BLURRED LINES

Blurred (Yellow) Lines

I sometimes wonder what the purpose of single yellow lines is. In Westminster it seems to be largely advisory, giving a message along the lines of, “It would be better if you didn’t park here, but if you really need to, then go ahead.” You regularly see “civil enforcement officers” as traffic wardens seem to be called now, walking past vans and commercial vehicles parked on yellow lines, and that seems to be Council policy, not to enforce parking regulations against businesses. One of the prime examples is a business on the Harrow Road which keeps a fleet of vans parked on a yellow line, which they would no doubt claim to be loading, but which observation suggests are merely parked. In fact they are gaining commercial advantage from this favourable treatment by the Council.

There’s also a general feeling that yellow lines don’t really apply later in the day. 6.30pm is the time round here when they are supposed to become free, but on the Harrow Road you’ll find people parking from 3 o’clock onwards, and in the backstreets some people seem to think they can park from lunchtime. So why does this annoy me? Simply because these vehicles cause congestion and are often dangerous as well. It’s particularly an issue of visibility for cyclists.

The latest offenders are the delivery riders, Deliveroo and the like, who park their motorbikes on double yellow lines with apparent impunity. There is a particular spot on Porchester Road where this happens constantly, where the road is narrowed by a traffic island, just before the bus stop, and a parked bike makes a real hazard.

Still, it’s better than Harlesden, which always seems particularly lawless when you drive through. I was told that traffic wardens there don’t dare to challenge illegal parking.

Va Pensiero Revisited

My regular readers will remember a previous post bemoaning the way that chain restaurants trading under an Italian label have ceased to cook Italian (or in truth any) food. Today I have cause to celebrate, because a really top class Italian restaurant has appeared almost on my doorstep. It’s called Guste Remo, and it sits on the corner opposite the Porchester Baths, in Porchester Road. It’s a rather ill-omened site, as a previous restaurant (Spanish) suffered a fire. The most recent occupant was a very well-intentioned organic, vegetarian pizza place, which just didn’t do much business. Guste Remo, on the other hand, seems busy already, and frankly is very good indeed. It’s not the cheapest around, but that wasn’t what I was looking for; I had an exquisite veal chop and we had a very leisurely evening.

Carnival Again

As I’ve said before here, street processions are significant in symbolic terms. They are expressing important meanings, as any social anthropologist will tell you, meanings around identity and ownership. I suspect that Lady Borwick MP understands that, which is why she is so keen to expel Carnival from the streets of Notting Hill. It is offensive to her and her supporters that poor black people should express any ownership of these streets. Now in fact there are still a good number of Caribbean families living in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington and Notting Dale, though clearly there isn’t the concentration that there was in the 1960s and 70s, when most of Notting Hill was pretty run-down, and most houses were let in multiple occupancy. Many of those houses have now been converted back into single dwellings, and the remaining flats are sold these days, and if let are not let to social tenants, so the change in housing has made for a change in population, wealthier and whiter. But the fact remains that Carnival is still the cultural expression of a sizable chunk of Notting Hill’s population, who have quite as much right to be there as Lady Borwick. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

I was at a meeting recently when a policeman said of Carnival that “They’ve had fifty years of it, so it’s time to finish it.” I think I now understand what is meant by institutional racism.      

NOTHING LIKE A DAME

Nothing Like a Dame 

One of the more unusual requirements of life as a parish priest, to be photographed alongside Dame Barbara Windsor, with a Chelsea Pensioner and a train. Strictly speaking it was nothing to do with me, but by a circuitous route I got a call from a charming lady from the British Legion in Devon, who was desperate to have some sort of religious act to preface the launch of a drive for more poppy day collectors, and by chance I could be available at 36 hours’ notice and so agreed to help out. So I invented a liturgy, printed it out, and turned up in fancy dress. I had been told that they had a Chelsea Pensioner coming, as well as Royal British Legion standard bearers, so I knew it would be a uniform occasion. I have no white gauntlets or service beret, but managed an MA hood and preaching bands. Dame Barbara wore the largest, glitteriest, poppy I’ve ever seen. She was charming and devout. Everybody was muttering about how good she looks for 79. I was struck by how very small she is, even on four inch heels. It was incredibly difficult not to gaze down at her cleavage, and I was left thinking how much she must have exploited that during her career, because it unquestionably puts her at an advantage (with men, at any rate).

Spare Vicar

In fact my presence was quite redundant, because Great Western Railway has a chaplain, who came along (which was no surprise since he is, quite logically, based at Paddington Station). He very graciously agreed to take part in what I’d concocted, and I think we got on well. But I had no idea he even existed! Nor had my colleague, the Vicar of Paddington, in whose parish the station actually lies. He’s paid by the Railway Mission, of which I’d never heard either. But isn’t it absurd that we should not know about him at all! We had a diocesan study day about chaplaincy a few months ago, but I don’t think anyone mentioned the point that if chaplains aren’t Anglican then there’s no reason why you would know they were there. As we’re the Established Church we tend to assume that requests for chaplaincy will come in our direction, but if an institution has other links it will of course look there (as a Roman Catholic school or hospital will obviously do) and then there are a few long-established industrial chaplaincies which exist quite outside Anglican structures, but I had never heard of the Railway Mission. I have to say, I’m very glad the chaplain’s there, as he is obviously good at the job, and it’s good to know that there’s someone with a real knowledge of the industry who’s there to pick up the pieces.

Not Actually What He Said

After standing around the very evocative GWR war memorial (marvellous sculpture by Charles Sargeant Jagger) to pray, everyone decamped to stand in front of the locomotive power car named after Harry Patch, the last of the Tommies, for publicity photos. This power car is splendidly decked out in computer-printed vinyl with poppies and silhouettes of soldiers, and the famous words of Lawrence Binyon that we say each Remembrance Sunday. The chaplain and I took malicious glee in pointing out to the GWR Area Manager that they’d got the Binyon wrong, though. The locomotive says, “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old…” but Binyon wrote, “They shall grow not old”. It’s poetry, you see… The general verdict was some computer auto-correct had been at work.

Making Waves

In the really hot weather this summer a magnificent wave of tarmac began to break over the kerb by the bus stop outside Betfred on the Harrow Road. I watched it grow day by day, and was slightly disappointed when I saw that it had been shaved off one day recently. This, as any urban cyclist will tell you, is not an isolated phenomenon. If there is a large pothole contractors will try to fill it with tarmac. However, tarmac does not set solid at all quickly (and in fact flexibility is meant to be a permanent characteristic) and so traffic is allowed on it before it has properly set. This matters most when you have buses standing on the tarmac, as their extreme weight simply squeezes it up. Obviously, the buses are probably responsible for the pothole in the first place. The result is the strange wrinkled surface you get at the side of many major routes in London. It’s another reason we cyclists keep out of the gutter. 

Grammar Schools

No, Mrs May, grammar schools are not the answer. I say this as an old grammar school boy, immensely grateful for the education I received, but even by my day, in the 1970s, they were ceasing to be engines of social mobility, as middle-class children were coached for the 11-plus. Nowadays the educational arms race has spiralled out of control, so tutors are the norm, and in many areas a substantial proportion of grammar school places are taken by children from independent prep schools. In contemporary conditions they won’t produce the social mobility you want, Mrs May. If you heard Justine Greening interviewed on the Today programme you will have been struck by how resolutely she evaded the question about the evidence base for doing this. I suspect that is because Ms Greening is aware of the evidence, which is absolutely clear, that if raising educational standards is what you want, then a truly comprehensive system is the answer. I know this offends what some people regard as “common sense”, but it’s true. There is an absolute international consensus that a truly comprehensive school system always produces the best results for all pupils. You can observe the results from the international comparisons, where countries like Finland and Sweden consistently do best. It is, of course, true that Sweden and Finland are also much less unequal societies than the UK, and that has all sorts of effects, not least on how acceptable comprehensive schools are to the privileged. The trouble is that we live in a society where privilege is entrenched by education, and grammar schools are part of that, because they cater to a desire to keep your children insulated from “the wrong sort”. So, no, opposition to grammar schools is not ideological (though I can’t help feeling, on reflection, that equality of opportunity is a pretty uncontentious ideology to follow) but on the evidence. They don’t work.

NO, DON'T STOP THE CARNIVAL

The Carnival is Over

It’s actually remarkable how quickly West London recovers from Carnival. Westminster Council sometimes leaves crash barriers for a couple of days, and this year TFL had left confusing temporary signs on Elgin Avenue which were still there two days later, but mostly it went very quickly, and of course the councils make sure the rubbish is removed very quickly indeed. You meet people who are shattered, having spent Bank Holiday Monday dancing all day, and see others who are clearly not up to social interaction yet thanks to their Monday intake. Generally, though, the most noticeable residue is a general feeling of goodwill.

This Year Was Different

Only this year the goodwill (and lots of people were saying that it was the best Carnival for years) was punctured by the Police Federation moaning about Carnival. They pointed to 450 arrests, which is a lot, until you compare it to the number of arrests at other large-scale events (Glastonbury Festival, for instance) to which the arrests are quite proportionate. It’s also not the case that an arrest means that a crime has taken place. People this year certainly saw individuals arrested for apparently no reason, and we all know that when a crime has certainly taken place many people are arrested for the purposes of investigation but never in fact charged. Nor is it quite as horrifying that a number of policemen were taken to hospital when you learn that several of them were taken to hospital because someone spat on them. Now that’s not to say that spitting is acceptable, but it’s a misleading statistic. The Metropolitan Police themselves pointed out that the number of arrests this year could be expected to be higher than in the past because they were enforcing the new Psychoactive Substances Act (which recently banned what were previously known as “legal highs”). Since the streets of Notting Hill were peppered with nitrous oxide canisters it is no surprise that this resulted in a number of arrests. What was different this year was that the Metropolitan Police Federation felt able to decry Carnival (perhaps emboldened by the post-Brexit mood, which apparently licenses being rude to foreigners and people of colour).   

Constituencies

We know that the MP for Kensington, Lady Borwick, wants to close Carnival down. She has made that very clear, and sent out a nasty “survey” to constituents inviting their complaints earlier in the year. I don’t doubt that lots of wealthy Notting Hill residents would much rather have the Carnival go away, and probably I would hate it if I lived on the route, but then I would either join in or go away for two days, which is in fact what many residents do. But Carnival is not unique: the same problems are faced by residents of Twickenham, for instance, albeit on a smaller scale, but much more frequently. I’m sure that a section of Lady Borwick’s constituency wants to be rid of Carnival as an inconvenience, but she should be aware that lots of businesses regard it as a gilt-edged opportunity. She clearly doesn’t care about her constituents who enjoy Carnival (of whom there are many, of all backgrounds) but you would suppose that she might worry about what businesses thought. It’s worth pointing out that Karen Buck, the other MP whose constituency is part of Carnival, is a consistent supporter of the event.

Success Story

It seems to me that Lady Borwick (and the Police Federation) should be celebrating the success of Carnival, which is the second-biggest street festival in the world, and which attracts tourists in large numbers. Did you not see them? Foolishly festooned with cameras and photographing the most mundane things? More than ever this year. That is because it is generally peaceful and cheerful. People enjoy it. People (in huge numbers) come to London to enjoy it. It shows off the diversity of London in a pretty authentic way. When it started 50 years ago it was a chance for West Indian people to gain some self-respect by celebrating their culture in an environment which had greeted them with racism, and that story still needs to be heard. But it’s more than that today, as the samba bands demonstrate (not Caribbean at all) and as a glance at the participants will show. Vast numbers of young people regard the music being played at Carnival as their own, whatever their background, and they are happy to take part, and are welcome to do so. This is a reflection of the London that most of us enjoy living in, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, vibrant and full of artistic endeavour, the London which is the world city that most people seem to want to live in. That is surely a success, and something that should be celebrated, not moaned about.