Anyone who goes to fashionable Marylebone will know there is a lovely public gardens just off Paddington Street, where shoppers, workers and students use to relax over lunchtime and late afternoons. It use to be a graveyard but has been consecrated for its present use and amentities by the Church Authorities. 

Now we have a similar site in Little Venice known as St Mary’s churchyard not far off from Paddington Green proper. A grandstand or two here, will not go a miss like we have in Paddington Street Gardens, along with an open space chessboard and plenty of benches for the students, shoppers and residents. 

It can clearly be given a sporting theme given at one end of the churchyard we have Little Venice Sports Centre which could be extended out with outside gym facilities as well. 

Before all this can happen we need residents in Hall Place Estate and St Mary’s Mansions on side with making the most of this green space in Little Venice, with their priorities. But first of all the site needs to be consecrated by the council via the Church authorities. And if it could have been done for Paddington St Gardens, l can’t see why not for St Mary’s Churchyard. 

If there is one thing Old Oak Common has got as a terminus site for HS2 in London, is numerous rail and tube links across the whole of Greater London and the South East. Some at Old Oak & Park Royal Development Corporation have even suggested it has as many as 13 links with the rest of the South East and Greater London. 

So when the contreversy of the Euston terminus comes up, l have always felt comfortable with Old Oak Common being an alternative if need be. Even with some of the capacity issues, it will anyway be the temporary terminus whilst works still go on in Euston station. 

But let us not forget our West London history. When Paddington Railway station had been built by Brunel for the GWR just over 160 years ago, its connection with what was considered to be Central London was poor but it generated the Underground Tube solution between Paddington & Farringdon. The rest is of course history now as it lead to the birth of Underground rail services in all major cities around the London.  

So l am under no doubt that similar innovation could have seen a solution to the Oak Old Common terminus, if it ever become the end point of the HS2 in London. So that it would have become the Paddington Railway station of the 21st century. 

With the GLA precept in the our Council Tax expected to increase by almost another 10 per cent this year during a cost of living crisis, you would think that at least the element for TfL (which was doubled) would consider being covered by Workplace Parking Levy (WPL). 

A WPL is a licensing scheme which applies to certain defined workplace parking spaces. The scheme requires employers to pay a charge for the number of parking places they provide that are regularly used by employees. It is a discretionary power made available to the council as a licensing authority by virtue of Schedule 24 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 which provides the framework to implement WPLs.

The idea behind implementing a WPL is to discourage individuals from using private vehicles to commute to the workplace and move them towards walking, cycling or using public transport. The London Mayor’s Transport Strategy (MTS) released in March 2018 included a proposal to support boroughs that wish to develop WPLs as it will help to meet the Mayor’s aim that 80% of trips in London will be by those means by 2041

A WPL can be developed by boroughs as part of a traffic reduction strategy and any revenue
raised as part of the levy must be re-invested into transport improvement schemes. The scheme can also help fund major transport projects and infrastructure initiatives in the City of Westminster that will help it retain its status as a world class location. Nottingham is the leading authority and thus as a leading example, since the implementation of its WPL 11 years ago, nearly £90 million of revenue has been created and ring-fenced for a variety of transport improvements which has resulted in a mass expansion of public transport services in the city.

The implementation of a WPL would help to achieve environmental objectives such as a reduction in CO2 emissions in the city caused by vehicles and a reduction in congestion on Westminster’s Road network. It would also support Westminster in its journey to becoming a net zero city by 2040 and the Mayor’s aims set out in the Mayors Transport Strategy. 

Indeed it  was incredible should it did not come up during the government negotiations with TfL during the pandemic for its funding, as a means of finding another source of funding outside of annual government grants.

Finally the WPL also get a mention under Transport Levies in the Parliamentary Library publication on local government taxation. 

Happy birthday greetings are certainly due to the Tube system in London started 160 years ago between Paddington and Farringdon to connect up GWR Paddington Railway Station to Central London by Metropolitan Railways.  But after the rains yesterday, the state of the old line needs to be looked at urgently as illustrated on platforms 5 & 6 in Baker Street Tube station. 

The penetration of rain water is obvious through the walls and ceiling from the Marylebone Rd road above, when you look along platform 5 & 6.  This regularly happens when there is a heavy rainfall. 

The last time is was refurbished l was still at school locally and passed through the station regularly. Those works were completed in 1984 and it seems, particularly in the 21st new century, it was been regularly leaking when we have had heavy rains. It appears the frequency of this has increased as the infrastructure of the walls and ceilings can not deal with the intense rainfall we have as a result of climate change. This urgently needs repairing and refurbishing to see the world first underground railway line get to the end of the present century. 

With the recent passing of Pele (Edson Arantes do Nascimento), like many of the boys l grew up with, in the neighbourhood immediately remembered the day, the king of the beautiful football came to Paddington. 

For most of the 1970’s when young boys were kicking a ball around in the school yard and playing fields of London, we were all doing a “Pele” involving either his many assortments of flicks and dummies or samba dancing on the ball. So when we heard he was in town to visit the local Boys Clubs, we did not hesitate to race over to the venues. This was of course all done by word of mouth, rather than via social media as one would today, and amazingly it managed to get all the boys out in the locality and further afield. 

His first stop was of course the Stowe Boys Club, on the Harrow Rd, W2 just off Westbourne Green and not too far from Royal Oak tube station.  Here he performed some small miracles. With a double breasted suit and tie on, he was still able to do his assortment of flicks and samba dancing on the ball! While we were still struggling in our shorts….. It came with ease to him certainly while he kept us all fully enthralled.  He then made his way to the North Paddington Boys Club on Lanark Rd,W9 where people like Sal Khan still remember how he spoke to them with a strong Brazilian accent still. 

The Paddington Boys clubs had also themselves produced a few football stars as well, like John Barnes, who went on to play for Liverpool & England. During the late 1970s he would have been tuning his fine first touch at Stowe Boys Club before joining his first club in Watford. Iconically he could not play football at his school, Marylebone Grammar School. As it played rugby not football, and he joined Stowe Boys Club to not only marshall his skills but fondness for football.   

We were of course accustomed to our footballing heroes being seen around and about Paddington, after all the Football Association (FA) was for many years based in Lancaster Gate before moving to Soho and then eventually Wembley.  A location we frequently went to for autographs of our stars. I once got one of George Best there! Little did we realize it was more often than not our footballing heroes  who were going up to the disciplinary Committees of the FA. But that did not take away from the prize of their autographs on old programmes or football tops. 

But Pele was in a completely different league, having won three World Cup winners medals, he was truly a legend. A global superstar who even in the late seventies and early eighties after the peak of his career in the 1970 World Cup final in Mexico City could still pull a huge audience. Critically he played a key role in the creation of a national identity in the country of immigrants, indigenous people and descendants of slaves, which Brazil happily exported to us all. 

May he rest in peace now after giving so many of us such joy in our youth. It was a day many of us have not forgotten for sure as every boy in Paddington was there and beyond #RIPPele 

The piece as it appeared in the Westminster Extra below in the week beginning the 6th of January 2023

It was good to commemorate those that made the ultimate sacrifice in the liberation of Bangladesh, the unfinished business of partition in 1947,  just over 50 years ago.

I have written before how the liberation of Bangladesh was the unfinished business of partition in 1947 of the Indian sub-continent. More over London unique contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 with a walking tour around a number of main sites in London. And thus an important occasion for the Bangladeshi community aboard. 

These victory celebration at least service the purpose of not forgetting them when we know we will not get justice – lest we forget. 

Thankfully the rerouting of the 205 was saved in the recent prospective cuts to bus routes in Central London, permitting integrated transport links to be maintained between bus, rail and tube all along the Euston & Marylebone Road and in particular maintaining a bus service between Kings Cross, Marylebone and Paddington. 

 

We were less successful on the North South link between Victoria and the Edgware Rd within the City of Westminster as the 16 bus is withdrawn from that service whilst the 332 maintained its service between Paddington and Kilburn but funnily enough now called the 16 bus route! The N16 is lost completely. 

 

This while the 414 bus route from Marble Arch through W9 was withdrawn only last year, which meant we had lost a service along the Edgware Rd at the beginning of the calendar year.  

 

So you can see the Edgware Rd took one of the biggest hits in the review of Central London bus routes though it could have been worse. 

 

https://www.westminsterextra.co.uk/article/think-again-on-bus-cuts-mayor-told

With the ethnic make up results of the Census in 2021 now available, we can now look at the figures for the size of the Bangladeshi community in England & Wales.

The Bangladeshi community stands at 622,000 in 2021, that is 0.3 per cent bigger as a share of national population in 2011 moving from 0.8 to 1.1 per cent. In 2011 its stood at 475,000 in total.

Geographically over 50 per cent live in Greater London, that is 322,052 in Greater London with over 100,000 in Tower Hamlets and over 50,000 in Newham.   

One of the notable trends is the growing community of Bangladeshis who have now moved to East London boroughs like Newham, Redbridge and Barking & Dagenham since 2011 census from Tower Hamlets. Suggesting a similar flight to Essex by previous generations of immigrates except that the community appears to have grown in Tower Hamlets as well by some 20 per cent! 

This latter influx of Bangladeshis from aboard also appear not to have come from the Bangladeshi itself from mainland Europe and countries like Italy. Maybe there were trying to beat the Brexit closer of the UK? This is probably worthy of study itself! 

So which parliamentary seat would you like to be in with Brent or Camden?  Its a question many residents in Little Venice, Maida Vale and Church St in the City of Westminster will be asking themselves giving the differing positions made by the Boundary Commission of England Review (BCE Review) between their initial suggestion of Camden Town & St Johns Wood below and the revised one of Queens Park and Little Venice above.

The critical thing is that the initial proposals puts the Paddington & Marylebone parts of Westminster North in with Camden Town while the revised proposal puts them into Brent that is Kilburn and Harlesden. That is quite a dramatic change of direction going from North to West for the residents of the remaining Ward parts part of Westminster North like Little Venice, Maida Vale and Church St.  It would be interesting to hear how the BCE Review came to such a major change of orientation for the old Westminster North CLP. 

It would be interesting to know what the residents in these wards feel, prefer being in a parliamentary seat with parts of Brent or Camden? Thats a open question which maybe we could do a poll on and see the Review will take it on board on their final