Unexpected publicity

Yesterday I received the May copy of one of the motoring magazines that I subscribe to. As I flicked through the articles to get an idea of the content I happened across an article that went on to name check the race team and some of the development work we’ve been doing recently.

Of course the fact that the journalist who wrote the article is a close friend and happens to be one of our retained race drivers is a mere coincidence.

In other news, I have been putting some thought into the car(s) we might want to run in 2009 onwards and have been trying to forget thoughts of Porsches, Aston Martins and other such GT cars out of my head. We haven’t even started our 2008 season yet, but practicality means I need to start thinking about the forthcoming years now, especially as we start to budget and plan our activities over the next few months.

I’m drawn towards an Aston Martin N24, best of British and all that.

Rantation (c) Perpetual Spiral

[Insert opening line of expletives and words to show the anger and frustration of Perpetual]

One of the benefits of being a hands on boss, is that I know everything that goes on with regards to my customers. so when someone triffles with either that knowledge, the customer themselves, tries to second guess me, or heaven forbid a combination of all three, I am not best pleased.

All three have happened today from one person. This person doesn’t work for me and doesn’t know the customer in question. Yet because I buy one series of products off them to sell onto my customer, they assume that they know best. The morning and most of the afternoon up to the time of writing (I am forcing myself to chill out – having a delightful cup of Lapsang Souchong tea as well as technically breaking the no smoking in the workplace rules by having a cigar in my office at home), I have been trying to sort this issue out whilst maintaining my calm exterior. At one point, to stop myself from sending the angriest email in the world ever, I wandered into town to glare at people and calm down a little.

To summarise, I have a diagram that really does show the effect of someone meddling when they clearly do not know what they are talking about, or when they will not accept they are wrong.

I can trace their journey down the flowchart as follows – NO, YES, YES, NO. May they spend the rest of their days in that eternal loop thinking about how they should learn to STFU when they are in over their head.

That is all. I just needed to vent, the dog isn’t very talkative and no one in the office wants to speak to me for some strange reason

Lost, immobilsed and fatherly beer

A couple of days ago the battery in my watch stopped working, and it seemed for a moment that I’d be stuck living the rest of my life at ten minutes past two. So I popped the watch into my local jewellers for them to do their thing and return me back to a life of seconds, minutes and hours.

Now this isn’t a fancy watch, it is simply a watch that tells the time and for most of the month, also displays the correct date too. Often I do forget to wind the date forward, so the date can never be relied on as an accurate measure the the date itself.

Apparently they have had to send my watch away for a new battery, that means my left arm feels light. I have considered tying it down to stop it floating above my head. I am completely unused to not wearing a watch and it is throwing my whole day, especially one such as today where I’ve been out and about and have had to refer to my mobile phone to check the time – after glancing at my plain and hairy wrist in the first instance.

It is strange how we get into routines and expect certain things to be there and how it throws you when they are not there.

In other news, the immobiliser in the Jeep has once again immobilised itself permanently. Luckily I managed to get it off the drive last night and in front of the house before it went completely kapput. It is now sitting there with the battery disconnected for 24hours to see if that resets it, otherwise it will be trip to the garage for another repair.

I have driven that Jeep into and out of ditches, through deep water, into hedges and towed race cars over Europe yet the electronics are crap. I needed to use it next week so will have to hire a car instead. I won’t be able to fit two exhibition stands in the Nissan, in fact I couldn’t even fit one.

The old man was in London today for a meeting, so we arranged to meet up for a couple of beers and something to eat. He doesn’t get down here very often, preferring the confines of the north. It was good to catch up and spend a few hours talking about something and nothing whilst demolishing several plates of food in Chinatown.

For many years we did not get on at all, a situation that only improved once I moved out and made my own way in life. There was a time when I resented not getting on with him, yet now I realise he only wanted the best for me. I hope I haven’t disappointed him so far.

Professional porn

I had to take part in a conference call this afternoon. Sometimes it is easier to get people together on the phone for a discussion rather than schedule diaries for a meeting. Whilst a phone call doesn’t allow you to read people’s expressions and reactions, it does mean you can decide whether a meeting is worthwhile.

Back in January / February I did some work for a company and put together a technical specification regarding a new service they wanted to bring to market. As is often the case, these things then go a little quiet and then all of a sudden deadlines change and things pick up pace.

So, I find myself on a phone and web conference this afternoon, where the host has the ability to share what they see on their own desktop with the other participants. After about 40 minutes talking about merchant service accounts, HTTP interfaces and all manner of clever things to make quite a good service even better, I was given the ability talk through a Visio diagram (drawn by yours truly) that the host had on his own desktop.

As he was then trying to find something else, he was flicking through the various programs he had open at the time. Bear in mind there was myself representing my business and his web developer / pseudo distributor for this product and all three of us could see what was going on on his computer.

He then flicked through his open programs to Internet Explorer, which had a somewhat graphic porn site on display. Suddenly my web conference had gone from Visio diagram to hard core porn.

The sound of this guy backtracking and making excuses reverberated down the phone, and I swear that for about 10 seconds, time stood still and a tumble weed rolled through my office.

Tomorrow I am putting his price up. Somehow I think he’ll be good for it.

Tax shouldn’t have to be taxing

So he says.

Well I beg to differ, for a multitude of reasons. Every three months I get a distinct feeling of melancholy as I sign the cheque and the form that encompasses my main businesses VAT return. I know that paying an ever increasing sum of money to the government each quarter signifies a growing business, but it still galls me deeply – much to the amusement of my book keeper as she prises the cheque out of my kung fu like death grip.

I have just signed last years accounts off, which means I shortly have to write a cheque for that years Corporation Tax. Now Corporation Tax is something that I feel is deeply unfair to new and growing businesses. When a business is growing, with cash flow tight and expenditure tightly managed, the accrual and payment of this tax comes as a bit of a kick in the teeth. I do wonder whether or not it would be more beneficial to such businesses that they are exempted from paying this for the first three years of their life, or that they receive a 50% discount. Of course this will never happen, nowadays most new businesses do not last three years and the Brownite Nu Labia government just wants to tax us all into oblivion it seems.

Finally, I received in the post today a gentle reminder from the Inland Revenue that my Self Assessment tax return for the year ending April 08 is due any time between now and 31st January. Well thank you for reminding me, I dare say I’d have remembered of either my own accord, or via gentle reminders from both my book keeper and accountant – after all that is one of the things they get paid to do. But still the polite letter shall be filled away and revisited at the end of the year when I feel like it and my accountant starts to get antsy about having not filed it yet.

As a postscript, I feel desperately sad for the people affected by the abolishment of the 10p tax rate. In times of rising costs of living and escalating fuel prices, people must feel that they’ve been abandoned without a care in the world. Watching the government back peddle, implode and attempt to reposition is the only good thing that comes out of this debacle.