Brunel's Thames Tunnel
Notices of meetings of All Party Parliamentary Groups drop into our letter boxes every day but few are as compelling as the notice for the APPG which arrived yesterday on ‘Underground Spaces’. I confess that I assumed at first they were about underground art or some other esoteric matter such as underground economies. But no, this is a group of people dedicated to tunnels. There are plenty of underground spaces in Westminster for parliamentary troglodytes to explore but it turns out to be the rather more mundane but serious business of making huge new tunnels for rail, road, sewerage systems and so on that the members are interested in. You see… something for everyone here. The International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association is about the sustainable development of the underground as an alternative to above ground developments and about developing technologies to use these spaces cost effectively and risk free. It’s big business construction companies’ opportunity to meet and exchange information with parliamentarians. Today I’m not using the word lobby. The Group obviously has a sense of history as their next outing is to Brunel’s tunnel under the Thames between Rotherhithe and Wapping. It was the first tunnel known successfully to have been constructed underneath a navigable river, built between 1825 and 1843. Creepy down there and not for the slightly claustrophobic; this is one APPG that’s not for me.
Could the APPG Underground Tunnel Group not solve part of the expenses crisis ? If enough tunnels are in and around Westminster I`m positive they could be made comfortable enough for living quarters for Parliamentary members.
I jest my Lady, it must be bad enough spending ALL DAY at work with these people !
😉
Don’t worry, the Brunel Tunnel is huge and not at all claustrophobic.
Ask the 2,000 people who were able to get a tour down there last weekend – and event that not only sold out its tickets within hours, but had massive numbers of people turn up on the day in the hope of spare places.
There is something strangely exciting about seeing “the hidden” that lies beneath our feet though, and visiting industrial subterranean locations is a sadly rare pleasure.
Perhaps there is an underground space which will allow this gentleman to tunnel into the Lords, following David Cameron’s announcement at his press conference this morning.
http://playpolitical.typepad.com/uk_conservative/2010/03/im-likely-to-be-in-house-of-lords-tory-mp-john-butterfill-tells-journalist-pretending-to-be-lobbyist.html
Or you could just let him do a ‘guest blog’ to see what he is going to be missing…
The old palace corridor is beginning to resemble a tunnel compared with the bright and airy Portcullis house. It is hard to imagine the one, when you are in the other. They are incomparable.
You don’t think I need specs do you, but I am sure the Committee corridor is much darker than it used to be!?
Carl H, we aren’t moles you know. IanVisits, well thanks for the insight into the reality of Brunel’s tunnel. I confess before yesterday I didn’t realise it was designed by the earlier Brunel, Marc Isambard, father of famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but the latter engineered it.
Bedd Gelert, no comment!
Gareth Howell, if you spend a lot of time in Portcullis House I envy you. The offices and meeting rooms there are so much better than ours for light, acoustics and temperature. You are right that the committee corridor in parliament is gloomy, particularly down the Commons end. I think it’s because we’re energy saving! Sometimes the weight of all that Victorian wallpaper is a bit oppressive.
Call me Gar How’s John.
“Sometimes the weight of all that Victorian wallpaper is a bit oppressive”.
I have spent many happy hours pondering the personalities of the individuals on the walls along the corridor, but not the history in the St Stephen’s vestibule where the greater public waits.
The river still stinks if you open the window on a Summer’s day, which is why my mind always wanders to St James Park, and a pretty girl on a park bench by the time lunch approaches in June!
The real value of Parliament is to be had before the opera or cinema in February or March, when it is a jolly good place to keep warm at no cost, during the afternoon, and even convince yourself you are doing something useful.
May a pillar hides the somnolent Gar at lunch time.
You have got to get your expenses somehow!
Thinking, off topic, of the invitation to find improvements to the Message board, the custom ofPeers, who welcome Commoner visitors to the House, of Saying,
“call me John”,
(or alternatively
“Don’t call me John!”
if the peer is not enamored of the visitor!)
to defuse the
overawing effect of the House and the rank of the noble peer, and the lack of knowledge of the ways of the Houses of parliament,
it must be possible to invent a smiley for the purpose, and fairly prominent on the board,for those who are, or are not invited to call the noble peer/ess by his Christian name.
We are not in the chamber, and I, for one, am certainly never likely to be,(I’ve decided!) but to have a
discussion on parliamentary legislation,with those who know more than any about it, often being enjoyable, it would seem appropriate to find a way of being on Christian name terms
whilst nobody else is,or only one or two are, in an informal situation, and so that everybody is capable of being aware of who is and who is not on Christian name terms.
I don’t need a box of chocolates from Hansard; the TLC of the Shorthand typists in the Committee rooms was always quite enough!
I have a number of lady friends amongst them,
who would remember me even now.
That is an off topic suggestion.
The MB is too formal, and yet formality is the way of the chamber in debate.
“Carl H, we aren’t moles you know.”
Kept in the dark by the Commons, making holes in their beautiful laid…plans, having fur as an atribute and according to some members of the media making mounds.
Are you positive my Lady ?
😉