Tour Of Britain Route through Chesham 12th Sept 2014

Idea 348 - sell suff on Ebay

I often have idea for opportunities or things to do, mostly I end up getting enthusiastic about them but don’t actually do them. Things like going up Ben Nevis on a Space hopper, or training for a marathon by walking 26 miles faster each day until I’m practically running it, and eventually im faster than Mo Farah, or maybe I’ll write a book of short stories all interlinked to cause some sort of global catastrophe, sort of an inspector calls meets 1984. 

Well my latest idea may not be original but I quite like it. The idea is that I find something as cheap as I can possibly find, Less than 50p, then I sell it on E-bay hopefully for a profit. So say I sell it for 60p after postage and E-bay fees, well now I have 60p to spend on something to sell.  This time I sell it for £1.24 and then £2.67, maybe then I have a setback and on sell it for £1.87 but I’m still up overall. And before you know it im buying a Fire Engine just think what I may end up with!

I probably won’t do it but the thought of it is quite appealing, Not sure where I’d buy the stuff from, probably not E-bay but charity shops and car boot sales to start with then maybe antique dealers then maybe the international boat show.

Women at work

Professional women at work

I’ve blogged about images before on this blog and so when I read Danny Golding’s post  regarding the trouble he was having finding suitable images for his new enterprise (Work Out Loud). The post got me thinking.

His post is primarily about how all of the available pictures are overly stylised pictures of young suited men. He goes on to explain there are very few photos available of working women, just lots of suits.  

Asi get most of my images from Wiki commons I thought I’d check what their selection of Working Women looked like, and it seems the view of the open media community is just as stereotypical. Here's the wiki commons page for when you search “Women at work”

The first thing I noticed was the categorisation which included

•  “Men and women at work” - Which would be ok if there were also suitable categories of “women at work”, but with the others it appears to define working women as only possible alongside men.
• Peasant women – So peasant women have to do some manual work or bake bread, but surely paid employment is not possible?
• Bikini Car Wash – Which bizarrely implies that one of the most popular jobs for women is to wash men’s cars with very little clothes on.
• Working mothers – so those that aren't defined by men, undertaking manual tasks or washing men’s cars are only working because their mothers.

The picture that come up in the first place are mostly historical black and white pictures which is not uncommon for Wiki commons but does give the impression that women used to work but that no modem women has a job worth photographing.  Filter the historical pictures we’re back to manual tasks and bikini’s. There are also a number of photos of women in uniform, police, flight attendants, nurses, ect ect, and whilst that’s all fine and dandy I can’t believe it proportional to the jobs that women actually undertake.

But now there is something you can do to redress the balance, Wiki commons is an open community so if you have more appropriate images of women at work why not upload them to commons.wikimedia.org

World Cup Stats - Who has the toughest group

A bit of world cup stats for you. Answer me this who has the toughest group? Well luckily FIFA helpfully rank each team, based on previous performance. So if you add up the rankings for each group you get a comparative value. So Group A has Brazil ranked 11^th (Crazy as that might sound), Croatia 18^th,  Mexico 24^th and Cameroon 59^th. So collectively the ranking for the group totals 112. In theory at least the toughest group should be the one with the lowest collective ranking.

So here goes in order from easiest to hardest.

• v  D (Uruguay, Italy, England, Costa Rica) – 56
• v  G (Germany, US, Portugal, Nigeria) – 57
• v  B  (Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia) -78
• v  C (Colombia, Greece, Cote d’Ivoire, Japan) -80
• v  E (Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras) - 84
• v  F (Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Nigeria) - 101
• v  H (Belgium, Algeria, Russia, Korea Republic) -107
• v  A (Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon) - 112

So clearly Brazil have it easy as do Belgium, But unfortunately, Its official England are in the group of death. But only just by a hairs breath, Germany only have it one place easier, and with the US, Portugal and Nigeria in their group I think I’d prefer Englands.

One Subtle thing that you could toy with is the idea that the logic that in every group the 4^th team is very unlikely to get very far. Yet they account for the majority of the score, and there is considerable variance (23 >59). What if you treated them as outliers and ignored them. What if in effect you assumed that the 4^th ranked team was going to lose every match.

• v  B  (Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia) - 21
• v  D (Uruguay, Italy, England, Costa Rica) – 25
• v  G (Germany, US, Portugal, Nigeria) – 34
• v  C (Colombia, Greece, Cote d’Ivoire, Japan) -36
• v  E (Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras) - 50
• v  H (Belgium, Algeria, Russia, Korea Republic) - 51
• v  F (Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Nigeria) - 52
• v  A (Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon) - 53

Well the answer is not much changes, the toughest group becomes group B, with Spain and Netherlands in it hard to see Chile overcoming them. Group H also looks slightly worse off too but still Brazil have bar far the easiest group, even accounting for their own poor seeding they retain the easiest group.

None of this helps to work out who is going to win, that will be Brazil anyway, but the stats in sport are what I enjoy so a little distraction never hurt anyone.

What have these people got in common?

Monkey aka Masaaki Saka

TinTin

Fido Dido

Milky Bar Kid

hugh fearnley-whittingstall

Guy Martin

Chris Evans

Doug

Chris Addison

Apparently they all look like me, or least they looked like me at some point in my life. Well what do you think do they all look alike.

The app is dead, long live the cloud

Since the release of the I-Phone in 2007 mobile computing has been all about the app. In the 7 years that followed, we have grown used to customising our phones to a staggering effect. According to Staista there are now more than a million individual apps available for the I-phone alone. We spend approximately 2hrs and 19 mins on Apps each and every day(Flurry). Yet we only spend 23 mins a day through our mobile browser. This has led many to label the browser as just another app and certainly right now any org NFP or otherwise is not reaching its market effectively if it doesn't have an app. I can't help thinking that the age of apps is going to be a short lived blip in the history of computing, given that were only 7 years in to this mobile revolution we have a long way to go before we reach a new world order.

Apps are marketed to us as a way of personalising our content getting what we want on our devices, yet what is more personalised than a google search i simply type in what I want and the google fairies supply. No the real reason for the current app revolution is partly to allow companies to stake a permanent presence in your pocket but mainly its to account for the still pitiful download speeds and the lack of network coverage. The app essentially allows us to continue accessing services that we want even when we in a lead lined box at the top of mt Everest.

The computing industry has been through such a period before, and you only have to go back to the 90's to a period before broadband and to a time when we could all hear our data flying across our phone lines in blips and white noise. It was a time of client and servers of fat clients, and of desktop applications. It was a time when we actually installed programs on our PC's and the trick for developers was to pack as much coding into your machine as possible. Nowadays however its all about cloud computing, No longer are we constrained by network access so now companies want to hold all of our information in one place and let us access it anywhere, they want us to trust them and have us as continual presence in their pockets. Its good for us too, it removes a lot of headaches for when things go wrong and lets us get away with much lower specifications.

So now that we've looked back 10 years lets roll forward another 10, in 2024 after a decade of unprecedented investment in our mobile infrastructure we now have web 10.0 and 8G connection speeds, we have city wide Wi-Fi that even seeps into tunnels and can cope with huge concurrence. In these situations the mobile cloud becomes a far better option and the browser bounces back. No longer do we need to both with updating apps each week, no longer do we need to worry f we have space on our phones for all that data, e don't want to wait for an ap to be installed no we just want those services available when we want them. Of course our phones know who we are and can authenticate this to providers so we're guaranteed a secure and personalised service wherever we go. So it leaves nothing left for apps and smartphones themselves become nothing more than just things, and yes there will be a form factor to make some nicer than others but in the same way as we've seen with laptops there are lesss and less to differentiate the brands so we care less and less about the branding.

So may I be the first to give the app with a terminal diagnosis. Yes right now you need an app but if you don't have one already you've missed the boat and your better to let it sink and prepare to surf the next wave. The future is all about making your services accessible and personalised wherever your members or supporters want to access them. Yes if you can knock out an app quickly do it if only to grab a valuable spot on a mobile devices. Do so for the short term, and do so in such a way that it fits with a wider digital strategy
which feeds your supporters with the right information however they access your services. Use industry wide services and protocols to allow users to validate who they are then remember what and more importantly how they want to look for. Make this journey as quick and simple as possible for your users and they will come back Most importantly don't shun mobile internet, there are big clouds looming ready to provide some Epic waves and for your supporters will surf them.

Internet of Members \ Salesforce1 World tour

Earlier today, I went along to the Salesforce 1 World tour, to find out what their latest offerings have to offer for the NFP and charity sector.  Sales force as a company are unashamedly sales orientated their language and style is exuberant to say the least and the event had a personality to match. The keynote speeches include lasers, gymnastics displays and even a Salesforce controlled drone. The day saw them announce proudly that Heron Tower is set to become Salesforce tower, in typically larger than life move. 

Despite its NFP foundation, despite its 1/1/1 commitment and despite some pretty big charity’s on their books, the whole Salesforce Ecosystem just doesn't seem to gel, with the sector, at least not in the UK. You have to work hard to see beyond the showmanship and look to the functionality of the platform then you begin to see a flexible solution that does some really neat tricks. The question is can you get through all that bluster.  The exhibitors at the event where all part of the Salesforce Ecosystem, i.e those working within or on the salesforce platform. They fell largely in to 2 categories Apps or implementation partners. It’s fair to say that none of them had a specific NFP focus. There were some rather cool apps on display Riva CRM integration, Cognizant and Cipher cloud to name 3. But as with any smartphone app store there are lots of apps and finding the right one for your requirement is not a simple task for a charity to understand.

Theoretically, it’s possible to implement Salesforce without an implementation partner, and a big part of Salesforce 1 is to increase what admin users can do, and to speed up user led change. But for a NFP it remains beyond the key skill set of the organisation so better to look for an implementation partner. But here too the Salesforce Ecosystem is huge and as with anything else there are partners and there are partners. Some understand the sector, but from the conversations I had at Salesforce 1 it’s clear that most don’t.  Most focus is on delivering Salesforce and making the platform do whatever it is that you want it to do, irrespective of who you are, talk to them about specific functionally such as an organisational renewal process, or member events, and they approach it as just another sales process, which to an extent is true but rather misses the point. 

It would be very easy to rule out Salesforce, and look to a more sector specific CRM, but the fact remains, it has some good functionality and can deliver just what some charities or associations need. If you've decided you need a CRM, it would be folly not to at least look at Salesforce, just as it would be not to look at dynamics, but you also include more sector friendly solutions.

The big tag line of the moment is “Internet of Customers” which is an evolution of the “Internet of things” concept where an internet world connects everything, from your smartphone to you clothing, from your fridge to the light switch. The concept is a good one that points out that behind every THING is a customer, and I’d like to move on the debate one step further by starting to talk about an “Internet of members”, or even an “internet of supporters”. If you remove the sales speak the principal is the same, and that hasn't changed for years. The people you want to engage are out there and they will do what they do in any number of ways our job is to create interactions that work for them so that we can progress organisational goals, and this is just what CRM’s should enable.  So think about what your members\supporters are doing day to day, then what they want from your NFP. The last question is what you can do to make those interactions as simple as intuitive as possible.

Book review - Sharpes escape

With Sharpe novels you know what to expect, they follow a largely formulaic plot. Sharpe the underdog up from the ranks hunts down challenges in the face of adversity against the establishment that he hates and loves. Not satisfied with impossible odds success Mr Cornwall throws in a classic gory battle scene, where the entire army relies on Sharpe and Wellington to save them. Throw in a very loose romance a few dead ensigns and worthy villain and you have a Sharpe novel. So you'd expect them to rather tedious yet like titanic and the Easter story, knowing the story doesn't detract from the humanity of the story. This is what Sharpe's Escape does very well.

All through the story Sharpe, Harper and Vincente, are put in impossible situations with 0% chance of success each time they must surely die, yet as a reader you know they must survive you don't know how but they simply must survive. Even though Sharpe is locked in an impregnable cell behind enemy lines with the 95th Light company on the other side of the country led by a fool, you know that somehow it is Sharpe that will burst in just in the nick of time to rescue the day and then go on to lead by example and show that in its day the British army and in particular the Baker rifle was the best in the world. He'll do all this with a inane loyalty that is never repaved, and shear bloody mindedness.

One difference between this and other books in the series is that previous encounters have had the classic parallel story of Sharpe's personal mission building along side a major army ambition led by Wellington. This has inevitably meant a highly descriptive detailed battle scene at the end of the book, and whilst Sharpe's escape does deliver a battle at the end the far more interesting one is at the start and in truth the battle never really stops, but in this book you get right into the action from page 1.

If you've read and enjoyed the previous shapre novels don't hesitate, jump straight into this one, you'll love it. If your new to Sharpe then there is as always a question as to where to start, the consciousness seems to be to start with Sharpe's Tiger and work through chronologically, that makes the most sense. Ultimately, however, it doesn't matter where, and Sharpes Escape is as good as any place to start, it is a self contained story that provides you with all the background you need to get straight into it. Sharpes Tiger remains one of my favorite books and this latest offering is every bit the book it needs to be and as always on a grey day on the metropolitan line, Sharpe has proved to be this bloggers perfect Escape.

Chesham Blossom - A photo blog

Here’s my first attempt at a photo blog, not sure what makes it different from a normal photo album but lets see. Some of you may know that I’ve helped to set up a community orchard in Chesham and at present there is Blossom everywhere you look so I spent Saturday taking some photos with my phone in and around Chesham to show what an amazing place our orchard will be in a few years time.

So heres the output, lots of photos of Blossom.

This ones from Four Acre Field in chesham, Its a wild apple tree taken which appears to have grown from a wild apple thrown from a footpath which runs across some community land owned by waterside school.

. Ok, so this isn't a Blossom picture but it is another lovely sight in the springtime

Blossom from an ornamental Quince in my back garden, The fruit is horrid but the flowers are lovely.  

 Taken later in the afternoon, its of an unknown variety, again from a footpath in Chesham, just by the McMinn depot, on an unused factory site.

I think this is a wild Cherry but to be honest im not sure, Its from Lowndes park but could be anywhere. With the blue sky background its positively inviting the Summer to draw in. 

One from Amersham Where you have to pay for such a beautiful blossom display.

Just for the record please free to use these pictures as you see fit, for non-commercial use with attribution. I'm happy for you to re-use them and will upload them on to commons.wikimedia.org before too long.

Latimer Road, Chesham

This post is about a particular road in Chesham which I drive down each and every day so if your not local maybe just wait for my next post. Latimer Road is a a 2 mile stretch of road just wide enough for 2 cars and only a few junctions. When we moved to Chesham it used to have a speed limit of 60 miles per hour and I would enjoy driving down it at speed it was that sort of enjoyable road. I would convince myself that I knew the road well and that it was safe for me to go at that speed. However, its not the case for everyone, and in the 3 years that I had been diving along the road at 60 mph I personally witnessed the direct aftermath of 4 crashes, speed was undoubtedly a factor in all of them. So I don't really have any real complaint that for the last year the speed limit has been lowered to 40mph and in parts 30mph. Especially when in the last year I know of no significant accident along that stretch.

The road itself comes into a quiet bit of Chesham and turns in to Waterside, which is a built up 30 mph zone and always has been, living just off waterside I still see cars traveling at great speed coming into town past a school and a local park. My dog was hit by a 4x4 in this stretch of road (no lasting damage) and several cats have perished. I fear its only a matter of time till something worse happens. I'm quite unforgiving with people who have little awareness of their surroundings thus risking the lives of others without even realizing. Lets hope the police commissioner is willing to take action.

My issue now is that so many people just ignore the speed limit and drive too fast along even the 30mph bit. I understand its difficult, it takes great effort on my part to drive so slowly along a stretch of road I know so well but I manage it. I've turned it into a bit of a game, in which I drive at the speed limit all the way and then by the time I get to my road, I count the number of cars that I have caught. Most days I have snared at least 4 cars and my record believe it or not is 12. I also get regularly overtaken along the winding narrow road and quickly lose sight of them as they disappear into the path of oncoming traffic. Also a problem is that without an opportunity to overtake safely drivers often feel the need to drive within a single car length of my bumper as if they can pressure me into going that little bit faster but leaving them no room to react let alone break if something where to go wrong. The only safe thing for me to do is to reduce my speed so as to try and give me more time to react knowing that if something happens i'm going to have a car in my backside.

You might expect the speeders to fit a certain category, young boy racers in low riding cars, but from my anecdotal reckoning they don't fit a particular profile. They are young and old men and women. It does seem that 4x4's are over represented as are white vans, but apart from that i haven't noticed any trend. I don't know why they want to go so fast, though I do understand that their is a certain adrenaline and a belief that you'll get somewhere quicker, but the reality is that it makes no discernible difference. If you could drive the whole stretch at 60 it would take you 2 minutes to get the whole way, at 30 for a mile and 40 for the other it would take you 3 1/2 . So really for a minute and half can't they just relax, the journey would really be a lot simpler.

Could NHS £10 a month charge be a good thing

A few weeks ago, there was statement by Lord Warner suggesting  that a £10 month charge for NHS services could stop it sliding further into decline. See more at

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/31/nhs-users-pay-membership-charge

It has proved controversial to a number of people as one of the core principals of the NHS is that it is for everyone, and free at point of use, so any charging mechanism is a difficult thing to swallow. However with a few changes i think a monthly charge could work.

• £10 a month is a lot of money for some but nothing for others, so I would change it to a sliding scale of charges with those unemployed paying nothing and those earning the most paying much much more. 
• a separate fee makes it very difficult to administer so I'd set it up to run via HMRC and take it directly from peoples payroll's and thus ensuring income is maximised. 
• In the same way we are moving to universal credit, we should also move to universal charging where all government charges are collected through the same general mechanism. We could call this system Income Tax?

So yes if the NHS needs more money to survive and to ensure we all get the services that we need then increasing costs need to be met by the country and a charge as suggested should be introduced, but instead of a separate charge why not just progressive and general taxation, its far simpler, fairer and requires less administration .

Chesham 2 - St Neots 0

In the past people have been far too quick to talk down Chesham, as a sleepy backwater full of urbane degenerates. More recently though I've noticed that the town has begun to have a bit of a spring in its step, a certain vibrancy and positivity within its population which could really make it into something special in the future. The people of Chesham never used to know how lucky they were, and now they are beginning to realize and it feels great. So i'm going to take a quick look at a few things that Chesham does really well.

Community

There may be several distinct area in Chesham but each has its own personality and each belongs to Chesham. Collectively there are some real positive things going on, Be it my own Community Orchard project, The Pop-Up restaurant, The Art shop, Local food market, Carnival, Transition town. The list is literally endless and full of people getting together to do something fun locally. None of these activities cost the earth, and they aren't essential but that's whats good about them. They all are generated from the ground up, and they are led by local people who just want to do something locally. We're not short of local heroes either, you don't have to look to hard to bump into someone doing something good locally, and you know what it makes a difference. The local facilities too are good We have our own Library, 2 swimming pools and a number of local community halls. The churches and mosques are open and inclusive and together they pull together in the name of Chesham. I've even heard rumors of something awesome happening on the High street on the 12th at 1pm, involving foxes perhaps? Something that St Neots can only dream of.

Sport

Who'd of thought it but even from a sporting perspective things are on the up At the weekend the mighty Generals beat St Neots 2 Nil to stretch the unbeaten run to 11 games, we have a fairly decent cricket club a brilliant community focused rugby club not to mention a burgeoning Bowls league that St Neots can only dream of. International sport too finds its home in Chesham, this year stage 6 of the Tour of Britain brings the worlds best cyclists to our doorstep. Hands down we beat St Neots int he sporting department.

Commercial activities

Now here you must all think St Neots has a chance but you know what its blown out of the water. OK we don't have a McDonalds, a KFC, or a pizza Express. OK, so all the chain stores don't see value in our little high street and you won't find an M&S in our town, but you know what? We don't need any of that rubbish, they are what kills a high street and makes it just like any other so if you do want a New Look go ahead move to St Neots, We'll keep our Butcher, Baker and our Candlestick maker. Does St Neots have a brewery shop? No, what about 2 different markets? A cobbled High Street that kids can run around and enjoy themselves with ease? Ok so we have a few too many charity shops and not enough restaurants, but even our charity shops are good, well stocked and with lots of rich peoples cast offs. So what if we're a quiet Waitrose Town but at least you can do your shopping in piece. There are also some hidden gems in Chesham too that only the aficionados would discover, How about a bit Chiltern ridge apple juice for  Or Auberge de Chocolate, which make high class chocolaty goodness right on our doorstep. We've even got an entirely fictional bus service. So St Neots Do your worst what have you got that our high street doesn't?

Environment

So St Neots, Here is our trump card, does the Abbreviation AONB mean anything to you? Whats that you say your nearest bit of natural eye candy is the Norfolk broads? HA! I laugh in you general direction. Chesham is Beautiful Its official it is right next to An Area Of Natural Beauty, and a natural gateway to the Chilterns which is internationally recognized as a natural haven, right on the edge of one of the worlds greatest Cities, (No St Neots 60 miles is not close and Cambridge isn't that great). Not only do we have Red Kites everywhere, but we have several endangered and special species both of flowers, and animals, including a Butterflies which you only get on chalk aquifers. If your anywhere in Chesham I could spin you around and set you off in a straight line and within 5 minutes you would be in a natural wonder with vistas worthy of the lake district or the Highlands, and all of this is a well kept secret so you don't get overwhelmed with tourists, Other than the odd coach load of DofE students.

Killer Fact

I could go on about the History, the People, the gardens, not to mention the Beer. But i'll leave all that for later posts, so for now I'll leave you with one last Killer Fact and a challenge to St Neots. So the killer fact on why Chesham trounces St Neots is Lama's! Go on St Neots Show me the Lama*!

* This actual Lama is not actually a resident of Chesham, The real ones are a little camera Shy.

Devil May Care - Classic Bond, Re-told

Devil May Care captures the spirit of Fleming perfectly, and does so without the outdated attitudes of the time. In terms of plot its exactly what you'd expect from a bond story, even if it is a touch too movie orientated. All the key elements are there, the car chases, the gadgets, the women, the Megalomaniac with a physical deformity and a grand plan to bring down the British Empire. Its a good holiday read, and for fans of Fleming, the novel continues on smoothly from previous stories, but whilst Fleming seems to have grown tired by the end, Faulks is revitalized and brings the story alive with his creativity and a way of building a plot that despite the story having been told 20 times before still excites.

The original Bond novels where by today's standards racist, sexist and homophobic, which at times made them hard reading and would almost certainly have prevented Fleming from getting published in today's world. So Faulks had a challenge to keep true to a Bond that in its nature was outdated and a sociological dinosaur, especially as the story carries on directly from "The Man With The Golden Gun". Faulks does this by focusing on Bond's recovery and deliberately introducing an aspect of modernisation into the secret service, and the wider world order, which places Bond as the old guard, and allows significantly toned down views, so he remains sexist but realizes that its an outdated view, there is a gay character who is the figure of some ridicule, but its done in a way that openly reflects the time. What isn't there is the crass Bond who magically cures the Lesbian instincts of Pussy Galore, and gone too is the racisim, instead Faulks focuses on how Gorner (Arch Criminal with Anglophobia and a dodgy hand) manipulates and exploits those in poverty. The result is that it allows the Bond character to be re-positioned in a world and an age that Flemming lived but that has thankfully moved on from.

Another change in storytelling since Fleming's day, has been the increase in sex and swearing and violence in novels. So Devil may care certainly does notch up the descriptive nature , But comparatively to other modern fiction it remains conservative, and thankfully Faulks is very tasteful about Bond's woo'ng of the love interests, and has managed to stay away from swearing almost entirely. One thing that hasn't been modernised in Bonds character is the drinking and especially the smoking, we find the main characters smoking at every interval, and whilst it undoubtedly would have been the case at the time, i don't like the growing trend of role models smoking in modern fiction and TV.

There are some nice references to earlier novels that pop up throughout the book and for those who have read the Flemming back catalog they will jump off the page, but for those new to Bond they will just add a little bit of color to the story. A number of old stories are name checked and old arch-villains referenced all in order to give the bond character depth for new readers. Some of the familiar characters of the past make a reappearance too, Leiter, Ponesenby, Housekeeper May, and of course M and Moneypenny But sadly no reference to Quarrel,or his decadence.

I've certainly read more gripping stories with more complicated plots and better developed characters. I've read more realistic crime novels and certainly more believable plot lines. But none of this is what bond is about and ultimately as a Bond novel Devil May Care certainly stands its own, and it's up there with the best of Fleming Bond stories. Its light hearted even humorous at times yet still packs a punch rattles along at a pace and manages to make the incredible seem plausible and great evil seem laughable. The books should be great escapism for those stuck on a busy commuter train, and easy to read on the beach in some far off land. With such an expectations would have been very easy for a talented writer such as Faulks to have retained too much of his own depth and to have completely miss-played the story, but thankfully Devil May Care was an easy and enjoyable read throughout, and noble addition to the Bond plot line.

CentrePoint - a new page - or back full circle?

I currently work in the 27th tallest building in London, and a landmark in central London. Built in 1966, Centrepoint has been many things to many people. But for my company and I it has most recently been a workplace. All that is about to change as the building is set to undergo a major change. Its set to become plush new housing, so today is our last day in the building before heading off for a new page of our own on Friday.

Growing up in London you can't miss the rather drab looking building that towers over the end of Oxford street, marking the end of London's best known shopping street, it also sits on a road that through the 90's could guarantee a bargain for techies, yet turn your eye half a turn and you find the luvies of theater land. Location wise you couldn't find a better place to provide 32 floors of offices, yet it stood empty for years. As a child I never understood this and I wasn't alone, it proved to be controversial in a number of ways but the developers where effectively speculating on the chance of finding a single tenant. This led to the government offering to buy the building for 5 million pounds, maybe if we had bought it in 1972 we could now have afforded to buy another couple of banks. It eventually became the home of the CBI and a number of other tenants, ourselves included.

Homeless Charity

Another side to the building was the link to the homeless charity and again growing up I couldn't work out how a homeless charity could afford to build a huge building like this and keep it empty. At one stage I even thought that it was the worlds largest Homeless hostel and that the entrance was a rather salubrious snooker hall. In 1974 local activists aimed to squat inside the building to draw attention to the plight of the homeless and reasoning that an empty building such as this should be used for the benefit of the homeless. Around this time the homeless charity Centrepoint was born. It seems the link is purely co-incidental but its rather a good story to think of it as a reaction to the excesses of property speculation that led to the building of a concrete empty building and contrasting to the hundreds of homeless people sleeping on the cold streets within its Shadow.

Its design too is controversial and rather Brutalist, its just Glass and concrete jutting up from the ground rather, well, brutally. Modern sky scrappers like the Shard and the Gherkin are for me far more beautiful. But the building is Grade 2 listed and has won plaudits for it rather uncompromising style. Its certainly deemed nice enough to be suitable for its next phase of life as a home for the rich. One things for sure the views from the building are like no other in the London, and therefore the world. London's newer Skyscrapers are grouped together in the east, but Centrepoint stands alone right in the middle and offers 360 degree views in to the heart of the worlds greatest City.

Future 

So its not really a surprise that the future for the building takes it back in one sense to its controversial roots. Where as the property boom of the 60's and 70's provided profit opportunities even for an empty office building. The property boom now provides a profit opportunity for largely empty housing. Whilst the plans do include obligatory affordable housing, largely the tower itself will be Luxury flats all I'm sure will be sold for in excess of a million pounds. When you look around London at that property band most houses remain empty for 90% of the time operating as a base for the few days a year when the International owner has a meeting in London. So once again there will be a stark contrast between the super rich and the super poor sharing a single doorway. Its ironic that what was controversial back in the 70's is commonplace 50 years later.

One thing is for sure I'll miss the views, but not the rather complicated lifts.