George Orwell statue

[teamsaint]

people at the top are seldom happy with one well paid job....
This Lady, who is also the new head of a Cambridge College.http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/bu...s_water_board/

Any road up, and back on topic, there is a fine monument to Orwell just next to London bridge station...the ministry of Truth Shard....spooky !!


Edit...a brief translation from Babelfishsaint of the Salisbury Journal article

"Oh goody, lots more money and power for me.....and there is S**T loads of money to be made out of telling people how scarce water is in the UK. The stupid sods will believe anything if we say it often enough !!"

[johncorrigan]

Well, if we can't give Orwell a staue at the BBC perhaps a [Wigan] pierage??

I'd be tempted to try something a bit more Jurable!

http://www.isleofjura.com/Images/Jura%20image.jpg

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this has a certain resonance .....

[french frank]

the area already has a work by Mark Pimlott

Costing £1.6m . Crumbs, who paid for it?

the BBC are working with Westminster Council to site the statue outside Broadcasting House, which is where Orwell worked.

'plans to site it on nearby Portland Place, which does not belong to the BBC'. Nothing to do with us, chaps

[teamsaint]

Costing £1.6m . Crumbs, who paid for it?

'plans to site it on nearby Portland Place, which does not belong to the BBC'. Nothing to do with us, chaps

looks like a quite posh swimming pool bottom.
good thing there public finances aren't under pressure .....
They spent £2m re paving the High st in Winchester and I thought THAT was profligate....

[Gordon]

They spent £2m re paving the High st in Winchester and I thought THAT was profligate....

Wot!! Dey Wuz Robbed!! I know a couple Irish lads who'd have done it for a case of Guiness. It does look to be a good job done, but £2M!! Pity about some of the closed shops though. But then Winchester's full of rich toffs innit

[french frank]

They spent £2m re paving the High st in Winchester and I thought THAT was profligate....

Doing up Broadcasting House cost £1bn ...

[teamsaint]

FF, I thought for a moment you really MEANT £1 Bn !! Oh you DID mean it !!Was it in danger of collapse, perhaps ?!

The £2m for Winchester High St....well, I don't know how much paving costs, but the council trumpeted the cost like it was a good thing....and, as Gordon said, it does look good....but it is SO easy to spend other peoples money..
In general, public money is being diverted into the pockets of big contactors, and away from people who need it. As for the BBC, perhaps if they cut back on MOTD salaries, (£40k per show for Hansen) and vanity projects, they could have afforded commentators for ALL the olympic events.....or whatever.

[Flosshilde]

Honestly, sometimes I feel that I'm reading the Daily Wail message board The BBC haven't just 'done up Broadcasting House' ( ) - they have built a substantial new building (three, according to this article in The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi...dcasting-house) alongside & attached to it.

Here's an article from the architectural press - http://www.architecturetoday.co.uk/?p=17368. Given the quality of some of the comments above I doubt if many will appreciate its style, although "The overall impression of this new addition to the BBC’s headquarters feels like a series of politically correct statements" might appeal to the Daily Mailish tendency. (not altogether )

[teamsaint]

Honestly, sometimes I feel that I'm reading the Daily Wail message board The BBC haven't just 'done up Broadcasting House' ( ) - they have built a substantial new building (three, according to this article in The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi...dcasting-house) alongside & attached to it.

Here's an article from the architectural press - http://www.architecturetoday.co.uk/?p=17368. Given the quality of some of the comments above I doubt if many will appreciate its style, although "The overall impression of this new addition to the BBC’s headquarters feels like a series of politically correct statements" might appeal to the Daily Mailish tendency. (not altogether )

what is the Daily Mail Message board like then , Floss? good stuff? Go there often?

speaking for myself...style is great...modern design i all sorts of areas of life can be, and often is, wonderful.
Style at excessive public expense, and in particular where only a very few will directly benefit., is another matter altogether.

[teamsaint]

Wot!! Dey Wuz Robbed!! I know a couple Irish lads who'd have done it for a case of Guiness. It does look to be a good job done, but £2M!! Pity about some of the closed shops though. But then Winchester's full of rich toffs innit

I wonder what the budget for repaving in, for example, Totton or Waterlooville would be ?

perhaps for £2m they might also become tourist magnets....the Gateway to the New Forest or the South Downs..HCC may have missed a trick here !!

[Flosshilde]

what is the Daily Mail Message board like then , Floss? good stuff? Go there often?

Only when someone puts in a link to a Daily Mail article.

speaking for myself...style is great...modern design i all sorts of areas of life can be, and often is, wonderful.
Style at excessive public expense, and in particular where only a very few will directly benefit., is another matter altogether.

Trouble is, if you work on that basis public buildings will be like the worst sort of supermarket or shopping mall - tin sheds. Shouldn't the state, & public organisations, have a little more imagination & commitment to architecture & the physical environment than that?

Another recent new BBC building might be of interest - BBC Scotland in Glasgow, which cost £188m http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi....stirlingprize. This was another one where the client got cold feet & kicked the architect off the job half-way through.

I would imagine that a large part of the cost of both buildings is down to the technology; they aren't just office buildings, but include broadcasting studios. And as such they will be providing a benefit to most, if not all, of the population.

[teamsaint]

my point , and I should have been more explicit, is that good design does not have to come at huge cost.(check out modern design of cheap consumer goods, which in terms of style and cost , is often amazing).
really, not many people want our public buildings looking like B and Q....but too often, in my opinion, quality in the public sector does come at a high cost, when expenditure elsewhere is being cut to the bone.
The public do deserve the best from their money...quality shouldn't be reserved for the rich...but use of public funds requires a great deal of care on those with the power to spend.

As a comparison of how things can cost disproportionate amounts...Wembley stadium cost approx £10k per seat to build, just a few years after Saint Mary's Stadium in Southampton was built at 10% of that cost per seat. Wembley has a few more bells and whistles,so even if you allow for double the cost per seat , it really isn't 5 times better !!

£1.6m for a bit of installation art, on the floor, where most people will never see it, is profligate.

(Oh and people sometimes quote Daily Mail articles because the article is interesting, or makes a good point....even if they never read a copy, or visit their message boards).

[Flosshilde]

my point , and I should have been more explicit, is that good design does not have to come at huge cost.(check out modern design of cheap consumer goods, which in terms of style and cost , is often amazing).

Yes, I know that - but the essential point about consumer goods is that they are mass produced - usually in the far East by workers on low pay working long hours, which is why they can be so cheap. That's one of the reasons why craftspeople & artists in the UK find it so difficult to make a living - the cost of what we make has to be substantially higher (higher overheads - rent, fuel prices, etc & the need to make something like a living wage) than the cheap imported stuff in IKEA. Comparing mass-produced goods with one-off buildings, though, is nonsense.

really, not many people want our public buildings looking like B and Q....but too often, in my opinion, quality in the public sector does come at a high cost, ... The public do deserve the best from their money...quality shouldn't be reserved for the rich...but use of public funds requires a great deal of care on those with the power to spend.

But quality does cost.

£1.6m for a bit of installation art, on the floor, where most people will never see it, is profligate.

Is it? I don't know - I haven't seen it. Next time I'm in London I'll go & have a look.

(Oh and people sometimes quote Daily Mail articles because the article is interesting, or makes a good point....even if they never read a copy, or visit their message boards).

I think I realised that, too. When I look at an article that's been posted, I usually browse through the comments - very amusing, some of them, & I've devised a little game I play with them. I won't bore you with it, though.

[Gordon]

To be fair to Winchester it is HCC HQ and has a lot of tourism, both local and regional, and its catchment is fairly well off [I don't know what its community charges are like, I live in another more rural local authority nearby].

A scruffy looking town won't attract or keep its trade. Having said that there is a couple of scruffy looking places in the Winchster city centre area!!

Part of the High Street is narrow and was pedestrianised ages ago making shopping more relaxed. It does look welcoming and spacious. It has easy access to the cathedral and eating places and the Brooks centre, a small retail complex. The new paving extends over about 300 metres length and 15 metres or more at its widest which may be about half that length. Area about say 3000 square metres in round figures giving a cost of about £670 per square metre. You could carpet the area for less!! The majority of this would be labour and plant hire to clear the site and relay the new slabs. If it takes man half an hour to lay 1 square metre of paving at a cost of £10 an hour, how many......?

Now Basingstoke is another matter!!