Mayor's Office

Here is the Mayor's office, mentioned below. This used to be an unkempt, open area as recently as the late 1990s. The South Side where Livingstone's scheme to increase housing stock taken hold - today, where there was nothing as recently as ten years ago, now sees multiple glass-and-steel high-rise condominiums none, I believe, higher than St Paul's. London's housing problem well appreciated by anybody trying to get a foot on the ladder - this city the engine of the UK and in good or bad times, attracts people from everywhere. Prop values may be down 15-25% in some neighborhoods but we all know it will come back. Part of the problem, if one is a first-time buyer that is, London surrounded by "green-belts" where development not permitted. Further, to maintain the historic sky-line, planning permission for anything more than five floors extremely difficult. And nothing can deter the view of St Paul's. Before the global melt-down, Super Gee contemplating developing the wetlands east of Greenwich and near the Thames Barrier. The problem with Gordon's plan being floods - as in, this area a flood plain. Sigh -I am sure it will happen one day, and tax payers will have to bail out (ar ar) the insurance providers. The Thames Barrier BTW architecturally marvelous and built for the once-a-hundred-years flood; it is now used monthly and by 2050, anticipated daily to prevent bankside swelling during the natural course of the tide.

Oh, and since a "bank holiday weekend," it rains.