Carillion, Patisserie Valerie, Bargain Booze, what do they all have in common?

Alongside the fact that they have all gone bust obviously.

I have been doing some housekeeping work on the database recently, and what is striking about reading through old press articles on all of the above is two things – one, the amount of back-patting self congratulatory articles and two, the speed of the decline.

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I stumbled across a business briefing article the other day about an acquisition. Nothing too out of the ordinary, these things happen all the time. What struck me about it though was the name of the company that had been acquired (for a significant amount of money for the outgoing MD) as I remember recruiting for them when they had five employees and one branch.

What I was most reminded of though was the fact that the person I recruited into that business (20 years or so ago) described it as the worst business he had ever been involved with. I remember meeting the MD at the time and, admittedly, the premises weren’t great, but the business model was sound and the MD clearly had something about him (as proven by where they have got to).

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The Deputy Leader of Shropshire Council (and local councillor) took to Twitter recently to take issue with an ad on some Arriva buses promoting Veganuary. Apparently it riled him to such an extent because Shropshire is a “great county, built on Agriculture”.

Said individual clearly thinks he is the next Donald Trump, exposing “the fake news of vegangelists” (his words). Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have the profile of the Orange One (with 714 Twitter followers as opposed to 56.9m) and a profile picture that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1980s knitting pattern. 12 people bothered to comment on the tweet.

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It is traditional at this time of the year to wish good health and glad tidings. There can’t be many years that we have approached with as much trepidation as this one though.

To say there is a dark cloud hanging over us all is something of an understatement. Regardless of whether you voted Leave or Remain, the fact of the matter is that the Government has pretty much ignored everything else it needed to do for the last two and a half years. Crossrail has gone massivley over-budget; HS2 is no nearer being started than it was five years ago; the full Universal Credit roll-out has been postponed again.

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