LONDON — Time stands still for no one. In London, it doesn’t even stand straight.
Big Ben, perhaps the most iconic structure in all of Britain, is leaning. The lawmakers who work in the shadow of the famous clock tower are trying to figure out what to do about it.
Members of Parliament gathered at the House of Commons on Monday to discuss a report containing some drastic solutions to deal with the problem, even though it will be thousands of years before Big Ben achieves the precarious slant of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Among the suggestions: temporarily relocating Parliament while costly repair work takes place on both the clock and the Palace of Westminster, where lawmakers meet; or selling off the entire complex to a rich foreign developer.
Neither option is likely to be accepted in the near future. Nor is Big Ben expected to imminently topple over.
A surveyor’s report last year revealed the top of the 314-foot-tall tower to be about 18 inches off the vertical. The cause remains unclear. Natural subsidence is one possibility, as the clay that lies deep beneath the clock slowly dries out. There has also been tunneling in the area in recent years to build a multilevel parking lot and to extend one of London’s Underground lines.
