Random Musings

I can't help but agree with Roy Greenslade on the subject of London's evening freesheets. They're both still uniformly abysmal with not a single thing to read. The trouble is that even the paid for Evening Standard is woeful with its ridiculous vendetta against Ken Livingstone and Mail-lite features. A bit more news would be nice. I actually have an "Eros" smartcard charged up with enough cash for ten copies and I've still not bought an issue for ages (aside from the day they were giving away a free Nicci French novel).

And while I know that London Underground is paid handsomely to allow distribution of both The London Paper and Metro in its stations, does that revenue really cover the vast cost of clearing up the mess? Despite signs telling people not to, every morning there's a pile of read/discarded copies of the paper at the bottom of central London escalators. These just go on to get jammed into the mechanism of the escalators causing un-needed delays to exiting the station when they go out of service.

[Update: Love this]

Meanwhile in further parochial news from this parish, our local Soho Post Office is closing. Or rather, it's moving to the other side of Oxford Street and into WH Smiths. The net result will be that Soho - home to a rather large media and creative industry - will not have a single Post Office left.

I realise that at least I'm lucky enough to still have a Post Office within walking distance, with many planned closures leaving whole communities without access to one at all. But the Soho Post Office is regularly jammed with people. On a recent trip, my knowledge of Key Stage 3 Science increased enormously as the queue snaked around slowly - I read the only interesting literature on offer whilst for a window to become free.

So there's enormous demand, and yet economics dictate that it's cheaper to sit inside another store where I very much doubt there'll be room for as many counters. Ironically, Soho will still have drop-off points for DHL and FedEx deliveries. Is it any wonder that the Royal Mail struggles?