An Art Gallery With Its Own Station
I went to the Whitechapel Art Gallery today to see some of the Government’s art collection. It is a charming modern gallery tucked away in the East End of London, hard by one of the entrances to Aldgate East station.
Note the roundel in the station paying an artistic tribute to the gallery.
The exhibition was worth seeing, but the gallery had lots of other things to see and an excellent cafe.
A Colour-Coordinated Commuter
The picture shows the London Overground’s distinctive orange colour that gets everywhere. Perhaps, the colour design team was led by a Blackpool supporter or someone from The Netherlands.
The London Overground Orange
Opposite me on my trip to the deep South, was a very normal looking commuter, who had an orange-framed Brompton bicycle and a phone and an MP3 player in orange cases.
I felt to take the photograph would have been too much orange.
By the way, one of the Overground lines reaches from the Olympic site at Stratford to convenient buses to Alexandra Palace, where the Dutch House is to be setup . So is this orange by design or coincidence?
The Dutch should feel happy at Ally Pally, as it has an ice rink. They could get vertigo though, as it is one of the highest points of London and the views are spectacular.
Looking at the New Junctions South of Surrey Quays
At present two lines meet south of Surrey Quays station on the East London line of the London Overground.
- The New Cross Gate/Crystal Palace/Croydon branch.
- The New Cross branch.
These pictures show how the new extension to Clapham Junction station is being threaded through.
It has been reported that all the track has now been laid to connect from Surrey Quays to the southern part of the East London line.
This engineering has all been accomplished in a few months, which just shows how much better we art at this type of work, than a few years ago.
Although the bridge over the line, shown in the pictures, is rather simple, it has been designed so that no-one can throw anything onto the track, get access onto it, without completely stopping pedestrians watching the trains. Perhaps, the man who designed it, was a train spotter in his youth. It was certainly well-used in the ten minutes or so, I was there.
The Emirates Air-Line Progresses
I took some pictures a few weeks ago of the Emirates Air-Line before. But they were in the dark.
These ones are much better.
Parking in Disabled Spaces
I took this picture today by the O2.
Parking in Disabled Spaces
It shows a row of cars parked in disabled spaces. I did look but couldn’t see one disabled badge. Perhaps my eyes aren’t very good.
Next time I go, I’ll have another look and show number plates next time.
Nuclear Dilemmas
The Times today reports that an independent Scotland under the SNP would want no part of the Trident nuclear missiles based at Faslane. So this would mean we’d need to build new facilities in England. The extra cost would mean that those arguing against Trident replacement be helped greatly.
I actually think that we should scrap Trident and if we needed to keep a nuclear deterrent, we should use cruise missiles fired from a vessel like an Astute class submarine.
But the bigger nuclear diemma is over nuclear power. It is being reported that today, David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy will sign a wide ranging treaty which among other things enables new nuclear power stations in the UK.
But Francois Hollande has said, that if he wins the French Presidency, he’ll scrap nuclear power in France. Remember that Scotland will need nuclear power, when the wind doesn’t blow.
Let’s have some engineers in politics.
A Mayor For Manchester?
Rochdale though sums up one of the problems of Manchester. You have all these individual towns, that it would seem don’t talk to each other. Some are proposing that there needs to be a mayor for Greater Manchester. There was a big article in The Times yesterday about a mayor for Manchester.
Recently,on my travels to the 92 football grounds in the UK in alphabetical order by public transport, I put England under a savage microscope. Some places like Exeter, Sheffield and Newcastle were no problem, as everything was signed and easy to understand.
But the biggest contrast was between Hartlepool and Manchester. I’d expected a post-industrial dump in the first and a modern city in the second.
I was so wrong about the first and was surprised to see a town that had pulled itself out of the abyss, with the help of a mayor who fought for the town. Manchester may have some nice new buildings and attractions, but it has the most disintegrated public transport system in the UK. Try turning up at Piccadilly station in a wheelchair and getting to Oldham hospital to see your mother, who’s fallen and broken her hip, without using a taxi! I know London isn’t perfect, but try getting from Euston to Barnet General.
Where was Manchester buses, welcoming booth at the station? Why didn’t the buses talk me through their route? Where were the street and bus maps at every bus stop? Where were the wheel-chair accessible buses with separate doors for entrance and exit?
London’s bus system has improved so much over the last few years and this is probably down to one person being in charge of the whole system, who reports directly to the mayor.
We are having a mayoral election in London in May. Manchester could do a lot worse than ask the one who comes second to be their interim mayor, with a major responsibility to sort out their transport system and make it friendly and understandable to everybody and especially visitors and the disabled.
Rochdale
To illustrate how bad some of our town centres have become, BBC Breakfast is looking at Rochdale, where 1 in 6 of the shops are empty, today.
Surely the problems of Rochdale are going to get worse in the next couple of years, when they open the Metrolink to Manchester.
As it opens in Summer 2012, it looks like some of the rats have left before the ship sinks, making the problems worse. Dorothy Perkins, Mcdonalds and The Body Shop were named in the program.
It looks a classic case of planning a city bit-by-bit in isolation. The new Metrolink will bring people into the centre for their shopping. But it seems, they haven’t thought about Rochdale.
On my travels I did go to Eccles and that town surprised me. So what have they done right in Eccles and wrong in Rochdale?
The Anonymous Widower 