The Sceptic Blog

Make sense of the recession with Tim Price, part investment analyst, part philosopher. http://tiny.cc/srDkE

Priceless commentary from Tim Price in Davos. Sardonic, satirical, it will make your Monday. http://tiny.cc/gnt7V

Tim Price is in stellar form with his latest despatch from the frontlines of our staggering economy, this one from Davos.

Below is your starter for ten…go to http://tiny.cc/gnt7V for the full Monty.

Mixed reviews for new release

(Davos, Canton of Graubünden, Switzerland – February 1.)

With their customary flourish, western governments unveiled their widely anticipated new vapour-ware product yesterday, dubbed the mi-God.
Arriving with actually no new content or special features whatsoever despite months of hype, the twelve-foot thick tablet looks like a giant lead balloon and met with hesitant reviews from the twitterati.
But the mi-God’s co-founder and visionary chief architect, Gordon Brown, called it a “revolutionary product” that would enable users, and bankers in particular, to carry on living and thriving in their imaginary worlds, free from the constraints of a normal economy, any kind of ethics, or a competitive open market … more at http://tiny.cc/gnt7V

From Daniel Hannan, a gem of a story that illustrates the bizarre nature of the tax system. http://tiny.cc/Zfr6U

Spending the week in Madrid, in probably the worst possible weather in which to visit this wonderful city. Nonetheless, it has been a veritable eye-opener. As a tourist I have taken the opportunity to learn about the history of Spain, the absolute horror of the Civil War and the grandeur of the country’s past. But it is as a commentator on politics and business that I bring you the following observations:

- The sterling/Euro exchange rate is a shocker. Notionally £1.11 to the Euro, by the time those rapacious sods at Gatwick had consumed their pound (or euro??) of flesh, it was to all intents and purposes at parity. Prices that would, 2 years ago, have appeared appealing therefore appeared atrocious. I feel for the Spanish. Tourists will stay away in droves. Locals seemed very happy to be paying the prices in restaurants, but shops were ominously devoid of customers. OK, this is a tourist-magnet capital city so prices are inflated, but so is pay. They’re unhappy in Greece. How long before they’re unhappy in Spain? It feels like something has to break in Euro-land. Or maybe achieving parity was the aim all along. Time to say goodbye to sterling perhaps?

- Still on the subject of the current exchange rate, we’re told it is wonderful for UK exporters. This is supposed to be our consolation for the collapse in sterling. Yet I read in The Times that, according to the manufacturers’ federation the EEF, the supposed advantage is working only for a selected slice or two of British exporters, that in general the rush you would expect of deal-hungry businesses to root out beneficial new overseas contracts has not happened. The article blamed it on the lack of knowledge among companies about how to export. Rubbish. The government-backed export agency UKTI exists, very publicly, to help anyone who wants to export. I can’t help thinking it is, yet again, down to lazy, unimaginitive British business people who think that mere survival is as good as winning. Survive? They don’t deserve to.

- Snow followed me from the UK like a faithful hound. First time in 10 years it had snowed in Madrid apparently. Odd, then, that local council cleaning crews were out gritting/salting pavements as if it were quite a matter of routine. I was stunned, having watched how completely crap we are in the UK at dealing with weather emergencies. Good old Madrilenos, I thought. I then spoke to a local who lives in the suburbs and he said they only do that where tourists can see them. Not so different after all, then…

- Cops. Lots of them. A younger me might have objected but now I feel very reassured. They don’t look hard and menacing – indeed many of them are young women who bring great dignity to the role. They are just there. What is not there? Any sign of feral youth sporting gangsta gear, frightening old ladies, and everyone else for that matter. Maybe they’re all in the Madrid suburbs, a friend said. Well, maybe. But the little buggers are all over Central London like a rash, they don’t stay away from the centre. The feeling grows that something has gone horribly wrong in Britain.

After sending out an email to the world wishing everone a happy new year (you can see its contents in the post immediately preceding this one) I got a mild reproof from a couple of folk who thought me unnecessarily downbeat. (By my Eeyore-ish standards I thought I was being positively Panglossian.) My reprovers point was that there are real signs of optimism out there and that we should not talk it all down. I agree! There’s still money to be made even if the politicos are dragging our economy to the knackers yard. Smart business people understand that and their courage and audacity will be rewarded. But there is a point where one has to acknowledge the bigger picture. Our superb columnist Tim Price, who writes on investment for Business First, understands the deep fabric of the world economy and his thoughts thereon do not make easy reading. But read them anyway: http://tiny.cc/g8wCe

Bloodied but hopefully unbowed, businesses who made it through 2009 are contemplating the coming twelve months with the usual mix of optimism and dread. An election looms. Will it make a difference? Are businesses sufficiently bored with gloom and misery to be more adventurous in the coming year, regardless of how bad the pundits’ prognostications may be?

If enough of us decide we are, perhaps that in itself will be enough to turn the ship of doom around. After all, the decisions we business people make on a daily basis are what keeps the country going, for better or for worse.

Our attitude to the recession was captured brilliantly by one young business leader (whose exploits with Richard Branson in Africa are recounted in this issue). In response to queries prefaced with the phrase ‘When things get back to normal…’ he replies, ‘NOW is normal. Deal with it!’

Quite right. While others are waiting tremulously in the trenches for the sun to shine once more, you could be out there capturing their territory.

But to do that effectively, you must have confidence in the fundamentals of your business, which is why the theme of this issue is Branding. Any failure to align your brand with the core values of your business will, at best, cause you to operate inefficiently. At worst it will seriously damage you. We also look at the history of one of Britain’s great brands, the gun makers Holland & Holland, as well as bringing you the usual mix of entertaining, informative and hopefully inspirational content.

To read the on-line edition, go to this link.

If you would like your own hard copy, please subscribe via our web site  and navigate to the Subscription form. If you are already a subscriber, your copy will be on its way in the next few days.

Enjoy!

I am as cynical as most about the hijacking of social media/viral marketing by corporations who try – and usually fail – to do something really clever. They always end up looking like men in suits trying to be cool by wearing trainers as well.

But this took my breath away. The version you will see requires some text entry, but when you forward it using their system, the recipient sees it cold. Wonderful. Heading for the wardrobe…

video.bigwarmup.com

News from Business First – http://eepurl.com/emFL

Isn’t it tempting, now and again, to believe that some companies actually build mendacity into their customer service complaints system?

Of course, I would not for one moment suggest that BT is a rotten, dirty, low-down lying bunch of scumbags. Nothing could be further from the truth as legions of satisfied customers will attest.

But twice in the past 9 months I have been obliged to have broadband installed in new premises. Each time it has been late/non-functional and each time the escalation of my complaint has received an eerily similar-sounding progression of explanations:

1. Five days later than promised, no service – order processing, takes time, don’t you know? And anyway, it was never supposed to be on before now, someone gave you the wrong date. (How????)
2. Two days later, still not on – well, it has been provisioned. We’ll check.
3. Five more days pass – ah, there’s a fault at the exchange.
4. Two more days – general network outage in your area, everyone’s been hit. (They hadn’t.)
5. Five more days, close to going postal – OK, OK, we’ll send an engineer.

Engineer arrives, problem solved in 5 minutes. Turns out some bozo had got the wires the wrong way round at the exchange. But you get the idea…a simple issue, but dressed in increasingly apocalyptic terms, all to keep one at bay.

Now, I repeat, it would be ludicrous, disrespectful and downright wrong to accuse BT of being anything other than a brilliant, fine and upstanding provider of communications services, and any similarity between the two experiences is just a coincidence.

Makes you think though, doesn’t it?

Welcome to the new Business First web site. All the features contained in the magazine are now available on this site together with a lot more content that might not otherwise make it into the paper version of Business First but that still deserves an airing.

So do please check back on a regular basis, or if you Tweet, follow @scepticblog.

Now that Greed is Bad, to misquote the great Gordon Gecko, open season has been declared on anybody not wearing a hair shirt to atone for their sins. Most notable amongst them – Goldman Sachs, the new hate figure of Wall Street, the “…great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” (thanks to Rolling Stone for that exquisitely pejorative quote).

They repaid $10bn in government bailouts. They made $3.5bn profits in the second quarter and started dishing out bonuses to their no-doubt deliriously happy staff.

They are successful. And that makes them bad, apparently.

What should they have done? According to the chippy and increasingly swaggering Democrats in Congress, they should have done anything but make shedloads of cash and be disgustingly successful. Interesting. I would have thought success is something we should celebrate, no matter how squid-like the successful business is.

Just saw this press release….

THE CITY’S FAVOURITE SHIRTMAKER, CHARLES TYRWHITT ’DEFIANTLY’ OPENS NEW STORE IN THE CITY – 30TH JULY 2009

The City of London’s Favourite Shirt Maker, Charles Tyrwhitt, is ’defiantly’ opening a new retail store in The City of London on Thursday, 30th July 2009.

The store will be located at 29 Canada Place, Canary Wharf, at the epi-centre of London’s financial district.

Charles Tyrwhitt was ’ringside’ in Manhatten, New York with its stores in Madison Avenue and 7th Avenue during the worst stages of the recession. Charles Tyrwhitt has stores in the same building as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, both casualties of the recession.

“We’ve cut £2 million of marketing costs, and as a result are now profitable,“ says Charles Tyrwhitt, Chairman Nick Wheeler.
………
Great shirts…hope the business thrives, I really do. But imagine any business saying they cut marketing by £2m…or maybe sacked all their staff…to become profitable!!!

Hope it works, like I said, but seems an odd way to run a business. How’s anyone going to find the shop if they’ve cut marketing???

…my blog will appear here when the mood, usually a dark one, takes me.