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I'm speechless. I've just followed a link to samizdata.net and seen this poster. How could they not know that this is going to press almost all the wrong buttons?
Is there a constituency out there that actually wants to live in a goldfish bowl?
[I'm tempted to ask if someone Down South could unpeel me one of these from a wall, but there's probably a CCTV camera pointed at each one]
Is there a constituency out there that actually wants to live in a goldfish bowl?
[I'm tempted to ask if someone Down South could unpeel me one of these from a wall, but there's probably a CCTV camera pointed at each one]
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Wow!
Seriously, it is a rather fine looking bit of retro design. (It's very beautiful.) You can just see the ad agency (wonder who?!) pushing the idea: selling it as providing the reassurance and comfort (nostalgia for the good old days, when we'd playfully rush up to the friendly local PC pounding his beat and teasingly knock off his helmet to his laughing response of "Little Rascal" before he went off to single-handedly collar the villain with his stripy jumper and bag labelled "swag") that the old London Transport posters convey to us now. Even the slightly sepia-ed tints seem to add to the glow of a past golden age. Or is that smog? Or a fug of disinformation?
Those eyes, though, are a bit worrying. They're almost flying saucers (now there's one for the conspiracy theorists: the aliens have landed and infiltrated the Met!). The eyes somehow remind me of the design of the jacket of one of the Penguin editions of a John Wyndham novel (can't remember which, Chocky or Cuckoos, maybe, mid-to-late 70s, orange-spined era).
I agree about wanting one. Could become collectors items. I wonder how long it will be before they're withdrawn. Or am I being overly optimistic about the possible negative response.
But, argh, are they stoopid, or what?
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Re: Wow!
It was actually Harry Payne on rec.arts.sf.fandom who pointed it out, with the thrust of the discussion being what SF book cover it was reminiscent of.
It reminds me very much of the thread on soc.history.what-if that was discussing the ways a Fascist Britain could have been implemented in the 1930s in a very British way without ever having the F word pass anyone's lips.
And come to think of it, I could just see the poster as something stuck to some background scenery in the Richard III film.
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Re: Wow!
It's got me really quite interested. I would love to see if there's any info around about the thought behind the design. Nothing so far obvious on the Met or City of London police sites. Tracking down the design agancy might be interesting...
Of course those eyes could be staring straight out from an illimuninati-style pyramid... no I'm not going there right now.
Cakes to bake, floors to sweep....
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This, no doubt, is where I discover it's a hoax after all.
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Honestly, if someone had made it up, I'd have thought it was going too far.
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http://samizdata.net/blog/
Perry de Havilland ...-