One baffling and unsolved case is the hit on Jonny Bristow a 39-year-old builder from Chatham Kent who in
One baffling and unsolved case is the hit on Jonny Bristow, a 39-year-old builder from Chatham, Kent, who in August last year was shot in the head. He was dumped, weighed down by chains, in the Medway near the north Kent coast.His body was spotted floating off Sheerness Docks on the Isle of Sheppey. Police are still struggling to find a motive, let alone the killers.To help to solve future crimes, the police are drawing up a database of convicted and suspected hit men. A list of techniques used by contract killers is also being compiled to help police to catch professional murderers.Police experts have drawn up four main categories of “hits”: disputes over the payments of debts or financial dealings; disputes over drugs; domestic arguments between former lovers; and fighting between rival organised crime groups.Advice on how to run undercover operations and protect people being tracked by paid killers is also being compiled at the National Crime Faculty, the centre of excellence and training at the police college at Bramshill, Hampshire.. According to Ken Livingstone and his supporters, London languishes in the past, clinging to a rose-tinted obsession with clear lines to a cathedral dome, unable to offer the kind of prestigious space that 21st-century global businesses demand. Architects, frustrated at the lack of progress, take their futuristic designs elsewhere as London stays mired in history
According to Ken Livingstone and his supporters, London languishes in the past, clinging to a rose-tinted obsession with clear lines to a cathedral dome, unable to offer the kind of prestigious space that 21st-century global businesses demand.
Architects, frustrated at the lack of progress, take their futuristic designs elsewhere as London stays mired in history.
They accuse traditionalists, led by English Heritage, of wishing to preserve a view of London made famous by the 18th-century painter Canaletto. But for the Italian’s depiction from the Thames looking towards St Paul’s Cathedral, London could now be at the architectural cutting edge, with a skyline to match anything that North America and Asia offer.Next week, the debate will move up a gear, when a deputation from English Heritage, led by its chairman, Sir Neil Cossons, appeals directly to the London Mayor, Mr Livingstone, to stick with tradition.Sir Neil’s plea will come in the face of a craze for height currently gripping many London architects, planners and prospective tenants. Schemes on drawing boards at present include: Lord Foster of Thames Bank’s 41-storey “erotic gherkin”; the 222m Heron Tower taller than the NatWest Tower; two towers at London Bridge, one designed by Renzo Piano of 305m and another of 420m half as high again as Canary Wharf; a Lord Rogers of Riverside’s 164m tower in Paddington; a giant building at the Elephant and Castle; and others in King’s Cross, Chelsea and Waterloo.Not all big businesses want to look down on everybody. English Heritage is keen to point to the new, low-rise building in the City for the US investment bank Merrill Lynch.
But in the same way their managers want to drive the fastest cars and live in the ritziest apartments, to many corporates, taller is better. Political leaders are also not immune from the same streak of vanity, glorying in towers as lasting monuments to their success. What may be good for Mitterrand’s Paris or Mahathir’s Kuala Lumpur, claim critics, is not right for London.Sir Neil also has a tricky charge of hypocrisy to defend. Under his predecessor, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, the quango backed a series of new high-rise buildings, including the “gherkin”.
But under Sir Neil, English Heritage has vetoed the Heron Tower, prompting the recent headline in Building Magazine, “English Heritage goes back to the past”.He is unlikely to find a sympathetic ear in Mr Livingstone. The Mayor is a keen proponent of London acquiring the sort of high-rise towers he believes its status as a world commercial centre requires. Indeed, claim his opponents, he appears to have undergone something akin to a Damascene conversion since his days on the Greater London Council (GLC), now enthusiastically embracing capitalist New York skyscrapers, so much so, they maintain, that he would like to make Hyde Park like Central Park, a green oasis in a desert of stark towers. The Mayor has warned that he may refuse any application for a building that is not large enough.Sir Neil, accompanied by Pam Alexander, English Heritage’s chief executive, and Philip Davies, the organisation’s head of London region, will claim that not only do corporate monoliths destroy an historic view but they are also bad for people beneath, creating howling wind canyons and blocking out the sunlight. There is also the question of their economic impact, that such buildings take tenants from elsewhere and render other offices empty, let alone whether they are financially sustainable and could go unlet.Arguments delivered in private next week will receive a public airing on 15 May, in a one-day conference at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Organised by Architects Journal, the session will hear Mr Livingstone and supportive fellow speakers, Mr Piano and Lord Rogers.
After receiving a draft plan for London, the Spatial Development Strategy, prepared by his deputy, Nicky Gavron, the Mayor turned to Lord Rogers for further advice prompting critics to claim a conflict of interest, bearing in mind his involvement in the Paddington Tower. Opposition is likely to come from English Heritage’s Mr Davies and Jon Rouse, head of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. In most large cities in the world, skyscrapers are grouped together. In London, this occurs in two places, the City and Canary Wharf.
