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Dave Hill: I am going to get out more in coronavirus London

My personal balance of risks now favours returning to normality as far as I responsibly can
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan toured the big TV studios this morning, not all of them remotely, speaking about striking the right balance between increasing economic activity and protecting public health. Rebuking the government for “shouting at” people to return to office working, he highlighted Transport for London’s efforts to make public transport Covid-safe and announced a survey for “exploring the safe capacity of our workplaces”. The Mayor calls this a “grown up approach” to divining what the next six months in the capital will hold. I have made an equivalent assessment of my own situation. I have decided to get out more.

Why? Everyone’s circumstances are different – a reality to which Mayor Khan seems better attuned than his predecessor at City Hall – ranging from domestic living space, to travel requirements, to employer attitudes, to what degree you are in the pink. I am, in several ways, fortunate: an ingrained home worker for nearly 40 years, I am spared any decision about making a daily morning peak commute; my home is not overcrowded; I’m 62-years-old and male, which puts me at the higher end of the risk scale, but I’m not overweight and rarely become ill.

Taste and temperament, of course, are factors too. Though content to spend long hours keeping my own company, I’ve missed walking London’s streets. I’ve missed watching what happens on them from the top deck of a bus. I would sooner travel for half an hour underground, even with my mouth and nose encased, to meet people in person than on Zoom.

Pre-Covid, I always tried to get out and about in London on at least two days a week, because you can’t report or understand a city without seeing, hearing and smelling it. At the height of lockdown, I was pretty cautious. But there was little point in being otherwise: walking round a London that often resembled a massive film set with no actors was certainly novel, but meant there wasn’t much actual London life to commune with.

But some of the suburbs have been thriving and although the City and West End are still in the doldrums, public transport use has begun picking up, thanks in part to the full re-opening of schools. And as the city tentatively and unevenly comes back to life, I think it’s right to re-immerse myself in it more deeply.

I don’t regard this as a duty or as passing some kind of test of courage, but as a bespoke decision buttressed by evidence. Yes, the virus is still out there, yes it can still be deadly, and yes, as we have seen from Leicester and elsewhere, it can make comebacks. But look at the reported “Covid deaths” in London, population nine million, since the start of August: a maximum of 11 and last week only four. The government-estimated “R” value (infection reproduction rate) for London as a whole is around one, as it is for the UK as a whole.

We don’t want it going higher. Yet considered articles from New Scientist and Sky News explain that some combination of more effective treatment, more assiduous testing, more diligent behaviour by (most) people and even the possibility that the virus is becoming inherently less deadly, at least in Europe, is contributing to a general fall in Covid-related fatalities.

London cannot and must not be complacent. Public Health England in London has warned that infection rates have been rising among Londoners in their twenties, and, as with public transport and the more susceptible London communities, effective messages from the authorities continue to be very important. But so is the resurgence of our city – not only for economic reasons, though those matter a great deal, but also because its heart and soul need to revive, and with them the spirits of London’s people.

Every London life is individual and every Londoner will make his or her own judgement about what is right for them. Mine is that I want London to recover and to be a small part of that recovery.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate directly or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com for bank account details. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: buses, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, health, London Underground, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London

Sadiq Khan releases Covid advice videos in South Asian languages

The Mayor introduces four short films, which underline core public health guidance
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan has produced videos providing health advice in Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi and Hindi in an attempt to reduce the impact of Covid-19 on South Asian Londoners.

The Mayor introduces all four of the short clips in the different languages with the remainder of each 90 second message presented by others, including his deputy mayor for business Rajesh Agrawal who delivers the Hindi version. They underline core guidance about the use of face-coverings, observing social distancing and regular hand-washing.

The initiative is in response to members of the capital’s various South Asian communities being among the groups of Londoners most affected by the coronavirus, including fatally. City Hall says these Londoners are “more likely to be employed as key workers in frontline health and service industry roles” and cites a recent study “suggesting that in hospital settings people from South Asian backgrounds are 20% more likely than white people to die from Covid-19.”

Last month, public health expert Professor Gurch Randhawa told the London Assembly’s health committee that public health messaging tailored to reach different communities across the country could have reduced the spread of the virus, including in the capital.

Khan, who is the son of immigrants from Pakistan, is an advocate of non-English speakers in Britain learning the language, but the videos appear to be a recognition that a bespoke approach to some Londoners whose first language is different is desirable for controlling the virus.

Accompanying the release of the videos, Khan said, “From key workers on the frontline to families staying home, London’s South Asian communities have made extraordinary sacrifices to help stop the spread of this virus,” and he urged the government to “do more to ensure reliable guidance in accessible formats is available to all.”

The video in Bengali has already been shown on Channel S, a TV station watched by many Bangladeshi Londoners.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate directly or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com for bank account details. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Sadiq Khan

Dave Hill: Haringey Labour is a snake pit of fanatics and feuds – it’s time its poison was purged

The people of Haringey deserve a better Labour Council and local Labour culture
Dave Hill

Late yesterday afternoon I went to see the movie Tenet, my first visit to a cinema since lockdown. I emerged from its two-and-a-half hours of “high concept” hokum baffled, a bit bored and wondering what the point was, then switched my phone back on to find it vibrating with the latest plot twists in an even more contorted vortex of alternative reality – the internal dynamics of Haringey Council’s Labour Group.

On Thursday, Labour List reported that “colleagues” of Councillor Pat Berryman had filed a complaint against him. Yesterday evening it emerged that Berryman has been suspended by his party. Friends of Berryman claim the complaint is vexatious and was timed with the intention of preventing Berryman challenging council leader Joseph Ejiofor at a Labour Group meeting that was scheduled to take place on Monday – except that, I am told, that too has been suspended, along with two other Haringey Labour councillors.

I’ve yet to confirm much detail about this flurry of activity and, I confess, the sane part of me rebels against trying. One thing I know for sure from three years of reporting the Momentum-led takeover of Haringey Council and the  endless feuding and faction-fighting that has ensued is that exploring the cross-cutting rabbit holes so many of the protagonists inhabit risks wasting too much of my life trying to shed a little light on that warren of paranoia, self-delusion, point-scoring, disinformation and ideological tunnel visions. Another thing I know for sure is that this snake pit of a story has reached a stage where Labour’s national leadership must surely step in in a big way.

There are ample grounds for a full investigation of exactly how the political stewardship of a borough whose residents include some of the poorest people in Britain fell into the hands of such a fractious bunch. The beginning of the story is, of course, the disastrous elevation of Jeremy Corbyn, a former Haringey councillor, to the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015. His victory was enabled by droves of the sorts of people who wrecked the Labour Party’s national electoral hopes in the 1980s joining up, some of them veterans of that era.

In Haringey, their impact was large. Momentum activists and others successfully organised the removal of sitting councillors they didn’t like and their replacement by others more to their taste in time for the May 2018 borough elections. The mobilising issue was, you might recall, the previous administration’s plan to form a joint venture company with regeneration specialists Lendlease in order to redevelop a portfolio of council property and land, including housing estates. There were reasonable arguments against this Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), but their force was trivial compared to populist cries against so-called “social cleansing”, egged on by Big Media journalists who should have known better.

The formation of what one local activist termed the nation’s first “Corbyn Council” – the working-class would be watching and hoping, apparently – was followed by a string of departures from Ejiofor’s cabinet: two were sacked on New Year’s Eve 2018, only for one of them to return and be sacked again; Berryman resigned. Ishmael Osamor, the son of Edmonton MP Kate Osamor, whom Ejiofor had given a role in cabinet affairs, stepped down and then resigned as a councillor following his conviction for drug offences.

Many questions remain unanswered about the Ishmael Osamor affair, including the circumstances surrounding his approval as a potential Labour council candidate in the first place. Indeed, the entire candidate selection process for the 2018 elections, which resulted in the departure of the then council leader Claire Kober and most of the more able members of the Labour Group, merits a full investigation.

The conduct of Haringey’s local campaign forum, the body responsible for organising the candidate selection programme, should come under scrutiny: Corbyn ultra-loyalist Claudia Webbe, a councillor in Islington and now, magically, the MP for Leicester East, who was brought in to conduct interviews, could be of great assistance there. Documents of interest would include pro forma declarations of hatred for the HDV and adoration of “Jeremy” which enabled any passing pinhead with a party card to stand a chance of being picking to fight a safe Labour ward – in some cases, they’ve gone on to represent them – while others who were actually up to the job were driven out.

By all accounts, the outcome of any Haringey Labour Group leadership contest that eventually takes place – effectively also a contest to be council leader – is uncertain. It is equally unclear if the ousting of Ejiofor would result in a better or much different kind of Labour administration. Ejiofor is a member of Momentum, as are some loyal lieutenants. Significant figures ranged against him are not. Yet they too lined up against Kober and have been known to express the same sorts of objections to what she had hoped to bring about – bold measures to generate more and better housing, stronger economic growth and the rejuvenation of some of Haringey’s physical environment.

It would be wrong to rubbish everything the “Corbyn Council” has done. There have been examples of sensible flexibility over social housing delivery and any suicidal urge to try to somehow block the redevelopment of the Seven Sisters “Latin Village”, a ridiculous Protest Left cause célèbre, has been resisted. Haringey has also been fortunate in having some highly-regarded senior officers.

But there’s a deeper backdrop here in the form of the local Labour membership culture, which still festers with fanatics even though Corbyn has gone. For example, some in the “grassroots” are still immersed in rearguard actions against Labour’s eventual adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Haringey Labour councillor Preston Tabois, who is on the list of Labour candidates for the London Assembly, was suspended last month over an antisemitism allegation. There is much that is, to put it kindly, unhealthy about Labour in Haringey. Keir Starmer, take action please.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate directly or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com for bank account details. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Claudia Webbe, Haringey, Haringey Council, Ishmael Osamor, Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer, Labour, London Assembly, Momentum, Preston Tabois, Seven Sisters

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 159: The medieval city of vineyards

The centre of the capital was once a place awash with grapes
Victor Keegan

If you could time travel back to medieval London you would be struck by three things then commonly seen in the centre of the city, but which have long since disappeared: monasteries, prisons and, especially, vineyards. London was awash with vineyards at that time. You could find them in Southwark, Westminster, Saint Giles, Bermondsey, East Smithfield, Holborn, Piccadilly (the Vine Street on Monopoly boards), St James’s Park, the Tower of London and almost anywhere with a road containing the word “vine”.

They were mainly owned by aristocrats, royalty and the church. The two most prominent were in Westminster and Holborn. Monasteries needed wine for communion and for the monks’ pleasure, so it is no surprise that Westminster Abbey had one south of Tothill Street, near where the almonry was located – commemorated in the Peabody building in Abbey Orchard Street, as the photo above shows – and another south of Great Peter Street between Horseferry Road and the Thames. There, eight acres of the Abbey vine garden were situated near another Vine Street, the old name of today’s Romney Street. The St James’s Park vineyard too was possibly owned by the Abbey.

How much wine was produced in those days and beyond? An awful lot if you believe the writer Thomas Pennant (1726-1798). He describes Lambeth as remarkable for the manufacture of English wines: “The genial banks of the Thames opposite to our capital yield almost every species of white wine; and by a wondrous magic, Messrs. Beaufoy here pour forth the materials for the rich Frontignac, destined to the more elegant tables, the Madeira, the Calcavella, and the Lisbon, into every part of the kingdom.” Pennant said that one of the “conservatories” contained 58,109 gallons of sweet wine, and added this astonishing claim: “It has been estimated that half of the port and five sixths of the white wines consumed in our capital, have been the produce of our home wine presses.”

Stjames's park

Holborn’s main vineyard (there were several) was on land taken over from the Bishop of Ely by Sir Christopher Hatton (of Hatton Garden), one of Elizabeth I’s  favourites. It was reported to extend to seven acres. The first Blackfriars monastery (close by today’s Holborn Viaduct) had a vineyard, as did St Mary’s nunnery further up Farringdon Road by today’s Vineyard Walk.

There was also a thriving bottling industry, which reached a high point in the 1660s when polymath Christopher Merrett, a member of the Royal Society – until he was kicked out for not paying his dues – recorded that London vintners were inducing a secondary fermentation in (French) white wine bottles, thereby inventing what today we call the méthode champenoise. Yes, Londoners invented what we today call champagne decades before the French because their bottles, made from wood-fired rather than coal-fired furnaces, were so fragile they would explode under secondary fermentation.

The current boom in English sparkling wine is thus merely reviving a lost industry. London no longer has plentiful vineyards and probably won’t ever again, despite the boost from global warming, if property prices remain high. However, there is one successful new vineyard in a London postal area. Forty Hall in Enfield has made the first sparkling wine from London grapes for centuries. The fruit has been turned into wine by a distinguished winery outside London (Davenports). But last year, Forty Hall sold some of its Bacchus grapes to Blackbook Winery in Battersea, one of four brand new London wineries, to produce the first totally London wine for a very long time. Few things in London are ever truly lost – they just return in different forms.

All previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate directly or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com for bank account details. Thanks.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
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London public transport use continues picking up since Bank Holiday

TfL figures shown consistent week-on-week percentage increases for both buses and the Underground
Dave Hill

Use of the London Underground and bus network has been rising slowly but steadily since the August Bank Holiday weekend, Transport for London figures show.

Though still far below usual pre-pandemic levels, there have been rising percentage increases in journeys made on both services compared with last week during the morning peak travel hours and for most days as a whole.

TfL says the uptick in bus use is probably significantly a result of London’s children returning to school, while that in Tube use is likely to be mostly due to workers returning to workplaces.

For the Underground, the week-on-week figures up until 10:00 a.m. have been as follows:

  • Tuesday, up by 8% compared with last Tuesday.
  • Wednesday, up by 11.5% compared with last Wednesday.
  • Thursday, up by 17.2% compared with last Thursday.
  • Friday, up by 21.1% compared with last Friday.

For buses, the week-on-week figures up until 10:00 a.m. have been:

  • Tuesday, up by 6% compared with last Tuesday.
  • Wednesday, up by 10.7% compared with last Wednesday.
  • Thursday, up by 22.2% compared with last Thursday.
  • Friday, up by 29.6% compared with last Friday.

Today’s morning peak saw 630,000 entries and exits from Underground stations and 800,000 bus boardings, both of which are the highest figures for the morning peak this week.

Today’s Tube ridership numbers represent a drop of 69.2% compared with the equivalent date last year while those for the bus are 50.8% lower. However, TfL says it expects further increases in the use of both modes, especially as some schools have yet to fully re-open to students.

The whole day week-on-week figures for the Underground this week have been:

  • Tuesday, up by 2.2% compared with last Tuesday.
  • Wednesday, down by 2.8% compared with last Wednesday.
  • Thursday, up 8.4% compared with last Thursday.

The percentage fall on Wednesday is thought by TfL to be due to a fall off in leisure-related  travel compared with the amount that took place the previous Wednesday (26 August).

The whole day week-on-week figures for the bus service this week have been:

  • Tuesday, up by 8% compared with last Tuesday.
  • Wednesday, up by 2% compared with last Wednesday.
  • Thursday, up by 13% compared with last Thursday.

Increased use of the bus has, however, been accompanied by a fall in bus passenger satisfaction according to a weekly survey for London TravelWatch, the capital’s official transport-users’ watchdog.

Its findings are that the bus passenger satisfaction level overall has fallen from 78% last week to 66% this week, with satisfaction with cleanliness falling from 72% to 56%, with the behaviour of fellow passengers down from 57% to just 40%, and with the number of people wearing face-coverings down from 59% to 53%.

The national figure for the level of bus satisfaction overall is 81%. Among Londoners, 24% said they believe public transport is “less safe” than shops, restaurants or pubs.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: buses, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, London TravelWatch, London Underground, Transport for London

Think tank calls for rapid action to revive London’s Covid-hit West End

Centre for London has set out a range of urgent measures in a new report
Charles Wright

Time is running out to save the West End, the “beating, human heart of the capital”, according to a new report from Centre for London.

The think tank today sets out a wide-ranging action plan to boost recovery, aimed at government, City Hall, the boroughs, businesses and landowners, warning that “the outcome depends on whether we act in time”.

Data compiled for the report underlines the scale of the pandemic crisis in Central London, which is recovering more slowly than anywhere else in the country even as suburban centres are beginning to return to normal.

Footfall in the centre languished at just over a quarter of pre-crisis levels last month, with retail transactions down by 60%, Tube ridership still down by 70%, and overseas tourism virtually non-existent.

It all adds up to a major assault on the West End’s unique economy, the report says, with jobs in hospitality, retail, culture and the arts now some of the most vulnerable in the capital. Small businesses, accounting for three-quarters of all businesses registered in Westminster and Camden, are particularly at risk, and theatreland, a major contributor to the city economy, has already lost an estimated 2,700 jobs.

“Neither London nor the UK can afford for the West End to remain underused, and for its unique economy to falter,” the report concludes. It recommends immediate help for arts and hospitality business in particular by continuing support for outdoor dining through street closures, temporary winter shelters and managed deliveries along with weekly “London fringe” outdoor performances and “culture vouchers” along the lines of the government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme to bring audiences back to theatres.

Transport for London should step up work to increase public transport capacity safely, in collaboration with government and public health bodies, and the capital’s tourism promotion agency London & Partners should prepare campaigns to attract overseas tourists back to the city as international travel returns, the report says.

And action should begin now to put vacant office and retail space to use, including making “residency” space available for artists and performers, supporting temporary “meanwhile” studio, hospitality and retail uses at reduced prices, and offering “enterprise-zone”-style incentives to attract new business, with lower business rates and capital allowances on office fit-out and adaptation.

“As we look beyond the crisis, we need to make sure that the West End can sustain the rich mix of places, events and venues that give it human scale and character, as well as opening up space for new ideas and new enterprises,” said Centre for London deputy director Richard Brown, launching the report. “The West End has shown itself to be incredibly resilient over time, but it needs help in coming months to avoid losing the buzz that will bring the crowds back as we recover from the COVID-19 crisis.”

Welcoming the report, Jace Tyrell chief executive of the New West End Company, which represents businesses across the centre, warned that urgent action was needed as footfall remains below sustainable levels. “Action such as this will ensure that the West End is able to recover and continue to thrive as an economic powerhouse contributing billions in tax revenues annually and as a vibrant, world renowned destination,” he said.

The Centre’s recommendations follow a similar call from Sadiq Khan last month for targeted support for the West End, help for freelance and self-employed workers in the cultural and creative sectors, and extended test and trace systems.

Read Centre for London’s West End recovery plan in full here.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

Categories: News
Tags: Centre For London, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Jace Tyrell, New West End Company, Richard Brown, West End

London Assembly sets out ‘formal objection’ to Sadiq Khan plan to relocate City Hall

Assembly chair Navin Shah has sent the Mayor a letter taking issue with his proposals for moving to the Royal Docks and with his handling of the issue
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan’s plan to move the Greater London Authority (GLA) out of City Hall and relocate much of it to the Crystal building at the Royal Docks was quickly met with stiff, cross-party opposition from the London Assembly. And in a letter to the Mayor last month, Assembly chair Navin Shah set out the Assembly’s “formal objection” to his wishes.

Shah maintained that the proposals, which the Mayor said in June would save the GLA Group of organisations as a whole £55 million over five years, “do not have a sound financial basis” and would be “detrimental to the standing of the Greater London Authority.” He also told Khan he “should not create fundamental, potentially irrevocable division” between the mayoralty and the Assembly, both of which are part of the GLA, by proceeding with any relocation against the Assembly’s wishes.

To do so “on that basis, and in the face of reasoned objection from one of the two constituent bodies comprising the Authority, which has its own democratic mandate and a legitimate interest in this matter, would be wrong,” Shah wrote. He urged the Mayor to “re-think your proposals, by working more effectively with the Assembly” and “engaging positively” with alternative options for making savings.

No reply has yet been received from the Mayor, who confirmed his intention to go ahead with the move a few days after Shah’s letter, dated 19 August, was written. In the letter, Shah said the Assembly “urges” Khan to “immediately start negotiations” with landlord the St Martin’s Property Group to allow a six-month extension to a “break clause” in the current contract, due to come into effect in December, allowing more time for “full, open consideration of any new proposals that the landlord has put forward” for a future lease arrangement.

Shah also asked the Mayor to present “a proper, more comprehensive options analysis” this month, taking in the possibility of staying in the current, bespoke City Hall building by Tower Bridge on different terms, making other use of the Crystal building – which the GLA owns and is largely unused at present – such as by selling it, renting it commercially or moving appropriate parts of the GLA’s machinery there to be in closer proximity to a major regeneration zone.

Eight pages of “alternative options” were appended to the letter, making the case that alternatives to moving have not been properly considered, that there had been a “failure to negotiate with the current City Hall landlord” and a “lack of information” provided to Assembly Members, as well  questioning the financial savings claim and arguing that the value of being in “an accessible Zone 1 location” has not been recognised.

Practical issues raised include the further dispersal of GLA Group personnel, who could be spread across three different sites: The Crystal in Newham and the Palestra building and Union Street premises where the London Fire Brigade HQ is based, both in Southwark. It could be that more GLA staff will be based in the two Southwark buildings than at the Crystal, with home-working expected to remain part of their longer-term future.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: City Hall, London Assembly, Navin Shah, Royal Docks, Sadiq Khan, The Crystal

The Square Mile might be reeling but reports of its death are surely premature

The City of London has gone very quiet during the pandemic but its powers of recovery should not be underestimated
Dave Hill

Transport For London’s press release deployed the language of our times to valorise their “temporary traffic restrictions” along Bishopsgate and Gracechurch Street, heading down to the disabled London Bridge. The changes will, it said, “transform one of Central London’s major thoroughfares into a safer and less intimidating place that prioritises people walking and cycling”.

You don’t have to be a sceptic (as I am) about the revolutionary potential of road space reallocation to recognise that the future of the City of London could be a lot different from its recent past. How different, though? And in what ways?

Walking south down the east side of Bishopsgate, inspecting the hopeful blue Streetspace fencing, I passed a large, gold “22” attached to a pillar outside an office block. I couldn’t remember seeing it before. I crossed the road, looked up, and was astonished by the cloud-pricking spectacle of the truly enormous tower that has sprouted there.

It is on the site of what was going to be The Pinnacle, once expected to become the second tallest building in London after The Shard. That fell victim to the Great Recession and this giant has taken its place. “Twentytwo” is 33 feet shorter than The Pinnacle would have been, but it still looks like a lift shaft to the stars. Not yet open for business, it appears to be encased in bubble wrap. Will its 62 storeys ever be filled?

I met a friend at the M Bar in Leadenhall Market, established in 1321 at the heart of what was Roman London and now a celebrated Square Mile shopping and dining spot. I was following in the trail of Karl Mercer of BBC London, who reported from the M Bar the other week. Karl heard that business had become painfully, indeed laughably, slow.

That impression was in keeping with a word portrait of the City by Sky News business journalist Ian King. “Even before Boris Johnson announced a lockdown on 23 March, the Square Mile was beginning to depopulate,” he wrote. And now? “This pulsating financial village feels a shadow of its former self.” King added that, like the Prime Minister, he would “love to see people returning to the office and for the City’s working population to be back where it was pre-crisis.” But is this likely? “Not in the short-term,” concluded King.

And what about the longer-term? My elevenses friend is far more expert in these matters than I. He stressed that everyone is guessing about what might happen next. Not only are the behaviour of the virus and the date of the arrival of a vaccine impossible to reliably predict, so too are the assessments of Square Mile workers and employers of Covid-19 risk. For some, home working has been an unexpected pleasure; for others, taking their chances with corona is a far preferable option to going on being stuck at home all day long.

But, given all that, he thought it reasonable to imagine a Square Mile in which more people work in its offices than before, but for fewer days a week, once the current fear of public transport has receded. Flexible combinations of home and office labour could enable rotating, enlarged casts of staff. Some companies are already trying to offload office space, but there aren’t a lot takers. The alternative might be to make better use of the empty space, including by turning some of it into living quarters and amenities. Young City workers could have a flat “over the shop” as part of their employment deal, affordably housed at the very heart of the greatest city on Earth.

Who knows? But my friend underlined that there will already be people out there thinking about these problems and how to solve them. Eventually, some of them will back their solutions with cash.

It was gone 1:00 before we left. When I’d arrived in Bishopsgate just after 10.00, the area had felt very quiet and I had felt a little blue. But by now Leadenhall’s main avenue was quite lively. Most of the out-front dining tables were occupied. There were even a few a few blokes standing drinking beer. The City might be reeling, but reports of its death are surely premature.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough coverage of the UK capital’s politics, development and culture. It depends greatly on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: 22 Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate, City of London, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Gracechurch Street, Karl Mercer, Leadenhall Market, The Shard, Transport for London