You Couldn't Make It Up

I don't want to start sounding like Richard Littlejohn (heaven forbid) but an item on the Today programme this morning certainly made me raise an eyebrow. It appears that a woman in Norfolk asked the local Job Centre to put up an advert for a cleaner. In the advert she asked for applicants who were "reliable and hard working". When she called the Job centre the following day she was told that the advert could not be displayed because using the word "reliable" would leave the Job Centre open to prosecution for discriminating against "unreliable" workers.Hmmm. The Job Centre did put the advert on their website but did not display it in their office. Now I'm all for political correctness but who in their right mind would go to court and say "I'm not reliable and I am suing." Of course this argument doesn't have much relevance to Instanta. We have never ever had an unreliable person work for us in our 53 year history. Honest.



The new brochure is approaching completion. I have been struggling to get hold of a couple of case studies to break up the endless pages of stainless steel and chrome. We have thousands of satisfied customers but the likes of the Police, the NHS,the Prison Service and major restaurant and hotel chains have strict rules on endorsement and , whilst we may well get permission "in due course" we simply don't have time to wait for the approvals. So a big thank you to David West of Marble Hill House near Richmond who managed to get us approval to mention his boiler and to Amanda Sweeney of City Servicing for pointing us in his direction.



The wedding is approaching at breakneck speed. On the Friday evening before the wedding Marion and I are hosting a "rehearsal dinner" at L'Escargot in Soho for the 30 people who will have roles in the ceremony. It promises to be a very pleasant evening and, to date, almost everybody has accepted. The next job is to arrange a seating plan. As long as everybody gets on with each other that should be a piece of cake. It's a wedding. Everybody gets on with everybody at weddings. Don't they?



Now I don't want to set alarm bells ringing amongst Liverpool fans but I just got an email from the club offering me £20 off one of their special edition Fernando Torres shirts. Being a businessman I wonder why on earth the club would want to discount the price of their best and most popular player's shirts. Surely they can sell as many as they can can get hold of. But the transfer deadline closes on Sunday, Liverpool are skint and Torres is a valuable asset.Who would want to be left with a pile of shirts on Monday? Just a thought.

And speaking of Liverpool I'll finish today with the highlights of last night's match at Wolves....