Overcrowded London

I suppose I should not really have been that surprised given that I have now lived in London more than half my life, but I was still amazed at the queues as passport control at Heathrow last week. It took about half an hour to get through the UK/EU section, but what really shocked was the length of the queues for non-EU citizens. My guess is that it would have taken people a couple of hours to get through given the number of people and the snail-like pace it was moving at.

It was a reminder that London is a magnet for people, not just within the UK, but all over the world. The multi-cultural nature of living in London is absolutely fantastic (and one of the reasons why I love London), however, the downside of the city being such a hub is that its infrastructure is put under huge pressure, which can make it very unpleasant for locals and visitors alike. Seeing those huge long queues did make me wonder what it will be like when the world descends on London for the Olympics next year.

Incidentally I was returning from a lovely week in Spain and flying back from the (particularly in contrast to Heathrow) magnificently spacious Madrid Barajas airport. Oh to have such space in London! The problem for us is that London and the south-east of England are just so over-populated that we will never be able to build airports and railway stations big enough to accomodate the number of people passing through them.

I wonder if the UK government could do more to move institutions out of London to ease this overcrowding problem. One of the main reasons for moving to or near London is the sheer number of (well-paid) job opportunities there are in London. If institutions did move to other parts of the UK it would take the pressure off London and also help stimulate the local economies of those areas (which always struggle in comparison to London). BBC Sport's move to Salford is an example of the kind of move I have in mind. I know asking people to move is difficult, so it would have to be a gradual process, but I do think it could be a win-win situation.

Our instant society

Having got married this year I have recently spent a lot of time writing thank you letters. I had to check myself a few times when, in my head, I assumed that the recipient had already read my "so lovely to see you" and "thank you for your generous gift", once I had put my pen down. Why did I think that? Well usually once you have written a message these days you press send on the email, text message, post or status update and it's there for the recipients to see straightaway (or it should be if your computer or mobile phone is behaving itself). I think it is an example of just how instantaneous we have become as a society as well as I reminder to myself about how enjoyable the act of putting ink to paper is.

This culture of receiving instant messages in bite site chunks has other knock on effects. In this age of reading messages on blackberry or simply having so many emails to read that you don't ever read any of them properly, the sender has to make sure he or she gets to the point and in not too many words. I find this filtering into my work life. Where I have clients who are clearly not reading everything I put in emails to them, the prudent course of action is to cut them down in size and make sure you say in a snappy way exactly what you want them to focus on. I am certainly not saying everyone is like this and I am also not criticising (if I had hundreds of emails a day to sift through and not much time to do it, I would likely adopt the same approach).