CRUISE INDUSTRY DENTED BY DISASTER January 15, 2012 THE spectacular cruise liner accident off the coast of Italy is not just a disaster for the ship’s owners and victims of the tragedy, but could inflict wider damage as potential passengers worry about safety. The Costa Concordia, with more than 4,000 people on board, flipped on its side after hitting a rock on Friday [...]
We mustn’t mourn the end of encyclopaedias March 15, 2012 AS A boy, I remember being taken to the local library and taught to use the dark, weighty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. As of now, that dates me. A “digital native”, someone to whom the modern information revolution comes naturally, is often defined as a person who has never owned a camera that needs [...]
Mortgage time-bomb UK’s top threat March 7, 2012 SOME time-bombs can be defused. Not this one. At some point – in a year, in two, or perhaps even in five – the cost of borrowing for consumers will climb back to the sorts of levels we were used to 15 years ago. Complacent borrowers addicted to rock-bottom interest rates – and for whom [...]
Oh I do long to be beside the (British) seaside February 2, 2012 IT’S not the South of France or the Amalfi Coast. But Britain’s seaside has plenty of charm of its own – and not just of the quaint and slightly run-down variety, but of a beautiful, unique and in some cases, highly exclusive type. For instance, Knight Frank recently sold a mansion in south Cornwall to [...]
MARIO’S BEMUSING MUSINGS ON BEAUTY January 11, 2012 THE GREAT Pyramids of Giza? An ugly pile of weirdly-angled rocks. The Statue of Liberty? Just a rusty shard of copper wearing a silly hat. The Colosseum in Rome is still far too paltry a landmark, but at least we’re getting warmer geographically. No, for the human race’s biggest achievement, one must go to Brussels. [...]
SEASICK IN THE CITY AS BROADGATE HOLDS SWAY January 5, 2012 CITY WORKERS in the Broadgate Tower dropped everything on Tuesday to look up the meaning of “deflection”, after strong winds made the building sway so dramatically that staff complained of seasickness. The building may have been designed by award-winning architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – but when you are stuck in a 165m tower that [...]
SEASICK IN THE CITY AS BROADGATE HOLDS SWAY January 5, 2012 CITY WORKERS in the Broadgate Tower dropped everything on Tuesday to look up the meaning of “deflection”, after strong winds made the building sway so dramatically that staff complained of seasickness. The building may have been designed by award-winning architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – but when you are stuck in a 165m tower that [...]
Honeymooning for one in the Maldives April 1, 2012 GOING on holiday alone is one thing. Going on holiday alone to the world’s foremost couples’ destination is rather another. I wasn’t off to backpack around the villages of the Himalayas or go down and out in Bangkok and Hanoi, bumping into new people and places every five minutes. No: I set off on a [...]
Vintage charm on the tiny island of Nevis December 11, 2011 GOOGLE “Nevis” and you’ll find very little about it on the internet. It’s a tiny Caribbean island, barely seven miles long, south of St Kitts and west of Montserrat, which harks back to a West Indies of 200 years ago. This is a place of sugar plantations, wooden Georgian cottages and Negroni-red sunsets – an [...]
Tower 42 put up for sale for by PE owners September 14, 2011 CITY landmark Tower 42, an icon of the London skyline since it was completed in 1980, has been put up for sale, with its private equity owners hoping to get £290m for the building on Bishopsgate. BlackRock UK Property Fund and LaSalle Investment Management yesterday announced they were looking for buyers of their freehold in the [...]