It's still possible to gain public access to the heart of the Olympic Site by following the Greenway. This sewer-top footpath has recently been resurfacedand upgraded in an attempt to make it more attractive to the local community, and newly installed lighting now makes this a slightly more enticing place to walk and cycle after dusk. Somebody's been a bit over-enthusiastic with the signage, though. Several pristine white signposts have been erected along this stretch of the Greenway, informing travellers that Hackney Wick and Bow are one way and Stratford and West Ham are the other. And then the same thing again 100 metres later. And then again, and then again, at similar 100 metres intervals, just in case you have the memory span of a goldfish. The southernmost signpost even manages to point the wrong way, directing cyclists straight ahead into a fence alongside the Great Eastern railway, rather than down the gentle slope underneath the nearby bridge and up the other side. Full marks for design, zero marks for practicality.
The security fence alongside this particular slope has been specially selected as home to 2012's first "branded hoardings". Alice, the ODA's Marketing Manager, is extremely excited by all this. Rather than leave passers-by staring at blue-painted plywood, her department have covered 100 metres of wall with shiny photographic panels and important brand messages. There are some appropriately uplifting images of athletes, and that technicolour 2012 logo we all love so much. There are big yellow warnings signs urging children not to play on site, plus some artists' impressions of what the finished development will look like. There's a list of the fourgroupsfundingconstruction of the Olympic Park, although no sign of the names of the 40 million taxpayers and lottery players whose money is really making things happen. And finally, as a sign of things to come, there's a gleaming list of official Olympic worldwide partner organisations and their corporate logos, just for added visibility. Coca Cola, McDonalds and Samsung have never taken a blind bit of interest in this industrial wasteland before, but the TV cameras are coming in five years' time and it pays to get here early.
Up on the bridge above Marshgate Lane, I had my camera at the ready. I've decided to try taking a photograph from exactly the same spot on the parapet every two months or so until 2012, in an attempt to document all the changes taking place down below. At this stage, with just twophotographs, the resulting slideshow plays like an Olympic Spot The Difference puzzle. There are huge changes already, but only on the left-hand side of the road. The large brick warehouse with the wedged-vent roof (built by the University of London Faculty of Engineering, and until recently a waste disposal depot) has been completely demolished. All the beautiful willow trees overshadowing the Pudding Mill River have been uprooted and chopped down. Vegetation on the banks of the river has been stripped away. Workmen with a big orange digger were busy dumping rocks and gravel to block off the concrete channel. A further army of diggers could be seen crawling all over the surrounding scrubland, where teenage motor-scooter petrolheads used to go scrambling, levelling the land ready for the Park's perimeter service road to be built on top. Meanwhile, on the right-hand side of the road, almost all of the factories, offices and big metal sheds still stand... but for how much longer? Be in no doubt, the Olympic Stadium will be ready bang on schedule, and nigh nothing visible in my latest photograph will remain.
Half a mile further north, yesterday was also closing-down day for the Manor Garden allotments. With the final harvest now safely gathered in, the last few allotment holders were forced to pack away their tools and have been escorted from the Park for the very last time. Their futile attempt to withstand the invasion of the Olympic planning process has come to nought, and an enforced five-year-plus relocation to Leyton is now underway. A big march and rally were held yesterday afternoon, as a last hurrah, with participants tying bouquets to the iron security gatesat the top of Waterden Road in protest. It won't do any good - the 2012 meteorite obliterates everything that lies beneath its destructive path, and no human force can stop it. The demolition of the Lower Lea Valley is already underway. Rebirth suddenly seems a very long way off.
Well known autumnal fact 1: There are four seasons in a year Officially, astronomically, the seasons all start and finish at either a solstice or an equinox. And today is the autumnalequinox, which makes today the start of autumn. It's all because the earth is tilted on its axis, which means that different parts of the planet get more direct sunlight at different times of the year. Yes, obviously. Now tell us something we don't know...
Little-known autumnal fact 1: Autumn is shorter than summer It's true. There may be four seasons in a year, but they're not all of equal length. It's 94 days from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox, making summer the longest of all the seasons. But it's only 90 days from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice, making autumn four days shorter. Winter's even shorter still, just 89 days, the shortest season of all. We may be entering the cooler, darker half of the year (between now and next March), but it's also the shorter half of the year. Here are the precise figures.
Season
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Start
00:08 21 Mar 07
19:11 21 Jun 07
10:51 23 Sep 07
06:09 22 Dec 07
Finish
19:11 21 Jun 07
10:51 23 Sep 07
06:09 22 Dec 07
05:57 20 Mar 08
Duration
93 days
94 days
90 days
89 days
So why aren't the four seasons equal? It's because the earth's orbit around the sun isn't circular, it's an ellipse, and so some bits of the earth's orbit are nearer to the sun than others. Kepler's Second Law says that planets travel a bit faster when they're closest to the sun, and a bit slower when they're further away. The earth happens to be closest to the sun in early January, which is when it travels fastest, so autumn and winter are relatively short. And the earth is furthest from the sun in early July, which is when it travels slowest, so spring and summer are relatively long. It's not by much, but it's enough to make a difference. Autumn isn't a quarter of a year long, it's really 1½ days shorter than that. Make the most of it.
Well known autumnal fact 2: Today the sun is directly overhead at the equator Sorry to those of you with Seasonal Affective Disorder, but nine minutes to eleven this morning is the official moment when the overhead sun switches from the northern to the southern hemisphere. It's about to be spring in the latter, but it's about to be autumn in the former. Damn. Or, if you're Antipodean, hurrah.
Little-known autumnal fact 2: Today is not the day that day and night are of equal length It's true. Sunrisein London this morning was at 6:47am, while sunset tonight is at 6:58pm. So that makes the day 22 minutes longer than the night. Equality comes in three days time, around September 26th. Just look how rapidly the gap between daylight and darkness is changing this week. It's always fast-changing like this around the equinoxes.
Date
Sep 21
Sep 22
Sep 23
Sep 24
Sep 25
Sep 26
Sep 27
Sunrise
06:44
06:46
06:47
06:49
06:51
06:52
06:54
Sunset
19:02
19:00
18:58
18:55
18:53
18:51
18:48
What's longer?
day by 36min
day by 28min
day by 22min
day by 12min
day by 4min
night by 2min
night by 12min
So why aren't day and night equal today? It's because the sun isn't a point of light as seen from the earth, it's a disc. At sunrise the top of the sun peeps above the horizon about a minute before the centre. And at sunset the top of the sun dips below the horizon about a minute after the centre. Atmospheric refraction means that we can still see the sun even when it's really below the horizon, adding a few more minutes to both of those times. And it's that pair of extra minutes that make all the difference. Daylight today is therefore still 22 minutes longer than darkness. But the illusion won't last long. In just ten days time darkness will already be as much as a whole hour longer than daylight, and then it's downhill all the way to Christmas. Let joy be unconfined.
Olympic update
It's been two months since the Olympic Park was sealed off and its occupants ejected. Two months since an impenetrable big blue wall was erected all around the perimeter, and a bored-stupid security guard posted at every entrance gate. Two months may not sound long, but it represents more than 3% of all the available construction time. So what's been going on here since July? Is the site still a ghost town of crumbling warehouses, or have the Olympic Delivery Authority and their big yellow bulldozers been busy? It's a bit of both, actually.
The security fence alongside this particular slope has been specially selected as home to 2012's first "branded hoardings". Alice, the ODA's Marketing Manager, is extremely excited by all this. Rather than leave passers-by staring at blue-painted plywood, her department have covered 100 metres of wall with shiny photographic panels and important brand messages. There are some appropriately uplifting images of athletes, and that technicolour 2012 logo we all love so much. There are big yellow warnings signs urging children not to play on site, plus some artists' impressions of what the finished development will look like. There's a list of the four groups funding construction of the Olympic Park, although no sign of the names of the 40 million taxpayers and lottery players whose money is really making things happen. And finally, as a sign of things to come, there's a gleaming list of official Olympic worldwide partner organisations and their corporate logos, just for added visibility. Coca Cola, McDonalds and Samsung have never taken a blind bit of interest in this industrial wasteland before, but the TV cameras are coming in five years' time and it pays to get here early.
Up on the bridge above Marshgate Lane, I had my camera at the ready. I've decided to try taking a photograph from exactly the same spot on the parapet every two months or so until 2012, in an attempt to document all the changes taking place down below. At this stage, with just two photographs, the resulting slideshow plays like an Olympic Spot The Difference puzzle. There are huge changes already, but only on the left-hand side of the road. The large brick warehouse with the wedged-vent roof (built by the University of London Faculty of Engineering, and until recently a waste disposal depot) has been completely demolished. All the beautiful willow trees overshadowing the Pudding Mill River have been uprooted and chopped down. Vegetation on the banks of the river has been stripped away. Workmen with a big orange digger were busy dumping rocks and gravel to block off the concrete channel. A further army of diggers could be seen crawling all over the surrounding scrubland, where teenage motor-scooter petrolheads used to go scrambling, levelling the land ready for the Park's perimeter service road to be built on top. Meanwhile, on the right-hand side of the road, almost all of the factories, offices and big metal sheds still stand... but for how much longer? Be in no doubt, the Olympic Stadium will be ready bang on schedule, and nigh nothing visible in my latest photograph will remain.
Well known autumnal fact 1: There are four seasons in a year
