They are not serious about where they are in the dispute

They are not serious about where they are in the dispute.’But Railtrack said that any pay deal must be part of an overall agreement on restructuring grades and working practices, which it believes is essential for the future of the industry. This will inevitably affect services over the weekend, causing five days of disruption.The RMT denied that the new proposals were a retreat and said they were a way of reaching a settlement without embarrassing Railtrack. Until now the union has always insisted that thewithdrawn 5.7 per cent offer was the bottom line for any deal.Railtrack has offered a 6 per cent increase on basic rates, but because almost half signal workers’ earnings come from overtime and allowances this is worth only 3 per cent. Last week Railtrack hinted that it might consolidate half the 6 per cent into overtime and allowances which would make it worth about 4.6 per cent, the starting point for the RMT’s new proposals. The union said the plans ‘would allow settlement without conceding a politically sensitive headline figure’.That referred to a 5.7 per cent offer from Railtrack which was withdrawn in June at the Government’s insistence.The RMT suggested a 4.6 per cent rise with one of various options attached. Since a ballot of RMT supervisors voted against joining the strike last week Rail-track has been in a bullish mood and is determined to get its way.In his letter to the union, Sir Bob said: ‘Loss of revenue is crippling the industry, threatening jobs and investment.’ In a separate letter to Bob Horton, chairman of Railtrack, the BR chairman said: ‘I must look to you to do everything possible on your side to reach a settlement which will allow us to resume the safe and reliable services which our customers expect.’The new RMT proposals, which it put to Railtrack via the conciliation service Acas on Tuesday, show a major shift in the union’s claim for the 4,600 signal workers.

The RMT union made public its proposals for resolving the two- month-old dispute as Sir Bob Reid, chairman of British Rail, wrote to the union urging it to call off its action and warning of the ‘dire consequences’ for the railway
industry.But Railtrack dismissed the latest move by the union while both sides prepared for the latest series of strikes, which will be a crucial trial of strength. RAIL union leaders yesterday significantly softened their pay demands, but the move came too late to prevent the start of five days of disruption, with strikes by signal staff from tomorrow. I did think, though, that he had finally made it through a programme without resorting to his favourite cliche, until, at the very last moment, he blew it. Yesterday he chucked a garnish of cherry tomatoes on to a dish with a gesture of outright contempt, as if adding something noxious to a compost heap.He’s not much more careful about his script, which has become a tiresome excursion through the same themes – the producer’s anxiety about shadows, the soundman’s paranoia about passing Vespas and the scrumptiousness of his own cooking. He has always been a casual cook, encouraging you by his lack of precision – but something almost beleaguered is creeping into his manner. There is an obvious danger that the police might find it easier (and more productive of media publicity) to ensnare small-time criminals rather than go out and catch the big ones.But, just as you were beginning to feel the first flickerings of civic indignation, you would be confronted with yet another aggrieved low-life, insisting that he would never have dreamt of supplying so- and-so with an Uzi unless the idea had been forced into his blameless head, and then you thought that maybe it was no bad thing that he wouldn’t know who to trust next time.As his tour of Italy continues, Keith Floyd has been getting more grumpy and desultory by the week. So while it was just about possible to be theoretically indignant that Joe Pyle had ended up in jail after being invited to take part in the sale of stolen morphine by a police informer, given that he had eagerly taken up the offer you felt it wasn’t yet time to start writing letters to Amnesty International.The programme made some more serious points – that the desire to protect informers was leading to the abandonment of prosecutions; that they enjoy a virtual carte blanche to commit crimes themselves; and that one particular officer had been collaborating with the News of the World to set up crimes which otherwise might not have happened and which could then be ’solved’ in spectacular style.

Serious enough, certainly, for the police themselves to make angry representations to the BBC about the safety of informers and for the BBC to get slightly antsy about the programme, which has now been postponed twice.
But the film’s case was undermined both by the subtlety of the distinctions it was exploring and by the Runyonesque pack of scoundrels to whom it had to resort for its evidence. It was a serious enough subject – an investigation into whether police informers are being used not just to report on crimes but also to set them up. The News of the World had called him a ‘lager-swilling crook’ and a ‘23-stone slob’. Sitting in Hiccups, the Hendon wine bar where he worked as a bouncer, he drank his lager with an extended pinkie, as if to demonstrate to the world the delicacy of his manners. In Islington they have built an adventurous house at which no one should throw stones.(Photographs omitted). (In one sense, their first London building was the movable hospitality tent designed for the South Bank and wrecked by a gale in Croydon last winter.)Now, finally, they have come down to earth in their own futuristic way, meeting the complex, untidy, sometimes ugly, sometimes sublime, mesh of urban structures and social relationships which mark out the lives of most British people.

Future Systems have brought an uncompromisingly modern architecture to a typical London street. They have produced a building with a memorable kick in its tail. They have made their mark on London and demonstrated an understanding that a respect for context does not have to result in bland architecture.In the past Future Systems have veered between a dramatic, if essentially lightweight, monumentalism – epitomised by their rejected designs for the Paris library – and a lingering preoccupation with the impermanent and the portable. The clients’ initial preference had been for wooden floors, but instead they have got white rubber.The white flooring, carefully separated from the wall surfaces by verges of polished aluminium, will extend out from the kitchen-dining room to cover the garden area, with sliding doors allowing the interior and exterior to merge in fine weather.

None the less, the glazing and white rubber floors invoke memories of hi-tech monuments of the past, not least Norman Foster’s Willis Faber building in Ipswich on which Kaplicky worked. The glass is unframed, giving a sheer and extremely lightweight look; privacy and sun screening are provided by means of specially designed blinds. Inside, glass bricks predominate: Kaplicky and Levete have no hesitation in conceding the influence of Pierre Chareau’s famous Maison de Verre in Paris, with its great facade of glass bricks. ‘If anybody wants to call this the Maison de Verre of London, we’d be very flattered,’ says Kaplicky.Beyond the glazed wall which encases the staircase there are rooms on four levels – a kitchen and dining room, plus a tiny flat for an au pair or visitor at garden level, a big living and entertaining space above, with views down into the lower level, a huge, shared bedroom for the couple’s two young daughters on the first floor and, on the top floor of this glass ziggurat, the main bedroom.All the ‘core’ elements of the house (bathrooms, storage and so on) are treated as free-standing sculptures, brightly coloured in contrast to the luminous all-white walls.The house is curious for having no roof, or at least not in the conventional sense. This idea had to be dropped, not least because of the need to compartentalise the house to meet fire regulations. The staircase was consequently placed across the front of the house, a solution which has the benefit of leaving the principal living spaces completely unobstructed.The house is entered across a sinuous metal bridge that curves to avoid a protected tree. To the rear, facing south, the house appeared as a ski slope of clear glass, a strategy adopted to make optimum use of the small site and to maximise natural light.Kaplicky wanted a staircase as the centrepiece of the building, a spectacular structure with views southwards at all levels.