So, Mr Bond...

Entente nationale

Word reaches me of some dastardly French protectionist antics. Some European nations recently berated France for trying to prop up its car industry with huge loans in return for promises not to relocate factories abroad. Now I hear that if you dust off your best schoolboy French and book tickets for Mipim via its Paris office, you can get two tickets for the price of one. No doubt some disgruntled Brits will grumble that this is an attempt by the French to keep Mipim, well, French. I very much look forward to seeing these grumbles produce results – perhaps Mipim 2010 in Torquay?

At least the trains will run on time

I hear that in Dubai construction work has finished on Trump Towers. No, not the Atkins-designed development that was put on hold last December, but the Dubai metro station for the £500m scheme, which has been completed ahead of many of the others on its line. The only problem is, nobody has a reason to get off there. The construction site itself contains nothing but a pile of earth, a couple of empty cranes and a typically understated hoarding carrying the slogan “ordinary is for other people”. Maybe “ordinary is what happens when the credit runs out” would have been more accurate.

A step too far?

Is Camilla Parker Bowles to perform the tango on Strictly Come Dancing? It may seem unlikely, but should this frightening spectacle ever materialise, it’s a fair bet that it will be the result of a plot hatched at the CIOB dinner. The Duchess of Cornwall, whose great-great-grandfather Thomas Cubitt was one of the founder members of the organisation, spent two hours deep in conversation with guest speaker John Sergeant at the event in London’s Guildhall last Wednesday. And as sex god Sergeant can testify, the programme is very useful for winning over a sceptical public...

Bonfire of the freebies

With BRE’s controversial Green Guide to Specification now online, we were surprised when a hardback copy turned up in the post recently. That can’t be environment-friendly, can it? A brief chat with someone from BRE then revealed that a hardcopy publication was part of the original contract with the publisher, but they did have another useful suggestion for the weighty tome. “If fuel costs start to rise again, you could always use it as solid fuel,” said our source. Now that’s what I call inflammatory material.

A cunning disguise

A man bearing the name-tag “Kevin Whittle” confused the crowd at the Institution of Civil Engineers’ awards do last Thursday with his remarkable resemblance to Mark Whitby, Ramboll Whitbybird’s chairman. On closer inspection, it was indeed Whitby schmoozing over wine and quiche – despite the badge on his chest claiming otherwise. The engineer blamed his eyesight for the “mistake” and left early. Was this a brazen attempt to seek out trade secrets incognito or does Whitby just need new glasses?

Don’t panic! Don’t panic!

I’m told the spirit of the Second World War – or at least of Dad’s Army – surged through a BRE meeting in Watford last month. British attendees of “Passivhaus: The Backbone of Zero Carbon?” derailed plans to make the German building standard synonymous with zero-carbon housing. “The whole event smacked of orchestration by BRE who have an association with Passivhaus,” a indignant informant told Building.

But fear not, apparently Blighty triumphed in the end. “The group reacted in the best of British,” said our man proudly. “The whole focus on carbon was challenged and effectively replaced by energy efficiency and conservation.” Doubtless we shall fight them on wind-turbine-clogged beaches, too.