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  • Thread starter Thread starter ETRAHXZ
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ETRAHXZ

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THX SHORTIE (you certainly are very short; maybe the Indian Summer).
No. I was of the impression the Rotunda, as a sitting duck for residential, was slated for condominiumization.
I recall a posting of apartments, fanastically overpriced (of course), as an open house day where prospectives camped out overnight.
There was also the possibility of a revolving restaurant on the roof. Another obvious treat!
Perhaps the idea was offices to a level then abodes.
(I recall standing outside the caretaker's flat on the roof. What a view. His huge Alsatian liked it as well and gazed contemplatively SW.)
[Quite a cherry job...]

I can understand some queer buildings being listed as a solemn reminder of attrocious taste in how not to do stuff.
What other possible rationale there could be for an operation so utterly daft is mind boggling.

What is a curiosity (to myself) is how so many new hotels, as well as the traditional ones, small inns, b&bs, though especially big hotel jobs pay. Where is the economic activity foot traffic to sustain them?
A comparable situation with condominiums which proliferate like pounds of butter.

A recently qualified electrical engineer, who invested in a glorified shoe box condo on Paradise Street, subsequently decamping to Alcester Street into a converted rubber emporium, told me that engineering enrollment at further (higher) education was minimal.
He said, and I concurred, such is a sheer wonder giving the Industrial Revolution and subsequent history.
He also commented that people in his economic plight, with a young family to fend for, routinely had difficulty with work situations because of EU influx of labour who work for significantly less.
I asked him about unions and trade associations, though he was vague on the matter.
However, it is an ongoing impediment. (He regularly commuted considerable distances daily from Birmingham to sites as far flung as Cheltenham and Bristol.)

because you have your ear to the ground, I wonder do you know if the proposed ultra high speed railway train is going to birth at Vauxhall from Euston? Almost ironic if it does. That being the case, will the Duddeston loop viaduct be finally used - as never way, even for shunting? I understand there is considerable brouhaha as to the line inbetween. However, given so many people live alongside (a few feet from the track) of busy railway, it is perhaps an exaggerated reaction to the so-called bullet train. Likely all that will be audible is a whoosh. It is hardly going to clatter along shuddering at the sound barrier.
At 100 mph the journey from Euston-B aught be about 1 hr once the vessel cranks up to full belt.
So at 200 mph (weather permitting) a mere half an hour. Were it an electromagnetic linear railway - which it should be - then it would be almost silent, no pollution and the journey could be reduced to under half an hour. One could literally pop along to King's Cross for a drop of real ale and back in two hours.
I hope the line will be landscaped with shrubbery, flowers, herbs - trees.
A woman who operated a cafe franchise in an inner London public park, asked me if I could have a row of conifers felled before the block of high rise flats in which she resided, because the outlook was boring. I asked her what was on the other side. She told me a motorway and that it would be so much more interesting to see a busy sign of life.
I almost asked her how much time she spant staring out of the window.
 
If you are going by my picture, I have grown since then, I was only two, but I am only 4' 11" wringing wet.

As far as strange buildings are concerned, some people actually like stuff from the 1960's and 1970's which I find bizarre, but perhaps I am a bit odd. The top bit of the Rotunda did used to revolve, with advertising on it, originally, but I don't know about the restaurant. The Post Office Tower in London used to have a restaurant on the top which revolved, are you thinking of that? I was abut 17 when the Rotunda was built, so was not so interested in buildings as boys, or more specifically the boy who became my husband and still remains so. As far as the hotels are concerned, there is a lot going on to bring people into and around Birmingham. Exhibitions, sport, all sorts of things, but could not possibly say what exactly. I must ask my daughter, she lives in Birmingham and knows more than I do about current actitivities, due to the nature of her job.

I have to say I have not got the slightest idea of the route of the high speed train, that is if it goes ahead. I have not taken much notice, probably because of the high cost of trains. My husband was made redundant eighteen months ago, but before then, as he was a director of a company whose head office was in London, used to have to go to Euston once a month. The journey cost at that time £218, first class, and that is only from Birmingham. That is expensive. Australia's trains are older, more comfortable and much cheaper, or so I found when I went there, why could we not have kept our old rolling stock rather than having to have this new stuff, the seats are jolly uncomfortable, especially if you are short. I do think there will be landscaping along the route where possible and where appropriate. They do with motorways, so I expect railway routes to be the same.

That poor lady in London you spoke of - sounds to me like she was lonely!

Shortie
 
Originally i believe the Rotunda was designed to rotate at the top (thats how it got its name and not because it was round )however there was a fault in the bearings that it rested on and it would have been to expensive to remove and replace them. Dek
 
YUP. THAT WAS A HUGE RESCUE JOB: pumping cubic yards of concrete underneath as the structure was slipping.
It was held, though of course generally stifled from public acclaim, the subsidance was because of the subterranean railway system. That certainly makes some sense but is utterly fantastic in light of the quite stupendous accomplishments of Victorian civil engineers and latterly big British based turnkey projects overseas.
Any sensible person would quite rightly look askance at the failure of structural integrity. It could have ruptured.
A restaurant was an obvious kind of gambit. Certainly a revolving advertizing display, with such as stock exchange, weather, intelligent news reportage, includign sports, would have proved a whopper attraction likely resulting in appetite stimulus.
The PO tower in Mayfair restaurant was closed for security reasons as it was a prime target for maniacs.
Certainly mighty queer, at 1k ft it would command top prices. So yet another suboptimal flub up.
(All the PO towers are on a sight line, so on a clear day with powerful lense you can site them all. [Set by laser]

Good gracious, I've no idea why I assumed so that Shortie is a bloke. Now I am enlightened. The railway fare (whether de luxe 1st class or nay) is crazy. It would surely have cost less to take an aeroplane? A nice jaunt, though slow, was Moor Street to Oxford-Euston.

The old railway stock, including buildings, was annihilated as a result of a sociopathic exercise overseen by Beeching.
There never was any sense to it; other than malice. To suggest the upkeep was prohibitive is nonsense. As a wee strap of a lad I well recall how everybody in her/his right proper mind enjoyed the comfortable convenience of rolling stock and station amenities.

Your daughter, Shortie, might well be able to shed some light on the curious phenomena of proliferation of hotels, inns and of course condominiums. With rail fare stratospheric, tantamount to delusional, it is a sheer wonder hardly anybody can afford to attend venues in Birmingham.
Certainly the unemployed and elder folk retirees are for the most part excluded and so presumably the bulk of subsistence income workers of any stripe.

Incidentally: this day the EU has ordered Britain that about 2.6 billion pounds in unemployment payment must be made to migrating prospects, guest workers, other EU denizens (some dubbed "dole tourists"). Maybe British rates are higher than most, though one would think a claimant would be better off with the feet up in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece with a phrase book.
(The pseudo think reporting does not state is it a British billion = 1 thou-1thou mln.) Cries of 'liquidation' now abound, as well as queries as to residency and voting rights. Presumably the fantastically highly paid self appointed consciences of politicians in a state of high umbrage have had the EU rules and regulations read to them. Of course it is a massive financial burden.
But it will likely pass because eof massive overcrowding-urbanization and infrastructural construction 1960s>.

The Cockney woman was disposed to being a chatterbox; as was her husband (Mouth & Trousers Jug Artist Brigade).
Tough people though. Perhaps she did get lonely while he was expostulating in the tavern. One would be desperately hard presed to stare out of the window sipping tea gaping traffic. (Frankly one wonders how whoever it is that does sits staring at cctv monitors for interminable hours. If you've seen a bank of them in action they are enough to give a person a headache - at a glance.)
This woman is a soul stirring instance of the necessity to cultivate a hobby to maintain and enhance sanity as health and efficiency in advancing years. Ideally at least a mental and a physical one. I never met her husband though I've a fairly shrewd idea of nattering: it's like one of the closest things to perpetual motion. One wonders what so many people find to discuss for hours almost every evening at the pub. Surely a wonder of Nature.

(Incidentally, it could be well contended that destruction of the railway system was robbery of communal heritage.
But then with a central government which uses public funds to capitalize N Sea oil and gas, then sells off the capital, and is forced to use the bulk of the revenue accrued, as tax, to foot the unemployment bill is hardly likely to come remotely clean.)

 
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