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VISIT
BY S.R.
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CCN 8/7
Newey,, Project Manager Bertran, ¡Head of OED
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FONG RONG. JUNE 30 TO JULY 3 1992
WHITTLE
Notes on 3 July Meeting
1.1 I met Mr Stephen Day, the Senior British Trade Commissioner at 8.30am in the conference room of the British Trade Commission. Also attending were Tom Buchanan, (British Council Director), Alan Paul (LC), Mr Smith-Laittan, (Counsellor) and Russ Jarvis, (Management Officer) from the BTC. The meeting lasted a little over two hours and terminated when Mr Day had to leave for another appointment.
1.2 Mr Day started the meeting by asking where I fitted in to the organisation. I explained the make-up of the design team and he expressed his dissatisfaction that I would not be able to respond authoritatively to spccific questions of the design brief. He said that he felt my visit was premature; he was in the process of putting some questions forward on the brief but these had yet to be formulated. (He mentioned that he had been hoping to see John Morris from Hong Kong Department). He then Ambarked on an assault on VED criticising policy "150 years in
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HK and not a single owned property- what kind of track record is that?" Experiences he had at his previous posting in Tunis where he claimed OED had been responsible for the wasting of £150,000 on unnecessary design changes. Riyadh, where he was involved in an inspection of the new embassy which had been critical of the commercial facilities. And finally on to the Albany and complaints about its furnishings and overall suitability. I countered as best I could with some of OED's recent successes.
1.3 Mr Buchanan was keen that we talked about British Council issues early as he had another meeting to go to. Mr Day questioned the inclusion of the "theatre" (multi-purpose hall) and its location within the Farrell scheme. I explained that access to it from the BC-G could be improved but Mr Day was more concerned about fundamental issues such as who pays for its running costs. I referred him to para 7 of Alex Smith's report of 13 March 1992. He clearly had not seen this document before although it had been copied to post. Nor had he seen the Smith visit report of 7 January which had included the December 1991 version of the SoR. A discussion ensued about the style and location of this hall, and the associated expense. Mr Day expressed incredulity that the BC were not paying for their part of the new building. Mr Buchanan conceded that should funds ultimately not be available for such a hall he could do without it. Mr Day asked him his preference of architects and he responded that Farrell's scheme was their preferred solution
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