[Ben Reeve Lewis’ is off to the Conference today …]
Well by the time most of you read this I shall be pressing the flesh and aiming for a gold medal in charm at the 2nd Landlord Law Conference in Bury St Edmunds.
A sell out Conference
Last year Tessa, Graeme and I had such fun and it was such a rip-roaring success we decided to do it again and on figures alone it is even more successful than the first one.
Time will tell if I get through the day without making an inappropriate joke somewhere, which seems to always be my specialism when I am trying to behave myself.
It’s the pressure that gets to me.
So for you poor unfortunates who didn’t book, I’ll cheer you up by reviewing the news for you so you don’t have to call the Samaritans in your depression.
Gnome news
First off it would appear that pressure is getting to more than just me. Regenda Housing Group of Oldham have employed a garden gnome to give advice on energy saving for it’s tenants
Reg (as he is called) even has his own blog where this week he makes his own inappropriate joke:
“In stark contrast to the amount of dust I have inhaled and builders’ cleavages I have been subjected to, I was given a little squeeze from the new Chief Executive of Oldham Council, Carolyn Wilkins.”
Meanwhile back at the 24 Dash article that alerted me to this bizarre happening, they report:
“From the comfort of his semi-detached home, the fay froufrou has been tasked with explaining everything that is happening at the property, step-by-step, and in the sort of simple language which everyone can understand.”
“Fay Froufrou???? What the hell is that? Has the world gone mad?
Horse sense
I hear that London & Quadrant Housing Association are not to be trumped and are employing a Chief Executive who is a talking horse.
At the interview he was asked how many years experience he had and he replied by stamping his hoof several times.
Council Officer jailed for fraud
Searching for something more down to earth I chanced upon a story on the ITN news website about Ibrahim Bundu, a Southwark council homelessness officer being jailed for housing fraud.
The scam was simply producing fake documents that got his friends and family into council housing.
Southwark Council’s Richard Livingstone was not amused:
“I meet people every week who come to my surgery saying can you help us, we’re desperate for a home. And, knowing that homes like this have been taken from those people through this sort of fraud is hard to stomach.”
But I was amused though, as I worked with the cheeky scamp myself at one point in another council. All I remember of him was that he was a miserable bugger, and is obviously far more miserable now that he is doing 4 years.
Hybrid Estate Agency idea
Meanwhile, back in the land of surreal ideas I read this week that the founder of Poundland, Steve Smith, has formed a hybrid estate agency which works like half an online agency and half a normal high street one.
You advertise and sign up online but there are still regional offices with staff who have local knowledge.
I noted some time ago that the rise in online letting may well have a knock on effect to the high street agents but Mr Smith seems to have found a convenient bridge between the two worlds and I have to say it seems to make sense to me.
Look at the business case for Poundland. On paper it probably looked daft but they are everywhere now.
High streets of the future may be taken over by regional advice centres where the landlord can drop in, get suitable advice to double the rent but avoid having anything else to do with the agents.
Might get a franchise myself, “SE16? Big park there….I’d Bung another £80 on that one if I were you mate”. Of course the advice will cost you more than a pound.
Using technology to find beds in sheds
Getting even more bizarre, how about Harrow Council employing satellite thermal imaging cameras to spot beds in sheds?
They identify hotspots in people’s back gardens which might indicate that there is more than a lawn mower and a bottle of whisky hidden from the wife in there.
I recently heard of another west London council that bought two military drones for £40,000 a pop to perform the same task. I can’t remember which council but I was speaking to one of their team at a conference a while back and he confessed that they were so nervous of losing the bloody things that they didn’t have the courage to send one up.
So if you read of a West London suburb getting bombed you’ll know the council finally plucked up the nerve to launch but true to council style it didn’t go very well.
Inappropriate humour
By far my favourite article this week was in the Daily Mail about Conservative party Chairman and ex housing minister Grant Shapps, AKA Bingo Bob and his own inappropriate joke.
He launched a bizarre advert reading:
“Cutting the Bingo tax and beer duty to help hardworking people do more of the things that they enjoy”.
This astonishingly patronising piece of PR caused a quite a stir in all the nationals in fact, but the Mail gave me my laugh out loud moment with:
“But it has been widely mocked online, and spawned spoof versions referring to whippets, clogs, eating swans, shooting poor people and suggesting the Tories think it is still 1961.”
Even the writers of TV political comedy show ‘The thick of it’ said they would have rejected the idea as being too far fetched.
While Osborne and his cronies defended the advert, Lib dem’s Danny Alexander said;
“It was rather patronising and demeans some quite sensible things in the Budget. There are good reasons to be supporting Bingo, there are good reasons to be encouraging our pub sector to be stronger – that’s the analysis behind those measures, the language, well that’s for Grant Shapps to justify.’
First prize goes to the altered versions of the advert straplines doing the rounds that the mail handily prints for us at the bottom of the article:
“They’d rather go down the bookies or get drunk, at least that’s what they told us at Eton”
“your zero hours contracts give you plenty of time”.
And my particular favourite;
“Drink and gamble away your pennies you working class scum”
Nice to know I’m not the only one with inappropriate jokes.
See ya next week
If you like Ben’s writing – why not get his TRO Confidential ebook?
>> Click here to find out more.