Walkabout - Legal "Inns" of London

I've been on 4 historical London walks so far in my 9 months in London, as well as many other random discoveries around the East End and Docklands area where I live. I've decided to ramp that up and to put together some photo albums....

I must give credit to http://londonwalks.libsyn.com/ for supplying the inspiration for me to thoroughly discover London properly and know its history....I felt I never got to know Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto properly the short time I was there, and I don't want to make the same mistake with London.

Today, my after-work walk involves historical Legal London, which conveniently is located in the area I work - Chancery Lane. This is where all the "Inns" of law are, housing all the barristers and solicitors. It's also home to UK's major courts of justice. Law is an area i should be familiar about but I have gladly chosen to leave it. It's ironic that my new career is set right in the heart of legal London.

Journey starts at Chancery Lane tube station, where I'm greeted by a traditional..16th century Tudor style wooden building.



Going straight through the building I immediately enter legal London, encountering the Staple Inn. There is a really nice courtyard for lawyers to clear their heads before heading to court.



Walking straight on, I reach the Stone Buildings, former home to the UK's Patent Office. This was where intellectual property law was first enforced and adjudicated. It's a really nice white stone building.



Moving on, I reach a few spacious squares with characterised by BMWs, Porshes and Aston Martins. These are home to a number of chambers where barristers practice. Unlike Sydney where lawyers reside in modern buildings, here they work in centuries old brick houses, with ivy vines growing off the walls. It's quite a relaxing environment. The pictures shows it quite nicely but I've seriously overexposed all my photos today...it becomes a depressing theme....



All the names of barristers are inscribed in front of the chamber



Moving on past some alley ways and law books shops, I venture past Bell Yard, with the Royal Courts of Justice on my right:



I then cross the road, and into the second Inn, through the Middle Temple Lane. This is home to many Inns of law and also the Temple Church, which I understand hosts some fantastic concerts.



Again, there are some neat alleys, leading through to the Temple Church. A private function was being held, so I couldn't go inside.



Walking past the Temple Church, again I met met with some beautiful squares where lawyers wine and dine and enjoy the open space. The architecture and gardens here are simply fantastic.





Finding my way out of the gardens and squares and back onto the main road, I am immediately met by the Royal Court of Justice, home to most of the great legal cases in British history.



Straying left of the Court I enter into Clement's Inn and into the territory of the London School of Economics. I took a picture of the Thomas More Building because Thomas More was famously remembered for hunting down William Tyndale who translated the Bible into English against the King's will, and getting him executed. ironically, Thomas More was also executed, for refusing to recognise Henry VII was the Head of the Church of England (according to wikipedia :P).



Walking around LSE, I felt really out of place because it's such a priviledged school, which made me feel a bit daunted... I then bumped into The Old Curiosity Shop, which appeared in many of Charles Dickens' novels. I'll leave for you to wiki this. I liked the compact look of the house, which really really stands out amongst its surroundings.



Walking past, I quickly reached 59 Garden Court. According to the podcast, this was the scene of the only successful assasination of the British Prime Minister in UK's history. Spencer Percival was the unlucky politician shot by a maniac.



The last part of the walk brought me to Gray's Inn, which also has its share of petite gardens and stone staircases. Why is Gray's Inn significant for Chinese history?



Because it was home to Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Chinese Republic, when he was living in exile in London. This is still commemorated here at the Inn.



That brought me to the end of the walk, which only took just over an hour. It was really enjoyable learning about the legal history of Britain and experiencing all the traditions which has blended into everyday life here in London. All this in my backyard, right outside the doorstep of my workplace. I know my photography skills didn't do it much justice, but hopefully better stuff will come the next edition!

Feb-June Catchup!

In a blink of an eye, it's been nearly 4 months since I last updated my blog!!

Unfortunately, my podcast came to no avail as it was either too time consuming or I just lacked motivation. Maybe both combined. Seems like it hasn't just been me though. Thomson Reuters have terminated their carbon market community, which was invaluable source of information for me. Now I troll around carbonoffsetdaily.com, businessgreen.com and other sites for my news feeds but it's not the same really. The carbon markets are no longer so sexy, though I still wish I was working in the CDM field.

During these months I've been following more generally the business world, and started investing in some unit trusts, taking advantage of my ISA allowance. By stroke of luck I actually managed to avoid any exposure to BP before the oil spill. But to be honest, I really don't have much clue what I'm doing. The 8 funds I've put money into are:

Aberdeen Emerging Markets A Fund Acc
First State Greater China Growth A Fund Acc
Invesco Perpetual Latin American Fund Inc
Jupiter Financial Opportunities Fund Inc
Jupiter India Fund Acc
Legal & General All Stocks IL Gilt Ind Trust Inc
M&G Strategic Corporate Bond A Fund Inc
Neptune Russia & Greater Russia A Fund Acc

I only really wanted to go for the emerging markets...though they are the highest risk ones. But I succumbed to my own risk averse nature and bought into funds in UK gilts, corporate bonds as well as no-risk cash. Unsurprisingly, they are performing the worst of them all. Overall, it's small money and nothing really to be excited about.

I've been thinking about buying gold the last 2 months, and keep holding it off because I think there's no way it'll keep rising. But as always, it just keeps motoring upwards with no end in sight....if only I was making some money for myself back in 2001...when gold was around $200 an ounce (it's $1200 an ounce now). Back then, Gordon Brown inexplicably sold off half of UK's government's gold reserves, some 375 tonnes at those ultra-cheap prices. How they wished they had held on!

In terms of the carbon world, it's been a year of consolidation and wait and see, I guess. Carbon is no longer significant enough to make big news, and major players have lost value and been bought off by large multinationals really as leverage for the off-chance that carbon will one day matter again.

Under everyone's radar, Ecosecurities have been bought by JP Morgan, Point Carbon by Thomson Reuters, New Energy Finance by Bloomberg, and Tricorona by Barclays. Now they are all operating under the umbrellas of those big companies and it's no longer so transparent what they're doing and where they are going.

As for global climate policy, it's so predictable that it's no longer worth reading beyond the headlines. Of course COP will meet again and again and developing and developed country won't agree because geopolitics is more important.

Nevertheless, there are progress made everyday on GHG mitigation methodologies and new projects through the CDM pipeline.

In the developed world, the most clean tech could hope for is to survive. Especially given the sovereign debt crisis, huge cutbacks will be announced in Germany, UK and beyond. In actual fact the UK emergency budget will be announced tomorrow and it'll be interesting to see how much the green agenda will be cut.

In my particular field, supply chain carbon management remains to be a very niche field involving only the brave few. However, the global standard 'wannabe', the WRI standard on product carbon footprinting is due to be finalised in late December this year and if companies unite and embrace this particular standard, it may bring some co-ordination in the market.

Outside of worklife, I've been keeping up with Kendo as per usual and also enjoying the city of London. Without being too touristy, I've been doing historical walks around London on my ipod, and recording my tracks as I go. Hopefully I'll keep this up and show everyone all the facinating strands of London life.