The new memorial at the Chattri

 

To the left of this photo is the memorial, unveiled September 2010, which displays the names of 53 Indian soldiers who died while hospitalised in Brighton during the period 1914-15. The last Indian soldier left Brighton in 1916. The original intentions of the then Mayor of Brighton, and prime instigator of the Chattri, Sir John Otter, have therefore been finally realised, thanks to the efforts of the Commonwealth Graves Commission.

Commencing in 1951, the British Legion organised an annual pilgrimage and memorial Service at the Chattri. This continued until 1999 when  the Legion discontinued it, citing old age and declining numbers of attendees. Hearing of this, Davinder Dhillon, a local Sikh teacher, approached the Legion with a view to resurrecting the event and under his stewardship the ceremony has been held annually on the second Sunday in June since 2000. The next service is on Sunday, 12th June 2011. Attendees come from as far away as Bradford. All are welcome.

Stairway to court . . .

A City Council press release reports that a man who erected an outside staircase without planning permission has been fined £1,600 by Brighton Magistrates and ordered to pay £1,260 costs. 

The metal staircase was put up at the rear of 36 Victoria Street (pictured above). This is not one of the several listed properties in the street, nor did the staircase obtrude on the street, which is in a conservation area; but it was positioned in such a way that anyone using it could look over the neighbouring wall into the garden and into a room of a neighbour’s property.

An application for retrospective planning permission was refused by the council and that decision was upheld on appeal by an independent planning inspector who agreed that it reduced the neighbour’s privacy.

Martin Randall, the city council’s head of planning and public protection, said: “Over a period of nearly two years the council’s planning enforcement team wrote to Mr Heath and served an enforcement notice to try and persuade him to remove the staircase. When all approaches had been ignored, the council was left with no alternative but to take court action.”

Musings on bus ticket machines

Brighton buses have now been fitted with new ticket machines.

The old machines would shoot out the ticket quite quickly but the ticket was usually difficult to tear off. It often required a second hard tug and then would tear in the wrong place leaving part behind. The driver would have to intervene to remedy the situation. This small delay is, of course, of small inconvenience to an individual passenger but the effect is cumulative, leading to slower journey times overall. It thus inconveniences the bus-travelling public as a whole and slightly increases the fuel used by the bus.

For passengers using a bus pass, it was noticeable that clued-up drivers mitigated the situation by having a small stock of tickets, that they had issued and torn-off in anticipation, ready to hand out as passengers boarded.

The new machines are ingeniously designed to cut the ticket as it is issued, but this operation seems to add significant seconds to the process and passengers have had to be warned not to tug on the ticket too soon. My suspicion is that the slight pause required in front of the ticket machine is going to significantly add to boarding times overall; especially as the passengers needing to receive tickets from the machine are likely to be younger ones and therefore tending to be those less delayed by the old machines. For bus pass holders, drivers have already returned to their previous practice, so no change there.

Another issue is why do senior bus-pass holders need to receive a ticket anyway? Even if they immediately lose it and a ticket inspector boards the bus, they are hardly likely to be accused of fraudulent travel if they can produce a bus-pass. One can appreciate that Brighton Buses needs to have a record of their senior passengers, but this surely need not be dependent on the issue of a paper ticket.

There's always one isn't there . . .

Because their work is so visible, architects come in for a lot of criticism but sometimes they are surely deserving of sympathy too. However much care and thought the architect put into this modern building, he can hardly have foreseen that a fourth floor occupant would have felt his/her privacy so threatened as to need to erect a screen along the balcony.

It is a nice building. Imagine what a mess it will look if every occupant erects a different type of screen of a different colour.

Earlier post: The Mirage

"Phiz" gets a Blue Plaque

At a small ceremony today, the City Mayor, Cr Geoff Wells, unveiled a plaque to commemorate the famous Dicken's illustrator, Hablot Knight Browne, at his last home in 8 Clarendon Villas, Hove.

This had been preceded by an opening address from Cr. Averil Older, Chair of the Commemorative Plaque Panel and followed by an account of Hablot's life and career from a local member of the Dickens Society, Andrew Carslake. Mr Carslake revealed, among many other fascinating facts, that Hablot was the son of his elder sister Kate with  Captain Nicholas Hablot of Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Hablot Knight Browne is buried in a handsome grave in Brighton's Extra-Mural Cemetery.

The ceremony was also attended by members of the City's Plaque Panel and the well-known actor Brian Capron who kindly hosted a coffee reception at his nearby home.