GROUND ZERO TOLERANCE

Picture: Asterix611 - via Flikr

I knew pretty quickly where I stood on this issue. The somewhat spiteful debate surrounding the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque.’ First clincher? It’s not actually a Mosque. It involves plans for a community centre with a place of worship inside. Second point? It’s not at Ground Zero, but two blocks away. Here’s a handy map showing the distance, remember this is downtown Manhattan, you can fit a lot in.

But if a third strand were needed to suggest just who’s wrong here, I’d skim through the quotes gathered from anti-Mosque protesters this past Sunday. I feel their wise words may not have been picked over finely enough and want to re-print a few, collected from Reuters:

“America needs to man up right about now. We’re bowing to Muslims that want to kill us, that hate us.”

“I don’t believe that every Muslim is a terrorist, but I do know that every Muslim was on the planes that killed my brother was a Muslim.”

“When they the terrorists they come over here and they tear down the World Trade Center, 3,000 people they get killed by the Muslim people, don’t forget them.”

Couple together the fact they quite literally can’t string a sentence together, with the fact television pictures showed them waving a model cruise missile… with a US flag sticking out of it – and we know just about where on the scale we might find many of these people. Please don’t think patriot or concerned citizen, not even ‘tea party maverick.’ To those of us living in the UK, think BNP activist, hijacking pictures of Churchill and screaming about ‘our jobs’.

They insist two blocks is too close to this ‘hallowed ground’ – and want the building pushed back further. I’d like to beg the question, how far would be far enough. To the tip of Manhattan? Into the sea maybe? How about 2.9 miles and a short ferry ride south to Liberty Island? Here’s another quote to cast your eye over, printed on the base of the statue that stands there:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”

One small but significant part of America’s fascinating history as a nation of immigrants, a nation committed to freedom of speech and freedom to worship too. I visited Ground Zero a couple of years ago. They requested that you don’t take photos and selling stuff was banned. But the New York Fire Department were teaching visiting school kids about the history of the place and at that time you could still stick tributes and messages to the fences around the building site.

One last quote comes from something I saw scribbled down there:

“The planes came and took my uncle away. We love you.”

That seems to me like a much stronger way to respect and preserve the memory of the people who lost their lives on 9/11. Better than borderline racism anyway.

WHY I LOVE THE SIGHT OF ST PANCRAS... FROM ONE DIRECTION

'Grumpy.... 'That's Betjeman .... not me.

Is it possible to love the look of a train station, airport or bus terminal from only one direction? I mean to enter at its southern end - and be awestruck by beauty and brilliance, yet remain disappointed and numb when passing through the same lofty building from the north …. Because I feel this way about London St Pancras.

This station is brilliant. I wax lyrical about it. Forget your Crosses both King’s and Charing – square and boring. Giant Waterloo may share its name with an epic battle but that’s also what you’ll face at its ticket machines and tube station. Tiny Marylebone can compete in the silly name stakes but I stand firm in my belief that shiny St Pancras is the daddy of them all. Look at the evidence. It has a champagne bar, a sushi bar and a burger bar… a giant statue of a couple kissing, a smaller statue of a grumpy poet, a toyshop, a bookshop, trains that go under the sea, fourteen thousand window panes in its roof and almost as many lost Frenchmen milling around beneath.

Still none of these things actually clinch it for me. Instead it’s the station’s solid structural connections to places I call home. I have a huge affinity with two cities, Glasgow and Derby. I lived, worked and set down roots in both and travel back to both regularly, passing through St Pancras every time. On every occasion – and with beautiful synergy – I see the Victorian façade, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott who also created Glasgow University - and then walk beneath the giant structural arch – supported by iron girders, forged in Derby. This place is built with ideas and materials mined from places I associate with strength. When it was bombed during the second world war, engineers from Central Scotland and the Midlands got it running again. Inevitably a mixture of pride, warmth and familiarity sees me onto the train with a smile on my face wherever I happen to be heading.

So why does the same building remain singularly unimpressive each time I return. The huge gilded clock bears down reminding you how late you are. 'This was once the largest indoor space in the world' but so what. For the traveller heading north to south it’s now merely a portal, you dash through focussing on what lies beyond, a hurried tube ride, London night out, tourist trip, reunion or just a warm flat at the end of a long journey.

It seems to me our perception of grand travel places alters depending on which stage of our journey we encounter them. I don’t know if this is something particular to London, Glasgow, Derby and me, or a real, widespread observable phenomenon. Can a similar effect be measured with New York’s Grand Central Station or Gare Du Nord in Paris? Answers on the back of an international train ticket please.