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abujaihs-blog · 5 years

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What Europe’s Low Interest Rates Mean for Luxury Real Estate

Debt servicing costs in many parts of the world are becoming more expensive, with central banks from the U.S. to Asia and the Middle East slowly beginning to raise interest rates, but there is one region where borrowing has actually become cheaper in recent years: Europe. The European Central Bank, or ECB, has kept interest rates low to negative as others have begun to hike, most recently leaving interest rates on the main refinancing operations, marginal lending facility and deposit facility at 0%, 0.25% and -0.40%, respectively. After its April meeting, the bank said rates will remain at those levels throughout 2019—but the market is expecting an even longer hold, possibly until 2021. That has implications for luxury real estate in the region, though it will play out differently in each distinctive market. So what should high-end property buyers make of the ECB’s decision, and how might they act on it? It’s Not Clear-Cut Low interest rates mean cheap debt and typically lead to rising house prices. Generally, that indicates a good time to invest, especially if the low-rate environment is expected to continue. But the full implications vary from market to market. There are 19 European Union members who use the euro, and the relationship between central bank decisions and mortgage lending is more complex in Europe than other places. “The transmission channel from monetary policy, markets, interest rates—the bond market essentially—to the housing market is much weaker in Europe than in the U.S.,” said Frederik Ducrozet, a global strategist at the Swiss private bank Pictet. “It is much more complicated in Europe—it’s very different from one country to the other.” And, of course, when it comes to luxury real estate, debt is sometimes not even necessary—at least not for ultra-high net worth buyers who can afford to make cash purchases. “Quite a lot of the luxury property sector is actually driven by equity rather than debt,” said Hugo Thistlethwayte, head of Savills international residential. “Debt is always looked at because it may be convenient , but it is rarely the driving force behind it.” Low rates affect more than just the mortgage and refinancing markets, however. They tend to boost home prices across the board and stimulate real estate as an investment class, including luxury real estate. Moreover, many buyers, including affluent but not super-rich people with earned income, and those on the market for a primary home, will still use some debt. What to Know If you are looking to take advantage of cheap debt, remember that long-term fixed-rate mortgages are more common in some countries than others. Every market is slightly different, but Germany and France have longer fixed-rate terms than Spain and the U.K., for example. “If interest rates start looking like they might go up, then your ability to fix now will be a drive, because you are going to be fixing for 30 years,” Mr. Thistlethwayte said. If you are a risk-taker, however, you might bet that the ECB will not raise rates any time soon and opt for a variable rate, which is lower than a fixed one. “You run the risk of rates going higher, but if they don’t go higher then you pay less,” said Claus Vistesen, chief Eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. More risk-averse buyers, especially those in markets where long-term fixed rates are not an option, might find themselves worrying about an eventual rate hike. Even though the ECB is unlikely to move quickly, real estate is a long-term investment, and rates cannot stay low or negative forever. (Negative rates mean that depositors must pay to deposit money with a bank, rather than receiving interest on it.) In that case, consider choosing a property that can be monetized if need be, whether by renting it out or increasing its value through renovations and improvements over time. “You are going to move into a higher interest world over the next decade; it probably means that capital growth will be slower, and therefore you want to outperform the market,” said Liam Bailey, global head of research at Knight Frank. “Things like value-add opportunities are a great way to try to outperform the average—because the average might not be very exciting.”

He also pointed to a shift in demand toward urban markets such as Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Berlin, where owners can arrange short-term or Airbnb-style lettings to mitigate future debt costs. (That is more feasible in some markets than others; the U.K., for example, has raised stamp duties for buy-to-let investors in recent years.) Where to Buy Experts point to Spain and Portugal as attractive markets for investment, where prices are still recovering from the 2008 property crash. “Those markets were absolutely destroyed,” Mr. Vistesen said. So if you are looking to buy a holiday home somewhere warm, you are likely to get more for your money there than France, for example. And though mortgages are less likely to be fixed there, growth prospects in the region will likely offset the impact of future interest rate hikes. “The Spanish and Portuguese markets are set for some relatively strong growth over the next 12 to 24 months,” said Knight Frank’s Mr. Bailey. “City authorities in European markets increasingly are really trying to attract global investors into their marketplaces,” he added. “They see it as a way of kickstarting regeneration projects and kind of helping to make city economies more dynamic, by encouraging wealthy overseas investors.” There are, however, some things to watch out for. “Often a long, ongoing interest rate situation can spur development activity which can bring an oversupply and falling prices toward the end of the cycle,” said Zoltan Szelyes, head of global real estate research at Credit Suisse. And if bubbles start to form, you cannot count on the ECB to step in. “They will never hike just to tame a bubble in some country in asset prices—they are always taking this into account but, in the past at least, it’s never been a major driver of their decision,” said Pictet’s Mr. Ducrozet. “They should have probably tightened more due to what happened in Spain and they didn’t.” “I do think you’ve got to look out for bubbles, and those that have been rising longest are probably up there,” said Savills’ Mr. Thistlethwayte. In Iberia, major cities like Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona were first to recover from the crisis. Mr. Thistlethwayte said he is a “big believer” in secondary cities such as Valencia and Seville, while cautioning against other European capitals including Paris, London and Amsterdam. The Italian market, meanwhile, has been slower to take off, but Mr. Thistlethwayte said Savills currently has two successful new-build schemes underway in Rome, while Milan is becoming “a bit hipper” with more wealth moving to the city center. Those cities, he said, are worth consideration. He also highlighted Germany’s potential and said investors are beginning to see residential property there as an investment class, rather than just a place to live. The cost of borrowing in Germany has made many occupants who would traditionally rent consider buying instead, and Frankfurt and Berlin are experiencing both domestic and international demand. Consider the Bigger Picture Interest rates are not the only factors affecting housing across the continent. In southern Europe, for example, many countries have implemented tax breaks and other incentives for wealthy individuals that are likely to have an even stronger impact on the market. A number of countries have implemented Golden Visa schemes over the past decade, which allow foreigners access to the Schengen area if they invest in property. Portugal also brought in a non-habitual resident tax to incentivize wealthy foreign nationals to immigrate there. Italy, meanwhile, is in the process of rolling out a so-called flat income tax for foreign pensioners, or retirees. And then there is the U.K., where property investors are more concerned with Brexit and the British pound than the rate environment. “We know in London that high-end luxury prices have fallen and that’s because of Brexit, because some of those investors aren’t coming in anymore,” said Pantheon’s Mr. Vistesen. “They’re not interest-rate sensitive, they just want to be sure they can actually sell again or even live in the city, which they are not sure about.” In Mr. Thistlethwayte’s view, the future of London’s property market “depends on what you think is going to happen with sterling, … what is going to happen with Brexit, what ability does have to continue to generate money as a financial center—and it really depends on which side of the Brexit argument you come down.”

Conditions will Remain For the Foreseeable Future Where and how to invest in European real estate depends on a number of variables—your long-term goals for the property, which bracket of luxury you fall into, whether you need to use debt, your risk appetite, and even your take on Brexit. You will also have to consider the diverging tax and regulatory environments and mortgage-lending practices in each market before making a decision. But one thing appears certain: Interest rates in the region will be low for the foreseeable future. “Even if rates are likely to increase at some point, we need to realize that we live in a low growth and low inflationary environment,” said Credit Suisse’s Szelyes. So if you have been thinking about buying property on the continent, now is likely the time to do it. “The macroeconomic environment is supportive,” Vistesen said. “The ECB’s policies are to a large extent responsible for that, because they are saying, ‘Look, we are not doing anything for a long period of time, so you go and buy your house in Spain, if you can find a good priced little house—we are not going to jump the gun in the next six months with a sharp increase in interest rates.’ That is an important part of it.” BY PORTIA CROWE Read the full article

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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THE HUNDRED-RISK

If they're so smart, why don't they do something about it? It brought a critical mass if they clump together.1 There's one more message I've heard from cities: in London you can still barely hear the message that one should be more powerful. San Francisco and Berkeley are great, but they're far apart. For example, most people who can manage that are the people. The most obvious is that outsiders have nothing to lose. What kind of ideas? Someone like Bill Gates can grow a company under him, but it's hard to imagine him having the patience to climb the corporate ladder at General Electric—or Microsoft, actually.2 I'm not sure which was worse. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I didn't, not enough. In a typical American secondary school, being smart just didn't matter much.3

So I've thought a lot about where to live. But it's not humming with ambition. Cambridge with good weather. Why? So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in Shockley's day, because VC funds didn't exist. Everyone values safety too much, both the obscure and the eminent. The other implication of the organic growth hypothesis is that you need those people. Lower down the list, the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin.

How lucky that someone so powerful is so benevolent. That is certainly true; in fact it was the basis of Amsterdam's prosperity 400 years ago. First there'd be a huge ideological squabble over who to choose. Copying is a good way to learn, if you want to create a silicon valley, if they wanted to. All kids know it. The first step is to re-evaluate the probability of raising more money, as if that could be a real help. But the superficial ugliness of Perl is not the thing itself, but what we mean by it is changing. Now it's possible to ask that question you'll get immediate answers. They expect to avoid that by raising more from investors. That should be encouraging news to kids and adults both.

In my high school French class we were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. So the kind of things they say to one another. Then at least you can give back the money you have left, you've avoided the immediate danger. Why? Both have the kind of work, they'd be a net loss. It is a truth universally acknowledged? But I think the main reason other kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. And I lost more than books. It may seem facile to suggest a startup make more money.

As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers. Because the self-reinforcing nature of this situation works the other way too: the less you need further investment, the easier it is to take advantage of your ability to make small and inexpensive things. Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors.4 But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be stolen—they're still just beginning to see its democratizing effects. That's not quite the same message New York sends. One of the exhilarating things about coming back to Cambridge every spring is walking through the streets at dusk, when you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. And both groups are highly mobile. But, like us, they don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they all tell the same story: there is a clear trend among them: the most successful startups seem to be much more hackable. Why did he? Outsiders are still learning how to be stolen—they're still just beginning to see its democratizing effects. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.

Humans like to work, consider one thing above all: the government. Ultimately power rests with the founders. Not for the first sentence; if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important thing. It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Since you can't derive as much benefit yet from a narrow focus, you may as well cast a wider net and derive what benefit you can from similarities between fields. If you have to pay as much for that. In 1976, everyone looked down on by everyone, including themselves. Why is the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing.5 When I was in grad school, a friend came to visit from New York. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously—not even the smart kids. Why do people move to suburbia? One of Silicon Valley's most famous companies began in garages: Hewlett-Packard in 1938, Apple in 1976, Google in 1998.

Notes

This of course, or a 2004 Mercedes S600 sedan 122,000 drachmae for the tenacity of the crown, and the leading edge of technology, so they had no natural immunity to messianic figures, just that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your way. A lot of reasons American car companies have never been the fastest to hire any first—A Spam Classification Organization Program. I realize revenue and not others, no one would say that it killed the best startups, because it is still possible, to the wealth they generate. European politics then had no government powerful enough to do would be much bigger news, in the definition of property without affecting and probably harming the state of technology isn't simply a function of two founders and investors are just not super thoughtful for the ad sales department.

They're an administrative convenience. There was no great risk in doing a bad idea the way investors say No. Not even being a train car that in the sample might be interested in graphic design. But it's hard to mentally deal with the bad groups and they unanimously said yes.

This is the other. So what ends up happening is that they've already made the decision. One sign of the world, but rather that those who don't care about GPAs. Charles Darwin was 22 when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a company that could be adjacent.

In many ways the New Deal but with World War II to the next year or two make the police treat people more equitably. There's a good way to explain how you'd figure out what the attitude of the good ones.

I'm guessing the next time you raise as you can charge for. For these companies substitute progress for revenue growth. I did manage to allocate resources, political deal-making power.

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years

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(ESSAY) Where Does a Body End? Moving through a Globalised World of Travel, Technology and the Ecologies of a Fragmented Self in Lydia Unsworth's Certain Manoeuvres, by Max Parnell

‘Where does a body end?’ Max Parnell takes an extensive venture through the pages of Lydia Unsworth’s Uncertain Manouevres (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018), asking how do we know, how do we travel, how do we value our world, our wild, our guides, our motion and ourselves in a time of environmental crisis?

Move to New Zealand, wherever. Pick the name that suits you best. Do you like to wear German trainers? Who doesn't? What about Japanese?

> It's already dark at five pm and I'm watching a group of tourists photograph a landmark in Glasgow whose significance I myself don't know. Whilst I watch these figures move, people that could be from all corners of the globe, I think back to the month I spent in France this summer: another traveller moving through overcrowded cities, trying to silently assimilate. To say that Lydia Unsworth's debut collection, Certain Manoeuvres 'guided' me through that month would miss the mark. I don't think the collection, containing a profusion of reflections on travel, notions of belonging, the fragmentation of the self and its relation to ecology and new technologies is written to offer immediate answers. Rather, the reward comes through the ways in which this collection invites the reader to dip in and out, to meditate on the questions it poses and to return to it, as was my experience.

> The focus of the speaker's voice; sometimes 'I', sometimes 'you', and even 'us', calls upon the reader to reflect on their own place in the world, on their own sense of identity and on the many, fragmentary selves that constitute an individual. Pieced together through recurring titles that feel as though they are in conversation with each other, the reader drifts with the speaker's voice, situating us within the conversation. Each of these partitions neatly opens up a space in which the speaker switches pronouns as a way of altering how the reader engages not only with the speaker's voice, but with how they, the reader, relate to the questions being posed.

> In the sections entitled 'On', the voice speaks mostly to a 'you', a subject that the speaker seems to know intimately; 'your house is the only one on the street'. Whilst seeming to maintaining an acute awareness of this subject's identity throughout these sections, it seems also apparent, right from the first page, that this 'you' perhaps represents 'us', speaker and reader alike. Unsworth delicately captures this collective 'you' throughout the collection through references to the habitual motions we enact whilst travelling:

Even now, at the furthest station, you disembark, head toward gentrification. Buy a postcard, write home that you have travelled. Buy a coffee, read books by authors you already know.

These reflections on the generic and predictable experience of travelling in a globalised world are woven throughout the text, as if as a way of framing the commonalities we pass through when travelling without quite comprehending why we do so. The speaker's voice is frequently direct, creating an immediacy to the poems that demands our attention:

Out of office auto-reply, here I come. Culture shocks, here I come. Inspiration, here I come. Another temple, here I come. Border control, here I come. Bucket list, here I come. The perfect getaway, here it comes.

One of the structural elements of this collection that works so effectively is the insertion of notes from a 1968 guidebook, Famous Cities of the World: Amsterdam. These short fragments not only help to partition the positional focus of the speaker's voice, but also add a sort of humorous reference to the speaker's meditations on the (often disappointing) motions of travelling. As the guidebook notes, the view from a certain building presents 'what could be almost any city', but only through a 'closer look' do features become more distinctive. One of the questions that arise throughout this collection is whether or not travelling can ever offer us this 'closer look'? What even is a 'closer look'?

> The doubt of whether we can really come to know something, or somewhere through such fleeting visits resurfaces throughout the text. It's a sensation many of us know: leaving a place feeling like you've barely scratched the surface, resulting in the seemingly inevitable sense of ennui. In one section of Effects, the speaker almost implores us to consider this question: 'Imagine tapping into some sub-tropical region, really getting to grips with it, knowing which leaves to eat and which to ignore.' To read this whilst moving from city to city, spending less than a week in each, it was hard not to look at my surroundings and wonder what small impressionistic fragments someone must take away from the cities that I have lived in.

> There's an intimacy to the speaker's voice throughout the collection, one that at once recalls personal experience whilst simultaneously conveying a sense of unwanted indifference many of us have felt whilst doing what travelling 'tells' us we should do. In particular, I think of the speaker reflecting on their experience visiting 'the oldest university library in the world':

Whilst I hadn't seen the oldest university library in the world itself before, I'd seen something like it. Beautiful as it was… most of my attention was caught up in the fact that I wasn't really feeling anything. There was no sickness, no awe… just a lot of thinking about whether or not to bother taking a photograph.

I think this passage speaks to many questions that arise with contemporary notions of travel. The phrase 'seeing something for itself' struck a chord with me, as I think it hints at our tendency to research or look at places we're going online before seeing them in 'real life'. I recall once, after accepting a position at a university abroad, searching Google street views to check how the area around the department looked. When I finally saw it in actuality, there was a strange sensation that I was looking back at myself in the university library in Glasgow, the then present reality of that 'distant' street seeming to be inextricably tied to my former home.

> This seems to happen on many levels, not just through Google maps & street views, endless online photos and reviews, but also with ever increasingly sophisticated technologies. I know someone whose job consists of creating VR experiences of luxury holidays so that buyers can 'get a taste' before paying for the real thing, just to check if it's worth actually seeing it 'in real life'. This raises questions of the actual reasons for travel. Is it to discover something, to be surprised and have to learn from the difficulties faced in not being in the know? Or does this meticulous planning and the profusion of information render the act of travelling a process designed merely to 'experience' something in person?

> There also seems in Unsworth's poetry to be a reference to the insatiable desire (or perhaps even necessity) to situate ourselves around the globe, at the expense of feeling a sense of belonging. The speaker alludes to this, noting the 'under-rumble of quietude, a sharp but not entirely pleasant suggestion to be still', alongside the way the anxiety of flying stops them wanting to move. When an unnamed speaker remarks 'this might sound weird, but I'm satisfied', the implication is that this satisfaction results from being still, from remaining in one place. I couldn't help but smile at this line, recalling a time when a friend of mine, when explaining why she wasn't moving, told me exactly the same thing .

> As I mentioned before, this collection didn't exactly 'guide' me through my journey in France, but seemed instead to act as a reference point; the eloquent articulation of many of the emotions I encountered being mirrored back at me from Unsworth's poems. The speaker's voice, at once relatable and honest, seemed almost too accurate with where I then found myself; 'I just wanted to come home… a place where you didn't have to stand up if you didn't want to and you didn't need to buy anything'. Whilst I didn't have the immediate urge to return home, I'd started to grow tired of the inability to simply 'be' in a city without consuming. Having been asked by security to stop sitting on the floor in the train terminal of London St Pancras, the only place where you don't have to consume anything, these words seemed almost too pertinent.

> Throughout my time in France, moving by train from one city to the next, I frequently found Certain Manoeuvres making me think back to Ashton Nichols essay Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism: Toward Urbanatural Roosting. In this essay, Nichols draws our attention to what he interprets as technology's ability to heighten our interconnection with all elements (living and material) of our planet:

'The globe is now completely mapped, filmed and photographed, from those 1960's snapshots of the delicate blue-green planet seen from outer-space down to Google Earth shots of the smallest streetscapes and streambeds. With my own computer mouse, and with MapQuest or Google Earth, I can move from Mauritius to Manhattan in a minute; I can spin from the Seychelles to Seattle in a second. I can zoom down onto every housetop. I can see almost every car in every parking lot. But this is not a problem. This is not a loss. In fact, my ability to scan the surface of the globe with my computer in seconds is part of what assures me that I am linked to every living creature, and every material object, that surrounds me'[1].

In its direct yet tentative language, Certain Manoeuvres speaks to this notion, calling upon us to consider the implications not just of living in a world entirely mapped out, but of travelling in such a world with this all encompassing map available in our pockets. Do we see such hyper-visualisation and advanced documentation as Nichols does; as an 'assurance' of connectivity with our surroundings? Or do we encounter this with a similar sense of melancholic despondency touched on in these poems? I feel the focus in this collection hints less at the connectivity, and more at the atomisation caused by contemporary technology. In Effects, the language has a cinematic quality to it, constructing a scenario that feels familiar, if not personal; 'We move through the world but we take our computers. You sit on the metro in Japan and swipe right, swipe left.' Even when travelling, something generally characterised by an openness to new experiences, a desire to learn and to immerse oneself in a new environment, Unsworth draws our attention to travel's invariable tendency to pull us out from the atomisation caused by our relationship with technology.

> When the speaker insists that 'nothing here is wild', I think we can't help but see ourselves in the description of 'you' that follows:

You search for something that doesn't flaunt the stamp of man but all mountain ranges are rectangular fields and all wolves are dogs. The same logo is on the beach as can be found on the roofs and on the bollards.

In this specific, yet also quite familiar sensation of trying to find somewhere untouched or 'wild', there seems to be an emotional state we are growing accustomed to in the age of the Anthropocene. As I looked from the window of my train, crossing the southern coast from Marseille to Toulouse, I found myself also scanning the horizon, Unsworth's description of ' hotel penthouses' and 'factory chimneys' unfolding in the early morning light.

> Another aspect of Certain Manoeuvres that spoke to me through my travel was the fragmentation of the self and the myriad forms such ruptures can take. This concept is examined not only in relation to the speaker's person, but in relation to our environments, noting the inserparateness of locational disconnection and a fragmentation of the self.

> There are multiple passages throughout that collection that not only felt pertinent to where I then found myself, but that seemed to trigger memories of an emotional state experienced when living abroad. One instance of this came in On, where the direct address to 'you' feels so candid:

You hear the constant pitch of your old country from inside the ear, pressing down on you like bad weather. You drown it out by sticking to the busy streets: trams, motorbikes, yellow lights, etc.

I think this musical portrayal, to some degree, is both metaphor and literal. It's something I've certainly been through, as if no matter how hard you try to assimilate somewhere, to step inside that language and occupy a new, partially formed sense of self, there are instances where the previous fragments of 'you' seem to creep in like a faint, distant pitch. It's a note you’re familiar with, one you recognise and that often feels frustratingly dissonant to the key of your new, modified self. Is there a coping mechanism for such ontological discordance? Or do you simply pass through the busy districts where the noise of unremitting nightlife makes the past self impossible to hear? Reading these lines, memories surfaced of walking alone, comforted by the twenty-four hour culture of an unfamiliar district that allowed me to just exist without explanation.

> There's something about the speaker's inextricable link to the objects that make up their person that feels so tied to the notion of travelling as a potential for personal growth. Unsworth hints at the objects that make up part of this experience — postcards, letters, photographs — whilst questioning how crucial of a role they play in actually forming the person. Were they to be discarded, would some part of the self be forever lost?

I take unneeded items and classify them: paper, plastic wood. Fling them... freeing up vital storage. The fact that the past still exists is so unnerving.

Again, I find this another example of Unsworth's ability to offer us images both metaphorical and literal, leaving us to meditate on the multiple possibilities of this phrase. Does this 'vital storage' signify physical space exterior to the body? Or this act of clearing out physical relics of the past a way of clearing out internal, cerebral storage, creating a space for one of the speaker's myriad persons to fill? I think one of the aspects of this ontological fragmentation that enriches the collection and that allows these questions to resonate is the fragmentation of the language itself, or, more specifically, the fragmentation of the definitions of words that are presented as false equivalences.

The word for time is tide, the word for tide is tie, the word for tie is binding. The word for wait is one step away from the word for watch. Hour logging. The word for war, the word for ear, emphasis, a prostitute.

I think the effect of these moments of playfulness comes in large part from the sharp contrast with the direct, prosaic style of the collection. There's something in the severing of these words from their meaning, alongside the detaching of the self from one specific body that reminded me of Jameson's 'schizophrenic fragmentation'. This develops further when the speaker's false equivalences move into a form of double negation; 'you are better not at home than not away', which feels almost like the discordant clash of two parts of the self disagreeing with each other. It feels like the 'buffering' the speaker alludes to, the glitching of one's physical self with the idea of this self as they move through different environments. One of the lines that beautifully meshes this physical movement with a virtual movement comes in 'Effects', the collective 'we' travelling to 'the edges of computer games… to see where the mesh runs out, see where the coders traded trees for grid'. The insistence that 'nothing is wild' extends in the virtual space, with no vector left untouched.

> As we find ourselves entering the final stages of Certain Manoeuvres, the poetry takes these deeply personal questions of self and delicately entwines them with contemporary questions of ecological degradation and technological entanglement. Maintaining the same direct and immediate tone we've grown accustomed to, Unsworth's poetry looks at these questions with a tentativeness that avoids trying to be didactic. Instead, the reader is invited to consider these questions through the speaker's seemingly incomplete and slightly obfuscated images. We see the speaker 'attached to [their] past self by telephone wires, in paper repetitions… a molecule rotating in one of two directions'. This series of persons, seemingly enmeshed in both the memories of the phone conversations and the wires themselves, throws us back to Unsworth's earlier meditation; 'Life, whatever that is: grain, maize, a chip in a computer'. These reflections, rather than standing outside of the other questions raised in Certain Manoeuvres, interlink both conceptually and formatically throughout the collection. Linguistically, the same fragmentation of definitions pulls apart the language surrounding extinction and consumerism.

Everything becomes a monument, an internet cafe, a clothing range. Timing is crucial. The Latin name of the functionally extinct Yangtze river dolphin means left behind. The word for pigeon is dove, the word for Dove is Unilever. As soon as one thing is joined with another it becomes a different thing that is again just one.

Including false equivalences alongside genuine definitions, it forces us to pause and reflect upon the ways in which language plays a role in our perception of such environmental questions. Unsworth neatly pulls this off, pointing to the ways in which, through entering our definitions, words related to the natural world become synonymous with material products and consequently affect our conceptualisation of our environmental surroundings.

> This oscillation between false equivalence and actual reference is at work throughout the collection, arising unexpectedly at moments to present us with images whose veracity is uncertain. I think this is one of the most intriguing elements of Unsworth's poetry, a sort of uncanniness that draws our attention to the peculiar (and often challenging) alterations occurring in our world. One of my favourite examples of this comes in 'On', the weight of such a passage demanding a pause in the text:

Everything makes two of itself and because of this we think the planet will also. I move to another city so as to be free of my earlier mistakes. In Russia there is a town on the outskirts of Moscow made entirely of plastic. When the mothers are raped they look directly at the camera before they walk away. Locals clamber over rolling hills of refuse looking for something to build a roof from, anything that corrugates.

Evidently there's a lot to say about these few lines, but one of my first reactions (strangely or naturally, I'm not quite sure) was to Google such a town in Russia to see if it actually existed: I still don't know if it does. As I started to type the words into the search bar, I realised that I didn't need to know whether it existed or not. The fact that such a strange place could exist says enough in itself, demonstrating the bizarrely concerning ways in which our landscapes are being transformed during the Anthropocene.

> I don't think it's possible to comment on this passage without addressing what I found to be one of the strongest images of the collection. Needless to specify, the direct and explicit reference to sexual abuse woven into the middle of phrases speaking to questions of ecological degradation leaves the reader no choice but to pause and deliberate on two significances: principally, the significance of this image in isolation, and secondally the (possible) link between this and questions of ecology. It's not my place to state what this means per se, but one notion these lines invited me to consider is the inseparability of human rights issues from the ongoing, and multifaceted challenges of the deeply entrenched environmental concerns of our time. Can these specific violations be treated in isolation? Or are they part of a greater ecology of issues that interlink and merge, forcing us to see a perpetual mutability that makes these questions impossible to detach from one another?

> So where does a body end? As we move through this collection, following the speakers ontological fragmentation, it's hard not to look at the objects of our own lives in which small parts of our self manifest. As I moved through city after city, dipping in and out of Certain Manoeuvres, I couldn't help but feel that lodged within the camera, the journal, the interrail pass, all this paraphernalia of travel, was now a certain fragment of who I was during that month. This is a powerful collection that asks many difficult questions, ones that I feel require time to meditate on. Even after multiple close readings, there seems to be a life to this text which grows and mutates independently, mirroring the ways in which the speaker fragments, multiplies and manifests themselves in obscure objects and spaces throughout the poems. That this is a collection I will return to, I am sure. How these reading experiences will be, I couldn't say, such is the nature of this multifaceted, intricately layered collection.

Uncertain Manoeuvres is out now and available to order via Knives Forks and Spoons Press. Lydia Unsworth’s latest chapbook, Throw the Towel In, will be released by KFS Press later this year.

Text: Max Parnell

Image: Knives Forks and Spoons Press

Published: 5/4/20

[1] Ashton Nichols, 'Prologue: Urbanatural Roosting', in Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism: Toward Urbanatural Roosting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. Xiii-xxiii. (p. xv).

#essay #essays #SPAM #Lydia Unsworth #Max Parnell #Knives Forks and Spoons Press #Certain Manoeuvres

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touristguidebuzz · 6 years

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Virgin Atlantic Builds an Igloo on a Deck at Heathrow — Airline Innovation Report

Virgin Atlantic has built a pop-up igloo at London Heathrow. Virgin Atlantic

Skift Take: Most high-value customers choose airlines based on two factors — price and schedule. But on the margins, airlines like to use marketing strategies to attract customers. Maybe Virgin Atlantic's outdoor igloo at London Heathrow will help it win some new fans.

— Brian Sumers

The Skift Airline Innovation Report is our weekly newsletter focused on the business of airline innovation. We will look closely at the technological, financial, and design trends at airlines and airports that are driving the next-generation aviation industry.

We also provide insights on developments in passenger experience, ancillary services, revenue management, loyalty, technology, marketing, airport innovation, the competitive landscape, startups, and changing passenger behavior. I write and curate the newsletter, and we send it on Wednesdays. You can find previous issues of the newsletter here.

At the Star Alliance and United Club lounges in Los Angeles, you can wait for your flight outside on an observation deck, perhaps while sipping Chardonnay, smelling jet fuel and enjoying one of roughly 330 sunny days each year.

It’s part of a newish trend of airlines and alliances opening clubs with outdoor decks. Some are in obvious places, like L.A. Others are not. Delta Air Lines has outdoor lounges in Atlanta and New York, while Virgin Atlantic has one in London. The terraces delight passengers, who pose for selfies by fire pits, while watching aircraft move on the ramp.

But it’s December now. And while Virgin Atlantic likes to brag it has the only rooftop garden at Heathrow, the airline has never figured out how best to use it because, unlike in Los Angeles, the sun does not shine year-round. “Winter in London proved to be the most challenging time for us to make this space incredible,” Daniel Kerzner, the airline’s vice president for customer experience, told me.

Enter the igloo.

This week, Virgin Atlantic announced it had built an eight-seat igloo on the deck, available to passengers through January 14. It’s part of a marketing deal with London’s Coppa Club, which uses seasonal igloos to goose low-season sales. At Virgin Atlantic, executives hope igloos will make the brand pop on social media. According to the release, the airline expects customers will take “highly shareable selfies in this unique location.”

I don’t see many igloos — I’m in L.A. — but apparently elsewhere they’re a thing. “Igloos have become a huge sensation in London, and we wanted to take it one step further,” Kerzner said. Kerzner, who earlier this year left Marriott International, where he was vice president of marketing, promised we’ll see more innovative ideas from Virgin Atlantic in 2018.

What do you think? What should Virgin Atlantic plan to help improve the brand’s positioning? Does it need to do more than have a month-long igloo popup?

And what’s with this igloo craze?

— Brian Sumers, Airline Business Reporter

The Week’s Links

Delta Air Lines Is Going After Future Business Travelers — While Still in College: At investor day last week, Delta’s chief marking officer said the carrier is courting university students as well as young professionals with lucrative jobs. Also interesting: Delta monitors spending patterns on its American Express-branded credit cards, keeping a close eye on splitters — or customer who buy on Delta and other carriers.

Video: Lufthansa Strives to Become as Data-Savvy as Netflix: At Skift Global Forum in New York earlier this year, I interviewed Lufthansa Chief Digital Officer Christian Langer. He told me he seeks to persuade all the group’s airlines to implement sophisticated ecommerce strategies used by major online retailers. As anyone who works in airlines knows, this is a tough task. He’s up for the challenge.

Spirit Airlines Names Next CEO as It Tries to Fix Old Problems: When Spirit replaced CEO Ben Baldanza in January 2016, it bungled the messaging. Baldanza said he left on his own, as part of a succession plan. But it didn’t seem that way, and investors received no warning. Spirit is not letting that happen this time. Investors are getting more than one year of warning. Current CEO Bob Fornaro will step down in January 2019.

25 Travel Moments That Mattered in 2017: At Skift, we recap the year with moments we think were important. I contributed three — one on the rise of basic economy, another on United’s dragging incident, and a third on the massive Airbus order placed by four discount airlines, all partly owned by Indigo Partners.

Should Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary Step Down? The idea of replacing iconic Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary would have been unthinkable six months ago. But times change. Maybe Ryanair needs a leader who is less antagonistic to labor. Or maybe it just needs a fresh start, Bloomberg View columnist Chris Bryant writes.

Southwest Sees U.S. Tax Bill as Opportunity to Buy New Planes: This is impressive spin by Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, a proponent of tax reform. More than most U.S. airlines, Southwest needs to place a massive order for new planes. It will have to replace older jets no matter the tax implications. But, hey, why not credit tax reform?

In It for the Long Haul: Passengers love to complain about airlines, but for business class travelers, the product has never been better. At least that’s what I say in this Globe and Mail story about long-haul business class. “Almost every airline has seats that turn into a flatbed. Most airlines are investing in new airport lounge,” I noted. “Many airlines are improving their food and wine. Things are a lot better up front than they were a decade ago, when just about every airline has recliner seats, and not beds.”

First Class Airline Travel. Is It Dead? Airlines Should Expand Their Brands With Premium Perks: There is no shortage of stories proclaiming first class is dead. I’ve even written a couple. But this report from CAPA-Centre for Aviation is more interesting than most. Its conclusion: “First class mostly exists not for direct revenue contribution, but for marketing.”

How Flyers Can Relax and U.S. Airlines Can Compete — With Spas: A couple of things here. Spas are not a new airport trend. And while the people quoted in this New York Times story may say otherwise, few passengers choose flights based on the spa experience. Business travelers tend to choose flights based on price and schedule. They always have, and they probably always will.

Norwegian Wi-Fi Update

Norwegian Air is expanding its U.S. network again, with new less-than-daily flights from New York to Madrid and Amsterdam, and Los Angeles to Madrid and Milan. Boeing 787-9 aircraft will fly all four routes.

Norwegian uses the Dreamliners as a marketing tool, and it should, considering how much it costs to new lease the fancy planes. But as much as Norwegian promotes the onboard experience — customers can order food through the entertainment system and flight attendants can help control jetlag through mood lighting — something is missing. Neither Norwegian’s 787s nor its Boeing 737 Max fleet have Wi-Fi. It is a perk the airline has long promised but never delivered.

Regular readers know I rarely will fly without Internet — I’m a millennial, and I’m addicted — so I asked Norwegian spokesman Anders Lindstrom about the holdup. While he didn’t explain why it has taken so long, he promised Wi-Fi is coming soon.

“We will start installing Wi-Fi onboard both the 787 Dreamliners and the 737 MAX mid-2018,” he said.

He didn’t say when Norwegian would finish, however. Let’s hope it’s soon.

Tweet of the Week

The lobbying group for the largest U.S. airlines — just about all of them except Delta Air Lines — is joining the suck-up-to-the-president game.

Is this what a lobbying group must do in 2017 to ensure the president will take it seriously? Presumably the airlines still want safety regulations.

Thank you @realDonaldTrump and @SecElaineChao for your leadership to achieve more effective, efficient and modern regulation that prioritizes jobs and economic growth. http://pic.twitter.com/wOmhUtD50k

— Airlines for America (@AirlinesDotOrg) December 15, 2017

Meet Me in San Francisco

Want to know about big travel trends coming in 2018? Skift is holding three free events in January to share our Megatrends — an overview of what we expect for travel in 2018.

We’ll be in New York on January 16, London on January 18, and San Francisco on January 30. In addition to lively discussion, we will have refreshments. And you’ll leave with a fancy magazine, featuring a story by me about how airlines are rushing to refine ecommerce strategies.

I’ll attend the San Francisco event, and would love to meet you there. Or you can meet my colleagues in London and New York.

Details on all the events here. You will need tickets.

Three You May Have Missed

You won’t get a newsletter next week because of the holiday. But here’s some extra content to get you through the month. I enjoyed writing these three stories in 2017 more than others.

Business of Pajamas, Pillows and Bragging Rights on Airplanes: Before Harry Zalk, I hadn’t thought about launching an Airline Insiders feature — a question-and-answer series where I ask airline employees and vendors about the intricacies of their jobs. But I met Zalk at a London conference and he impressed me with his zeal for airline pajamas, and amenity kits. He said the global soft products and amenities market is probably worth at least $500 million. He helps match luxury brands with airlines.

For the First Time, Allegiant Air Learns What It’s Like to Configure a New Airplane: If you fly U.S. discounter Allegiant Air, you may see a bright orange stripe running along overhead bins. That’s because many of its planes are former EasyJet Airbus aircraft, and it’s cheaper to keep the cabins as they were, rather than retrofit them. But earlier this year, Allegiant added its first new planes and had to decide how to configure them. One Allegiant executive described it like renovating a house. “They [Airbus] kind of walk you through the process and say, ‘Now it’s time to make these 14 decisions,’” he said. “That’s when we open the catalogue and say, ‘Oh, shit, there are many, many options.’”

Spirit Airlines Wants to Win Back Customers by Being Nicer: I spoke with Spirit Airlines CEO Bob Fornaro over the summer during what might be described as his apology tour. Baldanza, his predecessor, built a formidable low-cost carrier, but he did not create a customer-friendly airline. “For the most part, you can only do that for a short period of time,” Fornaro told me. “We almost went out of our way to poke the customer in the eye. And once a business gets more competitive, you can’t do that anymore.”

Skift Airline Business Reporter Brian Sumers [[email protected]] curates the Skift Airline Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Wednesday. Have a story idea? Or a juicy news tip? Want to share a memo? Send me an email or tweet me.

Subscribe to the Skift Airline Innovation Report

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rollinbrigittenv8 · 6 years

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Virgin Atlantic Builds an Igloo on a Deck at Heathrow — Airline Innovation Report

Virgin Atlantic has built a pop-up igloo at London Heathrow. Virgin Atlantic

— Brian Sumers

Enter the igloo.

What do you think? What should Virgin Atlantic plan to help improve the brand’s positioning? Does it need to do more than have a month-long igloo popup?

And what’s with this igloo craze?

— Brian Sumers, Airline Business Reporter

The Week’s Links

Norwegian Wi-Fi Update

“We will start installing Wi-Fi onboard both the 787 Dreamliners and the 737 MAX mid-2018,” he said.

He didn’t say when Norwegian would finish, however. Let’s hope it’s soon.

Tweet of the Week

The lobbying group for the largest U.S. airlines — just about all of them except Delta Air Lines — is joining the suck-up-to-the-president game.

Is this what a lobbying group must do in 2017 to ensure the president will take it seriously? Presumably the airlines still want safety regulations.

— Airlines for America (@AirlinesDotOrg) December 15, 2017

Meet Me in San Francisco

Want to know about big travel trends coming in 2018? Skift is holding three free events in January to share our Megatrends — an overview of what we expect for travel in 2018.

I’ll attend the San Francisco event, and would love to meet you there. Or you can meet my colleagues in London and New York.

Details on all the events here. You will need tickets.

Three You May Have Missed

You won’t get a newsletter next week because of the holiday. But here’s some extra content to get you through the month. I enjoyed writing these three stories in 2017 more than others.

Subscribe to the Skift Airline Innovation Report

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abujaihs-blog · 5 years

Text

What Europe’s Low Interest Rates Mean for Luxury Real Estate

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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Trump’s Staff and Allies Aren’t Clear on Travel Ban Specifics

Demonstrators crowd the international terminal as they protest against President Donald Trump's travel ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations, at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017. Olga Rodriguez / Associated Press

Skift Take: This ban has been so incompetent and poorly thought out that we imagine Jeff Smisek must be advising the administration.

— Jason Clampet

President Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown sparked a global backlash for a second day, as aides offered conflicting interpretations of its reach, allies from the U.K. to Germany condemned the move and major international companies said it threatened to strangle the free flow of workers and commerce.

Trump showed no sign of backing down, issuing statements comparing his order to one issued by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and effectively telling fellow Republicans who criticized him to mind their own business.

“This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe,” Trump said in a statement Sunday pushing back against the international uproar that followed his action. “There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order.”

His tweets were even more direct: “…Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III,” Trump wrote.

Trump was defending an executive order issued two days earlier that sets new barriers to entry for people from seven mostly Islamic countries. Refugees, visa holders and permanent U.S. residents were all among those affected, at least initially.

Figuring It Out

The fallout from the order was swift, compounded by the fact that few — including some of Trump’s own aides — seemed clear what was in it. Two of his top aides, strategist Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, had to get on the phone with British officials to walk them through it. Another Trump aide said the order added a new step to re-entry for some green card holders. Yet another aide said the status of such permanent legal residents would be clarified later.

Late in the day Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued a statement declaring that the entry of green-card holders is in the national interest. He said such individuals would be allowed into the country barring any significant evidence that they pose “a serious threat to public safety and welfare.”

One Trump friend and adviser, Tom Barrack, said the president has indicated that the immigration order serves two purposes: one, to keep a potential terrorist out, but two to send a signal to the larger Middle East that the countries there need to take control of the situation at home and stop using a flood of refugees as a bargaining chip to pressure the West.

Given that Trump’s foreign policy team is only now taking shape, “it is just a way to push back with the only tool that he has, so he is giving a time-out while his team gets in place and then they will have a run at it,” Barrack said in an interview.

Trump views the order as the first step of what he has described a “Marshall plan” for the Middle East, where he will help countries in the region with U.S. support in hopes of improving the lives of the people there by putting as many as 60 million young people to work on electricity and other infrastructure projects, Barrack said. Trump made calls on Sunday to U.S. allies in the region, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.

Courts Jump In

Amid the confusion over Trump’s order, the courts went into the breach, with no fewer than three federal judges seeking to block parts of it temporarily. The judges intended to prevent people stopped from entering the country from being sent back home, and to let most of those who were stopped enter the U.S. But they did little to clarify the state of the law going forward. White House officials insisted the rulings were moot because the travelers were processed as provided under the law.

Adding to the legal drama is the possibility that Trump could name his choice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court as early as Monday, setting the constitutionality of this order as a backdrop to what is sure to be a brutal confirmation battle with Democrats who joined the outcry against Trump’s move.

The human drama played out at airports across America, Europe and the Middle East, as officials struggled to interpret instructions that appeared to catch much of the U.S. government by surprise. Protests grew — at John F. Kennedy airport in New York, Logan International Airport in Boston, O’Hare Airport in Chicago and elsewhere — as squadrons of immigration lawyers commandeered food courts and other public areas to try to plot the legal strategy to free travelers caught behind customs barriers by an order few yet understood.

At the same time, the potential implications began to set in for multinational companies. After an early outburst of anger by some American technology leaders — Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Elon Musk — chief executive officers of other industries from finance to autos started to grapple with the order’s reach.

Jeff Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chairman and CEO, wrote in an internal e-mail that GE has “many employees from the named countries” who are “critical to our success and they are our friends and partners.” GE, he said, would “continue to make our voice heard with the new administration.”

Starbucks Corp. CEO Howard Schultz, who wrote he had a “heavy heart” over Trump’s immigration order, said the company plans to hire 10,000 refugees over five years around the world.

Google, Microsoft

Silicon Valley executives were more outspoken. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, an immigrant from India, called the policy “painful” and Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella took to the company’s LinkedIn to highlight “the positive impact that immigration has on our company, for the country, for the world.”

Friday’s executive order suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days and imposed a 90-day entry freeze for citizens of seven countries, from U.S. ally Iraq to longstanding enemy Iran.

The confusion around the order was exemplified by the debate over its effect on holders of green cards. At least 60 were stopped from entering Saturday at one airport alone, Dulles International outside Washington.

Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus initially said the green card holders wouldn’t be denied entry. “If you’re coming in and out of one of those seven countries,” Priebus said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “then you’re going to be subjected, temporarily, with more questioning until a better program is put in place over the next several months.”

A second Trump aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the changes would amount to only one additional step — some added screening when they return to the U.S. — but that they would be let in barring any reason to think they had become a threat. Kelly’s action was aimed at clearing up the confusion.

Americans First

Through it all, the White House insisted the program’s implementation was running smoothly and affected only about 109 people on a day when 350,000 travelers entered the U.S. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump was merely putting Americans first. “The safety of our country has got to be paramount,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

But two Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, warned that the measure may not succeed even on those grounds. They said it risked spurring anti-American sentiment and turning into a “self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” questioning whether all the relevant government departments had been properly consulted.

The two also said they were “concerned by reports that this order went into effect with little to no consultation with the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security.”

Republican senators cautioned that any actions not be seen as imposing a religious test on entry into the U.S., and some said the order was badly framed.

“We all share a desire to protect the American people, but this executive order has been poorly implemented, especially with respect to green card holders,” Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “The administration should immediately make appropriate revisions, and it is my hope that following a thorough review and implementation of security enhancements that many of these programs will be improved and reinstated.”

Airport Detention

Unsure of the rules, officials at airports everywhere played it safe. In Amsterdam and London, all U.S.-bound travelers from the seven countries — the others are Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya — were being turned away. In the U.S., more than 100 people were detained on arrival; some were later released when the courts stepped in.

Passengers arriving at Boston’s Logan international Airport mustn’t be “detained or returned based solely on the basis of the executive order,” District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled on Sunday.

The leaders of key American allies distanced themselves from Trump.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country would welcome those fleeing persecution, “regardless of your faith.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spoke to Trump on Saturday, expressed her concern that the fight against terrorism “doesn’t justify placing people of a particular origin or faith under general suspicion,” according to her chief spokesman Steffen Seibert. “We do not agree with this kind of approach,” U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said of the immigration freeze on Sunday, two days after meeting with Trump in Washington.

Countries including the U.K., Germany and Canada have been deeply enmeshed for decades in U.S.-led security and economic systems. Trump has thrown them into question.

He’s threatened to withhold military assistance from NATO allies who don’t pay their share of defense costs, and rip up trade accords that he says were rigged against U.S. interests. The immigration row comes just a few days after Trump’s plan to build a border wall sparked a fight with his Mexican counterpart, who canceled a trip to Washington.

–With assistance from Nick Turner and Brian Louis

This article was written by Margaret Talev, Shannon Pettypiece and Justin Sink from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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