Trees grow as tall as they can…

I have thought much about whether I should comment on the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross fiasco that has featured in many of the tabloids this week, but I didn’t listen to the Russell Brand Show, so it isn’t something I feel qualified to comment on, except perhaps that I was somewhat surprised at the use of the phrase ‘lapse of taste’ in connection with Russell Brand’s antics; it never ceased to amaze me that he remained ‘on air’ after seeing his, for me, unacceptably lewd behaviour week after week referring to Russell’s ballbags, or Russell’s scrotum, when he presented Big Brother’s Big Mouth.

However on reading of his background some time ago I had some sympathy for him, in particular I always remember an article in which he said  ”I don’t want to die as That Mad Bloke From Big Brother, I didn’t want to die as That Mad Bloke From MTV. I want to do something that has value, worth, poetry momentum… I’d just like to do everything I can. Trees grow as tall as they can, don’t they – not half as tall.’

No doubt his talents will take him far and I hope that he will “do something that has value, worth, poetry and momentum” rather than fall back on the lewd behaviour that he is more famously associated with.  Perhaps his recent flight to Hollywood will make that possible, maybe those casting Johnny Depp might spot a certain resemblance?

Oligarchs, Banks and other corrupt ogres of our time

The recent collapse or near collapse of many Banks has shown that the ideology of the capitalist free market economy has its weaknesses; Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve, admitted to a US congressional committee last week that he was ’shocked’ at the failure of that model.
Having crowed for years at the collapse of the Russian communist model, and always critical of the Chinese whatever social/economic model they seem to adopt, the US have now to take the bitter pill that some state interventions or part ownership of critical parts of the economy, are necessary to stabilise the model. My prediction is that globally all countries will settle to a middle of the road mix of capitalism and government ownership that best suits their local conditions; let’s hope that one day there is will be an end to this stupid “war of ideologies” which clouds peoples judgement in seeing there own weaknesses.

Apart from the media focus on the collapse of the Banking sector, and the predictable criticism of those that have made millions in bonuses, we now have the press using the term Russian oligarch seemingly as a derogatory term on a regular basis. The Wikipedia entry is typical of many articles in the English Wikipedia that are written from a US perspective (i.e. anything Russian, Chinese, Iranian etc must be evil), it runs “… Russian oligarchs are business entrepreneurs… Rare goods… were smuggled into the country and sold on the black market for a hefty profit, In the 1990s, the oligarchs emerged as well connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and got rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt, but democratically elected, government of Russia during the state’s transition to a market-based economy. “ Got that, this “unbiased encyclopedic” description says “democratically elected”, “corrupt”.

Now look at our Western governments, “democratically elected” i.e. we the people are given a choice of one individual from a previlidged background and another – most media in the UK seem to have forgotten we live in a parliamentary democracy and we vote for a party not a person!, and yes I think “corrupt” is fair description of a number of Members of Parliament who apart from their generous MP’s salaries collect fees for being on the Boards of Directors of companies, who solicit funding from anyone that seems to be worth a million or two, and accept ‘freebies’ from any rich businessman (or should that be oligarch?) that wants a few favours down the line. As one TV commentator remarked – If George Osborne wants to avoid criticism in future he would be wise to not take along his party fund raiser.

Spogs and other thingamajigs

Back in August (”A Quarter of Nostalgia“) I wrote about the “bobbly aniseed jelly ones” in Bassetts’ Liquorice Allsorts, when I should have called them by their ‘correct’ name of spogs! How did I come across this? Well, recently on BBC’s “Breakfast” program they interviewed Danny Danzger and Mark McCrun, authors of a new book “The Thingummy” , this book provides the real names of many common ‘thingummies’ complete with history, myth and anecdote behind them. Apart from explaining that Spogs are the blue and pink aniseed sweets out of liquorice allsorts, the book also gives the name for the groove that runs between your nose and your mouth, the stringy bits of a banana, and the name of the white exhaust trail that an aeroplane makes in the sky! The Retro Sweet Hamper web site clearly know their spogs! But if Spogs are the blue and pink aniseed sweets, please tell me what the yellow thingamajigs are in their picture – I have never seen them in the UK – have you!?

Praise for Gordon Brown from Nobel Prize winner

On Monday it was announced that Paul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his work on trade patterns and the geography of economic activity.

Paul Krugman is also a columnist for the New York Times, and in his Monday column he endorsed Gordon Brown’s £500 billion rescue plan for the British banking industry, contrasting it favourably with the American Government’s scheme.

He wrote “Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the Exchequer … have defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up.” He praised the British Government for having acted with “stunning speed” to address the financial crisis, again contrasting Mr Brown’s efforts with those of the US Treasury.

“This combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own,” he wrote.
“Luckily for the world economy …. Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense …. And they may have shown us the way through this crisis.”

Since Monday the USA has followed the British example of injecting money directly into the banks as fresh capital and several other European countries have announced similar plans.

It is of course too early to know how effective these measures will be in solving the current global economic crisis, but Gordon Browne has clearly demonstrated that other world leaders are willing to follow his example.

Now that recognised economic expert Paul Krugman has highlighted that Gordon Brown acted swiftly and decisively are we likely to see apologies from those less able politicians and media hacks for their remarks in recent months about Gordon being a ditherer? Probably not, that would take courage*, doubtful if we will ever see articles about the courage of armchair political writers in the right wing British press!

Link to Paul Krugman’s New York Times article

* Link to article “digby-jones-thanks-gordon-brown-for-showing-courage” 3 Oct 2008

* Link to article “EU-treaty-Leaders-praise-Gordon-Brown’s-courage” 19 June 2008

Virgin Views

During recent TV News bulletins we have predictably seen one so called ‘expert’ after another being wheeled in front of the cameras to make their pronouncements on the global financial crisis. Surely one of the most bizarre this week has been Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson being asked his views of the rescue package announced on Wednesday in London.

As an admirer of some* aspects of his life I think it was an event he may live to regret; did he ask to appear or was he invited I wonder? Either way, why would they expect his views to be any more valid than if they had dragged the next passing taxi driver off the street into the studio. Sure, Sir Richard is a colourful character and has a billion or three, at least on paper, but as a risk taker of some extreme, his views on getting a stable economy are hardly likely to be taken seriously. Aside from his failed round the world balloon attempts, several of his businesses have failed or just bump along inefficiently; Virgin Vodka anyone? Virgin Cola? His “bring back the Concorde campaign” while patriotic was hardly a great business proposition either.

Gordon Browne remarked last week, this is not a time for novices to be in charge, I’d add it’s not a time for virgin views on the economy either.

*Here’s an aspect that isn’t so great though, Virgin offered a measly $25 to take the virgin fuels .org domain name off of a 55 year old female American blogger – http://gaiacapitalist.squarespace.com/virgin-notes/ Obviously some Virgin executives would rather waste hours of their very highly paid time threatening legal action against a well meaning and enterprising individual, instead of simply making a sensible commercial offer of a few thousand dollars. As Sir Richard should have learnt by now, some things come back to haunt you.

Percentage Points

“Interest rates cut by 0.5%” say the scrolling headlines on BBC News bulletins today – really?

I’m sure that many people listening to the News in the last 24 hours will be sick of hearing the phrase that governments around the globe have reduced the interest rate by “half a percentage point”, but how many people realise what this means?

A percentage point is the arithmetic difference of two percentages, so for example in the UK the base interest rate has dropped from 5% to 4.5%, i.e. a decrease of “half a percentage point”. This means that the UK base rate has actually dropped 10% (since 0.5% is 10% of 5%, still with me?) not O.5%, since percentages indicate ratios, not differences!

Now can anyone explain what the announcer meant that said rates had dropped by “half of one percent”?

These Uncertain Times?

Received a invitation to an exclusive business club spam e-mail today inviting me to join the Entrepreneurial Club (Eclub) and to “potentially claim an exclusive place within this network” whatever that’s supposed to mean. On it goes “It is free to join, and is a powerful way to reinforce your business through this period of business and economic uncertainty” and on again “Now more than ever, we as SMEs need certainty through these uncertain times“ and then, ever so professionally…

What are the main aims, objectives and features of the EClub  (yeah, that’s right no ?)

<!–[if !supportLists]–> <!–[endif]–>To be a fun medium to start the process of developing people and relationships.
<!–[if !supportLists]–> <!–[endif]–>To be a platform for identifying areas of mutual need so as to be able to support each other as small business people.

And a dozen more

<!–[if !supportLists]–> <!–[endif]–>blah blah blah

Including

“<!–[if !supportLists]–> <!–[endif]–>Mutual support through tough economic times”

 and even

 

 

<!–[if !supportLists]–> <!–[endif]–>Positioning ourselves for the next economic boom.

And finally the irrisistable

<!–[if !supportLists]–> <!–[endif]–>Creating greater mutual and individual business sustainability through lasting trust-based relationships.And the bottom line…

“ There is no membership charge. You only pay for what you utilise in the EClub, and you can use as much or as little as you would like”

How can resist?

But seriously, having been an Entrepreneur for many years, the very idea that there ever was a “period of business and economic certainty” or “easy economic times” is laughable. There are always people that procrastinate and won’t act for fear of failure, there will always be fools that rush in, and there will always be those that follow up ideas and act on them!

It’s easier for anyone to set up a business today than at any time in history – no need for “bricks and mortar” just a “virtual office”, a server somewhere in the world to host some web pages and away you go! There’s easy access to Pay-Pal and micro-payment systems, and vendors offering to process credit-card payments without the need for begging letters or showing a gazillion years of accounts to a High Street Bank to get them to provide a “Merchants Account”.

Even the process of publishing web pages is far easier today than at any time since the start of the commercial WWW, Web hosting companies now provide simple CMS systems to enable almost anyone to write a web page without having to learn HTML…

Now if only I could get this Blog to take card payments and let people sign up for an Entrepreneur’s Club…

Beijing Paralympics Medals

Back from a break – so let’s kick off with more great news from Beijing!

Rank	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	China	45	47	33	125
2	Great Britain	37	21	19	77
3	United States	24	18	21	63
4	Ukraine	16	12	21	49
5	Australia	15	19	21	55
6	Russia	15	16	14	45

The table speaks for itself! Well done Team GB! Pity that when I searched on Google for Beijing Paralympics BBC it came up with the 2004 Paralympics page! Come on BBC pull your socks up – give it the coverage it deserves on the main News page and not just hidden away on the Sports pages.

These disabled athletes are an inspiration for everyone, unlike whinging Labour MPs who seem to think leaking news to BBC journalists about how unhappy they are with their leader is somehow professional; do they think it is going to win them, or their party, votes or promotion?! Well done to whoever sacked the Assistant whip Siobhain McDonagh, if she did the same while working for a company she would have deserved the same for jeopardising the shareholders investment.

Gordon, you might want to consider the future of Janet Anderson, Karen Buck, Patricia Hewitt, George Howarth, Eric Joyce, Sally Keeble, Stephen Ladyman, Martin Linton, Shona McIsaac, Margaret Moran, Tom Levitt, and Paddy Tipping, over their article for New Labour magazine Progress stating, as the BBC are quick to extract, that Labour has “no explanation yet” as to how it will “steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead”. Frankly, if these MPs think the public wants a meaningless strategy dressed up in Blairite spin from you, then they are truly out of touch; but more importantly, just like Siobhain McDonagh, they are truly naive if they can’t foresee that certain journalist, like those at the BBC, looking for an anti-Labour story will take their statements out of context and use it to damage your reputation. I for one trust a man that is honest enough to say that there are no quick fixes, keep on in there Gordon.

A Quarter of Nostalgia…

Some months ago I came across the A quarter of website, they sell sweets that you thought had disappeared; Black Jacks, Refreshers, Sugar Peanuts, Lemon Sherbets and about 700 more! The days of four Black Jacks for a penny are long gone but still a great site if you want a little treat!

I had a hankering for some liquorice and included in my tenners worth some Bassetti, now maybe it was stale, a bad batch or maybe my jaws are getting weak, but I can’t recall ever having liquorice sticks that damned hard before! Anyone else out there tried this stuff?

I gave up on buying Bassetts’ Liquorice Allsorts some time ago when I bought a bag one Christmas from Sainburys, again maybe it was a duff batch but I was extremely dissapointed at the small amount of actual liquorice in the bag, just tons of sugary stuff, very little plain liquorice and little if any of those bobbly aniseed jelly ones!

Have they economised on the ingredients over the years or was I just unlucky? The picture on the American Candy Blog seems to show a far different mix than I had. Do they have different mixes for different countries I wonder?

Strike “Down the Tube”

A 72-hour strike on London Undergound was called off last night by the RMT Union after an improved pay offer was made. It was due to start at midday on Wednesday 20th August.

1,000 track, signal and train maintenance staff working for Tube Lines were due to walk out. Tube Lines is responsible for running the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee lines.

Drat, there goes that “working from home” stint to watch the Olympics on TV…