星空传媒

Alistair McIntosh, director of the Housing Quality Network, fondly recalls an event in Burnley when he kicked off his talk by knocking a glass of water over the laptop provided for his presentation. This got the kind of response of which most motivational speakers can only dream 鈥� the computer's owner nearly had a fit. McIntosh apparently managed to calm her down after demonstrating that the expensive PC still worked. Not a bad effort.

Mock horror
Disneyland is pass茅 in politically re-aware America. The Habitat for Humanity housing charity in Georgia is hoping kids will soon be pestering their parents to let them spend a day in its ersatz developing-world slum.

Expected to sprawl over more than 2.5 ha, the theme park aims to simulate the dreadful conditions in which millions live in Africa and Asia. Visitors will get to tour authentic shacks complete with scorpions 鈥� a crowd-pleaser if ever there was one.

Urban meltdown
Poor Professor Michael Parkinson. The Liverpool John Moores University academic has the onerous task of flying round Europe to discover why the Continent's best cities are so successful.

Unfortunately, he could not produce his report in time for last week's Core Cities conference 鈥� publication has been postponed until the weather gets a bit nicer. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Gum drops
Sitting in chewing gum would be annoying to most people but it's driving politicians apoplectic. At a recent Office of the Deputy Prime Minister select committee hearing, chairman Andrew Bennett came up with some novel ideas for tackling the sticky menace.

In the age of the sticky note, mused Bennett, industry should be capable of inventing a less adhesive form of gum. He added: "There's an EU directive where the car maker has to take back a car at the end of its life. Why not do the same in this case?" Perhaps we would just chew Post-its instead.

I couldn't possibly comment 鈥�
It's tough getting politicians to tell you what they're up to, even if you're a politician too. When select committee member John Bercow was getting no straight answers from rural affairs minister Alun Michael on when the Living Places consultation results would be released 鈥� "I will simply say earlier rather than later," said sphinx-like Michael 鈥� an exasperated Bercow quipped: "Even across the party divide, I think we can agree that autumn is earlier than the year 2004."