Posted by zeristor 12 hours ago
If you've got friends/fam with you it is definitely worth paying for the observation deck at the shard.
I was curious about what type of arguments you could make to win a case like this.
"The Supreme Court commented that the degree of overlooking from visitors to the Tate gallery was so extreme it subjected the residents to being “much like being on display in a zoo” and held that there is no reason why constant visual intrusion cannot give rise to liability for nuisance."
https://www.tlt.com/insights-and-events/insight/supreme-cour...
Really strange take, that applies to so many situations where tourists gather
In a tall apartment / skyscraper I bet not more than 10% ever have or close their curtain. Also they paid those prices to look at that view so they want to do that. (A flat there is £1-5M)
Only if you have a license, right?
The apartment building was built years before the Tate Modern opened their viewing floor. After the Tate Modern viewing floor opened, visitors to the Tate Modern began photographing and videoing and watching people in the neighbouring apartment building.
The judge reasonably determined that there is some sacrifice of privacy made when choosing to live in a glass apartment building, but the Tate Modern's viewing floor's compromise of privacy was so egregious that it should not be allowed regardless of planning permission.
There are many buildings all over London that look over one another, many of those occupied by very very rich people, it was not corruption.
>Isn’t it just you have a window to look in or not? And every building has windows to look in if you choose to not draw the blinds?
For example, there would be a pretty big difference between my neighbour being able to see into my apartment and my neighbour organising tour groups to look into my apartment.
I don't mind my neighbour, it is reasonable to expect that my neighbours will be able to see into my apartment. I however could not reasonably expect that my neighbours would host some sort of organised viewing activity on a regular basis.
Sure, but the problem here was explicitly not the individuals occupying the apartments being seen.
>Unless I'm missing context the museum didn't organize tour groups to specially look into the apartments
From the court ruling: "Visitors in the viewing gallery frequently look into the claimants' flats and take photographs, and less frequently view the claimants and their flats with binoculars."
"Photographs of the flats are posted on social media by visitors. On the platform Instagram there were 124 posts in the period between June 2016 and April 2018"
I do not think it's acceptable to subject anyone to this, be they rich or poor.
It's worth noting that it has since re-opened - but access to the side directly overlooking the flats is restricted, and there are now signs asking visitors not to take intrusive photos: https://www.timeout.com/london/news/the-tate-modern-has-reop...
A busy viewing terrace is not an ordinary use of space, building one looking right into private homes isn't cool regardless of how wealthy the residents of those homes are.
I'm looking at the pictures in this article and that doesn't seem egregious: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64481260
That's just a function of the lenses being used. The distance is 34 metres, you could see very well into the flats.
I've been on the viewing platform, you had a very good view into the rather nice looking flats. Most people who came on the platform spent a good chunk of time staring at those flats, because they happen to be one of the more interesting things to view from the platform.
You might be surprised to find out how few people on the very progressive r/london subreddit were upset by this supreme court decision, probably because they were actually familiar with the situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/10qqey4/flat_owners...
That's simply not what the court case was about. I pasted a bit from the ruling in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48345234
Do you have 20+ people looking into your home all day long, taking photos and posting them on instagram?
Visitors in the viewing gallery frequently look into the claimants' flats and take
photographs, and less frequently view the claimants and their flats with binoculars.
Photographs of the flats are posted on social media by visitors. On the platform
Instagram there were 124 posts in the period between June 2016 and April 2018. It has
been estimated that those posts reached an audience of 38,600. Mann J found that
there was a significant number of people using the viewing gallery who demonstrated
a visual interest in the interiors of the flats, including by looking, peering in, taking
photographs and waving to the occupants. He accepted that their numbers and the
level of interest were such that a homeowner would reasonably regard this as intrusive
so far as the use of the south side of the viewing gallery was concerned (by contrast,
the western side of the viewing gallery is at an oblique angle to the flats, offering only
a limited view into them).
Knife crime is generally an order of magnatude lower than many US cities I'd also be happy to visit.
It's higher than the rest of the UK but then it is a big city.
(I live in a very rural and crime free part of the UK but love visiting London).
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-image-of-la...