“Is this perhaps the drug-fuelled fantasy of a rock chick or a Mafia boss?” asks Fiona Duncan, who recently visited the hotel to offer her verdict.

“Liberace lives,” is her reasonable conclusion.

“There’s velvet fabric, embossed leather or chequerboard tiles on other walls, fur on ceilings, white plastic studded with crystals for upholstery, dripping chandeliers, a creepy mirrored chill-out room, loos that are deliberately unmarked, impossible to find and astonishing once inside.”

“The English restaurant provides a welcome contrast to the ostentatious surroundings: sensible, freshly prepared and very well cooked.”

“There’s Persian pony skin on the walls of the bar, which feels like an opulent Napoleonic den.”

“Our room was a modest blood-red-and-black affair in crocodile skin, fur, velvet and chiffon, lit by chandeliers.”

“The bedrooms are each built around a wildly ornate bed, with copper baths filled from the ceiling.”

“One expects to see bowls of cocaine and sofas draped with half-naked women.”

For more information visit www.crazybeargroup.co.uk

Here is an idea that builds on the idea of bike-share but takes up a lot less space: Shared electric scooters.

It is another wonderful entry in the Australian Design Awards competition, by Anton Grimes of the University of New South Wales. He writes:

The Link scooter system is designed as a modular transport solution that can be retrofitted to existing Streetscape Smart Poles. It allows users to hire a small lightweight electronic scooter from a hub and ride to the desired destination and then return the scooter to another hub, where it is recharged. The use of existing light poles reduces the cost of the unit and provides strong anchors that carry both telecommunications and power to the hub. The device was designed to suit the Sydney 2030 plan to reduce cars in the CBD and make the city more pedestrian oriented.

I would have thought that scooters are not as safe as bicycles, and indeed the designer has thought about this, noting that

“The speed of the scooter is limited to 16km/h and the user is issued with a helmet that they must wear when they register to use the system. Users are required to comply with existing cycling and road rules. “

It is so inconspicuous, folded up and attached to the lamp-post. If we could all learn to ride the things without getting ourselves or pedestrians killed the benefits are significant: