I once got into terrible trouble over a story that a regeneration trade magazine had picked up (from one of my own team, thanking you, Mr Phipps!) when I was CE at Kent Thameside.
It was April 2005, a month before the General Election, and a journalist had got hold of an idea I'd been floating (ha!) for some time, regarding the possibility of slinging a cable car across the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury.
Actually the idea had come from a member of the team that had been responsible for the BA London Eye (and he'd imported it from a project in Japan, I think, or somewhere out of the east anyway) so it had some legs, but it was pretty outlandish just the same, the sort of "grand projet" idea that I would chuck out there occasionally, in sheer desperation, to try to lift aspiration locally.
So.... it wasn't really much of a story (and, actually, was so NOT a story that the Kent Messenger had run it six months prior, when it had dropped like a stone) but the trade journalist had alighted on it at a sensitive time - four weeks prior to a local and national election - and, having given the (then Labour) leader of Gravesham council a tug, who then phoned me to mark my card in no uncertain fashion, I was compelled to call the journo concerned (and then his deputy editor. And then his editor) and eat humble pie big-style in an attempt to get the thing spiked.
It was all very unfortunate. I wouldn't quite go so far as to say I nearly lost my job over this incident but relations (which were already severely strained) did accelerate due south from that point.
Imagine my amusement, then, when the weekend Guardian carried the story that TfL had announced plans for a cable car crossing for the river, to take passengers between the tip of the Greenwich peninsula on the south side to the Royal Docks area across the water.
(One of my loyal correspondents sent me the article with the comment "Ahead of your time as always, Jack").
The hope is that the TfL cable car will be open in time for the 2012 Olympics. Apparently the cars will be able to carry up to 5,000 passengers an hour - cyclists as well as pedestrians - traveling 50m above the water ("above the height of any shipping").
The five-minute route (utilizing the same site that had been earmarked for a six lane road bridge) would take people between the two Olympic venues, from the O2 arena to the ExCel exhibition centre.
The cost of this is estimated at £25m but nobody seems clear as to where the money will come from, the Guardian rather loftily states it "will be privately funded, and TfL is in talks with a number of potential operators". I can't think who these might be but, given Willie Walsh's current vicissitudes, I guess it won't be BA stepping up to the plate on this occasion.
But if there is an operator out there who can make money on such a project, then I imagine it would augur rather well for Nine Elms.
Boris Johnson's comment made me smile "A cable car spanning the majestic Thames would not only provide a unique and pioneering addition to London's skyline, but also offer a serene and joyful journey across the river" which is just about on a par with the hubristic old nonsense I'd trotted out to the lovely Trevor Sturgess of the Kent Messenger in 2004. Let's go fly a kite.
To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!
The morning fog may chill the air
I don't care!
My love waits there in Greenwich?