“London’s fire stations were once splendid buildings. Designed and built to the very highest standards of the Arts and Crafts Movement inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris, they were the work of the London County Council’s fire brigade department. The proposed ‘community fire station and safety centre’ at Canary Wharf is something else. It promises to look like a cross between an office block and a block of flats.” Why? That’s how public funding in the “new” England works.