Kilburn Launches A Takeover Bid For West Hampstead

All too often, Facebook petitions are just badly spelled lynch-mobs-in-waiting or 'for lulz' irritants that clog up your newsfeed, so we were cheered to see one that made us laugh - and that maybe has a good idea behind it. We present to you the campaign to rename West Hampstead tube and Queens Park station, respectively, East and West Kilburn.

The organisers have already anticipated the splutterings of West Hampstead residents; one of their (rather funny) arguments is "people in Hampstead mock West Hampstead at dinner parties... This will help them become better people". For all the hilarity, we think there's a serious point to be made: West Hampstead has three (three!) stations, all of which are in NW6 - a spot of renaming might help disentangle confusion between the tube, Thameslink and Overground lines. Then of course there's this 'Hampstead' business. Separated from the leafy Heath-side by the decidedly un-leafy Finchley Road, perhaps it's time to call a spade a spade. As the petition points out, estate agents will hate it, which is reason enough for doing it. (Though if them's the rules, we're going to start referring to Lewisham as 'West Blackheath', which itself will become 'South Greenwich'.)

Chrissy Tignor, the brains behind the petition, claims if the group gets to 5,000 members TfL will seriously consider the proposal. We can't help but suspect it's doomed to go the way of attempts to call Shoreditch 'Banglatown' and Archway 'Whittington', but that doesn't mean it's not something to mull over.