Knutsford City Limits

Tonight me and Marion are off to Manchester to the M.E.N Arena for Tina Turner's concert. The reviews have been great so, although we are only in the cheap seats, it should be a thoroughly entertaining evening. We'll be there providing that everything goes to plan with the Sous Vide photo shoot being done by local photographer Peter Raymond. It's not easy photographing stainless steel but Peter has now got it off to a fine art as witnessed by our last two brochures which have been highly praised. There are so many features on these digital water baths we may need to take more photos than expected. Check out the wide and varied range of Peter's excellent work here. I hope that we will put a sneak preview of the equipment on the blog very soon.



As I write, Natalie Drummond from our office should hopefully be airborne en route to Barbados and then on to St Lucia. We had a bit of a scare when her baby Olivia was taken ill last week but she seems to have made a speedy recovery and we wish the family a very happy holiday. (Phew. A bit of peace around here for a couple of weeks!)



I am all in favour of improved provisions for new fathers but those in the Equality And Human Rights Commission pushing for four months leave have not taken into account the effect it could have on a small company like this. Within a few weeks at least four of our factory staff will be fathers of children under two years old. If they all chose to take their four months at the same time we would find it very difficult to train and replace them. We want to be good employers and we support efforts to improve parents' lots but if you have over 10% of your staff in one area away on paternity leave (not forgetting holidays and sickness) you have the recipe for a very hard time. And speaking of babies, I see that Wayne and Coleen have jumped on the Instanta bandwagon and are expecting their own little Rooney. The Sun speculates that a girl will be called Waynetta but this is the type of snobbery to be expected from a rag like that. I can however, tell you that Instanta has gained exclusive access to a close up ultrasound image which I can share with you below.



At least Wayne's a winner. When you check out this elaborate sporting celebration, make sure you check out the score at the end.

Calls For Home Secretary Jacqui Smith To Resign Over Adult Movies

I find it surprising that, having survived the scandal of the housing claims, Jacqui Smith's career is now at risk because her husband watched an adult movie and it somehow got onto her expenses claim. Tory newspapers are baying for her blood but is this really something to bring her down? It seems to me that whoever leaked the story has it in for the Home Secretary. If you investigate you will find that the films rented were not hard core R18 material but something far milder. With millions of people using pornography in the UK (no doubt many of them Mail & Express readers) this should be a "Let him without sin cast the first stone" moment and only MPs and journalists who can honestly say without fear of contradiction that they have never seen something of this nature should be allowed to call for her resignation. If so I suspect the story would disappear overnight. The real scandal is the report that Smith was "furious and mortified" at her husband's choice of viewing. OK "Ocean's Thirteen" is not up to much but "Surf's Up" is great.



Here at Instanta we are just putting the finishing touches to the sous vide equipment which is due in the photo studio tomorrow. We have had a bit of flack for showing the prototype at Hotelympia 12 months ago but still not being in production. This is a major step for Instanta and is our first ever non-beverage related product. Once we had the feedback from the chefs as to exactly what they wanted we then had to tool up for it and then give the products lengthy field tests. The result is two superb digital water baths which have proved to be accurate and reliable and we can launch them confident that they are what the market wants.



Two days to the end of the month and the 1500LCD is selling like hot cakes. I expect March to be a bit down on last year as we had one order in March 2008 for over 300 boilers. We could boost this month's turnover if we were able to get out an order for over sixty boilers that we are customising for a new customer. They are all tested and ready to go but the operating instructions requested are longer than "War & Peace" and haven't been approved by the customer yet.



Listening to David Mitchell's "The Unbelievable Truth" on Radio 4 yesterday I learned about the Rhinoceros Party of Canada. This was a real political party that started in 1963. Policies included "Providing Higher Education by building taller schools" and "Ending crime by abolishing all laws". Sounds like my sort of party. Perhaps we could start a branch over here in time for the election. As well as being a good panel show host, David Mitchell is also a great writer with a regular column in the Observer. The Observer and Guardian have some brilliant writers at the moment. The pieces on The Apprentice by Charlier Brooker and by Sam Wollaston on the documentary Trophy Kids were sublime. You can read them here (Charlie Brooker) and here (Sam Wollaston)

I just found one of those films that the home secretary's husband was watching. Here it is. Warning contains content of an adult nature.

Quentin Tarantino Mariah Carey Jenny Wright. Have A Great Birthday

Yes, today March 27th will see all three of those famous people enjoying a birthday. Quentin will be 46, Mariah 39 and Jenny reaches 29. It's 13 years now since the schoolgirl Jenny arrived here for an interview as Office Junior and now she is Office Manager having arrived there via stints in many of the office jobs. Customers will know Jenny as the friendly voice at the end of the spares line and it is a credit to her that our spare parts service is probably the best in the industry with a massive 99% of orders being sent out on time.Her encyclopaedic knowledge of our spare parts could win her Mastermind. As I mentioned earlier in the week, Jenny's organisational skills have made me and Marion's lives so much easier. As well a finding a career at Instanta, Jenny has also found her partner Craig in our sales department.Have a great birthday Jenny.



The other day Natalie (AKA Uma) persuaded me to bake everyone pizza, having heard that it is one of the few meals that I can cook passably well.Having made all the preparations early yesterday morning I arrived at work to discover that poor Nat was not in due to her baby Olivia being very poorly. We were all really upset about Olivia but the show had to go on and here are Max, Craig and Lauren tucking in. And if anyone in the factory is reading this, I will make pizza for you next time we have a staff meeting.(That will be in April)There's no favouritism here.

Following my note on Instanta lookalikes on yesterday's blog, it has been pointed out to me that I missed a few so here they are now. Please let me know me if there are more that I've missed.



Steve Wilson (Our driver)



Steve Eyres



Tony Mercer



Max Vidal



Gavin Ford



Lauren Oldfield

We've got a Board Meeting today to discuss our progress for the first six months and the audited figures for 2008. After that we are going to lunch at the Warehouse Brasserie to try out some of the sous vide cooking made by our super new digital water bath that they have been trialing for us for six months so it's a working lunch (honest).The photos are booked in for next week and the brochure will be out very soon.



Don't forget that our son Paul's creation, ITV's great new game show :"The Colour of Money" has a new slot tomorrow at 8.20pm. It's up against "Casualty" but it's a lot more exciting.

Still nobody has posted Harry Hill's dancing jelly on YouTube yet so today we will make do with Harry's preferred solution to any dispute - FIGHT

Jade Goody's Tax Planning Demonstrates The Insidiousness Of Inheritance Tax

So it appears that her wedding to Jack Tweed fulfilled far more for Jade Goody than some valuable coverage in the glossy magazines. If the affairs were planned correctly (which they almost certainly were) the marriage will have saved her estate and ultimately her children from a massive 40% inheritance tax. So I raise my hat to the late Jade for her (or her advisors') foresight in making this arrangement because Inheritance Tax has to be just about the unfairest tax of all. As Marion and I are approaching the later stages of our lives we often think about how Sarah and Paul will be taxed when we depart. We have built up a small estate comprising a house, some nice antiques and Instanta. When we retire we will need to sell the business to cover our retirement. We will pay tax on that sale. What I don't understand is why anybody should pay tax if we leave that money to them. We have paid tax all our lives and bought everything with taxed income. Why should this be taxed again? Despite my fairly liberal politics I am completely with the Tories on this one and it was good to see it on Cameron's agenda this week even if Ken Clarke has some reservations.



Lets say that someone dies leaving an estate worth £1 million there is £312,000 that's tax free and the rest is charged at 40% which makes the tax £275,200. This leaves the beneficiary with £724,800. Let's say that the beneficiary sadly dies twelve months later. He leaves £724,800. Of this, £312,000 is tax free and the rest is charged at 40% which makes the tax £165,120 leaving the beneficiary with £559,680. I could go on repeating this until we fall below the threshold but the point is that the government has taken hundreds of thousands off what is today a relatively small estate built up from taxed income. We can go and spend any money that we have on whatever we want whilst we are still here but when we die our kids have to give 40% to the taxman. Why? If anybody can give a valid reason I will happily publish it here. Don't expect any.



Spare a thought for Marnie Pearce who finds herself in prison in Dubai for three months for the "crime" of adultery (which she denies). Seems that Marnie may not get to see her kids again until they are grown up.

We were just discussing in the office (we're dead busy again) how Instanta is blessed with so many good looking staff some of whom are dead ringers for stars of stage and screen. Take a look below and see if you can recognise who we think they look like.



Nick Neal



Natalie Drummond



Darren Rodwell



Craig Mercer



Me



Orange Wednesday last night (come on Orange can we drop Dennis Hopper's bus pitch and have a new one) and we went to see "Knowing". Marion thought it was rubbish. I quite enjoyed the action scenes but it's a bit of a hotch potch of ideas from lots of other films stitched together. A lot of CGI but it's very obviously CGI. Worth a look in my opinion but give it a wide berth says Marion.

Finally I am grateful to Jim Westbrook of Coffee Plus for bringing this video to my attention after yesterday's brilliant Samsung super computer. What does it all mean? All correct answers will get an extra 5% discount on their next boiler purchase. Got to fly now. I've been order to bake a pizza by one of those film star lookalikes - bloody prima donnas!

Ray Quinn Dancing On Ice Wonder Boy. An Apology

Apologies to Ray Quinn for my intemperate outburst on Monday after I lost £60 on the Dancing On Ice final. How could he have the most smackable face on TV when Piers Morgan still graces our screens? Watching Piers drool over the luxuries of Dubai, Monte Carlo and Hollywood with near masturbatory pleasure was enough to make one rush for the sick bag although it was easier to find the off switch.



I did watch the Dubai episode in full however as, if there is one place in the world that deserves Morgan , this is it. I have never forgiven the restaurant that refused to allow Marion a seat on the grounds of her sex when we went to Dubai for a trade exhibition. This is the side of the country that is kept hidden from the visitor but we wanted to see the real Dubai and in the real Dubai as in many other countries, women are second class citizens. Not only did Marion suffer the humiliation of being seated on the other side of the road to the restaurant, she had to put up with passing men spitting on the ground and cursing her as they passed. (you might ask why we stayed but it was the only restaurant in the area and we had not eaten all day). The cgi vision of the place above is how it's supposed to look soon but I have a horrible feeling that, without oil and with the world in recession,fewer tourists, this place could become a modern day Tower of Babel and the city could easily return to the desert it sprang from.I don't want to wish ill on anybody but Dubai truly is the pits.



Another high on the list of slappable faces has to be Sir Fred Goodwin, he of the £750k per pension paid for by you and me.But you can't condone those yobs who went round to his house and smashed his house and car windows at 4 this morning. They should have done a proper job and torched the place.



The vexed question of discounts raised it's ugly head again this morning when Northern Sales Manager Peter was on the receiving end of criticism from a customer. It seems that one of our customers is advertising our boilers at extremely competitive prices on the Internet and the other customer says that he can't compete. The problem is that both customers get EXACTLY the same price and service from Instanta. We can't dictate what price our customers sell at. It's called a free market. If they want to sell at extremely keen prices and it works for their business model then so be it. I don't want our stuff devalued but we get a fair price from both customers.What they do with it once it has left Instanta is entirely up to them.



There were two interesting films about animals on TV last night. There was the one about the two Aussies who bought a lion cub in Harrods and released it into the wild and "Grizzly Man" on More4 about a bloke and his girlfriend who lived with grizzly bears and came to a grizzly end. I didn't see either but the lion story was a feelgood tale which could lift the gloom of the recession whereas "Grizzly Man", which I recorded as it was made by my favourite director Herzog, is more in the spirit of the moment. I tried to find a good spoof on YouTube but they were all a bit rubbish so here's a fantastic clip for everyone like me who moans about the speed of their computer. I want one of these.

Apart From That Mrs Lincoln, How Did You Enjoy The Show?

Inflation heading towards deflation, graphs from the CBI monthly trends survey falling off a cliff, hospitals neglecting patients in order to meet targets, ministers claiming dubious housing allowances, Jade's death - what a gloomy time it is at the moment. I've just done some figures for our board meeting on Friday - they're not at all bad but somehow everything just feels flat. How are we going to get out of this malaise? I see that in the USA the Government's proposed remedy is to buy the toxic loans off the banks. Now that is one hell of a risk and I hope that they get them at a substantial discount or else Barack and his partners are going to end up with no economy and a lot of worthless housing.

I've been doing my best to lighten things up with the daily dose of virals from YouTube. Did you see the BAAA STUDS sheep from yesterday? That's one perfect example of a viral and it certainly raised a lot of smiles here at Instanta.

As did the arrival of Gary Rodwell and partner Faye at the office yesterday to introduce us all to new baby Ella who arrived last week. She really is a lovely little thing and we managed not to disturb her from her beauty sleep. Our Head of Sheet Metalwork, Kevin's partner's baby is due any day now so that will hopefully bring a few more smiles all round.

Marion has been busy on Google Street view looking at all her childhood stomping grounds in Richmond. She found her aunty's house with the postman just walking down the drive. Some bloke spotted the milkman walking down his drive. Problem was he buys his milk at Tesco. I see that writs are flying already with campaigners trying to ban it on privacy grounds. We're enjoying it at the moment. We've looked at a few dealers but haven't found any boilers in windows yet although we did find service engineer Tony from Catertech Liverpool's van and yes it was parked in his own drive.



At least Nat from our office is getting away from the gloom with a sixteen night trip to St Lucia starting on Monday (just in case there's anyone within a hundred miles of Instanta who hasn't heard about it yet). We've got a few Instanta boilers on the island so maybe she can sell a few more for us whilst its raining when she's out there (16 days of rain expected so I hear).



Orange Wednesday tomorrow so we'll give "Knowing" starring Nicholas Cage a try. Haven't seen any reviews but the trailers look good (don't they all?)

When it's all over, one abiding memory of the recession for me will be the wonderful Harry Hill. Nobody has posted the hilarious jelly on YouTube yet so we will have to make do with my second favourite Derek Acorah. I think Derek must live around here as I've seen him in Tesco's a few times. He can't be that psychic, he always seems to manage to get in the slowest moving queue.

Warning. Google Street View Can Seriously Damage Your Health

If, like me, you love to be one step ahead with the latest technology you will have already checked out the new Google Street View to have a gander at where your boss lives and see if it's as posh as he says and if he's been keeping his garden tidy. It has already taken over from Facebook as the screen of choice in hundreds of offices in Google's chosen cities. Fortunately Southport is not considered big enough to warrant Google's squad of camera cars to record our every street so you won't be able to see that our front door could do with a coat of paint or that someone is parking in my space at Instanta when they shouldn't be. But just imagine. You merrily zoom in on your street to have a quick look and what's this? Your best mate's car parked in your drive? Photo taken whilst you were at work and your wife was supposedly out for the day. I can see loads of these scenarios. There's already been a photo of an Observer male journalist strolling with a young (female) colleague. Ok it was an innocent walk back from lunch but it was considered sufficient to be mentioned by his fellow workers. So if you are in one of the 25 UK cities currently on Google Street View get looking around now and if you spot your pal's car where it shouldn't be you can thank Instanta for giving you the tip off. We'll certainly be checking out all our customers to have a quick look at their premises and if we can see an Instanta boiler or logo in their showroom window we will be highlighting it here.



So Ray Quinn, the boy with the most smackable face on TV (even more smackable than his near namesake Eoghan Quigg or Chucky) won Dancing on Ice and lost me £60 into the bargain. I bet against him as I couldn't believe that anybody would pick up a phone and vote for the smug little git even if he was a hundred times better than anyone else. And I didn't even have the pleasure of seeing him fall flat on his spotty little scouse face to lighten the loss.



Back to work today after our week's holiday and we still seem to have our overdraft facility with Barclays. I was a bit worried that posting the link to the leaked memos here on my blog might jeopardise our banker/customer relationship but let's face it the whole world and his dog have read them by now and, as the bank is making £2,700 per month out of us for our lovely interest rate collar, ours is an account worth keeping. Mind you I just got a note of our corporation tax liability that's due soon. I bet any money that, as a percentage of our profit, it's more that Barclays are paying.



Liverpool 5 Aston Villa 0. A huge thank you to Sky for changing the fixture to Mother's day so I miss our biggest home win of the season.

I am pleased to say that everything seems to have run smoothly whilst we were on holiday and Jenny has done a great job in charge of the office. It's good that I no longer return to work in trepidation apart from worrying how many customers have gone bust. None this week which is good.

I'll finish with a brilliant viral. Extreme shepherding. Shepherding doesn't get any harder than this.

You Want To Read The Barclays Memos? The Streisand Effect In Action

It's a sad day when one of the biggest banks in the country makes most of its money through dodgy but entirely legal tax avoidance schemes.The Guardian got hold of a number of leaked memos from a Barclays whistleblower and it infuriates me that a judge has ordered The Guardian to take them down off their website to try and prevent people reading what the bank was up to. But as The Guardian quite rightly points out today, by banning the memos, the judge has merely put into play The Streisand Effect. A few years back Barabara Streisand was infuriated to find aerial photos of her property on the Internet and sued the website owners for millions of dollars. Result? The website had half a million hits almost immediately and far more people viewed her property than ever would have done had she remained quiet. So I am doing my bit for the Guardian and if you want to read the memos download them by clicking here via Wikileaks or here. Please pass these on to as many people as possible. If the government is going to support the banks with our money through insurance we can't be encouraging them to profit from tax avoidance.

Well that's ruined our chance of an increased overdraft but you have to stick to your principles and these people clearly have none.



We're on the last leg of our holiday now and after Marion's birthday yesterday it's back to business as usual with her busy cleaning the conservatory at the moment. She enjoyed her shopping and I was amazed when she bought a lovely top on impulse. But credit crunch blues set in again whilst we were eating our tapas at the super La Vina and before we caught the train home we had to return to the shops and take the top back.



I said Marion would probably be right when she said that we were scraping the barrel in going to see Paul Blart:Mall Cop on Wednesday evening. She was.



So it's Chelsea again in the Champions League. First leg at home again. Hiddink has done well in his first couple of months so it's not going to be easy but at least we haven't got John Arne Riise playing this time. This weekend it's Aston Villa at home but those wonderful Sky Sports people have changed it to Mothers Day at 4 pm. That's great for any Liverpool fan with a mum isn't it? At least Marion's mum is a Liverpool fan and we can watch it on TV whilst someone (presumably motherless) takes my place on the Kop. How I yearn for the days of Saturday 3 pm kick offs.

Talking of football I'll leave you with James Corden's Gavin and the England football team. I had a dig at Corden on here a few weeks ago but it shows that, with the right script, he's still a very funny guy.

A Special Birthday

Today I am wishing a very very happy birthday to my wife and business partner Marion. As we are on holiday I have managed to persuade her to take some time off and we are going to go to Liverpool and have a look around the shops and get a bite to eat at her favourite Tapas bar La Vina. Those of you who know her will appreciate that persuading Marion to take some time off working is quite an achievement. Despite being on holiday this week she has single handedly managed to put in hours of work in the garden and, when it gets dark, in the house. Proud mother to daughter Sarah (28) and son Paul (26), Marion married me almost 33 years ago. We met when we were both at school and have been best friends ever since. Which goes to prove that opposites do attract. Marion works hard, I'm a lazy bugger. Marion holds her views passionately,I manage a shrug.My glass is always half full, hers is always half empty (in reality my glass is usually empty whilst hers is usually still full). Marion tends to worry, I tend not to. But we spend many many hours of the week together and I am never happier than when she is around. Have a wonderful day W. Go mad and buy yourself some new shoes, I just saw some green shoots of recovery in Craig's order book when I went into the office to pick up my eBay parcels.



I started to get withdrawal symptoms when I didn't book tickets for Orange Wednesday so I went and got some for "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" which Marion thinks is really scraping the barrel. As I write this,we haven't been yet so I'll let you know but she's probably right. She usually is. I'll keep it short today and finish with a song specially for her.

The Case Of The Missing £11 Million Gem

Of all the stories thrown up by the recession, none has been quite as bizarre as the failure of Wrekin Construction who apparently window dressed their last set of accounts with a ruby purported to be worth £11 million. The "Gem of Tanzania" was exchanged for shares but it now seems that the the gem had previously been in another group company's accounts with a value of £300,000. What's another £10,700,000 in the current climate? Sadly, although you have to laugh at the creativity involved and the fact that Wrekin managed to trade on the strength of their accounts for another twelve months, almost 500 people are now out of work so it's not really a laughing matter. Marion has gone to have her hair done so I've been furtively going through her jewellery to see if I can find anything to bolster Instanta. Just found some nice diamond earrings. Got to be a couple of million don't you reckon? That should keep Barclays happy for another twelve months.



After putting all the bird food out yesterday I can see a load of jackdaws circling and reminding me why we stopped putting the food out last year. There are six in the tree at the end of the garden and we haven't seen any for ages. It says robin food on the bag not bloody jackdaw food. Can't they read! Feeding the birds demonstrated perfectly that I am not cut out for manual work. Without exaggeration it took me almost two hours to put a bird feeder back together after filling it. Every time I screwed the top screw tight, the bottom wing nut fell off leaving me covered in seed. It did prove that I am very patient though. Marion thinks I was doing it to avoid some digging that she ended up doing.



Haven't been in touch with Instanta today yet although there are a few parcels due from eBay that I want to collect. I have bought some nice stuff recently but wonder when I will get the chance to sell it. I need to keep in touch with work to check the overdraft as ,since we got that interest rate collar, we are having to find £2,700 per month that wasn't in the budget and with interest rates at 0.5% this will continue for quite some time yet. We've found it for about six months so far but it's a penalty we could do without. No doubt when the Bank of England cut interest rates they forgot about businesses with these punitive deals (our rate goes up as bank rate goes down. It's called a hedge or a collar. I call it a noose). I am sure that we wont be the only ones to be celebrating when interest rates go back up. Mind you by then our collar deal will probably have expired and we'll end up losing out anyway.

One of the most popular videos on YouTube this week has been this one of a kid riding a giant python. It's been viewed over 1 million times and you can check it out here.


Maybe the kid's parents may think twice if they get to see the following photo.



It appears that Australian Patty Buntine couldn't find her faithful terrier Bundi when it was time for his breakfast. Where's Bundi? Can you spot him? Seems that instead of coming for breakfast, Bundi was breakfast. And speaking of breakfast I'm off to pick up Marion from the hairdressers now and go for some bacon and eggs. Real ones not one of those Wii breakfasts. And as there's nothing on at Vue for Orange Wednesday this week perhaps we'll watch a film at home. Forrest Gump perhaps?

Sitting in the conservatory as I write and for once when Marion and I are on holiday the sun is shining. Marion's credit crunch vacation is into its second day now and the sun has been out for most of the daylight hours. Spring is definitely in the air. I can almost see the shoots sprouting in the garden and last night frogs deposited a pile of spawn in the pond which certainly gets us thinking that winter is behind us. I nipped into Instanta briefly this morning just to check that we were still inside the overdraft limit and to pick up a couple of parcels of stuff that I bought on eBay at the weekend. Craig tells me that orders were good yesterday and that new dad Gary is going to join us for football tonight. Didn't manage to see any of the United fans and no doubt they were pleased that they didn't see me.



Yesterday we power washed the drive and today we are doing a bit of gardening and have just spent a fortune on bird seed to feed our feathered friends (or is it perhaps another of Marion's credit crunch plans. I saw her recipe book open on Pigeon pie). It's quite amazing the variety of food you can buy for birds. Mind you last time we bought this much we ended up with the garden looking like a scene from the famous Hitchcock movie.

We haven't decided on a film for this week. Maybe as we are on holiday we will give it a miss as there doesn't seem to be much on. The intro to Watchmen which I raved about last week and posted on the blog here has been taken off Youtube due to copyright issues. I hope you got to see it before it disappeared - brilliant wasn't it? And if you didn't see it, get down to the cinema straight away.



Managed to lose another chunk of the weekend accumulator winnings by being so stupid as to think that West Ham would beat West Brom last night. The Betfair forum was abuzz before the match that the Hammers were not going to win. This usually ends up with the team in question winning about 5-0 but for once they were right. Oh well still up for the year so far.

I'll finish with a clip for Craig and Jenny. They recently got a Wii. I wonder if they've got this game yet.