Is it a bench?

This thing

is a new piece of street furniture outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. You can get the scale of it from the two standard envelopes for A5 paper that I have placed on it. 

Is it meant to be a bench? Well, (a) it is every bit as hard as it looks: it is made in the same way and from the same stuff that you would make a particularly solemn memorial to a worthy cause. I expect someone to carve 'All ye who sit hereupon, forget not' or something like that on the back bit. And (b) as you can see from the picture, the 'seat' is divided, by sharpish metal things, into 5 sections, two of which do not seem to be for sitting on. I can tell you from experience that the little sections at each end will just about admit two adult male buttocks, but it's not pretty - you'd have to be on good terms with anyone sitting in the full-sized section next door. Why not have 4 decent-sized sections and use only 3 bits of metal?  

So I assume it is one of those things placed outside important buildings to stop terrorists ramraiding them, mocked up to look like a bench. But I reckon they could have tried harder.