Words starting with the letter C are not having the best of times at present, are they?. Think about it. Other than the obvious, there's Coronavirus, Covid, Circuit (breaks), Cases (climbing), Care (home) Crisis, Climate Change, CVAs, Cancer, Coughing. The list goes on. The truth is The Weekly has had a gut's full of the C-word this week and therefore has committed to not mentioning it again. Easier said than done with it affecting all walks of life, but it just feels like we could all do with a break from it!
“What is past is past. Never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.” This afternoon, Gareth Frank Bale will put Mario Puzo’s quote firmly to the test. Seven years after leaving for Real Madrid for a then world-record transfer fee, Bale returns from a footballing wilderness, one with all the money he could conceivably ever need (£600K per week!!). But whereas he could no longer get a game at Real Madrid, he has now returned to try to save the dwindling project that is Tottenham Hotspur. An enormous amount has happened since Bale left north London in 2013. Back then Harry Kane was a 19-year-old who had just been loaned out to Norwich City. Manchester United were still the team to beat and England had still never lost to Iceland. Bale missed Tottenham’s ascent under Mauricio Pochettino and their more recent stagnation. In that time, Bale won four Champions Leagues, scoring in two finals, two La Liga titles and, perhaps most importantly for him, he got his golf handicap down to three! This year he has played only 344 minutes of league football. He hasn’t scored a league goal since March 2019. However, come 4:30pm this afternoon, all eyes will be on the return of Britain's most successful active footballer. Amid the current turbulence of British football and life as a whole, the return of one of its best is, in The Weekly’s opinion anyway, worth getting slightly giddy over. COYS!
Another week, another batch of fine research offerings on the UK Property Market to digest. In the style of Craig David, on Monday CBRE released their Property Investment Yields which shows that prime industrial yields have continued to harden in Greater London, with prime estates now sitting at 3.90%. Tuesday saw CBRE host their Monthly Index Call and informed us that property had delivered a total return of 0.2% in September and that the industrial sector had seen capital value growth of 0.70% over the month, taking the quarterly increase to 1.10%. Then, on Wednesday, there was Lambert Smith Hampton’s teaser to their much anticipated Q3 2020 UKIT Report. It appears that Q3 saw total UK investment volumes reach £6.5bn, a rebound of 48% on Q2, led by activity in the UK regional markets. The quarter’s largest transaction was Link REIT’s £380m purchase of 25 Cabot Square in London (Morgan Stanley’s HQ). On Thursday, Savills released their prime regional residential snapshot which shows that prime values rose by 1.70% in the three months to the end of September, the highest quarterly increase since March 2014. The strongest quarterly uplifts were seen in York (6.1%) and Glasgow (4.1%) where supply remains highly constrained. And finally, on Friday, Colliers released their October UK Property Snapshot, duly informing us that the first week of October had seen deals worth £1.7bn alone and that industrial take-up will reach a new record high in 2020. And our summary of all that? It’s not all bad news out there!
The Weekly loves a survey, so you can only imagine the levels of excitement at HQ this week when it stumbled across the results of the EU-backed SIENNA project that studies ethics and opinions surrounding cutting-edge technology. Bedlam doesn’t do it justice! Researchers from the University of Twente have recently surveyed 11,000 people from eleven different countries, asking for their views on robots, artificial intelligence and smart devices. Unsurprisingly, the survey found that 80% of the people polled thought that the artificial intelligence and robotics revolution would significantly change their country over the next twenty years. However, one particular question caught our eye… whether robots would make a suitable romantic partner? Slightly concerningly, 27% either supported the idea of dating a robot or hadn't completely ruled it out! The Dutch are, apparently, the most accepting nation of the idea of artificial amour, where support for someone having a robotic boyfriend or girlfriend went up to a whopping 53%. According to Philip Brey, the project coordinator, “the data from the survey gives a snapshot of what people know about technology, and how they view both its benefits and risks”. And also apparently that the Dutch need to have a good, long hard look in the mirror when they get out of their single beds each morning!