Sunday 26 November 2006

London in winter: freezing outdoors, boiling inside

Here we go again. Another sweltering summer while we freeze in our air-conditioned offices. Just so men can work without the faintest glow of perspiration trussed up in their ties and suits that don't seem to change weight from winter to summer, socks and closed shoes. I suppose it's so we can all pretend we're working in London.

I see women smartly dressed for the climate in bare legs and strappy sandals. Fools, because they're blue with cold by 11am. On Wednesday there were a couple of brief outages as the electricity grid struggled to cope with keeping us in a state of mild refrigeration. But God forbid men should turn up in short sleeves, shorts or sandals.

Can't we design a professional summer dress code for men? At least ditch the socks. Mind you, those sandals men wear on weekends look as though they're made of ripped-up car tyres.

Can we get Mr Armani to design smart men's shoes with perforations that let feet breathe? And how about designing buildings with awnings instead of glasshouses that force us to work the air-con even harder?

Ilma Cave, North Sydney

-Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November 2006.

Sydneysiders might be pretending to work in London, but here in my office in London, we have been wearing short sleeves and sweating in stuffy rooms over 30 degrees for over a week. Ouside, it's been more like 10 degrees. To be fair, this is caused by a fault in the "heating algorithm", but even where the heating is under control, buildings are heated much more than they really need to be. Why should an office be the same temperature all year round?

Obviously well built buildings should shield us from the extreme temperatures of summer and winter, and this may require colling and heating systems, but I really don't like it when the temperature difference is extreme, either.

3 comments:

Crazyjedidiah said...

I do think that is stupid to put such a big difference between the indoor and out door temperatures think about those who set a/c in buildings.

tdix said...

We'll find something to complain about whatever the weather. Try jumping out of a freezer below -10 into temperatures reaching 50 on a hot day in the back dock (It gets hotter under the tin foil insulation than outside).

Anyway - would you be able to post on the Litvinenko affair and how it's being treated in London? Hope you don't mind requests.

Jonathan said...

At least that's meant to be a freezer, not supposedly at that temperature to make you comfortable.

I don't mind requests, although not having a media and communications degree, I haven't been analysing how it's all gone too much. I might post on it in the next couple of days, and postpone my Barmy Army post until the cricket's on again.