Bermondsey visit and Consolidation a result of the appetite inherent in Capitalism

On Tuesday I was down in the vicinity of London's Tower Bridge (I occasionally do a spot of  volunteer tour guiding at the Design Museum nearby and yesterday was such a day) and I came across this statue and was surprised to see a ‘Bourne’ commemorated .

The statue to Samuel Bourne Bevington

 Although the middle name only  is Bourne I see when I research the statue's provenance that there is a  (recent and perhaps tenuous) Leicester connection (where my family comes from)  - I don’t suppose there’s much significance but  thought it  slightly interesting(is Bourne a common middle name?).

Doing tours of the Design Museum Collection Lab is enjoyable, the visitors are varied and I feel it works well with small groups - yesterday the groups were very small).

The Design Museum's current location

The people who I introduced to my items of interest were (as I suppose all of us are) were atypical, one was in the business of Museums and the other had studied in a related fields.

Hopefully what we spoke about gave some idea of how I see a narrative around design evolution within a broader history.

Consolidation & Business

One of the big stories in the news ahead of UK's May general election is the perspective on business taken by the two major parties.
The idea that government is not significant and should step back  is a long way short of reality - the argument now is around the destabilisation that possible exit from the EU (Tories) might be worse than Labour 'interfering' with business.

Well how on earth could a Conservative leadership appoint to Government a former HSBC 'bigwig' (Stephen Green) who either condoned tax evasion when he was at the bank or who was not across such practices?

Is BT becoming too big again?

How would the media cover a 'benefit cheat' in an analogous storm?


Another aspect of business is the increase is  the influence of BT whose activity is set to include the largest mobile operator (EE) - is this healthy, commercial companies naturally  look for monopoly and control of a market, BT is again becoming dominant in the telecommunications (and TV business too).

The Poundland, Poundstores and sub pound shops  are also consolidating and competition looks likely to be diminished - should we have a government in the future that takes these issues seriously?