The unimaginative build-it-by-numbers regeneration strategy is to throw up high-rises around public transport hubs, which leaves tracts of East London without a horizon, little sunlight, and very windy streets.
This is Canary Wharf Station on the Elizabeth Line. It has no direct connection with Canary Wharf Station on the DLR, and neither of those stations have a connection with Canary Wharf Station on the Jubilee Line. One location: three stations.
Against the grey afternoon sky the silver leaves sprouting from the tree growing out of the taxi aren’t so shiny.
Flying Tiger - this is the Crossrail Place branch - gimcrack ground zero.
I can be a bit slow on the uptake. The people who get het up about “declinism” are the same people as “classical liberals” who rail against the “woke” and decry “cancel culture”.
The Tapping of the Purple Reader is the essential ritual of East London travelling people.
Public address speakers paired together on the lampposts at Hackney Central station.
Passenger on the train has a “specially selected” mozzarella and sun dried cherry tomato wood fired sourdough pizza - cook at home - on her lap. The most prominent aspect of the packaging is the Union Jack.
Hackney is gridlocked this morning. The average British car is the size of a small bus these days. Nevertheless most have just the driver.
The immigration “debate” in the UK is always radioactive. With their small boats stunting the Tories have gone the full Chernobyl. How do they shut it down when it explodes?