11.50 GMT -- sitting, killing time watching reruns of SNL's Palin (what on earth possessed McCain to do the QVC stunt?).... V Heavy polling in VA according to locals on the ground.... waiting for first results to come through .... Jeremy Vine playing with his graph again... we have to wait for 6.00 for Alaska ..don't think can stay up for that and still make it to my nine o'clock tomorrow...
11.57 -- three minutes to go - to something... .. JV running through obscure counties... David D trying to explain how networks forecast the results...claim that exit polls have Dem bias... laying off blame on ABC as BBC's affiliate.
midnight .. bonfire night in England... -- KY to McC; VT to BO....now cut to filler about Martin Luther King and I had better do some exercises....or revert to watching Tina Fey. Bizarre to think that BO was born six years before the Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws. 12.10 more discussion on race.... Dem win VA Senate. does that mean BO will win VA? Eric reckons that would be very good news for him - and he is a politics professor. Short tutorial now on separation of powers. Cheney's ex press sec already discussing BO's first 100 days. and now we have Ricky Gervais from New York. They wouldn't do this in the UK.
1.00 am -- PA to Obama -- allegedly... so we finally have a result that appears to matter.. MC chances "pretty darn minimal"...and Jed Bartlett's NH has stayed blue...BO now ahead.... chancs of goign to bed at some point looking better...IL to BO -- and DC finally gets to matter..... plus MA... and DL...suddenly 67 votes ,,, but TN to Mc. Results in now... but so far BO has not taken any Bush states.
1.15 -- Liddy Dole out in NC -- Kathy will be pleased.... saying how much NC has changed ... Raleigh Durham just described as starbucks belt....
1.45 and while I was asleep the popular vote projection which Beeb pundit said could only go in ob direction has just narrowed down fto 50+50 -- that can't be true..better stay awake.
1.50 -- VA seems to have disappeared off the political map... no mention for a couple of hours...
2.05 -- final news that Fox has called OH for BO... finally a state might change from 2004....GA gone to McC - despite the fact that BC won it in 1992....they are saying v close ... DD has finally said that White House ha sliped form Republican grasp -- might be bedtime.
2.35 -- debating whether am going to go to bed or wait up for FL.... getting quite dopey now.
2.40 -- Simon Schama trying to get DavidD to call the election for Obama...Ben Wildavsky - my token republican friend - has told me its all over from McC with PA and OH gone... I think I am going to sign off.... but can't get as excited as I did over Bill C.... I wonder whether I would have done if Hillary had been running...
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Monday 3 November 2008
Bad planning
You have 64 quarters of economic growth in which to open your mega-mall and then choose to open in the quarter when recession is likely to be confirmed... such is the fate of the vast new shopping centre at Shepherds Bush which I, along with most of West London visited on Saturday. As others have already commented, it already seems like a temple to a bygone age - so early 2000s - and an odd juxtaposition with Fiona Reynolds calling for people to reconnect with their simpler, non-consumerist selves on the radio that morning - by visiting the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy of an earlier age.
But good to know that, in a corner of W12 there is a place where, with no need to take more than five steps, you can buy Gucci, Prada, stock up with diamonds at Tiffany's (or is that a breakfast place). Notable that there were a lot of people in cafés; long lines to buy England shirts at £ 3.49 at Sports Direct (90% off - get donw there fast) - but not a single high end bag to be seen in the sticky paw of any of the thronging masses.
So is this completely misconceived? Quite possibly. Though once you have made it through the offputting designer village for people valet parking their Porsches and SUVs, there are some more normal stores where the tills may some day ring. And compared to Oxford Street, with about half the number of people, there would be more space to move about and no need to dodge between the lines of buses to get from one row to another. Time will tell whether this becomes a monumental folly. The verdict of a non-random sample at the tennis club in Sunday afternoon was that all had been and none would go back - to which I was the only possible exception (but at my rate of spend that won't make a decent return on £1.6bn this side of the next millennium).
But if not misconceived, it is stunningly badly planned. Not just because the tube station dumps you out by the bus station - not into the mall (the whole point is surely to avoid any risk of exposure to fresh air). Not just because the escalators inside the mall can't cope with people wanting to go both up and down. Not just that the refurbished Shepherds Bush tube has nice white tiles, but seems to have no increased access to cope with - duh - Monroe people. Not just because nothing has been done to make traffic move around Shepherds Bush green. Will any of the people who flocked there on Saturday to then be held in a queue outside the tube station closed for congestion in pouring rain - and who then could not get a bus either - ever bother to make it back?
Of course Saturday was exceptional. It was new. It was horrible weather. But there seems to be a complete mismatch between the assumptions on which Westfield was built -- vast numbers of people arriving from all over London - and the ability of the transport system to plan on anything like a comparable basis. But you wait 11 years for a mega-mall to be built (reassuring that these people are building the shopping mall for the Olympic village) and then you spend two hours in the rain trying to get away from it.
But that is not the only problem with the development... it is literally all shops and a few restaurants. No homes. No offices.
In short it is a monument to American suburban planning. Giant mall; inadequate public transport; single use. Disconnected from the local community. A potential blight on other local high streets. Jane Jacobs would be turning in her grave....
But good to know that, in a corner of W12 there is a place where, with no need to take more than five steps, you can buy Gucci, Prada, stock up with diamonds at Tiffany's (or is that a breakfast place). Notable that there were a lot of people in cafés; long lines to buy England shirts at £ 3.49 at Sports Direct (90% off - get donw there fast) - but not a single high end bag to be seen in the sticky paw of any of the thronging masses.
So is this completely misconceived? Quite possibly. Though once you have made it through the offputting designer village for people valet parking their Porsches and SUVs, there are some more normal stores where the tills may some day ring. And compared to Oxford Street, with about half the number of people, there would be more space to move about and no need to dodge between the lines of buses to get from one row to another. Time will tell whether this becomes a monumental folly. The verdict of a non-random sample at the tennis club in Sunday afternoon was that all had been and none would go back - to which I was the only possible exception (but at my rate of spend that won't make a decent return on £1.6bn this side of the next millennium).
But if not misconceived, it is stunningly badly planned. Not just because the tube station dumps you out by the bus station - not into the mall (the whole point is surely to avoid any risk of exposure to fresh air). Not just because the escalators inside the mall can't cope with people wanting to go both up and down. Not just that the refurbished Shepherds Bush tube has nice white tiles, but seems to have no increased access to cope with - duh - Monroe people. Not just because nothing has been done to make traffic move around Shepherds Bush green. Will any of the people who flocked there on Saturday to then be held in a queue outside the tube station closed for congestion in pouring rain - and who then could not get a bus either - ever bother to make it back?
Of course Saturday was exceptional. It was new. It was horrible weather. But there seems to be a complete mismatch between the assumptions on which Westfield was built -- vast numbers of people arriving from all over London - and the ability of the transport system to plan on anything like a comparable basis. But you wait 11 years for a mega-mall to be built (reassuring that these people are building the shopping mall for the Olympic village) and then you spend two hours in the rain trying to get away from it.
But that is not the only problem with the development... it is literally all shops and a few restaurants. No homes. No offices.
In short it is a monument to American suburban planning. Giant mall; inadequate public transport; single use. Disconnected from the local community. A potential blight on other local high streets. Jane Jacobs would be turning in her grave....
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