Easter comes - next year

If you’re missing the fun of Christmas already then don’t worry as another “holiday” is on its way as can be seen on this new style KitKat.

It’s always nice to have another holiday booked before you finish the current one I find

Enjoy!

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Earlier this year I passed comment on how good a service I’d had from Linksys (see here) but maybe I spoke too soon. The gist of it was that they gave me great service for a router that was about 5 years old.

Today I had the same problem once again and rang the same number once again. Today it was different, no longer were they able to support me unless I paid a small charge: All they wanted was £25.

Since when did £25 make a small charge?

I declined, reckoning that a replacement for the failing equipment wouldn’t cost too much more than the £25 “small charge”.  So off to PC World and 30 minutes later I was now the owner of a new router.

There was a choice in the shop: Belkin or Linksys. Similar in price, similar in capability. Guess which I bought.

Shell, international oil giant and owner of a chain of petrol stations in Britain, have banned the on-site collection of money in support of the Royal British Legion annual Poppy Appeal. This is particuarly insensitive when one recalls that their oil platforms were protected in the North Sea by Royal Marines.

It also appears to be an act of crass stupidity at a time when there is clear public support for the military and a groundswell of feeling around Remembrance.

To express my own “thanks” to Shell for this wholly unnecesary and objectionable act I shall refuse to buy anything from their service stations from now on.

I was dragged into the middle of Cardiff’s shopping centre last night for the first time in many months. Like many men of my age, I hate shopping, especially the way that some people do it. For me it’s all about knowing what you want and going out to buy it at around 9.30 on a Tuesday morning when there are no crowds.

And that’s how it was last night – NO CROWDS. In fact it was almost no shoppers. As we wandered around the new developments in The Hayes and the Cafe Quarter the thing that was obviously missing was Shoppers. I spoke to one tailor who has sold me clothes in the past. He reported that this is the worst year he has ever had and that on some days he does not get 4 customers into his shop.

But 50 yards away, millions of pounds have been spent on building more shops, and the fit-outs continue on many “labels”  that already exist in department stores in Cardiff. How will these new shops survive?

The other thing that worried me was the number of new Jewellers in town, including probably the most expensive high street label: Cartier. Why are there at least 5 new jewellers shops opening in Cardiff now?

To have so many new shops, so few shoppers and a glut of new jewellers selling frippery make me worry about the security of business in Cardiff. Additionally, as the centre shifts towards the Hayes and the shopping magnet that is John Lewis, what will happen to the other end of Queen Street and the Capitol Centre in particular. Surely that too is facing even more challenging times.

My brother-in-law owns a chippy, a really good one that produces “probably the best chips you’ll ever eat”, but yesterday he received a notice about his business rates for next year. His business rates will increase next year by 60%.

Did you get that - 60%!

And for what? There’s no explanation and no commitment. Surely you could expect some extra information for what equates to a £125 per week off his profit line.

His restaurant is open for 363 days per year and employs over 20 staff. He has regular customers that turn up day after day and week after week. The council services do not extend to providing working CCTV nor to collecting rubbish which he pays for privately.

But he recognises that the nation is in a real mess, financially and that tough choices are needed. And he’s prepared to play his part. But he’d like to know if there is a plan to fix the problem.

He really does not welcome a new rate that will penalise him. He is fed up with a bloated, arrogant public sector that believes it can bill him to help them get out of this hole, without providing some information to support the decision.

As a business man he needs to make his books balance and he will now need to find the £125 a week.  His options are to lose it from the bottom line or cut costs. The result is that he’ll probably not open for some of those quiet hours that he used to open for and will therefore have less staff hours to pay. As a result some of his staff will be worse off every week.

But let’s remember that in this particular business there are options: for some smaller businesses this tax will be crippling. In fact they will be so crippling that many will close, which has to be the worst possible result for the country.

By imposing this tax on a business our irresponsible Government are definitely going to make some staff poorer. They are also threatening some businesses and will force some to close as they cannot meet the new costs for no benefit.

That is why some businesses are doomed with this new Rate.

I must admit: I’ve been a slave to email. It’s been a friend, a distraction from real work, it’s given me a sense of being connected when all this exciting must read stuff lands in my inbox. And it’s helped me waste days if not years of my life.

But as of today all that is changed. I’ve decided to declutter my inbox, clear my desktop and instead of being busy, being busy I’m going to focus on the important things in my communication strategy.

No longer will I sit there waiting for someone’s broadcast; from now on it’s Proactive Communications for me!

So if you want to de-clutter your day, tidy up your thinking and focus on what’s important then I suggest that you too think about who you receive mail from and why. You could save yourself many hours a day with an auto delete filter on incoming mail.

The “unsubscribe” button is now a great friend. Have an uncluttered day.!

There’s a fair bit of recruitment activity being discussed in our house at the moment as my son looks for his first steps in a career. He’s keen to work in Cardiff and with a Marketing and Business Management degree is, I would hope, reasonably employable. He’s applied for a few jobs and is attending interviews this week. But the recruitment experience has astounded me.

One area he’s explored is Recruitment, and he is waiting for an interview for a recruitment company where he will focus on the Welsh-medium education sector.

Having been invited for an interview, he was given nearly a week’s notice. In a follow up call the same day that the meeting had been arranged, he was told that if he came “for an interview Tomorrow, he could start work next week“. This he refused to do as he was working for a marketing company and did not want to disrupt the completion of the project he was working on.

The recruiter’s advice was to “throw a sicky”, and then he could still start his job “next Monday”.  My son’s got some principles and refused. So an interview was re-arranged for this morning. He was there on time, scrubbed up nicely, and was ready to give it his best shot.

Sadly, the interviewer had gone out, even though the meeting had been confirmed last Friday afternoon and he is unlikely to be available until Wednesday. By which time of course my lad will be back with the marketing agency finishing the project.

All this made me wonder: I’ve used agencies in the past, and always wondered what I got for my 15-18%, but what I never imagined before was how much damage they could be doing to my brand.

I’ve got 2 sons, both graduates. One is doing a PhD so is missing out on the challenges of getting a job, whilst the other, a graduate in Marketing in Management is on the trail for his first break. And it’s tough out there. Lots more competition than usual and for those will little practical experience getting that first break is what used to be called a significant challenge, but is now known as a “big ask”.

And it’s not helped when a company like BT announces that it is scrapping its Graduate schemes. The ripples from this statement will be great and could trigger others to do the same and the knock on effect could be that we seen the destruction of graduate schemes across the country.

At the personal level for my sons and many, many others this is serious. But for the economy in general it is possibly even more serious as graduate schemes do produce wonderful results.

Yes of course I know that Richard Branson and many other highly successful types did no go to or even finish university, but they are an exception. In the general scheme of things we need graduate trained minds to get into business and to be successful. They stand a better chance of doing this in a structured programme. Like the ones BT used to run!