Author name: David Parkin

IT is early September so perhaps I should do what most of LinkedIn appears to be currently doing and list all the things I did over the summer and my “learnings” from them… Or perhaps I won’t. Except to say that I’ve learned that if you go to Corfu in August it is going to […]

IT isn’t easy out there in the hospitality sector but then who in business is finding anything easy at the moment? This Government’s rather odd decision to perform harakiri on its honeymoon period has piled the pressure on employers at a time when they need it least given global uncertainty and the rising costs across

HEARD the one about the Hollywood star, the pig farmer and the British ambassador? I hadn’t until I went to Scarborough this week. The annual Scarborough Cricket Festival is currently running – a month-long celebration of Yorkshire cricket and its long connection to the seaside resort. One of the regular sponsors at the event is

I KNOW what you are going to say. This photograph captures my best side. Please yourselves. This is a photo from the AABIE Charity Ball which I compered at Aspire in Leeds on Saturday evening. It is getting rarer to have corporate social events held at weekends but on the evidence I saw last Saturday

ANOTHER Saturday Night…as Sam Cooke sang. But unlike Our Sam, who went on to sing that “I ain’t got nobody”, I had plenty of people to deal with. I mentioned last week how I had compered the AABIE Charity Ball for financial group AAB. It was such a great Saturday night event that I wondered

AFTER last week’s photographs of the unfinished construction work at Leeds station, I make no apology for this image of a beautiful creation. No, not me, the jacket I’m wearing in the photo above alongside the Michelangelo of tailoring, James Michelsberg. “The Baron”, as he is colloquially known, has created a new garment for me

THE development around Leeds railway station continues apace. I’d say there should be more emphasis put on the word “continues” rather than “apace”. Work is continuing at the front and back of the station. If you don’t know which is the front and which is the back then I’d recommend you don’t ask the brains

WATCH out, watch out – there’s a Humphrey about. Do you remember that tagline from TV adverts for milk in the 1970s? I didn’t think you would. It was used by dairy Unigate to promote its doorstep deliveries of bottled milk. A “Humphrey” was a mysterious figure that kept drinking people’s milk through long striped

WHAT do you call 16,000 property professionals when they converge on a city for a major conference? Well, in my experience, anything you like, because they are too busy striding boldly through the city tugging wheelie cases and bellowing into mobile phones or talking loudly to each other about what deals they are about to

I KNOW Frank Sinatra’s original Rat Pack had a reputation as hellraisers but I didn’t expect their modern day tribute act to be quite the same. However news reaches me that the Rat Pack tribute act that I booked for the lunch to celebrate the life of Leeds lawyer Rodney Dalton have been at the