Olympic Update 1: Polishing a Turd

Good news. Waltham Forest News, Waltham Forest’s happy family propaganda spewing rag – free to all citizens fortunate enough to reside in the borough that excreted one of the finest groups of classically trained musicians the world has ever known – has recently been proud to report on the regeneration of some of the borough’s less handsome locations. Apparently:

“As part of plans to give residents better streets, twenty sites in the south of the borough have been given a little extra care. The locations range from parks to planters and streets to car parks, with the Council’s environment team trimming back overgrown hedgerows, re turfing bare patches in green spaces, scooping up litter and planting new flowers.”

Wonderful. It does seem odd, however, that it was not considered necessary to “give residents better streets” until the Olympic mafia rolled into town. Presumably the residents of Leyton were only too happy to live in a shithole prior to the arrival of Greatest Sporting Event in the World. Still, now that the work is complete, fortunate residents taking a stroll along Leyton High Road are now able to enjoy this magnificent vista:

Whoa! The people of Venice must be green with envy. (In case you are wondering what Leyton High Road looked like before the work, it was just like this but without the tacky beach hut-style paint) But it’s not just the parks and main roads that have been treated to this frankly amazing transformative treatment. No, rumour has it that some of the area’s ‘orphan sites’ have been regenerated too. Good news for the borough as a whole, even better news for the local tramps that use these sites to defecate, drink petrol and copulate in. What luxury.

(A delighted local street person celebrates his good fortune with a hearty lunch)

However, it’s not just north east London’s Esso clubcard holding, urine-soaked, transients that are cheered by the transformation, Waltham Forest News reports that

“Residents, businesses and, yes, journalists, [are] all cock-a-hoop for the way this part of the borough looks."

Well, you really can’t ask any more of a regeneration project that leaves you feeling cock-a-hoop, now can you?