TV crews waiting for Jacqui Smith to resign on 2 June 2009. Note the coloured light on the trees and the paving, from a rooftop brise soleil

Last time I stopped to take a photo outside the Home Office two security men rushed out to say ‘You can’t – it’s a government building’.  ‘Why not?’ I asked ‘Has Jacqui Smith brought in the porno videos her husband bought on expenses?’ They laughed and let me take my photos. Today there were half a dozen TV crews outside the office.’ Huh’, I thought, she must be resigning at last. No one stopped me taking the photo and I got home to find she had half-done the decent thing: she is resigning as Home Secretary but hopes to cling on as an MP. Let’s hope her constituency does do the decent thing. Home Secretaries should inform their underlings that members of the public are 1000% within the law when taking photographs from a public place.

Note: I believe DLP, formerly known as Lovejoys, were the landscape architects but could not find the project on their website. Geoffrey Jellicoe was asked to do a design for the site before the offices were re-built and said it could not be done, because the buildings were so ghastly.