Things move fast

You know those signs which are rigged up to a speed detector and light up, telling you, personally, to slow down if you're going too fast; one of them just flashed at me... on my bike. Cool as!

I'm not the only things to come and go in the blink of an eye though. Take a look at this:

And now this:

Aside from one photo being zoomed in far closer, you will notice that the second is far less cluttered with sheet clad building owing to the clearing of the site to build the Heron Tower. And these photos were taken, what, 2 and a half months apart.

The upshot of this is there are now - for a limited period - pleasant vistas across to St Botolph's without Bishopsgate Church. This view has been obscured for probably the last 30 years at least by a bland concrete building and, if all goes according to plan, will be obscured once more within the next year. So get in fast!

It's a very pretty church and i'm glad it's now revealed to the world. Does this mean I wish Heron Tower wasn't being built?

It's a tricky one. If the Heron Tower wasn't going to be built then I suppose the plot of land would be a great location for a small park. I think it'd get plenty of sun and, as illustrated here, the views would be pretty.

But that's never gonna happen. That land is destined to play host to an office block of some description. A view obscuring office block. But the question remains; what sort of building should it be? Preserving the view can't be an argument against or in favour of any building higher than 1 storey. Realistically, any new building in the city is going to be at leats 5 storeys high (even the old ones tend to have at least 4 floors).

So it does make me sad to know that the view of St Botolph's from the south East will be short-lived one, at least I know the building that gets in the way has an architectural ambition that might just soften the blow a little.

Blue meanies

This is an old photo (taken in August I think) of the fence going around the new Olympic park redevelopment area. It's a much better photo than those I took this morning (owing to me only having my phone on me this morning), hence its inclusion.

I'm not going to attempt to follow the development of the Olympic Park too closely as another blog does a far more thorough job of it. But I did come across some interesting stuff today on my way to the local nature reserve where I saw, among other things, two foxes sunning themselves in the... err... sun.

Firstly, to recap, also in August I saw that the only thing breaching the impenetrable fortress Olympic 2012 was a tree , which happened to lie exactly along the path of the fence, and was broad and
low enough to leave the developers with no choice but to cut around it.

Now, however, there is a new spirit of openness as they have installed windows. Not much to see as yet - just a load of rubble - so it's perhaps understandable that the first glimpse the public has been permitted to have of the site coincides with the plastering of these black and white posters over a section of the fence.

Now that's what I call a community art project!

Doom and gloom

Had Chris Morris not been given the go ahead to film the The Day Today episode where he announces "It's War!" (YouTube) ("The stretched twig of peace is at.. melting point." Ha!) he would have filmed a similar episode where he proclaimed, "It's Recession!". That much we know.

For recession is one of the few times when the press play a greater than half-share in making the news.

When I was at uni, and flirting with a career in international journalism I went to a graduate recruitment presentation by Reuters. One of the people leading the talk opted to illustrate with an example what the job was all about. He related how one day George Bush had off the cuff made a minor, equivocal comment about the US economy whilst preoccupied with other matters on a state visit to Italy. The Reuters people in Italy picked up on this and reported it as a big story. This story rocketed around the world unaltered - i.e. just the raw facts with no analysis as to whether there might be any substance beyond the childish ruminations of a befuddled president - and share prices began to plummet. About 36 hours later Alan Greenspan was forced to deliver a statement to the effect that the US economy wasn't in crisis and that the world wasn't ready to end just yet.

After relating this story the Reuters rep turned to the audience beaming. "As you can see," he said, "what we do here at Reuters really does make an impact."

What! You nearly cause a financial meltdown because of sloppy, knee-jerk reporting? And you're proud of that! That is the single example you've chosen to represent how crucial your work is. I dread to think what other calamities they've nearly foisted on the world if that was the one to be most proud of. I was always taught (always - every morning, before breakfast) that Chernobyl was caused by Russian scientists carrying out tests without proper safeguards; that the Exxon Valdez ran aground on rocks; that the famine in Ethiopia was caused by a number of dry years and exacerbated by civil strife... but I wouldn't discount the hand of global news corp Reuters behind it all.

So anyway, a very long-winded way of saying that surely I can't be the only one to wonder if booms and busts would happen at all without the media. (Yes there would be up and down fluctuations, but if so much is dependent on consumer and market confidence, would they ever reach mammoth proportions?). And that Land Securities, for one, don't seem too shaken, so a few London buildings should still get built.

Keyword of the week: Does London have a nickname?

Well - does it? Britain's nickname is 'Old Blighty', so we're OK there, but what about the capital?

This forum seem to agree that 'The Smoke' is one... but surely that can apply to any number of cities (I'm sure I've heard it in numerous American films), so that doesn't work.

This site seems to think 'The City' and 'The square mile' count, but, although they stick to the rules of nicknames (one is a shortening, the other a physical feature), I still think they are a poor showing.

But hey - look at this (taken from here):

"The Big Smoke" (or, "the Great Smoke") is London, England -- a city known for its fog. "The Big Smoke" dates earlier than "the Big Apple," but London's nickname is used informally and much less often.


(Oxford English Dictionary)
the (big, great) smoke, a colloquial name for London. Also, any large city or town (chiefly Austral.).

The trouble is, there are so many Australians in London these days that use of Big Smoke may well be on the increase, but not in the right sense to make it a proper nickname. Our (admittedly already obscure and anachronistic) sense of national capital jocularity is being diluted by outsiders. Damn cheek. Just coz they don't have any city nicknames of their own. (Quite odd really, given the Australian propensity for nicknaming things. If I'm wrong, and there are nicknames for Australian cities, please correct me).

Next they'll be importing a non-standard use of the term cockney -chuck another cockney on the barbie, or summat - and ruining that too. We should search Australians for vocabulary when they arrive in the same way they search us for animals and plants.

Who makes the iDents?

I make the iDents!

I've posted once before about the Channel 4 ident with the helicopter flying around new buildings going up in the Dubai desert.

Well, outside Channel 4 HQ, near where I work, they have actually built one of those fours which materialise as you pass by, and then vanish again as the pieces fall out of alignment. It's got segments of athletic torsos printed on it, though I'm not sure what the significance of this is.

Anyway, here is my home made, phone made iDent:

(More frequent, shorter posts!)

By the way, John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan - great album!

Also:

Balls!

All work and no play

More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts.

If I repeat it enough it may just become a reality.

I've not been busy exactly, but writing the blog hasn't seemed like an attractive proposition somehow. It hasn't put in an appearance near near or at the top of the leader-board of my diverse lifestyle choice options.

Until, that is, I saw that they have now removed the scaffolding from Cornhill Exchange at Bank and replaced it with pinkness.

Worth noting, I thought.

If I don't leave a post about the Channel 4 offices in the next few days please leave me lots of abusive comments.

Think about it, think think about it

Two things

1. I was just on the bus reading the FREE paper over someone's shoulder. On four occasions they deliberately instigated a protective tilt. What's wrong with the world today? Think about it, think think about it.
2. Fight!
   
   Signs often say "witnesses needed... serious assault... sexual assualt... robbery... BLISTERS!"
   
   This one ways "Fight".
   

Oh blog - why art though veering from buildings?

Broadgate Tower - an icon of our age

It's been a while yet again since I last wrote. But the Broadgate Tower waits for no man. It's left me behind and is mingling with the stars and mythical creatures.

I do of course mean it's allstar appearance on tonight's Dragon's den.

I've never noticed it before, despite being an avid viewer. This means that either:

1. all the other episodes (bar tonight's, which was a recap episode, 3 months on) were filmed before the tower was tall enough/respectable looking enough to be featured as a cutaway shot or (even better) as a backdrop for Evan Harris' summation speech.
2. the Dragons have moved den!

Either way I know that as well as looking like it's filmed in an East End converted warehouse studio, it is actually filmed in such a place.

But despite its new glitzy lifestyle it still lacks two things.

1. Completion. It actually seems to be going backwards as yesterday, after the Arsenal Chelsea game, the builders had blocked bishopsgate street and were in the process of - or so it seemed - erecting a new crane!
2. A name. This, I admit, is all my fault. I have been remiss in not capitalising on the, albeit limited, momentum I had. I will make up for this by printing t-shirts and selling on lulu or cafepress, where you can also buy this most interesting calendar for 2008. I have seen the back of every page of the calendar and they were most white and clean, which is what you'd expect.
   
   The Gherkin has a name and is doing well for itself. They've just illuminated an entire floor bright red (it doesn't, alas, show up too well on the photo, but it is very eye-catching). Would that ever have happened to plain old 30 St Mary's Axe? I think not.