Category Archives: Green stuff

Feb 12 2012

A new Audi – wow!

It’s fair to say that I miss my RS4 – it was by far the best car I ever owned. The three years I had it went by a ll too quickly. In the snow of last week, I missed the four-wheel drive! I guess I don’t miss the 13 mpg… But I do miss it!

It was the second Audi I had owned – the first was an Audi TT – which I also loved. But now Audi have gone and set a new benchmark – with the unveiling of a new go-faster version of the TT. The new 2012 TT RS Plus is a tuned version of the coupe and roadster with 355bhp – giving more horses than the Porsche Cayman R.

This is a very very fast car – 174mph is top speed. This is the limited speed – to stop the tyres blowing up! There’s no mpg figures yet so I figure that it will be eco-friendly.

0-62mph is 4.1 seconds. Which is a bit quicker than my RS4 – which was 4.6 seconds – and that was quick!

What I love most though are those wheels… They look really cool!

This looks like a very sensible choice for my next car? Thought you would agree…

Jan 14 2012

100,000 hits – wow

I am not sure when I started this little blog thing that I ever imagined that the hits would reach the magical and dizzy heights of 100,000! I was getting 10 or 15 hits a day and thought this was pretty good. At that rate 100,000 was a long way off…Today there around 250 hits a day.

But you have hit this site 100,000 times – a few minutes ago.

I am not sure who had the magical hit – but thanks. In fact thanks to all of you who drop by to this corner of the blogosphere! It is appreciated…

Jan 11 2012

Water, water everywhere?

I have been working with some Canadians, who are looking at bringing to the UK their skills in re-using waste water. They did it very successfully at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.

In essence, waste water in the UK is generally treated good enough to throw away. But it contains a rich stream of goodies – heat, fuel and water. If you can separate them it can become a genuine resource. It is clear that we need to look at ways in which we can better use the resources we are fast using up. As the population grows, we have to think about these sort of things.

I was amazed at the weekend to find an article (through Earth Baby’s excellent blog) about Denver in the United States. There it is illegal to re-use water. You buy your water from Denver Water – and you are allowed to use it – once! They you have to give it back to them – and they treat it! They claim they use it 7 or 8 times before giving it to Nebraska…

To make matters worse – Denver Water even claim right to the stuff that falls from the sky. It is illegal to collect rainwater and re-use it. You might own the gutters to the house, but you are collecting it for them (to clean up and sell back to you). There is some fan static language as to why – “it will injure vested water rights”. Oh, that’s ok then! At least we all know and you are upfront about it.

Putting to one side the arguments about monopolies, selling ice to Iceland and being ripped off generally, this is an amazing position to adopt in 2012. It surely can’t be sustainable on any level? America – leaders of the free world? Hmmmm.

Jan 3 2012

Another knee jerk policy : the feed in tariff cut was illegal

You might have spotted this story just before the Christmas break. Friends of the Earth and two solar firms, Solarcentury and HomeSun took the Government to court over the decision to slash the Feed in Tariff from 43.3p to just 21p per kilowatt hour. The favourable rate was introduced in 2010 as a deliberately attractive rate to encourage the fitting of panels.

A whole industry sprang up. Thousands signed up and this technology has the prospect of making real inroads to our CO2 emissions. Self generation (and selling surplus power back the grid) are clearly very green. Your south facing roof could save CO2 and potentially make you money.

But no sooner had the movement started than the Government slash the rate of the feed in tariff. Not by a few percentage points, but by half. The announcement was made in the middle of the consultation period! Mr Justice Mitting in the High Court found the Governments decision to slash feed-in tariffs (FiT) several months early, before a consultation on the issue ended, was “legally flawed”. There is likely to be a Judicial Review in the New year.

Of course a number of people paid premium prices to get panels fitted before the cut off date – which now looks like a waste of money. But more fundamentally, this whole debacle has put some people off the fitting of the panels.

Like most things, we don’t like uncertainty. The smart money is that this is a set-back. the Government have had their knuckles rapped. But they will almost certainly reduce the rate – they’ll just have to it a bit smarter next time!

Nas the clue is in the official Government response – Greg Barker the Climate Change Minister said the government disagreed with the court’s decision and would seek an appeal.

Perhaps the Government are not quite as Green as they suggest?

UPDATE 4 January

Climate change minister Greg Barker has today said, “We disagree with the court’s decision,” adding, “We will be seeking an appeal and hope to secure a hearing as soon as possible. Regardless of the outcome, the current high tariffs for solar PV are not sustainable and changes need to be made in order to protect the budget, which is funded by consumers through their energy bills.”

Jan 2 2012

2012 – the work:life balance is reset?

Having been away from the blogosphere for a few days I’m playing catch up with some of the stories I saw over the Christmas break. One caught my eye – which was the one about Volkswagen – which had agreed to stop its Blackberry servers sending emails to some of its employees when they are off-shift.

The move follows criticism of internal emails by Thierry Breton, the CEO of the French information technology services giant, Atos. He said workers at his firm were wasting hours of their lives on internal messages both at home and at work. He has taken the more radical step of banning internal email altogether from 2014. They have some time to prepare…

Last month the maker of Persil washing powder, Henkel, also declared an email “amnesty” for its workers between Christmas and New Year saying messages should only be sent out as an emergency measure.

Email and the ‘always-on’ technology has become part of our lives. We are used to being bombarded with information – and being contactable most days (and nights). It is difficult to ignore this persistence. People have developed a habit of walking around staring at their iPhones or Blackberries. We get text, email and Facebook updates. Twitter punctuates these.

I can see that the limit on emails for these big organisations is a positive move. But I’m not sue we can go back to living without email. It does make life easier in lots of ways. I can attach images / videos. I can get information to clients quickly. We can collaborate with people. But most importantly I don’t have to rely on the laughable Royal Mail.

I do think though that sometimes we do forget that we are dealing with people – and that communicating face to face is sometimes what is needed. My business is a people business, it’s not an electronic paperless always-on business – even if it does feel like that sometimes!

Dec 31 2011

2011 – what a year!

As you get older the years seem to slip by a bit quicker?

Looking back 2011 was pretty special in many ways. Certainly from a work perspective it was challenging. I can’t help but wonder what 2012 will bring – I’ll have a go at that little conundrum tomorrow!

So, what of 2011? Well the highlight was undoubtably the Wedding. No, not that one, the one where my ‘little’ girl married and became a Smillie. It was a proud day – and, for the first time in my life I dressed up as a girl – not once but twice. I wore a kilt and took on the mantle of Anni-Frid from Abba. People told me I wasn’t too good at the lipstick…

Jak, my youngest son who passed his driving test in 2010 got his first car – so can now drive me around, which is brilliant. He has also had two jobs! Adam continues to wait for Spielberg to spot him, but in the interim has moved on from his supermarket job and is now raising money for a charity.

We managed New York twice – which was a low-count year! It still remains my favourite place and I’m expecting we’ll be back there very soon. But I also managed to squeeze in a second trip to Shanghai and also a first trip to Istanbul with The University of Nottingham. Shanghai is worth a trip if you get the opportunity – I still haven’t mastered the language! Istanbul was an amazing City – I wished we had more time to look around.

My golf hasn’t moved on – despite two trips to Scotland. It is still a great place to go if you like the game described as a good walk spoiled! My handicap is resolutely stuck at 14. If only I could play to that!

I was also in Copenhagen when they had their worst storm for 30 years. That was for our friend Alan’s 50th birthday – which he was trying to keep secret. I know someone (who you know) who will be 50 in 2012. We may be keeping that one quiet!

One of the best ‘corporate’ events of the year was my trip to Downing Street – my claim to fame is that I spoke to an audience at Number 10. And not everyone can say that. It was a great night – especially as I have been into the Houses of Parliament earlier in the day.

There were lots of other good moments too, but I figure you will soon get bored of the list!

Dec 12 2011

Town Centre Shops – the future

We can all see the way in which retailers are currently headed. It is reckoned that there are over a dozen High Street names who are ‘at risk’ of failure. Their December Quarters rents are shortly due – unless that have made arrangements to shift payments to monthly frequencies.

This week Mary Portas is expected to publish a report tomorrow on the state of retailing – and her plan to get it to recover from the doldrums.

It is understood the report covers the issues about out-of-town shopping centres vs. In-town. You don’t have to be a planning expert to what these out of town centres have done to our Cities. They offer huge choice, easy access and generally free parking. That you can drive your car to shop door is seen as a high advantage. When they started this was all about ‘big box’ goods – but not so any more.

Of course the Supermarkets have followed suit; the latest stores are the size of most neighbourhoods. They too rely on you parking next to the store.

It is suggested that Mary Portas will address this issue – and either suggest a levelling of the playing fields – in suggesting out of town charge for parking (which sounds unlikely!) or – Cities should stop looking at parking as a revenue stream. This too looks to be challenging – especially in an era of financial austerity. But there is a point here. In the last week or so I have spent a large sum in Nottingham’s car parks. The minimum charge in the centre is now £3.50 I followed a lady who was tutting about her £11.00 charge!

We have to find ways of making our centre’s attractive = the alternative is they will decline very quickly. My view is that it is a slippery slope – and we are atop it at the moment.

I have little hope in Nottingham though – if you go to a meeting at the City Council now – you get charged £4.00 to park at Loxley House.

Dec 11 2011

An English metaphor hits the buffers

On Friday one of our oldest metaphors reached the pearly gates. The painting of the Forth Road Bridge can no longer be used as an example of work that is never ending!

A painter I met on the San-Francisco Golden Gate Bridge - now endangered?

120 years ago the 2,467m long Bridge was finished and workmen then embarked on painting it – again and again.The suggestion was that by the time you got to the finish line you needed to start all over again.

But not now so. The 10 year paint job is finished – and the painters have hung up their dungarees and brushes, only to return in 25 years time. The new paint applied binds itself with the metal and so keeps out moisture – they used 240,000 litres of the stuff! It is usually applied to Oil Rigs.

Around 1,500 people are thought to have been involved in the project – with as many as 400 painters on the bridge in a single day at the peak. There were 4,000 tonnes of scaffolding needed to get at the structure.

So that’s it – you can no longer say that your work is like painting the Forth Bridge – unless you are planning a 25 year sabbatical?

Dec 2 2011

90,000 hits….

I have been so busy today, I have only just looked at my stats on the blog – and was delighted to see I have been clicked 90,000 times…I hardly felt a thing!

Thanks for dropping by – I wonder if we could make the magical 100,000 number by the end of the year. On the basis of the last few weeks, it is possible, but I have yet to make a decision about whether to take a few days off over Christmas… like last year. If I do then I figure we might make the 100,000 around Valentines day?

In the meantime, thanks again, it has been amazing so far -and I think I still have a couple of blogs in me yet!

Nov 21 2011

The High Line and Chelsea Village

This is one of our favourite parts of New York. I was here just after the High Line opened in 2009 – and had watched it being built (or rather re-built) over the preceding years.

The New York High Line - at Dusk

It really is one of the best pieces of public open-spaces in my view. The group of people who had the forethought to rescue it from demolition really do deserve a medal. It was frighteningly expensive to do – and when you visit you can see why. It meanders through buildings, over petrol filling stations and through pretty expensive real estate.

We were there at Dusk and the light was amazing – everything glowed pink. It was also really busy (not a good sign for a photographer!).

It has recently been extended northwards and now runs for nearly 1.5 miles.

But this whole area is a fantastic neighbourhood. This was The Meat Packing District (think Ronseal Tin!) but has now become the trendy part of town. Expensive boutique shops (Stella McCartney et al).

One of the best pieces of re-use of a building is the Chelsea Flower market. It is one of a handful of ‘shopping centres’ in New York. But comprises predominantly independent small shops – The Fat Witch Bakery and RonnyBrooks Dairy being two notable ones. It really has been well thought through – much of the original ‘industrial’ feel of the place remains. There are rough edges – this is no polished marble floored centre.

And I think that’s what New York does best. It doesn’t do the clinical sanitised centres we have become used to. Grunginess is character here. It may not have a long history as we do back home, but the history it does have, it celebrates and holds on to. It makes the shabbiness cool – but authentic too. There’s little pastiche here. What you see is what you get…

UPDATE

I have purchased the book about the story of the High Line – which contains some amazing images (and the story of how it was all saved).