A friend of mine who stays with me from time to time in Chiswick and was thinking of moving here has now decided not to. She is horrified at the uglification of Chiswick due to local measures and the Big Brother diktat. She is now going to look to buy elsewhere, and I will also think about moving. The good things about living in London are no longer available for the forseeable future - cinema, theatre, meeting friends in nice restaurants etc etc. So the cyclists might have it all to themselves. But they too will be better off living in the country when London has lost its culture and shops are closed due to the pandemic, no one wants to live here because of that coupled with the difficulty of getting around, so people will leave the towns and the cities in ever greater numbers, businesses will move out of London or have small hub offices there with cheaper property elsewhere as so many employees will be working at home. So the cyclists will have a shop and business-free wasteland to cycle around. The combination of the pandemic plus these mad transport schemes will create a huge shift from London to the suburbs. Chiswick, as a suburb, could have benefitted from that, but no, Hounslow and Ealing councils between them have wrecked it, so, like my friend, many current and would-be residents will shudder and move much, much further out. Why not, when they can buy bigger properties and no longer need to commute? Hope West London councils are happy with that. But then, I suspect they only look at most a month ahead, hoping they will be in post at least that long. Long term vision is something they don't even contemplate.
Claire Moran ● 2222d