Grombles

After around four decades of trying to work out what does and doesn't contribute to business success, these days I spend much of my time mentoring others to help them discover the same thing (fortunately I can afford to do this because I did eventually manage to work out some of the answers). Over the years I have come to realise that successful business founders share a number of characteristics which seem to be lacking from those who try, but fail. Perhaps serially. So here are some observations: Who is the business being created for? I am often confronted by excited wide-eyed people clutching business plans that tell you about the fortunes they are going to make, but which lack the single most important factor any business requires, and which is answered by the question - Who wants it to succeed most - the founders or their customers? If it's the former, then the business is being created for the wrong reasons. Businesses that provide what customers need and really wan...

So my iPhone 4S fell on the floor. The screen crazed and my old faithful finally joined every other iPhone in the house. Tricky to read and not worth stealing. But it was only a couple of weeks away from the release of the much vaunted 6 and my network contract had expired long ago. These days I buy SIM only contracts with EE. Vastly better coverage than the loathsome Vodafone and O2, and cheaper to boot. So what I needed was an unlocked 6. No problem. Ordered it on Apple's website and within a few days it arrived. Hurrah. Although Apple did send me an SMS text to my old iPhone with a link to a website that an iPhone can't read! iTwats. Now the most important thing not to do to an iPhone, as I had already discovered, is drop it. The fancy box it arrives in has a tight fitting lid that you have to pull off as the increasing vacuum inside tries to stop you. Finally the lid popped off, releasing my precious and precariously balanced, as I now discovered, £700 iPhone. In slow ...

I've not gone barking mad or joined some weird religious cult (aren't they all?). But I do predict that we will make contact with intelligences from other planets soon. Here's my reasoning: There are approximately 100,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy (easy way to remember this order of magnitude is it's one hundred, thousand, million). Usefully there are also approximately the same number of galaxies in the universe. And assuming every star has about the same number of planets orbiting it as our Sun, and that the Milky Way is an average size of galaxy, that means there are around 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe. A lot. Scientists have long debated the probability of life, as we would recognise it - reproducing, eating, etc - existing outside Earth. Most agree mathematically that it's a certainty. What they did was take all the components they believed were required for life to have evolved on Earth and then extrapolate what they know about...

I am a big fan of The Royal Institution  where I've been a member for about 30 years. Their most interesting activities are their Friday Evening Discourses which last exactly one hour and feature august speakers from somewhere in the wide world of science - usually academics. The audience comprises RI members and their guests who broadly enjoy learning about leading edge science presented in an entertaining and, usually, easy to understand way. The RI was in fact founded by Michael Faraday and Humphrey Davy to promote science to the glitterati of London society. Today it's a bit of an anachronism overtaken to some extent by TV documentaries, the internet and social goliaths like TED. But I personally get a great deal out of membership if for no other reason that it gives me a good excuse to start the weekend with a Friday night out in London preceded by a stimulating topic of conversation for the West End dinner which follows. Last Friday I went to a particularly interesting...

Is it just me, or does the West's indignance about Putin invading the Crimea reek of hypocrisy in the light of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and countless other invasions and regime changes we've tried to effect during recent decades? And the people we've 'rescued' don't even speak our language, share our cultures or have the faintest idea who we are. And none of them are thanking us now. The other side of the hypocrisy is exemplified by the Falkland Islands whose inhabitants voted to remain British - despite Argentina, not unreasonably from a purely geographic point of view, claiming territorial sovereignty. So it is OK for the UK to sail half way around the globe to maintain British dominion in far away places, but not OK for Russians to pop next door to protect Russians. It would seem that at least 96% of Crimeans welcome Putin's invasion if you can trust their referendum... which the West are trying to call illegal. I don't recall being asked if I wan...

I have been battling with a dilemma. The concept of god is artificial. I am not going to argue the case for atheism here. It's overwhelmingly argued in thousands of books and blogs, and if you were still in any doubt, just listen to a few creationists or watch any religious service for acres of mumbo-jumbo helping to make the case for a 'wake-up' call. My dilemma is about the idea of perpetuating the brainwashing of populations who haven't woken up, or been allowed to, in order to encourage changes of behaviour to improve the world. In other words, if populations are already led by balmy divine instructions, why not harness its control of their minds to do good (whilst also trying to reach the same muddled brains to encourage a rational view of how the world really works). At their hearts, religions are sets of rules which: Justify, protect and propagate their own sources of power (eg 'There is only one god', 'You will not worship any other' etc). ...

Every country needs people who WANT to work. Immigrants want to make a better life for themselves and for their children. The emphasis is on the word 'make'. This is in contrast to a massive UK benefit culture that's become the lifestyle of choice for so many claiming to deserve it solely because they were born here. Rights without responsibilities weaken societies. To leave your family, friends, language (usually), customs, familiar places and climate (usually better than cold damp UK) to forge a new life in an unknown place takes courage and determination - both qualities we should welcome into our society. The UK has always been a melting pot of nationalities. Until very recently we were by far the largest trading nation on the planet. Our nation is designed to mix peoples and cultures economically and culturally. By opening our doors to foreign cultures, our lives are enriched. Food, music, dance, art, theatre, sport and many other aspects of the way we entertain o...