As an East London resident I've received a 20-page booklet through my letterbox about the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel in April. If you didn't get a booklet you can download one here. Eight pages are given over to information for drivers, which makes sense given most of the tunnel's users will be drivers. The eight pages are mostly about what you have to pay and whether you have to pay it. You might therefore expect that one of the maps in the booklet would be aimed at drivers. Not so. There is such a map, it's on the TfL website and you can see it here. But it never made it into the booklet because someone thought two maps aimed at bus passengers and cyclists would be sufficient. Let's Make This Bus Map Unnecessarily Complicated department has been at it again. It shows the three routes which make up TfL's commitment to running 21 buses an hour through the two tunnels. One is the existing 108 through the Blackwall Tunnel, one is the extended 129 and one is the new Superloop SL4, both of which will use the Silvertown Tunnel. LMTBMUC department is obsessed with routes rather than stops. • I don't care which bore of the Blackwall Tunnel the 108 will use, nor all the ridiculous twiddles the 108 and 129 have to make to enter the bus station at North Greenwich. I might care that the 108 makes several extra stops northbound on its detour to the tunnel but the map doesn't show where they are, nor does it have arrows to show which way the loop goes. • I don't care about the twiddles on the 129 either, whereas I would really like to know where the first stop beyond the tunnel is going to be and how far it'll be from anywhere useful. I'd also quite like to know where the 129 goes next but the next four miles through Newham are not shown, only a box saying that the route terminates at Great Eastern Quay. I bet most people have no idea where that is and the booklet doesn't enlighten them. • I can see where the SL4 runs but because it's a limited stop route I really need to know where I can catch it, and on that there's nothing. That's key because on the north side of the tunnel it won't stop anywhere in Newham, only in Tower Hamlets, and heading south it won't drop anyone off in North Greenwich, only two miles away up the A12. The next page of the booklet does at least say "Express service stopping in key town centres between Westferry Circus in Canary Wharf to Grove Park via Silvertown Tunnel". But it doesn't say what those key town centres will be, nor does it mention the three-mile non-stop section, and you're not going to attract any passengers like that. Cyclists don't care what ridiculous one-way circuits the shuttle bus has to make, they only need to know where to board and where it'll drop them off. The red blobs alas get somewhat lost amid the red lines. What is it with TfL and overcomplicated underinformative maps? Drivers, bus passengers and cyclists who might use the Silvertown Tunnel would really like to know.

When I told a good friend of mine I wrote a blog every day while I worked a full-time job, they responded, “I don’t know how you find the energy.” I actually generate energy from writing the blog every day, I tried to explain. If I didn’t write the blog every day, I would have […]

Attend inauguration, take Presidential oath, act as "a peacemaker and unifier", label Mexican cartels as terrorists, rename the Gulf of Mexico, rename Mt McKinley, pledge to an expanding nation, take back the Panama Canal, send astronauts to Mars, suspiciously-Nazi salute, sign order to withdraw from Paris climate agreement, sign migrant detention bill, unconditional pardons for Jan 6 attackers, roll-back on trans rights, roll-back on gender identity, redefine birthright to US citizenship, withdraw from World Health Organisation, make federal workers easier to fire, federal regulatory freeze, impose tariffs on Mexico, impose tariffs on Canada, delay ban on TikTok, drill baby drill, introduce External Revenue Service, establish Department of Government Efficiency, end government support for electric vehicles, end Green New Deal, axe education department, launch cryptocurrency, video call with Chinese President, appoint vaccine sceptic as Health Secretary, recommit to death penalty, put diversity staff on leave, deploy troops to Mexican border, suspend refugee programme, pause foreign development assistance, end 'corrupt' DEI policies, human rights start at conception, scrap FEMA, back biblical claim to Palestinian land, fire independent watchdogs, make claim on Greenland, reinstate troops who refused vaccination, eliminate DEI in military, curtail gender transition, offer federal employees payouts if they resign, reopen Guantánamo Bay, blame plane crash on diversity, impose tariffs on China, sack USAid workers, take control of federal payment system, revoke deportation protections, delay tariffs on Mexico and Canada, stake claim on rare earths in Ukraine, shrink US government, propose wholesale removal of regulations, plan for US to own and redevelop Gaza Strip, plan to relocate all Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan and Egypt, attend Super Bowl, ban trans athletes from women's sports, eliminate anti-Christian bias, sanction international court, remove Federal Election Commission chair, reverse ban on plastic straws, cut medical research funding, speak to Putin about Ukraine, 25% tariffs on aluminium and steel imports, propose Canada as 51st state, end production of one cent coin, call for end to Gaza ceasefire, cosy up to Russia, speak to Putin about Ukraine ceasefire, make premature concessions on Ukraine, fire air traffic control staff, attempt to rehire traffic control staff, rebuke Europe and its leaders at security summit, fire National Park workers, question the legitimacy of judges, liken oneself to Napoleon, threaten tariffs on foreign cars and semiconductors, fast-track fossil fuel projects, plan cuts at the Pentagon, layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service, face-to-face peace talks with Russia, blame Ukraine for war with Russia, claim Putin can be trusted, call Zelensky a dictator, launch new world order. And that's just the first month.

If you’re doing things right, people will knock on your door with business opportunities. Every so often, one of these opportunities will catch your attention. While you already have a strategy—a path you’d outlined to get where you wanted to go, and a list of things you decided not to do—you’re figuring out how to […]

On EastEnders' 40th birthday, let's go in search of the soap's iconic pub. London has only one remaining Queen Victoria pub, as far as I can tell, but remnants of several pubs of that name survive. The Queen Victoria, 148 Southwark Park Road, Bermondsey SE16 3RP corner pub from when this entire area was packed with Victorian terraces. You can still find a few of these if you walk down the right streets, then you turn a corner and it's all postwar flats and modern apartment blocks as is so often the case in inner London. Had the pub been one street corner to the east the Luftwaffe would have got it but instead it shines on with its yellow brick, sash windows and brown faience tiles. One less storey and it could almost pass for the actual fictional Queen Vic. Indeed a bit of digging suggests the soap's producers visited when the show first went into production and used the bar "for a dummy run". So says Julie O'Sullivan, the pub's millennial landlady, although she also claims that "Barbara Windsor, Dot Cotton, Ross Kemp, Shane Richie" have drunk here which suggests she sometimes mixes the real and the fictional. Alas Julie had the lease taken away from her in 2019, such is the way of pubcos, and the latest owners haven't quite retained the ambience. The central wooden bar is still there but now with downlit optics and the upper display shelf removed, plus Julie would never have allowed those chairs in here or illuminated a ring around the dartboard. But it still looks good because Craft Union like to put on a decent show, and it still has a bottle blonde behind the bar (called Carole) with a cheery voice well capable of passing an E20 audition. formerly The Queen Victoria, 118 Wellington Street, Woolwich SE18 6XY hostel, and still might be upstairs, but the former bar has since been taken over by a lowly convenience store called the Q. Victoria Supermarket. I'd have abbreviated it 'Queen Vic Supermarket' instead and taken down all the Oyster top-up signs, but I was not consulted. It still looks striking from a distance, a three storey gabled building with two tall chimneys rising higher than seemingly necessary and a fading inn sign depicting a book-reading monarch above what used to be the door. These days you enter up the side, they hope enticed by a wall of generic grocery vinyls and adverts for Lyca mobile, and it's so out of date the alcohol options still include a bottle of Becks. But the interior is low-key, low-lit and low-appeal, and all I spotted was Robinson's fruit squash, so unless you live locally and have run out of something urgent I probably wouldn't. formerly The Queen Victoria, 1 Gillender Street E3 3JW Charrington & Toby Ale tiles out front. formerly The Queen Victoria, 72 Barnet Grove, Bethnal Green E2 7BJ Still in the East End, not only does this look every inch a Victorian boozer but it's attached to a proper Victorian terrace, part of a patch of conservation area between Columbia Road Market and Roman Road. Just look at the gorgeous 'The Queen Victoria' moulding on the roof beneath a royal crest. In this case closure came in 1993 before this corner of Bethnal Green became the gentrification magnet it is today, and the odd grey doors at pavement level now lead to separate flats. The planters out front somehow haven't been removed by Tower Hamlets' car-friendly Mayor, not yet, and yes I did have to wait for marketgoers clutching wrapped flowers to get out of the way before I took that photo. formerly The Queen Victoria, 78 How's Street, Haggerston E2 8LP pub and all the houses it served have long been swept from the map. Instead the area's now solid former council housing, almost entirely flats, with the location of the Queen Vic now a row of parking spaces along the front of Fellows Court. Pubs are no longer a feature of the surrounding neighbourhood, the nearby shopping parade is as downbeat as it gets and the local primary school closed last year due to lack of pupils. If EastEnders were set here, sorry Haggerston, it'd be an utter gloomfest. formerly The Queen Victoria, 236 Church Hill Road, North Cheam SM3 8LB current plan is to build a 7-storey block of flats as a 'gateway development', which anywhere in inner London might look quite normal but would be a jarring highrise imposition here. No replacement pub is planned but a Wetherspoons exists just round the corner on London Road and that's quite enough. formerly The Queen Victoria, 13 Tooting Grove, Tooting SW17 0RA pub with copper roof, renamed 'The Little House' before it closed in 2010. An English Heritage spot-listing failed so now subdivided into five quite nice-looking flats. formerly The Queen Victoria, 98 Mitcham Road, Croydon CRO 3RJ formerly The Queen Victoria, 136 Falcon Road, Battersea SW11 2LP formerly The Queen Victoria, 121 Bath Road, Hounslow TW3 3BT formerly The Queen Vic, 118 Wellington Street, Maryland E15 1HH And finally a classic pub that's now lumpen flats. For almost all of its life it was known as The Albert House, having originally been the pub at the end of Albert Road. At some point that street inexplicably became Albert Square, despite not even being oblong, and that no doubt is why the pub's final owners decided to name it The Queen Vic. It didn't ultimately help to bring a rush of punters, even with a flapping inn sign out front, and when I turned up for the 20th anniversary it was already being redeveloped. The resulting block is called Basle House and the bit that used to be the pub has hardly any windows and looks terribly bland. Judging by the outbreak of angry posters all over the bin store an angry row appears to have broken out regarding the improper dumping of black bags, but as storylines go that's pretty poor so I'd stick with the real Queen Vic on the actual Albert Square tonight instead. from 2015: locations that inspired EastEnders [photos] from 2010: Two Albert Squares, E15 and SW8 from 2005: The real EastEnders, E20 at 20