The delightful and gorgeously pretty Victoria Hoe came to the Riverside Hotel today to film a piece for ITV’s “Lookaround” about whether people should be penalised for owning a second home in the Lakes. Our MP, Tim Farron, has proposed that second home owners here should pay double council tax, a policy which I strongly oppose. We filmed the piece on the new balcony at the Riverside with the river raging a torrent below. As a prop I used the latest edition of Cumbria Life which has articles by Stuart McConie, the Radio 2 DJ, Hunter Davies, the author and Kevin Roberts, the head of Saatchi and Saatchi, all of them second home owners here and all of them great ambassadors for the Lakes . Victoria, who works for cash-strapped Border TV does everything herself (in contrast the BBC news teams invariably go around in gangs of three- a presenter, a cameraman and a sound recordist)- and she does it with great panache. As I haven’t got a recording of today’s piece, I’ve accompanied this post with a recording of Victoria at the opening of the Lakes Hospitality March Show where she set up the camera to record herself riding a Segue. The same clip has a brief shot of me with Paul, our Wagyu bull, who tragically died last week (see entry for November 4th).
Posts Tagged ‘LHA’
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
Border TV at the Riverside
Friday, November 6th, 2009
RBS Presentation on Tourism in the Lakes
At the Royal Yacht Club, Bowness, giving a presentation alongside a spokesman from the Bank of England to 60 guests of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The title of my talk was “Tourism, the local perspective, 2010 and beyond”. I followed the ‘Dave’ Cameron style of ‘no tie, no script’, which to my mind is much more friendly than a power-point presentation. My theme was that although the recession may have passed the tourism sector by this year, we may be due for a nasty shock in 2010 if interest rates rise, if the pound recovers ,if energy prices rise and if VAT goes up to 20%. I was amused to see on the evening news that Sir Stuart Rose, the Chairman and CEO of Marks and Spencers had been making a speech at the same time, telling the City that we can expect a rise in VAT next year to 20%. Sally “flipped” me and this extract contains the introduction and the conclusion of my talk.
Friday, October 16th, 2009
Campaign to Save the TICs
Slow Life took a turn in the fast lane this week. We have had a quite a coup in getting support for our campaign to save the TICs. After the Westmorland Gazette gave such prominence to my call for public funding to be preserved the story was featured on the Cumbria Radio Breakfast show and on the BBC evening news (see video). Jean Fry, our President, took my place. The Gazette has published today a letter from Ian Stevens the head of Cumbria Tourism pledging full support and I‘ve had similar letters from our MP Tim Farron, from Gareth McKeever the Tory candidate and from Brendon Jameson the Council Leader. It looks as though Lakes Hospitality may have to take over the running of Windermere TIC ourselves and we have put forward a radical proposal to the council. Watch This Space.
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/chiefs_set_to_pull_tic_funding_1_624291?referrerPath=news