Google introduced the minimalist website at a time when most websites were cluttered and suddenly everyone wanted to pull in the Digital Feng Shui experts and de-clutter their websites.

Blogs looked like the future once, and big corporate websites not only needed blogs written in a casual way by the Managing Director Press Office, but this expanded to making the whole website look like a blog, and in some cases putting out key financial information in in blog postings rather than in the investors or financial news section.

Now there is a new trend – the analogue clock.

I am not sure where it started, but the first version of it I saw was on the relaunched UK Parliament website, which apart from being full of bugs had suddenly acquired an animated clock at the top of the page. Despite being fairly universally disliked in the comments section, the website designer was adamant that it would remain.

Recently,  the BBC website received one of its periodic evolutions and gained a clock at the top of the page. Semi-tolerable in that it is in the style of the BBC clock from about two-decades ago, so old people will like it, but I still wonder what functionality it adds to the website.

Recently I noted that the Chinese website, Xinhua had gained a clock – although it looks suspiciously like the BBC clock and even had the same animated seconds hand. The file name is different though, so they have at least tried to cover their tracks if plagiarism has occurred.

This morning, my attention was drawn to a website promoting a course about tea tasting (nice idea, ouch price tag) and it has a clock on the top of the website. Are people timing their tea making process by website clocks I wondered?

These are just the websites I could recall this morning – I’ve seen clocks sprouting up all over the place over the past couple of months.

The clocks are taking over!

As quite a fan of both the art and the science of Horology, and at one time had about a dozen different clocks in my living room, I love clocks – but not on websites.

If I want to see clocks, I’ll go here. I don’t need to be reminded of the time every time I visit a website though.

Please, let the fashion for putting analogue clocks on the tops of websites be a short-lived one.

Update:

It’s been drawn to my attention that the beta version of the new BBC website has dropped the clock. It seems the era of website clocks may indeed be a short-lived one. Hurruh!

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).

Tickets for the evening and Saturday visits were sold out almost as soon as they were announced – with the phone line and (decrepit) website suffering under the load of requests. People are now begging for tickets almost as if they are trying to attend a pop-concert.

Thames Tunnel Ticket Touts could make a fortune tonight!

This level of interest in our deep subterranean world shouldn’t really surprise people though – as most of us have a weird fascination with the hidden and mysterious. Even the most disinterested person is going to be mildly curious in seeing what lies beyond the dark voids they occasionally see in the tunnels on their daily commute.

I have a long habit of trying to get into subterranean locations – sometimes with success – and also do a little lobbying on trying to get places opened up where I genuinely think it is possible.

That latter part has been singularly the most disappointing though – as people cry that health and safety is a worry (rarely is) or that no one would be interested (oh, boy are they interested!).

It’s even worse when I don’t even get a reply though – as then I can’t be sure if an idea was evaluated and rejected – or simply thrown in the bin without consideration.

An example of the later would be an email I sent to the DLR last year when the Xmas closure of Bank station was announced. The proposal was simple. It is just about possible to walk onto the Bank line from a side road just before it dips into the tunnel, so why not open the tunnel up to the general public to walk down over the Xmas weekend before the engineering works started?

I just knew that hundreds, if not thousands of people would have leapt at such an opportunity. Not because the tunnel is historic, but because the opportunity is rare, and the walk would be a singularly unusual event to take part in.

No reply – not even a “don’t be stupid, don’t you realise there are a hundred and one reasons why that can’t be done!”

The Thames Tunnel tour will also include a recreation of the Funfair element, but that is a mere sideshow for most people who seem to be going down under the river. It is the tunnel that is the main event here, so other opportunities to open tunnels shouldn’t be reliant on being able to put on a big show. The tunnel is the show!

Maybe the huge demand for tickets to the Thames Tunnel will encourage more openings like this where possible?

I do appreciate the problems in opening subterranean venues though – the organisation, the volunteers needed, the inevitable worries about insurance and crowd control – not to mention ensuring there are no trains using the tunnel at the time!

For that reason, despite people expressing hopes that the Thames Tunnel tour will happen again, I suspect that repeats will be unlikely, simply because you are asking train passengers to lose a fairly important cross-river link. We shouldn’t forget in our desire to visit these places that they have a primary function, and being a tourist attraction isn’t it.

I wont mention details in case plans are being plotted, but I did get a “hmm, interesting” from a suitably connected person at London Underground a year ago for a proposal to open up a bit of abandoned station and a tunnel for a weekend in a way that got around most of the health and safety worries that come from having loads of people in sometimes constrained areas.

Fingers crossed that it happens, and even if it doesn’t, at least I know someone read the email and considered the proposal. That simple act is often worth the effort, even if nothing comes of it in the end.

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.

When clicking though auctions for domestic interiors though, I have sometimes been surprised not just how expensive some antiques can be, but also how comparatively cheap some can be.

As a long-term watcher of Antique’s Roadshow, I know that for some reason, tables seem to be shockingly expensive for what they are. I presume this is due to rarity, as not many families would have space for, let alone be able to afford a dining table 150+ years ago.

The same for simple looking kitchen chairs. Again I am guessing that the rickey old kitchen chair got thrown on the bonfire rather than restored after its 500th accident, so rarity adds value.

However, counterbalancing that is the seemingly good value that sofa chairs seem to offer.

Accepting that not everyone wants a chair that looks like the sort of thing your granny perpetually sat in when you were a tiny kid – but I often see chairs that could almost be modern – and at prices not that different from the high street. Oddly, actual modern chairs sold at auction are very expensive, because of the designer label.

I sometimes wonder if the people shopping in Ikea or John Lewis realise that they could buy a Victorian or even Georgian era chair for a price comparable to what they are paying for a good modern version?

Two Late 19th Century Victorian Leather Chairs
Estimate £300-£400 each

Eight 19th Century North European Dining Chairs
Estimate £75 – £110 each

Five mid-18th Century Mahogany Dining Chairs (George II era)
Estimate £100 – £125 each

Late Victorian Walnut Wing Armchair (OK, this is the granny chair!)
Estimate £500 – £700

I think that given the choice between a modern bit of mass production furniture and paying maybe 10% more to get something that looks comparable, but is over 100 years old, then I think I would prefer the older item.

The downside is that you can spend ages waiting for just the right item to come up for sale – then get outbid by another buyer. Then again, it took me over two months to buy my current sofa as it was perpetually out of stock and no other shops sold anything I liked.

I wonder how much cheaper items would be at house-clearance type sales as opposed to the rarefied airs of Christie’s as the items above are from.

Herewith – some photos:

Greenwich foot tunnel – photos of which are officially not allowed any more

A sad forlorn Fozzie Bear abandoned probably by a child being dragged across a busy road – see Londonist for more lost bears

Severndroog Castle – a folly built in 1784 to commemorate Commodore Sir William James who, in April 1755, attacked and destroyed the island fortress of Suvarnadurg (then rendered in English: Severndroog) on the western coast of India.

Other photos – here, here and here

The view from Severndroog castle over an ornamental garden – with a sapling planted by some idiot right in the line of sight for photographers.

Rather a nice water fountain from the remains of an old house demolished by the London County Council.

The Two Towers – an old water tower and the more modern communications tower

The view from the cafe in Oxleas Wood – a good spot to stop and have a rest.

Wandering round through Welling and down to Plumstead Common. On the way, this dire warning on a small grass verge against letting cattle roam the land

Plumstead Common offers these views over East London. Not particularly scenic, but the scale of the view is impressive.

Thence home.

Each photo is geotagged on a map if you want to know where they were taken from – just click on the photo then the “map” link on the side menu on the Flickr website.

Umm, a bit of laziness in taking photos and incompetence in keeping some of the ones I did take has left a few gaps in the time-lapse, although most of the missing weeks were when the structure was below the line of sight anyway.

Now that the core is rising up and fast becoming a major feature on the skyline, it will be harder to forget in future!

Here are three photos to show how the concrete core is rising up over just the past few weeks.

Nothing to see – yet.

Just starting to peer out over the tops of the buildings

Fairly noticeable now!

OK, actually a map of Middlesex – as what we call “South London” was at the time part of Surrey and Kent and not part of London at all. Then the Local Government Act came along in 1888 and merged parts of each County to create the newly formed County of London.

The map below is by John Cary and taken from his New and Correct English Atlas originally printed in 1787. This map was itself based on the slightly earlier Dury & Andrews map of 1766, although several minor changes were made to the plate.

It was re-engraved in 1793 and published in later editions of the atlas until 1843 – the 1840 and 1843 versions showing the first railway lines. With the imprint information removed, extra railways added, etc, lithographic transfer prints from the plate were issued in Cruchley’s County Atlas of England and Wales between 1863 and 1876.

Sadly, I am not currently able to say which reprint my version is – although the lack of railway lines puts it firmly in a pre-1840 edition.

Click here for medium, large or  very large versions.

…well, at least they will until the cutbacks in the BBC’s website start to take effect.

Starting on March 8th the BBC will be airing short TV and radio slots in English, Arabic and Farsi, talking with some of the bloggers they feature. That probably gives you a feel for the sort of blogs they want to review, which for me at least makes the project more interesting as I do like to keep up to date with international news and opinion.

They are seeking recommendations, either via email on super.power@bbc.co.uk, comment on their website, or via twitter @bbc_blogworld.

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.