Taking the piste

For those who don’t like going to the London Boat Show because it gets in the way of their winter skiing programme, there’s good news on the horizon.
London Mayor Boris Johnson is planning to span the Thames by stretching a cable car from the front of the ExCel show hall to the O2 in North Greenwich.

The privately-funded cable car would carry 2,500 passengers per hour in each direction 50 metres above the ground/ or sea level.

It’s a shame such initiatives aren’t offered to folks living in the real East End. It’s only since the satellite second city of Canary Wharf has sprung up that big business has tried to join up the two Londons. Many are worried that show goers don’t like the still rather bleak – compared to the West End – pastures of Docklands and want initiatives such as these to pull ’em in.

A more suitable place for the cable car, at least for the benefit of real Londoners, would have been the far end of the Royal Docks at Beckton where a former slag heap has been turned into a dry ski-run and is known locally as the Beckton Alps.

Pic: Daily Mail