A plaque, a small street and a hot political issue

It's a small street in Hampstead, but given events, events dear boy, events, it's highly significant...

The street is Rowland Hill Street and this plaque notes the former house of Sir Rowland Hill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowland_Hill_(postal_reformer)

Hill's reputation was formidable and established during his lifetime and he was a key political figure in non-Conservative Government's as a passionate advocate of public service, social reform and institutional reform that sought to break vested interest and development based solely on profit.

The plaque erected by the Society of Arts has under it a small brass plaque that reads:

THE ABOVE PLAQUE WAS FIRST ERECTED

BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS IN

1892 AND MOVE TO ITS PRESENT

LOCATION IN MAY 1978

Just writing this post I'm recalling the march we did to try and save the local Post Offices from closure in 2005 when Councillor Margaret Little (pictured right in the picture we took then)supported the Belsize Residents Association and the Heath & Hampstead Society... sadly those Post Offices have closed across Belsize by this Labour Government.

Hang on at the back - another new one

The speed of commercial change isn't just the market - some of it is also the consequence of something directly highly political and so we're back in South End Green seeing the emergence of a new salon and hairdressers.

Nothing against the company or the trade (genuinely) but it is in the site of ye olde South End Road Post Office

http://474towin.blogspot.com/2008/02/and-so-post-office-closures-start.html

The flicker of commercial life in that the store isn't laying empty for month after month means that this development is welcome and indeed a warm welcome to ENZ.

[And with that warm welcome goes a small plea that you join in with the community activity, the fairs, the christmas lights and other local stuff - South End Green has a strong sense of community - let's keep it and make it even better!]

But my sense of justice for the elderly, those on low income and traders who needed the post office means I'm still slightly riled each time I recollect (pic left).

And I for one certainly won't be forgetting that our Labour MP failed to vote to save Post Offices when there was a close parliamentary vote in the House of Commons.

Ye olde sat nav... on Haverstock Hill

We're on Haverstock Hill for this one with the early form of Sat Nav

The old milestone just down from the Sir Richard Steele
http://474towin.blogspot.com/2009/01/pub-in-which-to-put-pen-to-paper.html

It marks the spot "4 miles from the post office ____north"

I think that this is the Post Office in St Martin le Grand (Street's of Belsize 1991).

It's incredibly charming and i think important as historical feature. Interesting is the lack of net wear considering that this is prob mid/late Victorian (I would guess it's c. 1860/1870) and climate change has seen more erosion in the last ten years than over the previous hundred!

If you are out for a walk then take this in on your travels... it's to be appreciated.

A reminder of the scare of an empty building

I just stumbled across this in my photo file and it reminded me of ther brief period when local residents and traders were worried about the shops laying empty and the nervousness of what was coming.

We are looking here at the shops opposite Hampstead Post Office on the High Street just near the zebra crossing (which I think I'm standing on when I took this picture).

Empty shops can be so devastating and the effect on perception, moral and actual trade so demoralising...

So it's good when the refurb happens and they re-open...

http://474towin.blogspot.com/2009/01/two-shops-merge-into-one-unit.html

In the age of the mobile phone...

Well, I suppose the advent of the mobile phone always meant that phone boxes would fade and it's been coming for a while

But this feels like one of the oddest pcitures I have seen for a while.

It's taken on Hampstead High Street - it's just next to the still open, long-queue Post Office.

There are two phone booths, but one, as you can see is empty, gutted.

I find myself split over phone boxes, having had to use one the other day I found that I didn't carry the right change, that the price had gone up of calls and that in fact this 'cash call' cost much more than from my mobile phone and that most scary of all I don't remember mobile numbers any more. My phone remembers the numbers for me...

There's currently a consultation taking place that gives phone companies the ability to remove vast swathes of current provision, but it also has a clause enabling local councils to veto the removal.

Times they are a changing ...

Queuing - what queue?

When the latest round of Post Office closures were being discussed one of the main concerns was over queuing at the surviving branches.

It was an issue we took up and one that I shared concerns over. However, the reality is that I work long office hours and therefore don't access Post Offices during the peak hours so I might have been wrong.

Last Friday morning I nipped into my local Post Office and what did I find? A huge almighty queue - now I ought to warn that the picture isn't of the queue I saw - the picture is a local Post Office queue that I sneaked a while back. Post Offices are being very coy and nervous about being caught with long queues - oh to be a mystery shopper.

But the reality I experienced last Friday morning was a big queue and a long wait for a task that was actually genuinely 10 minutes max - as it was it took 20 minutes - aaaggghhhh.

But at least I didn't have to walk from Parliament Hill, past the closed post office in South End Green and then up to the top of the hill in Hampstead High Street!