A few weeks ago the first steel column of the superstructure for Europe’s tallest building was concreted into the ground at London Bridge Station. (Images below show the progress of last few weeks).

After a decade (!) of legal, political, planning and financial (thank the Credit Crunch) struggles, there is now no turning back. The Shard of Glass will be completed by the Olympics and will become part of London’s skyline and postcards just as the Gherkin and London Eye have done before.

 (Image shows outline of Shard)

This building is as tall as the Eiffel Tower and will be as recognisable and elegant as the Chrysler building in New York – from the top you shall be able to view the straights of Dover!

I, for one, cannot wait!

Today marks just 3 years until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games; London 2012. I have been following the huge project since 2002 when it wasn’t even certain that we would bid for the games or not. London surprised everyone by beating Paris to the grand prize in July 2005 only for our celebrations to be cut short the following day by the terrorist bombs.

Fast forward to today and it is amazing how the stadium structure is already virtually completed, as you can see in the picture, backed up by an amazing sporting performance in Beijing. Surely one of the best weeks the country has experienced for a long time – newspaper headlines were positive for a change! “The Great Haul of China!”

The Olympics in London will be spectacular - not withstanding any sporting success – the city is at the forefront of Global culture and arts, and as proved by the 2012 branding, isn’t afraid to innovate and surprise. I wouldn’t have it any other way! These games will be for the world, set in it’s greatest city; backed by 2000 years of history (even on the Olympic Park site) and a host who does things in its own unique way with nothing to prove but to have fun.

Recently I discovered some old photographs of Baker Street Station from the 1920s. These were taken before the grand building of today was built above the Metropolitan line platforms; replacing a number of shops, houses and the beautiful Leslie Green entrance around the corner.

The photo above shows the original station on Marylebone Road (facing towards Euston). This is the same view today from Google Street View. (Note that the front wall remains complete with the semi-circular windows that originally allowed light to flood into the brick-arched Circle Line platforms below.)

This is from another angle (towards Paddington). On the far left, behind the man, is 'Marylebone Circus'; the name for the crossing of Marylebone Road and Baker Street. Sadly this  name has been forgotten about today.
If you had taken the right on the Circus onto Upper Baker Street you would have seen the 'newer' part of the station. The photo below shows the then 20 year old Leslie Green surface building for the new Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (today the Bakerloo line).

Street View. Shortly after this photo was taken the building was demolished and replaced by the large Chiltern Court that remains today (the 20’s promotional image is shown below).

There are currently plans being worked up to improve the access to the station. This includes incorporating a dingy pedestrian subway into a new exterior Underground entrance. It was due to start in summer 2009, but the Credit Crunch has delayed it until after the Olympics.

Looks a bit half-hearted in my opinion…

I’ve always felt that the Science Museum in South Kensington was a little lost cousin compared to the Natural History Museum and the V&A. This, due to being largely hidden away and also having a lack of landmark entrance to pull people in from the street.

This is all set to change by the look of some radical new proposals released this week to give the museum’s facade an attention seeking architectural ‘blob’. Perhaps more importantly though, the whole of Exhibition Road is being pedestrianised and it looks like the ground floor will be opened up with a line a doors onto the street. I bet this would increase foot-fall into the museum significantly by itself.

As part of a wider regeneration of the Exhibition Road revitalisation as the ‘cultural heartland of London’, the Science Museum will undertake a redevelopment designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects which incorporates a new facade, new galleries, lifts and SkySpace - a cavernous rooftop space and 'destination cafe' dedicated to cosmology.

The ‘Sky Space’ (large blue thing on bottom left image, gold on bottom right) looks very interesting too and will probably be an impressive room to stand in if you can find it through the museum’s vast corridors. Although it won’t all be finished for at least 5 years, it looks like the road will be completed in time for the Olympics.

See the current facade on Google Street View.
Read more about the project here.

You have probably all seen the clip of Stephen Fry being interviewed on MPs expenses by now. In it he brought some much needed and previously absent common sense to the whole furore. Well today the controversial character of Piers Morgan has waded in saying that Mr. Fry’s views are “extremely stupid” and “naive”. Morgan continues to patronise:

So let me spell out the difference for him in simple, easy-to-understand language: Taxpayers do not pay journalists’ expenses.  Very rich people like Rupert Murdoch … do.
…
By dismissing this whole repulsive business as ‘not important’, and trying to claim some sort of moral equivalence between expenses met publicly by the taxpayer and those met privately by media tycoons, Fry is guilty of pathetically pompous grandstanding, and a staggering lack of understanding of both the issue and the very genuine anger felt by the cheated, thieved public. Shame on you, Stephen. I thought you were smarter than that.

Now this reply immediately strikes me as coming from someone who has not taken in the underlying points of the Fry interview. Comparisons were indeed made between MPs’ and Journalists’ and Morgan is right that the two are different, however that completely misses the point that was made, i.e. one of human flaw right across the spectrum.
I agree with Fry that “everyone has fiddled things”, one way or another. Surely most people have done things such as taking extra stationary from the office, kept quiet when undercharged or submitted claims that were liberal with the truth? Of course they may not be on the same scale, but the point is that we all all humanly flawed; we are all naturally programmed to take advantage of situations to the limit, and journalists are some of the worst for that. MPs are just as human, sympathetic, corrupt, morally correct or incorrect as the rest of us.

Another, major, point that has to be considered when deciding just how serious MPs have pushed the rules to the limit is that of their overall pay, and why this system exists in the first place. It is clear, to anyone that has followed the history of this or politics in general, that this additional expenses system was used effectively as a top-up to MPs’ salaries. They have done this because they are reluctant to increase their standard salaries for fear of being seen to profit, when in actual fact they do need a considerable wage to do their jobs and to attract the right people to the job. Ironically in the end it has completely ruined the reputation of MPs that they were trying to preserve.

I believe Mr. Fry was right in his passionate stance that “this is not important… it is not what we are fighting for.” When you step back and look at this, and when you look at others, ‘Sachsgate’; the Russell Brand phone calls etc., yes they are totally undesirable but really are not  important relative to the wars we are engaged in, and to the genocide in Africa; to matters of life and death. Whilst there was uproar at expenses this week, four more soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

Whilst we should be very concerned and annoyed that some of our elected officials are abusing an amount of taxpayers’ money, we must not let it take precedent over the everything else, and thus be ‘disaffected’ by politics. We should vote. Our votes can enact change in, and the direction of, the great country in which we live. Let’s hold our MPs’ to account, but let us not lose the understanding that human flaws are ever-present, and that what is really important is the big decisions our MPs make that change lives.

Morgan, like so many others, appears to have been blinded by what he wants to hear, rather than what is the most important in grand reality. Poor Stephen Fry has been branded “the MPs’ friend'” when all he was doing was widening the debate into a sensible perspective. Shame on you Piers. I thought you were smarter than that. Well actually, I didn’t!

WATCH: Stephen Fry’s interview on expenses.
READ: Piers Morgan's Blog

• PS. It seems to me that the simple and best solution to this problem is to scrap the allowances and dramatically increase MPs salaries from the current £60K to around £80K. Yes, that is a lot of money, and many people would be horrified by it, but it is the right thing to do. The people who run the country; burdened with all the pressure and responsibility that comes with that task, deserve a high salary which is proportionate to the job. It is the current insufficient salary which has caused this whole problem.

Photos taken by myself in London a few weeks ago. I challenge anyone to guess where each of these where taken. The 3rd row is the same location. The 1st and last photo are the same location. Photo 7 is one palace away from the second row. Cryptic enough? :-P

This is an issue which has struck me in the last few years, and it is ever present in all walks of life. I’m talking about too much say from too many people in too many areas.

What do I mean by that? Well the continued ‘politically correct’ submission to the lowest common denominator in decision making; be it planning, politics or public service. Why can we not trust the experts in their respective fields? The submission comes as a direct result of a flood of public opinion which is often not aware of even half the facts in any case.

One example is that of the UK’s planning process. Everyone is allowed a say, rightfully, but this process can last months, sometimes years, and then is given arguable too much weight in the final decision. Terminal 5 was one victim of this, and many of the proposed towers in London have been too. Is it right, as the current system dictates, that everyone is allowed a legal opinion on the aesthetics of a structure, or complain about more people moving into an area? These views form part of the planning application and are sometimes fundamental in whether a building is actually built – and of course it is only those who bare a strong opposing view that actually make the time to submit a comment, resulting in an apparent swathe of negativity. To increase our chances bold and beautiful things to be proud of, instead of being negative in the form of complaints and intervention we should be empowering the people that show an inclination for creating beauty in the first place.

Living or working somewhere does not give us the right to dictate how others may enjoy that same environ. We buy a stake in the land of our homes and the rest is public domain. The current, if misguided, capitalist view is that somehow when you purchase a place to live, you are buying a piece of an area, including its appearance and feel, even though this is constantly changing and generated by the sweat and tears of past generations. Surely we do not suddenly have a right to halt this process and 'purchase' something that is the result not of mass production but of the evolution of civilization?

This problem is not just manifest in planning but also in organisations such as the BBC where everyone seems to want to add their opinion to every problem (presenters pay, Sachsgate, Golliwogs and all sorts of others), instead of leaving those who have studied and gained experience over many years in this specific field to sort out any problems and deal with them appropriately. I understand that it is a publicly owned body, but that does not mean an everyday man in the street knows best any more than they would be best qualified to be the Prime Minister. Besides by doing this we weaken the BBC to the  point at which is it scared to broadcast anything remotely daring or risky. That can only be a bad thing as far as I am concerned.

Another more recent example is the situation of the Bankers. Yes they messed up, but it is easy to forget the tremendous wealth and prosperity they brought everyone over a period of 30 years. Now everyone thinks they know what to do with them – punish them all, anything from huge fines to execution, with new regulations left, right and centre. Perhaps though, we should stand back, bring the experts around the table, identify the problems calmly, rectify; move on and rebuild the system to its very strongest potential.

I believe our idea of a democratic system needs streamlining. What are our key objectives? In planning, one that would be most important is the long-term investment in beauty. Even though this can mean many things, it doesn’t seem to appear in many people’s arguments, even as a theory. Shouldn’t this actually be a central point in any planning argument? After all that’s what we need a planning department for; we could all put up a jumble of shacks that we could live perfectly well in, if considerably depressed..

Of course this problem only comes about because everything thinks that their view is the correct one. Winston Churchill’s famous quotation sums that one up:

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

Everyone has their own career path and expertise – perhaps we should concentrate a little more on the area in which we have talent, rather than lambasting other fields.

Some spectacular slow motion footage has been taken for the first time of a surfer inside a breaking wave. This is a clip from the BBC’s new series, ‘South Pacific’

One of the remarkable credit-crunch defying skyscrapers going up in London at the moment is the Heron Tower. As you can see in this photo construction work has long since started and the superstructure is about a 3rd of the way to it’s final height. On the skyline it will appear as dominant as the Gherkin and Tower42 (NatWest tower to those who haven’t caught up yet!)

Found this corporate video from Minds Eye Media which shows some of the views that will be on offer once this thing is complete at the end of next year. I believe there will be a public bar right at the top for us to enjoy and you can also see the HUGE aquarium in the reception area on this video:

http://www.mindseyemedia.tv/index.php?action=work&do_view=1&id=41

A new series of photographs from Boston.com – I’m a big fan of this site & will continue to bring you updates.

More at: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/human_landscapes_from_above.html

New York City is full of advertisements and billboards as you know, but a fair chunk of them have not been authorised and thus residents and visitors are submitted to even more advertising which is illegal. Thus pro-humanity campaign group ‘Public Ad Campaign’ have organised a project with many volunteers whom set out this week to white-wash hundreds of illegal ads and then replace them with public art, created by themselves.

Public art: High Five!

It’s a great idea in my opinion as we’re constantly bombarded with commercialisms nowadays and perhaps lack some of the more cultural elements which symbolise what it means to be human.

Public Ad Campaign acts on the assumption that public space and the public's interaction with that space is a vital component of our city's health. By visually altering and physically interacting with the public environment, residents become psychologically invested in their community. 

I’m a huge fan of smart governance and of not just solving problems but turning them to your advantage. This project is one of them and the results are good for everyone. Quite-Banksy-esque.

Source: http://www.woostercollective.com/2009/04/new_york_street_advertising_takeover_bri.html
Public Ad Campaign Website: http://www.publicadcampaign.com/

The United Kingdom has some of the most historical and awe-inspiring Crown Jewels in the world. Treasures that would never, ever, come together in today’s politically fair and correct culture, but fortunately they have done over centuries past, and thus remain for us to cast the greatest dignity and majesty upon our heads of state. Despite the fact the post is hereditary, I believe they do a fantastic job and the fact that they are not elected is perhaps a huge benefit. Taking the messy politics away from the Head of State role allows the country’s representative to keep decorum through political embarrassments that rest with the Prime Minister, and it also grants a careful and considered role to ceremony, charity and cultural work.
Did you know that the Monarchy is one of the UK’s biggest promoters of British business abroad? Many of the junior princes in particular travel often to business conferences around the world, and the price ‘mark’ actually gives tremendous weight to their arguments.

Anyway back to the topic of this blog post… The earliest surviving Crown Jewels date back to the 11th Century, with various elements having been added throughout the centuries, in particular the coronation crown (St. Edward's Crown) and many of the sceptres were added in the 17th Century after the restoration of the Monarchy following melt down of the previous jewels by Oliver Cromwell. (Don’t get me started on him!). In the 19th Century the jewels were added to with elements more suited to the modern age, for example Queen Victoria ordered a lighter crown be made for her coronation due to St. Edward's Crown weighing at over 2kg! This is the crown that has been worn in coronation processions since, however St. Edward's Crown is still used for the seated coronation itself.
Did you know that on the day of a coronation the new Monarch is allowed to wear the crown for several hours during the morning to get used to the weight. It has been said that one palace waiter walked in to see the new Queen Elizabeth II in her dressing gown, having breakfast with the crown on, on her coronation day in 1953.

Also did you know that the Crown Jewels were stolen from Westminster Abbey in 1303 (most items were  recovered but not everything!), and there was another attempt in 1671 when the Irishman Thomas Blood carried out a successful raid of the Jewel House at the Tower of London. Having knocked the jewel keeper on the head with a mallet, he squashed the arches of Charles II’s state crown so as to hide it under his cloak whilst his son started to saw the Sceptre in half! Their friend Robert Perot stuck the Orb down his breeches. Just as they were about to escape, the keeper’s son returned unexpectedly and raised the alarm. Blood was arrested, but no-one’s sure quite why, but ‘the merry monarch’, Charles II, pardoned Blood and in fact gave him a pension! After Blood’s escapade, security was tightened, iron bars replaced the wooden ones around the Regalia, and, from then on, visitors were not allowed to touch the Crown Jewels.

An amazing history, but even that can’t describe their inherent beauty. I am yet to see them for myself; the Tower is next on my list of places to visit in London, having already done many others. I’ve included some images to give a taste.

There are many other interesting facts surrounding the Monarchy which I’ll bring up over time. The diamonds in the crowns themselves are a whole topic. The coronation church and chair in particular.

Webpages of Interest:
http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/stories/crownjewels.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Jewels_of_the_United_Kingdom

You do have to worry occasionally about Gordon.

The possibilities are endless!

New photo today of the Southern end of the Olympic Park which shows the Stadium at the top which is progressing swiftly.In the centre are the widened and cleaned up waterways. A total transformation to the grotty overgrown and stagnant water of before. Then at the bottom of the photograph is the Aquatics Centre. Progress on its magnificent Zaha Hadid designed roof is going well. The scale is quite deceiving. The stadium will seat around 80,000 people and be complete by 2011.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/

The above links to a petition to prompt the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to resign, via his own website. Quite ironic really but because it’s so simple I think this may actually take off. The amount of signatures is going up by several hundred people per hour and if this rate continues for just a week it will be the largest petition on the site – that could cause some political waves.

I personally believe that it is important to have an election and to introduce a new government, better off a Tory one at the moment, but even a Labour one under new leadership would be able to effectively wipe the slate clean and thus exposing all problems and allowing a solution to be found that will not be tangled up political manoeuvring relating to past decisions and promises.

Thus whatever your political allegiance this could be an important thing to support, if you want what’s best for the country’s economic future.

“Very few people have the time, skill or inclination to create beauty, but we all appreciate it when it presents itself.”

I don’t normally follow these sort of things but I was linked to this video and it’s pretty funny if you know anything about youth behaviour on the internet. The kind of stuff that brought you ‘rofl’ and ‘w00t’ etc. This video takes the mick out of the ‘everyone has an opinion (and a stupid one at that)’ culture. Cool music too!

Well, perhaps… judge for yourself! We stumbled across this tree stump in the Lake District on the way to Aire Force waterfall. I presume it is an art piece; a nice idea actually but it must have taken ages to hammer in all those coins! As you can see my sister was delighted…

Right along-side the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Bridge sits the unusual yet inconspicuous building of Portcullis House. Few people realise what goes on inside or what it’s there for. It is virtually an extension to the Houses of Parliament linked by underground tunnels, and to neighbouring buildings by elevated foot bridges. (Portcullis House is the black building on the left in the image below).

The building has many offices for MPs of all parties on the upper floors, with committee rooms on the first floor which you will have probably seen on TV without realising. These are used for select committee meetings and similar – most recently seen in the background of the infamous apology from 4 bankers as a result of the Credit Crunch. On the ground level there is a very impressive atrium complete with real trees and water features and surrounded by cafés, restaurants and the Parliamentary bookshop. Beneath this there is a very thick slab of concrete to protect the building from the potential of tube bombs from the Circle and District lines of the new Westminster Station which sits directly below. Far below that lies the new Jubilee Line station. Thus if this building started at ground level it would actually come to the height of Big Ben’s clock face!

Did you know that this building was specifically designed to last more than 200 years, using dear materials such as aluminium bronze in the roof and walls, thus making this one of the most expensive office buildings in the world! It works out at about £1million per MP.

If you have a keen eye, next time you’re at Westminster tube station look for the direct tunnel link to the Houses of Parliament. The entrance is located inside the ticket barriers on the Circle Line level.