Discover London – before it's too late

Leadenhall Market

Some years ago, just as I was getting interested in photography, I took to going on Sunday morning photo safaris around London.

Some were to the more salubrious areas, some to where visitors mass and others still to streets and alleys that will not be likely to find themselves on the tourist trail.

Quite a few of these came as a result of an informal online photographic project: each week, the person organising it would set a place as a subject and those who wanted to participate would go, snap away and then share their efforts.

It was interesting to see how different people saw and approached the same subject, and it also provided an opportunity to discover parts of the city one might not otherwise ever come across.

I hadn’t thought about this for some time, but was reminded of it this morning by seeing #DiscoverLondon trending on Twitter.

‘Yes,’ I thought: ‘discover London before it’s too late.’

Falkirk Street, Hackney

There’s not been a time since I moved to London in 1988 that there hasn’t been construction work going on somewhere. But in recent years, in almost every direction, the skyline has become a forest of cranes as development and redevelopment have surged ahead.

Now I want to be clear that I have no aversion to modern architecture per se – I’ve enjoyed quite a few rambles with the camera amid the steel and glass, but what’s happening now is not the stuff of good or interesting new building.

Crypt window, Christ Church Spitalfields

This blog has previously touched on the boom in high-rise towers that are soaring above us. Some of them are interesting buildings. Some – and I am thinking particularly about the ‘Walkie Talkie’ – are simply hideous.

But even that is not the point. The gentrification of London – and it’s happening elsewhere too – is getting dangerously out of hand.

There’s a human cost to this: it’s a form of social ‘cleansing’ that has been discussed far and wide. The cost of housing long since became ridiculous – it’s now a question of

St George's Garden

needing to find over £400k for a home in the capital.

In September last year, it was reported that the average cost of a home in London was £515k. It’s £272k in the rest of Britain, which is hardly cheap.

Wages have not risen to the extent that most people can get a mortgage for three times their annual income that will buy them such a home. How mortgage lenders are, therefore, getting around this, I do not know, but it can hardly be sensible and sustainable.

Off Middlesex Street

There’s another aspect to the gentrification, though: it’s producing a city where character is disappearing as fast as the developers move in.

Denmark Street – our Tin Pan Alley – is earmarked for replacement with the anodyne. Norton Folgate, in the City, is under serious threat too. Soho is having its soul stripped out.

Many other areas are going the same way.

In Brixton just this last weekend, there was a demonstration against what’s happening there, with communities feeling that they’re being forced out by redevelopment and rising prices.

Change Alley

The situation is, however, complicated by

certain factors.

Broadway Market, just around the corner from me, has undergone a revolution in the last 12 years or so.

Moving into the area two decades ago, it was three quarters derelict, usually with hardly a soul around and not enough shops to buy the ingredients for a meaningful meal.

As illustrated previously, in a lengthy interview with one of the very few traders who had survived those desolate years, the growth of supermarkets had been a factor in that decay.

Pearly king at Covent Garden

A piece of local graffiti was memorable because it was accurate: “Broadway Market,” it declared: “not so much a sinking ship as a submarine.”

As the street started to revive, some locals complained. Yet apart from some dastardly dealings by local developer Roger Wratten by name rat by nature, it’s not been a case of losing much.

The street is always busy now – which also means it’s a bigger employer – is a darned sight more pleasant (even with the hipsters and more wheelie toys than Hamleys on a Saturday), and has enough of a range of independent shops that you can actually do most of your shopping there.

No, they’re not the same sort of shops, but since the majority of those who had abandoned the street for Tesco all those years ago had shown no sign of coming back, the shops are catering to a different, more middle-class market because that’s how they’ll survive as businesses.

Princelet Street

Those who complained that there shouldn’t have been any market on Saturdays, on the grounds of gentrification, never had any alternative plans to revitalise the street.

Similarly, you see something similar when dozens of people suddenly turn up to protest against a local pub shutting, having not bothered to give it any custom for years, if ever.

In other words, the issue is neither entirely straightforward nor bad per se.

But the problems don’t stop with regeneration. As has been seen across London, rising rents then further push the small independents out, to be replaced by franchises and chains.

Coronet Street

Think Leadenhall Market – a glorious building, tragically sanitised as hiked rents drove out the

likes of a fabulous fishmonger, a poulterer and a butcher.

Think Borough Market – revived to foodie heaven, but now becoming ever more a vastly over-priced stop on the tourist trail.

London is in danger of becoming simply a sort of theme park for those passing through.

So do #DiscoverLondon: look up above street level when you’re on foot: even Oxford Street is interesting when you gaze above the shop fronts. Look at the street art too – some of it can be fascinating and adds to some otherwise dour areas.

Postman's Park

Find out about some of the places where the photographs here were taken. Maybe even go and have a look at some of places they were taken in.

We have a fascinating city. So take a little time to discover beyond the bland and the corporate and the soulless.

And take any opportunity to look a little deeper, if you discover that an area is being scheduled for redevelopment.

Let’s all attempt to ensure that London – and all our cities and towns – are not rendered devoid

of any character by those who have no interest in them other than as money machines.

Look before it's all gone

And don’t forget that local businesses will only survive if we use them. Don’t go crying outside that pub or that butcher or that library when its shutters go up for the last time if you’ve never crossed the threshold in the past decade.

All photographs copyright.

• You can follow @londonerwalking, @SpitalfieldsT and @createstreets on Twitter to find out more about the city, its history, regeneration and development.

A World Cup-sized waste of plastic

The bottle

On most working days, I like to step outside the office and take the air, sipping a peppermint tisane outside the delightful Albertini, which is just off Euston Road.

On Fridays, the Chalton Street market provides additional people-watching possibilities.

A stall that is set up almost directly next to where I tend to be sitting sells a variety of curtains and cushion covers and various similar items, but I’m always most amused by the handwritten notice in one crate, proclaiming that the contents are “‘Genuine’ plastic tablecloths”.

Does the use of single quote marks around the “genuine” mean that we should take the claim with a pinch of salt? Has someone invented a type of ‘fake’ plastic? Is it a costermonger’s joke based on the common conflation of ‘fake’ and ‘plastic’?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but it remains amusing.

Plastic tablecloths – red and white check, of course – have a place. Nothing else is acceptable or appropriate when consuming proper fish and chips in a proper northern chippy that knows how to do them properly.

White mugs of tea – complete with a chip on the side – are also obligatory, as are proper mushy peas, Sarsons vinegar and plates piled high with thick slices of factory bread.

There is a possibility that such a table adornment would be appropriate in a down-to-earth Italian restaurant too, on which could stand a bottle of white, a bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of rose instead …

There are, indeed, myriad uses for plastic that range from the plastic as tacky to the plastic as high-quality material.

It’s a versatile material without which it would be difficult to contemplate modern life as we know it.

But given that substantial amounts of plastics are derived from petrochemicals, which are not an infinite resource, and given that many plastics are not particularly good at biodegrading, one might be forgiven for thinking that it would be sensible to be ... well, sensible about how you use it.

Recycling is sensible too – and not just in terms of sticking things in a bag or crate for collection once a week, but also by using a plastic object more than once.

Yes – even that plastic cutlery that gets divvied out in sandwich shops can be washed and used for more than a single lunch.

Similarly, I doubt I’m the only person who has a bag full of plastic bags in the kitchen. Some are used over and over again, but all have at least a second use, while if I know I’m going shopping, I take a bag or bags with me.

But there are times when you look at something and find yourself musing on the utter stupidity of it – and the absolute waste of resources.

A particular example occurred the other day, when my shopping order included, as expected, a bottle of Listerine mouth wash.

This time, however, something was different.

The cup

It usually involves a plastic top on a plastic bottle – the former of which can be used as a cup. This is sealed in place by, err, plastic.

A spanking new ‘limited edition’ version still sees that – but with the addition of the extra plastic cup, that is then held in place by a further plastic seal.

And by way of explanation, the extra little plastic cup bears the legend “Official oral care sponsor – FIFA World Cup Brasil [sic]”.

Come on brand owner Johnson & Johnson – is this doubling up of a cup (and seals to hold the extra one in place over the usual one) really a responsible use of a resource?

But that little plastic cup actually tells another story that is, in it’s way, just as depressing or soul destroying.

Someone, somewhere, is paid to come up with promotional ideas such as this.

And someone, somewhere, is paid to design such things.

Is that really productive work?

Well presumably it is – in terms of creating profit for the companies in question, but that begs questions about what constitutes productive work and how we add value to society as a whole.

Now I understand the need to design and produce containers for, say, mouth wash. And I understand that design can both be about aesthetics and for rather more utilitarian reasons. And that design can, for instance, reduce the amount of plastic used and thereby save money and resources.

But this little ‘freebie’ has nothing to do with any of that.

To some free market fundamentalists, designing something like this would be more valuable – assuming it increases units sold – than someone who is a nurse in a public health system.

Yet it reflects something that it’s hard not conclude isn’t downright bonkers.

And that bonkersness extends to anyone who might buy a bottle of Listerine simply because it’s got a “limited edition” World Cup cup strapped to it.

For goodness sake – who in all hell is impressed by a company proclaiming that it’s the “official oral care sponsor” of a sports tournament?

Yes – I know how advertising works: I know that even major brands spend fortunes in order to maintain levels of brand awareness, for instance.

Gratuitous picture of Joe Hart

And I get that companies want to have their products associated with success – so you can see the logic of Proctor & Gamble paying Manchester City and England goalkeeper Joe Hart to advertise Head & Shoulders shampoo, just as past generations of men were, presumably, tempted to splash on a bit of Brut by ’enry Cooper.

Those, however, relied on the sportsman promoting an actual product – not offering a ridiculous and inelegantly-branded little plastic cup as an enticement to buy.

Is there really anyone out there who is dozy enough to start using a product or to change the one they use because of such a claim and because of an extra bit of entirely superfluous plastic?

Presumably there must be – but then there are plenty of people out there who have, over the years, fallen for buying one variety of fast food crap over another so that their children can walk away with a bit of plastic tat (which helpfully ties in with marketing a film) or a sugar-laden cereal so that their offspring can have some freebie.

There are, presumably, people who buy a brand because it is advertised that, for every unit sold, a penny will go to some cause or other.

Just buy the product you need/want – and then give 10p to a charitable concern you care about, for goodness sake!

But in Listerine’s single, small marketing scheme, you have an indicator of so much that is wrong in the world today.

And while there’s no guarantee, what’s the betting that the US owners of Listerine, Johnson & Johnson, are far from being particularly interested in Association Football?

Bloody corporate plastic fans.

Pill-pop nation

They're not sweeties

One of the big news stories last week featured reports of a study by Imperial College, London, showing that statins have almost no side-effects.

It came hot on the heels of a report from NICE – the National Institute for Health and Excellence, which among other things, provides guidelines on medical treatments in the UK – announcing that, in order to reduce death from heart disease further, the threshold for prescribing statins should be lowered from a 20% risk over 10 years to a 10% risk over the same time.

Now: a disclaimer. I am not now nor ever have been a scientist or medical expert. So what follows are merely the personal conclusions of someone who might be judged to fall within the latest category that NICE is talking of.

And after the disclaimer, a statement.

I have never had a cholesterol test (I haven’t been near a doctor in years) and, on the basis of what I have read, I do not believe that cholesterol is the big problem or that high cholesterol is the cause of the UK’s rates of heart disease – and I would not willingly take statins myself.

Cholesterol is a vital building block in the body. Evidence suggests it is actually dangerous to drive it down – especially after the age of 50.

Mind most doctors have big doubts about the latest NICE announcements. According to other research by Pulse, the GPs’ magazine, of 511 GPs polled on a variety of issues, 57% opposed the NICE proposal, and 55% would not take a statin or prescribe one for a family member based on the new NICE-proposed lower threshold.

What we seem to be seeing is what Dr Phil Hammond – GP and comedian (and do see him if you get the chance: he’s very good) – has described as the “medicalisation” of society.

Statins have made vast profits for Big Pharma over the years – due to patents and stuff running out, those have reduced of late, so the NICE advice must be, err, nice for these same corporates.

However, it’s worth noting that eight out of the 12 members of the NICE panel that recommended the change have declared ties to the manufacturers, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

On only a very slightly different note, a quick glance at thelist of the NHS website’s partners-in-public-health list – (hat tip to Zoë Harcombe o Zoë Harcombe) – gives an indicator of just how much the country’s health has become utterly tied in with corporate interests and, therefore, with the search for profits.

As I explained three years ago, the current government decided to involve more Big Food representatives in making public health policy – and one of the earliest examples of this sawgovernment health ‘advice’ effectively providing free advertising for branded, processed foods.

It’s not difficult to begin to see where problems lie – or where they can be seen or suspected.

Last week’s research from Imperial College was a meta-analysis: in other words, a meticulous survey of previous surveys – in this case, 29 different studies.

But while the meta-analysis itself had no corporate backers, who knows who backed all those other studies?

Not only do we know that research is often produced that has been financially supported by the industry, but it’s also known that Big Pharma is most secretive with trial data – it doesn’t like sharing it with anyone, even in the medical profession – and there are plenty of people around who will assert that the same companies skew trials to start with by using ‘pre-trial trials’ to weed out anyone who obviously shows signs of side effects.

So the ordinary GP has little chance themselves of knowing all the details of any drug – they have to rely on the companies who sell them, just as we have to rely on our doctors.

The thing with statins, though, is that there is no substantial evidence for the big claim that levels of cholesterol cause heart disease.

That myth came into being because of the American researcher, Ancel Keyes.

After WWII, heart disease among men in the US reached epidemic proportions.

Keyes thought he knew why – that a diet rich in saturated fat caused high cholesterol caused heart disease – and he set out to prove it.

After a small study in the US, using men only, he looked further abroad and eventually produced what has become known as the Seven Countries Study, which bore out his great theory.

The trouble is, Keyes didn’t study seven countries. He studied 22 – and ditched most of the findings because they did not tally with what he wanted to find.

This is not a natural product

It ignores the French ‘Paradox’ – only a paradox if you believe Keyes – that sees the French eat more dairy produce than anyone else on Earth, never mind all that foie gras and duck confit, and yet still have far lower rates of heart disease than exist in the UK or US where the low-fat mantra has been so willingly churned out and gobbled up.

Yet Keyes’s work became the foundation for the health and diet advice of the last 40 years: cut out fat and fill up with starchy carbs.

It’s almost certainly been a contributory factor in the rise of obesity, but on a positive note, it’s provided Big Food with wonderful opportunities for creating and marketing as healthy, artificial fats and fat substitutes.

We now have a position where the British Heart Foundation has links not just with the NHS – see that previous link – but also directly with Unilever, which produced Flora.

And Flora is now able to be marketed as ‘heart healthy’ – watch out for the link between the foundation and the product in advertising. Unilever is also on that list of NHS ‘partners’.

In recent months, an increasingly desperate-sounding British Heart Foundation has taken to making statements on health stories that have the ring of a siege mentality about them.

When Sweden become the first country in the West to ditch the low fat diet advice last October, the foundation was sticking its fingers in its ears and claiming that low fat was still best.

With each new piece of research that is slowly rehabilitating natural saturated fats, it does the same.

The cynic might speculate on how, were it to do otherwise, that relationship with Unilever could become strained.

An increasing number of doctors are voicing concerns about medicalisation, just as increasing numbers of doctors are also stepping away from the diet mantras of the last four decades.

We’re starting to see the issue of sugar being raised much more, in terms of the serious damage that high consumption can do.

And it’s worth noting that, in the case of sugar, much of it is hidden.

I was in M&S a few weeks ago, looking for a yogurt for breakfast. I couldn’t find one that didn’t have sugar in it – not least the ones that are sold on the basis that they are ‘low fat’; healthy, in other words.

This IS a natural product – and it will not harm you

And then there’s high-fructose corn syrup that manufacturers have taken to shoving into all manner of processed foods to make them more palatable and to make the consumer buy them again and again.

Again, this is not obviously sweet foods we’re talking about. High-fructose corn syrup is used in breads, cereals, breakfast bars, yogurts again and soups.

Who thinks of sugar in soup or in bread? Cereals have been sold to the public for decades as a healthy breakfast, and breakfast bars come into the same category.

This is what hidden sugars means.

As an increasing number of people raise the issue of these hidden sugars, and as an increasing number of comparisons are made between the attitude of Big Food and that of Big Tobacco, the industry is fighting back.

Those links with the likes of the NHS and the British Heart Foundation should make us skeptical of any defences of what has become the status quo on health and diet advice.

Just as those links between NICE members and Big Pharma, and between Big Pharma and disease, should make us equally skeptical.

What is needed is far greater transparency in all these cases – and far better regulation, properly enforced.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with profits. But when the search for profits trumps people, then it’s a sign that something is very wrong.

And what is also needed is an honest and thorough approach to dealing with the problems caused by a national approach to food that includes using takeaways and ping food to the extent that the UK does, not taking time to eat properly, constant snacking, the demise of cooking skills, a prevailing attitude of food as fuel, vast amounts of media space given over to faddy diets, new homes built without proper kitchens etc etc – and not just a rather lame sense of correcting it all my medicalising the populace.

That won’t be as easy as sticking fingers in ears and endlessly intoning the low-fat mantra, irrespective of the body of evidence against it, but it would be a damned sight more effective than the equivalent of the three little pigs inviting the wolf to join them for dinner.

Further reading:

The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr Malcolm Kendrick

Although now dead the Cholesterolosaurus will march on by Dr Malcolm Kenderick

Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre

Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman

Worth following on Twitter:

@KailashChandOBE

@JoannaBlythman

@bengoldacre

@DrAseemMalhotra

@zoeharcombe

@drbriffa

The above-mentioned may not agree with all I have written here, but are all very much worth reading and following on the matter raised in this post.

Make that salt mine

It would be easy to think, based on general media coverage, that salt was one of the biggest enemies you can face in the search for a healthy diet.

Funnily enough, my mother – who, as a physiotherapist, had first to undertake basic nursing training – has always found the advice on cutting salt to be contrary to what they were told.

The thinking then was that you would consume as much salt as your body required.

Of course, that was at the end of the 1940s and was before these halcyon days of vast amounts of processed foods stuffed with hidden salts and sugars.

Indeed, a few years ago, I read comments from a GP who was visited by a lady who was worried about her husband.

He apparently put what she thought was a lot of salt on his meal at dinner.

The doctor stressed that that was not a problem: the problem was those hidden salts.

Now I eat very little processed food. And I’m careful about how much I use in cooking – some in, say, casseroles etc, and some in potatoes, pasta or rice, but little else. I’d rather add later – sometimes as a specific garnish, as the French do with fleur de sel.

However, in the last week, there have been no starchy carbs – the weather ensures I have no inclination for them. So, a pretty much perfect diet from the perspective of salt advice.

Yesterday, an hour or so after a light lunch – some left-over boerevors and salad – I felt exhausted; really shattered.

The germ of an idea occurred to me.

I’d had no caffeine for several days, as a measure against dehydration in this hot weather (and I am not complaining about the weather, by the way).

I’d also been making more than usually sure that I was drinking plenty of water – probably little less than two litres by that stage yesterday afternoon.

So, all-round sensible stuff, combined with not spending too much time in the direct sun.

The inkling was really quite simple, although on the surface, slightly less sensible. I suddenly had the sense that I wanted – no: that I needed – salt, so I picked up a bag of ‘salty and sweet’ popcorn, into which I tossed extra salt, together with a can of diet Pepsi for the zip of some caffeine.

Half an hour later, I felt restored.

It seems that, in being so careful, I’d probably flushed away vital salts and minerals over the course of a few days, and not replenished these.

It’s easy to forget, given media coverage of health issues, that salt is essential to our good health.

We need it. It is not an optional extra. We don’t need sugar. But we do need salt.

And perhaps, because I usually have some caffeine in a day, my body was objecting to none.

So today, some caffeine, and a pot of cottage cheese for lunch, to which could be added salt – indeed, it’s bland enough that it benefits fro that, and a twist of pepper. Fruit to follow and plenty more water – this should be more balanced.

In the evening, Nigel Slater’s quick version of that Moroccan classic, chicken with lemons and olives. No rice, but a little salt in the cooking of this, plus, of course, the natural saltiness of the olives.

And at 8pm, I'm still feeling quite lively.

I can’t help but wonder, though, how many other people are experiencing anything similar.

A thought occurs. Some years ago, we were in Barcelona and The Other Half got a mild case of sun stroke. We only really realised when, later that day, he was exhausted and without an appetite, but found himself licking salt off his finger in a restaurant.

Somehow, he realised, with a salt cellar in front of him, that he needed it - and he's not a salt head.

My mother's tutors were probably right. What has changed, I suspect, is simply that the quantity of salt shovelled into processed foods has changed the equation. We need salt. Our bodies know it - and processed food exploits that.

Doesn't make the behaviour of the food industry any nicer, does it?