黑洞社区

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Eagle-eyed readers of the Guardian website on Thursday may have noticed one of construction鈥檚 well known faces, Hanif Kara, director of UK engineer AKT, rubbing shoulders with pop icon Madonna on the front page. Such is the glamourous life of jet-setting engineers, it appears. However, unfortunately for Kara, the story was all about management failings at the Material Girl鈥檚 proposed 拢10m school in Malawi, which has been abandoned despite 拢2.4m being spent on consultants. Neither Kara or AKT, which had been engaged on the project, were mentioned in the piece and there鈥檚 no sense the firm has done anything wrong. So all publicity is good publicity?

Student protests

Keen to find out how things are progressing on the vast Wembley City scheme, I recently sent along a couple of my spies to the topping out ceremony of a new student accommodation block there. But alas, on arrival at the allotted hour, the time-honoured ritual was already over. Nevertheless, my minions were treated to a bird鈥檚 eye view of the development and learned that the student block is slap bang next to a new five-star hotel. How would you feel if you had to pay thousands of pounds a year only to have to bed down next to hotel guests paying a fraction of the fee?

No rest for the RICS

One often wonders whether presidents of the RICS are laying the ground for a well earned retirement, having capped off a career in the private sector with a stint wearing a hefty gold chain around their necks. Not so, my spies tell me, for Robert Peto, current president. Peto is planning to get stuck back in to property after his time ends, so I hear - with DTZ. He is currently vice chairman of capital markets there, so a return to his former stomping grounds shouldn鈥檛 be too much of a transition. Retirement is for wimps.

Misguided youth

Far be it for Hansom to pour scorn on the ambitions of a young and hopeful entrepreneur, but in some cases it鈥檚 important to speak out when you can see someone
making a fool of themselves. So it is with the young businessman who approached one of my hacks this month at an industry conference to talk about making schools out of shipping containers. We may be entering a brave new world of standardisation, but teaching times tables in echoey, corrugated boxes synonymous with people trafficking may be one 鈥渧alue for money鈥� drive too far.

Pulling a sickie

When deputy mayor of London, Sir Simon Milton, summoned journalists to City Hall on Monday this week to talk about the capital鈥檚 new enterprise zone in Newham, I duly trundled along to hear all the details. More fool me. Sir Simon failed to turn up. Apparently his office had neglected to tell anyone that he was sick and an embarrassed press officer was left simply to send everyone home again. We鈥檙e sure this is no representation of the scrupulously well-organised way in which mayor Johnson runs the capital.