We all know what propaganda is though – don’t we?

Obviously it’s the posters put up during WW2 compelling people to sign up to die in a distant land, or stop spreading secrets closer to home. Obviously, its the adverts on telly put out by politicians seeking re-election. Obviously it’s the grand paintings of the past designed to make Monarchs look more regal than they really were.

How about postage stamps? Are they propaganda? Well, here in the UK they all carry the image of the head of state, and when affixed to an envelope turn your personal letter into Official Correspondence, to be delivered to the end address by authority of the State.

We may be so used to the postage stamp that we don’t give it a second thought, but I lived in a lot of countries with various dictators and Presidents, and there, the image of the Head of State on a stamp was far more pervasive a tool of political control.

Every day we transact with propaganda, as we hand over paper currency with all the emblems of State power emblazoned upon them. Currency is probably the most powerful tool of the State, and the iconography used on currency may be decorative, but it is also reminding us who is boss.

The British Library exhibition touches on these aspects all too briefly, in a display given over to the larger demonstrations of power and propaganda — the posters.

Something that we might not fully realise, is that while a lot of the images are familiar from repetitive use on t-shirts and in books, that belies the sheer impact of the original posters. They are huge. They dominate and breathe down on you as you walk past. Imagine a street full of warning messages instead of exhortations to shop.

Then again, in recent years, exhortations to go shopping have themselves been a form of propaganda. Buy things and save the economy from recession!

Propaganda can also be more subtle and private though. The theatre of power is a very powerful tool — if you look grand and imposing, people assume you are the sort of person who can make decisions. It’s not without good reason that the Foreign Office was refurbished and returned to their Victorian grandeur during the 1980s. Britain is a power again, and grand buildings humble the supplicants seeking an audience with Ministers.

Even 10 Downing Street got a makeover, and while modest, the differences turned a rather shabby 1950s interior into an impressive Georgian House once more.

Back to the exhibition, dotted around the place are a load of Antony Gormley-esque mannequins with messages printed on their chests.

A number of video screens carry interviews with modern politicians talking about the propaganda power of the London 2012 Olympics.

I live on the Isle of Dogs, and the “Back the Bid” campaign was unsettling in how it was emblazoned everywhere. Posters hanging from street lamps, DLR stations bedecked in massive adverts, and everywhere messages to send a text message supporting the bid.

Support the bid — or else.

Have you noticed how most posters from TfL carry the Mayor of London slogan on them? Never forget who is in charge.

An exhibition that has largely focused on elements of propaganda that we might nod at and agree with, ends with health scares. Is John Hurt’s memorable voiceover on the AIDS adverts just a health message, or were there moral undertones — government seeking to influence morality though a scary advert?.

Eat healthy food, keep fit, avoid consumption, obey, obey, obey.

Most of the health messages are eminently sensible, but also they remind you that Government Knows Best. You shall obey the government. We may be more questioning today of government messages, but politicians will never fall out of love of reminding us how we rely on their largess for all the good things in our lives — and how other people are to blame for all the bad things.

Oh, the one thing that was mercifully missing though — the one propaganda poster that is all pervasive today, but was never actually used during the war.

So stay calm and visit the exhibition.

But do so before the 17th September. Entry is £9.

However, as part of the wider changes in the area as government officials are kicked out and old buildings are demolished, the whole site was razed to the ground, and a more modern glassy slab has replaced it.

Although faceted and angled in places, most of the shape distorting effects are around the sides and top, which means we have ended up with another “almost-slab” fronting onto Victoria Street again. Fortunately, the use of glass lightens the effect, especially as it reflects the buildings, and sky opposite to create a virtual skyline that if you squint a bit can almost make the bulk of the glassy façade fade away (looks much better on a sunny day).

The biggest improvement though is the ground floor that binds the building to the pavement, and is the part most often seen by people on that side of the street. Away have gone the blocked off walls and low rise foyer, and in has come a massive all glass frontage that lets light flood through the area.

Also, what was once 54-60 Victoria Street is now 62 Buckingham Gate. A more prestigious street name achieved by shifting the entrance around to the side of the building. It is also here on the corner by a major road junction that one of the more interesting aspects of the building is visible to passers by — and it is nothing to do with the building itself.

Within is a huge lamp, designed by Stuart Haygath that has been assembled from 70,000 recycled spectacle lenses. It shimmers slightly in the natural air flow of the building, and is really quite dramatic and slightly mesmerizing.

A more cozy seating area at the other end contains a tapestry by Grayson Perry.

The previous building came with a basement car park for 95 cars. Today that has been replaced with space for 300 bicycles. And showers. It does make me wonder if we will ever see cycle-hire racks being installed inside new office basements in the future?

Although I described the building as being a bit of a glassy slab from the front, around the sides, the edges are more sharply angled, and that has the advantage of making the interior look rather more interesting. Rather than sitting next to a glass wall of uniform panes and columns, the skin of the building shifts and twists depending in which side you look at.

Although just 11 stories high, and sitting between two tall towers, if you are lucky enough to work on the 11th floor, the views north and south are quite spectacular.

Even looking to the East you can make out St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey in the gaps between the towers.

A green roof, and a modest sized terrace are designed to provide a bit of greenery to the upper level so that when seen from Buckingham Palace, the building shouldn’t be too conspicuous above the trees of St James Park. In theory. I didn’t test it out myself.

Of course, the views are only visible to the tenants, so for the vast majority of people passing by, the biggest change — apart from the physical structure — will be in how an alleyway between the former building and Westminster Town Hall is being improved.

What was a narrow dark passage of limited appeal, but considerable utility to pedestrians is getting a glass roof, and a number of cafes along one side. I suspect that vastly more people will benefit from that small improvement than would ever get to work inside the new building itself.

Thanks to Land Securities for the look around the building.

For architectural model fans, there is a model of the entire Victoria area in the Land Securities marketing suite, with their development picked out in pink – showing just how much of the area is to be redeveloped.

A few more photos from 62 Buck Gate here.

The trips will take place on the also recently restored Epping-Ongar railway, which was for a while part of the Central Line, but is now a heritage railway.

The original railway ran from Epping to Ongar, but at the moment, the link is broken, so the line runs from North Weald, with vintage buses as a shuttle link from Epping.

I’ve been up there, and I think the railway is utterly delightful, and there is loads to see in Ongar itself. Not to forget you simply have to take a countryside walk to Greensted Church. Not far from North Weald is a modest military museum as well.

Prices for the special day are quite reasonable as well.

Basically, £18 (£9 for children) for an entire day of trips along the railway during the day on their other steam and diesel trains…

…and then £5 per trip between Ongar and North Weald inside Coach 353 hauled by the vintage steam locomotive Met 1.

There is also a one-off trip along the entire length of the railway for a tenner.

It’s not underground, but it is a trip along what was for many years part of the Central Line, so you can claim to have ridden a steam train on a tube line. Not even the Victorians managed that!

Trains run on the weekend of the 21st June and the 28th June.

Although you can turn up on the day, the special Victorian carriage tickets have to be bought in advance here.

Tickets are allocated in two ballots.

The largest ballot is reserved for people who attend the Proms — which is perfectly understandable — and if you buy tickets to at least five performances, then you can opt into the ballot, which is for about 3,700 seats.

Just remember to tick the necessary box when buying tickets – which go on sale at 9am on Sat 11th May.

Tip – to avoid the holding queue that builds up on the booking website – log in early in the morning, and keep clicking on things to stay logged in until 9am.

The other option though is for the Open Ballot, which reserves 100 Centre Stalls seats (£87.50 each) and 100 Front Circle seats (£57.00 each) for anyone to apply for.

There is an application form to fill in and that is now available on their website – and just as in the main ballot, you are limited to 2 tickets per household.

Applications have to be posted to them by the 27th June.

Finally, any left over tickets, usually including some in the cheaper areas will go on public sale on Friday 5th July (I’ll flag that up closer to the date). If all else fails, then some standing tickets are usually still available on the Last Night itself.

Over at the Limmo Peninsular, where two tunnel boring machines have been sent off towards Canary Wharf, what was a site occupied by digging down two huge shafts in the ground, is now a marshalling yard for concrete segments going down, and soil coming back up.

While I was there, in just a few minutes, three truck loads of concrete passed the site, and the two huge gantry cranes were busy shifting big stacks of future tunnel linings.

Future crossrail tunnel linings

Small locomotive

Gantry crane shifting concrete segments

A little further to the East is the Connaught Tunnel.

Here, they have had to block off a small section of canal that links two docks and are excavating the bottom of the dock out to reveal the roof of the old Victorian tunnel that runs underneath it.

I have recounted the whats and whys of that already.

The Connaught Tunnel site

Here be tunnels!

Overlooking the Connaught Tunnel

Excavating the tunnel site

At the base of the Connaught Tunnel dig

A worker I shouted a question to thinks it will take about 4 weeks to reach the top of the tunnel, which seems a long time to me, but maybe they are being very careful with the last metre or so of digging?

And details have finally been confirmed — including public tours of HMS Illustrious.

As part of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic, three military ships will visit London, including the ex-aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, and there will be an aircraft flypast over London.

The agenda is:

Tuesday (7th May)

• HMS Blyth arrives and moors next to St Katherine’s Dock (noon-1pm)
• HMS Edinburgh passes through Tower Bridge and moors up next to HMS Belfast (1-2pm).

Wednesday (8th May)

• HMS Illustrious arrives in Greenwich (12:30pm)
• Royal Navy Parade from St Paul’s Cathedral to Mansion House (6pm)

Thursday (9th May)

• Fleet Air Arm flypast over Greenwich (7pm)
  • Warning – not on main website, but still on secondary page, might be a mistake as main page lists Saturday.

Friday (10th May)

• Ship’s company at Tower of London for Ceremony of the Dues (12:15pm)
  • This is visible to the public who are inside the Tower.

Saturday (11th May)

• HMS Illustrious Open to Visitors at Greenwich (10am-2pm)
  • Likely queuing by the Greenwich visitor centre — arrive early!
  • Also, I see this so often at these things – it’s an aircraft carrier, its not really suitable for prams.
• Merchant Navy Memorial Service at Trinity Gardens (1pm)
• HMS President and HMS Blyth — both at Wapping will be open to the public (10-2pm)
• Fleet Air Arm flypast over Greenwich (7pm)

Sunday (12th May)

• HMS Illustrious Open to Visitors at Greenwich (10.30am-2pm)
• HMS President and HMS Blyth — both at Wapping will be open to the public (10-2pm)

Monday (13th May)

• HMS Illustrious and HMS Blyth leave London at 3.30pm and 4.45pm respectively.

Just recently they started handling another recently wet object that had been dried, probably less carefully than usual for a museum relic – the swimming trunks worn by teen-idol, Tom Daley during the 2012 Olympics.

Actually, they are one small object in a smallish display set up by the museum to celebrate the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics.

A small glass case, just around the corner from the lower level canteen has a few objects associated with the Olympics on display — and then around the side are some of the costumes, and a big screen playing reruns of the event.

They don’t shy away from the pre-event controversy, which largely melted away as if it had never existed the very day the doors opened to the public.

Curiously, the yellow vest worn by Bradley Wiggins is not the actual Tour de France yellow vest, as that was still in France — so they made a quick replica for him to wear on the night.

There is also something slightly unsettling about leaning over to take a photo of a pair of swimming trunks worn by a very young man — slightly creepy really — especially considering the somewhat lecherous comments made by some elements of society about the lad himself.

The Olympics organisers have donated a large number of objects to the museum, but amazingly for something that was so tightly controlled and only happened a year ago, the organisers themselves don’t have one of everything left to hand over — so they are missing one of Mary Poppins brollies for example.

The exhibition is open until the end of October.

A bit of a hot potato politically as the cyclist lobby is exceptionally vocal.

As noted by the BBC, there are trials, described as happening “at a research laboratory in Berkshire”.

A single sentence in their article said: “Members of the public can participate in the trials.”

What! How?

Simple really – fill in this form and be willing to spend half a day at their test centre between Wokingham and Bracknell.

If nothing else, it’s something different to do, and you can go home feeling that you contributed in your own small part to road safety improvements.

Predictably, lots of wailing about woes and doom from rent-a-quote politicians who, had the last  election taken a different turn, would now be explaining how these are necessary and unavoidable.

Also a snarky headline from the Evening Standard about the wrong sort of water. In fact acid erosion is a common problem in London.

However, those with longer memories (or a penchant for tube history), will know that acid erosion of tube tunnels is not an unusual thing, and neither is the replacement of tunnel linings.

In fact, its a well tried method.

You may recall that in 1991, a section of the Northern Line needed repairs for exactly the same problem. Around 90 meters of tunnel lining had to be replaced just south of Old Street station as it had suffered from attack by sulphuric acid — or Oil of vitriol as I still prefer to call it.

It was in fact the tunnel itself that caused the introduction of oxygen into the soil, and started the chemical process of converting soil based pyrites and water into an acid.

The solution then was to replace the grey cast-iron linings with larger diameter acid resistant linings made from cast duplex stainless steel. The works were carried out at night using a special shield, through which the trains passed during the day.

That project took six years from initial concept to completion, including more than four years of research and design, a precasting contract for the linings and finally nine months of installation works.

They were however exceptionally lucky to have an abandoned tunnel right next to the works site, which helped immensely with storage of materials and equipment, and may go someway towards explaining why the work was able to be compressed into 9 months, when the Jubilee Line works will take longer.

So, despite the inconvenience, the replacement of rusted tunnel lining rings is itself not an unusual or unexpected thing to happen in London’s water logged soils.

Off on a totally different, but vaguely related issue…

The original “northern line” was much smaller than the current tunnels, and was widened in the 1920s. When the Old Street tunnel linings were replaced, they were also slightly, wider as well, mainly as it was easier to work that way.

When pondering the issue of overly hot tube tunnels, one of the biggest problems is that heat has built up in the clay surrounding the tunnels and cannot absorb any more surplus heat.

It struck me some time ago, that using long-proven tunnel widening techniques, and an unlikely to arrive pot of cash — a tunnel such as the Bakerloo Line could have its 100 year old tunnel linings replaced and at the same time, significantly widened.

The multiple benefits being new tunnel linings of course, but also you cut out a metre or so of surrounding soil and effectively cart away several decades of heat in the skips overnight. An inner lining is added to preserve the “air-piston” effect of the trains passing through, but over the years/decades, the linings are all slowly replaced with wider ones.

In the long term, you widen the tube tunnels to mainline train sizes, so that over a fairly long time frame, there comes a point where the Bakerloo Line can have a massive capacity upgrade in the form of larger trains.

Pie in the sky I know — but not technically impossible.

Considering how important a part of the tourist trail a look around the inside of the Palace is, it does seem odd to think back to a time when the most a person could hope for was a sighting of the changing of the guards from the outside of the huge metal railings.

Originally a temporary scheme lasting just 5-years, now, it would seem almost bizarre that the Palace could ever be closed to the public again.

Just as with the Open House London event, which is coincidentally, 21 this year, people are increasingly expecting to be allowed to wander around once private buildings and peer inside, even if only for a momentary glimpse.

Of course, unlike Open House, the Palace opened its doors because it needed the money — to help fund the repairs of Windsor Castle. That bill long since settled, the expectation of the public to be allowed inside remains unabated, and the Palace sweeps up the tourist currency with gay abandon.

It cost £8 to go inside in that first year. Inflation should have pushed that up to £14 by now. In fact, it’ll cost you £19 this year.

The only upside for us locals is that the entry ticket can be reused again and again for a whole year – so clever people book late one year and keep their ticket to go back early the next year.

For us, the entry price is still an effective £9.50 per yearly visit.

The Palace itself never changes in that unchanging way that we demand of Monarchy today, but they do rotate a fresh display each year, so if you are into that sort of thing, then repeat visits can be worth it.

I popped along last year to the Diamond exhibition, and have to confess that I slightly raced through the Palace — been there, seen that — to get along to the temporary exhibition.

It is really just a rather grand house, and frankly, not as grand as some that lower aristocrats have built in cheaper parts of the country. I still smile at how the banisters and railings are covered in sheets of plastic just in case clumsy commoners touch them. The grand gallery of paintings needs a new roof — the current incumbent looking very “local council” everything is roped off to prevent people getting too close.

The palace opens its doors to the lowly serfs for the 20th year on the 27th July.