The opening of the Hindhead tunnel will be the most significant opening of 2011. For roadies and petrolheads it will mean the A3 is dual carriageway all the way from Tibbett’s Corner in Putney to the Dockyard gates in Portsmouth, and that the Hindhead traffic jam, the (very often literally) long-standing bane of Hampshire motorists’ life is finally unblocked. They will justifiably celebrate.
I have no idea how the ecological balance sheet stands for the new Hindhead Tunnel; most new road building seems to fall on the negative side. It will, experts say, be the longest non-estuarial tunnel in the UK so presumably the boring technology must have been pretty cutting edge. It also gives a great chance for Hindhead Common to return to a more natural state, potentially restoring, alongside the Devil’s Punchbowl, one of the most beautiful spots in the south of England.
The development also means that the first A3 London to Portsmouth road will have been, in slightly less than 100 years, almost completely shifted off its original line. The London to Portsmouth road was named as the A3 when the great road numbering system was brought in on April 1, 1923; it then ran through Kingston, Esher, Guildford, Liss, Petersfield and Cosham, and on to Portsea Island. All those towns have since been bypassed, starting with the Kingston bypass opened by then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in October 1927.
The old line of the A3, renumbered in various places (the Kingston to Esher road, for example, has become the A307), is now out of main road usage and provides fascinating historical snapshots of road, town and village development over the twentieth century. This road itself is a development of the various old coaching routes and turnpike roads from London to Portsmouth, and the traces of these, now that the A3 is shifted on to its new super speedway line, can hopefully be explored at greater leisure.
Which is how a retired sub-editor with a pencil, a notebook, a camera and an itch to experiment with html - http://www.londona3.co.uk/home.htm - comes to be strolling down to Pompey…
Thursday 30 December 2010
Friday 17 December 2010
Ah, the joys of leisure
Social networking produces two bonuses this week: Facebook comes up with a free ticket to Midsummer at the Tricycle Kilburn, and twitter tips off about a National Theatre cancellation which gives a cheap ticket to Hamlet. Not bad for someone who can go months on end without going near a theatre or even thinking about it.
Midsummer, apparently an old hit from the Edinburgh Festival last year, is a great comedy, musical with songs its writer and producer calls it. A great laugh, and touching. Hamlet has a very good Rory Kinnear and is a fabulous pruduction by, better get his name right, Nicholas Hytner.
Midsummer, apparently an old hit from the Edinburgh Festival last year, is a great comedy, musical with songs its writer and producer calls it. A great laugh, and touching. Hamlet has a very good Rory Kinnear and is a fabulous pruduction by, better get his name right, Nicholas Hytner.
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Exposed by the leaks
So I pass my sixtieth birthday and the students are still revolting, taking their protest right up to the House of Commons as it votes to effectively privatise higher education. Great campaigns by the students using occupations and the Internet, and transforming Twitter from a medium through which the world discovers what Stephen Fry had for breakfast to one that is a useful tool in political struggle. Even at 60 no home but the struggle as fantastically under-rated novelist Edward Upward wrote.
Students and wikileaks then were last week’s firing pistons in the motor of British history. The wikileaks saga demonstrates an outrageous abuse of civil rights in what clearly looks like a convoluted plot by the Americans to get their hands on Assange. I can understand the American diplomatic service being miffed at being exposed in their own cables as a bunch of devious, two-faced, calculating manipulators, but what’s new about that. The real exposure in the wikileaks cables is how different the real picture of American foreign policy is from that presented in the mainstream media. In other words how many of our respected journalists swallow without question official government utterances. It’s as if the sort of demented twisted thinking that made the Iraq dossier into a case for invading that country was not so much a one-off act of political desperation by Bush and New Labour, but rather the norm of western diplomatic thinking, and that journalists get embedded into that just as much as they get embedded into jingoistic reporting alongside the troops. Not true of all journalists, but the exceptions, Pilger, Fisk and others seem increasingly marginalised.
Peaceful, now then to be a retired hack, not that, as a sub-editor in the lower echelons of British tabloid driveldom, I was ever near the levers of press political power. I managed to turn down my only offer of promotion up the greasy careerist pole…that was many moons and many bars ago.
So, back to finishing off a disgracefully decadent Euphorium chocolate birthday cake, and watch out for the next anti-extradition demo…
Students and wikileaks then were last week’s firing pistons in the motor of British history. The wikileaks saga demonstrates an outrageous abuse of civil rights in what clearly looks like a convoluted plot by the Americans to get their hands on Assange. I can understand the American diplomatic service being miffed at being exposed in their own cables as a bunch of devious, two-faced, calculating manipulators, but what’s new about that. The real exposure in the wikileaks cables is how different the real picture of American foreign policy is from that presented in the mainstream media. In other words how many of our respected journalists swallow without question official government utterances. It’s as if the sort of demented twisted thinking that made the Iraq dossier into a case for invading that country was not so much a one-off act of political desperation by Bush and New Labour, but rather the norm of western diplomatic thinking, and that journalists get embedded into that just as much as they get embedded into jingoistic reporting alongside the troops. Not true of all journalists, but the exceptions, Pilger, Fisk and others seem increasingly marginalised.
Peaceful, now then to be a retired hack, not that, as a sub-editor in the lower echelons of British tabloid driveldom, I was ever near the levers of press political power. I managed to turn down my only offer of promotion up the greasy careerist pole…that was many moons and many bars ago.
So, back to finishing off a disgracefully decadent Euphorium chocolate birthday cake, and watch out for the next anti-extradition demo…
Thursday 9 December 2010
Where was I? anyway...
So, be careful what you wish for. I always wanted to retire by the time I was sixty. So here it is today and here I retire. Strong sense of déjà vu about the whole thing. When I went to Manchester University forty years ago, sudents were occupying the administration. Now I’ve retired they’re doing the same thing. Right on, as we said then.
Anyway, after 35 years of pretty disgraceful hacking on low-grade tabloid newspapers I remain I a die-hard socialist and delighted to see that students are still rebelling. I seem to remember a chairman Mao slogan saying it’s always right to rebel - one to post at Tiananmen Square perhaps, as well as all the other places.
Where was I anyway. Yes, not much change - Vietnam victory, apartheid victory, collapse of Soviet Union, end of British industry, Thatcherism, rise of Islam, computers Internet, and the death of Fleet Street.
So for a gentle rambling retirement blog, the main interests are: the motor of history, the London-Portsmouth road, Arsenal, Pompey, Greek islands, the South Sea Bubble and was one of my uncles responsible… suppose I’d better organise a party.
Anyway, after 35 years of pretty disgraceful hacking on low-grade tabloid newspapers I remain I a die-hard socialist and delighted to see that students are still rebelling. I seem to remember a chairman Mao slogan saying it’s always right to rebel - one to post at Tiananmen Square perhaps, as well as all the other places.
Where was I anyway. Yes, not much change - Vietnam victory, apartheid victory, collapse of Soviet Union, end of British industry, Thatcherism, rise of Islam, computers Internet, and the death of Fleet Street.
So for a gentle rambling retirement blog, the main interests are: the motor of history, the London-Portsmouth road, Arsenal, Pompey, Greek islands, the South Sea Bubble and was one of my uncles responsible… suppose I’d better organise a party.
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