Bristol - Shopping Centre Of The World ?

I am sitting in our plush offices in Bristol on the top floor of Colston Tower and looking out across the city and all the building work that is going on. I am reliably informed by my lovely Bristol colleagues that the new Cabot Circus, including Harvey Nicks, will put Bristol on the map for shopping.

Before you accuse me of going off on a useless diatribe, the link, albeit tenuous, is that although there are fancy new shopping centres being built the outlook for consumer spending is still bleak. M&S today warned of "stormy times ahead" as consumer confidence hits sales.

As far as the building work is concerned generally speaking house builders are in a mess. No more so than Taylor Wimpey who today announced that they have not been able to secure the additional investment they had hoped and may now face some huge issues. A whopping 58% was quickly slashed on its' share price.

Meanwhile, our friends at Zoomf.com, have been dissecting the latest property report from Knight Frank. They suggest there has been a further fall of 1.7% in Prime London Property last month. Better news though for the so called "Super-Prime" Market for properties at £10m plus which seems to be holding up well.

I caught the lovely Melanie Bien from Savills on the BBC yesterday talking with some chap from the website housepricecrash.com. Melanie was much more realistic in her assessment than the scaremongering talk from her co-star of a quick 30% plus house price reduction.

Well, what do you expect from a website such as that that seems to delight in the fact that house prices are finally falling and would, it seems, dance with glee if we were all hit with such a massive crash. I still think supply and demand in the UK will kick in to stop such a fall.

We do, however, need a little help from mortgage lenders and I have seen some encouraging signs recently.

Anyway, as long as the new shopping centre in Bristol has a Lidl then top consultant Wesley will be happy. Well, there is a credit crunch on.