MIPIM 2009

Ok, hands up all you other Nottingham Bloggers who, like me, forgot all about Powder Monkeys and NCC jollies over at MIPIM this year?

There was rather a lot on at the time, what with the budget and the associated celebrity visits, not to mention all the highly amusing 'culture' reports and the ongoing housing allocations fallout.

So here's a slightly delayed piss take.

Firstly, it does seem that NCC weren't quite so keen to trumpet the junket in these credit crunch times. Someone obviously realised that language like 'Yachtingham', apart from being an unfeasibly crap pun, would probably go down like the Titanic. How many of us would have liked to have seen the 'Powder Monkey' meet a simliar fate, taking 'Team Nottingham' with them?

Slightly bizarrely virtually all web presence of the 2008 event seems to have gone, probably to the same place as all NCC's email correspondence on the Icelandic Banks. The Report on the 'Invest in Nottingham' site doesn't so much as mention a yacht, although there is a nice picture of one as reminder. Its all very low key.

Here's a short extract from an interview with Morgan Tucker's managing director -

''I went out to MIPIM to target six key businesses and with the help of Team Nottingham I struck two important deals."

Hmm, now here's a short extract from what I wrote about last year's knees up -

"One businessman on the trip proudly boasted that 'two' new deals had 'come his way'... "

Erm, that's what we in the trade call a consistent, but not exactly relentless, work rate I feel.

Mr Tucker waffles on elsewhere on the site -

"In 2007 a relationship formed on the yacht between ourselves and South Derbyshire District Council led to the company's involvement in the design, masterplanning and imminent planning submission for a community led homes development..."

I can see how this sort of wheeler dealing could only be possible on a luxury yacht in the south of France, as opposed to a sweaty office in the south of Derbyshire. I wonder who paid for dinner?