Nicholas Boys Smith has an interesting Critic piece on the restoration of the Palace of Westminster, interesting because it highlight how poor we are at major public projects.
A sense of palace
It’s apparently beyond us to fix one of the world’s greatest buildings
The creation of the modern Palace of Westminster after the medieval palace’s destruction by fire is a Victorian epic; a three-part novel of Dickensian satire, Trollopian industry and Disraelian hutzpah. It is one whose final success we are unable to match today despite greater wealth and technological resources due to failings of ambition and ability to execute.
It's a subject about which I know very little, but the whole piece is well worth reading as it fits so well with a whole raft of current failings.
Besides this history of purpose and beauty, ambition and delivery, the saga of modern Britain’s inability to restore the Palace of Westminster is frankly pathetic. It is the quintessential exemplar of “Broken Britain”, of a state no longer able to conceive sensibly ambitious plans or execute them effectively, of a state so focused on posturing and process that it has forgotten about common sense and outcomes.
8 comments:
I recommend we build a new home for parliament on The Merrick, a hill in Galloway. From it you can see Scotland, of course, Wales, England, and Northern Ireland. Moreover, obvs, it has the huge advantage of Not Being London. It would be designed so that we could scrap Toni Blair's Supreme Court and revert to the old habit of using the judicial committee of the House of Lords for the parts of its job that must be done.
It would be infinitely easier to build anew than to rescue an old building. The value of the land in Westminster would probably pay for the Galloway parliament which would, of course, be built in accord with the best environmental principles.
And another thing: the Crystal Palace. "Designed by Joseph Paxton [it] was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m), and was three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral. ...
The 990,000-square-foot building with its 128-foot-high ceiling was completed in thirty-nine weeks."
I was watching a vjdeo the other day about Josiah Wedgwood. Unable to work a potters wheel properly because of his crippled leg, he set to and took on all the technical aspects of potting.
Needing to get his fragile goods to market, he set to and drove on the building of the canal network. This was recognised as a good thing by other industrialists who joined in and built more. This was followed by the building of the railways.
Apart from parliament passing bills to enable the works, there was no government involvement and no public money spent.
That is how the transport infrastructure came about during the Industrial Revolution. Whatever happened to that drive and energy ?
Given that the current building is falling apart, it is depressingly inevitable that we would get one of two outcomes. Either the current paralysis, or some "radical" scheme to preserve the old building as a tourist attraction and build a modernist monstrosity in somewhere like Leeds.
It should be a real eye-opener that the state which is so hemmed in by multiple considerations that it can't successfully restore one building is also attempting to control the weather. "You can trust us with the economy".
dearieme - I agree, Not Being London would be an advantage for the rest of us - the majority. According to Wokipedia, The Merrick is in the Range of the Awful Hand which sounds a bit grim, although the sight of MPs toiling up there would be enjoyable. Anything stemming from Blair should be rolled back, including his knighthood.
John - yes, Wedgwood was a remarkable man. Eventually he found the leg too much of a hindrance so he had it amputated. A very meticulous experimentalist too, he ran test after test until he achieved an effect he wanted. The Cromford canal isn't far from us, another example of private enterprise in the days of picks, shovels, horses and carts.
Sam - "You can trust us with the economy".
That's it isn't it? Can't do anything else, can't spend within our means, can't keep projects even close to the original budget but we have a firm grasp of how the economy works. Oh and we can control global weather.
Unfortunately, though I get a whiff of the author's frustration, the article isn't specific enough in giving examples and details to inform me - I worked in the sector in the 1990s. I can tell you about the unsatisfactory nature of modern building contractors let loose on historic buildings!
Tammly - it may be a limitation on the length of the piece where only so much detail can be included.
Dearie- me. A wonderful idea.
When I first went, with work, to Aus, it all finished up with with the Aussie and myself driving, a long long way, to Canberra to meet the head civil servant who would authorise payment for what we were jointly offering.
On this long journey this Aussie informed me that the Australians were very wise and had located the Nation's Capital in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from normal civilisation. Where the polies could not annoy the common people.
We arrived at the Very Important Civil Service office car park, stripped to underwear, removing sweaty travel scruffs, and donned suits.
I have climbed The Merrick with a troop of Boy Scouts camped in a farmer's field much lower. Long ago. Long, long long ago in a simpler, happier time.
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