London's drowning in clutter

What an anti-climax London must be to tourists. A supposedly beautiful city is covered in tat, caked in lurid colours and nobody does a thing about it.

I’ll explain what I mean. Paris is a magnificent place. This was encapsulated for me when I visited there when I was 16. I went for school trip, and being a teenage Northerner, I was drawn to a cultural hotspot. Not the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe or Sacre Coeur.  No, the place me and my cohorts visited was McDonald on the Champs Elysees. Now I don’t know if this fact was made up, or if it has been enforced anywhere else since, but I was told this particular franchise was the only McDonalds in the world to have a gold ‘M’ on it. In fact, all of the signs on the front were gold.  Spending much of my youth in Hull, I was shocked that anywhere would take pride in the appearance of their buildings to the extent they’d make a massive company change their signs.

McDonalds on the Champs Elysees

Fast forward to London in 2010 and what do we have? With a typical glance down a London street you’ll see, at least, the following clutter:

• For sale signs
• Sold signs
• To Let signs
• Let signs
• Congestion charge cameras
• Congestion charge road markings
• Traffic lights
• Bus lanes
• Speed cameras
• Speed camera signs
• Parking meters
• Double yellow lines
• Red lines

Ah... Glorious London

The list could easily go on but I won’t labour the point. Most of the above are pretty standard signs and they arguably deserve to be erected, but the first 4 should be removed as soon as possible and the others could be better positioned. There seems to be no authority to take control and make a stand. London is a damn expensive place to live and it’s made all the more intolerable by the lack of concern about this kind of matter. I’m sure I sound like a town councillor in training, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. People should care. People should have some civic pride. Not forget to remove old signs, or not give a damn about an increasing amount of clutter that gradually drags an area down.

It’s not just signs. As the list above shows, there are a multitude of colours that adorn our roads. Leaving aside the fact that most of them have gaping holes in them, they now have black tarmac, white lines, red bus lanes, yellow lines, red routes and now some roads have terrible blue cycle lanes. I’m a big fan of cycle lanes, but adding a thin line of blue to the road does not constitute a safe, durable bike line. It’s a cheap halfway house and is yet another attack on our eyes and on our city.

Let’s end this lack of interest and care. London should be a great city, at the moment it’s a cluttered mess.