James Barlow

Council News

A meeting of the Full Council of the city of Bristol is currently in progress. I'll be posting snippets to my You Tube channel over the next few days.

Looking back a few days, a report on the City's Capital Programme presented at the Resources Scrutiny Committee (no video) confirms the overspend figures for the Museum of Bristol (see this blog):

Museum of Bristol : as at the latest project cost report, more than 75% of the project contingency has been used, to meet costs relating to : below ground conditions, repair requirements revealed on stripping back the building structure, design changes to the income generating aspects of the building to maximise commercial opportunities, and late release of development details by the design team. Further details are given in Appendix B (to follow). On the basis of a costed register of outstanding risks, the project board has recommended an increase in the project budget of £1.3m, to provide a realistic contingency for the remainder of the project.

In addition, the adjacent Wapping Wharf development is now unlikely to proceed in the short/medium term, so that works that were to have been undertaken under the S106 agreement will now have to be incurred by the project (Museum Square and Museums Street). At this stage, it is proposed that the budget for the scheme should be increased by £1.8m, but that efforts should continue to mitigate the cost increases and to maximise funding from external sources.

And there's another interesting entry about Redland Green School (see this blog):

For Redland Green School detailed work is continuing, with external legal and technical advice, in relation to the work of the design team. Serious temperature control problems were reported in the last quarterly report. Following an independent assessment of the heating and ventilation installation, this has been fully recommissioned to assess the effectiveness of previous remedial work. The outcome of this will determine whether any further changes are needed.

You can also read about the Budget Virements in Appendix C. [Local authority code for "robbing Peter to pay Paul".]

HSBC Travel Money

Well, I got my money back from HSBC after they let someone with my library card pinch two and a half grand from my current account. I also got the following email from the Police:

Hi Mr Barlow, just to keep you informed that an officer did speak with the HSBC fraud office but unfortunately they only keep CCTV for 14 days, so by the time this incident was reported the CCTV had already overwritten. Also the CCTV at the venue overwrites after 5 days. Currently there are no further lines of enquiry and so this case will be filed.

The theft in question was undertaken by a criminal gang - Coventry based, according to the coppers - who apparently trawl conference venues looking smart and stealing stuff off the delegates. It would seem to be a good line of work; I wonder why I bother with all this tedious working when I could be out robbing. Even if you the victim tells the banks and the hotels that a crime has been committed, the management can't be arsed to keep the video, so the return on investment for a life of crime looks quite reasonable.

Now the only issue is to collect my fees from HSBC. I explained to a rather confused lady in Bengalore that HSBC had exceeded their overdraft limit with James Barlow, and that fees would be applied to their account. Perhaps my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service will have more effect.

The End of the World

The Large Hadron Collider is due to be switched on tomorrow (Wednesday 10th), and there is a small, vocal internet-based community who think they're putting the planet at risk. Have a look at Walter L. Wagner's web site for more details on the hypothetical disaster, which involves the entire planet being sucked into a black hole.

View Larger Map

Barlow Snr, fresh from a recent engagement in the role of "Old Farmer" on Tess of the d'Urbevilles (I bet you were just thinking we needed another dramatisation of Hardy's novel), tells me that a distant, Swiss branch of the Barlow clan are maintaining a watch from the shores of Lake Geneva, and will report forthwith on the appearance of any holes, black or otherwise.

Addendum: Given the involvement of CERN in the development of the World Wide Web, I suppose it's appropriate that their web-site eschews fancy-pants CMS, Java and Flash in favour of good old HTML tables.

A correspondent tells me that the Agenda for the 25th September 2008 meeting of the Cabinet of the City of Bristol contains some interesting news about the Museum of Bristol (see this blog). The document in question is not on the website yet, but apparently there is an agenda item tabled to discuss additional funding on the Musuem of Bristol.

I'm told that the extra capital expenditure is of the order of £1.3m, with another chunk of taxpayers money - £1.8m - for the adjacent Wapping Wharf development.

Remember, the redevelopment of the old Industrial Musem into the Museum of Bristol was originally supposed to cost £20.6m, but in November 2007 this budget was raised to to £24.7m.

Branding Update

You may recall that the council set aside a budget of £100,000 for "branding and marketing for the Museum of Bristol prior to opening." According to the council:

The focus will be on promoting the Museum of Bristol as a major cultural venue for the city of Bristol and visitors to the city.

Well the competitive tender for the work was won by Manchester-Basd Design Agency "True North". According to their press release:

Design agency True North has scored a major coup with its appointment to provide the brand for the £25m New Museum of Bristol. The team is also being charged with re-branding all of the existing attractions that come under the umbrella of Bristol’s Museums, Galleries and Archive Services.

The Manchester-based agency collected the task in the face of fierce nationwide competition, but was appointed without a pitch after meeting with the client and talking through the team’s experience in the arts and culture sector.

They now face what MD Martin Carr describes as “a complicated, broad and thrilling brief”, to deliver a portfolio of solutions that it is hoped will change the perception of the Museum Service, and impact upon the very city itself.

As he explained to How-Do: “The headline grabbing job is providing the visual identity and branding for the new museum (which is scheduled to open in 2010), but the entire task reaches far beyond that.”

“The service is looking for a transformational re-brand, with a subsequent re-branding of the five other attractions under its auspices. Something that really is radically different to what’s in existence now.

“There’s a lot of stakeholders involved with a job like this, as you can imagine, so they were looking for a team that could take them through the creative issues in a considered manner.

“An agency that could mix the creative magic with a logical approach and deliver something ground-breaking, yet that would still have a universal appeal to the diverse groups involved.”

Carr pointed to the team’s track record with the Imperial War Museum North, the British Library and the National Portrait Gallery as evidence of their expertise in the sector.

Now when I'm selecting a design agency, one of the first things I do is look at their logo and website, because that is surely something into which the team will put their best effort. And remember, this is the team we are paying to produce something "radically different to what's in existence now". After a bit of searching, I think I've found their web-site:

This doesn't fill me with confidence, but at least it's better than the attempt of team at the first search result (out of 2.7 million) returned by Google for "True North Design":