Dear N16

Congratulations to Sam Britton for his or her description of the near-lunatic introduction of bendy buses into London. Anyone who uses our streets, in whatever capacity – cyclist, walker, or driver – knows that these 80-metre-long nightmares are the wrong solution for the transport of the public in our mediaeval, congested city. We’re not Paris, or Amsterdam. We don’t have enormous straight boulevards that suit long vehicles. Stoke Newington Church Street, or come to that, Oxford Street, are now even more of a nightmare to travel through for everyone. Honestly, Ken.

But there was another point touched on in the letter that seems to have escaped people’s notice. That was that TFL want to ‘give value for money and reduce emissions’ for the London public. Why doesn’t this apply to the thousands of jet aircraft that fly straight over us every week?

In Highbury and Stoke Newington, we are now directly underneath the flight paths of thousands of jet aircraft going into Heathrow. They come in from both the north-east and north-west Heathrow stacks, turn over Crouch End and Finsbury Park (or somewhere thereabouts), and scream over Highbury, Islington and Stoke Newington on their way down to the landing path to Heathrow. I’ve spoken to BAA about it, spoken to the CAA, and all that they say is that ‘nothing has changed in the way that air traffic is conducted over London.’ I beg to differ. When the wind is from the west, I (and thousands of other people in Highbury, Stoke Newington and Hackney, I imagine) am woken at 6.00am, and have to endure the racket of thousands of jet engines going overhead till 11.00pm.
Why has it suddenly become convenient for Heathrow Air Traffic Control to do this? Why do we have to take the brunt of noise and pollution from two streams of aircraft from the east and west turning into their final approach to Heathrow? Why are they flying so low, so continuously on one path, and why over N5, N10, N16, E1, and N1? (We’re at least 15 miles east of the airport!) 

I’ve read on the HACAN (a lobbying group against aircraft noise, first started in west London) website that BAA has finally admitted that 50% of all traffic into Heathrow is now routed over Highbury, Islington, Stoke Newington and Hackney: ‘BAA has confirmed that half of all flights landing at Heathrow Airport are routed over densely-populated areas of North London. The company, which owns the airport, told pressure group HACAN ClearSkies that many North London residents can expect hundreds of planes flying over their homes most days of the year. Planes land over London when the prevailing west wind is blowing.’ 

BAA have been evasive in the replies they’ve given to my complaints. ‘May I again assure you that there has been no change in policies relating to how Heathrow operates or how Air Traffic Controllers direct traffic’ is their standard response. All of us in London are under risk from the bad siting of Heathrow Airport.

It really is in the wrong place, to the west of one of the heaviest populated cities in the world, when the prevailing winds are from the west, with aircraft flying into that wind when landing. God knows what would happen if one of these planes came down (as has happened in Amsterdam, for example).

But what we do know is how noisy and polluting these aircraft are. And how they are now routed over us in Highbury, Stoke Newington and Hackney. Why are people like Jeremy Corbyn, the blessed Livingstone, Lord Porritt (he really is, you know) and all the ‘environmentalists’ not raising hell about this?

Yours sincerely, James Slattery,
Legard Road, London N5

Dear N16

More Monkey Business. Herr Quint’s Curious Conundrum and the Perplexing Puzzle of The Joystrings: A Humble Response With reference to Mr Cor Quint’s remarks regarding The Joystrings song ‘It’s An Open Secret’ (see Letters, last issue) and his comment ‘I do not know of a Jan (...Senior)’, may I endeavour to enlighten him.

Although, as aficionados of one of the ‘60s top beat combos will know, beater of the mighty skins in The Joystrings and owner of the finest pair of cheekbones this side of Ginger Baker’s Air Force was a certain Mr Wycliffe Noble, it would not be an inaccurate, albeit a highly metaphoric description, to use the words Jan Senior to describe the father of the young gentleman featured in the interview you refer to (N16, issue 12, Monkey Business).

I have known Mr Jan Noble, (aka Wycliffe Junior – hereafter referred to as simply ‘Junior’), one of our most highly regarded, if not always upstanding, members of the literary community, for several years and have had the always entertaining and rarely dubious pleasure of collaborating with him in various musical projects, most recent of which I gather formed the core of Mr Priest’s interview. May I say that he has inherited many of the very excellent qualities that his father possesses: an almost metronomic sense of time (if not, in his case, punctuality), a strong sense of idealism, libertarianism and those afore-mentioned good looks – as many of the ladies of the borough will testify.

Returning swiftly to the matter in hand however, I must offer the opinion that, although the song ‘It’s An Open Secret’ is a great single, The Joystrings were primarily an album group: show me a better Christmas collection than ‘Well Seasoned’: it contains none of the tedious commercial trappings that have become associated with the winter season, has some highly individual re-workings of blues standards and more importantly contains, what I regard to be, their finest track, ‘Keep Me In Your Love’. Nestled away in between the carols and candles is such a glittering bauble of beat-pop psychedelia that, if one were not aware of the strict Temperance of the band, one might fancifully suppose their influences came from some of the more exotic sources that fragranced the creative juices of pop-groups of that era.

As for acquiring an autograph for your copy, Mr Noble would, I’m sure, be flattered at such a request. He is a now a fit and healthy octogenarian residing in a beautiful self-restored house overlooking the River Thames, has his classic Sonor drum-kit set up in a study at his home and, when not conducting his daily business and attending anti-war demonstrations, can be sometimes seen coaxing the equally rakishly handsome visage of his vintage MG around the byways of Surrey.

Thankfully, he did not, like many of his contemporaries of our most colourful decade, succumb to any Green Manalashis, decide to re-dedicate his life and logic to yogic flying or feel the necessity to make a pilgrimage to Africa to ‘discover’ ‘rhythm’. Henceforth, examples of his excellent and humanistic architecture can be seen around the capital, gently chastising the excesses of modernists who did not feel the necessity to enable those less fortunate amongst us to access their creations: a most notable example being the graceful curve of the disabled ramp that softens the rather brutish and fairly bland

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