Today’s Observer provides details of an evolution of the aforementioned pop up phenomenon into dining.

A top London design practice has designed the scheme to capitalise on a three week period during the London Olympic Games.  Called Studio East Dining the pop up restaurant will be located on top of what will be a car park in the multi million pound Westfield Stratford Shopping Centre development which is due to open in 2011.

The paper explains the concept of the creation of Bistrotheque, the east London company that pioneered the idea of pop up in the capital. It has been designed by Carmody Groarke the young architectural practice renowned for their 7/7  memorial in Hydepark.

London hasn’t got the monopoly on pop-ups though.  Last Christmas we saw a retail pop up stored appearing on Belfast’s fashionable Lisburn Road for Terry Furniture.

Seems like a sensible way to make use of spare space to me.

And who said entrepreneurism is dead?

DMcC

38 years after that fateful day the world waited with baited breath to see whether Lord Saville’s 5000 page report would unequivocally lay the blame for what happened in Derry on Bloody Sunday at the feet of the British army.

The whole roll-out of the report was fascinating from a communications’ point of view.  Apparent leaks conditioned the public to prepare for an exoneration of those who were killed and injured in Bloody Sunday, but by and large the detail of the report was kept under wraps right up until the Prime Minister’s pulsating address in The Commons.

For his part David Cameron has to be commended for the very clear and precise language he adopted in his Parliamentary address.  Our new PM  has earned himself something of a reputation as a straight talker since his rise to political prominence. And you’ve got to say he lived up to his reputation when, having cleverly articulated his support for the British Army, he said what happened on Bloody Sunday was neither justified nor justifiable.

His speech was powerful, compelling and, while carefully balanced so not to upset the current heirarchy and rank and file within Britain’s military, was uncompromising and unequivocal in its condemnation of those who were guilty of opening fire and then shooting innocent people.

Ok, the cynic could say the whole strategy was carefully calculated: make an upfront apology, stress the innocence of those killed by the Paras and then perhaps those who have been pressing for the truth could say they have had their day and would be less likely to press for prosecution of those involved.  Maybe that was part of the thinking or maybe not.  Others can make up their minds on fhat.

But for a pure, enthralling TV moment, the PM’s speech was pure gold.

DMcC

Ok, I was a late stand-in for Serious PR client, Colin Turkington, who was testing for his upcoming WTCC debut in Portugal, but it was nonetheless a truly encouraging experience to see so many talented young people who had excelled in a range of activities from sport to music to academic.

For me one of the highlights of the evening was the entertainment programme put on by the students which included a piano duet, a clarinet solo, an extract from the annual school play, a French horn solo and a fab rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

In a pre-recorded video interview BTCC champion, Colin Turkington, (who became a ‘virtual’ guest of honour due to last minute change of plans) advised young people about driving sensibly and working hard.  In his home town and former school the address went down a storm.

Clounagh Junior High is part of the Dixon Plan which means those in Year 10 ‘graduate’ to schools like Portadown and Lurgan College and the final video which captured some of the key moments for the Year 10s during their time at Clounagh brought plenty of smiles and not a few tears!

My, how school has changed since my days in the 1970s!

DMcC

As one who spent his early working years in a regional newspaper in County Down it’s gratifying to see some people waking up the influence these important outlets have.

According to a survey by TNS-RI Omnibus on behalf of The Newspaper Society local papers are trusted over and above council magazines and websites.

The poll showed local papers were the second most trusted source of info, with regional TV news tops.

According to one person quoted in PR Week local papers are by far the most popular media source for those who want to raise awareness of an issue or problem and, as such, they perform a unique role in upholding democracy which begins at a local level.  Cynics might say we shouldn’t be shocked that a survey conducted on behalf of The Newspaper Society comes out with this result.

In Northern Ireland where we have around 40 regional titles we’ve been spoilt over the years with a choice in most towns of 2-3 newspapers all delivering comprehensive coverage of news and sport in their local area.

In an era where newspaper circulations are generally in decline we should do what we can to preserve these integral elements of all our communities.  Whether it be seeing your child in their first school days, reading the local WI notes or staying in touch with developments in the local courts weekly newspapers are invaluable.

So, go on. Get out there and buy your local!

DMcC

Apparently the US authorities are desperately trying to ascertain if the US Army Intelligence officer, currently under lock and key in Kuwait, has already leaked highly sensitive info including embassy cables to the Wikileaks.org site.  And they’re trying to hunt down the website’s founder who has pioneered the release of the kind of information the mainstream media are unwilling or unable to release.

It’s the kind of story you could imagine hitting the big screen with Tom Cruise in the starring role isn’t it?

Thanks to The Independent for a great Saturday read.

The very clever Belfast-based architectural practice, which was established during The Troubles has left its finger prints all over the best parts of the new Belfast. And last week its efforts were rewarded when it won the Legacy to Belfast Award as part of the annual Belfast Business Awards.

TODD employs 40 staff at its Hill Street HQ and offers services in architecture, town planning, urban design and master planning.  The firm also provides workplace and interior design consultancy.

In the past decade the practice has design key strategic projects including the redevelopment of the University of Ulster’s Belfast campus, Invest NI’s HQ and the new Titanic Quarter development where it has been involved in a number of buildings including the Gateway Offices, The Public Record Office, the new campus at Belfast Metropolitan College and the iconic Titanic Signature project.

Well done Paul, Peter and co.

According to the Mail the lift idea was to avoid top presenters, Alan Hansen, Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer having to mix with ‘common’ members of the South African public when making their way to the £1m roof top studio which the Beeb has built.

Apparently it was ok for Gordon Strachan, Jurgen Klinsmann, Harry Rednapp and Roy Hodgson to use the stairs.

The paper explains how hospital workers watched with astonishment as the last touches were put to the new exterior lift which has been reserved for the Beeb’s top team.

And it gets worse.  The Corporation which is financed through our licence fees is sending 295 staff to the extravaganza and putting 45 of them up at Cape Town’s Mandela Rhodes Place Hotel. Cost? £500 per skull per night.

In their defence the Beeb denied the lift installation was not about looking after their top brass, but aimed at ensuring there would be “no disruption to patients” who would be seeking treatment at the hospital.  Very thoughtful I’m sure.

It’s not every day a client takes Serious PR global.  There have been one or two in recent months and we’re proud of that.

This week we were delighted to hear of another client literally going world-wide with news that Portadown’s Colin Turkington is to compete in this year’s World Touring Car Championships. It meant a hectic few days for our team  dealing with local, national and international press enquiries, prepping for interviews and getting the word out.  By Friday evening more than 3.5million people had the opportunity to hear or see the news!

The WTCC is a phenomenal event, with more than 350m TV viewers across the world.

Turkington plans to join the grid on 4 July for the WTCC round in Portimao, Portugal, followed by Brands Hatch on 18 July and Brno in the Czech Republic on 1 August

He said he was excited about the possibility of testing himself against some of the best drivers in the world.

“I feel this is a natural progression for me after last year’s championship,” said the current BTCC and Independents’ champion.

“We were bitterly disappointed when – due to insufficient sponsorship – we were unable to compete in either the BTCC or WTCC full programmes. This opportunity – initially for three rounds – has been made possible through the support of a group of private sponsors.  We are really grateful to them and hopefully, with further support from others, we may be able to make additional rounds towards the end of the season.”

Turkington will be re-united with West Surrey Racing (WSR) for the WTCC programme.

“Obviously we know the WSR guys very well. They’re a top team and have been a big part of my success in recent years,” said Colin. “I’m also indebted to Team Principal, Dick Bennetts with whom we have been working very closely over the past few months to make this deal a reality.”

Turkington will be driving the BMW 320si in which he won the 2009 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship.

“This is part of our plan to target a full programme in 2011.  We will be working hard over the coming months to demonstrate the WTCC is a fantastic event with which to be associated as a sponsor and will be speaking with a number of organisations in the hope they will come on board for next year.”

Turkington admits to being touched by the wave of support from the racing fraternity since the beginning of this season.

“We have received hundreds of email messages of support from our fantastic fan base.   It’s going to be great to get back behind the wheel again. I can’t wait.”

WSR Team Principal, Dick Bennetts, commented: “We are all really looking forward to seeing how Colin and the team go in the WTCC. The guys have nearly finished rebuilding his BMW and we are just waiting on a fresh engine and some parts from BMW Motorsport, before doing some testing prior to our first race in Portimao on 4 July.”

WSR will be competing as Independents and definitely don’t underestimate the calibre of the competitors. “It will be tough going to circuits like Portimao and Brno, where we’ve never raced before; although we’re sure there will be very good support for Colin and the team at Brands Hatch on 18 July.”

“The team had been looking at both the BTCC and the WTCC, however Colin felt that he’d like a new challenge, after being the BTCC Champion last year and the BTCC Independents Champion for the last three years.”

Next stop for Serious is Brands Hatch on 18 July!

According to the paper the technology giant doubled up while shooting images for its controversial Street View project.

The Mail reveals: “As Google’s distinctive fleet of cars, fitted with roof-mounted cameras, cruised Britain’s streets over the past three years photographing every house and public building, antennae inside were also pinpointing the wi-fi hotspots.”

Ironically there had been media reports alleging  that Google had admitted ‘accidentally’ collecting some emails from ‘open’ wireless networks. But as The Mail on Sunday reports Google was on a deliberate and calculated mission to gather information so it could target localised ads.

The company has admitted that it should have been ‘more transparent’ about the full extent of the project and pledged to stop mapping any new personal wireless networks in future.  But it said it would NOT delete the information it had already obtained from the Street View project which now covers almost every road in the UK.

For many this is incontrovertible evidence that Big Brother is alive and well.

Should google be congratulated on innovation or publicly derided for an invasion of privacy?  Answers on a postcard…

According to the paper the three Church of Ireland clerics penned the prayers – two for the teams, hosts and fans and one for those indifferent to the ‘beautiful’ game for personal use and for church services.  The prayers ask for blessings on all those involved, generous sportsmanship and for the competition to be a source of celebration.

The News Letter story quotes The Rt Rev Nick Bains, an avid Liverpool fan as saying that more than half of the population pray at some time and everyone will be affected by the World Cup in one way or another so it ‘makes sense’ to have some prayers for those that ‘want to use them’.

Clever tactical opportunism by the church?  Or a sign parts of those within ‘the church’ have really lost the plot?

We don’t know what he means specifically.  New Secretary of State, Owen Patterson likes the idea of ‘examining’ the possibility of reducing corporation tax here as part of an overall package aimed at stimulating the economy.  But how is that likely to play in the other ‘regions’ of the UK. Won’t the Scots, Welsh, or those in the NE of England have a justifiable shout for precisely the same dispensation?   And if corporation tax is reduced across the UK how does the Government fill the massive financial hole that will be left?

Mr Cameron wants to reduce the dependence of the NI economy on the public sector by championing a resurgence within the private sector. Laudible enough. But what’s he going to do specifically to reward and encourage entrepreneurs who are prepared to ‘have a go’ –   especially those who have been  – or are still to be made redundant – as a result of the economic slump or impending Government spending cuts?

This whole horrible mess began with the banks.  So how about appointing a small business champion and penalizing them if they don’t lend to business?

How about encouraging much more of a ‘risk’ culture within public sector inward investment organisations like Invest NI?  How about no business rates for companies in their first three years,   ‘payment’ holidays for NIC / PAYE for companies finding the going tough as well as ‘guaranteeing’ in whole or part bad debt which can have such a devastating effect on small business?

Whatever, Cameron, Osborne, Patterson and co come up with as a package of economic stimulae should be discussed with small business, agreed and rolled out as soon as possible.  We can’t afford this big promise to remain as a Tory soundbite!

DMcC

the terse exchange between the BBC’s Carrie Gracie and Lord Foulkes on the Beeb’s 24hr news channel recently

Just when we thought that Gracie had Foulkes over a barrel (or a £1,200 plush new rocking chair, fully reimbursable from the Parliamentary Fees Office) the redoubtable Scot laid into Gracie about her value for money as a familiar face to news junkies like myself.  To her credit, Gracie calmly admitted that she earns £92k per year; roughly 50% more than the great and good (and apparently downright corrupt!) in Westminster.

I can’t help feeling that once the Daily Telegraph has milked the MPs’ expenses story for all that it’s worth (and fair play to them for having a go), the popular press will  be looking around for the next fattened lamb to sacrifice on the altar of public opinion.  Woe betide any news reader, senior civil servant or local apparatchik who happens to fire in an ill-considered expenses receipt for a diamond encrusted loo seat.  And if newsreaders have been supplementing their generous basic salaries with exotic expenses claims, their hapless mugshots are sure to be splashed all over the newspapers in the coming weeks!

Watching Question Time last week, and seeing a panel of senior politicians facing a barrage of criticism from a very hostile audience, it struck me that Sir Menzies Campbell surely had a point when he claimed that MPs’ pay packets had fallen behind those of headteachers and senior civil servants, and that a parliamentary pay increase is long overdue.  It’s a reality, however, that doesn’t elicit much sympathy with the many out there who are facing the full force of this recession. Strikes me that there are certain benefits to working in a slimmed down private sector – with any diligent boss, these extravagant expenses claims would never even have seen the light of day!

Their break-up did not come as a huge shock to me.

Throughout my teenage years I became hooked on the glamorous lifestyles and whirlwind romances of the rich and famous, only to have my ideals and beliefs of long-lasting love and relationships shattered by yet another celebrity divorce.

And it begs the question: why do so many celebrity relationships fail?

I was lucky enough to have been brought up by parents who are this year celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary (happy anniversary Mummy and Daddy Knox!). I feel privileged to have experienced a childhood full of my parents’ marital happiness, but I wonder, has this resulted in me having overly ambitious expectations of love and relationships? Is it too much to expect a marriage to last in these modern times of pre-nups and one month long relationships before engagement?

The media presents the same set of excuses time and time again – conflicting schedules, too much time apart, an affair was unavoidable due to close working conditions on set!!

At what point will celebrities realise that the “average Joe” has problems too, but we manage to work through them? Couples with a partner in the armed forces or on an oil rig often go for long stretches without even the faintest opportunity to communicate and guess what? – They manage it!

Modern day celebrities need to get a reality check, and take a leaf out of Goldie Hawn and Judi Dench’s book- both of whom have had successful relationships for over 20 years

Have your say:

• Favourite celebrity marriage?

• Most memorable celebrity split?

AKx

As announced recently, inflation (as measured by the Retail Price Index) remains negative at -1.2%. The inflation rate became negative for the first time in almost 50 years last month, while the Consumer Price Index remains well above the UK government’s target of 2%.

The question is: how does this affect you and me?

Our personal rate of inflation depends on how we spend our money and actually may not match the official rate of inflation according to a report yesterday by the BBC. And in fact, ‘the news’ isn’t always a reality for some of us.

The BBC has an online calculator available so we can get a much more accurate picture of how inflation is actually affecting us as individuals. Worth checking this out – especially for me, after purchasing my new Mini!

Using this cute wee calculator and filling in my monthly expenditure, annual spending and housing costs I was able to find out how my bank balance has changed with the economic times. Apparently my cost of living has changed by 0%. Safe to say that’s obvious when I look at my month-end bank balance!

So very little difference at my end… For now! But I’m still hopeful with ‘the news’ today that I might soon be making some big savings.

RDy

With this in mind, my boyfriend and I decided we’d take a well-deserved -and easy on the purse strings!- break after a stressful and costly few months of writing-off cars and attempting to get on the property ladder. We eventually decided on a special deal that was running at the Ballyliffin Lodge in Donegal.

Our wee holiday didn’t get off to the best of starts, with a road-closure in Derry adding an extra half hour onto the trip and resulting in a very grumpy driver (not me!).

But once we arrived at our hotel, things soon improved. We were taken to our room; there was a stunning view of the beach from the balcony.

We spent the next few days frolicking in the pool and eating great food. I should note, I tasted the best enchiladas I’ve ever had at Mamie Pats’ bar! It was incredibly relaxing, which is what it was all about.

I was warned to take a lot of reading material with me, as there isn’t a great deal to do in the area. Although this is true – the village is tiny- there is still plenty to see and do if you have a car with you can venture further afield, or if you like golf! Apparently the golf course is one of the best in Ireland!

We had a great day driving along the coast, up to Malin Head, the most northerly point in Ireland, and admiring the beautiful scenery. I had never been to this part of the Republic of Ireland before, and the landscape was spectacular. We were fortunate enough to go on a dry, though EXTREMELY windy day, so the waves were huge. They reminded me of the famous Guinness advert where the waves were horses (this excited me no end and made me feel like I was really experiencing Ireland. I’m Scottish and get ‘sadly’ excited about touristy things!).

From the big waves, we went to Ireland’s most northerly pub and experienced typical Irish hospitality!

Overall, I had a brilliant time on our mini-break and would thoroughly recommend a trip to this part of the world to everyone. The hotel was great – lovely location, brilliant room and staff, excellent spa and gym, great food… The only problem was that because of the Euro and our ‘we’re-on-holiday-let’s-treat-ourselves’ mentality, our credit-crunch busting holiday actually ended up costing more than a few days in the sun would have!!
KtF