Eurostar to Heathrow ? new proposals from Arup

Posted on May 29, 2008 by William Perrin

Kings_cross_heathrow_arupThe engineers Arup have published some odd, but appealing plans for extending the Eurostar to Hethrow and interconnecting with rail services to the West.  This is a welcome addition to the various proposals to extend high speed rail to the North.   Click on the pic to the left.  Remarkably only about 20% of passengers arrive at Heathrow on tube or train combined.  The large (3MB but only a few pages) pdf below has what sketchy details they can provide. 

It looks like Heathrow are aligning this with proposals for a third runway – to get away with that they need ways of shifting more passengers from the airport than the roads can ever hope to offer and free upcapacity by replacing short haul flights with rail (as the Paris Brussels services do for CDG).  For Kings Cross this might be good news with a fast link to Heathrow – Crossrail (which Boris will have toruble funding) doesn’t make for an ultra quick transit (see previous piece on Crossrail here).  The odds of this being built are slim and a long way in the future.

High speed to the West is more attractive than high speed to the North – the ECML can be sped up with existing rolling stock by removing some pinch points on the line that cause the ‘125s’ to slow repeatedly from high speed.  The marginal benefit of faster trains is low.  Whereas getting to the West faster needs a more radical think.

Download arup_heathrow_rail_proposal.pdf  

Posted in Transport | Leave a comment

Springwatch King’s Cross

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Sophie Talbot

Starling_parent_baby Captured a few minutes ago a baby starling being fed by, first one parent then both. The baby looks almost like a female blackbird as it doesn’t yet have any starling type polka dots or a shiny blue/green sheen to it’s feathers. If you hear a bird call that sounds exactly like R2D2, you can bet that’s a starling! The RSPB lists starlings as being on their red endangered list, and they are one of the species of common British birds going missing from central London. Happily, right here in King’s Cross we have them nesting.Starling_parents_baby Here they are feeding on dried mealworms placed in a homemade feeder designed to keep out pidgeons. I put out the mealworms morning and evening for both the starlings and blackbirds.

Visit BBC Springwatch and BBC Breathing Places for more information about what you can do to support bio-diversity on your doorstep. LB Islington and The Ecology Centre are a must for the big Islington Springwatch. And, take a leaf out of the guerilla gardening book – you might just want to start a project yourself this year. Don’t forget to call into Culpeper Gardens for a real hit of nature in the city – take a book, lie back, relax and soak up the peace.

Don’t forget to send us any photos you take of wildlife in King’s Cross this Spring and we’ll publish them on this site. Happy wildlife watching!

Posted in Wildlife and Nature | Leave a comment

Open Garden Square Weekend

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Stephan Schulte

Garden_square_week

Download Larger Copy of Flyer – Download logs_flier.pdf

Posted in Wildlife and Nature | Leave a comment

Outram up in flames again – but CCTV well positioned to give vital evidence…..

Posted on May 27, 2008 by William Perrin

Outram_fire Oh dear, i was only thinking the other day that it had been ages since someone torched a stolen moped, when i look out ofhte window, see smoke and someone has set a moped on fire.  A moped was put onfire in the Outram undercrofts this evening (Sunday 27 May) at about 2000.  The fire brigade came quickly and put it out.  I think elderly people live in this part of the Outram – setting a fire under an old persons house is serious stuff.

There is some hope of solving this one though – overseeing that part of the Delhi Outram estate is a monstrous 3 camera CCTV tower that appeared from nowhere in April to protect the Council depot (in the pic above it is just out of shot to the right – see below for mast).  One of the cameras points directly at where the fire was set, one other covers the entrance to this dead end yard.  Unless the arsonists had an invisibility cloak it would have been impossible to sneak in un noticed.  So let’s see if the council and the police can share CCTV footage to crack this one. Or will it be another case of ‘there wasn’t a tape in’ etc
Outram_firemen_2
Cctx_pole_outram

Posted in Anti Social Behaviour, Crime etc | 1 Comment

Regents Canal Wildlife Planting and Clean-up

Posted on May 27, 2008 by William Perrin

Cimg0832

Regents Canal Clean up May 28th

Thames 21volunteers along with Thornhill Bridge Community Gardener members have begun to clean up the area between the western portal of the Islington Tunnel and York Way (Maiden Lane) Bridge.
There isn’t much graffiti left now that British Waterways/Islington Council have cleaned it up, but the pressure washers from the BW boat (the Griffin) will be used to remove the residue left by burnt motorbikes along the canal towpath.
The bulk of the cleanup will involve cutting back the vegetation either side of the wooden steps, just east of Thornhill Bridge (Caledonian Road). The ground will then be terraced and planted with a mixture of wildflowers and more established plants. If the volunteers finish the steps and other jobs, the beds at the entrance to the canal at Muriel Street will be cut back, nettles removed and replanted with wildflowers.
The railings along the entrance to Thornhill Bridge Community Gardens (west side) from the towpath will also be repainted.

Posted in Wildlife and Nature | Leave a comment

24-Hour Liquor License Requested For York Way

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Stephan Schulte

34b Sometimes I ask myself, "are the only new businesses opening in London bars and clubs?"  Unfortunately, I’m usually disappointed by the answer!

Here we go again – this time it’s a new establishment seeking to open at 34B York Way, N1 9AB in Regent’s Quarter.  The License Application number is PREM/3816 and they are requesting permission for the following:

  1. Permit the exhibition of films, playing of live and recorded music
    between 00.01 – 24.00 on Mondays to Sundays
  2. Permit the supply of late night refreshment
    between 23.00 – 05.00 on Mondays to Sundays
  3. Permit the sale of alcohol
    between 00.01 – 24.00 on Mondays to Sundays

If you would like to comment on this Application, please do so before 11 June 2008.  You may send your comments to: licensing@islington.gov.uk.  Please be sure you identify yourself as a local resident and include your address.  You might also wish to copy our local Councillor Paul Convery – paul.convery@islington.gov.uk, so he understands the depth of feeling on this matter.

Personally, I don’t want to see York Way become another Upper Street – with wall-to-wall bars – especially one like this that proposes to sell alcohol 23 hours and 59 minutes/day, 7 days/week!

I feel there should be a limit to the number of drinking establishments in a given area.  By taking such action we would actually making those granted much more valuable so that owners would have a clear reason to ensure that they did nothing that would cause them to lose their license.  What do you think?

Posted in Planning, Licensing and Regulation | 2 Comments

Barnard Park consultation

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Sophie Talbot

Barnard_park_2   

Download barnard_park_leaflet_sq.pdf

Posted in Planning, Licensing and Regulation | Leave a comment

New Compounds: Art and Science Event

Posted on May 22, 2008 by William Perrin

Fugue2_2 I thought you might be interested in this event, free for Camden and Islington businesses/residents, which we are holding next Tuesday….

New Compounds: Arts and Science in Collaboration will showcase 4 innovative projects combining two disciplines to create ground-breaking new work.

Presented by the artists and scientists involved, the four projects draw inspiration from fields as diverse as architecture, neuroscience, AI and figurative art. Be charmed by the connection between music and the immune system, challenged by the complexities of brain patterns in space, and discover inspiration and information for your own work – from creating partnerships to finding funding.

“There is a certain daring awkwardness to bringing scientists together with artists in a territory where fact lives up to its reputation as stranger than fiction. These are brave experiments which combine the poetic ambiguity of art with science’s admiration for nature’s bluntness.”

Janna Levin, Advanced Fellow in Astrophysics, University of Cambridge.

Tuesday 27 May 2008, 6–9pm

@ The Wellcome Collection Conference Centre

183 Euston Road NW1 2BE

FREE to Camden and Islington businesses.

£5 for attendees from outside Camden and Islington – payable in advance via cheque.

Please rsvp to info@createkx.org.uk with your name, organisation and postcode.

CreateKX, Supported by Innovation Central
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

New Compounds: Arts and Science in Collaboration

speakers

Fugue Art

Gordana Novakovic
Fugue is an ongoing collaborative project, based on the functioning of
the human immune system. At the heart of the piece is a complex piece
of scientific software, an artificial immune system algorithm, accurately
mimicking the changes and cascading responses of the human immune
system. The artistic concept, inspired by the musical form of the Fugue,
interprets, expresses and communicates these changes through
independent channels of vision, using cell-like images, and sound.

Conversation Piece

Alexa Wright & Alf Linney
Conversation Piece is an artwork designed to explore the boundaries between
virtual and real world experience. It is an intelligent room that uses speech
recognition and synthesis software, a dialogue management system,
microphone arrays and directional sound sources to conduct disembodied
dialogues with two separate users at a time. Technology used is concealed and
statements made by the machine (‘Heather’) can be heard only at a specific
location in space, so that the effect for other audience members is of hearing
one side of a telephone conversation.

Sixty Days of Goodbye Poems of Ophelia

JoWonder & Simon Park
Artist JoWonder and composer Milton Mermikides have collaborated with microbiologist Simon Park to create an animated painting out of bacteria, a version of Millais` Pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia. The growth and interaction of bacteria will generate the image and also reflect the body’s decomposition following death.

Neurotopographics

Hugo Spears & Antoni Malinowski
A groundbreaking film exploring the boundaries of art, architecture and neuroscience by exploring how mysterious patterns of brain cell activity allow us to perceive and remember space. The film installation, Neurotopographics, is the result of a Wellcome Trust funded partnership between neuroscientist Dr Hugo Spiers, artist Antoni Malinowski, and architect Bettina Visman.
www.neurotopographics.com

To book:

020 7412 5511

info@createKX.org.uk

Posted in Arts and Entertainment | Leave a comment