Hansom: Goodwill to all men?

Glad to be present

It was good to see so many people eager to attend the Association for the Conservation of Energy’s 30th birthday party at the House of Commons terrace. It was a bit of a shame that headline speaker and cabinet minister Oliver Letwin didn’t appear to be one of them. Starting his speech he said: “I’m not here by choice,” as a sort of backhanded compliment to the persuasiveness of the association’s lobbyists. Still, Letwin was just one of a number of political bigwigs who turned up, including communities minister Don Foster, ex-energy secretary Chris Huhne and ex-housing minister Andrew Stunnell. Anyone would think politicians are still taking sustainability seriously.

Feeling blue

The extraordinarily high turnover of senior staff at former government design quango Cabe in recent months, capped by the departure of its director last week, has led to question marks being raised about its future. However the changes have led some wags to consider whether the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment - which used to be dubbed by some “Can’t Arrive Before Eleven” as its metropolitan staff were so slow to appointments in the sticks - might need another nickname change. Do the departures of chief executive David Kester and directors Diane Haigh, Tony Burton, and Nahid Majid in the last nine months have echoes of the management of another well known
London-based organisation? Could “Chelsea-style Administrators in the Built Environment” become the commission’s new moniker? Maybe. Unfortunately for Cabe, though, a Roman Abramovich-style sugar daddy who can solve its funding problems is exactly what it doesn’t have.

So good they named it twice

City traders following the market updates of contractor ISG last Friday were surprised to receive two statements ahead of its annual
general meeting on the same day. On closer inspection it turned out the second one was identical to the first, apart from the corrected spelling of its client “Center Parcs”. To be fair to ISG, the European holiday village developer does have an oddly spelt name. As Center Parcs’ Wikipedia page wryly notes, the firm’s name “is incorrect in every language”. In British English it would be Centre Parks, in American English Center Parks, and in French Centre Parcs. So surely we can forgive ISG in this case.

Happy new year!

This may be my 169th year at Building, but I’ve been as entertained as ever by the antics of the construction industry in 2012. We’ve partied everywhere from Tom Bloxham’s bubble house in Cannes, to the deputy ambassador’s flat in Bogota, Colombia. Along the way we’ve taken in a £150,000 chicken coup, a blouse designed for the late Michael Jackson, a collapsing cake replica of the Gherkin tower, drumming gorillas, Lego pandas, Hercules the Scottish grizzly bear, the man who ran away from the circus to join Davis Langdon and the unsettling prospect of a Sir John Armitt swimsuit calendar. Here’s to an equally entertaining 2013! Keep the gossip coming …

Festive charity

I’m pleased to bring news of two impressive six-figure charity fundraising efforts. Mike Chaldecott, managing director of British Gypsum, has raised £100,000 in a 100-day challenge, after encouraging male staff to get their legs waxed, customer service reps to bake hundreds of cupcakes and entire departments to dress up as cartoon characters. Chaldecott took on the challenge - for homelessness charity CRASH and Macmillan Cancer Support - after an anonymous donor promised to add £20,000 to the total if he could raise £80,000 in 100 days. Derwent London meanwhile raised £195,000 for the Teenage Cancer Trust at its 10th annual fundraising lunch at The Dorchester in London.