the power of the dragons

Wharf whilst raising vital funds for our cause.

“Last year was a huge success and I’m so excited to welcome even more teams for 2023 for what is a fun, competitive and great team building experience.”

Sponsored by Canary Wharf Group, the event raised £26,000 for WaterAid last year with 15 teams competing and aims to exceed that in 2023.

“It’s the perfect setting for the community to get involved,” said Aminur. “It’s a competitive challenge but it’s also fun and we’re raising awareness at the same time.

“It’s not just about financial support either because just having that visibility can lead to people doing things like petitioning their MP or local authority to highlight this issue.”

“We took part last year and it was brilliant,” added Fiona. “It was harder than I expected and got highly competitive, but I would say that, for any organisation that wants a proper teambuilding day, this is perfect.

“You have everyone in the boat and you have to learn to think together.

“We had people from across the organisation in the boat – some I’d never met in 11 years of working at WaterAid – it’s fantastic for people who want to do more than sit in an office.

“What people expect from an employer has changed – they want companies and other organisations to care about the world we all live in.

“Events like this offer them a way to demonstrate that they do and for their employees to get out and do something beyond the day-job.

“There are so many challenges that remain worldwide and we need this help to work to mitigate things like climate change.”

Registration for the event is now open, with teams encouraged to try to raise more than 50% of their target by June 8.

Canary Wharf Group event manager Camilla McGregor said: “We are delighted to welcome back WaterAid’s Dragon Boat Race to Canary Wharf.

“Following a successful partnership last year, we are overjoyed to see the event increase in popularity with many teams already signed up for this year’s event, helping to raise much needed funds for this fantastic charity.”

Go to waterwaid.org for more information about the event or the charity

Scan virtual viewpoint

by Chris Ezekiel

Robots will eventually be everywhere in society, but how many roles will they take from humans?

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and robotics will no doubt accelerate the number of jobs that machines will take over from humans. Robots are already assisting surgeons and, eventually, all surgical procedures will be performed by autonomous robots.

This makes sense. Robots don’t get tired or have shaky hands after too much caffeine. Today, robots can even give you a haircut. But it seems people are much more reluctant to let robots near their hair than their pancreas.

Robots will be everywhere, serving you coffee or a beer and, equipped with AI, they will even be talking about the weather or football as they do it. Robots will cut the costs of basic services such as health screening and education as well as many high end lifestyle services such as personal concierges or tuition, making them much more affordable.

With an ageing population and the subsequent strains on healthcare and social services, robots will take care of the nursing needs of the elderly. Manual jobs currently done by electricians, plumbers, scaffolders, decorators, and chefs will all be performed by robots.

They will bring great efficiencies and consistency and productivity as robots don’t oversleep or get the wiring wrong. Autonomous driving cars are already with us and the same will happen with air and sea travel. Conflict has become a battle of technology, and cyber warfare is now being fought every day.

AI is already writing essays, poems and creating artwork. The challenge will be for marketers, authors, and artists to become ever more creative to differentiate themselves from the products of the algorithms.

Robots won’t only be in a physical form. AR will allow us to superimpose our own view and dreams onto the real world. Virtual friends, and even virtual partners, will make the 1985 film, Weird Science, where two teen misfits design their ideal woman on a computer, a reality.

The contact centre will be a small team of humans dealing with complicated cases where hard to replicate human characteristics such as empathy and creativity are paramount.

There will come a time when the only human jobs left will be the Machine Police (gatekeepers of the AI algorithms), bar staff (pubs where robots will be banned will become popular, like the way vinyl record shops of yesteryear are making a comeback) and hairdressers, of course.

by Jon Massey

When you go to a great restaurant, it can be very expensive,” said Gordon Ker, founder of Blacklock, a small chain of four chophouses that’s set to open its fifth in Canary Wharf this month. “But we want to give our guests a positive shock when the bill arrives. We want them to be asking: ‘Is that right? What’s been missed off? When can we do this again?’.”

Check Blacklock’s menu and it’s serving up skinny chops for a fiver each, steaks for £18 or less and a burger for £12 with sides on offer for £4 a go. That’s in contrast to, say, Manhattan Grill – just over the waters of West India North Dock – where sides are £6, steaks start at £32 and a burger is £17.

It’s not like-for-like, of course. One is a restaurant in a five-star hotel serving American beef, while the other takes its inspiration from the workaday chop houses of old. I suspect, however, that Gordon would be willing to pit the Cornish, grass-fed meats Blacklock serves against anything imported from across the pond.

It’s also his brand’s approach to the produce that, in part, explains the lower prices.

“We’re certainly not buying cheap meat, it’s expensive stuff that we serve,” he said. “But we try and be sensible about how we source and utilise the animals.

“The first thing to say is we buy the whole animal, and we use as much of it as we can. That way there’s no waste for the farmer so we get a better price.

“A steakhouse might buy prime cuts, but then the farmer has to shift the rest of the meat.

“Supply and demand means if everyone wants the same cuts, then the price for those goes up further.

“We get a fixed price for the whole animal, which is cheaper, and then we get inventive with the menu – selling cuts people might not be familiar with.

“For example, we sell a sixth rib eye, which is a little further down from the prime ribs – but that’s £18 in contrast to a typical rib eye for £30.

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“Then we do a starter – Pig’s Head On Toast, where we cook down the whole head and then pull the meat apart, braise it, spice it, and serve it on bread with gravy. Our message on sustainability is also that people should be eating better meat less often.

“Our meat comes from Philip Warren in Cornwall and is regeneratively farmed to help improve the soil. The animals live a comparatively long and happy life and the farmers aim to keep out of things as much as possible. There are no antibiotics or growth additives or negative things like that.

“Our margin on food is less than what standard restaurant economics tell you to make it. But that’s part of our commitment to providing exceptional value for money.”

Gordon is not a man afraid to go his own way. After studying law at UCL, he embarked on a career as a solicitor and found himself an associate at Londonbased firm Olswang, dealing with hospitality and leisure firms.

But despite the regular income and reliable prospects, he found the law unfulfilling and started formulating plans to escape it.

Having got to know Hawksmoor founders, Will Beckett and Huw Gott, as clients, when private equity firm Graphite Capital bought a majority stake in their business, he told them he intended to launch his own restaurant. Describing it as “a terrible idea” they did their best to discourage him.

They said I had a stable job, that running restaurants was really hard and wondered why I would want to do it given I knew nothing about it,” said Gordon. “That made a lot of sense at the time, but I was persistent and I think they took pity on me.”

So, when Gordon quit his job, he went first to work at Hawksmoor for 10 months to learn how a restaurant worked while simultaneously scouring the capital for a suitable space to try out his ideas.

While Will and Huw helped him out with some early investors and remain shareholders in Blacklock today, it took Gordon a while to find a landlord willing to take a punt on a business with no track record.

Nevertheless, against the odds, Gordon opened his first site in a Soho basement formerly used as a brothel. He and his team overcame water leaks and a lack of

4Branches of Blacklock currently trading in London, with a fifth soon to launch in Canary Wharf