Former Midland HQ Up For Sale

An impressive freehold building at 27-55 Poultry, the former headquarters of the Midland Bank, has been put on the market with Knight Frank appointed to handle the sale.

Planning permission had been received to turn the building into a hotel, but when the owners, Poultry Developents Ltd, defaulted on a loan, administrators were called in.

(via PropertyWeek.com)

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New balls please!

Epic game of tennis last night with Andy Murray and the very un-Swiss sounding Stanislas Wawrinka taking it to a breathtaking climax under the new Centre Court roof long after darkness had fallen outside. It was a great advert for tennis and I’m sure the BBC will be happy with their viewing figures.

But is appears as though not everything at Wimbledon is about the unsullied love of tennis and The Evening Standard has pointed out that RBS, the bank the government bought with your money, is spending £300,000 on an entertainment suite during the Championships. Whilst exploding with the usual tabloid shock by contrasting what a regular ticket-holder has to pay against what corporate entertainment provides they do lift the covers on RBS’s apparent attempts to keep this taxpayer-funded expense away from casual gaze, possibly suggesting some degree of comprehension on RBS’s part that the public may not wholly understand quite why RBS are spending their money on partying with people who could probably afford it anyway while your average Joe and Jane Public has to cut back on their spending.

If true it seems as though some parts of RBS still haven’t got the message or understood what’s been going on for the last few months and doesn’t bode well for their rehabilitation from profligate risk-takers to responsible financiers.

The Evening Standard - RBS at the tennis
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/

Michael Jackson Fans in Liverpool St Flashmob

A day after the death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, fans assembled in Liverpool St at 5pm tonight for moonwalk and singalong. I saw the plans surface on Twitter, and I think the plan was to go into the station, but judging by this cool vid, it seemed to happen out in the street. I don’t think there’s many figures from the world of enterrainment that could inspire such a response from fans.

Were you amongst the crowd in Liverpool St? What was the atmosphere like? Why did you go? Share any thoughts, or links to more pictures and vids in the comments below.

Friday Round-up

Apparently some entertainer by the name of Michael Jackson died last night? Does anyone know about it? Seriously though the office, and apparently the internet and all forms of known media seem to have gone nuts about it. I have to confess that I was never really a fan and for me his greatest moment was getting Eddie Van Halen to play the guitar solo on “Beat It”, which shows which way the musical wind blows in my music collection. At least that means I won’t be having to get a refund on his farewell tour tickets but for fans who want to mark his passing, and the simply curious, there are plans for a mass moonwalk at Liverpool Street station tonight at 6pm, details at http://is.gd/1e7st

Regular readers may remember the Leadenhall Market Diamond Hunt and they’ve released a photo of the lucky winner, Rob Nicol, together with Speckled Tim who was the Hunt’s mascot and guide. They’ve got a host of other events on over the summer so head on over to their website for more info.

I’m hoping to be off to the Master Gunner pub up on Moorgate in a bit, assuming the rain holds off, but as I’ve managed to leave my mobile at home today (sob) there won’t be any tweeting going on.

Leadenhall Market
http://www.leadenhallmarket.co.uk/

The Master Gunner
http://www.themastergunner.com/home.htm

Pub review: The Paternoster

Pater Noster, as good Latin students will tell you, means Our Father and comes from the Lord’s Prayer. It’s also the name of a type of lift, now rarely used in this country for health and safety reasons, which probably obtained it’s name from the occupants being driven to prayer in the hope of a safe transit. Most recently it’s the name of a very good pub near St Pauls, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Paternoster is tucked round behind Paternoster square and is only a few yards from both St Pauls station and the cathedral itself and as I was in the area checking out the City of London Festival events I popped in for a drink in between times. It’s a nice, airy place with traditional dark wooden panelling much in evidence but with two sides of the building being open to the light it’s far from gloomy. It was a late Friday lunchtime so I’d managed to miss most of the usual Friday rush and although there were plenty of folks still in there it didn’t feel crowded so I, and mate Paul, propped ourselves up against the bar and chatted with Rach.

It has a much better selection of wines than a number of the other local pubs I’ve been in and an equally wide selection of spirits, though you’ll have to forgive me the schoolboy chuckle when I spooted Knob Creek peeping out at me from the shelves (left). On the beer side they have the usual Youngs beers and a selection of bottled beers with the more interesting ones being the draft “Waggle Dance”, which has honey in it, and bottles of Wells & Youngs double-chocolate stout in the fridge next to the Banana Bread beer. We weren’t around for long enough to sample the food and they do have the standard pub fair of Fish and Chips, Sausage and Mash, hot and cold sandwiches, burgers and pies plus a range of more interesting dishes such as Welsh Rarebit, a couple of Goat’s Cheese dishes, BBQ baby porks ribs and potted shrimps.

Manager Rachel previously spent some time in Bristol before she was tempted back home to Oz for a while but then she returned to the UK and took over the reins at the Paternoster for pub chain Youngs late last year. She recently put on their first, and very successful, quiz night a couple of weeks ago with over 60 people participating and on the back of that she’s planning to book another one in mid-July, in addition to the live bands that they host peridodically in the evening.

As I said to Rachel I could quite happily turn up there at opening time one day and spend the whole day working my way through the selection of interesting wines and beers that are on offer, though my liver may not thank me for it. It’s a very nice spot with a buzzing, but gentle, ambience about it that makes it good for taking parties of people or just a lunchtime drink. Check their website (below) for updates on events and their special offers.

The Paternoster
http://www.thepaternoster.com/
http://twitter.com/PaternosterSq
2/4 Queen’s Head Passage
Paternoster Square
London, EC4M 7DZ

Food review: Farm Collective, Farringdon

The Farm Collective is in Farringdon on the corner of the appropriately named Cowcross Street where it joins Smithfield Market. Without going all Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on you I’m someone who likes to know where my food comes from (and I don’t mean ASDA) as I can’t stand bland and in my mind flavour, not quantity, is king which means making sure animals are looked after properly and that produce is properly grown and handled.

Having been to some decent restaurants in my time, and plenty of bad ones, I like to think that I know good food when I taste it and here, not a 5-minute train ride from my office, was a place that was saying “lets not forget that all of our produce tastes like food should; full or flavour, rich in goodness. Our food had credentials and it tastes brilliant.”. A frequent claim, but is it really true?

Having found the Farm Collective, a little tricky given the numbering scheme in Cowcross Street, I found it hard  to settle on a choice because they did seem to have all of the kinds of things I like and I eventually chose to go for the sausage and mash, seeing as I’ve probably tasted sausages from every end of the spectrum, both good and bad, so it’d make a good benchmark. 

Farm Collective is primarily a take-away although there’s a bench outside to sit on and a bar at the back with stools should you rather stay to eat, which in this instance I did. Taking a seat at the bar I tucked in and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve found that lesser sausages can have a variety of flavours and aftertastes that have nothing to do with meat but with these I got exactly what I wanted and happily devoured both the sausages and the creamy mashed potatos and began to reflect on what food can be, without turning into some kind of pretentious food luvvie or using phrases like “bursting with flavour“. The move in the food world, egged on by TV chefs, seems to be for food with a conscience and one of the pleasures in eating somewhere like the Farm Collective is that you know that your food wasn’t produced by the lowest cost provider but by people who genuinely care about what they produce.

I asked Craig, co-founder of the Farm Colletive with Dom, where my sausages had come from so he pointed me in the direction of Plantation Pigs where MD Hugh Norris has this to say about his pigs:
“Pigs are fascinating. Their curious shape, those improbably tough rubbery snouts perfectly designed for digging, their inquisitive and playful behaviour and not least their ridiculous attempts at sprinting. I am captivated by these marvellous animals.”
Doesn’t sound like someone in it for a quick buck or a slogan produced by a marketing focus group. I think I’m liking him already…
“We breed all our own pigs. We use ginger- and black-haired animals that can withstand the heat of a summer’s day and cold winter nights. Sows must be good mothers to rear their litters with the minimum of intervention from our stockmen. The breeds we use confer great qualities on the pork making it succulent and tasty. Its flavour will enhance both complex and simple dishes to provide a delicious, satisfying meal. Our pigs live outside in the fields. In summer they bathe in mud wallows to protect themselves from the sun. In winter we provide deep beds of clean straw for them to bury themselves in to keep warm. Plenty of fresh air and exercise helps to keep our pigs healthy and reduces the need for medication.”

So for £6.00, the price of a half-decent pub meal, I’d got something that was satisfying not just my lunchtime hunger but also going some way to supporting decent British farmers producing decent and tasty products.

I’m sold. I’ll be going back and working my way around the menu, although I’m going to have to try and fight off the sausage and mash temptation for sure. For the early risers they sell a variety of breakfast items and for those not into the hot food they have sandwiches and salads with ingredients as carefully sourced as my sausages. And they do deliveries too…

The Farm Collective
http://www.farmcollective.com/
91 Cowcross Street,
EC1M 6BH

Plantation Pigs
http://www.plantationpigs.co.uk

800 Saxophonists Do Their Thing in the City

As part of the City of London Festival, 800 Saxophonists took to the streets on Sunday to create the Leviathan - a work of living, monumental art. Snake line processions started at the City’s four historic gates - Bishopsgate, Ludgate, Aldgate and Moorgate - before arriving together at London Bridge where they performed a new piece of music composed by music  composed by John Harle.

The Leviathan was caught on camera by the excellent London SE1 website.

City MP’s Expenses Revealed

The redacted expenses of all MPs have been published on Parliament’s website, which means MPs are inevitably facing tough questions from their consitutents and local media at the moment. I took a look at the expenses of Mark Field - who represents the Square Mile as part of his Cities of London and Westminster constituency - to see if he had a clean bill of health.

Those hoping for scandals of related employees, second home flipping and moat cleaning will be disappointed in Field’s expenses - he tells me he has never remunerated a member of his family, does not qualify for second home allowances (being an Inner London MP) and indeed, has a history of calling for reform of the system, having written to the Speaker before the current controversy, asking for a ”total root and branch review with a resolve to scrap the ACA and introduce an entirely transparent pay and parliamentary expenses system for the future”.

Whilst Mr Field’s expenses don’t include duck island extragances, they do throw up a couple of questions which I put to the MP directly.

There are a number of claims in the expenses for the services of a PR company called “A Shore Thing”. I asked Mr Field to explain what function they had carried out on his behalf. He said:

“I employed on a part time basis the services of a communications specialist to help me get onto national and regional TV and radio shows as well as promoting my constituency interests in magazines and on websites”

Some may argue that profile raising activities should not be funded from the public purse, but Mark tells me he dispensed with their services after a year and he now has established his own regular media appearances which allows him to get a wider hearing for constituency related matters such as the wrongly imprisoned Sean Hodgson, the future of the antiquarian Cecil Court and the case of Ofcom whistleblower, Bob Winsor.

Some people’s eyes may have been caught by the claims for TV & internet packages that included optional movie and sports channels. When I asked the MP if it was reasonable for these to be included as an office expense, he explained that this was the result of an agreement with the fees office.

I agreed with the Fees Office in autumn 2005 that, rather than estimating an apportionment of costs for my home office computer system (hardware, maintenance, insurance and running costs) also used by my wife and an NTL package, which included internet connection, basic cable TV package (including news and parliamentary programmes) as well as sports and other optional channels, I should cover the full computer costs out of my own pocket and charge the entire monthly NTL bill to my IEP.
 

Mark contends that this arrangement, with him paying for this home computer’s maintenance, insurance etc from his own pocket, was actually beneficial for the taxpayer.

Perhaps the only piece of potential extravagance that I saw in Mark Field’s were claims for a £78 pocket diary planner from Smythsons - the luxury leather goods and stationery shop which is also in his constituency. I put it to Mark that there would have been cheaper alternatives to this luxury item. Mr Field informed me that the pocket diary from Smythsons was a very good one which contained a wide range of contact numbers and reference details and although he claimed for it in 2004 and 2005, he continues to use it in doing his job but asks family members to buy it for him  as a Christmas gift rather than put it through as an expense.

What do you think about Mark Field’s expenses? If you have a point of view, please feel free to add as a comment below.

Friday Round-up

The City of London Festival is a three-week long annual event which brings a variety of arts and art forms to the City residents and workers and I know from last year’s just how popular it was in my office with mainstream arts mixing with the decidedly unconventional, but highly entertaining.

The kick-off today is marked by a procession from the Guidhall at 12.30 finishing at St Pauls at 1.30 and then at 2.30 they’ll be a Street Piano event in Paternoster Square by St Pauls. The pianos will be around until July 13th so you’ve got plenty of time to find one and give it a go.

As one festival starts, so another finishes with it being the last day of the Spitalfields Summer 09 Music Festival and your last chance to catch the free lunchtime concert with the closing event being tonight’s concert by the Early Opera Company in Christ Church Spitalfields with early Italian compositions.

On my travels yesterday I bumped into two lovely, if decidedly cold, young ladies at Liverpool Street Station trying to tempt me into going to the London Playboy Party tonight at the Cafe de Paris. I’m otherwise engaged this evening so didn’t take them up on their offer though if you do go perhaps they’ll be able to afford to buy some of their lovely models some clothes…

So I worked with a murderer - part 2

You may want to read part 1 before reading this

I looked up the phone number for the local police station in the area where the murder had taken place and cautiously called it, convinced in my own mind that I was just going to give them a couple of names and then ring off. Eventually I got through to the team who were doing the investigating and and blurted out the information before trying to make my excuses and hang up.
“We’d like to come and see you” said the voice on the other end,
“Really?” I said, surprised that they were that interested,
“There are some things you’ve mentioned that nobody else has been able to tell us”,
“Oh crap” I thought, but didn’t say.

After a quick battle of conscience I agreed to their request and so it was on a Saturday morning that two friendly policemen turned up on my doorstep having driven over 100 miles to get to my house. They stayed for about an hour, probably only fifteen minutes of which was talking about the case and the rest writing up my statement and talking “Police stories”, and also discovering that one of them had gone for an interview in a building that I was working in at the time. They left seemingly quite happy and it was a few weeks after that I heard that Simon had denied murder and that it was going to go to trial. That meant a long drive, a day off work and potentially ending up with my name in the papers, which was not really what I’d had in mind when I’d volunteered the information, but when I though of how much the murdered girl’s family had already lost it seemed trivial in comparison.

As the weeks went by the court date loomed closer and closer and I got more nervous and more nervous, then I received a phone call.
“It’s all over” said a friendly policeman,
“What?” I replied,
“He’s confessed”

I was so relieved I wanted to dance and skip and shout but instead felt the stress of the months of waiting roll off me as I settled down to a glass of very nice white wine, which seemed to get lost on the way down so I had to send at least two or three more after it to find out what had happened.

It turned out he’d held out until his very last court appearance before the full trial and then confessed, which was only a half-decent thing to do as he should have owned up earlier and saved the stress and expense all round. It was across the national papers for a couple of days as the details came out, but thankfully not my name, though some of the evidence quoted in the paper seemed awfully familiar. It was odd seeing his face on the London papers having been so used to seeing it across a desk.

At sentencing he got 16 years for the murder and I got a letter offering me counselling, which I thought was more appropriate for the family than me but I appreciated the offer. Would I do it again? I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

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