diamond geezer

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

This is a post about the space at the front of numberplates and how it's been changing.

Most vehicles have a blank space at the start of their numberplate. I've been looking at a lot of numberplates over the last couple of days and blank spaces are definitely the majority.

If the space isn't blank, the most popular thing to appear in it is a blue stripe with the EU logo above the letters GB.

GB stands for Great Britain and was first used as our international vehicle registration code in 1922. It was first allowed to appear on a numberplate in 1977 when the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic was introduced.

The appearance of the EU symbol dates back to Council Regulation (EC) No 2411/98 in 1998. The blue stripe has to be between 40mm and 50mm wide. The centres of the 12 stars have to be arranged in a circle of radius 15mm with the tips of the stars 4-5mm apart.

If you don't have a national identifier on your numberplate, the alternative is the good old-fashioned oval sticker.

The sticker goes on the rear of the vehicle. If you rely on numberplates, the identifier has to go on the front and on the back.

Vehicles registered in EU member states with numberplates in the common EU format are allowed to travel freely within the European Economic Area.

This was fine while we were still in the EU, and indeed fine during the transition period following Brexit, but that all changed on 1st January 2021. Since then a national flag has to be displayed instead of the EU flag when travelling abroad (and new numberplates can no longer be manufactured with an EU flag on them).

I found these GB/flag combos on cars registered between 2011 and 2020, which makes me think displaying the Union flag has been legal long before everyone got het up about a referendum.

And the national flag doesn't have to be the Union flag, it can also be the Cross of St George, the Cross of St Andrew or the Red Dragon of Wales.

You might expect the Cross of St George to be particularly popular with drivers of a certain mindset, but in my perambulations it's telling that I spotted a saltire and a dragon long before I spotted a red cross.

The flag must always come above the national identifier.

The next change came on 28th September 2021 when the government changed our national identifier from GB to UK.

Allegedly they did it to better represent Northern Ireland within the union, because it was a bit galling for those who weren't officially part of Great Britain to have to display GB on their vehicles. There may also have been an element of "because we now can", although technically we could have changed from GB to UK at any time over the last 100 years.

UK numberplates are a lot harder to spot than GB numberplates because they've only been required for the last 15 weeks.

The top example shows a brand new car with a Union flag and UK imprinted on its numberplate. The bottom example shows a car registered in 2008 which has been upgraded via a sticker. Stickers are a perfectly legal way to update to the current format.

These national identifiers are only relevant if you choose to take your car abroad, which very few Britons have done in the last year. That explains why GB is still much more common than UK on British numberplates (and why having no identifier is even more common... because most cars never go overseas).

In good news it's not illegal to display GB on your numberplate otherwise the owners of millions of vehicles would have found themselves breaking the law overnight. Indeed the government permits a surprisingly broad range of national identifiers, as follows...

• UNITED KINGDOM, United Kingdom or UK
• GREAT BRITAIN, Great Britain or GB
• CYMRU, Cymru, CYM or Cym
• ENGLAND, England, ENG, Eng
• SCOTLAND, Scotland, SCO or Sco
• WALES or Wales
But you can only display these alternative identifiers if your vehicle stays within the United Kingdom and Ireland. Head abroad to the EU and the only acceptable combination on your numberplate is now the Union flag and UK. Better get a sticker next time you travel.

Another change to the start of numberplates came on 8th December 2020 with the introduction of green plates for zero emission vehicles.

I've seen them on Kias, Hyundais and Teslas. Both of these were the same colour, honest, just subject to different lighting conditions when I took the photos.

According to The Road Vehicles (Display of Registration Marks) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, the green band must be
(a) made from retroreflective material
(b) colour Pantone 7481c (or as close as possible to this colour)
(c) no less than 40mm and no more than 50mm in width.

The green bands can be blank or combined with a national flag option and country identifier. I haven't seen a non-blank one yet, but I guess electric vehicles don't go abroad as often as petrol/diesel vehicles. Also green bands remain optional rather than mandatory, so only owners wishing to parade their eco-credentials will have one.

So it's very much been all change at the start of numberplates over the course of the last year. At the end of 2020 they typically displayed GB and an EU symbol but now it's UK and a national identifier, plus maybe a green band if tailpipe emissions are zero. Who says this government isn't getting things done?

posted 07:00 :

Monday, January 10, 2022

Let's investigate three more maps released by TfL in advance of the imminent closure of the Bank branch of the Northern line.

The three maps have appeared on a dedicated Northern line closure webpage which provides travel advice for displaced passengers. One of the maps also appears in a special 8-page colour leaflet which I picked up from London Bridge station yesterday (but not from Bank, Monument or Moorgate because they didn't have any).

First there's this map of key alternative travel options.

The map shows tube and rail routes which might help you get round the disruption, with certain other lines greyed out. It's been made available in 'from north London' and 'from south London' variants - this is the latter. The idea is to nudge you onto certain other lines that aren't closed, for example onto the Charing Cross branch or various National Rail lines.

• District line services from Embankment could be helpful for getting to the City.
• Thameslink could be useful, that's the dashed purple line, although it's a very roundabout way to get from Elephant & Castle to London Bridge and it doesn't actually connect with anywhere along the southern end of the Northern line.
• Southeastern services from Waterloo East to London Bridge could be useful, indeed they're specifically recommended in the accompanying travel advice, although changing lines at Waterloo is a bit of a schlep.
• The Jubilee line is a much quicker route from Waterloo to London Bridge but notice how the map has greyed this out so you don't see it because TfL don't want extra passengers clogging it up.
• The Waterloo & City line ought to be a slamdunk option for anyone trying to get to Bank, but notice how this has also been greyed out because it currently only operates during peak hours so TfL don't want you using that either.
This Bank branch closure could mess up lots of possible journeys so it's good to have a map which covers numerous alternative options. But by greying out the Jubilee and Waterloo & City lines the map is also a manipulative tool to try to stop you noticing routes which might be quicker in case they get overcrowded. By contrast the closed stretch of line is still much too prominent, its black and yellow stripe making it look like there's a connection when there isn't.

One of the most important alternative travel options, the new weekdays-only 733 bus route, does not appear. It gets one whole sentence in the leaflet but it's not even hinted at on the map. When the Overground was being constructed in 2007 the alternative bus routes were portrayed prominently on the tube map, some might say overly so, but fifteen years later the 733 is very much an also-ran.

Next there's this map of key alternative cycle routes.

The red boxes are my addition to show you where the stations on the closed section of the Northern line actually are. What you probably want is cycleway C7 which runs from Kennington to almost Bank, although it skirts Elephant & Castle and Borough and totally misses London Bridge so it's by no means ideal. Indeed the central London cycle network has several holes and lots of gaps and this map rather highlights that.

But I actually went wow when I opened it because it's easily the most useful map of central London cycle routes I've seen in recent years. All that the TfL website offers in the way of cycle maps is a Google map with coloured lines and labelling that vanishes if you zoom in. This by contrast is a proper piece of static cartography with clearly numbered routes providing an excellent overview for route planning, and here it is hiding away in a Northern line travel advice portfolio. If someone at TfL could knock up a broader cycle map in a similar style and promote it a bit more widely they might have a damned useful travel tool on their hands.

Finally there's this map of key alternative bus routes.

...and this is gobsmackingly poor.

I've chopped off the bottom part which goes all the way down to Morden, but you can download the whole abysmal map here.

The key thing that should be on the map is route 733... and it is, in orange, except it's been joined by nine other less useful routes. Also on the map is nearly-as-useful route 133... in blue, but not quite the same shade of blue as less useful routes 35, 155 and 333. Good luck trying to pick out which colour represents which route on a map which has somehow ended up looking like ten strands of exploding spaghetti.

Amongst the inexplicabilities on this map are...

• Route 155 being shown all the way from Tooting when the only useful gap it jumps is Kennington to Elephant & Castle.
• Route N155 being shown separately, even though it mostly runs when the Northern line is shut.
• The most prominent colour (red) being given to the least useful bus (N155).
• Route 77 (Clapham Jn → Waterloo) being included even though it goes nowhere near the closed stretch of line.
• Route 87 (Clapham Jn → Charing Cross) being included even though it goes nowhere near the closed stretch of line.
• Routes 196 and 344 being included solely to assist passengers on the Battersea extension, thereby helping to create a really distracting granny knot around Vauxhall.
• Route 35 being shown pootling around south London to connect three stations that aren't on the Northern line, while omitting its connection at Clapham Common.
Also someone in the mapping department has decided to show every bus stop separately for reasons I don't fully understand. This means that, for example, Kennington and Elephant & Castle have each been depicted by three bus stops and Bank/Monument by four. The tangle around Vauxhall has been made much worse because four bus routes have been spread across three stops. Even the four routes which cross the Thames via London Bridge have been unnecessarily split in two because they serve two different stops on each side, not that any passenger cares.

The overall effect is to completely smother route 733, the most important on the map, which could have been almost straight but instead weaves back and forth like a demented snake. I shouldn't complain. TfL are normally so insistent on not producing bus maps that to have one is a treat, but alas it's been drawn to resemble a tube map instead.

I've had a go at extracting the most important information from the bus map and created this simple graphic instead.

It shows how route 733 shadows the line closure, how routes 133 and 35 nearly do and how routes 155 and 333 straddle the southern end. I've ignored the other six bus routes because they're just noise. It's by no means an ideal representation, it's much too simplistic, but if it's helped you go "oh, I see how it works now" then it's done its job.

Route 733 will eventually get its own digital map at tfl.gov.uk/bus/route/733 but that's not been switched on yet because the route isn't running. If you want to work out where the 733 is stopping you'll have to piece it together from the text on the separate Bus changes webpage, which isn't linked from anywhere I've previously mentioned. They don't make it easy. But they have spent a lot of time and effort making it harder than it needs to be.

posted 07:00 :

Sunday, January 09, 2022

London's 300 year-old-pubs: The Ferry House
(a regular series in which I visit pubs opened 300 years ago)

Where is it roughly? At the very foot of the Isle of Dogs, not far from Island Gardens station.
Where is it specifically? Ferry Street (a road which non-pedants would describe as cobbled).
How far is it from the Thames? Barely 40m.
How would I get there with a satnav? Enter E14 3DT (but don't expect to find anywhere to park).

When did it open? 300 years ago, obviously.
It didn't though, did it? Nobody knows for sure when it opened, hence the date of 'circa 1722' plastered across the front, so 2022 isn't necessarily the 300th anniversary but it's near enough.
It can't be that old? Parts of the building are original but no, most of it is late 19th century.

What can we tell from the pub's exterior? Many things.
    a) It's called The Ferry House.
    b) It's the oldest pub on the island.
    c) Somebody's looking after the hanging baskets.
    d) The kitchen is currently closed.
    e) They take American Express.
    f) They have a special offer on a large bottle of Heineken.
    g) They have a beer garden.
    h) They're on the Thames Path National Trail.
    i) Their rooster means it used to be a Courage pub.
    j) They like hashtags #ginpalace #whiskeywonderland #vodkagotcha #rumandreason
    k) They have a very interesting chalkboard.

Oh isn't that interesting? Yes it is.
What can you tell me about this ferry? It operated between here and Greenwich as early as the first half of the 14th century and was later known as Potters Ferry.
What can you tell me about this ferry that isn't on the chalkboard? At the time the pub opened the ferry was operated by the Warner family, the Masters of the Royal Barges. The Potters Ferry Company bought it for 15 guineas in 1762. The ferry stopped transporting horses in the 1840s. In 1888 it morphed into the Greenwich Vehicular Steam Ferry, a cable-hauled service which set off from decks fitted with four sets of railway lines, but this was underused and went bust four years later. The opening of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel in 1902 ended any need for a ferry in this location.

What was the local population in 1722? Nil. Back then the Isle of Dogs was all marshes with a single dirt track leading south from Poplar to the ferry.
So it's called The Ferry House because it used to cater to ferry passengers in the absence of any other local facilities? Yes.
This is fascinating stuff, will you tell us more? No. It's all been blogged in impressive detail by the islandhistory.wordpress.com website where you can read much more about The Ferry House, the ferry, Ferry Street and the undeveloped Island, and quite frankly I can't compete with that.

What can you tell from the pub's website? They reckon they're the Island's oldest building in continual use. They sell a range of draught and bottled beers, cask ales, a selection of wines and a choice of spirits. They say "Dogs welcome, Humans tolerated". They show a lot of live sport.
What can you tell us about the pub's interior? Nothing.
Don't you think you should have gone in? I went past at 10am and it doesn't open until noon.
Couldn't you have made an effort and gone back later? It sounds like a 'dogs and big screen sports' pub, so basically no.

Did any other London pubs open in 1722? Obviously yes.
Which ones? The Blue Anchor on the Hammersmith waterfront first got its licence in 1722 and is still trading. The Old Ship in Hammersmith also claims a 1722 launch. The Black Dog in London Road, Twickenham, is first recorded in 1722, but is currently a Roxie steakhouse. The Bulls Head in Chiswick and The Coach and Horses in Rickmansworth both date back to at least 1722 but that probably doesn't count, plus Rickmansworth isn't in London anyway.
Can we expect to read more about some of these 300 year-old pubs in future posts? Don't count on it.

posted 07:00 :

12 things that happened this week #coronavirus

• masks to be worn in secondary classrooms
• record 1 million daily cases in the US
• "we can ride this out" (PM)
• key workers to be sent supply of daily tests
• pre-departure travel tests scrapped
• no more PCR tests for cases without symptoms
• three more weeks of 'Plan B'
• unvaxxed Djokovic refused Australian visa
• survey suggests 1.3m in UK have long Covid
• "don't think omicron is mild" (WHO)
• no need yet for a 4th jab, advisers say
• UK death toll passes 150,000

Worldwide deaths: 5,440,000 → 5,480,000
Worldwide cases: 289,000,000 → 304,000,000
UK deaths: 148,778 → 150,057
UK cases: 13,100,458 → 14,333,794 (↑1.2m!)
1st/2nd/3rd vaccinations: 51.9m/47.6m/35.3m
FTSE: up 1% (7384 → 7485)

posted 01:00 :

Saturday, January 08, 2022

A new tube map has just been published, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

The new map is needed because a large chunk of the Northern line is closing next Saturday until the middle of May and no trains will be running between Moorgate and Kennington. The designers have chosen to colour the closed part of the line using a dashed black and yellow line, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

The colours they've used make the closure look like a cross between the Circle and Northern lines, which isn't ideal when those two lines already cross at Monument. The yellow is really quite eyecatching, indeed arguably more eyecatching than the black sections of the Northern line which are remaining open. For some reason they've chosen to represent the line closure not by removing it but by making it more prominent, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

Leaving the line in place makes it harder to see that Northern line trains now terminate at Moorgate and that there are no helpful ways to continue your journey south from there. It also necessitates a surplus connector blob at Bank which technically doesn't need to be there. And because the short section between Elephant & Castle and Kennington is coloured black, not black and yellow, it suggests that trains might still be running between these two stations when obviously they're not, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

Details of the closure have been written in a teensy tiny yellow box squished in alongside Borough station. Admittedly I'm showing you the poster version of the map and they're enormous, but this is also the pdf version on the TfL website and you have to magnify that up a lot before you can read it. No box appears on the folded paper version of the map where the only explanation of the closure is given in the key on the back page. But it's written in a much smaller font than the rest of the key as if the designers either assumed you had perfect eyesight or decided you didn't need to read it, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

The only station that won't be served by other services is Borough so Borough station is closing for four months. The map tries to make this clear by crossing out the name of the station with a red line, but it's a thin horizontal line so quite hard to see, unlike in the old days when a red cross was used instead. Additionally a blue dagger directs you to closure information in a column alongside the map, and because the station's called Borough it comes first in the alphabetical list, but I wouldn't have done it like that.

Kennington is a bit of a mess, as it has been since the last tube map when it was split from one blob to two lengthily connected blobs. The split is particularly baffling on the latest map because the closed line means you won't be able to interchange here, but the designers have still chosen to include an extra interchange blob and greyed it out a bit. Now it looks like the Charing Cross branch joins the Morden branch at Oval whereas the lines actually join at Kennington, and it'd have looked a lot better if they'd just continued the line straight down, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

Another thing they've changed on the latest tube map is what the Battersea extension looks like.

On the last map it drooped at the end in an embarrassingly suggestive way, but this time the designers have applied some Viagra and now it sticks out horizontally. Unfortunately they've added an ugly kink to manoeuvre the line around the word 'Kennington', but that's because space is tight and the designers have to work to slavish rules about how lines are allowed to change direction, and I wouldn't have done it like that.

If you look more closely you'll see they've also moved Vauxhall closer to the river, and they've remembered to give Battersea Power Station a boat symbol this time, and they've switched the Northern line to go underneath the Victoria line rather than over it, but it's still not how I'd have done it.

I'd have done something like this...

...which is to make the Battersea extension a straight line and to make the Morden connection go vertically down. I'd also have made the dashed yellow a lot lighter and changed the dashed black to grey so the line closure didn't stand out quite much. Admittedly I'd have broken a rule by removing the Kennington blob on the closed stretch of line, indeed my solution is topologically suspect, but this transgression makes the rest of the map much clearer so I think it's valid to have done it like that.

Of course I'm only a rank amateur dicking around with MS Paint rather than an expert with the proper design package, plus I'm not beholden to professional rules decreed by specialists who know what they're doing. I could have chosen a different path through life and taken a design qualification and then attempted to get employed by TfL to fill the role where it actually is my say-so on how the tube map looks but that's not the career choice I chose. All I know is that if I had got that job and designed the latest tube map to my own rules you'd still all have sat there and found fault because, whatever I'd chosen to do, you wouldn't have done it like that.

posted 07:00 :

Friday, January 07, 2022

Walking Britain's B Roads: the B116
Balaam Street
[Newham] [0.5 miles]

My apologies but I've had to go back and walk the B116. Originally I didn't think such a road existed but subsequent discussion has confirmed that the Ordnance Survey thinks it does, which means it does. Although originally designated the B166, at some point in the last 20 years the National Street Gazetteer has become convinced it's the B116, possibly through a data entry error, and therefore by definition it is now the B116. This means I now have to subject you to a mundane half mile through Plaistow. I hate to think what my horde of new followers is going to think.

The B116 is better known as Balaam Street and is one of the oldest roads in Plaistow. It's thought to be named after a Norman baron called Hugh de Balun, not the biblical bloke with the donkey, and was recorded as Balostret in 1371. It led from the centre of the village to the edge of the marshes, which in those days spread back well over a mile from the Thames, and was home to a number of prosperous folk who enjoyed the secluded rural surroundings. 'Village', 'prosperous' and 'secluded' are just some of the words nobody would use to describe Plaistow today.

Today a somewhat bespoiled Balaam Street starts at a T-junction in the shadow of a single tower block. The boarded-up pub on the corner was once the Coach and Horses but has been empty for over ten years because turning a damaged listed building into flats is expensive. The three-storey Victorian beauty nextdoor is The Laurels, a former Masonic Hall dressed in ragstone, and very much at odds with everything else we're about to pass. As for the clouds you can see rippling across the sky they're cirrocumulus ahead of a bank of altostratus - nomenclature which will prove significant as we proceed south.

If you've ever wanted to go to college in offices above a carpet warehouse, Balaam Street is the place for you. Its correct name has somehow escaped the notice of the owner of the Balam Food & Wine off licence, although given the number of times the road's changed its spelling over the years perhaps we should let him off. Ian Visits has the full backstory of Barbers Alley, the unnecessarily broad pedestrian thoroughfare which heads off to the left. But the world owes a lot more to the ambulance station on the right which marks the site of Chesterton House, former home of amateur meteorologist Luke Howard.

Luke moved to Plaistow in 1796 to manage his father-in-law's pharmaceutical business, and while living here started to make detailed observations of the cloud formations he saw above him. In 1803 he published a groundbreaking Essay on the Modification of Clouds which included the first attempt at their classification, thereby introducing a nomenclature we still use today.

(1) Cirrus.— Parallel, flexuous or diverging fibres, extensible in any or all directions.
(2) Cumulus.— Convex or conical heaps, increasing upward from a horizontal base.
(3) Stratus.— A widely-extended continuous horizontal sheet, increasing from below.
(4) Cirro-cumulus.— Small, well-defined, roundish masses, in close horizontal arrangement.
(5) Cirro-stratus.— Horizontal or slightly inclined masses, attenuated towards a part or the whole of their circumferences, bent downward, or undulated, separate or in groups consisting of small clouds having these characters.
(6) Cumulo-stratus.— The cirro-stratus blended with the cumulus, and either appearing intermixed with the heaps of the latter or superadding a widespread structure to its base.
(7) Cumulo-cirro-stratus, or nimbus.— The rain-cloud: a cloud or system of clouds from which rain is falling. It is a horizontal sheet, above which the cirrus spreads, while the cumulus enters it laterally and from beneath.
The Howards moved to Tottenham in 1813 so that's where his blue plaque is, but it's Plaistow which provided his blue sky thinking.

Opposite is Plaistow Park, formerly Balaam Street Recreation Ground. As parks go it's pretty bogstandard, having lost its bandstand and several other original features, but the ornamental garden (currently with frozen fountain and single flowering rose) remains intact. If it's food you want the Munchy Grill promises to take care of your peri peri needs while Kate's Anglo-Ghanaian cafe, A Taste of Honey, reopens today after a lengthy Christmas break. The modern mental health centre where the road bends was built on the site of the Invalid and Crippled Children's Hospital, a small unit which provided a few dozen beds for the chronically unwell between 1903 and 1976.

Which brings us to the Greenway, or rather the North London Outfall Sewer, here silently conveying the effluent of millions beneath the street and onward to Beckton. It doesn't generally whiff too badly either, before you ask. Off to one side is one of London's three Dongola Roads, while off to the other is the site of the demolished house where the Human League filmed their video for Keep Feeling Fascination. On Balaam Street we find a scrap of grass overlooked by a single bleak bench, a mobility scooter charging up on the pavement, a refuse bin painted with the flag of St George and a red car bumper lying at the foot of the tree it was smashed into.

At number 42 the Helping Hands charity is collecting pizzas, fruit and veg for local distribution, stacked neatly out front in naturally-chilled plastic trays. Three men are chatting intently outside So Nice Market, then step out into the road when they recognise the driver of a passing car. At Total Gadget Repair Ltd the shopkeeper peers out through the window oblivious to the long term misspelling of Phone Accerrories on the facade above his head. Uncle Jim's Fish Bar is BestMate's local chippy of choice and was once awarded a three star review by this very blog. For those who like to know which bus routes we're following it's been the 241 and 325 all the way.

Balaam Leisure Centre is an unwelcoming brick fortress built on the site of the much splendider Plaistow Baths (which were demolished exactly 50 years ago). Alas the centre's been closed for the last three years following the discovery of a serious water leak from the pool into the concrete slab above the gym, which is an unfortunate thing to happen immediately after a million pound refit, and there are fears it'll never reopen. I'm pleased to say that personalised printers Proclaim Enterprise have spelt Stationery correctly across their frontage, although they have then messed up with the strapline General Printing At It's Best.

Balaam Street draws to a close much where it did centuries ago, no longer on the edge of the marshes but on the busy Barking Road between branches of Iceland and Ladbrokes. What was once the most prosperous village in West Ham is now anything but, as a large pawnbrokers on the final parade attests. But times change, as do road classifications, along what ought to be the B166 but has somehow become the B116 instead.

posted 07:00 :

Thursday, January 06, 2022

Just before Christmas I published a simple infographic summarising the sequence of lockdown restrictions over the last two years... a brief monthly snapshot of fluctuating curbs on freedom.

2020 2021

Jan Normal LOCKDOWN

Feb Normal LOCKDOWN

Mar → LOCKDOWN → Step 1

Apr LOCKDOWN → Step 2

May LOCKDOWN → Step 3

Jun STAY ALERT Step 3

Jul EAT OUT → 'Normal'

Aug EAT OUT 'Normal'

Sep RULE OF 6 'Normal'

Oct TIERS 'Normal'

Nov 'LOCKDOWN' 'Normal'

Dec TIERS PLAN B

I found it a useful way of getting my head round how long all this has been going on, the ebb and flow of pandemic peaks and the astonishing range of vocabulary the government has appropriated to dress up their measures. But it wasn't an image, it was a table embedded in a longer post, so it was never especially shareable.

On Tuesday evening The Guardian's Media Editor took a screenshot and tweeted it. We both follow each other on Twitter so this was fine. "This is the most simple explanation of why everyone is feeling very tired after two years of this" he said, and then added a very kind comment about old school blogging.

This is the most simple explanation of why everyone is feeling very tired after two years of this. (From @diamondgzrblog who is committed to old-school blogging and therefore always great.) pic.twitter.com/y5wMrF3ENR
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) July 6, 2018

Jim's tweet swiftly went viral, earning further traction from big hitters like Adam Boulton (formerly of Sky News), Susanna Reid (off Good Morning Britain), the Prime Minister's sister and at least one MP, as well as various journalists, academics, DJs, media types and members of the Great British public. By midnight it had had 1382 likes, then somehow passed the 5000 barrier mid-morning and after 24 hours had received 9682 likes and 2297 retweets. So that was nice.

It received quite a few replies saying "Yeah but it wasn't like that in Manchester" and "I wouldn't describe the months labelled “Normal” as normal" and "Except for shielders of course" but also "Seeing it mapped out like this really makes me understand why my mental health was in the gutter for most of 2021" and "Almost looks like there's never been a plan at all" and "God this is depressing" and "Thanks". Someone even created a Chernobyl meme version.

An unexpected consequence of this tweetfest was that a lot of people decided to follow @diamondgzrblog, my Twitter account which only tweets when I publish a new post. At the start of this furore it had 1354 followers, a total it's taken me five years to accumulate. By the end of Wednesday it had 2149 followers, which is a 60% increase in the space of a day and an astonishing uplift based on a single tweet.

Jim does have past form on this - his tweet about my Romford racist photo in referendum week somehow added 2500 new followers to my main @diamondgeezer account almost overnight. But 800 new followers to an automated blog-focused Twitter account is quite something, not least because I bet most people didn't realise what they were signing up for.

All that these 800 new followers had seen was one single coronavirus-related graphic (and not a graphic that @diamondgzrblog had ever tweeted before). Based on a sample of one it was a reasonable assumption that I might post pithy topical graphics on a regular basis, or at least focus on the wider issues of the day. Instead, as regular readers well know, this blog is an old-school smorgasbord of personal stuff, local reportage, data-bashing, trips to the Olympic Park and rather too much transport-related content. It's not going to be to most of their tastes at all.

As if to prove the point, the first post most of these new followers would see was an in-depth discussion of the National Street Gazetteer and potential anomalies regarding B road classification in Plaistow. This might be the kind of thing you come here for but you didn't sign up on spec based on one tweet, you've been here a while. These fresh folk won't be expecting a daily 7am tweet linking to whatever today's motley blogpost is, possibly with photos, they'll be expecting sizzling curated Twitter content. I wonder how many will never ever click on the link, or simply unfollow once they've deduced a London-based pot pourri is not for them.

Twitter's not even the best way to follow the blog, which is to turn up at diamondgeezer.blogspot.com at 7am and expect to read something new (or if you're more technically minded to add diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/atom.xml to your RSS feed).

It's the journalists among my 800 new followers I feel most sorry for. Admittedly I nearly had the scoop on the Abba Arena and I once discovered that Bob Dylan had painted my photograph of Blackpool Pier, but you'd have had to sit through years of mundane posts to have uncovered that. Also I should probably point out to the PR folk who've signed up that we're probably not going to get on. But hopefully a few dozen amongst the onboarding crowd of researchers, engineers, grandparents, students, creators, curators, educators, translators, hobbyists, producers, councillors, counsellors, writers, coders, runners, players, flâneurs, activists, volunteers and broader humans will discover something here they come to enjoy.

Hello if you're new here, and if you've managed to read all the way down to the end of this post I hope there's a good chance you'll consider staying around.

posted 07:00 :

Wednesday, January 05, 2022

A reader asks...

When a B-Road becomes semi-declassified, how do we know its new extent? Is there an online database of B-Roads somewhere? Or is it just that road signs get removed?
It's not road signs. Hardly any B Roads in London are signposted with their B Road number, either on the approach or along the road itself. Things are different elsewhere in the country where a B Road may be the most significant route for miles and copiously signed. But just checking signs is no great help.

Instead yes, there's a database and it's called the National Street Gazetteer. Local authorities upload data monthly, for example if a new road is built, and are also supposed to keep track of any changes to road classification. The gazetteer is co-ordinated by GeoPlace, a collaboration between the Local Government Association and the Ordnance Survey, and currently contains 1,486,432 streets each with their own Unique Street Reference Number (USRN). It's been freely accessible since July 2020, although the download's so huge my laptop hasn't been able to cope with interpreting it.

Instead the best place for a specific search is www.findmystreet.co.uk/map where you can zoom in on a specific road to discover its USRN, its classification and who's responsible for it. For example the map confirms that Bow Road (22700175) is an A Road maintained by TfL and Old Ford Road (22700893) is a B Road maintained by Tower Hamlets. One catch is that the data isn't necessarily 100% up-to-date - for example it shows Sweetwater Place in the Olympic Park as Under Construction even though it's been open to traffic since April. Another drawback is that the pop-up box doesn't explicitly state which B Road a road is, only that it is one. [alternative map]

Meanwhile road classification has been the sole responsibility of individual local authorities since April 2012 when the Department for Transport relinquished control. You can read their comprehensive list of guidance on road classification and the primary route network here. Only when creating a new A or B Road does an authority need to contact the department to obtain an unused number from a centrally-kept list. Similarly the department likes to know when road numbers are retired so that, after a suitable pause, they can be reused.

The local highway authority is responsible for recording classification in their area. Any changes must be included in the authority’s monthly update to the National Street Gazetteer in order to be valid.

Given that road classification is an ongoing process, and classifications may date back to the 1920s, the department recognises that neither local authorities nor central government will have comprehensive records of classification decisions taken before 2012. Where an authority identifies a discrepancy in the treatment of a road, it may be advisable to complete a classification form to clarify the status of the road.
I said yesterday that half the B118 appeared to have been declassified. I based this on OpenStreetMap no longer showing Columbia Road, Gossett Street and Old Bethnal Green Road in yellow, and the impossibility of driving down this end of the road due to due to traffic calming measures. However the map on findmystreet.co.uk indicates that all three of these streets are still very much part of a B Road, which the OS map underneath confirms is still the B118. No matter that you can now only ride it on a bike, it's still officially a B Road because Tower Hamlets council has never uploaded any changes to say otherwise.

My apologies to residents of Columbia Road, Gossett Street and Old Bethnal Green Road because they got very short shrift in my B118 write-up. Nevertheless I did actually walk the whole thing and you got twice as much detail about half as much road. I believe I've blogged the correct length for all the other B Roads I walked before that.

However I remain conflicted by the B116 which I don't think exists but various mapping platforms are convinced is in Plaistow.

The road in question is Balaam Street which links The Broadway (A112) to Barking Road (A124). It's definitely a B Road because findmystreet.co.uk says so, and the underlying OS map says it's the B116. Open StreetMap agrees, as snapped top left. But StreetMap (based on Bartholomew mapping) is convinced it's the B166, as is my 2000-vintage London A-Z, as was the Ordnance Survey in 1966, as is the SABRE website, as is whoever compiled the legislation for the 2012 Olympic Route Network. It definitely started out as the B166 because that's what the 1923 road map top right shows, and the B164, B165 and B167 are suspiciously close by.

B Roads do sometimes change their number, and the original B116 over by Victoria Park died early, but I don't believe the classification's been transferred to a road in Plaistow which already had a perfectly good number.

4pm update (from the OpenStreetMap discussion forum)

"It is possible that the sequence of events which led to it being recorded in the National Street Gazetteer as the B116 were faulty. That's not unknown - there are other instances where data was wrongly transcribed when copying from original paper records into digital records. In this case, it's easy to see how B116 could be a typo for B166.

However, the NSG is considered definitive even if the process by which a record was added to it was faulty. So there is no dispute that the street *is*, now, the B116. The fact that it may, once, have been the B166, and the change was the result of a fat-fingered data entry clerk, does not mean that it is still the B166."
It seems Britain does have an official list of B Roads but it's only as good as the information pumped into it and this may not have been accurate before 2012 in the first place. The data's not especially public either, which means the best place to look is probably a map, or else the excellent SABRE website, but even those aren't necessarily 100% correct. It's unlikely ever to bother you, but it's not as tidy as you unconsciously assumed it was.

posted 07:00 :

Tuesday, January 04, 2022

Walking Britain's B Roads: the B118
Old Ford Road
[Tower Hamlets] [1.3 miles]

Just when you hoped they'd gone away the B Roads are back. I'm walking them in numerical order and so far I've managed the first eleven, totting up a grand total of twelve miles. In bad news the next ten are all in Tower Hamlets so all geographic variety has gone out the window, although in good news I'm going to find them terribly easy to get to. Indeed this one's impressively close to home as it connects Bethnal Green to Bow.

The B118 is an excellent example of how modern traffic calming has changed the classification of roads. My millennium-vintage London A-Z definitely shows it starting one mile further west in Shoreditch and following Columbia Road, Gossett Street and Old Bethnal Green Road. But a series of subsequent measures has made driving the route impossible aboard anything more advanced than a bike, hence this ragtag backroad is no longer worthy of B Road status.

» The first blockage (top left) is outside The Birdcage pub on Columbia Road where the Sunday flower market peaks. A brief chunk of Gossett Street has been pedestrianised forcing traffic to bend back on itself, and if you're in a car there's no way through.
» The second blockage (top right) is at Warner Place, previously blogged as part of the B108. A modal filter has been installed in the form of a planter and a hidden camera, this being Tower Hamlets' preferred cheap option, and if you're in a car there's no legal way through.
» The third blockage (bottom left) is either side of Mansford Street where the big school is. On one side the road's been made one-way westbound only and on the other side it's been made one-way eastbound only, so officially even on a bike there's no way through.
» The fourth blockage (bottom right) is alongside Middleton Green near the outdoor gym. Full-on Streetscape landscaping has converted the road to a weird public piazza surrounded by bike lanes and blocked by concrete benches, so if you're in a car there's no way through.

I've walked the dead half for completeness' sake but I won't subject you to it. Instead join me on Cambridge Heath Road by the petrol station for a walk along Old Ford Road.

The B118 now starts in what was once the heart of municipal Bethnal Green, back when it was a separate borough, not so far from the town hall (sorry, boutique hotel). First up on the left is York Hall, originally the public baths but since upgraded into a luxury spa, be it one where they still host major boxing matches upstairs. On the right is the V&A's toy-filled outpost, until recently known as the Museum of Childhood but reopening next year with a revamped youth slant in the hope that kids will enjoy it more than nostalgic parents. These are by far the most important buildings on Old Ford Road. We have peaked early.

This cultural nexus continues briefly thanks to St Margaret's House, a charitable hub "supporting creativity and wellbeing", which appears to involve running a lot of workshops, a long-running vegan cafe and an on-trend second hand clothes shop. It's hard to tell if the browbeaten corner shop at the end of the terrace has been closed for years or is merely shuttered for New Year. The Catholic church looming opposite has a faintly forbidding outlook. And then with a snap of the fingers Old Ford Road switches from Victorian to postwar flats, and will continue to swap as we proceed, indeed whatever sequence of photos I choose to show you beyond this point will not adequately sum up the road's repeatedly split personality.

I've chosen to skip the council blocks of the Cyprus Street Estate and show you instead the lovely homes along the subsequent stretch. They'd have been among the first to spring up along this former country lane and still scrub up well, indeed to the tune of a million. At this time of year the number of homes with wreaths on the door is always a good measure of middle class contentedness and these terraces display way above the Tower Hamlets average. For those who like to know which bus routes we're following it's the 309 and D3, both imminently terminating outside the Chest Hospital that's no longer a chest hospital.

Here are some of the flats I mentioned, the L-shaped block of Sidney House and the green-specked towers of the Cranbrook Estate. The latter estate is large enough that my next B Road runs along the other side. The local chippy is called Fish And Ships and has made the cardinal error of hanging a large permanent sign outside saying Open even though most of the time it isn't. At first glance the City of Paris looks like a one-storey 1960s pub, which indeed it once was before it morphed into a wine bar and more recently a (very inappropriately named) Indian restaurant. The Royal Cricketers closed a year earlier to become flats with a very nice view over the Regent's Canal, but had been well enough established in 1845 that one of Victoria Park's gates was named after it.

The B118's finest moment is the next quarter of a mile alongside the southern edge of Victoria Park. A vista of trees, grass and boating lake opens up through the railings, complete with looping promenade, pavilion cafe and a considerable number of birds. The lengthy terrace of tall villas opposite gets the best view - mostly as old as they look but one section had to be rebuilt by the Crown Estate in 1989. Victorian author Israel Zangwill lived in one of properly old ones, as a blue plaque at the top of his front steps confirms. Halfway down an actual roundabout intervenes (where Grove Road cuts across the park), but before long the really nice houses restart again. Expect the lack of properties on the northern side to have had a significant effect on house numbering by the time we reach the end of the road.

Up next is Skew Bridge, our second crossing of a canal, so called because it launches off at an angle. It's also quite narrow which is why it was closed to traffic during lockdown, and under Liveable Streets proposals the council intends to seal it off more permanently. Quite what that'll do to the long-term viability of the B118 it's not clear. Beyond the Hertford Canal all the housing reverts to modern flats with a single isolated leftover pub, The Lord Morpeth. Its striking mural commemorates Sylvia Pankhurst who used to live nextdoor at number 400, and the Suffragettes who may have popped in for a beverage between protests and charitable acts. The Gunmakers Arms where Sylvia opened a mother and baby clinic in 1915 is alas long gone beneath the concrete stairwell of Tait Court.

Old Ford Road's final burst is sub-inspirational. The Turkish restaurant has succumbed to market forces and become yet another pizza takeaway. Connaught Works is a warehouse conversion suitable for those who can't get into Bow Quarter. For those who like to know which bus route we're following it's now the 8 (alight three stops after Bus Stop M). Parnell Mini Market is not the first corner shop, and won't be the last, to misspell Stationary on its frontage. By the time Old Ford Road comes to an end the house numbers are in the 600s on one side but still in the 300s on the other, for reasons previously suggested. The road used to continue all the way to the Old Ford, the historic site where a Roman Road once crossed the River Lea, but the far end was lopped off by the A12 Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. The B118 stops one junction further back on Parnell Road because there's no point classifying a stunted dead end.

Spoiler: As just described, the B118 runs for just over a mile from Cambridge Heath Road to Parnell Road. So does my next B Road, the parallel B119, and the two are never more than 400m apart. You'll have heard of it.

posted 07:00 :

Monday, January 03, 2022

2022 promises to deliver London's biggest transport bonanza in decades, a haul of new station connections unmatched this century. Throw in last September's Battersea extension and we're in the midst of a brief golden age of project completion thanks to plans made when the going was good. It can't continue as funds evaporate, plugs are pulled and future plans indefinitely mothballed, indeed 2022's expansion may turn out to be something of a last hurrah. But let's look forward to what the upcoming twelve months should bring...

January: In 12 days time the southbound Northern line platform at Bank station will be sealed off to the public and you'll never be able to catch a train from it again. It's all part of a major upgrade to the ultra-labyrinthine station which'll make getting around much easier, including lifts to the Northern line, escalators down from the Central line, two new moving walkways and a brand new entrance on Cannon Street. In particular the tracks beside the current southbound platform will be filled in to create a new customer concourse while a totally new platform they've been busy building in parallel is readied for use. You'll hardly recognise the place.

The Northern line will be closed between Kennington and Moorgate from Saturday 15th January with a reduced service on the remainder of the Bank branch. A temporary bus route, the 733, will operate on weekdays between Oval and Finsbury Square. Expect a new (and potentially ugly) tube map to coincide with the start of the closure. Shutdown is due to last 17 weeks which'd put reopening around the weekend of Sunday 15th May. Not everything inside the station will have been completed by then, but TfL's expectation is that they'll have the entire upgrade completed by the end of the year which would be damned impressive... and makes Bank one of 2022's shiny new baubles.

March-June: It's inconceivable that Crossrail won't open this year, which is damned exciting after three and a bit years of interminable delay. Trial operations are well underway, indeed they were even shuttling trains back and forth on Christmas Bank Holiday Monday, but everything still hangs on the successful rollout of rewritten software for signalling (ELR110) and for control and communications (CMS28.0). If that goes well then passenger evacuation scenarios will be tested in the weeks to come, followed by a period of 'shadow running' and only when confidence is high will full opening get the green light.

Nobody yet knows for certain when opening day will be, but Sunday 6th March remains the optimistic earliest possibility and 'some time in the first half of 2022' the backstop default. That could mean catching a purple train under Central London is only nine weeks away or could mean three, four or five months, but all of these are still excitingly close considering past tribulations. A new tube map is promised whenever Crossrail finally deigns to appear, although it might be missing a station. Bond Street remains horribly behind schedule and is nowhere near being ready to hand over to TfL, so it remains likely that initial services will have to skip the station which may mute the triumphant launch somewhat. But that transformational launch between Paddington and Abbey Wood is growing ever closer... which makes Crossrail 2022's shiniest, sparkliest bauble.

September-December: And there's more. The Overground extension to Barking Riverside is due to open in the autumn, whenever 'autumn' actually is, unlocking the development of thousands of remote estuarine houses. TfL first proposed an Overground extension in 2014 (when completion was expected in 2019) and put in for planning permission in 2016 (anticipating 2021). Last year they completed the viaduct that curves off from the Tilbury line and attention is now focused on the installation of telecoms, signalling and overhead line equipment. The new service is initially expected to run at an operating loss, which is what happens when you run an expensive service to a housing estate that doesn't yet fully exist, but should realise an operational surplus by 2030. The opening of the extension will also result in the publication of the year's third new tube map... because Barking Riverside is 2022's third shiny bauble.

December: Meanwhile Network Rail has a new London station up its sleeve - the unexcitingly named Brent Cross West. It's being slotted into the Midland Main Line between Cricklewood and Hendon, just south of Staples Corner, as part of a major Barnet council regeneration scheme. The area around the station is mostly industrial area at present, with an eye to turning it into 6700 flats, so not somewhere most of the rest of London is going to want to visit. Even the Northern line station is closer to the Brent Cross shopping centre than this. The station will be served by Thameslink trains so opening is likely to coincide with timetable changeover day on 12th December. Whether Thameslink will still be on the tube map by then is another question... but if it is expect to see Brent Cross West making an appearance as 2022's fourth shiny bauble.

After 2022 all that's left on London's new station list are maybes. New Bermondsey (formerly Surrey Canal Road) is not a given. Beam Park in Havering looks to have lost its funding. Old Oak Common should spark into life when HS2 begins, notionally in 2029, but any adjacent Overground stations may now be lost. Progress on the Bakerloo line extension is suspended. Any hope of the DLR reaching Thamesmead is just blue skies thinking. The pandemic and its associated debts look to have slammed down the lid on optimistic expansion, as enforced funding discussions with government focus on what to cut back, not what to grow. 2022's expansive burst of rail infrastructure is the ultra-fortunate beneficiary of plans laid down in happier times. London may not see its like again.

posted 07:00 :

Sunday, January 02, 2022

2022 anniversary quiz
Here are 26 events celebrating an anniversary in 2022. How many can you identify?
All the answers are now in the comments box, and clickable.

a) built 122 (1900 years): stone curtain
b) born 1022 (1000 years): one in the eye
c) injected Jan 1922 (100 years): pancreatic saviour
d) founded Feb 1572 (450 years): boarders-on-the-Hill
e) founded Mar 1872 (150 years): old faithful home
f) played Apr 1972 (50 years): one song to the tune of another
g) died May 1972 (50 years): stubbornly brief ruler
h) elected May 1997 (25 years): a new dawn has broken
i) announced Jun 1822 (200 years): how Charles made a difference
j) added Jun 1972 (50 years): temporal skip
k) published Jun 1997 (25 years): boy wizard juggernaut
l) born Jul 1872 (150 years): polar pioneer
m) transferred Jul 1997 (25 years): special administrative region
n) died Aug 1997 (25 years): royal fairytale turned sour
o) acceded Sep 1422 (600 years): ruled from nine months
p) born Oct 1772 (250 years): decreed a stately pleasure-dome
q) published Oct 1822 (200 years): a multiplicity of supplements
r) published Oct 1872 (150 years): circumnavigational wager
s) born Oct 1872 (150 years): up with the lark
t) screened Oct 1972 (50 years): no longer Farm
u) acceded Nov 1272 (750 years): Scottish hammer
v) opened Nov 1922 (100 years): mummy's home
w) launched Nov 1922 (100 years): 2LO from the Strand
x) vanished Dec 1872 (150 years): a floating mystery
y) founded Dec 1922 (100 years): excluding six counties
z) launched Dec 1972 (50 years): one last step for man

posted 15:00 :

This is Elmfield Road E17, a short terraced street teetering on the edge of suburbia.

Elmfield Road is where the late Victorian housebuilders abruptly stopped. It sits on the very western edge of Walthamstow where the land dips down to a broad swathe of marshes, reservoirs and water treatment plants. One side of the road is a continuous two-storey terrace, just as you'd find on many a nearby street, but the other is an open stripe of lawn terminating at a spiky black fence. It's nowhere anyone but residents need to visit, an outpost on the last rung of a segregated residential ladder, but simultaneously a cheery spot where community spirit oozes out of every window.

What shines at present is the street's Living Advent, a festive sequence of homemade tableaux affixed to bay windows ranging from a shiny Christmas pudding via an arty partridge in a pear tree to a not very good joke about turkeys. Everyone's really tried and many have left the curtains open, which I guess is easier on a street hardly anyone walks down with no neighbours opposite. A similar 24-stop trail has been created on neighbouring Salop Road but having three times as many houses allows 100 folk to opt out, whereas Elmfield Road requires a higher level of amateurish participation.

One of the parking spaces was co-opted in 2018 to create Waltham Forest's 250th Bike Hangar. Someone's gone to the effort of draping two hanging baskets from the Permit Holders Only parking sign. Numbers 49-63 were destroyed by a bomb in December 1940 and the resultant deaths of Herbert Gray and John Wren are commemorated by a plaque added to the front porch of a postwar replacement. It comes as no surprise to discover that residents hold a big Summer Street Party every year, even during socially distanced times, with Ana Maria baking biscuit medals and Douglas organising the petanque.

Whichever end of the street you arrive at you're welcomed by a splash of art. A huge mural has been painted across each end terrace, one very much redolent of Picasso, the other portraying endangered urban animal species. The oversized quartet here are a fox, a badger and two bees, each bearing an appropriate placard, and for some reason not a hedgehog. The street's website is quite hung up on hedgehogs, most recently bemoaning the fact that some residents might have sealed up all the gaps in their fences preventing the little chaps from snuffling through. If your street doesn't have its own Wordpress blog, let alone a Facebook group, you're probably missing out.

What makes Elmfield Road unique is the side where the housing isn't. Beyond the grass behind the railings is what used to be the Dagenham Brook and is now the River Lea Flood Relief Channel, a broad artificial conduit for unlovely water. The Elmfield Road Sluice regulates the flow at the southern end of the street and was last overwhelmed in October 2000, for which reason residents are strongly advised to set up flood alerts on their mobiles. And on the far side of the channel is a steep green bank with scrawny trees on top which shields the Coppermills Water Treatment Works from view. I expect its tanks are all too visible from the upstairs bedrooms, but that's the price you pay for living on the edge.

Rest assured I'm not intending to write a post about every street in London, there being over 32000 of them, because that would take the rest of the century to complete. But some streets strike you the first time you walk down them as being anomalous enough to be worth digging into. My congratulations if, like Elmfield Road, you live on one of them.

posted 07:00 :

Saturday, January 01, 2022

12 things that happened this week #coronavirus

• Wales/Scotland/NI: new restrictions on socialising
• Boxing Day shopping footfall down by 40%
• no new rules in England before New Year
• US halves isolation time to 5 days
• "enjoy NYE in a sensible way" (PM)
• poor/patchy supply of lateral flow tests
• "omicron & delta driving tsunami of cases" (WHO)
• NHS prepares eight Nightingale surge hubs
• omicron wave in South Africa may have peaked
• 1 in 25 had virus last week
• Wales loans England 4m lateral flow tests
• more restrictions "absolute last resort" (Javid)

Worldwide deaths: 5,400,000 → 5,440,000
Worldwide cases: 279,000,000 → 289,000,000
UK deaths: 147,857 → 148,778
UK cases: 12,004,920 → 13,100,458 (↑1m!)
1st/2nd/3rd vaccinations: 51.8m/47.4m/33.9m
FTSE: up ¼% (7372 → 7384)

posted 23:00 :

No other right-angled triangle with sides of integer length gives the same result.

posted 10:50 :

Welcome to 2022, a year as yet unwritten.

It's got to be a better year than the last one given how bad that was, and better still than the year before that which was the pits. But it's unlikely to be great.

The pandemic's still with us and surging out of control with record numbers of cases thanks to the extra-transmissible omicron variant, and millions have been out socialising for Christmas and New Year because they've been allowed to which is all very well but was only ever going to spread the virus far and wide into age groups and parts of the country it hadn't properly touched yet, so that's a further exponential increase locked in no matter what we do next despite everyone thinking they couldn't be positive because they'd taken a frankly unreliable test, and assuming they could get hold of any tests because delivery has been a totally unreliable shambles just when we really needed everything to work smoothly, but why should we expect any better of our at best inept at worst corrupt government who've been flinging public money at their mates ever since all this began, we could hardly have done worse that being governed by a lackadaisical Prime Minister beholden to a deranged pack of swivel-eyed backbenchers whose insistence on prioritising freedom over science and business over health is delivering us into a dangerous free market dystopia where our public services face further cuts on top of a decade of salami-slicing and deliberate sabotage, so I fear for local councils and the NHS and the BBC because under this government they're always under threat, especially now that the pandemic has forced ministers to rack up monstrous debts while trying to keep a lid on the economy which has likely destabilised our public finances for years to come and it's perfectly possible we may never regain our former standard of living, indeed 2022 may ultimately be seen as the 1947 of the 21st century, a grey year on the painfully slow climb out of austerity, an inexorable blight on the hopes of a generation who've cruelly had countless opportunities permanently swept away, not to mention the damage done by disrupting health checks for the best part of two years as innumerable body parts go more wrong more quickly than they would have done otherwise which is a thoroughly grim legacy for the future, because while lockdown might have saved lives it's also cost them too, and there's a fine dividing line between enabling choice and restricting behaviour and I can't see our current leaders getting the balance right even as things improve, which hopefully they will because this omicron variant looks milder than previous strains and it would be brilliant if evolution finally drove out the harsher less infectious variants, but that's just the kind of blue skies thinking which is currently lulling the general public into a false sense of security as they go about their everyday business thinking we're through the worst so they can completely let their guard down, and tens of thousands more people are going to die before we get out of this, assuming we ever do because the virus may always be with us from now on and the government insists we're just going to have to learn to live with it, which is great if you're healthy enough for it not to kill you but do stop and think of those yet to be picked off through no fault of their own, plus those whose health will be blighted by prolonged after-effects or other conditions that have already slipped through the net, and don't forget that even in a normal year hundreds of your favourite people die because life's cruel like that, be that close family or older celebrities, even Sir David Attenborough's got to go eventually, the only certainty is change and not all change is good as we'll likely discover when another unexpected variant emerges and turns out to be worse, because that's where vaccine hesitancy and unavailability ultimately leads, plus there's always the chance of a completely new pandemic breaking through at some point and we might not be so lucky there, imagine if 2019 was as good as it ever gets, even with this bumbling clown at the helm because if you think the current Prime Minister is bad wait until you see the next one, and then consider the damage that could be done by a competent leader intent on dismantling society to create a small state economy where only roguish free marketeers thrive because that's the governing party we actually voted in at the last election and the next is still years away, and inflation could still be horrifically high by then and have taken a huge bite taken out of your savings, assuming you have any, not to mention all the intended infrastructure projects that'll have to be mothballed or cancelled because we simply can't afford them, and that sound you can hear is a nation's hope and optimism gurgling away down a budgetary plughole, its population increasingly weighed down by a barrage of wilful misinformation and baseless fury in a world of caution rather than adventure and restrictions rather than joy, and then there's climate change because that's not going away any time soon, as this current record-breakingly mild weather suggests, and OK environmental armageddon is likely to be painstakingly slow and incremental but it's only ever going to make our lives more difficult especially those of us living near the coast, and once that Thwaites glacier collapses or the Gulf Stream shifts we'll be in uncharted waters with no going back, indeed one day we might look back on 2021 and wish life was that simple again, but human spirit and ingenuity will always get us through because we're a resilient bunch, as proven by the global crisis we've somehow managed to get through recently, because it turns out things are rarely as bad as the worst case scenarios suggest, that is unless we finally get that long promised solar flare or artificial intelligence gets too clever or some other world-ending blip from the planetary risk register actually materialises, and basically what I'm saying is don't assume 2022 has got to be better than 2021 because it might not be and we could just be on a downward spiral, but let's hope not because hope and ingenuity and human spirit is all we have.

Happy New Year, and well done for getting here because that was never a given.

posted 02:22 :

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