All Comment articles – Page 485
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Comment
ǿմý buys a pint … for Mott MacDonald
ǿմý’s meeting with Mott MacDonald’s transportation team has an inauspicious start – there’s a security alert on the Jubilee line. Out of breath, dishevelled and half an hour late, I arrive to find them settled in.
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Do well at schools: How to win BSF work
If you want to come out at the top of the class in the competition for ǿմý Schools for the Future work, now’s the time to pull your socks up
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Rethinking Britain
Historically the construction industry has been used as either a brake or an accelerator for the UK economy – subject to the whims of the party in power
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The reader: Tony's booklist
Here’s my personal selection of handy reference books to help you solve those legal conundrums that my columns don’t cover
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Payment times: 10 days seems a lifetime away
The government says its suppliers will be paid within 10 days, but it still has an awful lot of work to do to stamp out payment abuse in the public sector
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Private housing starts dive well below levels in 1980s and 1990s recessions
Housing starts in England plunged in the final quarter of last year to levels not seen in modern times.At the depth of the last house building recession during the worst three month period at the end of 1992 private firms started 19,227 homes. In the final quarter of 2008 just ...
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Comment
War, Peace and Taylor Wimpey
“I am so fed up with this process.”This was the verdict of someone involved in the fraught and never-ending Taylor Wimpey debt talks this week.They were referring to the latest delay in signing off on a restructuring deal that has been more than six months in the making.Pen was expected ...
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Inflation, deflation, Japan and paradoxes
So consumer price inflation isn't falling as fast as many commentators had expected. Is that a surprise? Well not really.Ok there are lags in the systems. But with oil price falls, the cut in VAT and deep discounting the big plot twists pre-Christmas, it was hard to see where the ...
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More buyers sniffing around for bargain buys in the housing market, says RICS
More green shoots appear to be sprouting in the housing market with the surveyors' body RICS finding an increase in interest among potential homebuyers over the past three months.Sensibly RICS economists are not getting over excited by this, after all interest from buyers was at basement levels and was almost ...
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Comment
Could buying up unsold private stock be stifling social house construction?
Is it just me, or is there a link between the deals being struck through the Government's National Clearing House to take unsold private homes into the social sector and the recent collapse in new construction orders for social house building?I ask because I have been doing some analysis and ...
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The FD revolving door keeps spinning
Another week, another new finance director.The latest move sees David Wilton promoted to take over the reins from Bob Hartley at White Young Green. The reshuffle sees Hartley move sideways to become services director as WYG braces itself for the recession.The last few months have seen FD changes at Atkins, ...
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The new realism
The economic downturn isn’t without its consolations. It seems to be ushering in a new age of collaboration in construction and a more sober reckoning of what we’re about
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Like with like
With reference to the issue of foreign trades taking UK jobs, while the government is correct in stating that we can all apply for these jobs, that everything is fair and square and minimum wage laws and so on are covered, this does not mean that the wages paid to ...
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Comment
It's simple really
To meet the BSF programme, we need to respond to the current financial environment
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How to stay healthy
Hands up all those who have been tempted to cut training on safety during the downturn? Do so and your business will suffer
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This is an emergency
The argument this week over whether Ed Balls meant to say we were in the worst recession for 100 years may have caused mild hysteria in the media, but it won’t have raised many eyebrows in construction
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Don't keep it to yourself: Notifying insurers
Insurance policies provide a secure safety net, but that can disappear pretty quickly if you keep the insurers in the dark when things go wrong
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Local difficulty
Your correspondents, Patrick Cooper and Sally Hughes, do not want the John Roan School to move to a new site on the Greenwich Peninsula as part of the ǿմý Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. They are perfectly entitled to their views, although I do not myself agree with them.
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