Yesterday, along with several hundred other equally excited people during the day, I finally got a chance to walk along a bit of train tunnel – yes the infamous Brunel Thames Tunnel that had been the topic of much news reporting over the past couple of days.

Turning up to Rotherhithe Station with tickets in hand, there were four handwritten signs on the windows warning that the tours were sold out. It seemed that earlier in the morning, the BBC had said that tickets were available, leading to a flood of soon to be disappointed visitors arriving clutching bank notes in the hope of a peek.

Also thanks to the somewhat anger inducing ticketing website operated by the LT Museum, there were people who thought they had booked a tunnel tour, but had actually only got tickets for the Victorian Fair and were being politely, but firmly told they couldn’t go down the tunnel. Even after I booked my tickets, was wasn’t 100% sure I had got what I thought I had asked for until the tickets arrived in the post and I could relax a bit.

After the usual heath and safety warnings about trip hazards and what to do if the lights go out (stand still) or an evacuation was needed (stand still), or feeling ill (stand still), we were handed over to our guide for the evening. A jolly chap from Chicago who only started working for the museum earlier that week. Not a bad start to a new job – take the first walking tours though a tunnel in some 145 years.

I am sure most people know the history of the tunnel – or you can look it up – so I wont recount the obvious here.

Slowly going down the tunnel, though we passed from the preserved original brick work into the newer concrete shield that was applied over the bricks when the tunnels were last modernised, rather controversially in 1995. I have sympathies with both sides of the argument, and in an ideal world, the tunnels should have been restored – but then again, why spend a fortune on brick work that frankly only maintenance staff would ever see?

Well, apart from a couple of thousand people this weekend of course – but even that rarity doesn’t justify not only the cost, but the extended closure of the line for the restoration. Sad, but true.

So down the tunnel as it gently sloped under the river, punctuated with short breaks for a bit of history, and then slowly back up again to stand in the very center of Wapping station in a spot that would be most unwise at any other time.

There were strict rules about not stepping on the rails, so small “bridges” not only took us from the one side to the other, but also offer elevated platforms for photography.

As an aside, we walked northwards on what is actually the southbound rail track – and visa versa on the way back.

Slowly heading back, without stops and back up and out into the fresh air once again.

OK, all we did was walk along a concrete lined tunnel – but if you are going to walk down a concrete lined tunnel, then this was the one you would have wanted to walk down.

Afterwards to the recreation of the Victorian Fair next to the Brunel Museum, and a chance to clamber through a tiny gap to get inside Brunel’s Shaft.

The museum curator gave a long, and innuendo laden speech about the history of the tunnel and regularly reminded visitors that today was the first time in 145 years that anyone had been able to stand in the shaft itself. Apart presumably those of us who had a look inside last year?

Although walking tours are probably never going to happen again, they will be resuming the tunnel tours they used to run with London Underground. Basically, a guided tour around the two stations at either end, linked up by a slow train trip through the tunnel and they arrange to turn on the floodlights, so you can see from inside a carriage what some of us lucky few got to see by foot. I had done that tour a few years ago, and they are actually good fun, so worth a visit when the line reopens again.

Brunel’s shaft is currently being converted into an extension for the museum, which will roughly triple the amount of space they have for displays, hopefully turning small incidental museum into a serious destination in its own right.

Obviously, I took tons of photos, and this time experimented again with taking HDR photos, most of which came out fairly well. The aim being to capture all the detail without needing a flash so that the photos reflect the dim light down there, without being too dark to see anything. In theory.

Pretty much every London based blogger worth the title has booked a tour and their reports can be found at:

853 – Diamond Geezer – The Great Wen (ex Time Out Big Smoke) – Annie Mole.

Blogless photographers include:

LondonStuff – mykreeve – webponce & mctumshie (who has lots more photos of the fair than the tunnel).

Wandered over to an interesting talk last night entitled Europe and America – Worlds Apart? that took took a statistical look at the differences between the two population blocks.

A lot of people, myself included will presume that Americans are staggeringly different from us and that democracy and free-markets aside, there is little that unites us.

The reality in statistical terms is quite surprising.

In a tour-de-force of graphs and charts, Professor Peter Baldwin (Professor of History at University of California) charged though the issues at a breakneck speed to show that America is actually not that different in end outcome from Europe.

America is considered to be a very unequal country with strong concentrations of wealth – although it is actually fairly similar to Sweden in that regard. I think that in the UK we tend to forget that many of Europe’s dominant firms are actually controlled by founder families, with only limited voting shares available on the stock markets.

In areas of absolute poverty, again the USA is about average when compared to the countries that make up the European Union. Some parts of Europe have less poverty, and some have more.

America is generally considered to be very religious, but actually it is about the same as most of Mediterranean Europe – and that outlier of Catholicism, Ireland.

In terms of social spending, if you include the strong tradition of philanthropy in the USA, then you actually get a net expenditure in the US which is roughly average with Europe. In Europe we may mandate the spending through taxes, and in the US more is voluntary – but so long as the end result is the same, does it matter if the money comes from donations or taxes? Personally, I think not.

Surprisingly – and this drew a heckle from the audience – car ownership in the US is comparable to Europe. However that statistic was rightly pulled into question by the fact that it doesn’t include SUV ownership, which is markedly higher in the USA. Likewise statistics about private vs state schooling, although he did point out that regardless of how you define a privately funded education (and that is a contentious issue), the US and Europe do tend to be roughly similar.

On the environmental issue – I am sure we all know that the USA is evil incarnate and that their emissions per person are massively greater than the rest of the world.

However, if you take emissions per unit of GDP generated by each person, then the US is not much different from Europe. This is not fiddling with the figures – but a quite serious issue. If, for example, the UK’s economy was as efficient as the USA’s, then our carbon emissions could be comparable. The reason we emit less per person, is that each person is less productive at work.

Another one which surprised me was road vs rail transport.

The USA has a rail network that is comparable to Europe’s, but it is put to a totally different use. In Europe humans travel by rail, but cargo travels largely by road. In the US, it’s the other way round. You can reasonably argue that the US and Europe are similar in transport, albeit with a different focus on what/who is moved.

In fact, the only area where there is a significant difference between the USA and Europe is in the triumvirate of guns/murder/prisons. Excluding murder, the crime rate in the USA is again similar to Europe – but murders are staggeringly higher, as is prison incarceration rates. Add in that the USA has a much higher rate of gun ownership, and you can draw the obvious, if contested, conclusion.

The question that wasn’t really addressed in the talk is that with a wealth of data showing that the US and Europe are actually quite similar, why are we convinced there are huge differences.

My personal gut instinct is one of enthusiasm. I find most Americans I have met/known tend to be incredibly enthusiastic about whatever issue they latch onto. Americans may be as religious as Europeans, but those who are religious tend to be strongly religious. The same for with business – people trying to set up a business in the USA are vastly more driven to be a success than I notice in European small businesses.

A key cultural difference is that in the US, in general if you set up a business that fails, you are an entrepreneur and an adventurous person. All to often in Europe if you set up a business that fails, then you are a failure. Setting up a business in Europe that succeeds can almost be worse!

I have also often noticed that a society that claims to be very individualistic can also give considerable authority to fairly minor functionaries in an almost militaristic style. I personally find it slightly amusing how even the most basic of municipal workers can wear uniforms that have badges all over the place, epaulets, and where a small brand sign might be expected, you will find a huge crest or coat-of-arms, with moto and the related paraphernalia of a military uniform.

These are the more subtle differences that can’t be represented in statistics – and is why the perception of strong differences between the two sides of the Atlantic are deeper than mere numbers.

As an aside, Lord Howe was in the room and he also commented on the social differences – recounting a story about when the US accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. The Chinese people stoned the US Embassy in Beijing in protest – and as the UK is seen as the US patsy, the UK Embassy was also pelted with stones.

The US offered compensation to the Chinese, but demanded compensation back for the damage to its Embassy. Everything was formal and legal with financial matters to the fore.

When then Chinese asked the British Ambassador if the UK would demand compensation – he responded that he was quite untroubled by the incident as the stones had been used to make a delightful new rockery in the garden.

That says more about the differences between the UK and the US than any collection of slides and statistics could ever achieve.

Thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for setting up the event.

Warning – tickets are SOLD OUT. You can try turning up in the hope that people have spares, but that is about it. The Brunel Museum will however resume their floodlit tunnel train trips in a few months time.

In the meantime, here is my report of my visit to the tunnels.

On the weekend of the 12th-13th March, the world’s first underwater tunnel – at Rotherhithe – will be open to the general public.

Neither the Brunel Museum nor the LT Museum websites have any details – but phone the LT Museum on 020 7565 7298 and grab some tickets.

As it happens, I knew there were plans to do something prior to the line being reopened for trains, but I thought they had been cancelled.

The Brunel Museum used to take a slow tube train through the tunnels with the tunnel lights switched on to show off the structure, but this is presumed to be a walking tour through the tunnels before it is handed over to live trains again.

Woo!

Update: The LT Museum website now has details – and it is indeed a guided walking tour from one end to the other, and back again. Self-evidently, the start/stop point will be the Rotherhithe side as that is where the museum is sited – along with the soon to be refurbished shaft area.

Note – Like turning up to a nightclub wearing trainers, there is a dress code and trainers are not permitted. You need to have sturdy shoes for the tour.

Note: This blog posting is a tidy up of several previous older postings with details of recent changes to procedures.

–

As a regular attendee of the recordings of HIGNFY, I am quite often asked how to get tickets, so I have on occasions written up the details – but over time, the pages end up inaccurate thanks to changes made by Hattrick TV, so here is the updated version.

The key point to note is that getting tickets is both very easy, and yet also a matter of some luck – and even if you get a ticket, you are then going to face standing in a long queue for at least an hour on the night.

OK – here goes:

There are two series per year, in the spring and winter, with tickets released in March and September.

To apply for tickets, you first have to open a (free) account on the Hattrick website, and it is worth doing that before the ticket booking date as on the day, their website can slow down alarmingly.

Having registered, you will probably get an email closer to the date that the tickets are released, but I also track their website through an automated system and always note the date on my events calendar.

On the day, log in to the website and you will then be able to select up to four tickets for one show. Once you book your tickets, you will be blocked from requesting any other dates. Having made a reservation, you have to wait for an email to confirm your request was accepted – just occasionally it isn’t.

Also note that the website slows down as few million people (only a slight exaggeration) try to book tickets at the same time!

Anyhow – presuming you got the confirmation email, print out a copy and wait until the night in question.

Due to people booking tickets then deciding not to bother turning up on the night – the show always overbooks and if you turn up late, then there is a chance you wont get in, although anecdotal chatter suggests you will be offered tickets for another date.

The doors open roughly around 6:45pm, but keen fans will be in the queue from 5:30pm to get the best seats.

There are no toilets outside, but if caught short, then go to the top of the queue and the security staff will usually let you inside to use the toilet.

As you go in, the staff will take control and they tell you where to sit – the earlier you arrive the better the seats you get. Even if you arrive late and end up with an obscured view, there are loads of TV screens dotted around the place, so in the very worst case, you will still get a 2-hour TV show.

A warm-up act will try to wake the audience up – sometime very good (Jo Caulfield) or less good (seemingly, everyone else).

The guests, host and regulars, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton are brought on – a bit of fiddling with microphones and the like occurs, and then the recording starts.

The show is generally recorded in one continuous take and edited later. At the end of the recording, they do a few reruns of comments where the editors think they need to change how a sentence ends (or starts) as they have already decided what to cut or keep. Weirdly, that last bit is some times the funniest bit of the evening as the presenters relax a bit, and it is a bit surreal to hear the jokes a second time round.

Then that’s it – off you go while the staff start dismantling the set.

Typically, finishes around 10pm.

The key details!

The next release date is March 10th 2010 at 11am

Register for Your Account

Have I Got News for You Tickets Page

One weekend in March, the National Trust is opening up almost all of its buildings to the public free of charge. You need to download a voucher to gain free entry to the buildings, and that then gets you into as many properties as you want on the 20th–21st March 2010.

The only caveats are that you need to register for the voucher (I could link to directly to the voucher, but that would be naughty) and print out a copy. Also some of the venues might not be open as planned, so you should check their special event website a few days before the weekend to be sure your plans are not made of mice and men.

Also, during the weekend you can join the National Trust while you are there and if you pay by Direct Debit, you will get two months free.

For your (and frankly, my) convenience, I have scanned through the properties within the M25 that should be open over the weekend, and put the details below.

The price in brackets is how much it would normally cost if you visited any other time – should you be choosing where to go based on how much you can save over the weekend. I haven’t listed any of the properties that are normally free to visit, but they should be open as normally anyway.

National Trust Properties in London

2 Willow Road, Hampstead, NW3 (£5.50)

This unique Modernist home was designed by architect Ernö Goldfinger in 1939 for himself and his family. With surprising design details that were ground-breaking at the time and still feel fresh today, the house also contains the Goldfingers’ impressive collection of modern art, intriguing personal possessions and innovative furniture

Fenton House, Hampstead, NW3 (£6)

This charming 17th-century merchant’s house has remained architecturally little altered during more than 300 years of continuous occupation, while the large garden is also remarkably unchanged since it was described in 1756 as ‘pleasant… well planted with fruit-trees, and a kitchen garden, all inclos’d with a substantial brick wall‘. Lady Katherine Binning bought the house in 1936 and filled it with her highly decorative collections of porcelain, Georgian furniture and 17th-century needlework. The sound of early keyboard instruments and the colours of early 20th-century drawings and paintings add to a captivating experience

Sutton House, Hackney, E9 (£2.90)

Built in 1535 by prominent courtier of Henry VIII, Sir Ralph Sadleir, Sutton House retains much of the atmosphere of a Tudor home despite some alterations by later occupants, including a succession of merchants, Huguenot silkweavers, and squatters. Discover oak-panelled rooms, original carved fireplaces and a charming courtyard

Eastbury Manor House, Barking, IG11 (£2.50)

Important brick-built Tudor gentry house, completed about 1573, little altered since. Early 17th-century wall-paintings showing fishing scenes and a cityscape grace the former Great Chamber. Evocative exposed timbers in attic, fine original spiral oak staircase in turret, soaring chimneys, cobbled courtyard, peaceful walled garden with bee boles

Rainham Hall, Rainham, RM13 (£2.80)

Charming Georgian house set in a peaceful, simple garden, with some surprising features, quality materials and fine craftmanship. Awaiting conservation

Red House, Bexleyheath, DA6 (£7.60)

The only house commissioned, created and lived in by William Morris, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement, Red House is a building of extraordinary architectural and social significance. When it was completed in 1860, it was described by Edward Burne-Jones as ‘the beautifullest place on earth’. Only recently acquired by the Trust, the house is not fully furnished, but the original features and furniture by Morris and Philip Webb, stained glass and paintings by Burne-Jones, the bold architecture and a garden designed to ‘clothe the house’, add up to a fascinating and rewarding place to visit

Claremont Landscape Garden, Esher, Surrey KT10 (£6.40)

Claremont is a beautiful garden surrounding a small lake and featuring an unusual grass amphitheatre. The garden’s creation and development has involved great names in garden history, including Sir John Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent and ‘Capability’ Brown. In 1726 it was described as ‘the noblest of any in Europe’ and the garden today is of national importance. Visitors walking round the lake will see the island and pavilion, grotto and many viewpoints and vistas. There are hidden features to enjoy as well as wider estate walks and a new children’s play area

Ham House and Garden, Richmond-upon-Thames, Surrey TW10 (£10.40)

A 400-year-old treasure trove waiting to be discovered and one of a series of grand houses and palaces alongside the River Thames. Ham House and Garden is an unusually complete survival of the 17th century that impressed in its day and continues to do so today. Rich in history and atmosphere, Ham is largely the vision of Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart, who was deeply embroiled in the politics of the English Civil War and subsequent restoration of the monarchy. The fine interiors and historic gardens make this an unusual and fascinating place to visit

Osterley Park and House, Isleworth, Middlesex TW7 (£8.80)

With a spectacular mansion surrounded by gardens, park and farmland, Osterley is one of the last surviving country estates in London. Once described as ‘the palace of palaces’, Osterley was created in the late 18th century by architect and designer Robert Adam for the Child family to entertain and impress their friends and clients. Today you can explore the dazzling interior with handheld audio-visual guides, which bring the house to life in a completely new way. Outside the gardens are a delightful retreat from urban life and the park is perfect for picnics and leisurely strolls