Finally, we have something to thank the Nine Elms developers for...OK, only joking.

See what the developers of the Battersea - Nine Elms riverside estate for the super-rich have achieved! They have blocked the view of the helicopter-killer St George Wharf Tower from the south! Rejoice, rejoice! So long as you stay on line south-east from the towers to Brockwell Park,  you no longer have to gape at that rude duracell styled middle-finger of a residential cylinder. Just at the three lumpen blocks of steel, concrete and glass that have arisen to block our view. But here's the bad news: you can still see the sorry erection from all other viewpoints.

Over recent months, as yet another huge new tower of (putative) luxury apartments erupts over the Vauxhall Cross, a new and truly dismal passtime is born for pissed-off residents like self.

It's a great hobby for the years of pandemic. Moving around, alone, in every direction from this transport node,  to see if there is any single angle or perspective from which all these buildings coalesce into anything other than a repulsive and callous "f**k you" to the established local populations.

Today, after weeks when things were just seeming to get uglier and more brutal (not 'Brutal' in the 1960s sense, I must stress), stumbled across a view that was actually slightly improved. 

It was from the highest point in Brockwell park.  Those three lumpy new residential towers closest to Vauxhall are at last blocking out the south-eastern view of that vile middle-finger of a skyscraper, the (helicopter slayer) St George Wharf Tower, aka Duracell, or (my favourite nickname as it has grim ambiguity) The Plunger.

As the Northern Line extension to Nine Elms and Batttersea Power Station opens for business, so the area's developers are working on two new tower blocks just southwest of the Power Station - showing just how desperate they must be to ensure no one living in Battersea itself can actually see anything at all of the once unmissable local landmark. 

I think these will be part of the "Upper Park residences" area, with one tower planned to rise to 27 storeys - which is as high or higher than the top of the power station chimneys. It's odd, I don't remember seeing any high-rise towers to the west of the power station in the original plans.

So, how about this new transport link? 

Surely we should be licking corporate bottom for their beneficence in making the new two-station Northern Line branch possible? Well, yes and no.

It could be good for residents of the estates between Sainsburys Nine Elms and Wandsworth Road overground station, allowing them to get into the West End quickly (but, outside rush hours, the 87 bus already does that quite well). 

But it's also ironic that this incredibly expensive two-stop extension is creating a worse service for long-suffering passengers living further south. The number of Charing Cross branch trains going all the way to Morden has been cut, from about one every 6 minutes to 10 or 12 minutes. Leading to more crowding on the grim old platforms at Kennington.

Overall, then, returning to the original theme of this piece: whichever way you look at it - almost - the prospect is grim. As the last of the grand towers in this phase rise, it's clear that there's not a single building worthy of the location. And that the supposed cluster of graceful towers is in reality more like the threatening arthritic fist of a killer robot. 

Maybe it should please me that these gruesome erections are just as much an affront to the wealthy residents across the water in Pimlico, Westminster, parts of Chelsea and even Belgravia. So many of those grand stuccoed terraces or red-brick mansion block estates around Westminster Cathedaral and Vincent Square now have their southerly views polluted by these great hulking presenes in the sky. Even from the Centopah in Whitehall, you cannot miss the rude stiffness of One Nine Elms. 

The one project I find quite entertaining is the bit which forms an outer wall to the Power Station's encircling walls of residential cement and glass. This bit, which  folds itself around the osuth-western aspect of the now almost invisible power station, has the amusing feature - a couple of massive holes in the buildings. Gaps, voids, about three floors deep. Peepholes so that the plebs can still get a glimpse of the promised land within, perhaps. They're the  gsps that let thelight in. Why ever they are there, they are a good thing. Quite good. 

Nine Elms Disease: is there a cure?

So, if the development is to redeem itself and win over the hearts and minds of local residents, that long-promised linear park is going to have to be bloody good. But, looking on a recent map, they no longer call it the linear park, and it is not so linear. Just Nine Elms Park.

Oh well, plenty of room for freebies for visitors from the other side of the tracks (zone 2, you know, and not the smarmily-bought "zone 1" trick the developers have pulled). 

What say you to free champagne fountains and iced-vodka sculptures? No? Ok, let's see a few hundred luxuriously appointed shelters, each with its own bathroom, for the homeless. Free music every weekend, and 24/7 facilities including lighting and PA for buskers, all through the park.

Any other ideas, please add to comments below.

As for the skypool, fill it up every morning with something delicious (alcoholic, or maybe not, maybe hot soup on cold nights); drill 2,000 holes in the bottom; attach 2,500 pub-style tubes with taps; except these will need to be about 500m in length, and clipped to refreshment stalls around the US Embassy, with washing facilities; to keep the protestors in good spirits. Employ 100 bungee-jumping staff to keep said sustenance flowing freely and happily. 

Just dreaming.

Come on get your bloody fingers out and spend some of those ill-gotten gains on something good!

View from Vauxhall Bridge, six months ago. It's
less interesting now...

Think we have it bad in Battersea? See what they've done to the view from
the stuccoed streets of Pimlico. No wonder they're furious!

This view from a Battersea footbridge shows just how deceptive some views are. Two of those towers
are in fact great big piles of stepped boxes....

Exhausted by the infantile antics of the automotive industry

What an awful lot of exhaust pipes you have, Granny Merc. Yes, all the better to engulf you in stinky gases, my dear!

 Look at the photo above.

That thing is a private conveyance, what we used to call a "car". It is something people choose to buy or lease, and often put an awful lot of their disposable income into maintaining.

Look again. The car in the photo is quite a new car. This is late 2021, and thanks to the ingenuity of engineers many cars no longer need an exhaust pipe as they are fully electrically powered, and do not emit stinky gases.

But this vehicle appears to have not one, not even two, but FOUR exhaust pipes. And this in late 2021, after London mayor Sadiq Khan's expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone. 

Why, if cars now have to have very low emissions, do they need four orifices from which to emit suchlike?

Especially if they are very expensive cars, such as the vehicle shown above, a highly respected brand.

As it is a coveted make, I assume only one of those pipes parps out toxic fumes, and the other three bathe us all in exotic fragrances of healing aromas, a touch of musk, perhaps, for the grieving macho driver, but also some gorgeous honeysuckle, sweetpea and lemongrass for the rest of us...

No, sorry, I cycle behind such lumpen machinery all the time and know they all stink of the same thing: money, testosterone and burning futures.

I've also noticed that the 4-pipe brigade are usually the most expensive top of range versions of the model, and are almost certainly the noisiest - in fact they seem to tune those pipes to emit a particularly angry racket.

I was tempted to brand this 4-pipe tribe as Clarsonistas, but this would be too limiting. Although many are ruddy-faced late-middle aged men still trying to wear Levis, but not really cutting it....no, you see, I just as easily fall into the trap of stereotyping people. Young, old, male, female, white, black, small, large, all types of people drive these things. It's depresseing to me that clearly highly intelligent people choose such cars in which to navigate the narrow, traffic-choked streets of old London.

These big speeding lumps of metal glass and plastic on wheels are bad enough in any form - but those extra exhaust pipes are just a provocation too far.  

Are the quadruple exhausts supposed to denote something? Are they helpful, or necessary? Do they make the engine more efficient? I only ask. But it's not as though it's a racing car, or even a derivative of one.  It is an SUV, and therefore more closely related to agricultural conveyances. 

Oh, and by the way, do you you see the designation of the vehicle? It says "GLC 43"

Do they mean to refer to our long defunct but much missed metropolitan government? Are they taking the piss? Show a bit of respect, Mercedes-Benz!

I only makes these points, and ask these questions, because I am puzzled with all the contradictions in this society we inhabit. Four exhaust pipes for one family conveyance seems to be a symbol for something at odds with wisdom, not to mention good taste. Even the fiercest, strongest, biggest tigers in the jungle get by on just one arsehole.

How many more arseholes can this poor city tolerate?

Afterthought: The vehicle in the photo does have two major redeeming features. First, it's by no means the fattest SUV in M-B range. Look at it: it hardly spills over the width of the parking bay, and those tyres are positively anorexic! How pathetically undernourished this car seems.
Secondly, and crucially, it is painted red. A colour! I almost forgive it its 4 pipes for this gift to our drab grey street environment. I counted vehicles in the normal traffic jam at Wandsworth Road/Queenstown Road junction yesterday. Among 40 vehicles, the only real colour was provided by two traffic-marooned busses. There were two enormous white cement trucks, 16 off-white or blue-black delivery vans. The rest were cars, mainly SUVs, some white,  many black, but most in varying shades of metallic grey. Why are people so keen to add to the dismal greyness of this murderously colourless December city?