Am still singing (sic) all the old Neil Young tunes from Saturday night. My rendering of I've seen the needle and the damage done is I am told, particularly painful (and very effective at clearing the family out of the kitchen and getting a bit of peace for a cup of coffee).
Tom Dobson e-mailed me to say how much he enjoyed the blog (so that's FOUR people who read it now Andy. So ner de ner! And just what is the TEN group precisely?) and how "you won't be surprised to hear that I also checked out the view line to Paddington" (of course he was at the Killers on the Friday and the Springsteen concert on the Sunday).
Bless. Well he worked on Padders with me, naturally (as indeed did half the development community in London). In fact it was his job number projections (the Hunt Dobson Stringer work showed 30,000 for the entire scheme built out) that gave me the ammunition I needed to play hard ball with my friends at Job Centre Plus.
And that genius lad Paul Warren of Bovis was able to deliver 700 (out of a total of 900) locally-based construction workers to show the way. And as that was obviously the harder bit, the end user jobs just had to be delivered too.
And we're over 5,000 jobs now into the local community (and I don't know how many jobs in total are currently extant at Paddington Waterside - does anyone out there have this information?)
Tom's a mischievous beggar though. He goes on to say in his e-mail "our ears pricked up when Bruce (Springsteen I guess) declared he wanted to build a house on Hyde Park. Turned out it was a house of music and a house of love. Which was a little disappointing as I'd have enjoyed the city planning committee meeting." Oh you are awful Tom! But I like you!
There was a time - for about six months I reckon - when I used to attend Westminster Planning Committee every week. Sometimes it felt like a life sentence although I didn't go for years and years and years, unlike the late great Geoff Marsh who never missed a meeting, and who had a forensic understating of the Westminster property market as a result.
Oh we do miss Geoff grievously. There will never be expertise like it. There will never be a Fair Isle tank top like it. And he loved a debate about the Paddington skyline too.
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