At St Pauls
A visit to St Paul's Cathedral on a weekday lunchtime to see the anti-capitalist protest camp - protestors, sightseeing workers and sightseeing tourists all very well behaved - prompts some thoughts about public space and private space in the city. The protestors' original target was said to be nearby Paternoster Square, home of the Stock Exchange, but what is called a square, and one might think is 'public' space, turns out to be private land. Normally full at lunchtime, today it is empty, fenced off behind temporary barriers guarded by the police. But as I understand it, the protestors only get to stay where they are now because they are on a different bit of private land, but owned by the C of E rather than a (secular) property company - presumably if they were in the middle of the road they would be moved on. The landowners' 'control' of the Paternoster Square turns out to offer them less control than they might have thought, since the protestors...