Six months on from the July 7th London Bombings

Six months on from July 7th and commuting numbers back to normal

It's hard to believe that six months ago travelling on the London Underground, buses and trains was very different than it is today. But it is a tribute to ordinary people's strength in London and across the UK that terrorism did not succeed it its attempts to have us fleeing from the streets and scared to travel on public transport. For a while the numbers on public transport dropped, naturally, they would. Everyone looked at everyone else with an air of suspicion. Men carrying rucksacks were constantly stopped. Companies tried to capitalise on that fear and produced see-through bags (we met the man who created Freedom Bags) and survival kits. People who "looked a bit foreign" felt uncomfortable travelling on public transport and obviously we had that horrible day when the police with whatever error of judgements they had, shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes for supposedly acting suspicious and looking a bit foreign.

On a personal level the London Bombings changed my life in a totally unexpected way. Believe it or not, prior to the bombings I was feeling listless, unenthusiastic, generally miserable and also pretty sick & tired of blogging too. Luckily I was working part time on the day of the bombings, and was at home. From a tenatative post that Geoff began about the day and "power surges", I was able to pick up from where he left off and on a rougly half hourly basis blog the events of that terrible, terrible day.

I was so, so, so, lucky. Many other people were not and their lives were ended or changed forever due to the fact that simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had never felt so aware of the lottery of life & death. I had never felt so pleased that my friends and family were all safe and well. I had never felt such pride of being part of a city that would not be beaten by mindless terror and cowardly acts in the name of politics or religion or whatever. Only a few days ago it was announced that a film The Sucide Bomber is being made about a disenchanted British Asian Muslim from Bradford and is set in the UK and India - so perhaps for a fictional point of view we may see what leads people to commit these acts.



After a tiring and emotional day of blogging I saw that my blog had been "elevated" to the status of "citizen journalism". I'd had emails and calls with international media throughout the day as initially ordinary people such as myself and contributors to the amazing Wikipedia were as frequent as journalists in trying to make sense and report on what had happened in London. There's a great site with a movie that shows how much that Wikipedia page changed thoughout the day.



Then I got involved in the publicity and PR for Tube Relief with Geoff and Neil. This invovled over sixty people including many other regular contributers and commenters to this blog (see this list which includes Fimb, the truly amazing Tami - hope Christmas in New Orleans was OK!, Jon Choo, Jenni Hardi, Chris Green, Chris Presswell and Jonny Lyon) we made a stand and we got local and national publicity.

For some the challenge part was fun & united way to show the world that we were not afraid to travel on the Tube for the hell of it. But we all wanted to raise money and help the survivors and the families of those killed. We raised around £12,000 for the London Bombings Relief Charitable Fund. For many it was the first time they had done fundraising and even though I didn't do the whole challenge as I was blogging the day, I managed to raise over £180 to go toward the pot (my fundraising page is still open if you would like to donate).

Since then coming into contact with London Bombing survivors like the incredible Rachel and hearing the many stories about the courage and strength of ordinary people - transport staff, paramedics, the emergency services, the police and just ordinary commuters - I have never felt so good to be alive or determined to play my small part in reporting on life on the London Underground!

Deadline for National Rail Photo Competition

Get your pictures taken from National Rail Trains in today

Just a reminder that today is the deadline for pictures for the National Rail Photo Competition that I mentioned in December. To enter you have to take a shot of London from a train. Now that's a National Rail train, not a tube. According to Metro who the competition is in conjuction with: "Viewing London from a train offers a wealth of photographic opportunities. Competition entries could show famous monuments or landmarks ......Alternatively, photos could be of attractive parks, streets or skylines that simply sum up the city at Christmas - a view that may be missed from the pavement or in a car."

I've entered a few including the one below of Vauxhall Bus Station (which is next to Vauxhall Tube station) from my South West Train at Vauxhall National Rail Station



I don't actually think this shot is that great, but I like being able to see the reflection of the train window and I also like the general mad shapes of the bus station there anyway.

Full terms and conditions for the competition can be found here. The winners will be announced week commencing 9th January 2006. Prints must be sent to Metro photocompetition, Fourth Floor, 121 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 6Ql and digital images, no larger than 8Mb should be emailed to londonphotos@atoc.org. The prizes which are worth up to £1,000 and more entry details were already mentioned in my original post.

Good luck if you are entering!

London Underground Fashion Victims

Fashion Victims on the Tube

Back to the regular weekly look at people spotted on the London Underground who could be conisdered slaves to fashion. It's quite a wide definition, but is either people who follow what they think are the latest trends and aren't really doing a good job of it, in that the look is "wrong" on them, or they are wearing something so bizarre it puts them in a league of their own. I spose you could argue that they are therefore "trend setters", but with a trend that it's unlikely others will follow.

Anyway, this week has been a bit light on "victims", possibly because with the holiday season there still aren't as many people on the London Underground as normal and as there will be next week. So only two and they are both showing the "art" of wearing a mini skirt.

Not quite a victim

The lady below almost didn't make it onto the blog, as overall it's not too bad a look. But as it's so cold at the moment, (I took this picture yesterday) I was surprised to see such a short skirt with such short boots and such thin tights.



She got off at the same stop as me and then proceeded to walk up a long escalator on the left. Probably much to the delight of several male passengers who were standing on the right. Let's just say the Japanese subway gropers or people who take pictures looking up women's skirts on the subway, would have had a field day!

OHMIGOD they've snapped Kenny's Sister

Now the lady below is a perfect contender for Kenny from South Park's older, fashion conscious sister.



The brilliant thing about her keeping her parka hood on throughout her journey has meant that I haven't had to obscure her face. But you can see she has the classic furry "Ugg" style boots together with the classic fashion victim metallic bag. The mini skirt was truly hideous in a thin denim and with little "frills" at the bottom and at the back.

Even inside the carriage she still kept her hood up, making the Kenny comparison even more apparent. Unfortunately I was shaking with laughter so much that it was hard to not make it look obvious to the rest of the carriage what I was doing.



The last entry for the London Underground fashion victims and all of them together can be seen on the following Flickr set

Last Episode of the The Tube TV Series tonight on ITV1

The Tube on TV goes retro

Just a reminder that tonight at 7.30pm on ITV1 (London region) is the last episode of The Tube a "fly on the wall" documentary TV series about life on the London Underground from the perspective of the Tube's employees.

This 8th and last episode - Moving On (Old & New) looks at how stations, rolling stock trains and names have changed on the Tube from 1860s to today. We'll see how "Jason Collins has managed the state-of-the-art Canary Wharf station, but must now get used to running historic Waterloo and security conscious Westminster".

Apparently for those of you with alternative regions of ITV - if you have Sky Digital, you can retune your TV to watch ITV London temporarily. Also the whole series may well be repeated on Sky Travel.

Sorry I've been a bit remiss about reporting when these have been on, as there have been lots of gaps in the programming and I've not been able to just think "Ah, every Thursday on ITV1 at 7.30pm", but I hope those who watch enjoy it anyway!

Here's also a screengrab from one of the episodes that Angela from Mosaic Productions kindly sent me some time ago of staff member John Polley and his model Tube railway (www.metromodels.net) that was featured in one of the earlier episodes in December.

Talks at Acas broken down - Sunday's London Underground Strike On

UPDATE - 5pm - I've just learnt that today's talks have broken down, so it looks like the strike will be going ahead from 6.30pm on Sunday 8th January for 24 hours.

See the BBC for the latest on this. However, if it is anything like the New Year's Eve strike the majority of the station staff will still carry on working.

The last weekday London Underground strike was in June 2004, even though with the continuous threat we get of them, people may be surprised to learn that it was as long ago as that!

London Underground are asking the RMT to return to the negotiating table: "'We remain committed to resolving this dispute at any time and with the least possible inconvenience to Londoners.' If the strike goes ahead it would affect services from 1830 on Sunday evening and all day Monday. As on New Year's Eve, LU would again seek to run the best service possible on these days."

Meanwhile, the RMT offices will be open on Sunday from 13.00 to "improve our organisation on the day of this strike". You can read Bob Crow's and RMT's instructions to striking staff here.


RMT and London Underground actually meet today to try to resolve strike

Well after all the kerfuffle about talks to avert the last Tube strike, it looks like the ones today at concilliation service Acas are due to go ahead. It also looks like Bob Crow is actually shortening his Eyptian holiday by one day to be there, as yesterday he agreed to attend.

We already know that Mr Crow is also planning on balloting members "blatant breaches of safety" during the New Year's Eve strike, when the majority of stations actually operated in spite of the strike. Crow is proposing a "go slow" (will we even notice on certain lines?) rather than an all out strike to protest about this. These breaches of safety are "strenuously denied" by London Underground (LU).

Sheriff Ken Livingstone told BBC London that he predicted several more strikes by the RMT who, he claimed, were left shame faced when the majority of Tube station staff turned up for work on the 31st December.

"Rather than say they made a mistake, they will dig in and try to make the next strike more effective," he said.

If today's talks do not resolve the issues, there will be a London Underground strike from 6.30pm on Sunday 8th January for 24 hours.

You were all very vociferous with your comments on the New Year's Eve strike (which was great!), so what do you think will happen with the next planned one?