Thames Tideway Tunnel
September 25th, 2010
UPDATE: 10/1/2013 I’m a big fan of the tunnel, I think it needs to be built but I won’t be following the details week by week, for that see the links below.
For anyone with a keen interest in London and its infrastructure, and in engineering and industrial archaeology as I have, the advent of the Thames Tideway Tunnel is a matter of great interest.
Mixed tenure estates
September 24th, 2010
My thinking on this has been coloured by the analysis of Nicky Gavron. For example if I skim my blog I can find the following quotation . . .
‘Mixed and balanced communities are rightly one of the shibboleths of the London Plan. But under Mr Johnson’s this means ‘a mix of tenure should be sought, particularly in neighbourhoods where social renting predominates’. Where, one might ask, are displaced residents to go? Crucially, there is no reciprocal policy for social rented housing to be introduced into areas where private housing predominates.
On the one hand the right wing London boroughs want to clear their council estates and build private flats for sale to overseas investors and on the other hand they don’t want new “social” tenants moving in anywhere, the polarisation of London will continue.
Now turning for a moment to the interview Dave Hill conducted with Karen Buck MP we can find the following transcript:-
DH: In terms of security of tenure isn’t there an ongoing debate in the world of housing assocations social housing in the broader sense about whether you need to change the rules I mean it’s because you have situations where people they get themselves into a nice social rented home of one type or another they stay there for ever sometimes they start to earn a lot more money than they earned when they moved into it. It’s that kind of conversation that’s going on. Is there no kind of argument for changing the rules as they stand at the moment?
Go away you’re poor
August 16th, 2010
Following the report from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research entitled “High Density Housing – The Impact on tenants” I have come to the conclusion, along with other indicators, that the current attitude of developers and some housing associations to their tenants is “go away you’re poor”.
HIGH DENSITY HOUSING – THE IMPACT ON TENANTS:
From Building Design 14/6/13
Cassie O’Keyboard | 12 June 2013 1:54 pm
Another interesting thing about this typology of having maisonettes over flats is that there isn’t any shared circulation space so the residents don’t have to pay a service charge. Particularly for social housing this can make a big difference to how affordable it actually is to live there.
The second article in the series linked below:-
Hope VI – or go away you’re poor II
Monitoring blogs – RSS feeds
July 20th, 2010
If you regularly follow several blogs and want to know if they have changed lately or updated their posts, there is a much easier way than viewing them from bookmarks. In your email client there will be a section for “News & Blogs” and this will enable you to add what are called RSS feeds which are marked on most blogs with an icon like this:-
Click the image above for a “howto” on RSS
All you have to do to monitor or follow a blog is to click the icon in the address bar and then copy the link to which you are taken into the appropriate place on your mail reader and you will then be automatically advised each time the blog changes.
Or do it the easy way and sign up with https://www.bloglines.com/
Maria Bethania – Royal Festival Hall
July 17th, 2010
Cathy Come Home – reviewed
July 16th, 2010
“Now I was pregnant again, some would say it was wrong to have another kiddy when you’re overcrowded as it is. But I don’t think so, I think kiddies are God’s gift, you don’t do right to deprive anyone of the chance of life, love’s what’s important in a child’s life, love is more important to a child than nice surroundings, I know, because I lived in what they call a respectable home, and I didn’t have it”.
Bow Quarter – Bryant and May
July 2nd, 2010
While walking around the East End (26/6/2010) I came across the former Bryant and May factory by the Eastway. I used to pass it on the train in the 1970s when it still had the branding on the outside facing the railway lines but it has long since been converted to housing and known as Bow Quarter.
Former Bryant and May factory from Fairfield Road
Private Eye: Thatch Roofs
June 29th, 2010
Some time ago, earlier this year while I was doing some internet research about Hammersmith and Fulham I came across a table showing the salaries of the Chief Executives of Housing Associations. They are substantial. A few weeks ago on one of my many architectural trips into the capital I met a couple on the train, quite posh, retired who were about to dispose of a copy of that weeks Private Eye. Understanding it was headed for the bin I said “would you mind if I read it instead please?” to which they agreed and on p.3 I found this article.
Ministers were quick to reveal that 50 housing associations pay their chief executives more than the prime minister. But they may be a bit slower to do anything about it.
Associations are classed as private sector organisations despite receiving billions of pounds in development grants and housing benefit payments from the taxpayer. That enables them to raise billions more in private finance to build homes without any impact on public borrowing, and to style themselves as independent businesses that have to pay the going rate to attract and retain the best people.
Cannon Place – Cannon Street London
June 5th, 2010
This has been a difficult week trying to identify an appropriate item about housing to highlight. Watching the emails come in with different items of building news. There was the intriguing and fascinating Cannon Street cantilever . . .
Click the picture above to see the full design
Finding somewhere to lay the foundations for an office block above London’s Cannon Street station proved so difficult, the engineers had to call on the structural principles of the Forth Bridge to get the job done
https://www.building.co.uk/technical/support-act-cannon-place/5000302.article
. . . which I went to see on Thursday 3rd June. It’s a fascinating sight, photo in due course I hope. However it’s not housing, that’s why this article is filed under Thoughts.
PPP abandoned – the last nail in the coffin for Brown
May 10th, 2010
When one looks back down the years at Ken’s Mayoralty, his struggles with the Labour Party at the time of trying to get elected as London Mayor, his fight with Gordon Brown over PPP and Ken’s attempts to keep tube funding public, his hiring of Bob Kiley (at some expense) from New York, to advise on how to go about running the tube efficiently, it is with a feeling of something bordering on despair to say “I told you so”.
From the London Evening Standard
Ken’s battle to save the tube from the hands of private contractors, and more importantly to ensure that all the funding went to the infrastructure and not divided into the pockets of directors and shareholders, rumbled on for years intertwined with his own struggles with the Labour party and his standing eventually as an independent for Mayor.
This from Londonist
Today he must feel vindicated but (saddened at the waste), that his prophetic point of view has been so thoroughly proved. What a waste of money in lawyers fees and contractors fees Londoners have paid for this mess.
Today the Guardian prints the news as follows:-
Transport for London (TfL) announced late on Friday evening the end of the controversial Public Private Partnership (PPP) on London Underground, saying it entered into an agreement to buy the shares of Bechtel and Amey (Ferrovial) from the Tube Lines consortium for £310 million.