Last week UKR visited Cork. There was Gill Marshall (Head of Love and
Laughter for UKR) resplendent in her slingbacks (with strong family
connections there), Tim Garratt of Innes England (aka the Hon Urbanist,
never EVER a grubby agent, it was him that took this photo) and me.
We
were there as the guests of Cork City Council, who we'd met at
MIPIM. None of us really had the time to go, but we're sure glad we did!
Cork is a wonderful place.
There's been a bit of a flurry over the government's Help to Buy scheme these past few days. The nice people at Savills have put out a helpful newsletter explaining it all, which was something of a relief.
It would seem that the mortgage guarantee element of Help to Buy could facilitate up to 325,000 purchases over the next three years (assuming mortgage lenders have a moderate appetite for the scheme, and that remains to be seen). This is the equivalent to an average of 110,000 purchases a year, an increase of 12% on 2012 levels.
Today, I'm letting someone else have a turn - Paula Hirst, head of regeneration at Mazars, offers her thoughts on a scheme which seems to hark back to the 80s...
Thursday's London Evening Standard heralded "a £1bn vision to transform Deptford", announcing a new scheme on the Thames-fronted Convoys Wharf site by Sir Terry Farrell.
I'd been asked to sit on a panel for the RICS London and South East Summit yesterday morning; I was battling with a virus, but being nothing if not a good little soldier, I dosed myself up, and crawled into Great George Street to do my duty.
We were supposed to debate whether London and the South East was a winning place to live and do business. I'm always rather flattered to be included in these things and as usual, I was cast in the role of the advocate for out-of-town, which is quite tough actually, given my pronounced estuary twang, but hey!
I am a huge fan of Anna Soubry, the Minister for Public Health. She was a big banana in student politics when I was a nipper and I have worshipped her from afar ever since. She's so clever. She's so beautiful. And, blimey, she doesn't beat about the bush.
She is quoted in Total Politics magazine as saying: "What we now need to do is stop people in the party engaging in quite a lot of twattery, and to accept that we've achieved a huge amount, and it's all to play for... The Tory party must learn from its own history that when we fight each other, you can guarantee to lose."
Wednesday in UKR is Nottingham day. And today I have a group of 10 (yes TEN) technical professionals on the train with me this morning for the Big Site Visit at Sandfields, Lenton, Nottingham.
Yes! We will be discussing landscaping. And ecology. And soft stripping(!). And it will be Anoraks for Britain for two hours out of St Pancras, for the whole day rampaging around Nottingham in the sunshine, and then for the two-hour return journey. Lawks malordy. The term "herding cats" seems apposite.
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