Martin Meenagh blog

The Boris Johnson Tower

The picture depicts a projected version of a tower to be erected on the Olympic site as a sort of memorial, approved by Mayor Boris Johnson and funded by an Indian Steel magnate. Personal offices tend to raise up great buildings, or to promote those like Robert Moses who do--they aren't subject to the restraint of committees.

I quite like them. The idea of a Maronite or Papal Cross bigger than the statue of liberty standing over east London disguised as an electricty pylon has a certain charm to it, and I guess that it is one way of allowing a tall mosque, and of welcoming the bulk of the Anglicans back to Rome....

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Congressional Healthcare Bill in America I spent a good deal of this morning and yesterday reading over the proposed American healthcare bill (or at least, a compound version; there appear to be five doing the rounds). I don't want to blog on the details of it immediately. It's also a bill, which may well stall in the Senate or be overtaken by events, and which could yet be critically amended. It is the product of Congress, not the administration per se, and the lawyers have not yet got at it. I had some instant worries about it though. In no particular order, I'll list them; Firstly, it can't allow individuals to choose their doctor and treatment in the long run; instead, it will practically formalise the role of doctors as salaried employees of large medical groups. Sarah Palin is onto something with the idea that this will then allow essentially ideological or non-medical outlooks on, say, euthanasia, abortion, transgender issues, or non-emergency treatments of c...

William Orpen There are four major Christian traditions, which are of course Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian and Coptic. Some sects and cults also exist, like the Moonies or Anglicanism. Yet in some bizarre way this weekend, protestant contributions to something other than the seizure of churches have been making their way into my consciousness. I suppose that the first indication of this trend was a reflection in an old copy of Gibbon that he actually became cultured because of Calvinism. Packed off to Switzerland because he went Catholic at an otherwise boring Oxford, Gibbon fell in love with Suzanne Cuchod, and with Greek because of instruction from a Calvinist mentor. It's an odd thing--I keep coming across indications of Calvinists who could have fun, though they doubtless thought that they would pay for it later, and whose political intelligence was second to none. Althusius springs to mind, for instance. But then what am I thinking, I thought to myself? I've sat on balconi...

Pakistan Forty years ago, Robert Francis Kennedy began a presidential campaign that would kill him. He knew that there would be personal attacks upon him. He knew that he had considerable personal baggage that must have weighed on him every night and day. By all accounts, he suspected that his hard line with criminal and Cuban elements had led to the death of his brother, and, indirectly, the disasters that followed. he put himself in danger and he sought to lift and calm a troubled, tearing nation with his understanding of grief and hope. Benazir Bhutto was no Robert Kennedy. She returned when well justified allegations of theft and corruption had been lifted. Her personal party welcomed her back, and the 'democratic' elite which has been selling Pakistan out for years rubbed their hands. She had deeply unpleasant enemies in Al-Qaeda, whose response to the battering of the Taleban in Afghanistan is to shake its tendrils across the border. She had the sinister Intelligence serv...