Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

Tag: London (Page 6 of 15)

The Birth of the Shard

24 February 2011 / / 4 Comments

If you take a stroll down Farringdon Road, from Exmouth Market towards Clerkenwell Green, you will come upon a magnificent sight-line into the City of London. It is not until you reach the Betsey Trotwood and the Free Word Centre that St Paul’s Cathedral emerges on the skyline, but from further up the road, a new landmark is emerging – Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ Shard of Glass, currently under construction.
Since I work at the Free Word Centre, I regularly happen across this view.  I often take a quick snap with the camera on my phone. Below is an example that has been filtered through Instagr.am.
Birth of the Shard, by Yrstruly on InstagramA better attempt with an SLR and telephoto lense is on Flickr:

Birth of the Shard

Birth of the Shard by yrstrly on Flickr


I have found that the damp and foggy days when the building emerges from midst are when the Shard looks most interesting. The giant looms on the horizon, and one’s sense of scale is confused and compressed, which reminds me of the famous photograph by the Liverpudlian photographer E. Chambré Hardman, ‘The Birth of the Ark Royal’, taken in 1950.
Birth of the Ark royal

Photograph of the HMS Ark Royal, taken from the top of Holt Hill in Birkenhead, by Chambré Hardman.


See also the weathered early photographs of Tower Bridge and the Eiffel Tower under construction.  Watching The Shard rise, I have a strong sense of being embedded in history. I know that it will become a symbol of London, like Gherkin and Millenium Wheel, or the pointy Transamerica Pyramid in San Fransisco.  Watching it grow makes me feel like I am sat inside an iconic, historical image.

Farringdon Lane Docking Station

18 February 2011 / / 4 Comments

Right then:  I’ve made a tentative foray into the world of webtools for urban living: The Farringdon Lane Docking Station on Twitter.  Now I need help making it better.
There’s a long established trend of inanimate objects being on Twitter, including Tower Bridge and The River Thames.  In both cases, they update people on crucial aspects of their current status: for example, is the tide in or out? I felt it was time this particular bike rack joined the service – as a keen user of Boris Bikes (an ironic moniker given they were commissioned by Ken Livingstone) I often need to check the status of the rack outside the Free Word Centre (where I work).
The Farringdon Lane Docking Station is a popular rack, one that is usually either (a) completely full with no space to park a bike, or (b) completely empty with no cycles available to use.  For that reason, I often find myself trying to check the status of the racks online or on the move.  Unfortunately, the workflow required is relatively difficult, involving several steps through the website or iPhone apps like Fliplab’s London Cycle.  This actually takes a fair few frustrating minutes via a 3G connection, which is no good when I am in a hurry and keen to make a quick decision about whether to take a tube train or a bike.
I thought I could solve this by creating a twitter account that automatically updates itself, whenever the status of the dock changes.  That way, whenever I think I may need a bike, I can simply fire-up my twitter application of choice and look at the latest status of the docking station.  I don’t have to load unnecessary information about the status of every other docking station.
Unfortunately, my coding skills are minimal and limited to simple PHP.  I don’t have the wherewithal to pull data from the London Cycle Hire site using their API.  I solved this by making a customised RSS feed using the Feed43 (Feed for free) service.  This scrapes the cycle hire map page (which has the status of all the bike racks embedded into it).  Then I used Twitterfeed to post the results into a customised twitter account.  The results are below:
The problem with my system should be obvious!  If the chain of data was linked together properly, then we should be able to see every single change in status, not a huge jump from 16|0 to 8|8.  This is clearly happening because both Feed43 and Twitterfeed pull data a long but regular intervals, not on a second-by-second or minute-by-minute basis.  This is useless for my purposes.  How can I improve it?

The Seams of Our Society Are Exposed Tonight

9 December 2010 / / 3 Comments

We live in interesting times. As I write there are protesters kettled by police on Westminster Bridge, and burning portaloos in Parliament Square. The army are deployed in Edinburgh, clearing the effects of the worst snow for 40 years. Meanwhile, an ‘info war’ is being waged on the largest financial services companies in the world by a disparate group of hacktivists. Digital technology allows us to watch all these crises unfold in realtime.
In my twitter stream all these stories are spliced together. This makes them seem like different scenes in a single master-narrative.
All these events are compelling because they show just how tenuous our human systems are. Visa and MasterCard should be reliable to the point of invisibility – instead we are reminded that they can turn off our credit on a political whim. The food supply into our cities should be consistent and unbroken, not severed by a bit of snow. And our shopping districts should not erupt into blazing vandalism in an instant.
These confusions expose the thin seams of our society. I do not think they will break, for tonight at least. But the strain is obvious.

Free Speech in Parliament Square

13 July 2010 / / 4 Comments

Democracy Camp, Parliament Square. Photo by Yrstrly on Flickr.

Democracy Camp, Parliament Square. Photo by Yrstrly on Flickr.


Earlier, I posted the Democracy Camp’s Press Release.  I confess I probably would not have worded the statement as they did –  “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” may be good rhetoric, but it is also a tacit admission that the camp is indeed seriously unhygenic!  Since those who oppose the protestare using a public health argument against the campers, I worry that this admission only gives more ammunition to the authorities.
My understanding of the peace camp is that it is primarily a protest against the British presence in Afghanistan, with a dash of the anarchic “Don’t vote” message thrown in for good measure.  However, the eviction controversy has replaced these demands with a version of Marshall Macluan’s “The Medium is the Message”.   More important than anything they say, is the fact that they are there.  As Westminister Council and the GLA seek to remove the protesters, the issue of the right to protest becomes paramount.
Making your point outside the seat of government is an essential component of any democracy, however unsightly it looks, and however inconvenient it is for everyone else. It is right and good that the tourists who come to photograph and tour the so-called Mother of Parliaments should also see people openly dissenting against the decisions of that parliament.  I have ambled around Parliament Square a few times in recent weeks, and the contrast between the grandeur of the Palace of Westminster, and the ramshackle protest camp, says something important about free speech and democracy.  Even the poorest and most humble of us can challenge what happens in the most ornate and powerful of places.  This is an image we should promote and propagate.
If the authorities are genuinely concerned about hygeine then they should provide modest facilities for ablutions and waste disposal… thereby facilitating the protest, not hampering it.  It would be unfair for residents of the City of Westminster, or Greater London, to foot the bill for this.  Instead, UK taxpayers should pick up the tab.

Update 19th July

Here is the Court of Appeal judgement against the Democracy Village.  I think the key paragraph is here (hat-tip to Intifada Kid):

48.  It is important to bear in mind that this was not a case where there is any suggestion that the defendants should not be allowed to express their opinions or to assemble together. The claim against them only relates to their activities on PSG. It is not even a case where they have been absolutely prohibited from expressing themselves and assembling where, or in the manner, in which they choose. They have been allowed to express their views and assemble together at the location of their choice, PSG, for over two months on an effectively exclusive basis. It is not even as if they will necessarily be excluded from mounting an orthodox demonstration at PSG in the future. Plainly, these points are not necessarily determinative of their case, but, when it comes to balancing their rights against the rights of others, they are obviously significant factors.

Taken together with points in the comments from MattGB and David, I would probably back away from my uncompromising stance in favour of the camp.  If the activities of the protesters turn Parliament Square into a no-go area for other demonstrators, then they are engaging in the denial of other people’s freedom of expression, as they excercise their right to their own.
Such an argument makes me uneasy, because similar arguments are used mendaciously in other instances – For example arguments of the “your right to free expression impedes my right to freedom of religion” kind (c.f. Behzti, Satanic Verses, Jerry Springer The Opera).  In this case however I think this formulation just about holds up – not least because the example of Brian Haw shows how someone can mount a permenant protest on Parliament Square without making it a no-go area for other.
Memo to Democracy Camp:  Next time, pick one small quadrant of lawn and stick to it!

Chromaroma

25 June 2010 / / 3 Comments

Ask and ye shall be rewarded.  In reply to my previous post, Matt Somerville tweets:

@robertsharp59 Sounds like you want to see http://www.chromaroma.com/


Indeed I do.  It is described as:

an online multiplayer game played out as you travel the city with your Oyster Card. By using Oyster data we are able to show you your Tube travel, and every journey means you amass points, taking a few steps further along the way to owning London.
Chromaroma is a type of location-based top-trumps. You collect places, identities, modes of transport and passengers as you travel around the city; discover and investigate mysteries attached to different locations and build alliances with fellow passengers that share your journeys. It’s a game you can play on your own, or part of a team.

This sounds very much like a Foursquare-type version of the idea I described earlier, so I will contact the Mudlark collective to ask for more information.  Hilariously, I am faced with the slightly awkward prospect of trying to express the depth of my interest, without giving the impression that I am in any way laying claim to the idea like John Turturro in Secret Window.

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