And Now The Good News!
BBC Breakfast yesterday carried the story that small businesses were starting up at an increased rate. The full story is here , under the unlikely title of “Explosion in Number of UK Entrepreneurs”. Here’s an extract.
The number of small business entrepreneurs in the UK has increased by 117% in the last five years, fuelling a 41% increase in the total number of firms in the UK.
Business data collected by global information services company, Experian, has found that one or two man band businesses have managed to maintain the lowest insolvency rate over the last five years compared to other types of businesses.
Charlotte Hogg, managing director of Experian UK & Ireland, said: “Our analysis reveals that the UK’s smallest businesses have been surprisingly resilient during the economic downturn and have also seen their population skyrocket in the last five years.”
Hogg explained that the recession would have been an underlying factor in the increase of micro businesses. She said many start-ups were the result of changed circumstances where people found themselves unemployed, and needed to look for alternatives.
There are so many gaps in the market and it would appear that people are rushing to fill them. As an example I’ve told many of my friends about Tommy Miah and his Raj Hotels. Some will try him and all the others said it is what is needed, as they are fed up with paying too much for inadequate hotel rooms in places miles from where they want.
No Pope Here!
I will put it this way. The Catholic Church’s attitude to women, homosexuals, child abuse, birth-control and lot of other things are just so far outside my beliefs about what is good for humanity in general, that I’ve declared my personal space a Pope-free zone. It was so refreshing and uplifting to hear of the work of the Bobby Robson centre in Newcastle, yeserday while other channels were covering the Pope’s visit. When you’ve lost your wife and son to serious cancers, it is just so much more important to you, that research is done to make sure others don’t face the same challenges and problems that I do.
Today, I shall be going to Clare, to see the Tour of Britain Cycle Race, go through one of Suffolk’s historic villages. I shall probably pop in to the church, which is one of the finest parish churches in England.
Some may find it strange that a man with no religion should visit a church or a cathedral, which I generally do, when I’m exploring a town or city! But then what is wrong with my contemplation of beautiful buildings in a secular manner?
Celebrity Punishment
George Michael’s sentence of eight weeks for his driving under the influence of cannabis is totally wrong. As he could have easily killed someone, the sentence is not over the top either.
The reason is that it costs the taxpayers a lot of money and actually makes a lot of people feel rather sorry for him.
He needs to be punished and perhaps the best way to do that with celebrities is to take their comfortable lifestyle away for a couple of months.
So perhaps for six months, we do the following.
- His passport is taken away.
- In that six months, he must either use public transport or be driven in something like a Mondeo, by an approved Court-appointed driver. There would definitely be no limos or luxury vehicles.
A punishment like this would be much cheaper on the taxpaper than prison and perhaps he might learn something!
To be fair to George Michael, though he’s probably done so much damage to his body with smoking, drugs and alcohol, that he might not live as long as he should! Now death is truly a punishment,but only when it is self-inflicted by a stupid lifestyle choice!
Thank Heavens For Sir Bobby!
I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to listen to the Popefest on the radio and it was a great relief when I found that Radio 5 Live, were doing a program on the cancer research centre that Sir Bobby Robson helped to fund!
What a refreshing and uplifting program and yet another reason to celebrate one of the finest Englishmen of the last few decades! He will certainly have or have had more effect on the lives of ordinary people all over Europe than the current Pope.
We can all learn a lot from how Sir Bobby carried on until the end.
He was a selfless man with true humanity, who probably never did anyone any harm! He certainly never meant it, if he did! And to say that about a man, who worked in one of the most ruthless professions is extraordinary.
We will never see his like again!
A Very Misguided Cardinal
It is a bit rich for Cardinal Kasper to call the UK a Third World country, because of our attitude to homosexuality, contraception, aggressive atheism, abortion and our multi-cultural society.
Especially, as the Catholic church does not allow the use of condoms to prevent disease and has done little to punish the known child abusers in the ranks of their priests. Every accusation of child abuse, no matter, who is thought to have performed it, should be fully investigated by the proper authorities. Internal investigations are not good enough!
By any stretch of the mind, our crimes are all very small compared to systematic child abuse. C would be ranting today, as she had dealt many times with the worst excesses of child abusers. None as I am aware, were priests of any denomination.
But then Cardinal Kasper is seventy-seven, so he should have advantage of wisdom! Where is it? Nowhere in my mind! We all decry elderly dictators like Robert Mugabe and Kim Il Yong, for holding on to power, but isn’t the Catholic church under the control of a self-serving group of elderly men, albeit with perhaps a better sense of morals. Where are the women at the highest level for a start?
I also have a personal beef against the Catholic Church. They discriminate against coeliacs and don’t allow them to be priests.
I shall not be watching anything to do with the Pope’s visit. I mean him no harm, but the sooner this circus and its associated cult of personality is over the better. I don’t pay my taxes for visits like this!
The CEO’s E-Mail Address
It has been reported that the CEO of Nationwide has been forced to shut his e-mail address, because of protests, that they are charging for overseas cash withdrawals. Apparently, it has now been changed to something like ceo@nationwide.co.uk and you now get through to one of his assistants.
Apparently, there is a web site call ceoemail.com, which gives many of the e-mail addresses or those that run companies and organisations.
So if I was running a large company, how would I organise it?
The e-mail address would be obvious like ceo@megacorp.co.uk and this would then go through a strong spam filter to remove the real rubbish trying to sell me worthless fakes and then pass the rest to my assistant or one of a group of assistants, if the company was large enough or I was getting a lot of e-mail. The assistants would have software, which by just clicking a button would take action on the e-mails. Actions might include.
- Forward to Customer Services or other Departments. These would also go into an e-mail tracking system, so that it can be traced that e-mails have been acted on.
- Put on a block list as it’s abusive. The sender would be told and why!
- Reply with a simple and appropriate e-mail.
- Phone the sender and say something appropriate.
- Send them a nice postcard. I’ve always found that this is a good thing to do, as people won’t throw away a nice picture. But they may pin it to their notice board.
Obviously, you can think of a lot more responses you might use.
The important e-mails would be sent to me for personal action.
Now some companies manage to do this with letters and I can remember receiving a phone call from Sainsbury’s after I’d written in with a complaint to the CEO.
But one thing no company does is to analyse all of the messages and count the occurences of various issues. So to return to the Nationwide example, if the CEO was getting a lot of complaints about withdrawal fees, the CEO would know about it and could take action.
So in fact, if you get the system right, it’s a very powerful way to find out what your customers are thinking about and satisfy their needs!
Should We Licence Cannabis?
I have never taken recreational drugs and probably never will. I also feel that our current strategy against drugs is a total failure and probably just makes things worse.
So it was very refreshing to read the views of Professor Roger Pertwee on the BBC. His views about licensing sales, should be taken seriously. After all, getting criminals out of the loop, ensuring quality and protecting health are probably more important.
But his views will be totally ignored. All we will do is go on building more prisons, so we can lock everybody up!
Mark Serwotka Talks Sense
He doesn’t very often, but his views in this report are absolutely correct. Lord North must be turning in his grave.
Is Lincolnshire a Nanny State?
This story, about a father being threatened with action because his seven-year old daughter walk twenty metres to the bus stop to go to school is ridiculous.
At the age of six or seven in the early 1950s, I used to be taken to the bus stop at Oakwood by my mother to catch the 107 bus to Enfield for piano lessons with my Aunt Mabel. I had my couple of pence for the ticket and used to sit in one of the back three seats by the conductor. When I got to the stop just past Enfield Town station, I would get off and run down to my aunt’s. It should also be said that my aunt didn’t have a phone at the time. Were my family responsible or not? Perhaps, my illnesses are all down to letting me look after myself from an early age!
The Anonymous Widower 