Rebuilding the City: 1951 and Now
July 3rd, 2011
In spite of the mens’ final at Wimbledon the function room on Level 5 of the Royal Festival Hall was all seats taken to hear several well known experts on architecture and housing speak to the assembled along with a lesser known figure of equal importance being Jean Symons, clerk on site during the building of the Royal Festival Hall.
Paul Finch was chair, and introduced the meeting allotting each of the speakers fifteen minutes each, starting with Jean Symons who spoke from notes very movingly about her time on site and the scenes that surrounded her.
On passing through Glasgow
June 17th, 2011
Travel has long been a pleasure of mine and it had been many years (nearly 19 years in this case) since work had called me North but the opportunity to catch up after almost two decades of change was irresistible. So much is new, the Foster Armadillo concert hall, BBC Scotland, the new Zaha Hadid Riverside Museum, the Science Museum and several bridges. But better still so much is still there from last time. The Charles Rennie Mackintosh buildings, the wealth of good architecture and the friendly people.
Glasgow is a city that grows on me each time I go. Here are a very few shots of places I passed by, some of which I had time to visit and others not, but there’s always next time for it’s a city that draws you back.
On arriving at Central Station . . . let’s park our bags and . . .
Virgin Pendolino
June 16th, 2011
UPDATE: 25/8/16 Following the Corbyn silly season story I’ve had another look at the seating plans five years on. The Virgin East Coast Mallards don’t suffer from what I experienced in 2011, the seating plan shows three first and six standard rather than the four first and five standard on the West Coast in 2011.
The Virgin East Coast HST seating plan shows three first and seven standard class carriages.
The Virgin West Coast updated seating plan may be downloaded here
Original article 16th June 2011
I had my first ride in a Virgin Pendolino recently, standard class (as we kept being told on the tannoy – there’s nothing like being repeatedly reminded you’re a pleb), forward facing and aisle, aircraft seating, quiet carriage. On the plus side the ride was comfortable, quiet and fast. On the minus side it was like sitting inside a small aircraft with 2+2 seating, with the luggage inside the cabin, and insufficient luggage racks at that, and in the wrong place.
Kate Davies and H&F
May 4th, 2011
Fun with Nick and Kate
Both the Independent on Sunday and the Daily Mail featured the erstwhile director of housing for Hammersmith, Nick Johnson, and his partner, Kate Davies, this week. Good investigative journalism but slightly missing the point, which is why are they paid so much out of public funds to promote private housing?
The same day I saw these stories I got notice of a planning application from Notting Hill Housing (prop. Kate Davies). It is to build 41 properties on the former VW garage site in King Street. Four of these will be five-bedroomed town houses in St Peter’s Square, each retailing for about £3million on the open market – which is what all 41 will be doing. Apparently, there is insufficient equity in the site for this housing association – whose only purpose for existing and paying its chief executive is to house people on low incomes – to build a single affordable home.
https://www.andyslaughter.co.uk/?p=4736 or if that fails then locally here -> Fun with Nick and Kate
Bernard Crofton on housing, from the Guardian
March 17th, 2011
bernardcrofton -> Bellerephon
Of course not, but you can often blame architect for problem estates. Here’s a little anecdote.
As the most junior lettings officer, I was given the task of filling the empty block in the Stevenage town centre. It had one benefit to the locals: instead of being let to people moving out of London I was allowed to let them to local couples who “fell pregnant” with no other prospect of their own home. I was told to promise them they would be high-priority transfers when the child was three. Then Heath won the 1970 election, budgets were cut, and many of them were still there a decade later, but with more kids. Older couples suited to the estate moved out because of the noise.
The Chief Architect planned a tower block in each neighbourhood:”like a church spire in a traditional village”. My response that people don’t have to live in a church spire fell on cloth ears.
And an anecdote on architects in general. I attended a course on residential densities at the Architectural Association. One of our test exercises was a disused dock backing onto a 1930s LCC estate. Apart from mine and a planner’s from Islington, every design submitted included a big wall between the older council estate and the new homes.
https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/28933440
Is the big society big enough for homeless people?
bernardcrofton’s comment 4 July 2011 12:03PM
It was deliberate policy of the Thatcher government to remove full security of tenure and allow rents to rise in the private sector,and to force council and housing association rents to rise in the public.
The result was that Housing Benefit “took the hit”. (I would say see my evidence to the commons social security committee 1996 but I can’t find the link for the moment). This was seen as an inevitable cost of forcing up rents. The neo-cons believed that eventually there would be a resurgence of the private landlord.
The same belief underpins the current coalition plans for “near-market rents”. The problem is that this time all the family sized dwellings are going to be above the benefits cap etc..
And the “flood of immigrants” around the millennium was a temporary phenomenon caused by the accession of the eastern block to the EU with full rights to live and work anywhere within the EU. I make no comment on the rights and wrongs, or losses and gains to the UK, involved in that treaty. I simply observe that the Accession Act 1996 put into UK law the Maastricht Treaty which gave those countries equal rights with other EU citizens to enter the UK. 1996 was the seventeenth year of a Conservative Government.
Recommended (13)
Recruitment agencies
January 26th, 2011
https://careers.guardian.co.uk/careers-blog/recruitment-consultant
alternageek
26 January 2011 9:59AM
I would just like to know why agencies post jobs that don’t exist so people will feed them their CV? – I’ve had this happen to me numerous times since I first moved to the UK and makes job hunting so depressing. I actually stayed in a job that was making me ill, because it was better than having to weed through fake ads and being disappointed that the job never existed.
Also how come when you tell an agency I don’t want to do X, Y & Z – that’s all they offer you? Or they send you on interviews saying the role is what you want, but when you get there, its actually for the opposite of what you’re looking for.
I’m about to go back into the job market (Customer Admin/Service background) and totally petrified about finding real work and going on interviews where I’m not wasting anyone’s time.
Google Earth historic images
December 29th, 2010
Civic pride and the Common Good
December 12th, 2010
An article in Private Eye No.1274 dated 29/10-11/11 about the possible selling off of council assets (translation – buildings paid for by rate payers over the years) to developers, has prompted consideration of the way things used to be and how life for all of us might be better if they still were.
I was recently prompted into thinking about these things by a fellow blogger who pointed me to his take on the Big Society. After reading his thoughts here:-
https://ukregeneration.org.uk/2010/11/29/the-big-society-age-%E2%80%93-now-it%E2%80%99s-official/
Pathfinder – Owen Hatherley – Guardian
November 22nd, 2010
“Knocking stuff down does not increase supply, […] everything we knock down shrinks supply”
Prof Anne Power speaking to LB Camden
Pathfinder seems to have been in the news since the days of John Prescott and New Labour. Back in March this year, Karen Buck MP, a lady I respect, pointed out in a housing debate that. . .
. . . when the Pathfinder projects were starting they were dealing with the problem of excess supply and indeed many areas being blighted with huge numbers of homes that they could not rent or sell . . .
Pathfinder – Karen Buck blasts back March 4th, 2010 https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=86
I confess that I never did understand the true reason for it especially since it quickly resulted in groups of home owners banding together and taking their local council to court, and often winning, in order to avoid demolition.
At the height of the Pathfinder demolitions I can remember BBC news reports showing people saying that they were going to lose their homes with a compensation figure that would come nowhere near the cost of a new flat built to replace it.
New Royal London Hospital – Yuk!
November 14th, 2010
What a mess. I don’t often take an instinctive dislike to a building but this thing is on such a gargantuan scale that you can’t ignore it, unfortunately, you have to have a view on it. It is out of scale with its surroundings to an alarming degree, ugly, with few windows and a most unattractive finish on the parts that aren’t blue panels.
Out of keeping, out of place, out of scale, I wish it was out of sight.