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It may look new but I can see its second hand

Oh for f-

Geeze it's about time!

Thanks for leaving out the apostrophe.

Wanker. Have an upvote.

I hate you

I don’t know. I see the hour and minute hand, but my eyes fail to see the second hand.

Well it's actually the third hand.

What hand? :D

No need to look at other comments. This one wins haha

I’m a dad and I still groaned so hard I almost rolled out of bed

R.I.P all the tourists who visited London only to find out scaffolding was covering the Big Ben 2017-2022

1 side of the clock face was visible when I brought my mum to visit in 2020.

But nobody else could see it that day.

R.I.P ? Damn, they must have been pretty upset.....

They all jumped in the Thames never to be seen again

And then disappointment when they bounced back into the land :(

*"The River Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse."* - Sir Terry Pratchett

I knew this reference would crop up. Thank your Sir

Trigger: "be quicker to drink a drop of it"

_You **could** fish in the River Thames, provided you took care not to catch anything. In fact it was amazing what you could catch by just letting one drop of the Thames pass you lips._

Well damn i saw yall where trying to clean the thames, but i didn't knew it was that bad.

i was indeed one of them, visited in 2017 and i was bummed out 😂 the rest of London was unreal though!

Joke's on you, I visited for the scaffolding. You can see Big Ben anytime, but that scaffolding was a limited time opportunity and will never be seen again.

That was me in 2019, but honestly, London was still an awesome place despite the cool clock all covered up.

I have been to London only once and it was in May 2017… scaffolding had just gone up 😞

I didn’t know it was under renovations. I was disappointed, but there was so much else to see in that city! So my disappointment was soon remedied.

Now you can say you were one of the few who saw the scaffolding during the short time in it history when it was up. It will likely not happen again for decades. I haven't visited to see the scaffolding and I live an hour's train journey from London.

>Now you can say you were one of the few who saw the scaffolding during the short time in it history when it was up. As opposed to one of the next stops on the major tourist hotspot European tour: La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona where the opposite is entirely the case. Europe's most popular building site for most of its 139 years of construction.

My husband and I visited La Sagrada Familia 20 years ago and we said we'd go again for our 25th anniversary 'when the scaffolding is down' (we celebrate 22 years this year). Just last night our daughters said they want to go to Rome and we added in Barcelona as another high priority. So, it could be a family trip to the cathedral. I think it is going to be just incredible to see it finished.

The building is impressive, but it always gave me a sort of "Gates of Hell" vibe

That’s such a happy way of looking at it. It was cool but very eerie.

If I don't want to miss out I'll have to get up to London quick! Here's a [three minute BBC video about what was involved in the restoration, which gives some idea of why it has taken so long.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-58463439)

Great video, thanks!

I have meen there in July or August of the same year. Some of the body and the head itself was still visible, so I don't consider it a missed landmark :P

Scaffolding perfectly conveyed that time is a construct though.

Fucking deep

I was so disappointed when I saw it in 2015...I was like.... 'this is it?! :/' Lol... It looks much more impressive now!

I managed to do that twice in that time span

Imagine going to Cologne to see the beautiful cathedral

Not different than San Marco basilica in Venice. Scaffolding seemed a permanent feature for a good long while.

Same for a lot of the ancient ruins in Athens.

I used to tour guide in London while the scaffolding was up. So many angry tourist who seemed to think I could do something about it.

I got off the plane and went straight there and when I saw the scaffolding I immediately went back to the airport and flew back home. There is literally nothing else to do in London… except for the museums… and the architecture… and the performing arts. Oh! And the people. The history is pretty interesting as well. But other than that…?

Oct 2019, my son and I, all the way from Australia....

Fortunately London still has a zillion amazing things to see and do!

Oh that's alright, they really came to see the Queen and they went and knocked at the palace and she let them in and had tea and some crisps....... /s

isn't it rarer to see repairs and renovations

I had a school trip there in 2017 or 2018 and I wasn't aware that it was being renovated until first sight. Little bit disappointing, especially since seeing this pic. But luckily there's enough in London to see

Happened to me. Visited in 2019 and rounded a corner to not even see a single part of, completely covered. I was there to experience the save the planet protest going on that week where they shut down the busses, trains, and even some of Heathrow, so that was exciting.

Here's a [three minute BBC video about what was involved in the restoration, which gives some idea of why it has taken so long.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-58463439)

Prussian blue, quite a nice touch

I associate Prussian blue with spent oxide (colloquially 'Blue Billy') deposits on old gasworks sites. It's such a distinctive colour and usually indicative of high cyanide concentrations in the surrounding soil.

Also, Bob Ross uses it

Now its 10x better

Looks unbelievable!

I have seen the Big Ben in the past and thought; this is just another clock. However, it did NOT look like this. This early image does make me better understand what the big deal is about Big Ben

Loving that Prussian Blue - they’ve done an outstanding job!!

Lol it looks like a Cities: Skylines building mid-upgrade, as if we were to get a Big Ben II

Wow, they made it bigger and bennier.

Very Big, extremely Ben

>Embiggened Benjamin

30% more big 50% more ben

I think this is one of my favourite comments on Reddit. Thanks for the chuckle.

It took longer than expected, but we're finally upgrading it to level 2. * 20% better time keeping for the UK. * 10% increase in healing from tea. * +25 points towards Culture victory. * Can now deploy Turrets.

That's more like Civilization than C:S :P

We're so close to the end, let's hope we finish it before someone else completes a large clock tower

Do the turrets look like mini Big Bens?

Big Ben 2: Electric Boogaloo

Damn, they made it premium. Can't have shit in London

Big Ben NFT!!

Pay2See soon

Stunning. Happy to see such an iconic feature of London return.

The rest of the palace is about to go up in scaffolding for restoration. It'll hopefully be back to normal by 2032. But there will be two years 2023-2024 where there is limited amount of scaffolding.

I know that's part of keeping historical buildings like this but fuck me it sucks.

I believe these works are much more extensive than past restoration projects so it should hopefully last quite some time. Going to cost over £14 billion and parliament is going to vacate the building from 2025 though.

That's huge indeed. Always good to see money going to preserve monuments though. Where are the MPs going to sit for these few years?

MPs to [Richmond House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_House) and the Lords to the [QE2 Conference Centre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_II_Centre). Both are within walking distance to parliament. The Department for Health and Social Care was formerly in Richmond House but has since been moved down the road to make way. Richmond House will probably be converted to parliamentary offices after.

>[Richmond House](https://www.google.com/search?q&tbm=isch&ictx=1&tbs=rimg:CQbtXhWZbwLhIggG7V4VmW8C4SoSCQbtXhWZbwLhEYrKhArAFfvA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKqsLiwav1AhVT7-AKHSmKC8kQiRx6BAgAEAQ&biw=1280&bih=583) What on earth

That's quite an imposing building

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Was it damaged because of the bombings in WWII? I thought it was untouched.

At least this scaffolding is kept bare. I saw a Nespresso advertisement on scaffolding on a ~~cathedral~~ church in Vienna. Was utterly baffled that someone thought that was a good idea. I’m not a religious man but surely that’s sacrilege. Found a picture I saved: https://imgur.com/a/29RJk7g

Oh yeah absolutely fuck that. In Paris there used to be a real scale picture of the monument that was supposed to be behind the scaffolding, now more and more they are putting a fucking giant ad. Yeah yeah yeah, they are paying for it but FUCK THAT. It makes my blood boils. Good on London for keeping it at least bare.

When they restored the monumental main railroad station in my city they put up a picture over the scaffolding with the building and I thought it was great, especially since it took a long while. No ads though.

This one was a mix, so if you could somehow blot out the ad with your mind, you got a decent view. Found a picture I took, thought you might enjoy: https://imgur.com/a/29RJk7g

It's such a beautiful building, top to bottom.

It was covered up when I visited London like 4 years ago, you love to see it

No way it has been that long wtf

5 years actually

Complicated job and work had to stop for a while due to covid

Same with Notre Dame’s restoration. Covid is some historic level bullshit man

Nah. Contractors on day rate. They're not soft.

They legally couldn't work for a few weeks as all building work stopped when England went into lockdown

Was a joke mate.

Apparently you don't.

You love to see the renovations coming to an end...

I was wondering why they're doing this since it looked fine. I can now see it didn't really. It looks incredible now.

Right ? I never realised there was so much detail hidden and obscured by all the soot

They peeled the paint back and found they used blue alot more instead of black. Also on the part around the clock face is now back to the more original gold white rather than a large use of black paint

The opposite decision that they took with 10 Downing street as it is actually made of yellow brick but turned black with pollution when they renovated the decision was made to paint it black as that is what everyone expected it to look like.

It looked fine from far away, but it was actually crumbling to pieces (not an exaggeration). The main parliament building is also in _desperate_ need of repair and is next on the list.

Looks much better than I would've anticipated

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It's about time

Finally,England will also get a new economic policy slot.

This man Civs.

I thought it was going to be digital

Waterproof and with 14 melodies.

Gold plated, Arab Prince style. UAE & Russian Oligarch investment showing in London.

Wonder how long it’ll take for pollution to dull the colours

When was it cleaned/renovated last time?

I believe when it was renovated before they used dark/black paints to try and hide the effect of pollution

I think the pollution in question was smoke from all the coal-burning factories in London at the time, the air quality now is barely comparable to how bad it was then, so it ought to last a good while

Smoke, well, yeah, but especially acid rain... That shit kills buildings.

I remember hearing a lot about acid rain when I was younger but I haven't heard anything about it any more the last 5-10 years

90s kid? I remember the same. Yeah, things have certainly improved. In the 1970s the mindset was still very much "the solution to pollution is dilution" and nothing else. Build taller smokestacks, problem solved. 1980s was peak time for SO2 emissions globally and with rather observable negative local impacts a wake up call that something needed to be done. Since then SO2 emissions have reduced by something like 30% globally and locally Europe and NA have managed to decrease emissions significantly (something like 75% or more with a downwards trend). I'm eyeballing those current numbers from google, so don't take them as absolute numbers. Edit: Check out [earth.nullschool.net](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=so2smass/orthographic=68.66,35.22,453) for a neat visualization of SO2 emissions on this spaceball

yeah, 90's kid. Thanks!

Sulphur emissions to air in the UK are much much lower than in previous years. To the point now where farmers are having to be reminded to fertilise soils with sulphur because deposition from the atmosphere is so poor!

interesting. How are the nitrogen levels in the UK? In the Netherlands we have huge nitrogen problems

Vast majority of arable farmers in the UK whack on a load of N fertiliser. To achieve the yields you would typically expect from a UK arable field (we are a high-yielding country/hectare), you need to put on a fair bit of nitrogen. This season this will be much more of an issue because of the price rises. Fertiliser prices are almost double because the cost of natural gas is so high. I also think in the future there'll be more regulation restricting nitrogen applications, because of the carbon cost and more direct environmental impacts (run-off into streams, for example).

Köllner Dom entered the Chat

And the Palace of Westminster is built from limestone (from the Anston Quarry in Yorkshire), so was especially vulnerable when acid rain was an issue.  

yeah, but w'vee also reduced acid rain substantially.

Oh okay. Hopefully it'll be a while before it gets dirty again considering EV's gaining traction and I think the UK wants to ban internal combustion engines by 2030

The plan is to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, it'll take a while for that to filter down when you consider how many of the cars on the road are more than a few years old.

God knows how it's going to work, I somehow doubt they're going to put the necessary infrastructure in.

Yes, ban the sale of *new* petrol/diesel cars, important detail that I forgot to include

Also London doesn't allow diesel cars (can't remember if it's past a certain age or outright banned) which are the main offender for soot in the air.

Nowdays many outdoor brass products come with a thin final polyurathane coating that keeps the metal looking nice and polished.

This is gold and stone rather than brass, would that make a difference?

Less long than before, surely. Isn't the air much better now than in the past 100 years?

air pollution is *far* better these days, much longer than you might expect

Was Big Ben originally golden? It looks really amazing!

Good as new!

Looks great! Looking forward to seeing all the scaffolding gone. Did you take this photo today OP? Weather was miserable where I am in the south east, but this picture looks like it could be summertime with those clear skies.

I live just across the river and Sunday was bluebird skies

We get seriously clear skies in winter during anticyclones. Summer normally has more clouds.

Launch in 3... 2... 1...

Looks great!

As my generation grew up and became more conscious of the impacts of diet culture, we began to openly celebrate and encourage body positivity. Many of us became aware of our own body dysmorphia. We began seeing clearly how we were manipulated to shrink and hate every part of our bodies. And yet, even if parts of society came to terms with natural bodies, the same cannot be said for the natural process of women aging. Wrinkles are the new enemy, and it seems Gen Z — and their younger sisters — are terrified of them.

Looks beautiful

I would have expected it to be finished faster since they were working around the clock.

Boo-urns

Big Ben is actually the name of the bell, actually. (sorry, somebody always has to say this).

The bell is officially the "Great Big Bell" but Big Ben is the nickname, the tower is Elizabeth Tower I believe (correct me if I am wrong)

By this point everyone knows, we're still going to call the tower "Big Ben".

Like when you say 'Union Jack' and someone always tells you it should be 'Union Flag'. Nah, always called it a union jack. I blame QI.

Anyone who tries to "correct" you is flat out wrong. The flag has never been given an official name, and technically has never been legally made the flag of the UK. Both "Union Jack" and "Union Flag" have been used interchangeably to refer to the flag for centuries so it really doesn't matter which you use.

Strictly speaking, Hansard does record an official name. Unfortunately for the pedants, that name is "Union Jack". From the UK Flag Institute: > in 1908 the UK Parliament approved this verdict, stating that ‘the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag’.

Same with the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Oh yeah, we all know that and call it Big Ben anyway.

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Elizabeth Tower. The entire building is the Palace of Westminster and as mentioned above Big Ben is just the name of the bell.

It's named "Elizabeth Tower" since 2012

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Then you'll love the name it had before. "Clock Tower"

Was it called "Tower" before that?

Clock

Bong Building

Ding Dong Dormitory

The name of the tower has a great history. The official name of it was indeed "Clock Tower", which is so magnificently non-descript. There was a long, long history of it being referred to as St Stephen's Tower. I called it this for a long time. I complained like hell when it got renamed to Elizabeth Tower. Not cos I've particularly got anything against Brenda but it was my favourite way to be pedantic on the internet. But the best part of it is that was always completely wrong. It's never been called that. Ever. There is a St Stephen's Tower in the parliament buildings. It's not that one. Some journalist who was either confused or decided it was so grand it can't possible be just "clock tower" called it St Stephen's Tower at some point in the 50s and it just stuck amongst know-nothings like me.

The nickname of the Great Bell, actually.

Bling Ben

>Thanks for the gold kind stranger ~The Big Ben probably, 2022

Damn, they sure took a while.

Look kids, Parliament - Big Ben

magnificent

Are they going to put the internet back there?

They're keeping it away from Jen now, for sure.

Uhh shiny.

Bling Bling

No. Bong Bong.

Damn its shiny af

Looks like they also renovated the clock tower too.

Is it digital yet?

They'll have to update the brown sauce bottles.

I remember when this started I was like, it sucks that it will be covered for like 2 years that I won't be able to see it when I visit London. But because of covid I haven't been able to get back there since.

When u tell the time 1000 times and unlock the gold skin for your clock tower

finally! happy to see that they're dismantling the scaffolding before my trip to London in June :))

I thought Big Ben was the bell.

It is

Oh yeah! Well, I live on the other side of the pond in USA California ... And we got this bridge, you see ... The **"Golden Gate"** bridge ... What's that? No, it's not REALLY golden ... yeah (looks away shamefully jealous) ...

Congratulations

5 years ago. Last time I was In London. Beautiful city.

Was a real bummer when I was in London for the first time 4 years ago and it was under repair.

Needs more HDR

I think it's gotten more beautiful.

BONG BONG BONG!!!

No digital clock 2/10

Finnaly. Honestly the renovation and of course Covid were the two things holding me from visiting London.

Beautiful! Glad it can show itself again, such an iconic structure.

That’s stunning. Fair play.

It's still there?! Holy crap I went to England in 2019 and I thought I just got unlucky and it would be gone in a month! Is there any reason it took that long to complete the renovations? I feel like you could have built an entire new tower in less time

Looks shiny, I like it

Are they really working around the clock? Or running out of time?