Another stupid magazine

Coming up with new things to say about Brockley all the time is not easy. So we look for inspiration wherever we can find it.

That's why we were excited when a new magazine touting itself as "South East London's Premier Guide to Luxury Living" fell through our letterbox this week. And why excitement rapidly turned to disgust.

Presumably since we live in the conservation area, a database manager somewhere has decided that we are the sort of people that would appreciate recycled articles about Thailand and Damien Hirst. The science of direct marketing still has some way to go.

If it was just a glossy vehicle for estate agent ads then it would simply be an offensive waste of paper. But since it tries to pass itself off as a guide to South East London life, it's also patronising and inept.

Like its rival "The Guide" [not the good one in the Guardian on Saturdays, the rubbish one which always features a picture of Greenwich on the front cover - in case anyone in South East London hasn't thought about visiting the place], SE City Life barely makes an effort at covering the thing that it purports to be about.

Inside we get the obligatory review of Inc Bar in Greenwich, some cut-and-paste articles about places to shop and eat, none of which are in South East London and a thing about the Dome in Greenwich. It does trump The Guide by paying cursory attention to a bit of South East London outside Blackheath and Greenwich, with an article about Eltham Palace. Then on to the ads...

The somewhat less aspirational SE4U magazine does manage to cover Brockley at least, but even then, it only manages a handful of articles each issue - how are we supposed to plagiarise that!?