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London's 850-year-old food markets to close

bbc.co.uk

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Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#241

Post by pmontra »

no_wizard wrote: post #225
seizethecheese wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, startups should have absurd mission statements, while managers of the city of London should be more sober.

Wait why should startups have absurd mission statements? That doesn’t make sense to me

They shouldn't but they do. Making the world a better place is not what founders have in mind. What they have in mind is "we are looking for an exit and retire young", for nearly all of them. Unfortunately those words are not something they can write in a mission statement so they must be creative.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#242

Post by lmm »

hi_hi wrote: post #3

This makes me deeply sad. I use to live near to the market on St Johns Street, which is a direct route to the Smithfield. There was once a burst water main that serviced a nearby hospital that caused St Johns Street to be closed down as the flood uncovered bones which needed to be excavated and investigated. They eventually were identified as cattle bones which were a few hundred years old, from when the road was not…

The commercial interests are downstream of very real human wants and needs. London is in a housing crisis.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#243

Post by lmm »

zeristor wrote: post #59

Farringdon station happens to be where the Thameslink line from North to South London, intersects with the East to West Elizabeth line. As the Elizabeth Line was being finished I realised that the whole area around there is going to change hugely. Mind you if that’s the case the station would need to be rebuilt. The article discusses converting the market to a social space to make the most of the new Museum of London…

> how on Earth is a new market in Dagenham spec’d as costing a large fraction of a billion quid?

Partly cost disease, partly just that even Dagenham is expensive these days.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#244

Post by lmm »

samaltmanfried wrote: post #192

I just searched for modern images of Smithfield market, and what on earth is that ghastly awning they've bolted onto that beautiful historic (presumably Victorian) facade? For example: https://dm1igrl0afsra.cloudfront.net/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/...

Between a beautiful facade and not getting rained on in London, I know which I'd pick.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#245

Post by Fnoord »

bruce511 wrote: post #227
Fnoord wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot were straight out manipulated, including by foreign agents (Russia).

Democracy is a system of government. It asks people to vote on important decisions (like brexit) and to choose leaders to make day-to-day decisions on their behalf. It is, of course, the system favored in the West and evident touted as the "best system". Being 'best' of course does not necessarily make it good. Large groups of people are easily swayed based on fear, anger, perception, rhetoric and so on. The implicat…

Your argument only works when politicians don't lie, when they're sincere, when people are not getting deceived. It is unreasonable to ask of people of low and moderate intelligence who lack time cause overburdened with work to do proper research in a world of fake news (read: propaganda) and micro targeting. Honestly, I find it victim blaming.

For example, Trump distanced himself from Project 2025. Now the people he has selected for his government are from Heritage Foundation and all that.

Furthermore, he incited a coup yet still is going to sit on a throne. That is not democracy in my book.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#246

Post by briandear »

Symbiote wrote: post #123
Hilift wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is completely incorrect, please don't spread culture-war lies on HN. The £12.50 charge is for old, polluting cars. Petrol cars made since around 2005 are exempt, and diesel cars since 2015. Vans from ~2006 and 2016 respectively. https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/car...

What “culture war” are you talking about? The one where Brits are frustrated with how their country has gone off the deep end in terms of sanity?

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#247

Post by Animats »

It took this long?

Paris closed Les Halles in 1973.[1]

New York's Fulton Fish Market moved in 2005.[2]

A wholesale food market is a transportation hub. It needs good road access. If you can't easily get semitrailer trucks to it, it's in the wrong place. At one time Smithfield was served by underground freight rail, but that shut down long ago. Smithfield has a setup where maybe eight semis can parallel park on the street and back up to loading docks. Hunts Point Market in New York has space for over a thousand.

It's the end of an era, though. One of the last of the big public markets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Halles

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Fish_Market

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#248

Post by mintplant »

sfjailbird wrote: post #92
teractiveodular wrote: post #43

It's interesting to see how cities are handling the increasing bifurcation of wholesale and retail markets. In Sydney, the current Fish Market is a grotty assemblage of small warehouses in what's now a prime waterfront location of the city that has become an unlikely tourist attraction, but still serves the wholesale market. They're building a new one right next to it that looks far nicer, leaves tourists much less a…

If anyone is looking for a good read, there's a great book called Arcadia , which revolves around this trend of traditional city food markets being supplanted by upscale hipster traps.

Any idea who wrote it? There are many books with this title.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#249

Post by Lio »

briandear wrote: post #246
Symbiote wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely incorrect, please don't spread culture-war lies on HN. The £12.50 charge is for old, polluting cars. Petrol cars made since around 2005 are exempt, and diesel cars since 2015. Vans from ~2006 and 2016 respectively. https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/car...

What “culture war” are you talking about? The one where Brits are frustrated with how their country has gone off the deep end in terms of sanity?

Speak for yourself.

I have a 2014 diesel car so I pay the charges when I visit cites.

I don’t drive much which is why I keep an old car. I’m fine with the charges. The air in London and Birmingham is gross.

Anything that can be done for the people that live there should be.

Re: London's 850-year-old food markets to close

#250

Post by madaxe_again »

fakedang wrote: post #229
hermitcrab wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It is shocking how little money it takes to buy influence in the UK. I reckon I could afford my own MP.

You can afford the PM for 50k pounds and the chancellor of the exchequer for 20k if they're Tories.

You can get yourself a seat in lords for about £80k of donation, still - the threshold is surprisingly low.
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