From Westbourne Park To Old Oak Common – 4th July 2015
I took these pictures a few days ago as my train went along the Great Western Main Line to Southall and West Ealing.
This is a Google Map of the area.
Along The Great Western
Old Oak Common and the various train depots are at the left (West) and Westbourne Park Bus Garage is at the right under the Westway, where it crosses the railway.
The Sainsburys at Ladbroke Grove was built on the site of the old Ladbroke Grove Gas Works. (You can still pick out the two gas holders by the canal.) I found this good page with lots of pictures on a blog maintained by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It says this about the site.
Where the Grand Junction Canal and the main line railway to Paddington diverge from their parallel course there is a teardrop shaped patch of land bounded on the east by Ladbroke Grove. In 1845 the Western Gas Company built a gas works there facing All Souls Cemetery on the other side of the canal. When North Kensington was developed for housing in the second half of the 19th century the Gas Works sat waiting at its northern edge. And there it stayed as London grew around it. In 1936 the Gas and Light Company built a progressive housing development on the Ladbroke Grove edge of the site powered by the wonder of gas, Kensal House, but more of that another day.
Today only a couple of gasometers remain overlooking the cemetery. Most of the site is taken up by a Sainsbury’s super store. But in 1970 although gas production had ceased the owners seem to have been wondering what to do with the gas works, and denying rumours that the whole site would be given over to housing.
It would appear that they are completely remodelling the North side of the railway opposite the North Pole Depot. This Google Map shows the area from Mitre Bridge to the flyover that crosses the railway.
North Pole Depot And The Flyover
The two bridges at the left carry the West London Line and Scrubs Lane (Mitre Bridge) over the railway.The two circular structures at the right are the gas holders in the former Ladbroke Grove Gas Works.
The pictures in the gallery certainly show an impressive retaining wall is being built.
The last few pictures in the gallery were taken as the train ran past the train depots at Old Oak Common TMD, that I talked about in this post.
Are There Secondary Effects In The Budget?
I have a feeling that there could be some secondary effects from the budget and particularly the announcement of a National Living Wage.
Nowhere will this measure be felt more than at the bottom end of the employers. If you read the tabloids, you get the impression that dodgy low-quality businesses are the big employers of illegal immigrants, keeping them in squalor and paying them in cash, if they’re lucky.
With a solidly enforced living wage, will this make it more difficult for these companies and operators to survive, so this country might be less of a magnet for illegal immigrants. I don’t know, but a higher level of living wage gives the Tax Authorities a good reason to investigate the sort of businesses who rely on no-questions-asked labour.
I very much watch innovation in the media and also have been in touch several times with universities in the last few years. I think we’ll see companies using their local innovators to make sure they support their now more highly-paid employees. I know several universities are giving students real projects in local companies.
So will we be pushing our employment up-market? I think we will!
As an example, an industry that we all seem to use more these days are couriers to deliver the goods we’ve bought on-line. They have got so much better over the last few years and that is just not the delivery reliability, but the staff as well, who seem to be polite and very much on-the-ball. Incidentally, most staff who’ve delivered to me lately seem to have been British born and educated.
I don’t know what will happen in the next few years, but I have a feeling that the Chancellor’s announcements may be helping to move the country on from a low-wage, low-skilled and badly-supported work force to one where a job, where you work hard and efficiently gives you a real living wage.
Of course Labour think that the restructuring of Tax Credits will mean many will lose out. But then Labour’s solution to a low-wage, low-skill economy was to pay people at the low-end to do nothing or crap jobs.
The other thing the Chancellor must do to help, is make sure that our transport links are improved. It’s one thing to get a job and often it’s a much more difficult thing to get to that job every day. You just have to see what the Overground and the fleets of new buses have done for Hackney and the surrounding boroughs, here in London, over the past few years.
The Anonymous Widower 