CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
New owner for 'hidden' route
(16 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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I thought it was more usual for banks and other houses of finance to "sell" their properties to an arms length subsidiary then rent them back off of themselves on tax-economical terms that make the books look good.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Interesting. I used to hugely enjoy booking meetings in the eighth floor offices that formerly housed the executive in mutual days. Best view in Edinburgh and highly conducive to lofty thought.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I had a summer job at Widows once, proof reading all the hunners and hunners of variations of leaflets for the new Stakeholder pensions. At the time the 7th and 8th floors were abandoned by any permanent residents so we were sent up there to keep us out of the way and spread out all the A3 printers drafts over the floors and pore over them for errors. Good view indeed but the "intelligent" lights kept going off and you had to wander the floor to trip the relevant sensors to get them on again.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I imagine many on this forum have worked there at one time or another. Although I normally always take the stairs, one of the last times I visited the top floors I used the lift and it came to a juddering halt half way down. It then slowly started moving again before arriving at the destination.
The view from the main stairwells of the central block is impressive too even through it doesn't include the castle.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@kaputnik
Amusingly I spent a couple of months in a very close reading of those same leaflets.
Posted 10 years ago # -
We got moved on to proof reading after the previous "job" finished, which was two of us spending 3 weeks at a desk answering the phone if it rang to tell them that the department no longer existed and give them the new contact details. They thought this was more prudent than either;
- buying an answer machine
- telling people they had moved on
- re-directing the phone lineWe were obviously looking very bored hence they started giving us things to read over for mistakes while we waited for the 1 or 2 phone calls a day.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@kaputnik
Ever work in the Dalkeith Road building? I laboured for the guys who installed the suspended ceilings there in a previous life. Made more recent meetings a bit surreal.
Posted 10 years ago # -
This is my favourite modern building in Edinburgh. Kudos to the EEN for managing to find a photo of it that makes it look a bit rubbish.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Min
It is well designed and actually quite nice to work in. The lines are all very gentle curves.....
..if only the changing rooms were bigger than the broom cupboard.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Been on the cards for ages. My almost four years at Widows came to an end at Christmas, one of the (few) plus sides to the job being that my desk was on the 7th floor, right by the window looking out on the castle. That was tempered slightly by the blinds being sick down because they stopped working ages ago and the company that installed them went under, and there was never the budget to replace them (they are between the panes and electric). Great atrium though.
Posted 10 years ago # -
" Great atrium though."
Apparently having an atrium is a signifier of impending bankruptcy: the company has lost control of its spending if it has such an extravagant feature in its office.
Bankruptcy administrators call them a CWA (Company With Atrium). It's a variant of one of
Parkinson's Laws.Posted 10 years ago # -
Another 'rumoured for a long time' thing.
Oh, and the heating on the 7th floor never worked. In winter we'd freeze (November/December people were sitting with jackets on, and in some cases gloves and hats); in summer it was a giant greenhouse, and the little windows were like the blinds, only about a third of them would open (and then last year we were told we weren't allowed to open them ourselves).
There was excitement in the high winds a few years back when one of the biiiiig window/doors blew in. Me and a guy I work with manhandled it off its broken hinges (fortunately I had some allen keys for a couple of bolts) and laid it down on the balcony.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Apparently having an atrium is a signifier of impending bankruptcy
RBS tried getting around it by calling their atria a "street". Still went bankrupt...
Posted 10 years ago # -
@kaputnik
Surely we in fact went RBSrupt?
Posted 10 years ago # -
I don't think Widows went bankrupt but it wasn't long after they moved into Port Hamilton that Lloyds took them over.
As far as I'm aware TSB Scotland with it's Atrium in George Street has never itself gone bankrupt, although has had more mergers than most.
Posted 10 years ago #
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