Leicester has a rather lovely station, outside of the great termini. Classic late Victorian elegance, and well located at the edge of the inner ING road, so accessible both by pedestrians and vehicles.
A small thing, but I always rather liked that the bridge on the other side of the road is done to match:
Just up London Rd from the station is one of my favourite Leicester landmarks "Top Hat Terrace"
This is now a legal office, but in Victorian times was the headquarters of Francis "Tankie" Smith, the famous detective and master of disguise:
I have been busy. I have had good news. I have not had time to scan the threads.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
50% are men, too large a proportion of which are misogynistic. 50% are women, who if they want to succeed in a male dominated society, need to behave like men, generally the more unpleasant portion of men.
If this turns out to be true, we'd be truly f*cked.
'The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century. But Divlitsen said the models used have coarse resolution and are not adept at analysing the non-linear processes involved, which may make them overly conservative.'
Albeit with warmer winters in the UK than in the past the gulf stream may be less important to us anyway, less rainfall potentially too in summer. Though would need more irrigation for agriculture
You can wave goodbye to any 'warmer winters' in the UK after a collapse of the gulf stream.
"In 2020, a study had assessed the impact of an AMOC collapse on farming and food production in Great Britain. It estimated that AMOC collapse would reverse the impact of global warming in Great Britain and cause an average temperature drop of 3.4 °C."
I have been busy. I have had good news. I have not had time to scan the threads.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
1) LSE publicly praised Ghaddffi's son’s thesis that dad had invented democracy that was more democratic than that actual voting crap.
I hope they were just being corrupt whores. The alternative was that they actually were advocating fascism pebbled dashed in socialist words.
People are beginning to realise the state doesn't give a shit about them. They take money from people but deliver no services. We arent a priority. For most people the only help they get is bins, education if they have kids, and the odd trip to nhs. I suspect most people don't think they are getting value for taxes. The police no longer investigate crime that people care about. The nhs is gate kept by doctors (assuming you can get hold off one) or their receptionist who seems to want you to fuck off and not bother them. A lot no longer bother having kids because they worry about the state of the world so they look at how much is taken for their paypackets and go what did I get for that?
I have been busy. I have had good news. I have not had time to scan the threads.
I am just coming on to tut tut loudly at -
1. Alison Rose of NatWest. Dearie dearie me. "A serious error of judgment". No shit, Sherlock. Howard Davies is Chair. His impeccable judgment was shown when he was Chair of the LSE and it decided to take money from Ghaddffi's son who, entirely coincidentally, received some sort of degree shortly thereafter. Mind you he had that idiot, Shami Chakrabarti on the Board so it's no wonder the LSE's moral compass was MIA.
3. The Criminal Cases Review Commission and its appalling response over the Post Office. We have institutional callousness, to add to all the other institutional failings pretty much every public and private service suffers from these days.
3. Police Scotland - on 16 March they launched their Violence against Women & Girls (VAWG) Strategy. 9 days later on 25 May the Chief Constable said the force was institutionally misogynistic. On 22 July a woman was violently assaulted by a man in Aberdeen. The assault was recorded on film and witnessed. The woman suffered punches to her face and arms; she has a black eye. The police have given him a warning and left it at that. Maybe they also said "maaate" at him as that insufferable weasel, Khan, has suggested in his risible poster campaign.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
1) LSE publicly praised Ghaddffi's son’s thesis that dad had invented democracy that was more democratic than that actual voting crap.
I hope they were just being corrupt whores. The alternative was that they actually were advocating fascism pebbled dashed in socialist words.
People are beginning to realise the state doesn't give a shit about them. They take money from people but deliver no services. We arent a priority. For most people the only help they get is bins, education if they have kids, and the odd trip to nhs. I suspect most people don't think they are getting value for taxes. The police no longer investigate crime that people care about. The nhs is gate kept by doctors (assuming you can get hold off one) or their receptionist who seems to want you to fuck off and not bother them. A lot no longer bother having kids because they worry about the state of the world so they look at how much is taken for their paypackets and go what did I get for that?
The NHS was always run for the producer interest. Hence the 80s joke - What’s the difference between a patient and a customer? The customer is the one with the rights.
It's still possible to build beautiful stuff - I was amazed to find out the "Atlas" bar in Singapore was opened in 2017.
Design should cater in order for 1) The needs of people using it 2) Cost 3) looking pretty
How about the aesthetes in the population who NEED beauty?
I suspect this is a lot larger as a percentage of the whole than you realise. PB is infested with engineering geek/data types. Beauty is not the their thing
For many people, it matters quite a lot
Beauty is worthless if it doesn't cater for the people use it. Would you queue up to wait for a bus while being urinated on by tramps just because the building was beautiful? Well maybe you would but I bet most wouldn't.
I don't claim beauty is not important I am just saying catering for the needs of those using it and cost are more important. Cater for 1 and 2 then make it beautiful not make it beautiful but impractical. Slough's new bus station is a prime example of the latter
Ugly is not materially cheaper than beautiful. It just takes imagination.
The Georgian terraces that people love were thrown up cheaply by developers for example
Comments
This is now a legal office, but in Victorian times was the headquarters of Francis "Tankie" Smith, the famous detective and master of disguise:
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186334-d24884228-Reviews-Top_Hat_Terrace-Leicester_Leicestershire_England.html
The 16 heads are Tankie in a dozen (not very convincing) disguises. The slight flaw in the plan is that everyone in the town must have known them...
See: Slough.
Would also ensure we had cooler summers than the scorchers southern Europe suffers
The Georgian terraces that people love were thrown up cheaply by developers for example