Might the cash-rich City Corporation splash out on a bridge across the Thames to help the poorer borough of Wandsworth?

City fathers attending the Mipim property show in Cannes had private conversations about the Corporation extending its largesse and becoming a funder of regeneration projects outside the Square Mile.

The City has a very rich property business called Bridge House Estates. City Spy understands Wandsworth is looking for £80 million to swing a footbridge from north of the river to the marooned new US embassy site in Nine Elms. What better cause?

The Cannes and Cannes not

UK local authorities sending delegations to Mipim totalled 95… in March, in Cannes. City Spy trusts they will all show new business generated rather than just fat expenses bills.

Presumably one council that will be keen to show the fruits of Mipim is City Corporation. It sent no less than 10 directors to the Cannes bash at a cost of £80,000.

“It's essential we go to Mipim to progress talks,” Peter Bennett, the City surveyor tells Property Week. “We have a property portfolio worth billions. Yes, there's sunshine, but we work from very early to very late.” Of course you do, Peter.

Westminster by contrast, sent nobody. “It's a jolly down to France,” says Rosemarie MacQueen, the council's strategic director of built environment. “I meet developers all the time in London without needing to go to the south of France.”

When the party's over

Lehman Brothers, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland… the three biggest entertainers at Mipim in the boom years. Hmmm.

Get ready to bid on the Irish estates

A talking point at this year's Mipim was Ireland. The collapse of the Celtic Tiger is the elephant in the property sector room — it was not that long ago maps were being drawn up of London showing all the hotels, office blocks and shops that had been snapped up by the Irish invaders.

Now, the question is what will become of them? The Irish government has set up NAMA, its asset protection agency, to take over the toxic assets lurking in the backrooms of the Irish banks. But if NAMA took over everything then it simply could not cope.

One solution doing the rounds at Mipim is that the agency may hang on to property in Ireland in the hope that prices will stabilise and rise, while selling the non-Irish. Expect a fire sale of some of London's plummiest properties…

On Property: Peter Bill at Mipim in Cannes

Dave sees red at the boys in blue

What will Austerity Britain look like under a Tory government?

Says David Cameron: “I went to a police station the other day and they have five different types of car. As I was walking through I said you've got a Proton, a BMW a this, a that. Then they said: Oh yes and we're getting a Lexus for traffic which is costing £83,000.'

“Now Kent police, for instance, used souped-up Skodas.

“As a former owner of a Skoda, I'm a great defender of Skoda and they said that it was quite fast enough to catch criminals going up the M2. So there is a lot of money that could be saved on better purchasing.”

Yes, Dave, but what self-respecting bloke will want to join the police to switch on the blue light and race through the traffic in a Skoda?

... and the Tory second-hand car trader' takes another hit

It was all a long time ago, back in the days when Jack Straw was shadow education spokesman and Lord Ashcroft, not yet ennobled, was busy sponsoring the ADT academy in Wandsworth. Even then, Ashcroft was not held in the highest esteem on the shadow benches. “A sleazy Bermuda-based second-hand car trader” is how Straw described Ashcroft in the House of Commons in early 1990. Charming.

Have you Ever heard?

On City Spy's desk lands the following revealing statement: “The recession has sparked a realignment of the City legal sector, with the traditional peer groups set to become redundant and the Magic Circle' — traditionally a phrase that signalled quality, high-value and high cost — set to lose its kudos.”

It all comes from a report published by City law firm Eversheds. Which is not itself a Magic Circle firm. Funny, that…

How the markets get cramp

Blimey, here's Jeffrey Swartz, the president and chief executive of Timberland, as he explains how necessary it is to keep the free market under control.

“They say if you work a muscle, the process of building a muscle, you create uric acid. Uric acid is part of the feedback that says careful you're overdoing it'.

“The body, which is a magnificent machine, has self-correcting mechanisms because untrammelled is dangerous. An untrammelled market has no morality, and, unchecked, it goes to excess.”

The ones that got away

In his desk drawer Swartz keeps a memory stick listing every employee who has ever left Timberland. The clothing company boss gets it out from time to time to look at the names.

“Every name on that list happens to be somebody's grandfather or somebody's husband or wife or son. I don't keep that list for any other purpose than to remind me of my failures.”