Layer 526 . . . Welcome to the East End - the Lea Valley and the Olympic Park

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I was talking to a friend of a friend last week who told me he's feeling very excited about moving to the East End. It turns out he was born in Bethnal Green and lived there till the age of five, at which point he and his family moved back 'home' to southern Nigeria. Having gone through school and university in Nigeria he eventually found his way back to London, via several other countries, and then found work and a place to live in the suburbs - somewhere near the bottom of the M1. Brent Cross?

By chance last autumn he was invited to a party in Bethnal Green - the very first time he'd been back there since the age of five. He described emerging from the tube station, walking down Bethnal Green Road, feeling the 'buzz' on the street - the strollers, the pubs, cafes and bars - and thinking "Wow! - this place feels like home! I need to live here!"

He's right - there's so much to appreciate about the East End in 2012 - so much diversity, energy, creativity - the whole vibe. It's not heaven on earth, but it sure as hell beats living in the suburbs. One small example - two brilliant little live bands playing on different street corners at Columbia Road market a couple of weekends ago. It was worth getting an open air coffee and hanging out in the cold air just to enjoy the music. The same thing also happens at Broadway Market on Saturdays.

Another friend recalled driving through ShoreDitch (!) last weekend - well gone midnight and the streets and bars still crowded to overflowing, traffic slowing down to avoid the throng, including, inevitably, various people staggering around drunk, behaving pretty badly.

Apparently the different tribes tend to descend on Shoreditch, Hoxton and Hackney at weekends - the West London crew, the Essex mob, the Kent crowd, etc. Apparently experienced spotters can differentiate them by their clothes and their taste in footwear. East End folk do NOT go elsewhere at weekends. How time's changed the old manor.

And now, of course, the Olympic thing is coming to its climax. Today the Guardian website features this excellent page:

Olympic Park: an alternative tour around the London 2012 games site

The Olympic Games are just around the corner, and thousands of curious visitors are coming to the site to see where all the London 2012 action will take place. Join Alexandra Topping on an alternative walking tour with Simon Cole, of Hackney Tours, to discover the area's greenest spaces and most interesting historical facts, as well as the top views and the best hot chocolate

Click below to go on the virtual video tour:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/london-2012-olympics-blog/interactive/2012/feb/20/olympic-park-alternative-tour
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Layer 484 . . . The Olympic Family, Fuckwits, Gridlock, Protests, St Paul's, Fundamental Change and Putting Down Roots

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The Olympic Family

What an unfortunate expression. What can it possibly mean? At last night's meeting/briefing for 'the Hackney community' (ugh) presenter after presenter kept talking about The Olympic Family. What they actually mean is - all of those entitled to drive or be driven along the "Olympics Only" vehicle lanes leading to and from the various Olympic sites: competitors, officials, bureaucrats, etc. It'll be interesting to see whether people like the Royal Family will become honorary members of The Olympic Family. These road appropriations will be in force from 6.00am to midnight every single day for more than three weeks. And if millions of regular road users can't be persuaded to either a) go away or b) just stay put at home during those weeks, then gridlock is guaranteed. And that's not speculation - that's official.

The highlight of the meeting was a woman in the audience who stood up to make the following contribution:

"A few years ago I was in Australia with my son at the time of the Olympics, and I went to spit on the floor. My son said, 'Don't do that - you'll get a £1,000 fine - and you can also get fined £1,000 for dropping litter'. And now I think this is a REALLY GOOD IDEA and we should DO IT HERE. This could really make the Olympics better for EVERYBODY."

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It turned out there was gridlock in the car park of the community centre where the meeting was taking place. There was a classic moment when it was announced that a car was blocking the entrance to the car park - and a description of the car and its registration number was duly read out. Nobody moved. We all know what happens in this situation - out of sheer embarrassment for being humiliated and for being shown up as a fuckwit you let the meeting move on, and after a decent interval you quietly get up and move your car, or whatever. "Don't worry", said the oragniser, "We'll all look to the front so nobody's going to turn round and look at you!" And then a guy stood up on the front row - and went out to move his car.

Doesn't bode well for the London Olympics.


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Will the anti-capitalist movement have grown stronger by the time the Olympics begin, and if so - with what consequences? Or will the protesters simply get hoovered up from the streets and detained for the duration?

I've just heard an item on the radio saying that the Bishop of London has said it's time for the anti-capitalist protesters camped outside St Paul's Cathedral to leave. In response to this, the Canon of St Paul's, Dr Giles Fraser, has apparently threatened to resign if the protest camp is forcibly closed down. Previously he said this -

"I remain firmly supportive of the right of people peacefully to protest. But given the strong advice that we have received that the camp is making the cathedral and its occupants unsafe then this right has to be balanced against other rights and responsibilities too. The Christian gospel is profoundly committed to the needs of the poor and the dispossessed. Financial justice is a gospel imperative. Those who are claiming the decision to close the cathedral has been made for commercial reasons are talking complete nonsense."

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This is from last Wednesday's Guardian:

The Occupy movement has lit a fire for real change


Establishment praise for the Occupy protests reflects anxiety at public anger – which needs to be turned into political pressure


by Seumas Milne


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/19/occupy-movement-fire-for-change


It's not hard to see why the Occupy Wall Street protests have gone global. What kicked off a month ago in relative obscurity – drawing inspiration from this year's Spanish indignados occupations and the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia – has now spawned protests in more than 900 cities around the world. The only surprise is it didn't happen sooner.


Three years after the banks that brought the west's economies to their knees were bailed out with vast public funds, nothing has fundamentally changed. Profits and bonuses are booming for financial oligarchs and corporate giants, while most people are paying the price of their reckless speculation with falling living standards, cuts in public services and mounting unemployment.


Coming as this crisis has done – at the end of an era of rampant deregulation that has created huge disparities of income and wealth, concentrated in the hands of the top 1% and secured by politicians bought by corporate interests – a backlash against those actually responsible was well overdue.


While the protesters were originally ridiculed as unfocused, or denounced by leading Republicans as "mobs", they are now championed by the media establishment – including the New York Times and Financial Times – on both sides of the Atlantic. Obama has made friendly noises, while his officials say they now plan to "run against Wall Street" in next year's presidential campaign.


In a climate where plutocrats like Warren Buffett are meanwhile begging to pay higher taxes, it's a clear sign of elite anxiety at the extent of popular anger and an attempt to co-opt the movement before demands for more fundamental change get traction.


Something similar seems to be going on in Britain where – against a steady drumbeat of lobbying scandal and escalating unemployment – police and the conservative Daily Mail have so far both given the City occupation outside St Paul's Cathedral a notably easy ride.


There's no doubt that these occupations echo both the spirit and organisation of the anti-corporate movement that erupted in Seattle in 1999. The tactic of occupying a symbolic public space (as opposed to strikes, sit-ins and marches) can be traced back to Greenham Common in the 1980s through a string of often dubious "colour revolutions" over the past decade.


But it's this year's drama in Tahrir Square (acknowledged with an Egyptian flag at the London camp) that has given it such evocative power. And while the 1990s anti-capitalist globalisation protests took place at a time of boom and speculative frenzy, today's occupations are targeting a global capitalism in the deepest crisis.


Which is why they have such a clear sense of reflecting the common sense of the age. What both movements now and then also share is an intense commitment to direct democracy and the influence of an "autonomist" opposition to engagement with mainstream politics – seen as a central part of the problem, rather than any solution.


In that, of course, they're in tune with millions. But when it gets to the point of resisting making direct political demands at all – an issue of controversy this week among US protesters, with some arguing "the process is the message" – that would surely limit the protests' impact.


The Occupy movement has already changed the political climate in the US. Some commentators argue that's enough – and it's up to politicians and wonks to turn the theme of economic justice into policy. But that would be to hand the initiative to the very system the protesters reject – and limit the scope for making common cause with others resisting austerity and corporate greed.


Not only that, but any demands need to be a good deal more radical than "independent regulation" if they're to make sense of the call for fundamental change and action to tackle the crisis: democratic ownership and control of banks and utilities, say, and wealth and transactions taxes for a start.


And as Naomi Klein argued to protesters in New York, the movement will also need democratic structures and institutions if it's to put down roots rather than fizzle and burn out. 


The form and focus of these protests already varies widely from country to country: in Chile, they originally concentrated on free education, but now the target has expanded to include banks and GM crops. Across Latin America, where the revolt against neoliberalism first began more than a decade ago, it has been alliances of social movements and political organisations that have proved most successful in turning protest into economic and social change.


But there is of course no automatic link between large-scale protest and any radical political breakthrough: Spain has been convulsed with occupations and strikes – and is expected to elect a rightwing neoliberal government in reaction to the socialist government's austerity. The populist right can take advantage of mass disaffection as well as the left.


But in just a few weeks the Occupy movement has helped bust open the political class veto on the scale of change demanded by the crisis – and now that opportunity needs to be seized.

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Major meetings are taking place today concerning the Euro crisis.

Seumas Milne wrote this excellent piece a couple of weeks ago:

The class interests at the heart of David Cameron's plan


The Conservative party is effectively the political wing of the City of London. No wonder it can't lead Britain out of this crisis


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/05/david-cameron-conservative-party-city-of-london


"Our plan will work", was all the prime minister offered by way of reassurance yesterday. But that judgment already looks flaky. And most people in Britain aren't reassured. Nor are Cameron and Osborne's old friends at the IMF, which yesterday called on countries able to borrow at low interest rates, such as Britain and Germany, to "consider delaying" their cuts programmes.


The IMF has argued Britain could afford to raise its debt by 50% of GDP without triggering a crisis. But the Tory leaders show no signs of budging. Osborne's "credit-easing" plan to boost bank lending to businesses simply reflects the failure of his Project Merlin to achieve the same thing.


Not even its most enthusiastic advocates imagine such an intervention will turn round the collapse in investment or demand. But still the government shrinks from using its control of two of the biggest banks to boost investment and lending directly.


Osborne instead came up with a new growth plan: make it easier to sack workers, while requiring them to pay £1,000 for an unfair dismissal hearing in an employment tribunal – refundable only if they win the case. There's no serious evidence that extending the qualifying period to claim unfair dismissal from one to two years will create jobs. 


Signed off by Vince Cable, it also reveals the limits of Liberal Democrat restraints on Thatcherite recidivism. But more than that, it casts some light on the class interests at the heart of this government's response to the crisis.


Cameron and Osborne's refusal to change course is partly driven by ideology, of course, and a determination not to weaken in any way the private grip on the major levers of economic life. But there's something else, more quintessentially Tory, about it.


"If this party is anything, it's the party of small business and enterprise", Osborne told the Conservative faithful in Manchester this week. But that's not the whole picture. As the figures published at the weekend by the Guardian underline, the Tories are first and foremost the party of the City of London and financial engineering. More than half the party's £12m donations in the last year came from the City and banking. Its most lavish donors were hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms: the very interests which drove the financial sector over a cliff in 2007-8.


Now, the Tories' intimate links to banking are hardly new – even if the funding grip has tightened. But a government in the hands of what is effectively the political wing of the City of London takes on a more dangerous significance when bankers and financiers are almost universally recognised to have both played the central role in creating this crisis – and in perpetuating it.


It's not just slashing the rate of corporation tax for banks, or delaying the milk-and-water Vickers bank ringfencing proposals till 2019, or refusing to clamp down on bank bonuses in the teeth of public hostility or vetoing a financial transactions Tobin tax. It's the refusal to intervene directly in banking and finance to drive recovery that most starkly reveals whose interests the government puts first.


None of this, of course, has stopped Cameron talking earnestly about being "completely dissatisfied with the banking industry's behaviour", or the need to "encourage good business practices", or his determination to "crack down on tax evasion". In fact, despite the Tory leaders' withering dismissal of Ed Miliband's call last week for a new "economic system", it's striking how much they have echoed some of his language.


No doubt they've registered the polling that shows most people agree Britain is dominated by "fast-buck capitalists" and "predators, not producers". The problem for the Tories is that those are also their most enthusiastic supporters and paymasters.


If Miliband really intends to break with the 30-year-old "Thatcher settlement", one Conservative cabinet minister told me this week, it would be a highly significant political shift. "But I don't think that's where the British people are," he added, "they just want us to sort out the mess of the last five years". As the crisis deepens, however, it's becoming ever clearer you can't do one without the other.

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Layer 395 . . . The New Dickensians, Victorian Christmases, Chatsworth Road, Markets, Regeneration, Honky Tonk Shopping, Having Fun, Fats Waller, Sutton House, Will Hutton, Fair Pay and a Better Capitalism

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Today, out and about in London, it felt very Dickensian, and in a very good way. In my little corner of it, at any rate.

By the late morning the sky had cleared, and in bright sunshine we, the Christmas shoppers and winter strollers, were out and about, dressed in layers of thick clothing and a variety of hats, hoods, scarves, mittens and gloves; our steamy exhalations filling the air.

The shop owners of Victorian Chatsworth Road - an up and coming area if ever there was one, or so I'm told - had worked with council officers to put on a 'pilot' Christmas street market. It's been many years since the old Chatsworth street market gave up the ghost of Christmases past, and ceased to be. That was back in the days when the huge new supermarkets with equally large car parks had just opened up, and local shopping seemed doomed for ever.

We're now in an era where people again love going to local markets, 'farmers markets', and suchlike, and local commerce is on the increase.

Take the crossroads in Chatsworth Road, for instance, where there's a cluster of excellent and interesting businesses - L'Epicerie (whose French owner seems to have been a key player driving the new market scheme), the Book Box Bookshop, Venetia's Coffee Shop, Hop Toyshop, and the Creperie, which has recently opened and seems to be doing very well indeed. In all, according to the map produced by the Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association, there are over 80 business premises clustered together in the central stretch of the road.

http://www.chatsworthroade5.co.uk/

Check out the excellent dokofilms movie on this site.

And watch this space for an Oxzenfilms movie - hopefully within a couple of days.

‘We had everything from clothes, cheesecake, jewellery, baked cakes, quality tea and even impromptu piano and clarinet serenaders. It was a crisp day but the sun shone and hundreds of people enjoyed the atmosphere.

‘It’s been kept at 20 stalls to start with, but we have every confidence it will grow from strength to strength as time goes on.

‘We would encourage those interested in running a stall to look on the website or call us, and for the rest to pay Chats Market a visit on December 5 or 12 for more bargains and interesting buys for Christmas.’

Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association (CRTRA), working with Hackney Council, are running three pilot markets in November and December before considering a larger, regular market from 2011. The market has a long history and was in its heyday in the 1930s, with up to 200 stalls lining the street.

Ian Rathbone, interim chair of CRTRA, said: “Markets offer a great opportunity for local residents to start up a business, allowing them to test their ideas and meet their customers.”

He continued, “Chatsworth Road has seen many changes over the last few years and the benefits to the local community of a revived market will be tremendous – a chance to meet people and build community spirit, a place to buy and sell goods – from gifts and clothing to food – all while supporting a local high street and contributing to the continued regeneration of E5.”

Remy Zentar, owner of L’épicerie, and CRTRA Treasurer, added: “Reviving the market will bring new people and more business to the street. It’s about offering the customer more options and the experience of shopping locally.”

According to this website, their current 'To Do' list  is -

* bring back a weekly street market
* make Chatsworth Road your favourite shopping street in Hackney
* promote our neighbourhood
* get the whole community involved
* have some fun!

So it's not all about making money and increasing turnover. The reformed Scrooge would have approved.

One of the fun elements today was being able to enjoy coffee and mince pies bought from a table in front of Venetia's whilst listening to live music coming from a honky tonk pianist  playing a piano parked at the crossroads, ably supported by a clarinetist, a guy playing a snare drum with brushes, and a guy playing a metal bollard with drumsticks. Well done the pianist for his excellent choice of jazz, ragtime, blues and stride. Loved the Fats Waller songs.

Ain't Misbehavin'   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Wwhe9Hx_w
This Joint Is Jumpin'  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7YAU8CTInw
I'm Crazy 'Bout my Baby  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfYzlEhocGM
(How many songs open with words like 'effervescent' and 'eulogising'?)

I love these lines:

"I'm exasperated 'bout my offspring -
My offspring's exasperated 'bout me." 

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From Chatsworth it was a shortish walk to Sutton House for its annual Christmas Fair. Every neighbourhood would be greatly improved if it had a National Trust gem like this one. When I think back to the days when this house was neglected, semi-abandoned and left for squatters to occupy . . . Those dim dark days of the Thatch revolution.

I think I'm right in saying that this is the only National Trust property in Inner London.

Every room today was filled with stalls and activities, such as instant portrait painting.

 In one room someone was spinning yarn whilst running a stall; in another someone was playing a lute. Another room was filled with music by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye. Perfect.

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be . . . ?

Joni Mitchell
All I want
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni+mitchell/all+i+want_20075383.html

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Will Hutton's column in today's Observer has generated a tremendous amount of comment - mainly from complete bozos, right-wing trolls, City fatcats and would-be fatcats, and backwoods Tories. Of course some of them are clearly all of these things.

Oxzen's comments attracted a fair amount of ignorant response, I'm proud to say.

Rein in the fat cat salaries or see public services suffer even more

The current market in top people's pay is creating an imbalance in society that makes life less fair for everyone

by Will Hutton

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/will-hutton-private-public-sector-pay

In tough times, when people's interests are stark, the what-is-fair question rises up. Who is deserving or undeserving of great reward? Is there common ground on which to make a judgment?

So what is fair? I've been considering this for the last six months while working on the first phase of a report on how to achieve fair pay in the public sector, along with any implications for "social norms" in the private sector, at the behest of the prime minister and chancellor. My answer is that people expect their reward to rise in proportion to their effort and contribution, recognise they should not be rewarded for luck and want the process to be impartial. But they also concede that in organisations others contribute, so no single person can claim to scoop the pool of reward. Fair pay has an upper boundary. Hence the case for at the very least tracking and monitoring a measure of how pay is distributed between the top and bottom .

The stakes are high. Britain needs to drive up the performance of its public sector and keep its top public sector pay fair. And no less urgently the private sector needs to get a grip on the CEO pay arms race in the name of a better, more productive and fairer capitalism. There are risks with reform and tracking pay multiples. But the bigger risk is doing nothing.

Will Hutton's been banging on about creating a better, more productive and fairer capitalism for ages - since well before he wrote The State We're In. And a fat lot of good it's done us, thanks to the blasted Blair and New Labour.

The reformed Scrooge, taking pity on Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and his family, decided to become fairer and more generous. Handing over a proper living wage brought benefits to both the employee and the employer.

What hope is there of Cameron and Co taking notice?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Cratchit

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More glorious cricket - for the record:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/04/ashes-2010-second-test-live

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/03/ashes-2010-australia-england-live
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Layer 291 . . . Fitness, Fatness, Fighting, Boycotting and Voting

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It's been a busy week - mainly trying to keep up with the outpourings in the press about the election and the debates. Too busy reading to do any writing.

Too Fat To Fight

It seems the biggest threat to the American armed forces is the stark fact that so many of their potential recruits are considered too overweight, and therefore incapable of being effective killers. I'm not sure what sumo wrestlers would make of this.

This is on a par with Arlo Guthrie being turned down by the draft on the grounds of being a convicted criminal - having once been fined for dumping litter. Guthrie, clearly, didn't want to be drafted into the army to go and fight in VietNam, whereas the fatties . . . It shows a great lack of faith in being able to slim them down during basic training. Still - it's for their own good. You can't be too careful when you're out there trying to project  military power.

There's physical fatness, and there's spiritual fitness and fatness. The majority of New Labour's troops were clearly too fat to fight against social injustice and inequality. Why else were they so fucking ineffectual during the last 13 years? They were indolent, sluggish, bloated & moated, expenses-fiddling comfort-lovers, the vast majority of them. You can expect someone like Nicholas Soames to be nothing but a useless reactionary tub of lard, but corporeal lardiness is clearly no indicator of fitness for purpose when it comes to fighting for a better world for the less well off, since the majority of the New Labour crowd were not morbidly obese in anything but a spiritual sense.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8655651.stm

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'Vote for me, I'm flawed'

Meanwhile, Suzanne Moore, left wing journalist and columnist, and longtime resident of Hackney - well-known wearer of lipstick and fuck-me shoes, according to Germain G - has decided to stand for election in Hackney North & Stoke Newington - the safe seat of Dianne Abbott. Go Suzy!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/30/suzanne-moore-independent-candidate

http://www.dalstonpeople.co.uk/news/Q-Independent-Candidate-Hackney-North-Stoke-Newington-Suzanne-Moore/article-2036702-detail/article.html

http://twitter.com/moore4hackney
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/03/gordonbrown.davidcameron
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Guardian Goes LibDem

Under the headline 'The liberal moment has come' the Guardian today declares its support for the LibDems, with the proviso that people should still vote Labour in Labour/Conservative marginals. Exactly. THIS IS A SINGLE ISSUE ELECTION. All three of the major parties stupidly support drastic cuts in public services. The one big issue now is to  get  a referendum on proportional representation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/30/the-liberal-moment-has-come

Polly Toynbee also comments on tactical voting and proportional representation:

Next Saturday at 2pm, after the election, an instant-response protest is planned in Parliament Square by a score of democracy groups demanding proportional representation and pressing Nick Clegg to accept nothing less. If everything hangs in the balance then reform can still be won.

But if Cameron has won his majority, this event will be a mournful wake. The sound and fury will signify nothing: winner takes all, however huge the majority that voted against him. Your vote is indeed precious, so use it tactically to win reform so that you never need vote tactically again.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/01/precious-vote-apathy-tactical-voting

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Also Too Fat To Fight?

Many headteachers will be quavering at the thought their pay will be docked if they fail to implement SATs tests in their schools, even though the NAHT and the NUT have passed resolutions supporting a boycott of the tests. Headteachers are in many ways a wonderful group of people, but it can't be denied that their lack of fight and lack of determination to do right by their pupils has allowed successive governments to inflict things on our schools and on our education system that should never have been tolerated. Time to finally stand up and be counted.

"School governors have been told by the government they could send heads home if they boycotted the tests.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls wrote to them setting out their responsibilities and what action they could take if their head took part in the joint NUT and NAHT boycott.

The National Governors' Association (NGA) says it is not clear it would be legal to send heads home and is asking the government for details.

They say there is a "huge climate of uncertainty".

Neither union has mandated the heads and deputies it balloted to take part in the action.

This means it is up to individual head teachers to decide what action to take and no-one will be thrown out from their unions if they go against a boycott."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10094201.stm

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Jon Stewart rocks! -


http://tv.gawker.com/5528164/jon-stewart-mocks-the-laughable-tameness-of-british-political-scandals
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Layer 136 All Along the Lea Banks

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I’m a complete convert to the idea that cycling is the best way of going from place to place. Especially if you can do it away from roads and traffic. It’s silent, it’s much faster than walking - enabling you to travel much further, it doesn’t cost anything, it gets you fit, it gets the sun on your skin, and it gives a sense of absolute freedom.

Those were pretty much all the things I felt about cycling at the age of 10 or 11 when my parents bought me my first bike. Suddenly the whole world was mine to explore, any time I wanted, and all for free. My estate, the streets and estates beyond my immediate territory, and especially the open roads that led out of the city and into the countryside, the lanes, the woods and the hills on the horizon: all were mine to discover and to enjoy. Life became much more exciting.

The cycleway along the River Lea must now be the longest continuous cycle path alongside water in this country. The fact that it goes through the heart of the country’s biggest built-up area and its capital city makes it even more amazing. You can also branch off it and go east towards the Regent’s Canal as far as the Islington tunnel.

At the southern extremity of the Lea is the Limehouse Basin, and the connection with the Thames. Out of the basin there’s another canal heading north-west and a link with the Regent’s Canal at Victoria Park.

If you head north along the canalised River Lea you will eventually arrive in the countryside in Hertfordshire, if you have the stamina.

It must be the most interesting and stimulating off-road cycle route on tarmac and gravel in the entire country. Apart from the river itself there’s Hackney Marshes, Walthamstow Marshes, Leyton Marsh, Tottenham Marsh, nature reserves, ponds, lakes, playing fields, marinas, Springfield Park, Victoria Park, tennis courts, an ice rink, 18 hole pitch and putt, horse riding, the country’s biggest area of football pitches, reservoirs, locks, sailing, fishing, cafes, pubs, houseboats, rowing clubs, and riverside flats, houses, and businesses, both old and new.

There’s also wildlife, especially birdlife, galore. Cormorants, gulls, terns, herons, Canada geese, swans, coots, moorhens, kingfishers, kestrels, as well as the common varieties of city birds and others from far away just passing though - migrating down this green corridor across the metropolis. Yesterday there were magpies busy building nests.

And now we have the vast Olympic Park, currently taking shape and rising up behind fences, but soon to be available and accessible to everyone. Whatever anyone thinks about the Olympics, and personally I hate the jingoistic rivalry and petty nationalism, the medals tables and the sheer phenomenal cost of the things - there’s no getting away from the transformational effect of the building that’s currently taking place along the Lea.

This week and last there were TV documentaries showing some of the negative effects of the construction - the loss of allotments and business premises belonging to small local workshops and factories. There’s no question that a lot of local people are grieving for the loss of their quiet, run-down, post-industrial wilderness.

The question is whether the regeneration of the area - and there’s a huge area we’re talking about here, if you consider the whole of Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham - three of the poorest and most desperate boroughs in the country in pure economic terms - is worth it, on the basis of no pain, no gain.

Time will tell. Right now, I defy anyone with any imagination and full use of their senses to stand at the viewpoint overlooking the construction of the main stadium and the water sports complex and not to feel a sense of amazement and excitement at the sheer scale of the activity and the ambition of the project. In the distance stand the watchtowers of Canary Wharf and the Gherkin.

It’s now possible to see the full scale and the outline of the stadium itself, as it reaches its full height, whilst hundreds of hard-hatted project workers and enormous, strange-looking construction vehicles swarm around the entire site. There’s a constant stream of massive concrete-mixing trucks delivering concrete from the adjoining site where it’s produced.

Huge trains deliver raw materials to these works, and there are mountainous heaps of sand and gravel, and many vast silos of cement. Trucks queue beneath them to receive their next fill-ups. They shuttle back and forth, day and night.

The work is relentless, focused, and very impressive. A dozen cranes tower over the site, swinging long metal arms back and forth. Of course you might say it’s only a construction site. Well it’s a construction site, Jim, but not as we know it.

Interestingly, very few people pass by on foot or bicycle along the raised Greenway and its vantage points, and very few stop and stare. In a sense this is way off the beaten track, even though it’s right at the heart of the London conurbation, surrounded by millions of people, and the top of the stadium is now at a height that’s visible from miles away.

Very few people actually know the River Lea, let alone the Lea Valley Regional Park and its facilities, let alone make use of them. This situation will soon change, with snowball effect. The word is bound to spread, as soon as a few thousand more people get the know the area and what it offers, and then a tipping point will be reached, beyond which the awareness of the Lea Valley and its delights will be changed forever.

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The absence of people in general along the Lea, especially on weekdays, is even more marked if you think about children. They don’t exist. Or old people either, for that matter.

This is criminal if you think about the beneficial effect of walking down and around the Lea. If a river walk can make even a relatively jaded, self-confessed grumpy old man feel uplifted, inspired, de-stressed and regenerated, then consider what effect it will have on young people who know only city streets and estates, and the confines of busy, crowded homes and small classrooms.

It’s a whole new land of awe and wonder, considering the contact with water and nature, with wildlife and trees, with open skies and the elements, and all the various aspects of the built environment.

And then there’s the Olympic site, and the amazing structures that are beginning to appear there. There was a certain point on my river ride yesterday when you turn a corner just beyond the abandoned Big Breakfast house at Old Ford Locks, start moving across the bridge that spans one of the canal spurs, and suddenly see the massive skeletal structure of the new Olympic stadium towering above the trees and the river in the middle distance. It’s a stunning sight, guaranteed to provoke a ‘wow’ reaction.

My point is that children should be out there, taking it all in, benefitting from it all in every aspect of their development - intellectual, social, emotional, physical and spiritual. Children, especially city children, should be able to do the same things that enrich and inspire adults, to enjoy the same things that fire our imaginations and fill our senses.

There are so many opportunities for learning out there - so many starting points for conversations and discussions, for observation, for questioning, for drawing and photography, for inspiring follow-up investigations, reading and writing. How can teachers (and parents) ignore such opportunities?

It should be compulsory for every child in the area to be taken out and to become familiar with the geography and history of the area. Thanks to the excellent rail and DLR links from north, south, east and west into Stratford, Hackney Wick and Clapton, hundreds of schools could easily organise trips to investigate the Lea and the work on the Olympic site.

So why don’t these things happen? Mainly, of course, because there’s no political will for them to happen. Plus a shortage of headteachers with the vision, the will, the confidence and the determination to make them happen. Plus teachers who lack those qualities, and who might also suffer from fear, inertia, laziness and shortage of zest and energy. Over-large classes and children with behavioural difficulties don’t help, though those things can be catered for and the problems overcome.

Strangely enough, children who go to delightful, interesting, stimulating places tend not to misbehave. Oddly, they seem to become interested in learning when given opportunities for first-hand experience that gets them physically moving, legitimately and purposefully interacting, functioning as a team member, information-gathering, and using all their senses.

These opportunities to simultaneously develop social and emotional intelligence, and their intellectual capacities, should be grasped by all teachers, parents and carers. Parents should demand that their children be offered these experiences and these types of informal and formal learning by their schools.

Spiritual intelligence is nurtured when children are encouraged to use their senses to input directly into their knowledge of the world, and encouraged to use their intuition to see patterns, to question assumptions and draw conclusions. Spiritual intelligence manifests itself in joie de vivre, laughter, curiosity, delight, motivation, self-confidence, participation and self-control.

Physical intelligence - strength, coordination, mobility, fitness and health - is inevitably promoted when children are able to go on long rambles in the open air, with the sun on their faces and on their skin.

The government and the bureaucracy pay lip-service to environmental education - learning about, in and through the environment - but as every head-teacher will tell you, nobody actually gives a damn about these aspects of learning and achievement. No questions are ever asked about whether these opportunities are offered to children. All the attention is on getting bums on seats and eyes on the teacher and the interactive whiteboard, and on worksheets, for hours on end. Active? Ha!

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It so happens that one of the best tracks ever recorded is The Lee Shore, by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Written by David Crosby in the key of E minor, it uses only three chords, Em, C and Am, to create a work of great atmosphere, beautiful melody and superb, gentle, insistent rhythm. The song is about the beauty, the atmosphere and the feeling of freedom and spiritual peace to be found when travelling around the Caribbean by yachts and boats of one sort or another.

Most London kids are never going to experience the Caribbean, except possibly some of those who have family living there. The nearest they are likely to have in the way of weekly or monthly experiences of water, of boats, of wide, open skies and landscapes, and of a profusion of beautiful animal and plant life, is therefore a place like the Lea banks and the marshes. It’s criminal that the overwhelming majority are being denied it.

So why don’t we offer, allow and encourage it? Health and safety concerns? Not enough time in the week? Not in the curriculum? Or just because we can’t fucking quantify and measure the outcomes? You can bet your life that if someone could ascertain that through environmental education and outdoor experiences kids could be guaranteed to achieve Level 4 by the age of 11 (or Level 5 if they’re in a posh area) the Lea Valley and places like it would be overrun with crocodiles of children, teachers, teaching assistants, pupil mentors and special needs assistants, all with their little bags with clip boards and packed lunches.

Oh well, back to reality.

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Learning from the environment, and from nature, is central to Zen and Taoism. Hence the emphasis in Zen that even in the town or the city it’s possible to create small gardens where the natural world can be contemplated in peace, stillness and silence.

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To take a look at the Olympic site from webcams mounted on a school across the river, and other spots, go to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/webcams/2012_webcam1.shtml
http://apps.newham.gov.uk/Webcam/
http://ukwebcameras.co.uk/blog/2009/02/london-2012-olympics-stadium-live-construction-webcam/
http://www.webviews.co.uk/network/camera/england/london/olympic/games/village/construction/cam.html

http://www.gainsborough.hackney.sch.uk/olympics/olympic_park.asp
- double-click on the video screen(s) for some funky action.

Take a look at Nina Pope's excellent slide show of the construction on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nina_pope/sets/72157604450601466/show/
.