Posts Tagged ‘cycling’

Stop Killing Londoners

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023

Stop Killing Londoners: In the rush hour on Friday 2nd August Rising Up environmental protesters in Stop Killing Londoners briefly blocked the busy Marylebone Road at Baker St in ‘Staying Alive’ road-block disco protest to raise awareness and call for urgent action over the high pollution levels from traffic on London streets which cause almost 10,000 premature deaths in the city each year.

Stop Killing Londoners

The recent court decision that the Mayor of London can go ahead with the ULEZ expansion planned for the end of August 2023 will be welcomed by many Londoners, despite the continuing protests against it over recent months. According to Transport for London (TFL), 9 out of 10 cars seen driving in outer London already meet the ULEZ emissions standards and so will not need to pay the daily charge.

Stop Killing Londoners

It is nothing like the blanket scheme many of the protesters allege. Almost all petrol vehicles under 16 years old or diesel vehicles under 6 years old already meet the emissions standards and will be exempt, as will motorcycles etc built since 2007, lorries, taxis, most vans, buses and coaches. There are various exemptions and grace periods for disabled and some other users, and all vehicles over 40 years old are also exempt.

Stop Killing Londoners

But of course it will cause hardship for some car users, particularly those on low incomes who live outside London but drive into it for work and who will not be eligible for the Mayor’s £110m scrappage scheme for “Londoners on certain low income or disability benefits, and eligible micro businesses (up to 10 employees), sole traders and charities with a registered address in London.” They would be helped if boroughs outside the London border would also offer scrappage schemes.

Stop Killing Londoners

Back in 2017, Stop Killing Londoners decided to protest to raise the profile of the damage that air pollution at illegal levels was doing to Londoners. Polluting road vehicles produce around half of that pollution, and it is a problem in outer areas of London as well as in the centre – and also in at least some areas of the fringe, including where I live.

The scientific evidence shows that air pollution in London causes thousands of early deaths each year, although there are some differences about the actual number. The studies quoted by Stop Killing Londoners suggest it was over 9,000 a year, though TfL quotes a figure roughly half that.
But as well as those who die, many others suffer from life-changing illnesses caused or exacerbated by the polluted air, including cancer, asthma and lung disease as well as dementia.

Most dangerous pollution is invisible – oxides of nitrogen and small particles in the air, though we can often smell it in London, and we see larger particles deposited on our roads. Since the ULEZ zone was introduced in central London nitrogen oxide levels have almost halved. But cutting dangerous particulates means reducing the number of vehicles on our streets, so we need to see further money going into making cycling safer and improving public transport.

Like the ULEZ expansion, the protest wasn’t welcome with some drivers, although the protesters made clear with notices and on a megaphone why they needed to protest and that they would only hold up traffic for a few minutes – less than some delays caused by road works and their temporary lights. A few left their vehicles and came to argue, and a man in a white van tried to drive through them, only stopping when people sat on the bonnet of his van – when he threw water over them.

Stop Killing Londoners decided that TfL seemed to be doing very little in 2017 to cut pollution and intended their protests to push them into action. Even Boris Johnson as Mayor until 2016 had realised he had a legal obligation to do something about it and had begun plans for a ULEZ zone, but little happened until Sadiq Khan became mayor in 2016. And the ULEZ zone only came into effect in April 2019. Perhaps the series of protests may have accelerated its introduction as they did make news headlines.

Stop Killing Londoners road block


St Omer & Arques 1993

Sunday, May 7th, 2023

Mostly I’ve photographed London over the past 50 or so years, with just a few earlier pictures that I think I have lost, including the first film I ever had processed, of ancient oak trees in Richmond Park back in 1962. It cost me 17s 6d to get it processed and it was years before I could afford to do more. I think all of the pictures are now lost. But I have also photographed elsewhere, particularly in Hull and Paris, and also on a number of holidays, some where I’ve perhaps taken photography more seriously than others. But I’ve always had a camera with me.

Cyclists, France

A few of those holidays have been cycling holidays, including a ride up the Loire valley and a couple of others in northern France. France is a better place to cycle than the UK for various reasons. It still has mile after mile of largely empty rural roads and French drivers have a much more positive attitude towards cyclists. More of them are cyclists themselves or have been.

le Marais Audomarois, St Omer, France

One such holiday was in late August 1993, when I went with my wife and two sons, aged 14 and 17 to northern France. Our rides were fairly leisurely with not the slightest whiff of Lycra and frequent stops for me to repair the punctures of the others or carry out other running repairs. My own bike, a 1956 Cinelli bought secondhand for me by my eldest borther for my 13th birthday performed without any such problems. I’ve recently scanned and put the pictures from our holiday into a Flickr album.

Water Tower, near Cassel, France

Two things made that difficult. One was the poor trade processing of the colour negative film I used, with one film having two large gouges across most frames along with some other damage which required extensive digital retouching. I tried out Photshops new AI filter which removed them perfectly – but also took out some other parts of the image, so I went back to doing the job manually.

Tower, Hauts-de-France, France, 1993, 93c08-01-71

But what took as much or rather more time was trying to identify the locations for many of the images. I’ve done my best, but some are still rather vague and others may be wrong. I’m hoping that some viewers on Flickr will help and tell me more. If you know the area around Calais, Ardres, St Omer, Arques and Cassel please do take a look. The pictures are rather mixed up in order, and I was using two cameras, both with colour negative film, for reasons I can not now understand.

Canal, Rue des Faiseurs de Bateaux, Saint-Omer, Hauts-de-France, France, 1993, 93c08-01-41

On 23 August 1993 we made an early morning start on a train to Clapham Junction and rode from there to Victoria. The train to Dover and the crossing to Calais for the four of us cost £42 for a fivee-day return ticket and our bikes travelled free. We arrived in mid-afternoon and an easy ride took us to the hotel we had booked in Ardres.

Bridge, Canal, Hauts-de-France, France, 1993, 93c08-01-43

The following day was a more difficult ride, and we had a nasty few minutes when Joseph’s chain came off and jammed between sprockets and hub far from any town or village, close to the high speed line then being built for Eurostar, work on which had involved us in a number of detours, and for years I’d look out of the window a few minutes after we came out of the tunnel and recognise the short uphill stretch were it happened.

Blockhaus d'Éperlecques, Éperlecques, France

Eventually after much sweating I managed to free it and we could proceed. For some reason we had decided to visit the Blockhaus d’Eperlecques, built in 1943 as a base to launch V2 rockets at Britain, but destroyed by bombing and now a French National Monument with some very large holes in its concrete roof.

Bridge, near St Omer, France

Our route to it involved a rather large hill but we were able to rest a bit and look around the site before continuing on our journey to St Omer. Here we found another slight problem with our French map, which showed what looked like a nice quiet route on to Arques. It turned out to be an abandoned railway track, complete with sleepers and impossible to ride. After struggling for a while we turned back and took the N42 instead and soon reached Arques.

L'Ascenseur à Bateaux des Fontinettes, Arques, France

At Arques we were just in time for the last guided tour of the day of the 1888 boat lift, L’Ascenseur à Bateaux des Fontinettes, modelled on the Anderton lift in Cheshire, replacing 5 locks and taking 22 minutes to transfer boats up and down by 13.13 metres – 43 ft. It was closed in 1967 as traffic had grown considerably and replaced by a single modern lock.

A la Grande Ste Catherine, Hotel, Hauts-de-France, France, 1993, 93c08-01-52

At Arques we had booked a three night stay at ‘A la Grande Ste-Catherine’ . Including breakfasts for us all and a couple of dinners for the two of us (our two sons wouldn’t eat proper French food) this cost 1832 Francs, then a little over £200. They ate frites and burgers from a street stall, though one night we did all manage to find food for all of us at a supermarket restaurant.

le Marais Audomarois,, St Omer, France

The next day we returned to look around St Omer, and then rode to Tilques, abandoning saddles for a boat trip around le Marais Audomarois, one of the more interesting parts of our visit.

Rooftops, Cassel, France

And for our last full day in France we took a ride to Cassel, a town on a hill that rises to the highest point on the Plain of Flanders, surrounded by flat lands in all directions, taking an indirect route via the Forêt Domaniale de Rihoult (Clairmarais), rather disappointing as it was full of noisy schoolkids from their colonies de vacances.

Radio Uylenspiegel, Cassel, France

It was a struggle up the hill to Cassel, and we were glad to rest for a while at the cafe inside the grim fortress of a Flemish language radio station – former a casino and I think the local Gestapo headquarters. Our ride back to Arques was by the direct route and began with a long downhill stretch where no pedalling was needed for a very long way.

A Cathelain,  Bavinchove, France

Finally came our last day, and I planned an easy route back to Calais, mainly beside canals. But the others objected and demanded a visit to the Eurotunnel exhibition on the way, which held us up considerably, not least because most of the roads had been diverted to build the high speed line and our map was fairly useless. We finally managed to catch the 19.15 ferry, a few hours before our ticket expired.

Many more pictures in the Flickr album Northern France – St Omer.



Death at the Elephant

Friday, May 21st, 2021

Cyclists die-in where a cycle bypass would have prevented a cyclist death

When I was growing up in a working-class area of Greater London there were few private cars around. Only one of my friends was from a family that owned a car, and they could only afford it because both of his parents worked. Working mothers were much looked down on in the area at a time when most married women were housewives, and many employers still expected or even required women to stop work when they got married. There were men in middle-class occupations, but even few of them had cars, walking to local companies or to the station for the train to London. Otherwise people walked to work or took a bus or rode a bike.

My father at the time was self-employed, a man who did odd jobs; a little building work, plastering, plumbing, carpentry, roofing, glazing, electrical wiring, painting, decorating as well as gardening and bee-keeping. He worked for people in our area who mainly were as poor as we were; every penny counted – and there were seldom any spare to count at the end of the week. He rode around on an ancient bike, often with a bucket on the handlebars for his tools, and when he needed a ladder or more equipment or materials, left his bike at home and pulled everything on a hand cart.

For us kids, a bike was a great liberation. We played games on them, sometimes rather dangerously, and rode for miles often along busy main roads. But there was less traffic then and it moved much slower. I got my first two-wheeler – old but newly painted – for my sixth birthday, learnt to ride it that day and was then off, at first along our street and its side avenues, but soon much further afield, either with friends or by myself. By the time I was at grammar school I was riding miles out from London as well as cycling to school.

But things changed. It became the aspiration of many if not all working men to own a car – and more and more married women worked to make it possible. Car makers produced more and more cars aimed at a wider market, something that perhaps began in this country with the 1948 Morris Minor and Ford Popular, introduced in 1953, but accelerated in the late 1950s, when Harold MacMillan told us “most of our people have never had it so good.” Though in 1957 it still had to make its way down to areas like that I lived in.

Riding a bike began to be associated with poverty and cycle clips became an icon of failure. England developed a strong anti-cycling culture, with cyclists becoming an object of derision and hate. They cluttered up the road, preventing the free movement of motor cars. It’s an attitude still prevalent among car owners, and one pandered to by our road designers who until recently largely discounted cyclists in designing roads to enable drivers to drive faster. Pedestrians too were something of a nuisance, to be caged off whenever possible and forced to move away from crossing near corners to motorists could negotiate the rounded profiles at greater speed.

We have seen some changes in recent years. The 2005 bombings made many more consider cycling in cities, and increasing concern about healthy exercise has also led to more recreational cycling – if often by people carrying bikes by car to safer places to cycle. And we now have a few segregated cycle routes in London and elsewhere.But London as a whole is still often a very dangerous place for cyclists (and pedestrians.) One reason is the poor design of many large vehicles with very limited visibility for the drivers. Another is road design inherited from years of ignoring the needs of cyclists and the continuing failure to put enough money into developing roads and paths that are safe for cyclists.

The problems are in part political, with a lack of national leadership and many local politicians remain rabidly anti-cyclist and respond to powerful lobbies from some drivers and in particular taxi drivers organisations. In London it was made worse by the local government reorganisations of the 1960s and the abolition of the Greater London Council in the 1980s. Traffic – including the problems faced by cyclists – is one area that clearly needs to be dealt with for London as a whole and not left to the whim of local boroughs as is currently the case. Some have an almost complete disregard for the safety of cyclists.

Stop Killing Cyclists has organised a number of bike die-ins taking place shortly after cyclists have been killed at the sites where they died. The protest these pictures come from was at the Elephant and Castle in Southwark on Wednesday 21 May 2014, following the death of 47 year-old Abdelkhars Lahyani on May 13, killed by a HGV (heavy goods vehicle) whose driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by careless driving.

The traffic system here was completely redesigned a few years earlier at a cost of £3 million, but without making proper provision for cyclists. Southwark Council’s transport plan argues against segregation of cyclists and says that including them in traffic is useful to slow traffic flows. While it may do so, it is at the expense of regarding them as expendable.

The protesters marked out a bike ‘bypass lane’ which if implemented would have taken Lahyani away from the dangerous area where he was killed. Many accidents at junctions are caused by drivers turning left and driving over cyclists they have failed to see on their left side, either in a blind spot because of bad vehicle design or simply because they have failed to check their route before turning.

More at Cyclists protest Death at the Elephant on My London Diary


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Cycling and health

Friday, July 31st, 2020
M3 from Sheep Walk, Shepperton

Every weekday for the past few months I’ve been having breakfast, washing and then getting on my bike for some exercise, riding around ten miles. I take a camera with me and sometimes stop a few times to take pictures which does slow me down a little. I don’t have Lycra and the roads around here are in pretty poor condition, and I sometimes ride on some rough paths, so my progress isn’t that fast, and the rides generally take me 40-50 minutes – an overall speed of 15-12 mph. The pictures here were taken on my rides in the first week of July.

At the start I of these rides was very short of breath, and thankful that this part of South-West Middlesex is extremely flat – one reason for siting Heathrow here. Even now, 4 months after I was ill in March, hills are still a problem if I ride across the river into neighbouring Surrey, though I’m now having to stop and rest fewer times on the way up. But I can now ride up the slopes to cross the motorways or railways without much difficulty.

Cottage, Moor Lane, Yeoveney

At the start the empty roads (apart from the many potholes and cracks) were bliss, but I arrived home exhausted. Now traffic even on the relatively quiet roads I mainly ride is something of a pain but I’ve got fitter and while I’m a little tired when I get home I’m not on my last legs. Cycling has definitely improved my fitness, but I haven’t lost a single pound.

So while I’m pleased that the government is encouraging cycling, and I’m sure it will improve people’s fitness I don’t know that it will actually do much to reduce obesity. Nor am I sure that they are going about getting more people on their bikes in the right way with gimmicks like the repair vouchers and prescriptions. They need to divert much more of the money going into roads into making roads safer so more people feel able to ride on them. As well as providing separate cycle paths where possible this also needs special attention to the edges of roads, the roughly 2m in which cyclists normally ride and which currently are usually in even worse condition than the rest of the roads.

River Thames, Shepperton

It also needs the kind of changes currently being proposed to the Highway Code, which prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable on our roads, pedestrians, then cyclists and then the various other categories of road users. You can contribute to the consultation on this until 11.59pm on 27th October 2020.

I don’t think cycling has a great deal to offer in combating obesity. Cycling is such an efficient process that it uses relatively little energy, and isn’t a very good way to lose weight. Jogging would be better though I find it far too boring.

Lord Knyvett’s Schoolhouse, Stanwell

Obesity is now of course not to do with actually being obese but defined by the WHO for adults as having a BMI of 30 or greater. BMI is a useful but very crude measure, which only takes body mass and height into consideration.

I think I am as fit or fitter than my wife, but in terms of BMI I come out slightly overweight and she appears slightly underweight, a difference of around 9 or 10 in BMI. We eat more or less the same diet and roughly similar quantities. I think the difference in BMI is at least partly if not largely accounted for by the width of our frames. This is reflected in the width across the shoulders – mine being roughly 1.3 times wider., much greater than the 1.09 difference in our heights.

River Colne, Stanwell Moor

The BMI formula, BMI = weight(kg)/height(m)^2 seemed conceptually wrong to the Belgian scientist Quetelet, who first put it forward around 1840, as mass is essentially a three-dimensional property, and so we might expect it to correspond to the third power of height, but that doesn’t give sensible results. The square was adopted for fully grown adults and in order to give roughly acceptable results for the population as a whole, but Quetelet actually pointed out it should not be applied to individuals.

Seven years ago Professor L N Trefethen FRS, Professor of Numerical Analysis, University of Oxford, proposed a revised BMI to make a “better approximation to the actual sizes and shapes of healthy bodies” and it does cut down the difference between Linda and me slightly, bringing her just into the normal range. The differences it makes are rather small, but given the blind reliance we sometimes see on BMI important. Trefethen suggested using instead of the square the power 2.5 of height and points out that Quetelet had found that “during development the squares of the weight at different ages are as the fifth powers of the height” while suggesting the use of the square for fully grown adults. At the time it was certainly much easier to calculate a square, though now calculators and computers make fractional powers easy to use.

Duke of Northumberland’s River and Heathrow

It probably doesn’t matter if we regard BMI as a very rough measure, but does when it comes to setting out charts and and applying them to individuals. If your BMI is 26, you may actually be normal, while if it is 25 you could be overweight whatever the chart says, but it would be too inconvenient to give, for example, a BMI of 26 +/- 3 which would probably be rather more accurate a reflection. It would be more useful for individuals if we could find a more sophisticated formula that gave a clearer indication.

There is of course another equally simplistic but probably more reliable measure that can be applied to individuals to determine obesity. It’s called a tape measure. If you are a man with a waist of over 40 inches (102cm) then you are almost certainly obese.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Another cycling problem

Thursday, May 28th, 2020

My cycling for exercise continues, but not entirely without incident. I had a day off from exercise on Saturday, when the furthest I went was to walk to the bottom of our garden, perhaps around 30 yards. I got more exercise from the twenty or thirty times a day I walk up and down the stairs, though its only 13 steps.

Staines Reservoir South

Sunday I did get on a bike, for a leisurely ride with Linda, mainly along cycle paths and bridleways. We locked our bikes at the bottom of a footpath that leads up the side of one of the Staines Reservoirs to the path between them. It’s apparently a top bird-watching site, but all we’ve ever seen there is the occasional duck and gull. There was a small bird sitting on a post too far away to identify but possibly a pied wagtail, common around here.

Spot the bird – possibly a duck

We cycled on and took a path to Stanwell Moor, returning to Staines along the bridleway which leads down beside the King George VI reservoir, rather bumpy for cycling but usually deserted, though for some reason we met several largish family groups walking back from Staines Moor. People do go there to paddle in the River Colne in hot weather.

Wraysbury River and M25

Monday I again went to Stanwell Moor, but taking the rather better bridleway beside the M25. It gets a little narrow after a small Thames Water site beside the Wraysbury River, and I put on a face mask for this and the next section where its seldom possible to keep proper distancing when passing others – though there were very few I passed going in either direction. It’s difficult to know why the river is called the Wraysbury River (or Wyrardisbury River) as it doesn’t go to Wraysbury; a stream from it does flow to join the Colne Brook which does – or why locals have always called it the Wraysbury River rather then the River Wraysbury – which Google maps confounds by changing between the two at the Staines By-pass, but the many streams of the lower Colne are altogether something of a mystery.) I made a short diversion at Leylands Lane walking along a narrow footpath that leads to a weir on one of the at least 3 streams of the River Colne here, then retracing my steps to Horton Road to go past the former mill on the main stream there before continuing on to Stanwell Moor Road to return to Staines along the now resurfaced cycle path. What used to be an often painful ride with concrete blocks not quite meeting every few yards jolting the buttocks is now smooth tarmac and a pleasure to ride.

River Colne, Horton Road, Stanwell Moor

Tuesday I decided it was time to face a proper hill again, rather than just the odd railway and motorway bridge we have in our part of Middlesex, and made my way up Egham Hill and Middle Hill to Englefield Green. This time I changed to my smaller chainwheel before the ascent (I’ve learnt it takes a little nudge from my heel to actually get it to move), and while I didn’t find the hill easy arrived at the point I gave up last week feeling much healthier. But I was very much panting for breath, far more than normal. Though I’ve fortunately not had real breathing problems, whatever virus I’d had and still haven’t completely shaken off has clearly left me with some reduction in lung function, and I needed to take a few minutes to get my breath back before continuing on the gentle rise.

Cemetery, Englefield Green

Once at the top it was a really pleasant ride through the village, stopping briefly to take a couple of photographs at the cemetery, then again as I went downhill past Royal Holloway College, and I was really enjoying the ride along the shady undulating road towards Virginia Water when disaster struck. Finding a steeper than expected short section of road I pulled rather enthusiastically back on my gear lever to change down, and shuddered to a halt with a loud grating sound. There is a stop on the rear dérailleur which should have prevented the chain going too far, but somehow it had jumped over the largest sprocket into a narrow gap between that and the spokes and was jammed solid.

Great Fosters

I pulled the bike to the side of the road and found an old glove I carry for dealing with chains, and tried to pull the chain out. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled and pulled – nothing. After several minutes I carried the bike across the road to where there was a pavement and continued. I was feeling pretty desperate; not only could I not ride the bike in this state, but I couldn’t even wheel it – I would have to carry it to move it. I tried harder, now using both hands and not caring about getting oil on me, and took the chain off the chainwheel so there was more to get a handle on. I could now try from both ends of the jam. Finally I got one link out, pushing it away from the wheel as well as pulling, and was encouraged. I thought I could help it a little by turning the wheel, and kept on. Eventually another link came free. I tried harder from the other end of the jam and got another link free, but it was still stuck almost a third of the way round inside the sprocket. I kept trying and finally several links from the other end came free, but there were still two or three firmly stuck. They had to shift I thought, and used all of my weight to jerk the chain out and finally it yielded. It had taken me 20 minutes to free it.

I carefully rerouted the chain to its correct position and set off, taking things easily in case there was any more damage, but it seems to be OK and I got home without any problems though half an hour later than planned – and needing to wash myself and my trousers to get the oil off. I checked the gear setting carefully before my next ride.

Fortunately, Wednesday’s ride was uneventful.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


More exercise-2

Sunday, May 24th, 2020

Thursday I did another photographic ride, quite a lot on various footpaths and exploring small park and woodlands, more than covering my ten miles but at a more leisurely pace. The temperature was well up in the twenties and there was little or no wind and it got very hot in the sun. The pictures here come from this ride.

It was too hot on Thursday night for me to sleep well and I woke on Friday not feeling at my best, with a slight stomach upset and feeling just a little chesty. It was a pleasant temperature – 19 degrees – but rather windy as I set out at 10am for my exercise ride. Wind is a pain for cyclists though it helps to have it behind you but it always seems to be more of the time against, and adds to the effort. I’d decided on a route through some back streets and I got lost, ending up in a dead end behind some houses.

I stopped and got the map out, and found I had cycled too far up a hill and would have to go back around 600 metres. Next I had problems with my gears, finding a very steep short rise and being unable to change down to my lower set on the smaller chain wheel, and coming to a halt. Eventually I managed to move the chain, but made several unsuccessful attempts to start of the steep rise before having the sense to ride across to get started. I struggled up, and at the top simply collapsed. My heart was racing, I was panting heavily for breath and felt slightly sick and rather shaky, and I had to keep sitting on the pavement for around five minutes before I felt well enough to get up.

I thought about giving up and turning for home, but decided since the hill ahead wasn’t as steep and I’d now got my gears more or less sorted to try to carry on. I crossed the main road and struggled on up the hill until I was more or less at the top and then stopped. I was still feeling pretty rotten and decided there was no point in carrying on. I turned around and made for home by a slightly more direct route. For the first half mile I didn’t even have to pedal. But I didn’t quite make my ten miles, just a little over seven before I reached home for a rest on our sofa.

Perhaps I will have to rethink my exercise schedule, though it may be enough just to make myself take it a little easier on the hills and give up and walk rather than forcing myself to ride. It would be easy to avoid hills altogether by staying in south-west Middlesex, one of the flattest areas of the country. All the hills here are man-made, railway and motorway bridges and a little over-generous infill of some gravel sites and none present a great challenge to even elderly cyclists.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Tax Rebellion

Sunday, December 15th, 2019

Travelling around London as I do is often frustrating, with traffic often blocking the streets rather than moving through them. If I had any sense I would have picked up my folding bike, a Brompton, and took it with me to get to this protest at City Hall, the home of the Greater London Authority, more or less next to Tower Bridge.

My journey had started badly, with my train into London arriving around 25 minutes late – impressive for a journey which normally only takes 35 minutes. If I’d brought the bike I could have jumped on it and still got to City Hall on time, and if I’d been thinking more clearly I would have rushed down to the Jubilee line station to take a train to London Bridge, leaving me with just a short walk.

But when I’d planned the journey I’d given myself plenty of time, and the bus had two advantages. First my National bus pass meant it was free, and secondly it took me almost to the doorstep of where I was going so I decided to keep to my plan and take a bus. It was a bad call, and as I waited longer and longer at the stop I wondered whether to give up and go back for the tube, but finally the bus arrived and I got on. The first half mile was fine, but then we hit more traffic.

I ran up the path towards the protest, and saw the die-in starting from a couple of hundred yards away. I hadn’t missed it completely but it would have been rather better to have arrived and been available to photograph the start of the event.

The protest was to declare a tax strike against the Greater London Authority, withholding the GLA element of their council tax until they abandon projects which will cause environmental degradation and hasten ecological collapse. They want a citizen’s assembly to re-write the London Plan to stop all infrastructure projects polluting London’s air and invest in measures to cut carbon emissions and encourage healthier lifestyles

Many of London’s problems were made much worse by the abolition of the GLC by Margaret Thatcher back in 1986, leaving the city without any proper overall authority. The GLC under Ken Livingstone had made a good start in improving public transport in the city, but things more or less came to a halt, only to pick up again when he returned as Mayor with the newly formed GLA in 2000. Rail privatisation in 1994 made matters worse, with so many different companies responsible for overground services in the area – and recent franchisees seem even less competent than their predecessors.

The development of London in most respects also took a setback with the election of Boris Johnson as Mayor, who was able to claim the kudos for Livingstone’s cycle hire scheme, but was generally ineffectual, as well as wasting time and considerable money on a garden bridge that served no purpose and few wanted.

Progress with better cycling facilities has been slow, though much of the blame for this lies with the boroughs rather than the GLA. Some boroughs have been clearly anti-cyclist, and a strong lobby from cab drivers organisations has opposed innovation. Progress has been very piecemeal.

The Green Party has of course been pushing for better cycle facilities and other changes that would make London a healthier place, and both Sian Berry and Caroline Russell spoke. There were also protesters against the Silvertown Tunnel, which will greatly increase traffic on both sides of the river, particularly in Greenwich. This has now been given the go-ahead by Mayor Sadiq Khan who seems to have rather less concern for the environment even than his predecessor.

I don’t know how successful – if at all – the tax boycott has been, but I’ve heard nothing about it since. I think it would take rather more than this single protest, where many of those present will not have been London council tax payers, to get such a boycott going on a scale large enough to have any real effect.

XR London Tax rebellion


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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