'Under-utilised'? Maybe a few of us left in part to get away from creeps like these Adam Smith Institute weirdos.

Trad living. This area, one of the oldest in the city, was flattened in the early C20 for the north-south rail link. The same architectural bureau (Polak) oversaw the surface level car parks and two decades later the postmodern historicism of the hotel complex that covered them.

1910. Chops and roast beef on the menu at Brit-themed inns. And will the restored Métropole restore the dedicated 5 o'clock tea room? These were all over the centre, serving delicacies such as boiled eggs and bread & butter. WH Smith's tearoom by Grand-Place was much recommended.

Reset. For a century and a half, British cuisine was quite common in Brussels. Just without the Britpop playing in the background
brusselstimes.com/1024745/englis…

It is thought the launch of the operation has been timed to coincide with Thursday’s local council elections in England... Police in Scotland have been put on alert because of the risks of street protests and attempts to stop detentions.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/a…

Rue de Namur 62-66, shops below apartments, around 1901. 62 (left) appears to have been abandoned for at least 20 years. At least I hope nobody's living there. I wonder how stable it is.

This plan to stuff 17 apartments into the existing volume received an unfavourable opinion in the commission de concertation in Jan. No comment on what threatened the stability of the house or whether that threat still exists.

Sumptuous art nouveau auxiliary fanlight with its own balustrade. Unusual bit of compact façade theatre.

An art nouveau share certificate for the Brussels-headquarted Spanish Electric Tramways Company.

Rue de Namur. The Société générale de chemins de fer économiques arrived in the 1880s, knocked houses together. A new building from 1914 also housed offices for its tram companies in Bari, Turin, Milan, Florence, Trieste, Warsaw, Elberfeld, Madrid, Barcelona, Cairo, Damascus etc

It is quite remarkable to see how far a lot of people who boosted Brexit or forms of Thatcherite ideology would rather embrace paralysing doomerism rather than explore positive policy changes that contradict their own ideological belief system

This is the sort of honesty box border the UK expected for NI and appeared to want for Gibraltar. No thanks.

Rue de Namur. No 72-74, a 1914 furrier's store with flats above. The imperial campus took up much of the triangle between this street, the boulevard and the palace behind. So a Congo oils processor was also at this address. The two bays on the left were added in 1969.