Will the last to leave the City turn out the lights?

I stumbled across a photographer on the Boston Globe's excellent Big Picture yesterday. 

The photographer lives in Britain and his name is Jason Hawkes.

Jason's really into aerial photography and his images of the City by night are quite stunning.

He's also given me permission to present a few of his shots here, so here they are.

First, there's Lloyd's of London, the place where the Financial Services Club (UK) meets three or four times a month, and the centre of the world's insurance industry some would claim (double-click the photos to see in large size):

I think you can just about see a few of our members falling out of the front door at the bottom of that one!

Then there's the Gherkin, or the Swiss Re building as it should be called:

Who's that sitting in Room 1802 and what are they doing in 1803?

Then there's the beauty of the London Cityscape:

This is the core of the City of London.  A City that dates back to Roman and pre-Roman times.  A City that never sleeps.  Hi, my name is Sam Spade and I'm investigating ... whoops, sorry, got a bit carried away there.

Finally, there's the new City of London which is Canary Wharf:

Based upon the recent press about banks and the City, we should be thankful that the lights are still on and, as we reinvent this industry, we need to focus upon maintaining the City's heartbeat. 

Gordon Brown said yesterday: "as we design this new regulatory system, we have to be clear as a nation about what we expect from our banks ... This should not be at the cost of Britain hosting big international banks. There is no room for parochialism or protectionism in our model of the future. Global financial flows and liquid capital markets have brought massive benefits to our economy."

Too right, so let's make sure that the lights stay on!

p.s. thanks again to Jason Hawkes for letting me use these photos which are quite special.

Comments

[spellchecker]

How disappointing… this sounded like some ‘green banking’ twist story. I thought you were leading us towards some dramatic stats showing that, should we let all these banks fail, we would actually save the planet thanks to the electricity not wasted at night in the City…

[Chris Skinner]

I must admit, I did think about the green angle as the Boston Globe's over 2,000 comments includes a number in this vein, e.g.

Comment #2088:
They are wonderful pictures but surely with half these lights out would save our planet.

and #58:
That's an impressive amount of light pollution they have over there, almost as bad as the Eastern Seaboard.

But the green thing is really outlined over here:

http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2009/01/are-banks-serious-pollution-merchants.html

All best
Chris