IN Magazines

IN Magazines
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In The Docklands Today

Over the past 20 years, the population of the Docklands has more than doubled and the area has become both a major business centre and an increasingly acceptable area to live. Transport links have improved significantly, with the Isle of Dogs gaining a tube connection via the Jubilee Line Extension (opened 1999) and the DLR being extended to Beckton, Lewisham, London City Airport, North Woolwich and Stratford. Canary Wharf has become one of Europe's biggest clusters of skyscrapers and a direct challenge to the financial dominance of the City.

Although most of the old Dockland wharves and warehouses have been demolished, some have been restored and converted into flats. Most of the docks themselves have survived and are now used as marinas or watersports centres (the major exception being the Surrey Commercial Docks, now largely filled in). Although large ships can - and occasionally still do - visit the old docks, all of the commercial traffic has moved down-river.

The revival of the Docklands has had major effects in run-down surrounding areas. Greenwich and Deptford are undergoing large-scale redevelopment, chiefly as a result of the improved transport links making them more attractive to commuters.

The Docklands' redevelopment has, however, had some less beneficial aspects. The massive property boom and consequent rise in house prices has led to friction between the new arrivals and the old Docklands communities, who have complained of being squeezed out. It has also made for some of the most striking disparities to be seen anywhere in Britain: luxury executive flats constructed alongside run-down public housing estates.

The Docklands' status as a symbol of Thatcher's Britain has also made it a target for terrorists. After a failed attempt to bomb Canary Wharf, on February 9, 1996, a large IRA bomb exploded at South Quay. Two people died in the explosion, forty people were injured and an estimated £150m of damage was caused(1). This bombing ended an IRA ceasefire.[1] In a 1998 trial James McArdle was imprisoned for 25 years after a trial at Woolwich Crown Court that ended on June 24. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, McArdle was released on June 28, 2000.
(1) The parlous state of the Docklands property market at the time of the blast, combined with a lengthy delay in implementing redevelopment, means a true estimate of the financial cost is difficult to reach.

London Docklands also now boasts its own free newspaper, The Docklands, launched in 2006 by Archant London. This is a mixture of news, sport and lifestyle, and comes out every Tuesday. It is delivered to properties in the area and available to pick up from various locations in Canary Wharf, Greenwich and the Royal Docks. It is the newspaper with the highest circulation in the area. A sister title, The Peninsula, was launched in 2007, covering the Greenwich Peninsula.

InMagazines are a brand name owned and published by RED CUBE MEDIA LIMITED (c) copyright 2009.

Winter Still Life

Winter Still Life
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In Love, In Chelsea ! ...

Will Kate's Day Be Extra Special? Sky News Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton turns 27 today - and there is speculation her man will make it a double celebration by getting down on one knee. Related photos / videos Will Kate's Day Be Extra Special? Related content Speculation of royal wedding bells as Kate turns 27 Wills's Kate turns 27 amid wedding talk Video: Kate Middleton turns 27 Related Hot Topic: Royal Family Have your say: Royal Family Bookmakers Ladbrokes has halved its odds to 5/1 on William and Kate announcing their engagement following a run of money. The odds of the Prince popping the question at some time in 2009 have also shrunk to 1-2 from 6-4 at William Hill. The long-term couple spent much of the festive period holidaying at the royal retreat of Birkhall, the Prince of Wales' home on the Queen's Balmoral estate in Scotland. The pair reportedly enjoyed a romantic meal in a secluded log cabin in the grounds of the home. William, an Army officer, is due to start training to become an RAF search-and-rescue helicopter pilot in the coming weeks. Kate, meanwhile, continues to work for a party goods supplier run by her parents. The couple met at St Andrews University in 2001 - where they were both studying history of art, although William later switched to geography. After graduation, media interest in the royal girlfriend intensified and Kate's 25th birthday was marked with a pack of photographers waiting outside her Chelsea flat. At the time, William said he wanted nothing more than for the paparazzi to leave her alone. The couple broke up in April 2007, following reports that William's career in the Army and Kate's life in London meant they were seeing less and less of each other. However, a few months later Kate joined William in the royal box at the Diana concert and by the end of the year they were an item again. The profile of the Prince's girlfriend grew last year when she attended a number of events with senior members of the royal family. Rupert Adams, from William Hill, said bets are now focussing on which year the couple will get engaged. He added they were offering odds of 500-1 the couple would get married in Las Vegas and 10,000-1 in Gretna Green.

New Year's fireworks to welcome in 2009!

NYE 2009 Fireworks_035
Originally uploaded by k_jurek

PM warns that 2009 'won't be easy'

Gordon Brown has warned the country that 2009 "won't be easy" as it faces up to the economic crisis. Skip related content Related photos / videos PM's New Year's speech warns of tough year ahead Play video PM's New Year's speech warns of tough year ahead Play video Related content Indian inflation at nine-month low of 6.38% Video: PM's New Year's speech warns of tough year ahead Majority of Britons opposed to adopting euro: poll Related Hot Topic: Financial Crisis Have your say: Financial Crisis In a New Year message the Prime Minister insisted that Britain would pull through - but admitted the challenge was "enormous". "This coming year won't be easy, but I am determined that this Government will be the rock of stability and fairness on which the British people can depend," he wrote. "The scale of the challenges we face is matched by the strength of my optimism that the British people can and will rise to meet them." Amid widespread pessimism about 2009, the premier sought to strike an optimistic note at the start of what will be a make-or-break year for the Labour government. The prospects for a fourth consecutive term in office are likely to turn on the eventual length and extent of Britain's first recession since the early 1990s. But Mr Brown insisted the British people, and the Government, had demonstrated their ability to get through similar challenges in the past. He said the task for 2009 was to "build tomorrow", with jobs for the digital age and the green agenda, new transport and communications infrastructure and enhanced skills. Working together with Britain's world partners, he said, such actions would ensure the UK would "hit the ground running" after the downturn. The Prime Minister also set out his ambition to see a new economic philosophy replace the "unbridled free market dogma" which has been discredited by the financial crisis. "I want 2009 to be the year when the dawn of a new progressive era breaks across the world," he said. In a swipe at the Tories, the Prime Minister insisted failure to act would lead to a worse downturn and a weaker economy in the future. But Shadow chancellor George Osborne accused the Prime Minister of "arrogance" and said that what the British people wanted to see in 2009 was a change of government. Mr Osborne said: "Gordon Brown is living in a fantasy land of his own imagination - not the Britain of 2009. "He talks of tomorrow, but ignores the role he played in creating the mess of today. "He offers no apology for leading Britain from boom into bust, no explanation of why our country is now the worst affected in Europe, no excuse for why six months of policy announcements have achieved nothing except to add to our national debt. "He has the arrogance to use Churchillian language when he will go down in history as the politician who spent ten years in high office failing to prepare Britain for the gathering storm. "The only thing he hardly dares talk about is 'change', because he knows one of things the British people want to see in 2009 is a change of government."

Debt and dishonour - Fatcats feel 'the pinch'

William Briggs bids farewell to 2008, but the credit crunch seems very far from over... The economic drama of late autumn/early winter 2008 - banks nationalisations, bailouts, emergency rescue packages, etc - has begun to seem like a pleasant memory as we go into 2009 facing the everyday misery of companies going bust or entering administration and rising unemployment. In terms of bringing home the scale of the present economic situation to the public, the sudden collapse of many high-street names over the course of a few weeks at the end of the year was a perfect storm for two reasons. Firstly, the appallingly bad timing (Zavvi entering into administration at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve having a particularly Dickensian ring of cruelty to it) and secondly, the warm glow of nostalgia attached to many of the firms involved. So far, the main high-street names affected have been of a type the Brits love; slightly old fashioned, not used as often as they once were but held in enormous public regard because they seem to have always been there. However unviable their shops and stores may have been financially, no one reading this has not gorged at least once on a Woolworths pick 'n' mix, and familiarity and nostalgia were key ingredients in making the end of the company more than just another casualty of the crisis. Other shops under threat such as MFI, Willis Gambier, and Rosebys have a similar air of permanence to them which hopefully will not prove to be unjustified. (Whittard of Chelsea, we are pleased to say, will definitely make it into 2009 by the skin of its teeth, thanks to the investment of an undisclosed sum by EPIC private equity partners). After the initial naive speculation that the financial crisis would happen in a vacuum, hitting only "fatcat" millionaire bankers, December 2008 was the point at which, as the therapists say, everything became real. Although it still seems reasonable to hope that things will remain that way for only the next 12 months. Against this background, the story of the demise at around the same time of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC after 48 years of activity (the politest way of referring to the Bernard Madoff $50 billion fraud scandal) was ideal, involving as it did the unmasking of a genuine fatcat whose activities are likely to see him put in jail at some point in 2009. With the Government and opposition both doing their best to be supportive through troubled times it is nice to have someone to vent anger at. The media coverage of the story was in equal parts justified disgust at the man himself and shock at the gradual realisation of the sheer scale of the sting Madoff had been pulling for so many years. On a personal level Madoff seems to have the ideal characteristics to be portrayed as a villain of our times. A former chairman of the NASDAQ who appears to have been turned in for securities fraud by his own sons. A man who pulled off "the biggest financial scandal, probably in the history of the markets" according to Nicola Horlick, the British fund manager known as Superwoman whose Bramdean Alternatives investment fund had about £10m invested in Madoff Securities. Every detail that comes out (from employing his niece to seemingly turning in false score cards at Palm Beach Country Golf Club) between now and the trial verdict has the potential to add to public disapproval. All before you even consider the endless punning possibilities of that surname (stress on the first syllable, "made-off", as in "with their money"). Watching what happens to him may be the only cheering news on the financial pages in the new year. Replying to Ms Horlick, Jeremy Warner at the Independent laid down the hard line against those who have "taken to portraying themselves as hapless 'victims' of massive regulatory failure." Such people can expect little sympathy from at least one desk at Marsh Wall, E14 as the "failure is entirely their own. If you invest in a hedge fund, you cannot expect anything other than the principle of 'caveat emptor' to protect you from rogues and mismanagement. Ms Horlick and her co-investors were victims, but only of their own stupidity, greed and carelessness." A nice note of triumphalism, but one based on the false assumption that the investors described are all a cross between Burlington Bertie and the Duke of Westminster. Among the list of burnt Madoff investors are the presumably charitable Fifth Avenue Synagogue, NYC, who have suffered what the New York Post described as "a $2 billion bloodbath". In human terms the suicide of $1.4 billion investor René-Thierry Magon, of Access International Advisors, on December 23rd is the worst result of the scandal so far but more fallout, hopefully not mortal, will undoubtedly follow. The long list of banks involved in the Madoff scam and the sums they are estimated to have lost (RBS £400 million, HSBC $1 billion, Santander $3.1 billion, among many others) can only serve to exacerbate the crisis in the inter-bank lending market. It's worth pointing out that even if his dodgy practices were revealed at the height of an economic boom, the Madoff scandal would still have been one of the stories of the year. The fact that it came along at a time when everyone is nervous about their immediate economic future can be regarded as a fortunate or unfortunate coincidence depending on how one looks at it. Madoff himself, currently under bail and house arrest, has made only one public comment so far: that the management and advisory segment of his business was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme." Whatever else he does with his life, this definition should go some way to clearing up a slight journalistic misconception which has taken hold since Madoff's arrest. Some in the media have taken already to using the Madoff scandal as an example of what happens when hedge funds go wrong. A hedge is best defined as a specialist type of pooled investment free to invest in any market or financial instrument and free to employ a number of differing investment strategies. A Ponzi scheme is a con developed by one Carlo Ponzi in the early part of the 20th century, best explained as a giant pyramid scheme, capable of taking in the greedy, the well-meaning, the poor and the rich in equal measure and periodically revived by others since then. Ponzi spent the last thirty years of his life in and out of prison and being deported before dying in poverty, blind in one eye and partially paralyzed in Rio in 1948. Can you spot the difference? It will be interesting to see if this little quote is discussed anywhere in the proceedings of the case U.S. vs. Madoff. In Magazines 2008, Copyright (c) William Briggs