May 22 2013

A new house – this is brilliant!

I’m always on the look out for new technologies in building. Ever since I trained as an Architectural Technician, I have had a fascination as to how we create places we live in.

I came across THe Looper – the blurb talks about a luxury pod for living in – inspired by a caterpillar. 10m long and 4m wide this is for a break, although it’s not far off the dimensions of a small one-bedroom apartment. It has an en-suite and air-conditoned sleeping area. The front rises and falls to create a deck!

I love it.

The only issue as far as I can see is that it keeps away – mosquito’s. In most of our towns it might need to keep away … burglars?

But otherwise, if we had a beach and lots of sunshine, this is house nirvana…

May 21 2013

Elf and Safety …

Whilst I was in Scotland last week, I saw two things which I thought I ought to share.

The first is a sign in one of the brilliant golf clubs we played at …

There is nothing like stating the obvious, just in case people weren’t doing as anticipated. Presumably some people could be dancing in the corridor, or eating their Haggis?

But then there was a great handrail up a fairly steep staircase/ ramp we saw. Here, you need to make sure you grip the right thing!

Great stuff.

May 20 2013

The nightmare that is IKEA

Just occasionally you have to go to IKEA. Sometimes it’s for those tea light things (a bag of a 1,000 is essential). Stuff is so cheap you just have to buy it – even if you will never use it again. It’s stuff that might come in useful (apparently).

The place is a baffling myriad of anagrams STURKY, TEGGURKA, GRUQQAR – but it turns out there is a sense of organisation in this too. Inferior products (such as doormats, floor runners, carpeting – basically anything that touches the bottoms of shoes.) are named after Danish towns. Then Swedish town names are handed down to furniture, bookcases and multimedia consoles. Norway bags the beds, dressers and hallway furniture. Finally Finland have the honour of the expensive chairs and dining tables. I kid you not.

IKEA’s spokesperson Charlotte Lindgren responded, “It’s nonsense to say that we did this on purpose. It was a pure coincidence, and it happened many decades ago…Besides these critics appear to greatly underestimate the importance of floor coverings. They are fundamental elements of furnishing.” No shit sherlock.

Being in IKEA is akin to a living nightmare. It’s not just the products – it’s the people. They start their experience by wanting to park as close to the exit as they can – because IKEA don’t have those little pound machines on their trolleys – so they concrete you in. This is a test then to carry their heavy kit a quarter of a mile to your car!

But this is nothing compared to the pain of assembling all those odd shaped screws and washers. The instructions might as well be in Danish. Inevitably you finish the whole thing and are left with three or four screws, dowels of other bits of metal. They grin up at you in a smug way – “we know where we go, but we’re not telling you“.

Should I throw them out – or keep them, just in case the thing falls apart tomorrow?

When I came out I saw the pictured car. Reminded me of my old RS4. As for his parking … Enough said on the matter.

May 15 2013

Nottingham – empty shops?

We have ongoing discussions with the Local Data Company and their assertion that 30.6% of our shops are empty. I blogged about it here.

Experian have suggested that the figure is 18.1% – which is probably a closer reflection. The Local Data Company stretch the definition of City Centre to a lot of the outlying suburbs. We have a plan to deal with this and try to properly reflect the position – more on that soon I hope!

What we cannot escape though is that we have too many shops.

Vacant shops don’t help Cities. They create gappy teeth in a street scene and ‘dead frontage’ (as it is known) is not at all good. It takes a few in a row to bring a whole area down.

So we have a few choices – we can either take the shops out of use (and there is some new Planning legislation to do this) and into another use. Or we can try to encourage new shops to spring up. I had a fantastic meeting a few weeks ago with Pop Up Britain – who seek to do this. They put temporary uses into places – often local people selling local goods. Again we hope to have some of these in Nottingham soon.

But there is another initiative launched last week by the City Council – in the form of grant aid to bring ‘out of repair’ shops back to a lettable standard.

The Vacant Shops Grant will be available to Landlords of up to £5,000 to improve the condition a shop.

This is a great idea – and a really positive step to take.

May 14 2013

Manufacturing is dead in the UK – well it’s not in Crewe!

I had the privilege on Friday of visiting the Bentley factory in Crewe, as a guest of Nick Riley – you can read his great blog here.

I have to say that I was taken aback by the whole experience. I thought Crewe was a place you went through on the train. What I didn’t expect was a factory building some of the best quality cars that money can buy on the entire planet!

Bentley have heritage but suffered badly through recessions. At one point they had just 1500 employees – today that number is 4,000. Unlike the Toyota factory in Burnaston, there are people here. Lots of them. And people who have a passion for what they are building. During our three hour tour we spoke to a few of the teams building the cars – this wasn’t staged – they were genuinely passionate about what they do; they were really keen to show us what they did – and the lengths they go to.

These are expensive cars (think £115,00 upwards) but there is a reason for this. An Bentley Continental takes 100 man hours to build – the Mulsanne takes 600 hours. Virtually everything is hand finished – varnishing the woods is robotically done, but is still hand polished. A steering wheel takes 15 hours to hand stitch!

What was really fascinating was trying to work out the logistics of the production line. On the Continental lone it shifts stations every nine minutes, on the Mulsanne line it is one hour! And at each station the components being added are all logged and computer controlled. Parts which started life together (such as the wood inlays) are sent apart to different build elements, but then come back together for a perfect match.

It was a fantastic experience – and I was seriously impressed. Manufacturing is definitely not dead – and 8,500 lovingly crafted cars a year – is testament to that.

PS My fellow blogger Jackie Sadek will no doubt think that I’m after a freebie. This would be shallow. But true. Please Mr Bentley – can I borrow one for a few weeks?

May 13 2013

Nottingham Castle – backwards we go?

There was disappointing news for Nottingham last week.

Our Heritage Lottery bid to upgrade the Castle failed. We were seeking nearly £15 towards the estimated £26m cost. Six out of 11 projects were successful in sharing £68m:

* Silverstone, home of British motor racing in Northamptonshire
* HMS Caroline, the last surviving warship of the First World War fleet, in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter
* Redruth’s old brewery transformed to celebrate Cornish heritage
* London’s Alexandra Palace – ‘The People’s Palace’ – with over 140 years worth of history
* 12th-century Auckland Castle in Durham, home to a spectacular collection of Zurbaran paintings
* Aberdeen Art Gallery and Cowdray Hall, the city’s public gallery with an impressive collection of early and contemporary works

We now have to wait another 12 months to re-submit.

You may know that I sat on the Sheriffs Commission back in 2008/9. Five years ago we were pressing for the Council to bring on board the private sector, that looks even more necessary now.

I was a little underwhelmed last year when I saw the plans for the first time. In fact, I blogged about it here.

We really need to aim higher and in my opinion we need to bring a different game to Nottingham. There is such an opportunity here – Robin Hood is a world brand and we just don’t use it. Five years have passed since we looked at some of the options. Lets not wait another five years!

In the meantime my good friend Johnny Lyle sent me a link about a theme park that looks like it might go ahead in Sherwood Forest. Pity they didn’t put that in the Castle?

May 12 2013

A real Space Oddity…

This is utterly brilliant!!

May 11 2013

Abercrombie & Fitch – more cool…

Hot on the heels of yesterdays blog about the uber cool Dr Dre headphones it seems that another cool brand has hit the headlines.

A&F is a pretty cool shop. It’s dark and mind numbingly noisy. And it’s CEO Mike Jeffreys has a certain demographic in mind.

He said, “…we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,’ he explained. “We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong in our clothes, and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

Well he certainly knows how to win friends with that policy. Is it just me or does Mr Jeffreys (pictured) need to work in the stock room?

Meeow.

May 10 2013

Deception and Perception

I need to make it clear that I don’t agree with counterfeits. If I want a Gold Rolex watch then buying one on the beach out of a guys suitcase is unlikely to have all the necessary guarantees! And $25 doesn’t usually cover the cost of the box.

But yesterday I heard something on the radio and had to smile.

It seems that the uber trendy Dr Dre Beats solo headphones are being forged and sold for £15. They generally retail at £170. Clearly there is something wrong. And when tested they generally broke, disintegrated and sounded awful. The estimated cost to make them was given as a few pounds.

Interestingly Dr Dre ‘phones were held out to be some of the best on the market. Well that’s not quite right. According to What HiFi they only get three stars. If you search their web site for headphones with five stars you’ll find plenty – look at these Grado’s at £110 – they get 5 stars.

But the point is that the Grado’s aren’t cool (I have some). Dr Dre is cool – and so, unsurprisingly you are paying a fair premium for the name – rather than a high quality sound. Perception is everything…

Sound familiar? (No pun intended).

May 9 2013

Like Watching Ink Dry?

The Queen popped into the House of Lords yesterday and amidst the Ermine and parchment she made an ‘early’ announcement about High Speed 2 – to the extent that it’s got a green light.

Two Bills are likely in the next phase of Parliament – the first starting the London to Birmingham line then a further bill for the ‘Y’ to Manchester via Toton Nottingham and Sheffield.

Work might start on the line in 2016/17 and the first trains could run in 2026. But not in my back yard – we’ll have to wait until around 2032/3. So that’s 20 years away. That’s not going to help my frequent trips to the ‘smoke’.

The estimates on cost are around £32bn. But this is for rail at 250mph – meaning London to Toton could be 45 minutes. London to Leeds will be halved to just 57 minutes.

I am still a supporter of the HS2 line, I think it will allow us to get a competitive edge over some other cities. The disappointment is that it is going to take so long. Of the people I have talked to about this the support is unwavering, the frustration is the timescale.

I heard on the radio yesterday morning that it takes three days for the ink to dry on the goatskin vellum parchment the Queen reads from – waiting for HS2 is much like watching that ink dry?

Tim Garratt's Blog

Le Frondeuse …. since 1962