Ed Vulliamy rails against constant building works and redevelopment in his area of London…

“At its worst, every day is like sitting all day in a dentist’s chair – relentless drilling, hammering and thudding from 8am until the walls crack, so that progressively deranged, a nervous wreck, one cannot think or speak, let alone work.

For my 86-year-old mother [Shirley Hughes] upstairs – a children’s book illustrator and author whom one might think had earned some peace and respect – this is a reprise. For more than two years, the clangor came through the walls from the other side of the house. For much of that time, five out of seven houses to the east of our front door were being gutted or having basements excavated. The street outside was bedlam, one big construction/demolition site, pavements impassable. Now we have one across the road, the other next door and further “developments” in the planning committee pipeline.”

So it’s not just Notting Hill that is being destroyed, it is some vestige of how to live, replaced by a new way, in London so full of itself. This is the celebration of that which was hatched under Thatcher, boomed under Blair, was bloated by Brown and now triumphs under Cameron: the absolute hegemony of selfish greed and impunity of money.

via Development hell: how the upmarket vandals ruined my childhood streets | UK news | The Observer.