黑洞社区

Boles鈥� field day

It was always going to be a tough gig. Nick Boles, the planning minister, was up in front of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) at a meeting in London last week to give a speech on the need for more houses to be built in the countryside. The minister, who has claimed that houses bring more happiness than fields and that 鈥渦ninteresting fields鈥� should be developed, at least acknowledged that he was 鈥減robably the CPRE鈥檚 least favourite minister鈥�. Heckled through his speech, Boles, who has been dubbed Boles the Builder by CPRE chairman Andrew Motion, ploughed on nevertheless, urging his audience not to 鈥渇ossilise鈥� 鈥渆mbalm鈥� or 鈥渇reeze-dry鈥� rural England, saying building was vital because villages need 鈥渘oise and bustle鈥� - not to mention 鈥渢eenagers nervously flirting鈥�. It was all a bit much for his audience, with some delegates walking out and others branding Boles a 鈥渓iar鈥� and 鈥渁 fool鈥�. And who said planning was dull?

Hanso does Glasto

Ahead of this week鈥檚 Government Construction Summit (GCS) and the launch of the construction industrial strategy, you might have expected chief construction adviser Peter Hansford to be putting the final touches to the plan and his speech over the preceding weekend. Far from it. Hansford was partying with 170,000 other revellers at Glastonbury, taking in headliners the Rolling Stones, among others. Hansford told 黑洞社区 he did not launch the industrial strategy at the festival nor did he perform despite unconfirmed reports that he was asked to close it with a speech on BIM.

Four and counting

Last week we finally found out how well the government鈥檚 flagship energy efficiency programme is performing. And the news wasn鈥檛 good, with a measly four Green Deal finance plans signed to date. This has to be well short of energy minister Greg Barker鈥檚 expectations given that earlier this year he said he 鈥渨ouldn鈥檛 be sleeping if we didn鈥檛 have 10,000鈥� in place by the end of the year. Nevertheless, Barker promptly took to Twitter to claim the Green Deal was 鈥渢otally confounding鈥� critics. Perhaps his attention might be better focused on persuading his colleagues to sign up: with 360 coalition MPs and around 1,200 civil servants in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, that would be a healthy start.

Peaks and troughs

So, farewell Davis Langdon. I鈥檝e been musing on the venerable history of the brand, whose roots stretch back to 1919, after parent company Aecom announced its decision to phase it out from October. Old hands like me know that this is but the latest in a series of name changes down the decades. The most significant rebrand before this was in 2004, when the firm dropped 鈥淓verest鈥� from 16-year-old brand Davis Langdon & Everest. The Everest who lent his name to this firm was a close relation of Sir George Everest, the man who carried out the original survey of the world鈥檚 highest mountain and saw it named after him. The company was clearly proud of this as it used to display a photograph of the peak in its reception. The Aecom name is an acronym for 鈥渁rchitecture, engineering, consulting, operations and maintenance鈥�. Somewhat less romantic, I think.