UNESCO threatens to remove Westminster’s status as World Heritage Site; what a metaphor for decline. This should be taken seriously — in 2021 Unesco removed Liverpool’s listing. London deserves this prize: the Palace of Westminster by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin is a masterpiece. It is classical in plan and gothic in detail, if you care; St Paul’s Cathedral is the opposite. These buildings were created by artists, and they made London look like a painting, a wonder of the world. But does it deserve to keep it?
Things fall apart slowly, then fast. For years we have watched the destruction of London’s skyline and charm. Ugly buildings are constructed along the river, not for aesthetics — are you mad? — or housing for ordinary people — who? — but for profit. We have the weakest tall buildings strategy in the world and when you look from Vauxhall to Tower Bridge you know it.
There is no strategy to give London what it needs — it is a mess fuelled by greed and idiocy and it looks like it
If we made great public buildings in the 17th century this one is a race to the bottom in glass. Look at the plans for 72 Upper Ground, a forthcoming monster near the OXO Tower, waved through by the Lambeth planning committee by six votes to one. These buildings are designed by people with no eyes for people with no souls. It’s a copy of Dubai, or Singapore, on the bones of something better. Labour and Tory politicians are equally guilty. There is no strategy to protect London and give it what it needs. It is a mess fuelled by greed and idiocy, and it looks like it. Sometimes I think architects hate people. What else can explain it?
The listing is threatened by the building of five 73-metre towers at the Royal Street site on the south bank of the Thames. It’s Lambeth again, trying to overwhelm its existing treasure, Lambeth Palace, which, alongside small jewels like the Globe Theatre, looks crushed. The Royal Street development promises what the renovated Battersea Power Station offered: a pulsating district with housing and jobs. But for who? Prada? New Battersea is glossy, for sure. It is also over-priced, anathema to the spirit of the city, whose wonders are Georgian to Art Deco, and exclusive. They sell Le Creuset in the corner shop. What else do you need to know?
Not all are bad. I think the Gherkin is wonderful and at least the City Hall Building — the Ball Sac — opposite the Tower of London has a mad kind of identity. But they are mostly Freudian expressions of fury and greed. Aesthetics matter. Poor or not, past Londoners at least knew their city was for them, and it was glorious. Now, increasingly, it belongs to the non-resident, courtesy of the non-artist. It’s the manifesto of the times in concrete because we have given up on stone. I hope Unesco’s threat gives politicians thought, and they create, at last, a proper plan for London. I think they won’t.
The Thick of It row is a vindictive piece of BBC bashing
It is suggested that The Thick of It, the BBC’s superb political satire, be removed from iPlayer because Chris Langham, who appeared in the first two seasons of four, was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2007 and jailed for six months.
This is absurd. Langham is not an auteur — the show was created by Armando Iannucci. He wasn’t a leading man — The Thick of It has an ensemble cast, including Peter Capaldi — and its airing cannot be read as promoting his career: he doesn’t have one. He has been punished — why should the viewer, and his colleagues on this dazzling show, be punished too?
This is a vindictive, and anti-intellectual piece of BBC bashing. If we remove The Thick of It, which is a masterpiece, should we not also remove the Caravaggios — we have three — from the National Gallery? He did kill a man, after all.
