[Ben Reeve Lewis is newly minted…..]
One of the advantages of having a travel agent for a partner, apart from the odd free holiday (yes really), is also the occasional complimentary entertainment tickets that come your way.
Living the life
Last Saturday saw us lounging around in a corporate box at The Emirates stadium watching Arsenal beat Lyonnais 6 -0 with free drink and food.
Frazzy is a big Arsenal fan and I confess I could easily switch from Charlton to the Gooners if I had one of those boxes each week. I’m loyal like that.
One piece of bureaucratic nonsense made me laugh out loud though. The boxes all have sliding glass doors onto your private seating area with a grand view of the pitch and the glass doors have these grey, gauze screens.
We were sitting with friends having a pint and watching through the glass when one of the cringing, embarrassed looking corporate assistants came in, apologised and drew the screens.
She said that licensing laws meant once we had alcohol in the room the screens had to be drawn so nobody could see it.
In 2015?????????? Come on!!!!!!! Did they think that those in the cheap seats would become so possessed by the sight of a pint of Carling from 300 yards away they would storm the terraces and attack the boxes just to get a sip?
What triple idiot dreamt that one up? Mary Whitehouse perhaps? Oliver Cromwell?
I asked the assistant if it was OK to take a photo of Arsene Wenger in case it was believed it would steal his soul.
And from a swanky upmarket box to a decidedly low budget one…..
Pods for the homeless
Regular readers will know I’m fond of a lateral idea in housing and I read with interest this week of a new design for the street homeless which the Telegraph rather unkindly referred to as ‘Window boxes’.
Architect James Furzer came up with the idea of raised wooden boxes attached to existing buildings and accessed by a ladder from the street to give the homeless somewhere warm, safe and dry to sleep.
I confess to having mixed feelings about this. James says quite openly:
“I know it’s not going to solve homeless or even help their lifestyle – I’m not claiming to have a complete resolution. There are many bigger issues around homelessness in London.
Adding
“But it is somewhere to give them a night’s rest, to give them a bit of an escape for a few hours”
Fair play mate, I see where you are coming from but I can see this creating more problems than it solves.
Problems …
How will it be policed? What if people move in and regard it as their own? What if they get used as shooting galleries?
There is something to be said for the argument “We’ll deal with the problem when or if it comes up” but I’m not convinced it isn’t a bit naïve to think people will just sleep in them and move on the next day.
I say this as someone who spent 6 years working in night shelters and with an inbuilt terror of being homeless because I’ve seen how easily it happens to people, but the grinding poverty, the drugs and alcohol used to blot it all out doesn’t make for an orderly or polite lifestyle.
Mr Furzer has won a cash prize and good luck to him but I cant help thinking the naïveté is with the prize panel. Nice to think you are doing something for the homeless when you live in Islington.
The only real solution is to tackle the homelessness crisis at root.
Turning to the ‘haves’
Staying with the Telegraph and going back upmarket we were told this week about the luxury Mayfair penthouse with a price tag of £26million, sold before its even built.
Notwithstanding this we were also told about the 200 flat Canary Wharf tower block that sold out within 5 hours mainly to Greek, Chinese and Italian investors for around £350,000 a pop.
All a sign of the yawning gap between the haves and have nots of modern London which with this week’s news, found just about everywhere, that foreign criminals are using London properties to launder money and thus pushing up house prices all seems to gel together rather nicely.
Joined up thinking needed
Cameron found time away from another free holiday (does he know my missus?) to make a comment on it :
“Foreigners must be stopped from buying UK homes with “plundered or laundered cash” as part of a “global effort” to defeat corruption”
He made this announcement speaking in Singapore, a country where a couple of years back Boris Johnson ushered in an invest-fest for the prime property of ‘One the Elephant’, inviting money launderers from around the world to stick their money in as fast as they could.
Why market properties to foreign investors, which will obviously include money launderers and then say you are going to stamp down on them? A bit of joined up thinking wouldn’t go amiss.
Sneering in the Sun
Disgraced Peer Lord Sewell best summed Cameron and Johnson up this week when the Sun reported:
“He sneeringly called Cameron “the most superficial Prime Minister ever” and dismissed Boris as a “public school a***hole”.
Sewell is perhaps the most extreme and hideous example of the lies and arrogance of our leaders I can think of. Like Rachman his name should become synonymous with astonishing acts of hypocrisy. “Sewellism” should enter the OED but I do agree with his assessment of the PM and the London Mayor, even if it was just the Charlie talking.
Mind you, having spent 3 years in my 20s as a professional rock musician I rather like the sound of a Lord who snorts coke off of a hooker’s breasts, it’s a reality I can relate to.
What made me smile this week
Last Friday Frazzy and I went to See Soul II Soul, cause enough to make me smile on its own but I particularly liked Jazzy B’s announcement to the mainly middle aged audience of boglers:
“We’re old enough to have done it and young enough to keep on doing it”
Maybe he had Lord Sewell in mind.
And I’ll tell you what else made me smile this week…..the publication of today’s newsround marks my final day working for Lewisham Council.
Finito……Finis…..the end.
Wednesday night saw the airing of the last of the TV series Nightmare tenants, Slum Landlords, a nice ‘Last hurrah’ to go out on.
Its been fun and I will miss the excitement but my knees are getting too old to climb through the windows of cannabis farms and I’m getting fed up of seeing the desperate being exploited by the morally bankrupt.
I’m glad the TV series has given my regular readers a chance to see the kinds of crap I’ve had to deal with most of my life. Time to now to just earn my living teaching others how to do it.
I’ll be full time with Tessa and Graeme building up Easy Law Training Ltd. Lots of inspiring projects to come over the next few months.
See ya next week, as a newly minted, self-employed Ben Reeve-Lewis.
Sadly this is what the world has come to, can’t even have a pint in public incase someone sees! SPR Properties
Ben – may I wish you well in your new role as Trainer. Its a fulfilling role, and I hope you get a lot of job satisfaction from it. Thanks also for the myriad of wonderfully quirky views on housing that you have shared with us, showing us the seamier side of landlording. I do hope you will continue to educate and entertain us all in your new working role. None of us can spend all our lives in grime, we need to come out into the light now and again.
Thanks Colette. I’ll keep writing on issues and you are right. After 25 years of dealing with cockroaches of the insect and human kind I need to come out into the light. I wonder if I’ll ever stop looking up at windows and assessing whether the house is overcrowded or what skulduggery might be afoot. Perhaps I never will.
And Steve. I know….how mad is that? Even the hospitality woman looked thoroughly embarassed.
Ben all the best with your new position with Tessa and Graeme. I’m sure you will enjoy the role and we will all benefit too.
Thank you