Fun Online Polls: Budget hotels & planning regulations

The results to last week's Fun Online Polls were as follows:

UK budget and mid-priced hotel chains. Thumbs up, thumbs down, what? Multiple selections allowed.

Premier Inn 20 votes
Travelodge 11 votes
Ibis 7 votes
easyHotel 0 votes
Holiday Inn 5 votes
Mercure 3 votes
Novotel 2 votes
easyHotel 0 votes
Thistle 1 vote
Other, please specify 2 votes

'Others' suggested were Days Inn (have smoking rooms!), Comfort Inn and Big Sleep.

Premier Inn got the most reasonably favourable comments, so that appears to be the winner - but perhaps that is because there are more of them, so people are more likely to have stayed in one?
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There appears to be some misunderstanding or disagreement as to planning regulations.

In my experience, local councils restrict the amount of buildings which developers can build on any plot; others (NIMBYs, Faux Libertarians and Homeys generally) appear to think that local councils encourage developers to build more than they really wanted to or more than what is appropriate.

It is possible that both are true: suburban and rural councils try and keep densities as low as possible (even when higher densities would make sense) and turn down more planning applications, and that urban councils ask developers to build as much as possible (more smaller units) and nod everything through.

(I'm not talking about the indirect effect on densities or home sizes of high land prices and taxation of profits rather than land values, I mean in terms of how much building a developer can put on a plot.)

So what's your experience/impression?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Penalty shoot-out and budget/mid-priced hotel chains

Now that this football related tomfoolery has ground to its tedious and predictable outcome*, I can announce the results to last fortnights' Fun Online Poll:

Penalty shoot out

Kick it to your left: Keeper dives to his right and saves it! 8 votes
Kick it straight and hard, Psycho style: Goal! 47 votes
Kick it to your right: Goal! 14 votes

I hope nobody cheated, but well done either way.

Best (and only) comment:

Al Trewyst: Goooooooaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllll !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* Out of seven teams which have appeared in a World Cup Final since 1970, five were in the quarter finals and four were in the semi-finals. Seven of those finals have featured at least one of this year's two finalists and this was the third final to have featured exactly the same two teams.
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An article in The Daily Mail today prompts this week's Fun Online Poll.

Budget/mid-priced hotel chains.

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

They probably aren't even aware they are doing it.

This month's edition of British Airway's Business Life magazine ("Total reading time 57 minutes", it says on the cover) includes half a dozen main articles (one page or longer) all of which are about rents and rent-seeking:

1. Interview with the CEO of Canada Goose, the premium cold weather clothes manufacturer:

When [my grandfather] first arrived, he worked in a clothing factory as a cutter and then decided at some point that he wanted to open up his own place, which he did. It was very small and in downtown Toronto, which was the home of the garment industry back then. Now it's the night-club district…

Most brands these days are not real brands, they're some product mass-produced in some factory somewhere else that has a fancy store woven in front of it by marketing departments…

I went to Europe, where I learned how valuable the term 'Made In Canada' is for us. I realised that for a lot of people a Canada Goose jacket is like a Swiss watch. The place where it is made is really important. We're a quintessentially Canadian product. All of our jackets are made in Canada. It's impossible to imagine us not making them in Canada.

2. Article about football players' salaries:

Manchester City, the 2011-12 Premier League champions, spend more than £200 m each year on player wages along, a figure that equates to 87 per cent of the club's total turnover… it's not as if it's the players or even their agents who are ultimately deriving up wages, it's the broadcasters - and one in particular.

In the summer of 2012, BSkyB signed a new three-year deal to cover 166 games a season, worth a record £2.3 bn to the Premier League… It's interesting to contrast that with Sky's first deal to cover Premier League in 1991. Back then it paid just £340 m.

3. Article about a private business which wants to build reusable rockets for space travel:

"I think there's nothing positive or constructive I could say about Kenneth Clark" [Managing Director Alan Bon] told an interviewer earlier this year.

It was Clark, in his role as Minister for Trade and Industry during Margaret Thatcher's final term, who 25 years ago pulled the plug on government funding of HOTOL - Horizontal Take-Off and Landing - the admittedly flawed spaceplane being developed by Bond and his colleagues…

Earlier this year, however, the government did a volte-face and over next two years it is to plough £60 m into the development of Sabre, a revolutionary engine tipped to transform the economics of putting satellites - and indeed people - into space…

… The technology behind Reaction's pre-cooler is so commercially valuable that rather than take out a patent - which would perforce lead to publication of its workings - the company is avoiding the risk of feeding copycat competitors by treeing it as a trade secret, like the recipe for Coca Cola.

… a new backer emerged in the shape of Nigel McNair Scott, a Conservatie Party donor and chairman of property investment company Helical Bar.

4. Article about commercial property syndicates:

Commercial proeprty is bounding back. Figures from industry monitor IPD who that UK commercial real estate returned1.9 per cent in the three months to June, the highest return in two years…

Many hope that this heralds a definitive upturn in the property cycle, and a signal to invest in shops, offices and factories on the back of a recovering economy.

5. Article about local loyalty card schemes:

My Sant'Ambrogio card, issued by the eponymous market of central Florence, is about two tubs of fresh pest away from marking me as a most loyal customer indeed.

Supported by the local council, this card is designed to encourage me to shop not in the international chain supermarkets and stores on the edge of town, but instead with the market stall holders and local businesses who risk being left behind if everyone moves to the suburbs.

6. Article about hotel renovation:

You could argue that a quality new build might be cheaper but that misses the point. The Prince de Galles has an established location on Venue George V and a proven trading history, and offers considerably less market risk.

Finding suitable land in an established European city is all but impossible, and what's more, a speedy renovation can improve a hotel's fortunes in months, while building from scratch takes years.

Tobacco Control on top form

From Tobacco Control:

Introduction This study examined tobacco smoke pollution (also known as thirdhand smoke, THS) in hotels with and without complete smoking bans and investigated whether non-smoking guests staying overnight in these hotels were exposed to tobacco smoke pollutants...

Findings Compared with hotels with complete smoking bans, surface nicotine and air 3EP were elevated in non-smoking and smoking rooms of hotels that allowed smoking. Air nicotine levels in smoking rooms were significantly higher than those in non-smoking rooms of hotels with and without complete smoking bans. Hallway surfaces outside of smoking rooms also showed higher levels of nicotine than those outside of non-smoking rooms. Non-smoking confederates staying in hotels without complete smoking bans showed higher levels of finger nicotine and urine cotinine than those staying in hotels with complete smoking bans. Confederates showed significant elevations in urinary NNAL after staying in the 10 most polluted rooms.

Conclusions You are all going to die a horrible and early death if anybody ever has any fun ever.