THING OF THE WEEK
BUILDING MCBUILDINGFACE… A brave move from Bruntwood, which is holding a competition to name its newest building at Didsbury Technology Park. Not to be put off by the famous Boaty McBoatface, sorry, RRS Sir David Attenborough palaver, the developer is inviting naming suggestions through its Twitter account or through its website. Thankfully there is a judging panel from the developer and Spire Healthcare, so perhaps the sillier suggestions might get filtered out, and at least there’s a nice prize – the winner will get to go along to the building launch and will score some shopping vouchers. THING will leave the naming suggestions to you, but the development’s proximity to the Siemens building might serve as a starter for 10…
KEEP DIGGING… An important lesson learned this week: always check your bank account before you drive a digger into a Travelodge. One disgruntled construction worker decided to take a payment dispute into his own hands this week by crashing a mini excavator into the hotel on Liverpool’s Edge Lane, which is currently under construction by main contractor Triton. The issue was apparently over £600 of unpaid wages claimed by the digger driver, who according to the Liverpool Echo, worked for groundworks contractor MF Construction. One slight problem – colleagues claim he actually had been paid before he decided to go on his joy ride. Oops.
GETTING CREATIVE… Another string added to OBI’s bow this week with the office agent launching its latest offering, Studio OBI, headed up by the X Factor hopefuls team pictured above, left to right: Paul Wilson, Ollie Heald, Márcio Sá, Ashley Ashcroft and Joe Averill. Studio OBI is billed as delivering “a range of creative solutions including brand identity, marketing materials, online platforms and CGI images” – i.e., a creative agency. By our count, OBI now does a quarterly magazine, creative marketing, office agency, asset management, CGIs, project management… plus a lot more. At this rate they might be running out of fingers to put in different pies, but with an increasing focus on their media offering, should THING be worried?
Via Peaky Blinders Bar on Instagram
BLIND DRUNK… This month’s bandwagon-jumping award must surely go to Manchester’s Peaky Blinders, a fusion between everyone’s favourite 1920s Birmingham-set gangster show, and a dim sum bar. Opening last month in the former Sakana unit on Peter Street, next to other bars frequented by Spinningfields’ finest, the bar has a host of themed cocktails on the menu, along with the staple food of any Birmingham resident in the roaring twenties, Chinese food. THING realises that much of the show is filmed in and around Manchester – London Road Fire Station being one of the frequently-used sets – but we can’t help but think the link is just a little tenuous.
TRAINING DAY… One for the railway buffs here: a “mini-museum” has opened at Liverpool Lime Street showcasing items including original signalling equipment, a 20th Century railway trolley, and luggage scales. While not the most ancient of artefacts, the signal box equipment is among the last part remaining of Lime Street’s original signal box, which closed last summer as part of a wider £140m upgrade to the station. It’s certainly welcome to hark back to a time when trains actually turned up – the irony is not lost on us that alongside the news, we’ve been issued with yet another release from Network Rail warning against travel disruption due to strikes – by our count, we’ve had one of these every Friday for the last seven weeks, while strike action has been going on for a good while longer.
