please empty your brain below

'Distant and Mythical Croydon'? Where do some of these writers come from? And as for moving the whole of Bromley into Surrey! I'll keep following your blog,DG. At least you appear to check your facts first! :-)
Excellent, I'm just going to call you 'The Geezer' from now on,

Incidentally, there is a train right in the middle of burgess park. I'm off there right now for a run, will snap a picture of it for you ...
Congratulations, I think. Having had a taste, perhaps some of your new readers might stick around: your writing is certainly much better than those four efforts.

I was going to ask what your top two most popular posts are, but you did that recently: http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/top-20-most-popular-posts.html

So, presumably this one was between 6,200 (journeys on foot faster than by tube, boosted by QI) and 8,300 (election statistics, boosted by the Daily Mirror and New Statesman)?
Bromley in Surrey????
Everything is about house prices now.
That's why we are all going to hell in a handbasket.
Luckily, cycling a mile to a station takes less than fives minutes.
Completely concur with Andrew. What it demonstrates to me is why I continue to visit this blog even though the subjects are often not natural subjects of interest to me. DG's well written and informative posts beat all the 'marketing' oriented guff 'written' by overpaid yoofs cluttering up the web.
Enjoy the opinion pieces just as much!
"don't forget the humble bus" ...I think many people have forgotten the "humble bus"...think Thatcher had a qoute bout it once, basically saying if you was of a certain (working) age and was still using the bus that you farly much was a "loser" in life. And I may be right in recalling that many a outer London residents would be "up-in-arms" at the suggestion a bus route might be routed along their road...because it might lower their house prices! We have often seen "our leaders" making journeys on trains...but can't think of the last time seen them on a local bus in London or anywhere else for that matter. Only bus (coach really) they ever go on is the big, comfortable, climate-controlled one they use to get around to try get our votes...
Working Class Hero, that's an interesting point. But from the perspective of a Londoner-in-exile, who doesn't drive (and thus does use humble buses), two things I notice, when visiting London, are (a) in the inner city and centre, it's normal for everyone to use the bus, unlike in the rest of the country; and (b) - related to the above - the measures taken by bus companies outside of London to attract the middle classes (with some success, in some places): leather, high-backed seats, wifi, plug sockets, general "premium" branding etc, also don't exist in London at all. So maybe in this very specific regard the suburbs of London have the worst of both worlds..
i don't consider bromley to be in london, it's in kent.

in fact i consider anywhere outside zone 3 that doesnt have a tube not to be in london
Unfortunately, Helga's definition of London (Epping and Chesham are in, Ilford and Brentford are not) is widely prevalent.
But wherever Bromley is, it ain't where the "Shortlist" article says it is.
Bromley in Surrey ? These writers should get out more. I always thought Bromley was ( really) in Kent, Croydon in Surrey.

I used to get the same bus from East Croydon to Bromley every work day and the conductor ( remember those ? ) had little rhymes for certain stops. 'Shirley Park, for a lark in the dark'. Funny the first few times, but after a few months....
The Thatcher/bus comment is a myth, she never actually said this.
I think Geofftech is right, although it is quite difficult to /prove/ such a negative statement (in principle, you have to examine everything she ever said).

But it is a widespread myth, because people, rightly or wrongly, perceive that it is the sort of thing she could have said, as it seems to match their idea of her thinking.

And I happen to share this perception.
The idea that buses are for losers is not a new one or a Thatcherite one. In 1979, the Merton Parkas had a hit with "You Need Wheels' which features the line 'a man ain't a man with a ticket in his hand, you need wheels'. Sung by Mick Talbot who went onto bigger and better things with noted Thatcherites The Style Council.
<thread drift>
I do remember...rightly or wrongly, the farce of quite a few people being "dropped-off" by car at commuter railway stations in the mornings and collected in the evenings again by car. Then of course others driving to the station and using the rather expensive and "break-in prone" car parks. I guess this is still the case?
Sorry everybody. Bromley is not in Kent it is firmly in London.

Sorry everybody. Croydon is not in Surrey it is firmly in London.

Sorry everybody. Epping is not in London it is firmly in Essex.
And now it's here too:

https://www.facebook.com/CommuterclubUK/posts/523901097760115

dg writes: To be fair that's not a new article, that's just someone retweeting Time Out's article.
But can a city be defined by it's borders? Yes countries can be, but nations can't. Surely a city is a social construct and if the people of Bromley believe they aren't in London (which I can gurantee a large amount of them do - or at least the councillors I regularly speak to do) then so be it.

I think this would be more accurate:

"Sorry everybody. Bromley is not in Kent County Council it is firmly within the Greater London Authority area".
Thanks DG! My mum was quite impressed after I told her I'd gone a bit viral, right after I had to explain what that meant :)
I suppose it was because I never had to actually catch a train to commute to work that I never felt hard done by when I lived by Burgess Park, one one side buses to Tower Bridge or New Cross, on the other buses to Camberwell, Denmark Hill, Elephant and Castle or London Bridge, in the middle two regular buses between Peckham and either Elephant and Castle or Tower Bridge and the park being about fifteen minutes walk from E&C and twenty minutes walk from Peckham Rye. It's extremely accessible.










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