The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Big Tent, Big Terror

The Government's campaign to prevent the terrorists from changing our way of life is to be further cranked up, if that is the verb I want, with the Glorious Successor's National Security Swivet, which urges architects to design buildings fit for stiff upper lips to cower in. "We know that right now our public places are under surveillance from individuals who are trained to look for vulnerability," says the voice-over on a Home Office training video. "The truth is some structures and spaces can actually assist in their appalling ambition," it informs. "Maybe you can't see the responsibility you have got," it lectures. "Until you do we are back to where we started, back to anxiety, back to fear," it continues, with the calm rationality and respect for the intelligence of its audience which we have come to expect from the Ministry of Fitness for Purpose.

Architects who follow the Government's urgings will be expected to design buildings with windows no larger than three square metres, avoid masonry cladding on buildings higher than two storeys, provide 0.66 square metres of "secure space" per occupant (designed "so people do not flee one blast only to run into the path of another" - presumably there will also be signs directing the terrorists to place their bombs according to the appropriate safety regulations), and set the buildings fifty metres back from roads in order to make room for the necessary concrete and steel blockades. This last is, of course, an eminently practical measure in a large, crowded city such as London where, thanks to the war on terror being waged by our leaders, the most serious of the recent terrorist attacks on Britain have taken place. Nor is that the only advantage: given sufficient time and urging, "the result could be an 'inhuman' urban landscape which fosters division and paranoia", turning whole cities into one great big happy Whitehall.

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