At our major launch earlier this year, we said that we were committed to ‘let the people speak’.  Indeed that is our credo.

Well, it would appear that both our dear Borough of Wandsworth and their chums at TfL are following our approach and are now letting us all put forward our views in relation to their proposed re-configuation of their globally infamous ‘One Way System’.

Pleasant young chaps from TfL armed with a few diagrams, artist’s impressions and a general sense of optimism braved the pre-Christmas shopping hordes last Saturday (15 November) in The Arndale Centre (sorry – Southside! We may suppose that it gets it new name from being …. ‘south of the Wandsworth One Way System).

Siting their pitch among the mobile phone unblockers, eye-brow weavers and smokeless cigarette hawkers they were clearly ready for all-comers.

But it would appear that their ‘charm offensive’ (surely an oxymoron) was not greeted with total joy and ecstasy ….

These intrepid ‘men of the road’ were more than a little surprised at quite a few things:

– the degree of scepticism, nay cynicism, that they encountered …. ‘Your minds are already made up’. ‘The decisions have been taken’. ‘This is a sham’.

– the level of knowledge, relating to current traffic volumes and pollution levels

– the sense that the scheme was for the sole benefit of newcomers (especially in the new Ram Quarter) and not the long-term residents

– the willingness, verging on the triumphant, to point out fundamental errors and omissions

– the collective mirth at their incorrectly captioned artists’ impressions

Anyway – they’ll be back in The Arndale (sorry – Southside) tomorrow (19 November) and it will be interesting to see whether they’ll have changed their pitch at all.

Let us hope that their proposed plans to unblock our traffic congestion and pollution will be as good as their neighbours’ ability to unblock our mobile phones.