please empty your brain below
How did you know he was Sir Oswald Mosley? He could have been a single mother!

Er . . .

Vaughan | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 9:45 a.m. | #

I agree with you DG about Elephant & Castle. I find it the most depressing place in London. I'm sure there are areas more deprived (are there?) but there is something so large and deprived about Elephant & Castle that so awful. The view from the platform into one of the most hideous 60's attempts at community creation is the most depressing of all. I think if I'd grown up there I'd, well, I probably wouldn't be the respectable(ish) (mostly)law-abiding citizen I am now.

Katherine | 10.12.04 - 10:36 a.m. | #

"Remind me to come back and blog about Wapping properly sometime, it's a fascinating and historic place."
OK I remind you.

pop artist | 10.12.04 - 11:30 a.m. | #

Hey DG, check this out:

Your very own Routemaster! Could you get someone to buy one for you for Christmas?

Katherine | 10.12.04 - 12:20 p.m. | #

The Battle of Cable Street in 1936. Once again it's those fucking East Enders that get all the credit. What about the great battle of Long Lane on 4th October 1937, when 20,000 stopped Mosley & his fascist chums marching through Bermondsey?
And it's not just the Cable Street thing that annoys me. The old Queen Mum quote of how she could look the East end in the face after Buck House got bombed. Well fucking fat lot of comfort that was to the south Londoners of Camberwell, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Deptford, New Cross & so on that got blown to fuck by the Luftwaffe. But then we're from the 'wrong side of the river' & not 'salt of the earth cockneys'. East London? Fuck 'em! Brick up the Rotherhithe Tunnel & keep the fuckers over the other side I say!

Gawblimeyman | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 1:32 p.m. | #

Well thanks very much for telling us that the Elephant & Castle ain't the best shopping centre in the world! But in a localised area,(especially if you live just to the north of it) it's not bad with a Tesco, Iceland, Woolies & WH Smiths among others. Sorry if it hasn't got a Starbucks for you, but it's got some decent small local cheap shops & NOT all pound shops for us poor, impoverished working class council estate folk who spoil your views as you do your tour of London by bus! If you really want a shitty shopping centre try the Arndale in Wandsworth, & worst market..how about Tooting.

Gawblimeyman | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 1:52 p.m. | #

And another thing...the shopping centre ain't pink! True the statue of the elephant may be in your phot, but the Centre itself hasn't been bright pink for a good few years. It got a makeover for Red Nose Day, which was crap. Some of us actually liked it pink, offset with blue railings. Pink & Blue-the colours of Dulwich Hamlet Football Club. Trust me it was the business then! Inner city picture postcard or what! Sadly it's currently getting another lick of paint, in red again & this time not even for charidee.

Gawblimeyman | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 1:57 p.m. | #

And yet another thing... Shadwell to Elephant & Castle?
Just who actually decides on what makes up the route of a London bus? Is there someone in an ivory tower at 55 Broadway who shouts Eureka! after twenty seven years in hibernation & screams Shadwell to the Elephant?
Why were bus routes chosen & who decides them now? I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it but I'm sure there's plenty out there sad enough to know...

Gawblimeyman | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 2:00 p.m. | #

GBM: it's not called the Arndale centre any more, it's called the Southside centre. But yes, it's crap.

As for which is more depressing, let me put it like this. Wandsworth is as depressing as 67\\% of the US believing that the Bible's Christmas story is the literal truth.

E&C is as 53\\% of the US believing the literal truth of the whole Bible.

This makes E&C just as depressing but rather more dangerous.

quin | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 3:04 p.m. | #

The Elephant's only dangerous because of all the bloody subways under the main road/roundabouts & shit CCTV making it a muggers paradise.

Gawblimeyman | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 3:48 p.m. | #

Well, yes, but that's still dangerous, regardless of why. And, btw, if you read down you'll discover that DG doesn't 'do' coffee. So Starbucks is hardly going to be on his list of requirements.

Katherine | 10.12.04 - 4:13 p.m. | #

Having not been to either Wandsworth's Southside Centre or Tooting Market, all I can say is that the Elephant & Castle shopping centre is the pits - even worse than Walthamstow Market or my local hellhole in Stratford. A lot worse.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 5:06 p.m. | #

I know this rather grim view from Elephant & Castle Station well.. except my normal perspective of the view was FROM the blocks of flats TO the station! I spent about a year growing up in that 60s carbuncle.. It's not *quite* as bad as everyone says, but I really to believe that the best thing that could happen to the estate would be to level it and start again. If the proposals are anything to go by, it looks as though they will. I wait with bated breath to see how it goes with the sister blocks, i.e. Aylesbury Estate down the road - not due to be demolished, but rather refurbished under the NDC scheme running in the area.
If you stop through on a train during the evenings at the Elephant, it's almost hypnotic watching the number of faulty lights blinking on and off in the block, in strange and wonderful patterns... *glazes over*
Not everyone off these areas are really that bad.. it's a shame that theres a sizeable proportion there who make it seem as bad as it looks, though. And the fact that they are grey and look like segments of the Great Wall doesn't help either.
As crap as the Elephant & Castle shopping centre seems, I don't think it could do a better job of serving the community there as it stands. Indeed, no starbucks etc, but how many of the locals would use them?

Nico | Homepage | 10.12.04 - 5:55 p.m. | #

Gawblimeyman, you'd wince at the thinking that made up what is today the 100. The planners, in their wisdom, couldn't cope with two routes along the Old Kent Road (171 & 172) going in the same general direction, so they re-routed the 172 away from the City and extended the 100 over the lost bit. Unfortunately double-decks can't do Shadwell or Wapping, so bang goes two-thirds the capacity.

Matt | Homepage | 11.12.04 - 12:40 a.m. | #











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