Universal Great Britain

[bedfordmassive]

Gotta give us something to stem the doom tidal wave I suppose

Yeah, it’ll take a while to turn things round from the last government!

 

[rob@rar]

Daily Express finds a couple of Conservative MPs to offer quotes which criticise a Labour government. Not exactly news, is it?! Standard operating procedure for the Express.

 

[Luke Hutchinson]

I think it’s more the £300million which is of note, if he’s quoting a number talks must be in an advanced stage

 

[bedfordmassive]

Daily Express finds a couple of Conservative MPs to offer quotes which criticise a Labour government. Not exactly news, is it?! Standard operating procedure for the Express.

Yeah, the framing is to be expected.

The interesting this is that they chose to attack this project rather than other ones they could attack (and there are several that are attackable for the Tory base). Implies something is going to be announced and they found out via a leak.

Edit: by announced I mean relevant spending in budget. Hype train is on.

 

[Altonsky]

Yeah, the framing is to be expected.

The interesting this is that they chose to attack this project rather than other ones they could attack (and there are several that are attackable for the Tory base). Implies something is going to be announced and they found out via a leak.

Edit: by announced I mean relevant spending in budget. Hype train is on.

Agreed. Sounds most likely.

Tbh though £300 million is a steal I think, I honestly expected it to be going towards a billion Unless that’s purely tax incentives and infrastructure is an additional cost.

 

[rob@rar]

If the final stage of the negotiation between Universal and the Government is tied up with the Budget, which I think is a reasonable guess to make, you’d expect it to be getting very close to being tied down now. But even so, I’d not trust the Express to care much about facts nor to have an inside line to the Labour Treasury team, so I’ll take this article with an extremely large pinch of salt. As has been said above, £300M seems like a very low figure to unlock a multi-billion dollar investment of this scale - would that even cover the train stations and the new spur road off the A421?

Apparently John McReynolds, Head of Universal's Government Relations, is back in the USA at the moment, so perhaps not deep in daily meetings with Ministers and Civil Servants over the nature of an agreement for the development at Bedford?

 

[ProjectUniversal]

Nothing new to report but of you'd like to see the latest site tour...

 

[Luke Hutchinson]

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Agreed. Sounds most likely.

Tbh though £300 million is a steal I think, I honestly expected it to be going towards a billion Unless that’s purely tax incentives and infrastructure is an additional cost.

That’s my assumption, Let’s hope those Tory MPs catch wind of that additional cost… They’ll have a heart attack

 

[xtpower]

I expect £300 million is the headline figure and the rest of the incentives are tied up in tax breaks and the like. I also believe like others it's either about to cross the line or they've agreed and it's about about signing on the dotted line.

 

[Doug88]

If the final stage of the negotiation between Universal and the Government is tied up with the Budget, which I think is a reasonable guess to make, you’d expect it to be getting very close to being tied down now. But even so, I’d not trust the Express to care much about facts nor to have an inside line to the Labour Treasury team, so I’ll take this article with an extremely large pinch of salt. As has been said above, £300M seems like a very low figure to unlock a multi-billion dollar investment of this scale - would that even cover the train stations and the new spur road off the A421?

Apparently John McReynolds, Head of Universal's Government Relations, is back in the USA at the moment, so perhaps not deep in daily meetings with Ministers and Civil Servants over the nature of an agreement for the development at Bedford?

He's probably back in the USA to meet with his boss so he can report back to shareholders about the deal and get the go ahead

 

[rob@rar]

Posted by Gavin Vaughan on the “We Want Universal Studios in Bedfordshire” Facebook group, Universal Creative have just listed several ‘ex-pat’ jobs all concerned with managing theme park construction. This for example, and this one.

For other ex-pat jobs the location is usually mentioned, for example,e ex-pat to Japan, but for these jobs no location is specified. Wonder if this is the first sign of Universal beginning to assemble ‘Team USGB’?

All the job details note that “While this position is not currently available, we expect it to become vacant at a later date and are beginning sourcing efforts. Although we are not actively recruiting for this role at the moment, we encourage you to send us your resume if you wish to be considered when the opportunity arises.”

 

[yepthatguy]

@ProjectUniversal just shared this very interesting article … Honestly sounds like it’s in the bag if Universal are happy with what the government are offering

I’ve just had a read.

If the Conservative Party (generally supported by the news outlet that published the article) think …

“Tax breaks should go to struggling British businesses rather than being used to lure a US entertainment giant to build a theme park in Bedford”

Then it should get even more interesting as the Universal land lies in the Mid Beds constituency, whose seat is now held by a Conservative MP, Blake Stephenson.

I don’t think these comments will go down well with the people in his constituency, if anything they will want him out and a labour MP in.

Mohammed Yasin is pushing for this massively but he’s Central Beds MP and Labour, and the universal land is not inside his area, it’s just next to it.

Sorry if this is a bit political, but I feel this stuff is highly relevant to whether or how quickly this will happen.

It’s been documented there’s already been a delay pretty much because of the above already.

 

[Jake S]

I understand this is as mostly rhetorical. The Tories (hell, perhaps Labour too) may say they would prefer tax breaks go to small businesses, but are they going to use any political capital to make it happen? I doubt it, but saying it plays well to the base.

That's not to say there aren't (legitimate!) concerns about offering such a massive tax break to a multinational corporation. But I have a hard time reading those quotes and seeing much more than rhetoric.

 

[Altonsky]

I understand this is as mostly rhetorical. The Tories (hell, perhaps Labour too) may say they would prefer tax breaks go to small businesses, but are they going to use any political capital to make it happen? I doubt it, but saying it plays well to the base.

That's not to say there aren't (legitimate!) concerns about offering such a massive tax break to a multinational corporation. But I have a hard time reading those quotes and seeing much more than rhetoric.

Agreed and if any of them really thought that they’d be scrapping all the generous tax breaks for the TV/Film production industry. They won’t, because (hopefully) they’re not that stupid.

And these tax breaks also inevitably help out smaller business’s further down the line.

 

[Jake S]

And these tax breaks also inevitably help out smaller business’s further down the line.

 

[rob@rar]

A lot of this is just noise, part of the normal (and IMV, distasteful) political knockabout that is day to day in Westminster. Government supporting businesses or economic sectors through direct grants or supporting infrastructure enhancements is not new, in the UK or elsewhere. In fact as the world gets more protectionist such support will become even greater. Here for example is £500M of direct grant to the Indian conglomerate Tata, to keep some steel-manufacturing in South Wales. That’s just one example from a very long list. The Conservative comment on that occasion was to say not enough support was being offered as jobs were under threat, which is the complete opposite of that piece in the Express which had a couple of rentaquotes saying it was an outrage that the UK would support Universal’s investment in Bedford. Like most political noise, I think it’s best ignored until actual decisions are taken and then look to see what’s going to happen, ignoring the political fluff that’s reported in our often biased media.

While I understand the comments that supporting Universal’s investment might cause public outrage at a time when hard choices are being made about public spending, I think those fears are over-stated. There wasn’t any significant opposition to the government handing out, in cold, hard cash, £500M to Tata last month (and not for the first time) to protect jobs in Newport. I don’t think we’ll see much opposition to infrastructure enhancements and future tax breaks to create thousands more jobs in Bedford and beyond.

 

[Dinosaurus]

This may be wishful thinking on my part, but this seems like a big step in the right direction for the infrastructure support that Universal is hoping for Rachel Reeves: Chancellor changes debt rules to release billions - BBC News

 

[bedfordmassive]

I feel a budget day set piece coming with UGB as an example of this in action

This may be wishful thinking on my part, but this seems like a big step in the right direction for the infrastructure support that Universal is hoping for Rachel Reeves: Chancellor changes debt rules to release billions - BBC News

 

[Steeb]

New DreamWorks film 'The Wild Robot' is getting rave reviews, I've read the book which was fantastic (my son's teacher was reading it to their class a few years ago and he couldn't wait for the next chapter so begged for our own copy). As this is a DreamWorks film, maybe this IP could feature in the park. The robot would lend itself very well to an animatronic, and the robot and baby gosling would both make great merchandise. It's a trilogy of books so has longevity - wikipedia says a sequel film is already in development.

Having seen this movie this week, I would love to see this happen. Feels like it could be a good option as a unique DreamWorks IP for the UK park. It's definitely performing well enough, and like you point out, longevity is right there.

 

[yepthatguy]

Evening all, quick question to anyone who may be able to answer.

When this potentially GB park was announced, the website was created which now holds PDFs and other documents relating to the project. There’s some quite detailed initial timelines in the pages.

Did universal so the same thing for the park in Frisco??

ie, Is there a website similar to the uk one with information on timelines but for the Kids park in Frisco??

Thanks in advance.