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(AGM Photos: Franco Chen. Click for full-size versions)
We were delighted to announce our 2023 Awards at the AGM at 245 Hammersmith Road on Thursday 29th June, with the Awards introduced by vice-chairman Richard Winterton and kindly presented by our guest speaker Andy Slaughter MP. Members and supporters were provided excellent hospitality for which we would like to thank the 245 staff, and of course our very own Robert Iggulden and his many assistants.
Award details and the associated narrative are posted on our 2023 Awards page together with a link to the updated spreadsheet of all Awards since 1990, and matching interactive Awards map. More AGM photos and the administrative documents are posted on the dedicated 2023 AGM page.
After a rapid run though the mandatory AGM procedures, approving the 2022 minutes, 2023 accounts, and committee re-elections, our guest speaker needed no introduction. As our local MP, with Twitter handle @Hammersmithandy, he has over 40 years experience as local councillor, deputy then leader in 1996, and an MP since 2005. He talked about the various battles over the West Ken. estates that were originally given over to CAPCO for redevelopment as part of Earls Court, then reclaimed, the continuing issues with Charing Cross Hospital, the Bridge, flooding, and then onto large developments and the general pace of redevelopment, with a particular discussion on Shepherds Bush Market. He also mentioned that with the recently confirmed electoral boundary changes, his constituency is, not for the first time, being radically reshaped to lose the northern half to Ealing, while he could gain Chiswick in the new ‘Hammersmith & Chiswick’ constituency should he be elected next time. He subsequently answered a number of questions from the audience including a topical one about Thames Water.
This year the main Environment Award was given to The Hoxton on Shepherds Bush Green. An addition to its own merits discussed in detail in the narrative, the building achieves the unusual feat of making a slightly awkward red brick building adjacent – Lawn House – fit better into the streetscape, so that the whole of ‘The Lawn‘ can be seen as a piece, perhaps the most characterful stretch of buildings in the borough, having won 2 further awards from us: the Dorsett (2015), and the Palladium (2022).
We again presented the Jane Mercer Award for “proactive co-operation, collaboration and communication” to a community gardening project – this time Askew in Bloom . The group shares some of the same enthusiastic members as last year’s winner, the Green Project, but this project has been running independently since 2019. It brings daily joy to what used to be a fairly ordinary W12 thoroughfare, and they are now spreading the word to other parts of the borough, starting with Dalling Road. More power to their collective elbows – and fewer asphalt tree pits!
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Health scares, 18 metre masts, autonomous vehicles, economic recovery, critical national infrastructure, Huawei… It’s a long list.
In Hammersmith we’ve started to see planning notices for 5G base stations, ironically mostly from the company named Three, and yes, since you ask, they are using Huawei.
From the Society’s perspective, our concerns centre on the mast height, positioning, and the associated, rather retro, street clutter. There’s some further reading at the foot of the article, but first, to get some perspective, let’s get our terminology clear, review the most prevalent public concerns and take quite a hard look at the benefits – both real and more far-fetched.
The most widely used 5G band in the UK will be 3.6GHz…
…5G is just as safe as 4G, 3G and GSM.
– Institution of Engineering and Technology
1G to 5G phones
Here 1G means ‘First Generation’ AKA Analogue ‘brick’ phones of the 1980’s, 2G (AKA ‘GSM’ or ‘Global System for Mobile Communications’), a typical Nokia from the late 1990’s, 3G, the first phones with really usable Internet connections, and today’s 4G, typified by a smartphone – Apple or Android. There was even a 2.5G and we mention 4.5G later.
The gifts of Heinrich Hertz, or a billion of them, come in the form of a Gigahertz (GHz), the frequency a thousand times the Megahertz we’ve had since VHF FM radio days. 1G to 4G phones have used various radio frequencies over the years, depending on operator and country, from 800MHz up to 2.6GHz, but the operating frequency used doesn’t directly affect the data speed as far as the user is concerned. WiFi is sometimes confusingly termed 2.4G or ‘2.4 Gig’ or ‘5 Gig’, referring to bands – 2.4GHz (the same frequency as a microwave oven but a minuscule fraction of the power) and 5GHz: a less congested, shorter range band that has nothing to do with 5G: 5th generation mobile technology.
In the digital world we similarly have Megabits describing the speed of received data – whatever the technology that delivered it – and the Gigabit of your scribe’s home, and likely your office’s high speed Ethernet wired network. We won’t discuss the many flavours of WiFi on top of the frequency bands mentioned: A, B, G, N AC, AX… a story seemingly involving yet another G, until WiFi leapfrogs 5G by changing it’s letters to numbers, becoming WiFi 4, 5, and 6, and in future extending into a new 6GHz band. That’s the GG’s corralled 🐴
Members will doubtless have read the conspiracy theories about 5G and the pandemic, as well as other suggested health dangers. However, for 5G, the radio spectrum is in fact being used in very much the same way as earlier generations of mobile technology – even reusing some of the same bands – yet more efficiently, and we now have 30+ years of evidence on the effects of electromagnetic emissions from mobile handsets, 1G to 4G. Specific new concerns arise around the possible use of millimetre-band (26 GHz), but this is a long way off being implemented, and only then for some very specific & limited applications due to extremely short range.
The most popular 5G band, 3.6 GHz, is slightly higher than current ranges, the implication may be more base stations as range is slightly reduced, but other bands may be used to compensate. The 700MHz band for example, cleared in June this year (responsible for the loss of several HD TV channels from Crystal Palace), has yet to be auctioned off, but is earmarked by OFCOM for 5G.
Mobile emissions
If you are at all concerned about health effects, first check and understand the implications of the SAR value for your existing 2G/3G/4G phone, which have been published by manufacturers since the days of 2G when such concerns first arose – or better, stop using it now !
Unfortunately in addition to the above health concerns, the 5G cause has been muddied, and probably harmed by overzealous marketing, too many G’s and spurious claimed benefits – we prefer to keep to the tried-and-trusted recipe of ‘more & faster’, on which it certainly will deliver.
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