Only an EU bureaucrat could have written this:

The development and acceptance of new technologies have led to the emergence of new media channels and new kinds of content. The emergence of new media has brought more dynamic and diversity into the media landscape; the report encourages responsible use of new channels.

In this context the report points out that the undetermined and unindicated status of authors and publishers of weblogs causes uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits.

It recommends clarification of the legal status of different categories of weblog authors and publishers as well as disclosure of interests and voluntary labelling of weblogs.

What does it mean? Honestly, your guess is as good mine. A couple of smart people think that the EU is moving closer and closer to making an attempt to regulate blogs.

If you read the whole document, it sounds like a grievance manifesto from a journalists’ union. Taken in that context, it’s not hard to see how the EU could use protecting journalists as a pretext to online regulation, labeling, mandated impartiality and all the rest.

I don’t have enough experience with EU reports to decipher this sort of prose. (Which in itself is a commentary on the problems of the EU.) But I know that I what I’ve read makes me very nervous. And glad that my server resides happily outside of the EUreaucrats jurisdiction.

If you’ve been to London, you’ve probably seen Battersea Power Station. The massive brick structure with its four distinctive chimneys (or smoke stacks, as we Americans usually call them) sits directly across the Thames from the exclusive borough of Chelsea.

Yesterday, my wife and I got to have close-up look around the London landmark, and I’m glad we did.

At the start of our tour, the view across the property to the power station.

Construction on the power station began in 1929. It began generating in 1935, and was continuously expanded and upgraded right through World War II until the final chimney was added in 1955. In any context, it’s an extraordinary building. Turbine Hall A was panelled with Italian marble. An auxiliary control room was done in stainless steel. It’s one of the largest brick structures in Europe.

It stopped generating in 1983. And despite two redevelopment plans, it has site idle ever since. Well, maybe idle is too strong a word. Each of the two failed redevelopment plans did some work on the structure — mostly demolition. The roof over central boiler house was removed. Large pieces of the walls have been taken out. Heaps of spoil adorn the site.

In short, Battersea Power Station is today more ruin than destination, but it is still an astonishing building deserving of restoration.

Turbine Hall A is but one example of the power station’s sad condition.

The folks from Treasury Holdings have a plan. Purposefully embracing the ironic, they are planning to convert the power station and the surrounding property into a massive, modern multi-use complex that will be one of the most environmentally friendly in the world. You can get all of the details here, but suffice for me to say that I was blown away.

The developer’s model showing the power station and surrounding area after redevelopment.

It’s the Treasury Holdings redevelopment proposal that opened the power station’s grounds to visitors. You see, the developer is working hard to attract support for their plans, and must undertake a public consultation as a part of their efforts to win planning approval.

The grounds are open to visitors on each Saturday during July and August., and as a result, thousands of Londoners who come to check out the landmark building are also being exposed — and solicited for feedback — about the redevelopment proposal.

It’s brilliant. The building is amazing. And thanks to Treasury Holdings for going to considerable expense to allow people to see it.

For what’s it worth, from my review of the redevelopment proposal, I hope it goes forward. It looks extraordinary. And it will give future Londoners the chance to not just see, but also to enjoy the famous power station.

UPDATE: You can see all of my photos here.

On Friday, a group of colleagues and I snuck out a little early to check out the British Motor Show. (Full disclosure: My firm built their new website, and they were kind enough to give us the tickets.)

Unlike the big annual shows in the U.S., this one only runs every other year. But like the shows in Vegas, Detroit and elsewhere, the BSM is massive. Most of the manufacturers were there with huge, expensive displays and the best of their product lines.

I took some photos and stuck them over at Flickr, but these were my highlights:

• Access to Bentley’s display was restricted by an imposing railing. To get in, you had to walk around to the furthest point, and enter past a gauntlet of sales people. But you have to hand it to them: Such a display is precisely on brand.
• Honda’sToyota’s Hybrid I concept car was very cool. I think most people will even love or despise the bullet shape, but I liked it, and it’s definitely a step up (visually) from the Prius.



• Mazda had a small car being carried off by paper machete pterodactyls. There’s a metaphor there somewhere, but I’ll leave you to sort out your own.



• The tiny, environmentally responsible, electric-powered Smart Car doesn’t seem so smart to me. One collision at any speed, and you’re just dead.

Thanks to our friends at BSM for the tickets. We had a ball.

I should also give a hat tip to the ExCeL center (also a client). They put on a great event, and their selection of bars and restaurants on site was a marvel, especially the lovely pub right on the river where we enjoyed the latter part of the evening.

UPDATE: Fixed the place in the post where I identified a car with a big “Toyota” sign in the background as Honda.

One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is the continued presence of specialist purveyors. In particular, my corner butcher.

I never really had a butcher in the U.S. Supermarkets had put them all out of business before I was born.

Here in London, there are still quite a few butchers, but like their colleagues in the states, they are increasingly under threat from supermarkets. A fourth generation butcher shop nearby in Holloway went out of business just a few weeks ago.

There has been a butcher shop on my corner, I’m told, for at least a hundred years. The gentleman who runs the shop seems to makes most of his living doing custom cuts for restaurant customers. But he would still like to do a strong retail business.

This butcher shop is, perhaps, a vestige of another age.

Yesterday, he put a sign that I hadn’t seen previously (and I’ve walked by his door now everyday for five months). It said, simply, “Our prices are cheaper than Sainsbury’s.” (That’s the discount grocery chain up the street.) On the flip side of the sandwich board, he had written a price list that included Mallard, Goose, Cornish Hen and a variety of other specialty meats. I picked up a Cornish Hen for dinner, and asked if he was having a hard time.

He told me that, actually, he wasn’t. His restaurant business was strong. But he reads the papers, too, and with food prices on the rise, he saw an opportunity to get customers back in the habit of coming to the butcher.

I hope they do. Since moving here, I’ve really only seem him busy once, and that was on Easter Weekend when families renew the tradition of getting together for Sunday Roast. For my own part, I’ve been in a few times, and I’ll keep doing business with him whenever I can, and if you live near Angel tube in Islington, I hope you’ll do the same.

As regular readers know, a couple of months ago, I moved to London. Unfortunately, for practical reasons — mostly involving the legal transport of our dog, Cody — my wife was not able to join me right away. Knowing that, and knowing that my new friends in London could not always be entertaining me at the pub — though several have made valiant efforts — I decided to undertake some long-intended reading.

For starters, I picked up a copy of the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes.

At 1,022 pages and weighing about 5 pounds, it was a heavy (literally) piece of reading, but the Holmes Canon (as true Holmes experts call the collected works) was one work of literature I had long wanted to complete.

And since almost the moment of my arrival, it has been my companion. On evenings when I wanted to get out for a quiet dinner, for example, Holmes and Watson came along. They’ve been along to the pub and the coffee shop and even taken the round trip with me to Coventry and Milton Keynes.

Tonight, I finished it.

I had read some Holmes in the past. Everyone, I think, ought to be required to read Sign of Four and Hound of the Baskervilles in a literature class somewhere along their educational path. But I had never before consumed all of the tails. And certainly, I had never done so on London.

Reading Holmes so soon after coming to London turned out to be a great way to immerse myself in the London of the Victorian era. And to a great degree, the London that was built up in the time of Holmes is still very much the one that I live in today.

Even now, Thames water have only begun replacing the Victorian sewer system. My own flat is in a converted Victorian townhouse built on one of the most important and oldest streets in north London.

One day, after reading my Holmes through a cold, grey weekend morning, the sun emerged, so I went down to Baker Street and visited the Sherlock Holmes Museum. At the time Conan Doyle was first publishing the Holmes stories, 221B Baker Street was the world’s most famous false address. Today, it stands just over the road from the Baker Street tube station, and just yards from the lovely Regent Park. In Holmes’ day, it would have been further down, closer to hustle of Oxford Street. No matter. The museum was interesting. And if nothing else, I learned that Mrs. Hudson’s house and the rooms taken by the good doctor and the eccentric detective were each a good bit smaller than I had envisioned.

The Sherlock Holmes Statue at Baker Street Tube Station in London.
Credit: fede_gene88 via Flickr.

Still, I kept reading. Through all 56 short stories and 4 novels.

So much literary criticism has been penned about the Canon, that I won’t pretend to try and contribute. I will say that many of Conan Doyle’s stories are masterpieces. But as one would expect, as he got later in life, the stories became a bit more predictable and formulaic. Even so, I can’t point to a single story that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. And there were many that were absolutely enthralling.

I think my favorite element was the characters of Holmes and Watson themselves. Conan Doyle graced them both with considerable wit and the romanticized grace of an era that was overflowing with it. Watson was especially compelling: the dogged, frustrated writer who over thirty years made his friend the most famous detective in all the world, and kept working his way through the notes in his Despatch Box at the bank near Charing Cross, right up until 1914.

I don’t know how long I’ll live in London. Perhaps for many years. But I am sure that thanks to my time spent with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson during my first weeks here, whenever I look around, I’ll see fleeting bits of their London wherever I turn.

UPDATE: My wife tells me that two Holmes movies are in the works. I’ll do a little digging on them tomorrow when the sun comes up.