ni.chol.as

Geoff’s a guy I worked with at the BBC during my short stint working for BBC News Online. Others know him best because he holds the world record for visiting all the London Underground’s stations in the shortest possible time. He’s since attempted to beat the record with others for charity including colleagues at my current company. This guy is good-as-gold, a genuine part of the London blogging landscape and a superb conduit of goodwill for the London tube network.

Geoff hosts a website and blog, Geofftech.co.uk which has for years contained a page of funny, original and interesting hacks and twists on the famous London Underground tube map. He is THE resource for finding things like the geographically-accurate version and others. He’s the DE FACTO place to hit first.

So why on earth has Transport for London chosen to nastygram him in an effort to remove all these parodies, wash away the goodwill and replace it with corporate down-the-line blandness? A network built with Londoners’ money, sold off to corporate interests and now cynically demanding ownership of a ubiquitous and ancient part of our urban landscape is just depressing. I hardly imagine Ken agrees this is how TFL’s budget should be being spent. For my part, I’m going to mirror the maps as long as I can. For your own part, I suggest taking an archive and holding on to them: they’re a useful resource and amusing distraction for Londoners that we can scarcely rely on others, least of all TFL, for.

For now, here’s a mirror of Geoff’s tube map parody collection. Enjoy!

Update:

Well, the original Silly Maps page has now been taken down and replaced with a list of mirrors hosted outside Geoff’s domain and in some cases outside the UK and outside personal control. If you have some web space and would like to add to the list of mirrors, I am hosting a zipfile of the page: just unzip-and-go!

In a great development for increasing awareness, Boingboing linked Geoff’s report of the affair. BB are a huge traffic site and this will really help.

I also got a reply to my email to my Member of Parliament, Kate Hoey. Kate’s always been very responsive and genuinely supportive of the issues I’ve written to her about and she’s been kind enough to forward my email to Valerie Shawcross, Member of the London Assembly who has agreed to take it up with TfL on Kate’s behalf. I look forward to some action in this regard, soon.

One of the ways out of this mess for TfL would be to grant a “license” to Geoff, gratis, in recognition of his charitable work involving the London Underground and in his efforts to spread goodwill about the network. The fact he encouraged 60 people to buy a day travelcard for the tube as part of his fund-raising efforts should be more than enough justification! For now, it’s time to sit back a little and see how things pan out. Good luck, Geoff!

Update:

The zip file I’m hosting was missing some files. These were toilets.jpg, real_underground.jpg and travel_times.jpg. The zip file has been updated to take account of these, as has my mirror. Apologies for the mistake.

Tags: tube, london, publictransport, trains, parody, legal, lawyers, tfl, londonunderground