Visibility and victim-blaming

The early days – the car as a dangerous oddity

Traction engines are like steam trains that drive on roads.  They became available in Britain during the 1850s, when they were mainly used to transport heavy agricultural loads.  In 1861, in response to this new menace, the Locomotives on Highways Act was passed.  It set the world's first ever speed limit, at 10mph. 

Four years later, the Locomotives Act 1865 set the speed limit at 2mph in towns, and 4mph in the country, and required a minimum driving crew of three - one to steer, one to stoke the engine with coal, and one to walk 60 yards ahead waving a red flag or lantern.  For this reason, the law became known as the 'Red Flag Act'.

These laws were passed because, since driving was considered to be a dangerous thing to do, drivers were seen to have a duty to the public to announce their presence.  The burden was on them not to injure anyone during the course of their imposing and outlandish activities, by making themselves highly visible to other, more vulnerable, road users. 

Fast-forward 150 years, and the motor vehicle is seen as the rightful heir of the highway.  Pedestrians and cyclists are permitted to be present only by the good grace and magnanimity of motorists, and on the understanding that they are temporary visitors – outsiders.  They enter at their own risk – and indeed there is a constant and high risk presented by vehicles moving at 30pmh and faster.

The double-whammy of automobiles’ presumed right to the road, and the physical danger they present to the human body, is set against the backdrop of an increasingly risk-sensitive society.  One consequence of this is that cyclists are required to take increasingly burdensome precautions to make their presence on the roads socially acceptable. 

These precautionary measures come in two forms:  physical protection in case they’re hit by cars, and equipment to make themselves more visible to drivers.  We’re going to investigate the latter.

Hi-vis culture

There’s a huge variety of visibility apparatus on the market, and it seems to grow every year.   It includes hi-vis bands, ankle-clips, bag-covers, vests and even whole jackets, and tape stuck to bike frames;  reflective silver patches on trousers, tops, jackets, shoes, gloves, and bags;  plastic reflector panels on the front and rear of the frame, on pedals and on wheels;  lights on the front and rear, and integrated into bags and helmets.

It can be argued that these are simply common-sense measures;  that indeed provide valuable protection, by making it easier for cyclist to be seen. 

However, hi-vis and reflective materials are not designed to protect cyclists from some neutral, abstract danger, or even a danger that is inherent to cycling.  (Unlike helmets are – at least to some extent.)  They are specifically designed to make cyclists visible to motorists.  

Most bike lights used in cities are for being seen by others, not for lighting the road ahead.  More strikingly, reflective material is only activated by the presence of headlights – the passive cyclist is involuntarily 'switched on' at the behest of the motorist. 

Reversal of responsibility

Furthermore, wearing hi-vis is frequently not a precautionary choice made on the part of the individual cyclist, but an imperative imposed by car-driving (car-driven?) society.  Indeed, by failing to adopt the designated prison-uniform of the highway, cyclists are increasingly accused of recklessness with their own lives - and even endangering others'.

Extraordinarily, there was a recent court case involving a child who was hit by a car when walking home along a country road.  The insurance company involved refused to pay compensation because she was not wearing hi vis clothing, and was hence to blame for her own injuries.

This is a reflection of a perverse situation, where the onus of responsibility is on cyclists and pedestrians to ensure that they are not injured, as opposed to the responsibility being on the motorist not to cause injury to others.  After all, the motorist is the one doing something dangerous:  driving a big, heavy, hard, object at high speeds - and is the one who causes injury to cyclists, and not vice versa.

This is a perfect reversal of the logic of the Red Flag Act, in which the individual creating the danger was responsible for mitigating the hazard they posed.  The point here is not that there's anything especially great about preserving arbitrary mid 19th century legislation.  It simply illustrates how the power of the motor industry is so strong, and so pervasive, that it has not only repealed a law, but utterly reversed social expectations. 

It also highlights the unreasonable nature of the demands of hi-vis culture;  the logic is that of a stab-victim being accused by the perpetrator of not ducking fast enough.

Victim-blaming

Here there are strong parallels with misogynist victim-blaming culture, where women who have been sexually assaulted are accused of having brought violence upon themselves by their clothing or behaviour, rather than the blame being laid at the feet of the actual perpetrator of the offence. 

Of course I’m not equating the experience of sexual assault with traffic accidents, and of course the types of trauma involved are very different – I just want to note certain similarities in cultural responses to them both.

Victim-blaming in sexual assault cases is often justified by framing it as ‘common sense’ that women who dress in revealing clothing should anticipate the unwelcome consequences of doing so.  This is often equated with the argument that you’re at greater risk of being robbed if you flash your valuables about in the street. 

One reason that this argument is nonsense (as well as grossly offensive), is that there is a deeply rooted culture of shaming and stigmatising women who are deemed to have dressed ‘provocatively’ (an ugly and topsy-turvy turn of phrase), in a way that simply doesn’t exist for people who leave their wallet poking out of their back pocket. 

Furthermore, despite precautionary warnings to potential victims, victims of knifepoint robbery are unlikely to be asked if the robbery was their fault after the event (at least not immediately).  Contrast this with the response to victims of sexual assault, who are routinely asked by police about their dress, state of intoxication, etc, when reporting crimes.  The same response is encountered by cyclists, who are frequently interrogated about what they may have done to cause a collision, rather than being neutrally asked “What happened?”. 

I was once knocked off my bike in broad daylight by an oncoming van that swerved into my side 

of the road at 20mph without indicating.  I hit him head-on, went over his bonnet, and headplanted onto the road.  (His first comment was the immortal line:  “Sorry mate, I didn’t see you.”)  He admitted immediately that he was entirely to blame, and when we met weeks later so he could pay for the damage to my bike, he was clearly relieved he hadn’t killed me, and that I hadn’t gone through his insurance company for full compensation. 

When I returned to work, the first words from my boss’s mouth were “So, was it your fault?”  When I mentioned it to my mum, she asked if I’d been wearing hi-vis clothing before she even knew the circumstances of the collision.  It’s problematic to directly compare road traffic incidents, where joint liability is much more at issue than in more straightforward ‘perpetrator / victim’ scenarios such as most robberies.  However, I would still argue that cyclists are regarded with undue suspicion of guilt, even when they are blameless victims, due to being unfairly stigmatised as a collective category. 

*           *           *           *           *

Clearly all groups that use public space must make certain compromises in order to cohabit our cities.  If cyclists are to use the roads they must be visible to other road users. It’s not sufficient to critique victim-blaming whilst overlooking the need for all road-users to be able to see and interpret each others’ presence. 

But how visible is visible?  Is visibility in the eye of the beholder?  What level of precaution is it reasonable to expect people to take?  How can we achieve a fair but meaningful balance of responsibilities for seeing and being seen?  When we consider these questions, we must take into account the underlying imbalance of social and physical power on the roads, and the imbalance in the expectations placed on different road users in our general culture.  

Claud Butler vs. Judith Butler

The other day, I entered a well-known chain bike shop, and speculatively asked about buying a new bike. 

My bike is a Frankenstein’s assemblage of long-forgotten mutant parts;  the handlebars are the only surviving component that haven’t broken and needed replacing*.  Although I thoroughly enjoy (albeit somewhat masochistically) the never-ending task of repairing my bike, I also dream of a far-off day where I’ll simply be able to ride it.  As Jerome K Jerome astutely wrote in ‘Three Men on the Bummel’ in 1900, “There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle:  you can ‘overhaul’ it, or you can ride it…  The mistake some people make is in thinking you can get both forms of sport out of the same machine”. 

I enquired about frame sizes.  I explained to the man in the shop that I have relatively long legs compared to the overall height of my body.  This means that if that an average bike is adjusted to accommodate the length of my legs, I have to lean uncomfortably far forward to reach the handlebars.  So, I asked if they had any bikes with a compact geometry – ie which are comparatively tall compared to their length.

I asked about track bikes, which match this description.  In one Whitechapel bike shop, I had previously been told that a track frame wouldn’t help me, as they’re shaped to tip down towards the front (I think this claim is spurious), thus still putting strain on your arms, shoulders and back, and not solving my initial problem. 

Conversely, I was told at yesterday’s shop that, yes, a track frame was exactly what I was looking for.  He proceeded to show me a model he said was ‘based on’ track bikes, which he said was popular with people wanting a combination of courier chic (ie track bikes) with retro chic (ie road frames).  He went on to say that its ‘track bike’ attributes were that it was fixed-gear, while its ‘road bike’ features included… a frame that was longer than it is high.  In short, the exact opposite of what I had asked for. 

After about 15 minutes, I had established that all their road bikes were assembled according to the same height / length ratio.  This meant that bikes that were the right height were too long, while bikes that were the right length were not tall enough.  [At this point in the story, you need to know that I’m a man.]

Just as I was about to give up, the salesman casually mentioned, “The only other bikes we have in stock are these women’s bikes, which are designed to be slightly compact, so that they’re relatively tall compared to their length.” 

Given that this was what we had been discussing for the last 15 minutes, I was somewhat surprised that this was the first time he had mentioned it.  But, having raised the option of women’s bikes, he was rather disturbed when I suggested that I might try out one of the women’s bikes, and immediately tried to put me off the idea. 

He told me with a dismissive and vaguely disgusted expression that most women’s bikes come in pink, or have butterflies painted on them.  I replied that all the ones in the shop were either blue and white, or red and white.  In fact, they looked identical to the men’s bikes, and I’d never have known that they were designed specifically for women unless he had told me.  He shrugged. 

I can understand that it may not be commercially viable for a shop to stock frames that suit every possible variation of body size and shape, and why bike manufacturers and retailers would sell frames to fit an ‘average’ size and shape.  I also accept that men and women have different average body sizes and shapes. 

But I struggle to believe (correct me if I’m wrong) that the ratio of body-height vs limb-length is gender-specific.  Even if it were, it goes without saying that it makes no sense that this should prevent me from riding a women’s bike.  Why do we need separately marketed frames for men and women, given that they appear identical?  (At least to us mortals who don’t work in bikeshops?)

*****

The shopkeeper responded to my request to ride a red bike by absurdly invoking a phantom butterfly-adorned counterpart.  This comment arose not from the reality of the situation, but from a need to construct (or rather reproduce) socialised differences between genders, particularly through the marketing of gendered consumer goods.  Yet the patently absurd logic that yielded the shopkeeper’s ‘red vs butterflies’ comment is precisely the same as that which is deployed to re-invent divisions between genders every day – not based on physical necessity, but on cultural habit. 

*  Footnote:  I’m not exaggerating when I say that all the components on my bike, other the handlebars, have broken and needed replacing isn’t an exaggeration:   either in terms of the fact that I really have replaced said components, or the fact that I did so because each part broke – as opposed to hipster bike-upgrade vanity.   

True Lies - when is a trader not a trader?

My previous post concluded somewhat optimistically - perhaps even disingenuously so - that "No matter how crazy our world can seem at times – there are some things that still aren’t quite beyond parody.  (Yet.)"

We have since been confronted by the case of Alessio Rastani.

In case you haven't seen it, the BBC broadcast an interview earlier this week with a 'City trader', Alessio Rastani, who unexpectedly voiced some uncomfortable opinions.

When asked how we can avoid economic collapse in the Eurozone, his response was that his concern is how not how to resolve the problem, but how to profit from it - indeed, he does not perceive the situation as a problem that needs to be fixed at all.  "For most traders… we don't really care that much about how they're gonna fix the economy... our job is to make money from it.  Personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years...  I go to bed every night, and I dream of another recession."

 Interestingly he adds that "Anybody can... make money from a crash…  This isn't just for some people in the elite.  Anybody can make money.  It's an opportunity."  The triumph of the freedom delivered by the neoliberal dream. 

This somewhat touching remark reminds me of a time when my sister and brother both scribbled in blue permanent marker all over the piano when they were about four and five years old respectively.  When my mum went crazy at my brother – who, apart from being the elder of the two (should have known better), was usually the one responsible for such acts of mischief - he plaintively sobbed, "But I shared".  This wasn't designed to land my sister in trouble, but a genuine plea that he had been a good older brother by sharing the felt-tips.

Rastani’s logic also reminds me of a woman who once jumped in front of me in the toilet queue at Climate Camp.  When I pointed out that there was a queue, her response was to smile knowingly, and smugly explain the beauty of her autonomist anarchism - that, not only was she was free to jump in front of me in the queue - I too must realise my freedom to jump in front of others in the toilet queue.  Presumably this would lead to a utopian paradise where, just like on X-Factor, everyone has the opportunity to succeed in getting to piss, as long as they want it enough.

These anecdotes illustrate the difficulty with Rastani's ideology.  Not anyone can profit from a recession, because - by defintion - someone (indeed most people) will lose out, and end up with no job, a scribbled-on piano, or piss on their trousers.  At least my brother had the excuse that he was five. 

I digress.  The point about this incident isn't that his views are stupid and wrong;  anyone can see that.  The interesting thing was the response to the incident.

All over Twitter, and even in rightwing newspapers such as the Mail and the Telegraph - who would normally support the essential logic of Rastani's political standpoint - were accusations that the interview was a hoax.  Admittedly, there are strong physical similarities between Rastani and one of the Yes Men, the activist pranksters who have famously conducted hoax interviews on TV news in the past.

This was weird.  Because the view of the media seemed to be not that they were surprised by the content of his speech, but by the brutal honesty of it.  In other words, they acknowledge their habitual collusion in a political ideology that they recognised as appalling when held up to the light.  But, just like a market bubble, this narrative breaks down when one of the actors doesn't stick to their script, doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain to maintain a united front of brazenness.  The reason that characters like Rastani alarm the press is that their honesty isn't just self-destructive – it holds a mirror up to the whole sordid landscape.  In the words of Leonard Coen, everybody knows - and everybody knows that they know that we know. 

What compounded this weirdness was that the public consensus seemed to be that it didn't matter whether the interview was a hoax or not, since we all know that the sentiments expressed are those truly held by free marketeers in any case.  This constitutes not only an unflinching embrace of what Mark Fisher calls 'capitalist realism' – a permeating acceptance of the capitalist ideology on its own terms. 

It represents a total breakdown in the individual's ability to identify the difference between reality and fiction.  Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that people no longer see the point in making such a futile distinction.  That is, we not only live in a world where parody and reality are literally indistinguishable, it is no longer even meaningful to consider them as separate in principle - since they merely represent alternative stylistic approaches to a single narrative - that of the capitalist infiltration and domination of every aspect of society and the psyche.  This is surely the ultimate capitulation of society to the post-modern political and media culture. 

The icing on the cake came when it transpired that Rastani was neither truly a trader, nor a hoaxster.  He makes a living by speaking about the market to anyone who will pay him, while not actually conducting any significant trading himself.  he is a self-publicist, speaking in order that he may create the opportunity to speak some more, about an entity that is so nebulous one could continue to talk about it for years on end without ever saying anything about it.  This gloriously reflexive and cloudy status, an eloquent example of an existence somewhere between reality and fiction, is surely the perfect vindication of those who see no-difference between parody and truth. 

So maybe, whilst remaining disingenuously optimistic, the statement that "some things aren't beyond parody" is, contains a sense in which it is not entirely inaccurate after all.

Life neutral?

We all know about offsetting our carbon emissions to balance out the harmful effects of our consumptive lifestyles.  (As Joss Stone said during the 2007 Live Earth concert, “Plant a tree, it’s that easy…”  Ahem.)

So, what if you’re an arms dealer with a conscience (bear with me here), and you want to alleviate the consequences of selling bombs and killing people?

Help is at hand.  Life Neutral Solutions is a consultancy that allows arms companies to ‘offset’ the civilian deaths they cause, by sponsoring western families to have babies.

Luckily for everyone’s sanity, Life Neutral isn’t real.  It was a hoax perpetrated by activist group the Space Hijackers, in order to raise public awareness of the world’s largest arms fair (Defence Systems and Equipment International – ‘DSEi’), which takes place in East London every two years.

Arms dealers, military officials, and civil servants from around the globe, haunt the ExCel Centre to tout every conceivable tool of destruction available to modern military science.  In previous years, this has included banned cluster bombs and torture equipment.  Delegates include those from regimes with the worst records for human rights abuses.  It is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, mirroring the £700m annual subsidy received by the UK arms industry.

But, despite priapic displays of military muscle – one worker from the neighbouring University of East London tweeted that the battleship HMS Dauntless was parked outside her office window – the event’s organisers are, unsurprisingly, keen to stay out of the media spotlight. There was almost zero press coverage of DSEi in the run-up to the exhibition.  During the 2009 arms fair, the host venue went as far as to erect signposts claiming that it was closed for refurbishment.

Enter the Space Hijackers.  A group of ‘anarchitects’ with a penchant for subverting the corporate domination of public space, we also have a history of resisting DSEi – notably in 2007, when the Hijackers bought a tank, drove it to the arms fair, and ‘auctioned’ it off to the public.

We thought that the merchants of death deserved to receive a little more attention for their activities, and used Life Neutral to provoke interest in the issue by stirring up a bit of controversy.  We simultaneously hoped to scratch away some of the banality that shrouds the defence industry, by parodying the absurdly hygienic and neutral corporate rhetoric.

While studying for a Masters a couple of years ago, one of my lectures was attended by a clique of half a dozen engineers from BAE Systems, who dropped by for a spot of CPD.  When the topic of environmental sustainability was raised, they entered into an earnest conversation with the lecturer about improving the eco-friendliness of their weaponry.  They were particularly interested in removing lead solder from the electronic circuitry in their missiles, to reduce the impact of heavy metal contamination of the soil in warzones.  (When I accidentally laughed, the lecturer and all the BAE staff turned and glared at me;  the lecturer said gravely, “This is a very serious issue”.)

The Hijackers took to the streets of Islington, to entice families into signing up for Life Neutral sponsorship.  After causing suitable outrage among the citizens of North London, we set our sights on wooing the media.  Eventually, a Life Neutral spokesman was invited to interview by the BBC World Service – only to be ‘outed’ as an activist prankster midway through the recording.  This bizarre conversation, which was broadcast on Friday 16 September, is now available online.

Far from being disappointed though, we were relieved to be rumbled as a hoax.  As well as getting an audience of thousands to hear about the arms fair for the first time, it proved that – no matter how crazy our world can seem at times – there are some things that still aren’t quite beyond parody.  (Yet.)


This is cross-posted from a piece that was first published at the Comment Factory.  

Riders in the abyss

Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a tale of a haunting.  A house is infested with voids that exist between its walls;  the adventurer who enters them finds a parallel universe of eerie nothingness, which slowly but brutally consumes the inhabitant through its very lack of spatial and temporal substance.  These non-spaces are an affront to the ‘legitimate’ sites of domesticity, which characterise the rest of the ‘normal’ rooms in the house. 

The fear of being trapped in a parallel world, where one can see – but not be seen by – the familiar, is a potent one, which has been repeatedly articulated in popular culture.  Honey I Shrunk the Kids, 1960s TV series Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, all feature protagonists who can look in on the real world they have left behind, but who are invisible to their loved ones. 

Neverwhere is particularly important, because it draws an explicit political link between invisibility and powerlessness.  The unseen inhabitants of Gaiman’s ‘London Below’ represent the homeless and otherwise disenfranchised poor of the city, whose plight is ignored both by the authorities, and by individuals whose personal circumstances create them as ‘recognised’ citizens. 

It is also this expression of powerlessness that makes tales of being ignored such an important theme in children’s books, such as David McKee’s Not Now Bernard, which play on children’s sense of insignificance in an adult-dominated world. 

The same logic is seen in the shanty towns on the outskirts of cities in developing countries.  Vast groups of people dwell in un-titled properties, in places that are not bestowed with legitimacy by the authorities, and that rarely even feature on official maps. 

But every day, all urban cyclists become Bernard;  become Hopkirk;  are thrust into London Below, and into the abyss within the walls of the House of Leaves;  occupy uncharted shanty-territory.

Our mental constructions of road-space divide our streets into different regions.  One region is the large block of space in the middle of each lane, which is used predominantly by motor vehicles.   Collectively, motor vehicles dialectically create this space as legitimate, whilst individual drivers simultaneously become the beneficiaries of this legitimacy whenever they inhabit that space as they use the roads. 

The two other regions of the roads are the space between the kerb and the nearest car, and the gap between the cars in adjacent lanes.  In other words, these regions are defined as the spaces in between motor traffic;  not as a space in their own right, but as a region that lacks traffic. 

It is these regions – undocumented, unlegitimised, even non-extistent - that are, necessarily, inhabited by cyclists.  (They are given short shrift if they cycle in the middle of the lane;  besides, it is the area next to the kerb that contains the cycle lane.)

One of the main reasons given by motorists for cutting up, knocking over, and otherwise besmirching cyclists, is that they did not see them.  Public information campaigns urge motorists to be vigilant, and ‘look out for’ cyclists;  others entreat cyclists to make themselves more visible to motorists, either by making themselves brighter (through hi-vis apparel and lights), or by staying out of motorists’ blind spots. 

But until we collectively reconfigure the way in which we conceive the physical space of the roads, cyclists will, by definition, remain in a permanent blind spot.  Not a bind spot created by the positioning of wing-mirrors, but by inhabiting a part of the road that simply does not exist. 

Cycling through Kafka's Castle:

Why cyclists bend the rules

Motorists don’t like cyclists breaking the rules.  They argue that cyclists will only garner respect on the roads when they stop jumping reds and riding on the pavement.  Many cyclists take the reverse stance, demanding equal respect with motorists before they conform to the same strictures. 

This is a manifestation of the classic ‘rights vs responsibilities’ argument – the idea that your ‘right’ to express certain freedoms, and to be treated to a certain standard, should be in direct proportion to how well you discharge your ‘responsibility’ to behave as a good citizen.  

But this line of reasoning is misleading.  The idea that everyone should be expected to behave (and be treated) in the same way is based on the false assumption that everyone inhabits the same road.  They do not.  Motorists and cyclists have fundamentally different experiences of using the road, which inevitably leads them to develop very different road-use behaviours.  These are rarely examined outside the confines of moral notions of how either party should behave, obscuring the real issues at play.

It is a truism that our cities are designed for cars.  However, while a great deal has been written about the implications for city-wide mobility, consumption, class and gender, etc, little has been said about the environment within roads that distinguishes between their various inhabitants. 

When drivers get behind the wheel, they find themselves in a seamless landscape.  Roads all join up with each other.  Signs always point in the right direction.  Maps all show you exactly what roads you can go down, and which direction you can go in.  (Albeit with the odd glitch in new satnav technology in recent years.)  The most difficult obstacle encountered by motorists is probably finding where they are allowed to park, in the case of zones requiring residential permits – but even parking is usually pretty clearly signalled with lines painted on the roads. 

Cyclists are not afforded such luxuries.  Bike lanes frequently stop dead at physical obstructions, or just disappear without warning.  (This phenomenon is so prevalent that whole books have been published containing nothing but pictures of absurd cycle lane cock-ups.)  Blue signposts marked ‘Quiet route’ lead unwary cyclists into backstreet shortcuts – only to leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere when the breadcrumb trail of signs runs out.  Standard A-Z maps (as opposed to specialised bike lane maps) display areas prohibited to cars – but don’t include contra-flow cycle lanes down one-way streets, or alleys that cyclists may (legitimately) cut through.

Parking is a minefield.  Street cycle racks are rare, meaning that street furniture must first be scouted out, and then assessed for its probable legality (“Am I allowed to chain my bike to these railings?  How about these ones…?”);  its security (“Could my bike be lifted over the top of this sign…?”); and finally its physical availability, as you embark upon a grim bodily struggle with a street lamp that’s just too thick to wrap your lock around.

The upshot is that motorists never have to think about the space they move through.  They never have to make split-second decisions about how to interpret mixed messages about how they’re expected to drive along a particular road – everything is handed to them on a plate. 

Cyclists meanwhile are forced to constantly question how they are going to navigate an obstacle;  to second-guess whether a cycle lane that directs them from the road onto the pavement will lead to them being shouted at by pedestrians 50 yards down the line;   to query every few minutes what is being asked of them by the authorities, and whether they are responding in the correct way. 

Cars drive through cities designed by Euclid.  Cyclists ride through cities that were designed by MC Escher, and which are administered by Franz Kafka. 

This article is not a straightforward justification of law-breaking by people who have been hard done-by.  It is a critique of those who get surprised when cyclists behave as though they exist below the radar.

When a group of people inhabits a world that demands constant reflection on what behaviour is required of them, they inherently develop a more fluid and immediate form of cognitive and physical engagement with their surroundings.  This blurs – even transcends – the more bureaucratic elements of the laws that are designed to govern the presumably legitimate heirs of this landscape. 

Campus news

The campus of the university I work at has been chosen as the location for not one, but two films, to be shot this summer.

In one film, we'll be the set of the MI5 headquarters.  In the other, we are the scene of a futuristic secret-police headquarters  in some sort of Blade Runner dystopia....  Spot the connection?  When K-Punk described our campus as Ballardian, he wasn't wrong. 

In other news, these recent additions to some of our buildings appeared last week - a pleasing counterpoint to our very own No No No sign.