Palace of Westminster

I was interested to read a piece by Simon Jenkins about doing something about the crumbling Palace of Westminster in yesterday's Evening Standard.

As he rightly observes, if you hire expensive accountants who go on to hire expensive architects to tell you what to do about a large old building, you should not be surprised that they all get the smell of the trough up their nostrils and go on to suggest that £10 billion or so of public money needs to be thrown at the place.

Building on Jenkins, my suggestion is that they kick all the riff-raff out of the near derelict vegetable markets at Nine Elms and build a smart new parliament building there, very handy for Sainsbury's and, as a cynic might say, for consultations with their masters in the shiny new US embassy going up nearby. Move parliament into the new building.

While all this is going on, decide what to do with the old building - which might be parliament or it might be some combination of conference centre, tourist attraction, museum and stately home. Maybe hand it over to one of the heritage outfits. Or to Merlin Entertainments (see reference 1). Or to Boris, who could make a splendid vanity project out of the place when he stops being mayor. He might even get to live in what is presently the speaker's tied cottage, so expensively redecorated for the current incumbent.

Then once you have vacant possession, get the builders in and make it fit for whatever its intended purpose has turned out to be.

In due course, if that is what the decision was, move parliament back.

Reference 1: http://www.merlinentertainments.biz/.