I awoke to this morning's news that Liverpool, the club that I have supported for the past forty four years, is on the verge of being taken over by a consortium backed by the Chinese Government. I have nothing against Chinese people but why can't a local club be owned by local business people? Love them or hate them, the traditional British Football Club owners used to be fans themselves albeit fans with money to burn and they were most interested in seeing their teams play good football. Any overseas investor has to be in it purely for the money and, whilst I have no doubt that there is a tremendous opportunity to sell millions of shirts made in China to Chinese people, I can't see any local benefits to the deal. Instead of a labour of love as it was twenty years ago, owning LFC will continue to be the grubby exercise in commercialism that it became when Hicks and co took over. As a season ticket holder who no longer spends a penny in the ground (where programmes are £3,and Kit Kats £1)or in the club shop (Shirts £40 or more)I will be exactly the sort of customer that the new owners won't want. Why have loyal fans of forty four years standing when you can have day trippers and tourists who are going to spend fifty quid each on top of the ticket price?
Marion, Max and me are off to DeVere Staverton Park near Daventry tomorrow. We are going to the Zip annual conference and sales awards dinner.Max and I are giving a brief talk on how to service the boilers so the service department will be a bit thin on the ground here. Fortunately we don't get too many calls nowadays and I have written a help guide for everyone in the office to have a stab at helping if they can. We'll always be available on the mobile if they need us.
I just got some industry stats from our trade association CESA. It looks like the catering equipment industry is bouncing out of the recession with signs of healthy growth in the last two quarters after seven negative quarters. It's good to see this upswing. Although Marion and I only have four months to go, we want the business to be successful for everyone who works here and for our new owners.
I reached a milestone on my diet yesterday when I had to ask our factory leader Tony Mercer to punch a hole in my belt for me as my trousers were starting to fall down. I've been dieting for twelve weeks now and have lost 12 kilos so far and four inches off my waistline. Poor Marion , who really doesn't need to lose any more weight, has had to suffer this with me and we are both getting a bit fed up (if that's the right choice of words) with the tiny evening meals. The breakfasts and lunches are great and probably much more than we have ever eaten in the past but the evening meals rely heavily on brown rice and chicken and we could both murder a pizza. At the rate that I've been losing weight we've got another five weeks max. Roll on September.
Sadly no Orange Wednesday again this week. This summer's releases have been a pretty poor bunch (Toy Story 3 and Inception apart). And speaking of Inception, I am grateful to an old friend of Paul's for Twittering (sorry Tweeting I stand corrected) the link to this explanation. If you've seen the film you can now understand. If you haven't, this pretty well sums it up.
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