London

With the country getting hotter, the ground underneath most houses in London will be drying out and becoming softer due to clay soil shrink-swell, leading to a massive increase in insurance claims for subsidence.

No one will want to buy a house with known subsidence because insurance normally only covers repairs for subsidence if it wasn't mentioned in the original survey report.

This is going to mean a huge reduction in houses prices all around London as they try to offload their houses that will need remedial action undertaking to prevent damage to the house.

This page shows a map of how London is going to be affected.

Most susceptible are properties in the highly-populated London areas, particularly in northern and central London boroughs, and Kent in the South East. Projections suggest that the number of properties in London likely to be affected by climate will rise from 20 per cent in 1990, to 43 per cent by 2030, and almost 3 times 1990 values (57 per cent) by 2070.

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/maps-show-the-real-threat-of-climate-related-subsidence-to-british-homes-and-properties/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26244752

Geography mattered on the Bloomberg site in the heart of the City, close to the Bank of England. The Walbrook, a lost river of London, had carved a deep valley into the landscape and the Romans constantly tried to reclaim the banks as the city grew and prospered. They did this by packing the ground with rubbish, building on it, then packing it again, three more times, so there is a stratigraphical layer cake of Roman trash going almost all the way back to London’s creation, in AD47 or 48. The river also waterlogged the ground, protecting the material from oxygen: leather, brooches, shoes, writing tablets, wood, animal bones and ceramics were all phenomenally well preserved. There are sandals that look fresher than last year’s Birkenstocks.

Site B2Y10 – to give it its academic name – was previously occupied by Legal and General, which dug deep in the 1950s, to create the biggest post-blitz rebuild in the City. Excavating archaeologists found the third-century Temple of Mithras, and oral histories from Londoners who witnessed the find in 1954 recall a magical atmosphere, when the secrets of the ancient past met the regeneration of the postwar present to create a sense of enormous hope and renewal. People queued for hours to see the temple. One woman who was pregnant at the time called her baby Mithra. As significant as that archaeological yield was, it was pretty haphazard – workers on the site were just picking things up and handing them in.

The Legal and General building had huge double basements, except on one side, where they had had to stay shallow for fear of jeopardising a Christopher Wren church on the opposite corner. “We were so excited by that single basement,” Jackson says. “We knew that in the layer underneath, that they hadn’t dug into, a lot of material would have survived.” Across 150 years of previous Roman recoveries in London, 19 writing tablets were found in total. In this one find, there were 400, of which 80 have already been deciphered. These are wooden frames, with an inset writing area about “the size of a Ryvita”, which would be filled with black wax, then written on.

...

Then there are anomalies that tell us something about the limits of Roman understanding. Jackson shows me a black, pebble-like object with three indentations on it, in which someone has tried to make a hole, to turn it into a pendant. Finding the material unnaturally unyielding, the Romans decided these were “solidified thunderbolts”, she says. “It’s so interesting to think of Romans doing archaeology themselves.” Not very well, mind; it wasn’t a solidified thunderbolt, it was a neolithic hand-axe made of obsidian.

It’s a reminder that we modern humans are also capable of misreading the signs. In the 1954 excavation, for example, they found beads that were assumed to have been worn by a woman, but here, those same beads and amulets were found still on their original strings, alongside other material that indicates they were worn by a horse. “It might have been a lady horse,” Marshall allows. Horses wore amulets covered in sexual imagery – such as fist-and-phallus amulets, with a clenched fist gesture at one end and an unmetaphorical phallus at the other, which was thought to ward off the evil eye. Children also wore amulets to ward off plague.

The last update of that page was mid February. In the meantime, while waiting for the page to be updated with the status of this month, I can entertain myself with some probability calculations for how likely/unlikely it is, that the north lift is currently functioning. The fact that the South lift has 100% uptime for the last 30 days, doesn't mean it didn't stop functioning today.

Community Fibre, the London-based internet provider, has been hit by its second outage in a week.

Customers complained they were unable to get online amid a major outage on Friday afternoon.

“Some customers may be experiencing disruption to their service. Our engineers are aware of this issue and working on a solution as their top priority. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience,” the company said on an update to its status page.

“Please ensure that all equipment is left on with all cables plugged in enable us to restore service as soon as possible.”

It follows another outage on Monday, during which users similarly said their internet connections had stopped working all of a sudden. Then, some found that they were able to get around the issues by changing their DNS settings.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24106326

This March, Stanley Arts are hosting Yo Comics!, the first South London Comics & Zine Fair for kids and by kids.

A free entry, family friendly event, Yo! Comics will be a day full of free workshops, free giveaways and the chance to meet some of your favourite kids comic book creators.

Comic creator stars from The Phoenix and published authors of your favourite comics will be at this special new event, including Gary Northfield, creator of “Derek the Sheep”, Neill Cameron (Mega Robo Bros, Donut High), Tor Freeman Marc Jackson, Woodrow Phoenix, and many more. Also at the event is The Cartoon Museum, Comics Youth and other brilliant comics educators.

In a first for comics fairs, young people will also be joining in with these fine creators to sell their comics, with local schools and youth groups taking part.

The day’s workshops are hosted by the professionals themselves and will be for the 7-14 age range. The workshops will allow kids to make their own comics and cartoons which they can trade with other young comics creators.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24106337

A discovery underneath the basement of an office block has been described as one of the most important pieces of Roman history unearthed in the city of London.

Archaeologists have found a substantial piece of the ancient city's first basilica - a 2,000 year old public building where major political, economic and administrative decisions were made.

The excavation has so far revealed sections of stone wall that formed the base of the basilica, which would have been two-and-a-half storeys high.

The site, which will eventually be opened to the public, sheds light on the city's beginnings.

"This is so significant - this is the heart of Roman London," said Sophie Jackson, from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola), who revealed the new find exclusively to BBC News.

"This building will tell us so much about the origins of London, why London grew and why it was chosen as the capital of Britain. It's just amazing."