| Ministry for Holes | |
| By Howard Graham on13/08/2008 10:50 | |
| I had lunch recently with a good friend and business contact of mine, Andy Stern. As it was a lovely day, I booked to eat outside at a local Thai restaurant based on Clerkenwell Road. Everything was perfect apart from the road works going on adjacent to where we were sitting as some utility company, a Gas one I think, were working down a large hole.
Now I have nothing against people engaging in good honest hard work on a hot day –that’s exactly what these gentlemen were doing. My problem is the fact that this part of the road has already been dug up and filled 3 times in the last year, most recently about 8 weeks ago when some other utility was being dealt with.
In this day and age, it can’t be beyond the ingenuity of mankind to come up with a solution to this. It just doesn’t make sense to dig a hole, work in it, fill it, and then do it again 6 or 8 weeks later.
I have come up ... |  | |
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| Phishing | |
| By Howard Graham on04/08/2008 13:36 | |
| Like most people I meet, I seem to be inundated with a variety of different emails from people whose intentions are not exactly honourable. Whether it be the online provision of certain medication or just completely irrelevant and unsuitable material, I sometimes wonder whether our firewalls and anti-spam filters are letting through more spam than genuine mail. Perhaps it’s just that these people are cleverer or as one person in the US told me, the proportion of spam to genuine mail is something in the region of 9:1.
Perhaps one of the most insidious areas of such emailing is the practice of Phishing. This is where emailers, pretending to be some other organisation, try and get information about you so as to carry out some other crime. The one that many of us will have come across is the email purported to be from a particular bank. Often this is by way of a “security alert” and asks you to reset your password or provide certain other info ... | | |
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| The Apprentice | |
| By Howard Graham on18/04/2008 06:56 | |
| | In common with about 7 million others, I am afraid that I am hooked on the Apprentice (Wednesday nights on BBC1). For those of you who have never seen it or read anything about it, this is a programme where Sir Alan Sugar sets a variety of tasks for 16 aspiring “apprentices” who are competing with each other for a job with Sir Alan Sugar’s organisation and a 6-figure salary. Each week, as the series progresses, one of the contestants gets fired. | | |
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| Freakonomics | |
| By Howard Graham on27/03/2008 16:02 | |
| | Last year I read a really great book called Freakonomics. For those of you who like an interesting spin on conventional topics, this is a must read. It is written by an economics lecturer at the University of Chicago together with a writer from the New York Times and follows a series of Blog postings that the two of them made back in 2003. | | |
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| Just in time!! | |
| By Howard Graham on18/03/2008 14:07 | |
| | Over the years, I have made connections, friendships and alliances with people from all walks of life and in many different situations and I value all these relationships as part of my ongoing business development. One person who I met recently, Mike Bird, has kindly participated in a podcast and also provided a testimonial for our company formation service. He also writes the excellent “Bloomstorm Briefing” as part of his site www.bloomstorm.com. In his most recent issue, he writes an article about “living with change” making particular reference to the subject of timekeeping. | | |
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| Hello my darling! | |
| By Howard Graham on14/03/2008 10:27 | |
| | I suppose the biggest event of the week, even speaking as an accountant and tax adviser, has to be the postponement of the Cheltenham race festival. The budget passed by with hardly a whimper, much as I suggested in my earlier posting.
Apart from the fact that it was so benign and lacking in anything controversial, you have to say that anyone with a name of “Darling” starts off at a great disadvantage. | | |
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| Oh what joy! | |
| By Howard Graham on12/03/2008 11:17 | |
| | I don’t know about you, but whenever I look back at old photographs of my youth and innocent years(!), I am struck by a number of things particularly:-
· Who is that young handsome, dashing man with all that hair.
· Despite all the hair what an awful look.
· How could I possibly wear clothes like that.
There is absolutely no question that what once seemed fashionable and trendy so quickly just simply looks naff. Our feelings at the moment of a particular incident are so different when we look back in hindsight. | | |
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| Enterprise Culture | |
| By Howard Graham on11/03/2008 12:46 | |
| | have been involved with the SME sector; (with emphasis on the S part) for almost 25 years and have always felt that generally, the small business in particular gets somewhat of a raw deal from government. On the one hand, they are saddled with the responsibilities of new legislation brought in because of the indiscretions of larger businesses, (Enron etc) and on the other hand, they bear the brunt of tax initiatives which were largely introduced to tackle far bigger businesses. | | |
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| Batten down the hatches | |
| By Howard Graham on11/03/2008 12:38 | |
| | Yesterday morning, driving into the office, I could literally feel the car being battered by the strong winds and driving rain. Reports on the radio from other parts of the country, particularly the south west were of 80 mile an hour winds, trees being uprooted and general mayhem as river levels rose and the threat of serious damage rapidly grew. | | |
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| More on business kissing | |
| By Howard Graham on29/02/2008 08:13 | |
| | In an earlier posting I wrote about the subject of business kissing and I have received some guidance from friends and contacts on this irksome and sensitive subject. Thanks to you all although I am no clearer than I was before. | | |
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