Oh, look - Nine Elms disease at last reported by Evening Standard

I was wondering when London's main media outlets would start to look harder at the miracle of redevelopment that is happening very fast along the southern bank of the river Thames, between Vauxhall Bridge and Chelsea Bridge.

Of course it was all Olympic excitement when the plans were announced, way back in 2012 - a new life for the old iconic Power Station, vibrant new communities where in the past all we had had were council estates, markets and cats-and-dogs homes.

And a rather grim recycling centre, and an awful lot of gravel/infill/chippings/cement or whatever it is that Hanson et al pour into the back of those high-velocity cement mixer trucks that go up and down Queenstown Road at all hours of the day, spraying it with cyclist-toxic pebbledash.

Now, thanks to the Evening Standard's op-ed heavyweight Simon Jenkins, we can be sure that this indeed is part of the big problem.

In today's (25.03.14) issue Jenkins waxes very shirty about the empty-property problem that is now bedevilling his own manor - Kensington & Chelsea, of course. Then he fires a salvo aimed at the massed forces of those who are juicing this city dry with their  rapid-build, off-the-plan schemes:

"The south bank of the Thames is becoming Europe's version of Dubai's Palm Island, the winnings of an evil world stashed in Boris's behemoths littering the London skyline".

He adds that  the rich developers will continue to choose nice old houses in Knightsbridge and Kensington for themselves - and that their weird high-rise investments in Bermondsey and Blackfriars and Vauxhall  are likey to remain empty, an "insult to London".

Well, I can't help but sympathise. Chiefly, I must admit, because those new high rises along the Nine Elms strip are going to totally obliterate what had once been a rather charming, back-end of view of Westminster.

A pox on you all, whoreson pimps, you fat-pursed invaders of Vauxhall. A curse on you, all of you!