Glowing like a worm that’s spent £800,000 in the pub

Pub wisdom
Liverpool council’s neighbourhood management scheme Include is back in the headlines because Newcastle council has adopted the programme.

What’s less well-known is that Liverpool councillor Richard Kemp, one of the initiative’s founders, nurses hurt feelings over the similarity between the Include brand (created in 2001) and the National Housing Federation’s In Business for Neighbourhoods (created last September).

He says: “We spent £2000 on a focus group at the pub and they spent £800,000 on a PR consultant to get the same result.”

Of course, it would be wholly wrong to suggest the NHF could have got the same result spending its money in a pub.

We don’t need no education
The introduction of a curfew on under-16s in Chesterfield has not gone entirely to plan. Local police, backed by the council, last week said they would escort home unsupervised youngsters between 9pm and 6am.

Unfortunately, local papers reported the hours of curfew as being 9am to 6pm. The police and council were eager to reassure parents that children would not be detained on their way to school.

Lego of me
Carping from the sidelines is a skill at which opposition politicians excel – until that unhappy day when they gain power and have to make good on their moans.

In Newcastle, the Liberal Democrats promised to get rid of an unpopular piece of civic art, dubbed “The Lego Men”. The day after their victory in June, new regeneration supremo Greg Stone was pictured holding a hammer to the statue.

But just two months later, the Lego Men have won a reprieve: the proposal to replace them was rejected by planners.

Ooh, you are awful
Landlords in Brighton would rather rent to George Michael than Andrew Ridgeley – it’s official. According to a survey carried out by local letting agent Outlet, 67% of landlords would rather have gay and lesbian tenants, believing them to be more easy-going and cleaner than heterosexuals.

“There’s definitely a correlation between house-pride and gay pride,” opined one landlord (and bastion of political correctness).

Bangers ‘n’ cash
Chelsea Bridge Wharf – the London housing scheme that counts accountants and lawyers as key workers if they work on public sector contracts – has caused ire among the other key workers who live there. It’s all about the small matter of a £1850 annual car park charge.

Street parking is banned at the development, so teachers and nurses have to stash their old bangers next to the Porsches in the underground parking lot, and they haven’t been given a discount.

Glow slow

We all know social housing is about more than bricks and mortar, but now one architect is on a mission to prove it. Marcin Panpuch has confided his vision for the future of off-site manufacturing: rather than bricks, wood panelling or even plastic composites, he wants to make homes from a genetically engineered cross between fibrous plants and bacteria that produce glow-in-the-dark chemicals.

“This would mix elements of glowing and being quite stiff,” he says. Sadly, though, it will be “at least 12 years” before we can chuck out our lightbulbs for good?

Source

Housing Today